The Squire's Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer

The Squire’s Tale is one of several of the Canterbury Tales that is unfinished, but the reason for this is less clear than it is for the others in this category. The Monk and Chaucer himself are interrupted when fellow pilgrims can stand no more, and the Cook’s Tale appears to have fallen victim to the loss of manuscript pages, but the Squire’s Tale ends in neither fashion and so presents something of a mystery. However, let’s begin at the beginning.

The Squire

The squire is the son of the knight, who told the first tale. He is the only pilgrim whose age we know, from the line in the General Prologue, “Of twenty yeer of age he was, I gesse.” He has seen military service with his father, but his main interest is in wooing the ladies with his singing, dancing and flute-playing. He dresses in ways that would today pose questions about his sexual inclination, as he is “emboudered (embroidered) as it were a meede (maid), al ful of fresshe floures, whyte and reede (red). One can see why the word “gay” has changed its meaning over the centuries!

However, this squire is definitely a ladies’ man, and he fits the image of a troubadour within the courtly love tradition. His romantic tale, curtailed though it is, is clearly going to be in the same vein as that of his father, concerned with a royal court, adventure and enchantment.

His Tale

There is no prologue to the Tale, merely a short introduction (8 lines) that is clearly incomplete but which serves to indicate that the tale will be “somewhat of love”.

The Tale is set in the court of the Tartar King Cambuskan, who can be assumed to be non-historical. He has two sons, Algarsyf and Cambalo, and a daughter, Canace. To mark twenty years on the throne, Cambuskan hosts a magnificent feast, during which a strange knight rides into the hall on a horse made of brass. He holds a mirror in his hand, has a gold ring on his thumb, and a bare sword hanging by his side.

The knight announces that the brass horse is a gift to Cambuskan from the King of Araby and India. This is (we might have guessed!) a magic horse that can take the king anywhere he wants within a day and fly through the air if necessary.

The mirror will, at time of adversity, reveal who is friend or foe. A lady could use it to tell whether an intending lover is true or false. The ring enables the wearer to understand the speech of birds, and also to know which plants will cure wounds. The mirror and the ring are gifts for Lady Canace.

The sword will cut through any armour and inflict wounds that can only be healed by the flat of the sword being applied to the same place.

The knight then rides back out of the hall and dismounts in the courtyard, where the brass horse stands still and cannot be moved. The knight is invited to join the feast, the sword and the mirror are taken to a high tower, and the ring is presented to Canace. There is more feasting and dancing, during which the knight dances with Canace.

When the feast is over, Cambuskan asks the knight to show him how to ride the brass horse. The knight explains that there is a pin inside the horse’s ear that must be turned. The king then needs to say where he wants to go and, on arrival, turn another pin. Another trick is that the owner can turn a pin that will make the horse invisible.

The next day, Canace is up and about before the rest of the family and decides to go for a walk, accompanied by five or six attending ladies. On the walk she comes across a female peregrine falcon that is bleeding from self-inflicted wounds, high in a dead tree. Having the magic ring, Canace is able to ask the bird what is wrong and to offer to find herbs to make it better.

The falcon falls to the ground and is picked up by the princess. The bird explains that she gave her love to a male falcon who proved to be false and eventually flew off when a female kite came along. Canace has pity for the female falcon and takes her home, where she makes ointments to treat the wounds, using her new-found knowledge of herbs.

The squire now breaks off from his narrative to tell us how the tale will develop and involve the other characters. King Cambuskan will win “many a citee”, Algarsyf will escape from peril thanks to the brass horse, and will find himself a wife called Theodora, and Cambalo will fight with “the bretheren two, for Canace er that he myghte hire wynne”.

And that is as much as we get. After only two lines of the third part of the Tale, the Franklin then thanks the Squire for his Tale and speaks in his praise, wishing that his own son was of the same calibre, instead of losing his money at dice and keeping bad company. The Host then interjects to remind the Franklin that he is also required to tell a “tale or two” (as opposed to the four tales of the original stipulation!), and the Franklin then agrees to be the next storyteller.

Discussion

In analysing the Squire’s Tale, what are we to make of its ending? As mentioned in Part 1, two other Tales are interrupted, but in nothing like as polite a manner as is done by the Franklin. Chaucer’s own romantic tale, the parody of “Sir Thopas”, is rudely interrupted by the Host, and the Monk is given short shrift by the Knight. They both use the same phrase, “namoore of this”, to indicate their displeasure, which is a mile away from the Franklin’s, “In feith, Squier, thow hast thee wel yquit and gentilly.” If the Tale is so terrible that it must be aborted, it seems very strange that it would be the Franklin who does so, especially as the words he uses are exactly those that would be expected if the Tale had run its full course.

That said, there are certainly reasons why the Tale might have been interrupted. The Squire is, as noted above, a flowery young man, and he uses very flowery language to tell his Tale. For example, it takes him some 130 lines just to relate the distress of the falcon at her husband’s falseness. As indicated in the closing lines of the Tale, there is a huge amount still to be told, involving the other characters and magic items. We have no idea, for example, how the sword and the mirror will come into play. It has taken the Squire more than 650 lines to get this far, which is more than the Pardoner will take to tell the whole of his beautifully intricate story, and the young man has hardly started.

We have no way of knowing how the story would have developed, because there are no extant sources for it. It is possible that the story was original to Chaucer, and he simply did not know how to end it. He was an excellent developer of plots but is not known as an originator of them; maybe this is an example of why he preferred to adapt other people’s stories.

Another possibility is that the whole thing should be taken as a parody of the troubadour tradition. Here is a young man who can start a story but cannot finish it. His father has the gift of being able to tell a long story, and go off at all sorts of tangents but eventually reach a conclusion, but the son’s inexperience shows through until he is gently rescued by the kindly Franklin who spares his blushes by praising him to the skies.

Another unanswered question is posed just before the Tale ends, where the Squire mentions that Cambalo will fight the two brothers for the hand of Canace. But surely Cambalo is one of the brothers, and Canace is his sister? What is going on here? An easy explanation might be that this is a mistake, and another name should be inserted in place of that of Cambalo; the knight who brought the gifts and danced with Canace seems like an obvious candidate. However, in the introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale we read of the “wikke (wicked) ensample of Canacee, that loved hir owene brother sinfully”. So perhaps there is a tale of incest to be told after all, and could that be something that the Franklin did not want to hear? Or did Chaucer see a difficulty in aligning the gentle nature of Canace, the healer of birds, with “wickedness”, and decide to abandon ship before things got too awkward?

There are still matters that do not add up, however. Who are the “bretheren two” if Cambalo is not one of them? There are many examples in the Canterbury Tales that show that Chaucer died before he was able to edit his work and put right all these inconsistencies and non sequiturs, another one being the apparent change from the original demand for four tales per pilgrim to a “tale or two”. In the film world an important role is played by the continuity editor, who is paid to make sure that silly mistakes do not occur. Chaucer could have used one with profit!

© John Welford