Many of the most famous Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey
Chaucer deal with the dynamics of marriage, and here we have a hen-pecked husband. When
he tells his beloved Pertelote that he dreamed he was attacked by a "yelow and reed"
beast (a fox), his wife questions his manhood (should I say roosterhood?) much as Lady
Macbeth questions Macbeth's in order to prod him into killing King Duncan. "Now han ye
lost myn herte and al my love, I kan nat love a coward, by my feith! For certes, what
so any womman seith, we alle desiren, if it myghte bee, to han housbondes hardy, wise,
and free, and secree, and no nyugard, ne no fool. . . .How dorste ye seyn, for shame,
unto youre love that any thyng myghte make yow
aferd?"
Pertelote not only questions the idea of her
husband being afraid of anything, she is particularly put off that
he should be afraid of a dream. "Allas! and konne ye been agast of swevenys [dreams or
visions]? Nothyng, god woot, but vanitee in sweven is." And here is where it begins to
get fun: first she quotes an ancient authority, Cato, as saying dreams have no meaning.
Chaucer is mocking the medieval penchant for basing most arguments upon the precedents
set by ancient authors or authorities. (Note: the Wife of Bath begins her story by
comparing her personal experience against the dictums of the authorities.) Pertelote
next puts forward a rational, scientific explanation for the source of dreams, complete
with illustrations. Dreams come from overeating, she asserts, which throw the body's
"humours" out of balance. Thus the dream of a red beast comes from an overabundance of
Chanticleer's "reed colera" which causes people to have nightmares of arrows, of fire
with red flames, and of red beasts that bite. She continues to describe imbalances of
another humour, melancholy, the black humour that leads to dreams of black bears or
bulls or black devils.
Now, having a physical cause for
his dream, Pertelote prescribes a physical cure: eating the proper herbs will fix him
right up! For convenience, I will use David Wright's translation from the 3 volume
Folio Society Dual Language edition (1985).
Now sir...take...some laxative...purge yourself
of the red choler and black melancholy. To save time, as there's no apothecary here to
be had, I'll be your guide myself and show you herbs to benefit your health; and in our
own yard I shall find hose herbs which have a natural property to purge from top to
bottom, above and beneath...
(197)
Chanticleer's response
is the first to challenge Pertelote's reference to Cato by citing a greater authority,
Cicero, who he says tells a story of two friends who set out on a pilgrimage, only to
have one of them murdered while the two are separated. It's worth noting that we now
have a story in a story in a story, for the Nun's Priest's Tale began with a tale of a
poor widow, shifted to the story of her rooster's bad dream, and now the rooster is
telling his mate a third story, which will be followed by a fourth with other examples
before the rooster's own adventures continue. But in essence, the Cicero story tells of
how one friend was visited by his missing friend in a dream, who warned him to come
quickly, for he was about to be murdered. This repeats a few times until the forlorn
ghost appears in the dream to say too late! But he tells where his body can be found.
And of course, it all turns out to be true; the dream vision was not meaningless
nonsense, but a true warning of what was about to happen. I also must point out that
the tale contains the expression, "Mordre wol out"--or Murder will out, which most
people attribute to Shakespeare's Macbeth, but appears here in
Chaucer two centuries earlier! In any case, the tale presents this conflict: dreams are
nonsensical responses to physical disorders in the body and can be cured with the proper
medicines or foods versus dreams are important visions from the
spiritual realm that can warn us of what is to come. It's interesting to note that the
stereotypical roles are reversed—some might expect the male to be the voice of science
and reason and the woman to represent more spiritual, mysterious thinking.
Well, the rooster listens to his wife and ignores his
dreams warnings. Therefore he is nabbed by the fox, who as noted in the previous
answer, uses flattery to seduce Chanticleer into closing his eyes long enough for the
fox to nab him, only to be tricked in turn by the poor rooster, who fools the fox into
opening his mouth to taunt the widow and her family who are pursuing them--giving
Chanticleer a chance to fly up into a tree. The fox tries flattery again, trying to
coax the rooster down, but the rooster will not be fooled twice. Thus, the latter
portion of the tale does reflect a moral about not trusting flatterers, but there is
also this moral, provided in Latin by Chanticleer himself: "In principio Mulier est
hominis confusio," which the rooster wrongly translates to mean woman is man's joy and
all his bliss. The astute reader, however, need not know much Latin to discern that the
true meaning is: principally, woman is man's confusion (ruin). Thus a second moral
emphasized in the tale is don't let women lead you astray.
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