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Chaucer's "Merchant" characteristically wears a "Flandrish beaver hat;" and it is no accident that the scene of the "Pardoner's Tale," which begins with a description of "superfluity abominable," is laid in Flanders. In England, indeed the towns never came to domineer as they did in the Netherlands.
The contents of the phial, well calculated to sustain the credit of the pardoner's legend, set the damsel a-sneezing violently, an admission of frailty which was received with shouts of rapture by the audience.
"Why, there be sins great and sins little. But, youthful sir, for thine own damnable doings, grieve not, mope not nor repine, since I, Lubbo Fitz-Lubbin, Past Pardoner of the Holy See, will e'en now unloose, assoil and remit them unto thee " "At a price!" nodded Beltane. "Good my lord," spake Giles, viewing the Pardoner's plump person with a yearning eye, "pray thee bid me kick him hence!"
For mine own part, I think old Chaucer hath it right in his Pardoner's Tale: "A likerous thing is wine, and drunkenness Is full of striving and of wretchedness. O drunken man! disfigured is thy face, Sour is thy breath, foul art then to embrace; Thy tongue is lost, and all thine honest care, For drunkenness is very sepulture Of man's wit and his discretion." AGAMENTICUS, August 18.
But plays are not mentioned among the entertainments enumerated at the opening of the "Pardoner's Tale"; and it would in any case have been unlikely that Chaucer should have paid much attention to diversions which were long chiefly "visited" by the classes with which he could have no personal connexion, and even at a much later date were dissociated in men's minds from poetry and literature.
For mine own part, I think old Chaucer hath it right in his Pardoner's Tale: "A likerous thing is wine, and drunkenness Is full of striving and of wretchedness. O drunken man! disfigured is thy face, Sour is thy breath, foul art then to embrace; Thy tongue is lost, and all thine honest care, For drunkenness is very sepulture Of man's wit and his discretion." AGAMENTICUS, August 18.
Nor, as the abbreviated prose version of the "Pardoner's Tale" given above will suffice to show, was Chaucer deficient in the art of dramatically arranging a story; while he is not excelled by any of our non-dramatic poets in the spirit and movement of his dialogue.
John Baptist, on the other the Fleur-de-lys. It is the coin which Chaucer takes for the best representation of beautiful money in the Pardoner's Tale: this, in his judgment, is the fairest mask of Death. Villani's relation of its moral and commercial effect at Tunis is worth translating, being in the substance of it, I doubt not, true.
The other instance is that of the "Pardoner's Tale," which would appear to have been based on a fabliau now lost, though the substance of it is preserved in an Italian novel, and in one or two other versions. For the purpose of noticing how Chaucer arranges as well as tells a story, the following attempt at a condensed prose rendering of his narrative may be acceptable:
Helen, forsooth dare ye name her, O Thing?" Now before Beltane's swift and blazing anger the Pardoner's assurance wilted on the instant, and he cowered behind a lifted elbow. "Nay, nay, most potent lord," he stammered, "spit on me an ye will spit, I do implore thee, but strike me not. Beseech thee sir, in what do I offend?
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