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"Set me down as Thopas Trednock, tailor, at the sign of the Pressing Iron, in Cornhill," the whey-faced man replied, in his shrill tones, amid the derisive laughter of the assemblage. "Thopas Trednock, tailor good!" the knight repeated, as he wrote the name down. "You will be an excellent witness, Master Trednock.
And yet the Rime of Sir Thopas, who goes seeking an elf queen for his mate, and is encountered by the giant Sir Olifaunt, burlesques these same romances with their impossible adventures and their tedious rambling descriptions. The tales of the prioress and the second nun are saints' legends. The Monk's Tale is a set of dry, moral apologues in the manner of his contemporary, the "moral Gower."
Interruptions are numerous; the narrative is full of life and movement, as when the miller gets drunk and insists on telling his tale out of season, or when they stop at a friendly inn for the night, or when the poet with sly humor starts his story of "Sir Thopas," in dreary imitation of the metrical romances of the day, and is roared at by the host for his "drasty ryming."
Two only among these "Tales" are in prose a vehicle of expression, on the whole, strange to the polite literature of the pre-Renascence ages but not both for the same reason. The first of these "Tales" is told by the poet himself, after a stop has been unceremoniously put upon his recital of the "Ballad of Sir Thopas" by the Host.
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