The Reeve's Prologue and Tale
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The Reeve's Prologue Tale is the third story to be told in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. The reeve, named Osewold in the text, is the manager of a large estate who reaped incredible profits for his master and himself. He is described in the Tales as skinny and bad-tempered. The reeve had once been a carpenter, a profession mocked in the previous Miller's Tale. Osewold responds with a tale that mocks the miller's profession.
As well as insulting the Miller, the Reeve's tale also criticises the tale told by the Miller. Just as the bawdy, humorous tale told by the Miller is in response to the serious one previously told by the Knight, the Reeve's offering 'quites' or counters the Miller's. While still humorous, the tale is much more like black comedy with its theft, rape and violence, and overall far more grim and realistic portrayal of events. In addition, none of the characters are depicted sympathetically; consider the unpleasant miller, his vain wife, and his thick daughter. The clerks may have good intentions initially but they seem to be far from bright even though they are supposed to be university students.
The tale is based on a popular fabliau of the period with many different versions, the "cradle-trick". Chaucer improves on his sources with his detailed characterization and sly humour linking grinding corn and sex. The north-eastern accent of the two clerks is also the earliest surviving attempt in English to record a dialect from an area other than that of the main writer. Chaucer's works are written with traces of the southern English or London accent of himself and his scribes, but he extracts comedy from imitating accents, a comedic device that is still popular today.
[edit] Summary
Symkyn, a miller, lived in Trumpington near Cambridge who stole corn and meal brought to him for grinding. Symkyn was also a bully and expert with knives. His wife was the portly daughter of the town clergyman (and was therefore illegitimate, as Catholic priests do not marry), whom the miller married because he wanted a refined wife. They had a twenty-year-old daughter Malyne and a six-month-old son. When Symkyn overcharged for his latest work grinding corn for Solar Hall, a Cambridge University college also known as King's Hall (which later became part of Trinity College), the college steward was too ill to face him. Two students there, John and Alan, originally from Strother in North East England, were outraged at this latest theft and vowed to beat the miller at his own game. John and Alan packed an even larger amount of flour than usual and said they would watch Symkyn while he ground it. Symkyn untied their horse and the two students were unable to catch their steed until nightfall. Meanwhile, the miller stole even more corn than usual to prove that the scholars were not always the wisest or cleverest of people.
Returning to Symkyn's house, John and Alan offered to pay him for a night's sleeping there. He challenges them to make his single bedroom into a grand house. After much rearranging was done, Symkyn and his wife slept in one bed, John and Alan in another, and Malyne in the third. The baby boy's cradle sat at the foot of the miller's bed.
After drinking wine for a long time, Symkyn and his family fell fast asleep while John and Alan lay awake, plotting revenge. First Alan got up and surprised Malyne in her bed before she could cry out and had sex with her. Then the miller's wife arose to relieve herself of the wine she'd drunk and, upon returning, felt for the baby's cradle in front of the bed in order to identify her bed. She discovered it by John's bed, where John had moved it, and joined him there where they made love.
Dawn came, and Alan said good-bye to Malyne whom he'd enjoyed three times during the night. She told Alan to look behind the main door and find the cake she had made with the half sack of flour her father had stolen. He saw the cradle in front of what he assumed was Symkyn's bed (but it was John's bed), went to Symkyn's bed, shook the pillow and told the miller—whom he thought was John—how he'd just slept with Malyne. Symkyn rose from his bed in a rage, awaking his wife in John's bed who took a club and hit her raging husband by mistake, thinking him one of the students. John and Alan both fled quickly.
