Note 29 — THE WIFE OF BATH.
Reading edition
The clerk in the original reads with greater assiduity than "oft at evening."
He had a book that gladly night and day, For his desport he woulde read alway.
After describing the contents of the book the wife of Bath adds,
And alle these were bound in one volume; And every night and day was his custume, When he had leisure and vacatioun From other worldes occupation, To reden in this book of wicked wives.
This portion of the narrative in Chaucer is exceedingly pleasant and natural. The wife says that she paid no regard to the clerk's Roman precedents, his quotations from Scripture, his old saws and proverbs.
Ne I would not of him corrected be; I hate him that my vices telleth me.
The contempt with which she treated his exhortations drove him utterly mad, and it was then that he betook himself to reading all the literature he could find that bore upon the vices and frailties of women. The evidence of their general perversity with which his studies supplied him consoled him for the ungovernable disposition of his own wife, and he used "to laugh away full fast" over the record of their obstinacy and evil doings. He had the sweeter satisfaction of revenge. His mirth galled his imperious, froward wife, and when he read aloud the endless detail of female iniquities, backed up by the authority of great names, she could restrain her rage no longer, and the storm burst forth under which the wretched clerk succumbed.