Note 34 — THE WIFE OF BATH.
Reading edition
The wife of Bath, having laid down the maxim that it is impossible for any clerk to speak well of women, except it be of the saints, indignantly inquires,
Who painted the lion, tell me, who?
and with an oath she adds,
If women hadde written stories, As clerkes have within their oratories, They would have writ of men more wickedness, Than all the mark of Adam may redress.
"Than all the mark" is than all that bear the mark or image of Adam. Pope's version, in which the wife asks the question and tamely answers it, is flat in comparison with the scornful repetition of the emphatic "who?" Yet he has employed this reduplication of a predominant word at ver. 397, where it has much less effect. Judiciously used, there is force and beauty in the turn, as in the couplet from Addison's translation of Ovid:
Her sisters often, as 'tis said, would cry Fie, Salmacis, what always idle, fie: