The Shipman’s Tale is one of several FABLIAUX included
in CHAUCER’s CANTERBURY TALES. As such it
is a comic tale of deception and adultery lampooning
the licentiousness of the clergy, the deviousness
of women, and the blind materialism of
the merchant class. Most scholars agree that
Chaucer originally intended the tale for The WIFE
OF BATH, but reassigned it to the Shipman when he
found a more appropriate tale for the Wife. Thus
there is little in the tale to link it particularly to the
pilgrim Shipman narrator.
The tale tells the story of a wealthy merchant
from St. Denis and his beautiful wife, though the
narrative suggests the merchant is far more focused
on his business than on his spouse. A monk,
Dan John, visits the merchant’s lavish estate frequently,
and is thought to be the merchant’s
cousin. One day the monk visits when the merchant
is busy in his counting house. He and the
wife engage in thinly veiled flirtatious banter, during
which the monk reveals an attraction to the
wife,while she in turn complains that her husband
neglects her and that he will not even give her the
100 franks she needs to pay a debt. She hints that
she will show her gratitude in every way imaginable
if the monk will give her the 100 franks. Dan
John promises to help her, helping himself to a
foretaste of his reward by stroking her “flanks.”
The merchant is about to travel to Flanders on
a business trip when the monk asks him for a loan
of 100 franks.Having obtained the loan, the monk
goes to see the wife.After paying her the money, he
enjoys her sexual favors.When the merchant returns
from Flanders, his financial situation forces
him to ask the monk for the repayment of his loan.
The monk informs the merchant that he has already
repaid the debt, having given the money to
the merchant’s wife during his absence. The merchant
mentions the matter to his wife that evening,
expressing his embarrassment at having asked Dan
John to repay the loan when he had already paid
her. He asks his wife what has happened to the
money, and she tells him she has already spent it
on rich attire for herself, claiming that for the merchant’s
own honor, he should ensure that his wife
is fashionably dressed. As for the money, she tells
the merchant he can “Score it on my tail [tally]”—
with the double meaning that he can put it on her
tab as something she owes him, or she can pay him
back by giving him her “tail.”
The story is based on the motif of the “lover’s gift
regained”—an extremely popular plot device that
appears in numerous medieval analogues, including
one from BOCCACCIO’s DECAMERON (the first story of
the eighth day), and remains popular in the oral tradition
of jokes even to the present time. The French
milieu of the tale (as opposed to the very English
setting of The MILLER’S TALE and The REEVE’S TALE in
Oxford and Cambridge) might suggest that this
story is earlier than those, perhaps Chaucer’s first attempt
in the fabliau genre, and therefore closer to
the French fabliaux that Chaucer used as models.
Critical views of the tale have examined it as a comment
on the bourgeois ethos of the merchant class,
and have seen the imagery making as the equation
of sex and money, of human relationships and financial
transactions. The Shipman’s Tale has also
been considered as the first tale in Fragment 7 of the
Canterbury Tales, the largest collection of coherently
linked tales in the text, and one with a tremendous
variety of literary genres, retrospectively drawn together
through ironic commentary in The Nun’s
Priest’s Tale that concludes the fragment.
Bibliography
Benson, Larry, and Theodore Andersson, eds. The Literary
Context of Chaucer’s Fabliaux: Texts and
Translations. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971.
Benson, Larry, et al., ed. The Riverside Chaucer. 3rd
ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.
Howard, Donald. The Idea of The Canterbury Tales.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.
Silverman, Albert H. “Sex and Money in Chaucer’s
Shipman’s Tale,” Philological Quarterly 32 (1953):
329–336.