Wife of Bath

The Wife's is the sixth tale (of twenty-four, including two by Chaucer), while Coghill in his modern version places it fourteenth. In both, her tale (from what is known to scholars as Fragment III, containing Group D of the tales) precedes the Friar's and the Summoner's. In Robinson she follows the Cook, while in Coghill she follows the Pardoner. In both cases, her tale is the first of a group of seven (Wife, Friar, Summoner, …

…morning as beautiful as any queen or empress in the world. She bids him "cast up the curtin" to see that she has already changed. The knight is ecstatic and the couple live happily ever after. The Wife of Bath ends with a double prayer: first that God will send women meek, young and virile husbands, and that cantankerous and niggardly husbands will catch the plague (no empty threat at the time when she speaks).