The Cook's Tale by Chaucer

NET / SLET / TRB Study Guide
Subject: English, Date: 16th March, 2018

The cook's tale, the fourth one in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales abruptly stops after 58 lines. It has a prologue too and in which the cook rejoices at Reeve's Tale and shares his realisation that as in the case of Miller, it is very dangerous to allow men to stay at your home by night.  The host asks the cook Roger to tell a very good tale to compensate the bad food he has given the company so far. Keeping the story of a hosteller in reserve to be told on return,  the London cook begins his present tale:

An apprentice cook named Perkin Fun-Lover always gets indulged in drinking, singing, dancing, and gathering men of his sort, especially at working hours. He is a fine young man and just as the hive is full of honey, he is full of love and amour.  He is as brown as a berry in appearance, with black locks of hair elegantly combed.  But in what way will it help the master in business? The cash box is always empty and the spendthrift cook even manipulates the accounts and leads the workmates go astray.  The patient master, at one stage, bethinks the proverb – “ Best toss a rotten apple from the hoard, before it rot all the fruits that's present.” He bids 'good riddance' to this young dissolute and debacherous  fellow who is now still more free to drown in merriment.

Just as birds of same feather flock together, he finds a companion who is as devil-may-care and happy-go-lucky as he is. Perkin soon moves his bed and all possessions to his friend’s place.  His friend's wife keeps an inn that is just to make a false impression for hiding her immoral activities.  She is thus a shopkeeper by day but a prostitute by night.  With this, the well-planned and well-begun story is left incomplete.  Some of the manuscripts of Canterbury Tales totally omit this unwhole story, though it's surely from the pen of Chaucer and has its own flavor.