The Merchant’s Tale by Chaucer

Next to the Oxford scholar, the Merchant proceeds to tell his tale. It's known from his prologue that the marriage has become so painful to him.  It is just two years since he married but he has experienced a lot from his ill-tempered wife whose ‘exceeding cruelty' is in contrast with the 'wondrous patience' of Griselda in Oxford scholar's tale.   He has no words to describe the cruelty of his bitter half and swears that she can outmatch any devil at once.  Now he begins his tale.

The Merchant’s Tale
A sixty years old knight named January, living in Lombardy is tired of his bachelor's life and wishes to be wedded now.  He analyses the advantages and disadvantages of a married life.  A single man may rejoice at freedom like a bird or beast but it is marriage that leads to a blissful life. Marriage is but a paradise, God’s gift that helps to find a wife, makes the couples face life in one heart both in joys and misery.  God made eve out of Adam for his help, pleasures, companionship and consolation. Above all the knight needs a son to inherit his estates.   He wants to marry a girl who should be the fairest of all, and her age not more than twenty, for he, being 'old fish,' wants young flesh every day.  He doesn't prefer even a woman of thirty who may lack taste and delicacy.  He, however, seeks the counsel of his friends in this regard.  All offer him good score including his wise friend Placebo but Justinius warns him that he cannot satisfy his wife and since he is old, soon he would become a cuckold. Destiny overrules.  He weds May, in whose rarest beauty, he finds himself completely lost.  Though he labors a lot till daylight in his bed, May estimates his 'dalliance not worth the bean.'

It's likely in the case of any young woman like May to cuckold her sexually feeble husband.  It so happens that Damian, one of the most faithful squires of January loves May at first sight on the very day of wedding celebrations. He becomes lovesick more and more and is bedridden. He writes a letter expressing his love and keeps it in a silk purse.  When the knight is reported of his illness, he sends May to visit him and comfort him to recover him from illness.  Damian gives her the purse that she secretly keeps in her bosom, reads it in the rest room and destroys it there lest others should know about that.  Pity creeps into her gentle spirit and she too writes a letter to him reciprocating his love.  Now and then, they exchange smiles, signals and sighs of love by means of non-verbal communication. 

The knight has a beautiful private garden that even gods would envy of.  Whenever it pleases him, he used to take his May there and rejoice. The garden is fortified with a fencing of wall and none but the knight has the key to enter there.  One day, suddenly the knight loses his eyesight completely and weeps and laments a lot on this.  In course of time, he becomes all right but then always takes his wife hand in hand wherever he goes.  The paramours Damian and May are left with no chance for their romance.  However May manages to take the wax impression of the garden key and pass it over to Damian.  As per her direction, he comes in advance to the garden before the couples arrive and hides himself behind a bush.

The knight and May enters the private garden and the latter gives a signal to Damian to climb up the pear tree.  On the other side of the garden, Pluto and his wife Proserpine take note of all these events.  Pluto condemns all women for their infidelity, taking May as a typical example.  He declares to bring back the eye sight of the knight at the right time to expose his wife's villainy.  Proserpine on the other hand reveals his displeasure against all men who are as unfaithful as Damian who betrays his own master.  She proposes to empower May with such a spoken skill to escape the wrath of her husband. 

May now pretends to have a burning for the pear fruit without which she will die.  The knight is stone blind and he has no servants to climb up the tree.  But she asks the knight to bend down, puts her foot on his back, climbs up the tree and permits Damian have his hunger fulfilled.  At this right time, as already declared, Pluto gives January his eye sight back who gets mad to see his wife and Damian rejoicing at each other. He cries out , “Out, help! Rape! Alas!”.  Now, influenced by Proserpine, May says that she is 'struggling' with a man in tree sincerely to cure his blindness out of such a shock.  Just as a man recently awakened from sleep could not see anything clearly, the knight, just now recovering from blindness, could not eye clearly what is happening in the tree.  This is her explanation and pretext. Then the knight beseeches her to forgive him for mistaking her with a vision as if enjoyed by Damian.  May comes down from the tree and the knight goes with her to live happily  thereafter. Thus ends the tale of January told by the Merchant.
In the epilogue, the host says that his wife is also an ill-tempered one but she has never been an unfaithful one.  He doesn't want to complaint more about her vices since someone in the company may leak out everything top her and then he will be in trouble.
Criticism:

This tale has given birth to the popular phrase “January-May wedding" that refers to the marriage between an old one and the younger one.  The names used here are symbolic – January, the knight with hair ad old as the snow, May, his wife as young as May flowers, Justinius the righteous man, etc.  Again folly of old age is a common theme extending up to Shakespeare's King Lear whose dotage leads to his eternal agony.  "Pear-tree episode" that Chaucer has employed here successfully is yet another popular theme in those days.  Bacon's exploration of the advantages and disadvantages of marriage and single life seems to have emerged from this tale wherein the knight elaborately discusses the same while choosing to marry a young maiden, calling a wife, as Bacon does, a nurse a good friend throughout the life.