The Physician’s Tale by Chaucer

This is the thirteenth tale in “Canterbury Tales” by Chaucer.

A knight called Virginius has a fourteen years old daughter named Virginia endowed with beauty and all other virtues that the world may envy of.  Nature has, as Chaucer says, created her with such excellence that no one can show a counterfeit. To be fair and virtuous is not a sin but it tempts others to sin.  It so bechances in the case of Appius, the Judge of the town who is smitten by her beauty. Evil runs into his heart and he says:
“This maid shall be mine, before any man!”

With foul appetite, the lustful judge schemes to bring false charges against her father and thereby to own her.  He finds a rogue called Claudius who agrees to his plan being threatened.  He accuses the knight that he had stolen his servant Virginia and whom he pretended to be his daughter.  Though the Judge says,

“……. In the defendant’s absence,
I cannot bring this new case to sentence.
Summon him and I shall gladly hear;
You shall have justice, not injustice here”

he, after fetching the knight to the court, gives no chance to him to defend himself.  He immediately orders the knight to bring forth her daughter and leave her to Claudius for ever.  The knight is struck with horror to know the plot of the Judge and Claudius. 
What can a helpless father like Virginius do? He returns home with his face as dead as ashes and asks her daughter to die in his hand rather than being ashamed of losing her virginity to the evil judge. Virginia compares herself to Jephtha in the bible and tells her father,

“Blessed be God That I shall die a maid!
Grant me death before I come to shame.
Do with your child as you will, in God’s name.”

The father strikes off her head and takes it to the Judge who, in rage, sentences the knight to death.  But people who have come to know of the villainy of the Judge and Claudius rushes to the court to riot on behalf of the father.  The judge is then put into jail where he commits suicide in shame.  Claudius is also sentenced to death but, upon the knight's plea, he is exiled instead.  All others, having a part in this crime, are either exiled or hanged. The physician ends his tale with a moral:
“Forsake sin, before sin may you forsake.”

Criticism:
This moral story is based on the histories of Titus Livius and is retold by Chaucer in his “Romance of the Rose” and John Gower's “Confessio Amantis”.  It also resembles a little the story of Jephthah in the bible who, to keep his vow, kills her own virgin daughter.  Reference to Virginius is also found in Shakespeare’s “Titus Andronicus” in which Lavinia is killed by her father not to outlive the shame of rape.

The theme of the story is “consent and sacrifice" and it is also a moral allegory with characters such as Virginius, Virginia and Appius.  Strangely this tale, unlike others in the Canterbury collection, is brief, simple and direct without a prologue and epilogue.  The end is sudden and unbelievable.  How fast furious people of the town change the course of the story! Claudius having direct connection is not killed but many, being ‘accessories to the wickedness', are hanged.  But Chaucer hasn't told anything of these accessories anywhere in the story.  Above all, is not gross injustice to leave foul Claudius alive and behead virtuous Virginia? The story proclaims the moral of the bible: “the wages of sin is death" but what is the sin committed by Virginia? The judgement to the judge is also sudden and unconvincing.  The continuity between Franklin’s Tale and this Physician's tale is also mysteriously missing and the story straightaway begins leaving no clue whether it follows the Franklin’s.