The Tale of Melibeus
Content warning: violence against children. Click here to skip ahead.
So the last story Chaucer told was really bad. It might be a little hard to tell from my summary, but it was incredibly rambly, focused on all the wrong details, and didn't make a lot of sense. The conceit here is that Chaucer was obviously travelling with the group and transcribing their stories because he's dogshit at making up stories himself.
Still, the Host feels like Chaucer deserves a second chance, but he says "look, your rhymes are really bad, so why don't you just tell us something is prose instead."
This is a mistake that results in over twenty pages of block text paragraphs that broke Skep and made him refuse to come near this book for months. Anyway here's the short version, which is really easy because somehow despite being twenty pages NOTHING HAPPENS:
So there was a lord named Melibeus. He had a wife named Prudence who we'll find was SO APTLY NAMED that you just KNOW Chaucer was sitting around with a huge shit-eating grin the entire time he penned this.
It occurs to me that he probably could have finished writing the Canterbury Tales if he didn't spend so much time being incredibly goddamn pleased with this story. As much as it pained me to read it, he had to write the damn thing.
Anyway to totally mood whiplash this summary, Melibeus is out one day, and a couple enemies sneak into his house and beat his daughter mostly to death. Although you'd be forgiven for thinking she died because she isn't mentioned the remainder of the story. Also Prudence got smacked around too, but not nearly as badly. She never complains about it.
Melibeus summons literally everybody in town for a huge counsel. Most of these people don't even really care about him, but they think a war could be a lot of fun, so they all scream for that, and Melibeus decides it's war time.
Prudence rolls her eyes and takes him aside and says, hey, this probably isn't a good idea. Melibeus responds, well, I can't really take it back now, and also, why am I listening to a woman? To which Prudence takes a deep breath like women are still doing to this day after a man speaks, then spends over one whole page quoting old thinkers like Solomon and Seneca and Tully to get the point across that, actually, she's the one he needs to be taking advice from.
Surprisingly, this ACTUALLY WORKS. Melibeus decides to listen to his wife, which is such a goddamn twist I could almost redeem the entire story for it.
So then Prudence goes, okay, so if you're going to govern well then we need to pick your advisors. Obviously, your top advisor should be God, that goes without saying. And then, you should be your own advisor, because you can think really hard about stuff, and this way nobody can give away your secrets. That would be ruinous, so you can't collaborate with a single person, not even me. And then after you've done that, you can consult with your friends.
Anyway this is the part where Skep started zoning out because we're only about a quarter of the way through, and again it's literally pages of block paragraphs of Prudence quoting these sources endlessly to back up her opinions on how she thinks Melibeus should govern. I've read Terms of Service less tedious. The remaining 75% goes like this: she convinces Melibeus to forgive the people because that's what God would do, the end.
Here ends Chaucer's tale of Melibeus and Dame Prudence.