"Nor dread them not, nor do them reverence;
For though thine husband armed be in mail,
The arrows of thy crabbed eloquence
Shall pierce his breast, and eke his aventail;<18>
In jealousy I rede* eke thou him bind, *advise
And thou shalt make him couch* as doth a quail. *submit, shrink

"If thou be fair, where folk be in presence
Shew thou thy visage and thine apparail:
If thou be foul, be free of thy dispence;
To get thee friendes aye do thy travail:
Be aye of cheer as light as leaf on lind,* *linden, lime-tree
And let him care, and weep, and wring, and wail."


Notes to the Clerk's Tale


1. Petrarch, in his Latin romance, "De obedientia et fide uxoria
Mythologia," (Of obedient and faithful wives in Mythology)
translated the charming story of "the patient Grizel" from the
Italian of Bocaccio's "Decameron;" and Chaucer has closely
followed Petrarch's translation, made in 1373, the year before
that in which he died. The fact that the embassy to Genoa, on
which Chaucer was sent, took place in 1372-73, has lent
countenance to the opinion that the English poet did actually
visit the Italian bard at Padua, and hear the story from his own
lips. This, however, is only a probability; for it is a moot point
whether the two poets ever met.