The Physician’s Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer

One of the shorter Canterbury Tales, this is a story of virtue assailed and the assailant punished, and may have been influenced by an incident within Chaucer’s own circle of acquaintances

John Welford

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Illustration from the Ellesmere Chaucer. Public domain artwork

It is not absolutely certain where Chaucer intended the Physician’s Tale to appear in the sequence of the Canterbury Tales, as there are no links between the manuscript fragment that contains the tale (also including that of the Pardoner) and any other tale. However, it is usually placed after the Franklin’s Tale.

The Tale is the old Roman story of Apius and Virginia, which the teller claims to have taken from the works of Livy, but Chaucer is more likely to have used the French “Roman de la Rose” as his source. There is no prologue or introduction to the Tale, which is only 286 lines long.

The Tale

Despite the shortness of the Tale, the Physician spends a long time introducing us to one of the characters, the 14-year-old daughter of Virginius, a knight. The girl is a paragon of virtue, beautiful, modest, with perfect manners, and everything a parent would want a daughter to be. Indeed, the physician goes on to tell us that all children should be brought up with the same degree of…

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John Welford

He was a retired librarian, living in a village in Leicestershire. A writer of fiction and poetry, plus articles on literature, history, and much more besides.