Legal Satire in The Tale of Beryn

Legal Satire in The Tale ofBeryn Richard Firth Green University of Western Ontario rTALE Of BERYN, though h,rdly a negligible item in the Chaucerian apocrypha, has receivedvery little comment. Perhaps potential readers have been warned offby an untypical lack of enthusiasm in its first editor: its Prologue at least, says Frederick Furnivall, may repay study­ "whoever skips or skims the Tale."1 In what follows I shall be arguing that its very specificlegal satire makes the tale itselfin some ways quite as interest­ ing as its prologue and that it deserves rather better than skipping or skimming. At the end of a prologue which has described the arrival of Chaucer's pilgrims at Canterbury, their visit to the cathedral, their stay at the "Checker of the hope" Inn (where the Pardoner's sexual opportunism gets him into hot water), and their departure next morning, the Merchant volunteers to tell the first tale of the return journey. T hough judged by Furnivall to be an "awfully long-winded one," this tale reworks only the first sixth of its French original, the Roman de Berinus-a section which is largely concerned with its hero's dealings at law.2 In the English version 1 The Tale ofBeryn. ed. F J. Furnivall, EETS, e.s., vol. 105 (London, 1909), p. viii. Subsequent quotations from the tale are taken from this edition (see note 10 below). For studies ofthe prologue, however, see E.J. Bashe, "The Prologue to The Tale ofBeryn," PQ 12 (1933):1-16; S. Kohl, "Chaucer's Pilgrims in Fifteenth-Century Literature," Fifteenth-Cen­ tury Studies 7 (1982):221-36; B. Darjes and T. Rendall, "A Fabliau in the Prologue to the Tale o/Beryn," MS 48 (1985):416-31;]. M. Bowers, "The Tale o/Beryn and The Siege ofThebes: Alternative Ideas of The Canterbury Tales," SAC 7 (1985):23-50; K. A. Winstead, "The Beryn-Writer as a Reader of Chaucer," ChauR 22 (1988):225-33. 2 Ben.nus: Roman en prose du Xlf;e siec/e, ed. Robert Bossuat, SATF, 2 vols. (Paris, 1931-33). Subsequent page citations are to this edition. This prose version is evidently a redaction ofan earlier Berinus in verse, only surviving in cwo fragments; unfortunately both fragments come from near the end ofthe work and thus cannot be directly compared with the English version. Since the French prose Berinus is "en etroit rapport" with these fragments (1.vii), whereas the English poem is a rather free rendition, there seems no way of deciding which of the two French versions the English poet was working from; as Bossuat remarks, Beryn "peut tout aussi bien deriver du Berinus en vers que de son remaniement en prose" (1.viii, n. 2). 43 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER Beryn, a spoiled young Roman nobleman who has fled an unsympathetic stepmother to seek his fortune in foreign trade, is driven off course by a storm and lands in a strange city where he immediately finds himself embroiled in a series of preposterous lawsuits. Two local merchants try to enforce fraudulentcontractsto swindle Beryn outof his cargo, he isaccused by a blind man of having cheated him out of his eyesight, a woman claims to be his abandoned wife, and he is even framed for a murder by the victim's son. With the aid of a man called Geoffrey (once a Roman mer­ chant himself, though long since ruined by the chicanery of the citizens), hesuccessfully extricates himself from these lawsuits-thereby winning the approval of Isope, the local king, who rewards him with the hand of his daughter. In the numerous additions and alterations the author makes to his source, he revealsan obvious concern for the law, and we may reasonably assume that the story had recommended itself to him in the first place as a vehicle forcommenting on contemporary legal practice. As Mary Tamanini has rightly observed, "The law and its processes are central to the develop­ ment of the Tale ofBeryn."3 To claim that The Tale ofBeryn is about "the law" is far easier than to define precisely the kind of law it is about or the kinds of legal issues it raises, yet...