The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer

4 ‘twelf yeer was of age’ – the reader instinctively sympathises with a child married, as it is later learnt, to a much older man, and this makes the Wife’s later treatment of her first three husbands seem more justifiable. There is no suggestion, however, that her first marriage was one she was forced into, as she immediately thanks God for it.

7 ‘(If I so ofte mighte have wedded be)’ – the Wife raises the issue of ‘serial polygamy.’ How many marriages can one lawfully contract? Are further marriages invalid?

11 ‘Cane of Galilee’ – refers to a very specious argument for marrying only once, on the grounds that Jesus is only seen to attend one wedding in the gospels!

15ff ‘Biside a welle...the Samaritan’ – Christ’s meaning is that the Samaritan woman is not legally married to her sixth consort; the Wife asks whether her fifth husband is not therefore still her husband. Correctly understood, the text does not limit the number of marriages someone can contract, as the Wife points out in lines 24-5.

28 ‘God bad us for to wexe and multiplye’ – Genesis 1.28. This ‘noble text,’ as the Wife calls it in the next line, indeed implies that a widow is perfectly entitled to remarry and have more children.

31 ‘lete fader and moder’ – Matthew 19.5.

37 ‘As wolde God it leveful were to me’ – King Solomon, under the Old Law, was permitted to have many wives (actual polygamy). As a Christian, under the New Law, the Wife must content herself with one husband at a time.

38 ‘refresshed’ – the Wife makes no secret of the fact that she would like to be ‘refreshed’ by as many men as possible. Solomon had one thousand consorts, and the Wife sees nothing but benefit in this (line 43).

45 ‘I have piked out the beste’ – The Wife has taken all she can out of her husbands.

46 ‘hir nether purs’ – no doubt an innuendo. The Wife makes no secret of her sexual demands on her spouses.

55-6 ‘I am free/To wedde’ – 1Cor. 7:39: ‘A wife is tied as long as her husband is alive. But if the husband dies, she is free to marry anybody she likes, only it must be in the Lord.’ St Paul goes on to say that, in his opinion, such a woman would be better off staying single – advice the Wife naturally omits.