The Canterbury Tales And Othello And The Pardoner's Tale

Emily Miller

Presentation Paper 3

English 3373

April 26, 2014

The Rouse of a Trickster

There are many similarities between William Shakespeare’s Othello and Geoffrey Chaucer’s Pardoner, out of his collection of tales entitled The Canterbury Tales. The stories can be compared to each other in different ways. The two most prominent themes in the stories are found in love and deception. The two themes are centered on the idea that tricking someone into trust will gain a person their own desires. The antagonists in both Othello and “The Pardoner’s Tale” are men that have one objective and they use any means necessary to accomplish their selfish and personal pursuit. The stories of both Othello and The Miller’s tale have a trifecta of characters that keep the stories in motion; the similarities between the two stories have very parallel plot structure. They both contain a power struggle, regardless if it is for personal gain between two men over one woman, in relation to how this woman can grant them their desires, or whether it is for the pursuit to get away with their villainous ply for material possessions. Whether it is love, power, or sex. Geoffrey Chaucer’s Pardoner, from The Canterbury Tales, and William Shakespeare’s Iago, from Othello, are both good examples of misleading and deceptive characters. These two literary figures techniques of manipulation are acutely effective on the other characters in Chaucer’s and Shakespeare’s works.

The value of manipulation and misleading for personal gain has proven to be rewarding for multiple people throughout history. Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare, exemplify characters and atmospheres that posses these manipulating qualities through personal gain. Othello is a play w...

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...s laid the stone for. He expresses his tales and describes how he has deceived individuals into buying multiple relics from him. The pardoner mocks the pilgrims with tales of how he has a metal shoulder bone that he received from a holy persons sheep, and that he would tell people that if you were to take this bone to a well and wash it in the water that your livestock would be unable to receive and illness once they drank the water. The most shocking at first is that the Pardoner is not ashamed at all at what tricks he plays on innocent people that trust him. The Pardoner says,

I wol noon of the apostles countrefete;

I wol have moneie, wolle, chese, and whete,

Al were it yeven of the povereste page,

Or of the povereste wydwe in a village,

Al sholde hir children sterve for famine.

Nay, I wol drynke licour of the vyne

And have a joly wenche in every toun.(PT 196)