"No grace, no remedye" : the moral of the Physician's Tale

The Physician's Tale has long presented a critical problem for its apparent juxtaposition to the moral framework, suggested by the remainder of the tales in the Canterbury collection. The prevailing mood of Chaucer's poetry is the hope for "Jerusalem celestial and the sense of God's eternal presence; existence does not end in death, but in the Parson's promise of grace and hope. In contrast, the Physician's Tale presents a tragic world, bleak and pessimistic, a world which offers no grace . . .no remedye." But, if viewed as a part of the whole, the Physician's Tale affords a sharper picture of the moral necessity which is prevalent in the other tales, it offers a contrast between justice and the absence of all fairness, between hope and the depths of despair. Beside the other tales, then, the Physician's Tale becomes a study in paradox. But it is this very paradox that facilitates a better understanding of the function of justice and grace in the other tales of the collection. It is the virtue of the Physician's Tale that in the antithesis of the tale to its counterparts we achieve a richer appreciation of the whole of the Canterbury Tales.