(While riding on the woods)

Merchant: Even if my wife were to marry the Devil, she would overmatch me
Having been married two months, and having loathed every minute of it, the
merchant sees a long and large difference between Griseldes patience and
his wifes cruelty.
Host: Oh please! Cant you tell us a tale of this horrid wife of yours?
January: Well, I for sorry heart cannot tell of my own sorrow, but I will tell
another tale...
Once there was, dwelling in Lombardy, a worthy knight who had lived nobly for
sixty years without a wife. However when this knight, January, had turned sixty,
whether out of devotion or dotage, he decided to finally be married. He
searched for prospects, now convinced that the married life was a paradise on
earth, particularly keen to take a young, beautiful wife.
Vioces: Do not take a wife for economys sake soas to save expense in your
household; afaithful servant takes more trouble to watch over your possessions
than does your own wife! Your true friends or a faithful servant will take better
care foryou than she will, who continually lies! If you take a wife into your
keeping, you may very easily become a cuckold!
January: Not true! A wife is a truly gift of God! Marriage is a very great
sacrament! The man who has no wife lives unhelped and forsaken.
January gave lots of arguments in support of marriage using his knowledge in
the religious field.
January: Ladies and Gentlemen, I will be married to some fair maiden of tender
age. I want a woman no older than twenty, which I can mold like warm wax in
my hands.
(Placebo [a pill] and Justinius [a trade balance] enter the scene).
Placebo: It would be excellent to marry a young wife, do exactly as you
please Do now just as you wish in this matter.
January: Oh, thank you! That is exactly what I wanted to hear! You are my true
friend Placebo!
Justinius: Dear brother I pray you to be patient One must inquire, in my
opinion, whether she is discreet, or sober, or inclined to drink, or proud, or
shrewish in other ways; whether she is a chider or a waster of your goods
January: Enough! Straw for thy Senek! Only a cursed man would argue against
marriage!
Fair women and fair bodies passed through Januarys head like images
reflected on a mirror set up in a market-place but eventually, January selected
one women from the many available to him.
Justinius: God sent a married man more reason to repent than a single man,
and so, married, you might be more likely to get to heaven even if marriage is
your purgatory.
January: I dont even know why I am still your friend!
Some time passed and January decided to marry a young lady named May. But
that is not all: Damian, the knights squire, was so in love with the lady May that
he was almost mad
One day, Damien told May everything he felt for her in a letter, and May did the
same later.
(January and May are walking in the fields).
January: Oh, I am blind as a stone! I cant see anything! What have I done to
deserve such a cursed destiny!
January's house had a garden so magnificent, that even he who wrote
Romance of the Rose could not describe its beauty, nor could Priapus
accurately describe its art. January loved this garden so much that only he
possessed the key to it. As January had been suddenly stricken blind, he
insisted that May remained by him at all times; she could go nowhere unless he
was holding her hand. So one day
(May gives Damian the Key to the secret garden).
Day: What you want to do is make a copy of this key.
Damian: Of course.
(June 8
th
)
It was summer and January wanted to have fun with May in his private
garden.
January: Rise up, my wife, my love, my gracious lady Come forth and let us
take our pleasure; I choose you out for my wife and my comfort.
May: Oh, of course darling, I would not choose another man for anything in the
world.
(May coughs and makes signs to Damien, who is in the bushes, to climb up into
a pear tree).
May: Oh my love, I have an insatiable lust for a pear. Would you lift me up so
that I can take one from this tree?
January: Of course, that wouldnt be a problem.
(The god Pluto and his wife Proserpina appear).
Pluto: Oh, I feel such a pity for January! Bleh, I am going to restore his sight so
that he can see the villainy about to be done behind his back... HAHAHAH!
Proserpina: You know what? I hate how women are always said to be the cause
of all sorrow and problems concerning mankind. In fact, the classical sources
which proclaim the evil of women missed out the evil performed by men, and
that is not fair! I am going to give May the perfect excuse.
Pluto: Ah, women
(January recovers his sight)
January: Oh, I can see again! Oh this is a miracle! May? May! What are you
doing up there? Alas! Help, Thief! Outrageous, gross woman, what are you
doing?
May: Sir, what ails you? Be patient and reasonable. I have given help to your
two blind eyes. There was nothing better to heal your eyes with and give you
vision than to struggle with a man in a tree: God knows, I meant well.
January: Struggle! Yes, but IT went IN! God give you both a shameful death!
May: Youll see since you have recently recovered, you have some
glimmering but no perfect sight.
January: I see, as well as I ever could, with both of my eyes, thanked be God,
and by my faith, I thought he handed you that way.
May: You are dazed, dazed, good sir. This is the thanks that I get for having
made you see; alas, that I was ever so kind!
January: (suspires) Now, my lady, let everything be forgotten. Come down, my
dear. I thought I saw that Damian was lying by you and that your smock lay on
his breast
Who was happy but January? He kissed her and hugged her again and again,
he stroke her body very gently, and he led her home to his palace. Now, good
people, I ask you to be satisfied. Thus ends here my tale of January. God and
his mother Saint Mary bless us.