ABSTRACT
‘The Wife of Bath Her Prologue’ was first published on 29 December 1713. It is likely that both of Pope’s ‘Translations’ from Chaucer were originally composed during the same period. For the date of the initial composition of this poem, see the Editors’ Headnote to ‘January and May’ above. Sherburn (1934: 71) suggests that Gay’s comedy The Wife of Bath, first performed in May 1713, might have ‘suggested’ Pope’s translation but, as TE (II.5n) points out, this seems unlikely in the light of the ‘Advertisement’ in the third volume of the 1736 Works, in which Pope ascribed the translations from Chaucer to the period immediately following the publication of Dryden’s Fables in 1700, and the note on p. 135 which specifies that ‘January and May’ was done at the age of 16 or 17. There is no corresponding note for the present poem, however, and it was no doubt revised for its appearance as a result of Gay’s interest in the story; there is some possibility that Pope contributed to an epilogue for Gay’s play (see below: Models). On 5 October 1713, Pope received 15 guineas from Jacob Tonson the younger for ‘The Wife of Bath’s Prologue’ and ‘The Arrival of Ulysses in Ithaca’ (see Corr., I.191n), and three months later the ‘Prologue’ was published in Steele’s Poetical Miscellanies, on 29 December 1713 (the volume is dated 1714). Pope’s poem was the opening item, occupying pp. 1–27.
