'Shot Wyndowe; (Miller's tale, I.3358 and 3695): An open and shut case?

Peter Brown. Medium Aevum. Oxford: 2000.Vol. 69, Iss. 1;  pg. 96, 8 pgs

Abstract (Document Summary)

Brown suggests that the "shot wyndowe" in Geoffrey Chaucer's "Miller's Tale" (I. 3358 and 3695) was a privy window, the window assoicated with "shot" in the sense of discharge, "shit," or chute. The existence of a privy enhances the scurrilous and scatological features of the tale and adds a further dimension to the theme of spatial transgression in which the boundaries of the private are breached and invaded.

Full Text (4286   words)

Copyright Society for the Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literature 2000

What kind of a window is the `shot wyndowe' that is such a crucial feature of the Miller's Tale? The term itself is rare: it occurs nowhere else in Chaucer's works, and is not recorded again before Gavin Douglas's translation of the Aeneid (1513).1 This lack of linguistic context produced an early uncertainty about the form and meaning of shot. The word is found unchanged in the two earliest and best manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales, Ellesmere and Huntington, and in a majority of others, but in a significant portion of the total (some twenty of the eighty surveyed by Manly and Rickert) there is considerable variation. 2 For Miller's Tale line 3358 there are ten occurrences of schutte, four of shoppe, and two of short, and for line 3695 four of shet, eight of shoppe, and one of short. Furthermore, within the variant manuscripts there is little consistency between the two lines. For example, the same scribe will write schutte on the first occasion and shoppe on the second, or change short to shoppe, or schutte to shot. Editors and other scholars evince a similar doubt about the precise meaning of `shot wyndowe', and the prevailing definition is itself questionable. Thomas Wright (1847) formed the opinion that the term denotes a projecting window from which the inhabitants of the house might shoot in order to prevent forced entry.3 This seems an unlikely use for a domestic window in late fourteenth-century Oxford, even if the periodic brawls, assaults, and riots made residents feel defensive.4 F. N. Robinson (1957) suggested that `shot wyndowe' might designate a window equipped with a fastening bolts but there is no indication of one in the Miller's Tale. The idea was abandoned by Douglas Gray, the editor of the Miller's Tale for the Riverside Chaucer (y87), who gives what is now the generally accepted gloss, simply `hinged window (one that opens and closes)'.6 This interpretation can be traced back through Skeat (yoo) - `a hinge-shutting window" - to Thomas Tyrwhitt (i779) who wrote, with more hesitancy: `That is, I suppose, a window that was shut.'8

A wide range of other modern authorities supports the Riverside gloss,9 and it seems churlish to quibble when there is a virtual consensus, but there are two objections. The first is this: if `shot wyndowe' means `hinged window' it is a redundant term, because other details in this most economic of narratives make it abundantly clear that it is a window that opens and shuts; why then would Chaucer go on to use a special term to denote its obvious properties? The second objection concerns the elision of shot and shut. With the exception of Wright and Robinson, commentators imply that these two words are synonymous, when in fact shot is not necessarily related to ME shetten, `to shut', and needs to be re-examined. OED is of some help here, both in acknowledging that `The precise sense of the first element [of `shot wyndowe'] is difficult to determine', and in suggesting a connection with Middle Dutch schotdore, sliding door, and schotpoorte, portcullis. In each case, schot occurs in a compound noun describing an opening and shutting device that is distinctive precisely because it operates without a hinge. Thus, schot denotes not so much the action of shutting, but the nature of that action. The sliding door and portcullis `shoot' into place, as we would say, with potential for the action of shutting being a sudden, abrupt movement.

Should we imagine the `shot wyndowe' of the Miller's Tale as a similar kind of sliding device? To do so, it might be argued, enhances our understanding and appreciation of that joyous line in the Miller's Tale when, with a giggle and one deft action, Alisoun shuts out the astonished Absolon: "`Teehee!" quod she, and clapte the wyndow to' (line 3740). For Alisoun's jape to work well, she needs to remain in full control of the aperture (so to speak) and close the window quickly and decisively. A sliding window, which can be closed easily from the inside of the house, would seem to facilitate this action, whereas to reach for a wide-open window would run the risk of confrontation with an enraged suitor. Consider also the stress on speed when Alisoun first opens the window for the kneeling Absolon, `The window she undoth, and that in haste' (line 3727) - surely an awkward manoeuvre if the window has to open towards him - and when Nicholas repeats her action: `And up the wyndowe dide he hastily' (line 38oi).' Yet the arrangement of these events does not necessitate a sliding window. Generations of readers have imagined a hinged window without registering any sense that the associated dramatic business is thereby rendered clumsy. Indeed, Absolon's amazement at having kissed the wrong part of Alisoun's anatomy is such that he staggers backwards (line 3736), thereby enabling her to lean out, reach for, and shut a hinged window, if such it be. So we are left with a puzzling term that seems either to refer to a hinged window with a word that may or may not mean shut, or to a sliding window that is not strictly necessary, but which might allow certain actions to happen a little more smoothly.

The puzzle can be solved by recognizing some preconceptions that inform the scholarly commentaries, and by examining the historical data. The presumption of the received gloss is that the `hinged window' to which `shot wyndowe' is supposed to refer is much like its modern counterpart: a glazed frame opening outwards." Although it is possible that the window of a house belonging to a `riche gnof of Oxford, c. 1380, would have had glass, it is more likely to have been unglazed: even in the fifteenth century, window glass was still regarded as a luxury item. Moreover, opening glazed windows were an even greater rarity. The usual arrangement was an unglazed opening furnished with a hinged and fastening wooden shutter on the inside of the house for warmth, privacy, and security.`2 An arrangement of this sort is entirely consistent with the actions of the Miller's Tale: we may imagine Absolon knocking at the shuttered window, and the inward-opening shutter (not an outward opening glazed window) is what Alisoun and Nicholas unfasten, open, and slam with such evident ease of control. In this context, a sliding window is an unnecessary complication, even if there were supporting historical examples.

So it may be appropriate to revise the gloss for `shot wyndowe' to something like `an unglazed window with an inward-opening shutter'.'3 But if that is the kind of window that Chaucer has in mind, and if it was the norm, and if the opening and shutting business is so well articulated regardless of the term `shot wyndowe', why did Chaucer bother to use it? As well as having the characteristics just described, the window has certain peculiarities to which Chaucer directly and indirectly alludes, distinguishing features that may not be unconnected with our elusive term. At the first mention of `shot wyndowe' we learn that it is conveniently located `upon the carpenteris wal' (lines 3358-- 9), and close to the bedchamber, since Absolon's crooning is audible to the slumbering John, who comments that the night visitor is `under our boures wal' (Line 3367). This is part of the window's attraction for the lascivious Absolon, who knows full well that it is `upon his boures wal' (line 3677). Its proximity to the bed is again signalled by the ease with which Alisoun hears the parish clerk's overtures, even though they take a subdued form: `softe he cougheth with a semy soun' (line 367). Alisoun, in bed with Nicholas, is even able to conduct a conversation with Absolon, in the street outside, through the shuttered window (lines 3708-26). As well as giving direct access to the space of the bedchamber or bower, it is also low down on the wall: Absolon plans to knock at John's window `That stant ful lowe upon his boures wal' (line 3677). More, Chaucer gives us a measurement: as Absolon stands under the window it reaches (presumably its sill) to breast level, `it was so lowe' (line 366).14 As Absolon kneels, we may imagine that the base of the window is about chin height - just the right height for his ill-fated kiss. The window-shutter is fastened, but capable of being quickly opened, and large enough to accommodate human buttocks with enough room left to move them quickly in or out, whether Alisoun's (`at the wyndow out she putte hit hole', Line 3732), or Nicholas's (`out his ers he putteth ... / Over the buttok, to the haunche-bon', lines 3802-3).

Chaucer's attention to detail might be called a technique of incremental realism. As we learn more about it, an object or `prop' with a vital function in the plot comes gradually into sharper focus, and the accumulated detail helps to make the associated actions more convincing. Seen in this light, the `shot wyndowe' might seem to be of the size, position, and kind it is merely to facilitate the hilarious ending of the story.'S But the realism of Chaucer's fabliaux is not generally quite so mechanistic: it is driven by the need to refer to recognizable things, and to deepen the meaning of the narrative, as much as by the mechanical demands of the plot.'6 It is therefore appropriate to ask what the `shot wyndowe' might have meant to an audience familiar with urban house design, and what (if anything) that might signify for an interpretation of the narrative.

A low, bedchamber window of a certain size giving on to the street, affording an occasional glimpse of bare buttocks - it is within the bounds of possibility that the window in question abutted a latrine. Domestic latrines within town houses of the later Middle Ages were often built against outside walls so that the effluent could be easily conveyed to the street, stream, or cesspit below.17 Ground-floor bedchambers, though by no means the rule, did occur,18 as did ground-floor privies,19 and the bedchamber might include a privy, as in the type of house in which Chaucer grew up in the Vintry area of London.20 The typical domestic garderobe was some 3 feet square and consisted of a seat set on joists over a chute.21 The chute was generally cut into a wall, and might be lined with timber, plaster, or stone 22 It is in these terms that we might imagine a latrine within John's bower, with the base of the `shot wyndowe' on a level with the seat, and provided with a window for ventilation.23 Such an arrangement helps to explain the ease, facility, and readiness with which Alisoun and Nicholas play their pranks on Absolon, and it also gives greater credibility to a line that might otherwise seem to be inserted only to provide a rhyme: `This Nicholas was risen for to pisse' (line 378).24 In other words, he is already heading in the direction of the `shot wyndowe' when his rival knocks there for a second time.

Are there any grounds for linking shot with a privy? The most obvious explanation is the most difficult to establish, namely that shot is a variant of chute.25 Chute in the sense of `fall' or `drop' was available to Chaucer in Old French,26 but it appears to have had no currency in Middle English, and the common term for a latrine chute was, simply, pipe.27 Shot-tower is recorded as a euphemism for `privy', but the date of its first appearance is uncertain, and its application would seem to derive from a technology that post-dates the Canterbury Tales.28 More promising is the occurrence of .shot as a derivative of both ME sheten, to eject or expel,29 and ME .rhiterr, to shit. The ambivalence of meaning enables a pun such that `shot wyndowe' becomes associated not so much with ballistic discharges, as Wright thought, but with bodily ones.30

Is the existence of a garderobe within John's chamber plausible in narrative as well as linguistic terms? Within the Canterbury Talea there is certainly a precedent, or parallel case, of Chaucer's featuring a privy to articulate the plot of a marital deception: in the Merchant's Tale, it is a space of privacy, outside January's control, where May can momentarily escape his jealousy and read Damyan's secret love-letter, then tear it into pieces and `in the pryvee softely it caste' (line 1954) - a gesture that destroys any illusion of romance.31 Within the Miller's Tale, to imagine a privy helps to make some of the other details more explicable: Nicholas's rising to piss (as already noted), and perhaps also the general emphasis on countering the effects of bad odours, notably the cardamom and liquorice taken by Absolon to `smellen sweete', and the quadrifolia placed under his tongue (lines 3690-3), just before his first nocturnal visit. If not introduced directly to counter the offensive smells of a privy, the tale's emphasis on the fragrance of Absolon only makes the place of its denouement the more offensive, associated as it is with bad odours such as those of Nicholas's fart, itself contrasting with the sweetsmelling herbs that freshen the student's room (line 3zos). The presence of a privy might also accentuate the wide disparity between the sublimity of Absolon's pretensions and the risible circumstances in which he enacts them: here is a would-be courtly lover, prone to wearing shoes adorned with the elaborate tracery patterns of St Paul's window,32 conducting his amours outside a latrine window. And if we enlarge the frame of reference to the preceding tale, with which the Miller's Tale is so often compared, we can see, again, an increase in contrast to the point of grotesque travesty between the elevated tower-window of the Knight's Tale castle and the low privy window of a carpenter's house. One, with its bars, mediates privation and a desire for a distant and unwitting Emelye, seen in a memorable moment one bright morning. The other is the fulcrum of a sightless but sensory close encounter with an Alisoun who is all too responsive in returning Absolon's attentions with her `nether-ye'.33

In another respect the tale's pattern of meaning, and particularly its play on privy, pryvedy, and pryvetee, is enriched if the reader is meant to envisage a privy as part of John's bedchamber. Thus Alisoun's injunction to the `ful privee' lodger (line 3201) to `wayte wel and been privee' (line 3295) in dealing with her husband is advice he initially follows but later ignores, with painful consequences: without waiting or considering his actions he opens the window, thrusts his buttocks out beyond the limits of the `privy' (`out his ers he putteth pryvely, / Over the buttok, to the haunche-bon', lines 3802-3), and, in spite of his tremendous, blinding fart, soon feels the searing effects of the red-hot coulter wielded by Absolon. The parish clerk's enquiring after John, `Ful prively' (line 3662), anticipates his own performance at the latrine window, at which he plans to knock, appropriately enough, `Ful pryvely' (line 366). The presence of a privy would also square with Chaucer's interest in small spaces - whether represented as the `cage' of John's jealousy, his bed, Nicholas's chamber, or the human body - and their violation. Indeed, Absolon's nocturnal habit of prying into a `privy part' of the house, and the humiliation he endures, are consonant with the prologue's and tale's jocular warnings about the dangers of wanting to know too much about woman's, or God's, pryvetee (lines 3454 355 8).34 When these warnings are not heeded, Chaucer engineers a `privy' ending that is all too public.

Thus, the linguistic, literary, and historical evidence suggests that `hinged window', implying a glazed frame opening outwards, is an inaccurate reading of `shot wyndowe'. In the Miller's Tale it should be imagined as an unglazed opening with a hinged internal shutter. `Shot wyndowe', however, is a rare and striking term and may designate not this conventional arrangement for a domestic window, but a special characteristic, namely that it was a privy window, the window associated with shot in the sense of discharge, shit, or chute. The existence of a privy within John's bedchamber makes some of the narrative details more explicable; it enhances the scurrilous and scatological features of the tale; and it adds a further dimension to the theme of spatial transgression in which the boundaries of the private are breached and invaded.

University of Kent at Canterbury PETER BROWN