The Friar's Tale and the next one, The Summoner's Tale, belong together as a unit because the Friar tells an uncomplimentary tale about a corrupt summoner, and the Summoner, in his turn, tells an uncomplimentary tale about a corrupt friar. The reader should remember that in spite of the personal animosity between the Friar and the Summoner, the greater quarrel is about the importance and validity of their respective professions.
Although The Friar's Tale is elegantly simple — partly because of the Friar's intellectual simplicity — the tale has its enriching subtleties. For example, Chaucer plays on the medieval word "rebekke," a type of stringed fiddle-like instrument, and "rebekke," slang for "old woman." The word also puns on the biblical name Rebecca (wife of Isaac and mother to Jacob), whose sacred water vessel in the biblical story is reflected in The Friar's Tale by a comically brown cooking pan. Another literary technique is a type of reversal in that the summoner and the demon ride out seeking "prey" with the pun on "pray." The central irony in the tale, of course, is that the foxy summoner out-foxes himself and becomes the "prey" of the demon.
The Friar's Tale is connected to The Wife of Bath's Tale in that the Wife discusses the problem of authority (that is, the husband or the wife), and the Friar deals with the relative authority in terms of the church and demons. In The Wife of Bath's Tale, authority is given over to a woman — a violation of medieval sense of hierarchy. The Friar continues the theme of authority by first describing the evil machinations of his superior, the archdeacon to whom the summoner is supposedly a "vassal." The summoner, in turn, has his own servants and spies in the form of whores and thieves. Likewise, the demon falls into a hierarchy in that he is assigned by a higher power the responsibility of capturing his prey, the soul of the summoner. Then in the episode of the farmer and his cart of hay, the reader learns that the authority of the demon is limited.
