Taking the stage after the Knight and his lofty tale of courtly love, the drunken miller regales the pilgrims with the account of a young scholar, Nicholas, who persuades his aged landlord's beautiful young wife to go to bed with him. Having successfully duped the husband and made his conquest, he finds himself the butt of his own practical joke played on a rival suitor, in the process giving rise to a famously farcical end sequence.