. . . Yes!

Here's why:

In your textbook the Wife, early in her prologue, explains why she'll remarry:

Welcome the sixte whan that evere he shal!
For sith I wol nat keepe me chast in al,
Whan myn housbonde is fro the world agoon,
Some Cristen man shal wedde me anoon.

We could translate this roughly:

Welcome the sixth whenever he shall come!
For since I do not wish to remain completely chaste,
when my husband is gone from this world,
some Christian man shall marry me at once.

But without a comma after "al," the sense changes:

For since I do not wish to remain completely chaste
once my husband is gone from this world . . .

"Sith" (because) appears in the Hengwrt manuscript (the "heap of dinosaur's bones" as one critic described it). In the (beautiful, illustrated) Ellesmere, another word appears:

Welcome the sixte, whan that evere he shal.
For sothe, I wol nat kepe me chaast in al.
Whan myn housbonde is fro the world ygon,
Som Cristen man shal wedde me anon . . .

Again, this would be roughly translated:

Welcome the sixth whenever he shall come.
For truly, I do not want to keep entirely chaste.
When my husband is gone from this world,
some Christian man shall marry me at once . . .

"Since" or "truly": How might this difference change

• the meaning of the passage?
• the religious tone or attitude in the passage?
• your impression of the Wife?

Any poem that exists in more than one manuscript will have differences. In the many versions of the Wife of Bath's Prologue, however, there are hundreds of differences in manuscripts and early printed copies that span more than a century.