A fusion of Chaucer's medieval world of The Canterbury Tales and today's digital world. The characters are introduced, sometimes close to their medieval predecessors, sometimes a modern equivalent, and sometimes a blend of the two. Includes a wonderful reading in Middle English by Kristen Hughes of the ‘Prologue to the Canterbury Tales’, lines 1-18. (Librivox, public domain: archive.org/details/canterbury_prologue_librivox). This is the Project Gutenberg transcription of those lines:
WHEN that Aprilis, with his showers swoot*, *sweet
The drought of March hath pierced to the root,
And bathed every vein in such licour,
Of which virtue engender'd is the flower;
When Zephyrus eke with his swoote breath
Inspired hath in every holt* and heath *grove, forest
The tender croppes* and the younge sun *twigs, boughs
Hath in the Ram his halfe course y-run,
And smalle fowles make melody,
That sleepen all the night with open eye,
(So pricketh them nature in their corages*); *hearts, inclinations
Then longe folk to go on pilgrimages,
And palmers for to seeke strange strands,
To *ferne hallows couth* in sundry lands; *distant saints known*
And specially, from every shire's end
Of Engleland, to Canterbury they wend,
The holy blissful Martyr for to seek,
That them hath holpen*, when that they were sick. *helped
Based on, and with text adapted from, ‘Canterbury Tales, and Other Poems’ by Geoffrey Chaucer (Text above: Project Gutenberg, public domain: gutenberg.org/ebooks/2383 & and Librarius, free for private and educational use: librarius.com/cantales.htm)
Music ‘Levantarán el vuelo’ (instrumental, and piano solo versions) by Circus Marcus (Free Music Archive, CC BY NC Attribution-NonCommercial: freemusicarchive.org/music/circusmarcus/
Artwork, and decorative letters (recoloured) mostly from books on Chaucer (British Library, public domain: flickr.com/britishlibrary).
Character list at end:
- Host -
Blender of old and new,
I am she and she is many.
- Yeoman -
Clad in coat and hood of grene,
A sheaf of papers, mind bright and kene.
- Clerk -
All that she myghte be lent,
On bookes and on lernynge she it spente.
- Knight -
A Knyght there was, and that a worthy man,
Trouthe and honour and curteisie.
- Squire -
Today’s lover and lusty bachelor,
Is less strong in the arm than in the dollar.
- Nun -
That of her smiling was full simple and coy
And none suspected her greatest joy.
- The Miller -
She knows the grain as lager and spirit,
With a miller’s sack for her drinking jacket.
- Phoebus -
Keep well thy tongue, and keep thy friend;
A wicked tongue is worse than is a fiend.
- Wyf of Bath -
Hir hosen weren of fyn scarlet reed,
Hir shoes gold soled, soft and newe.
- Cook -
Chocolate, cinammon and almond for sale,
No longer poudre-marchant tart and galyngale.
- The Parson -
Riche he was of holy thoght and werk,
He was a learned man also, a clerk.
