The Canterbury Tales (NHB Modern Plays) - Softcover

The RSC's alternative Christmas show this year: a new two-part dramatisation of one of the greatest books in the English language "Befell that in that season on that day/ In Southwark at The Tabard - as I lay/ Ready to wenden on my pilgrimage/ To Canterb'ry with full devout courage -/ At night was come into that hostelry/ Well nine-and-twenty in a company/ Of sundry folk, by aventure yfall/ In fellowship...And pilgrims were they all/ That toward Canterb'ry would ride..." So says Chaucer as he strides on stage to set the scene for Mike Poulton's spring-heeled dramatisation of The Canterbury Tales. The much-lauded RSC director, Gregory Doran, will stage this two-part adaptation of all 23 of the tales in the beautiful and atmospheric Swan Theatre, Stratford. All the famous characters are here - as well as many less well-known but equally full of life. Each of the stories has its own style - heroic verse for the Knight's Tale, vernacular rhymes for the Miller's Tale etc. - mirroring the many narrative voices employed by Chaucer himself.

Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?-1400) was born in London, the son of a wine-merchant. He fought in France, then went there and to Italy on diplomatic missions. Though he held various minor appointments at Court, he was often in debt. His Canterbury Tales, begun in 1387, is one of the foundations stones of our literature and our language. Mike Poulton has a string of successful translations and adaptations to his name, most notably Turgenev's Fortune's Fool (which won a Tony in New York) and Schiller's Don Carlos, which played for several months in the West End earlier this year. Both starred Derek Jacobi.