A note on the text by Gregory Doran.
Chaucer describes 'full nine and twenty' pilgrims in a company that gathered at the Tabard Inn to set off to Canterbury that April morning. (Actually he can't count, because by my reckoning there are thirty, plus the Host of the Inn who joins them for the ride and Chaucer himself ).
The Host suggests that everyone should tell two tales on the road to Canterbury and two on the way back. It's a scheme which is never completed by Chaucer. They do not in fact reach Canterbury at all, and only he himself actually tells two tales, as his first is rejected by the Host as doggerel. The Knight interrupts the Monk's endless accounts of tragic falls from grace, and Chaucer just gives up on the Cook's Tale.
Some of the pilgrims tell no tales, and we've left them out: the Haberdasher, Carpenter, Webbe (weaver), Dyer, and Tapycer (carpet or tapestry-maker), all members of a guild fraternity, (on a sort of trade union outing), along with two more priests that apparently also accompany the Prioress, and the Parson's brother, the poor Plowman . The Knight's Yeoman doesn't tell a tale either, but we've kept him in! However the Canon's Yeoman, not one of the original pilgrims, who gallops up at Boghtoun under Blee, a few miles outside Canterbury, tells yet another story, following the Second Nun's pious tale of St Cecily. And though Michael Poulton, our adaptor and translator, gallantly represented both in his original text, and we went into rehearsal with both, we have cut them along the way. Who knows, they may reappear somewhere along our long journey. All the other pilgrims' tales are represented in longer or shorter forms within our production.
We have pretty much retained the generally accepted order of the tales, and so, you will hear, (among others), the Knight's, Miller's, Reeve's, Prioress's and Nun's Priest's tales in Part One; and we hope you will come back to enjoy (again, among others) the Pardoner's; Wife of Bath's, Clerk's, Merchant's and Franklin's in Part Two.
