The Canterbury Tales
90 Minutes
3+ Males, 4+ Females, Max Cast 20+, Min Cast 8
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| Play Type: | Accessible, Doubling Roles, Flexible Casting, Music Lead Sheets |
CAST NOTES
The original cast of CANTERBURY TALES used: 3 Women/5 Men
For this adaptation, a great deal of doubling is required, even to the point of having men playing women’s parts and vice versa. The specific choices that you make will be up to the needs of your individual casting and the type and numbers of actors selected. If you want to cast twenty actors, that can be done, but part of the fun and humor of the production is seeing a smaller cast challenged to play a variety of roles.
Gillette Elvgren
(The cast enters and begin reciting lines in Middle English from the opening of Chaucer’s THE CANTERBURY TALES. Music under. )
ACTOR #1: What that Aprille with his shoures sote,
ACTOR #2: The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,
ACTOR: And bathed every veyne in swich licour
ACTOR #3: Of which vertu engendered is the flour,
ACTOR #4: When Zephirus eek with his swete breeth,
ACTOR #5: Inspired hath in every holt and heeth,
ACTOR #6: Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne,
ACTOR #7: Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
ACTOR #1: And smale foweles maken melodye. . .
HOST: Then people long to go on pilgrimages
To seek the stranger strands
Of far off Saints, hallowed in sundry lands, . . .
(The cast does a lively pole dance to a Medieval folk tune.)
At night there came into my hostelry
Some nine or twenty in a company
Of sundry folk happening then to fall
In fellowship, and they were pilgrims all,
That towards Canterbury meant to ride.
WIFE OF BATH: I’m a worthy woman from Bath City.
In Company I like to laugh and chat,
And I know the remedy for love’s mischances,
An art in which I know the oldest dances.
HOST: She’d had five husbands, all at the church door,
Apart from. . . uhem. . . other company at youth.
No need just now to speak of that, forsooth.
The Miller is a chap of sixteen stone. . .
MILLER: I have a master hand at steal. . . handlin’ grain.
I feel it, like this, with my thumb and thus I knew
It’s quality. . .
HOST: For he took three times his due.
MILLER: A thumb of gold, by God, to guage an oat.
You cast aspersions my way and I’ll smote
You here to kingdom come, ya ‘ear?
HOST: His nose displayed a wart on which there stood a tuft of hair,
Red as the bristles in an old sows ear.
And then there is the Pardoner,
With a brimful of pardons come from Rome.
PARDONER: And here a holy relic, from the catacombs
In an ancient glass filled with St. Peter’s bones.
ACTOR: A Knight there was
This full-length comedy play with music brings rapid-fire dialogue to an old classic. With a flexible cast, it is an excellent play for high school performances, college theaters, or community productions. Elvgren has selected the bawdiest and most satirical tales for this version. A sense of Chaucer’s language is maintained but is made accessible to a modern audience.
(Lead sheets available)
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Play Details
CAST NOTES
The original cast of CANTERBURY TALES used: 3 Women/5 Men
For this adaptation, a great deal of doubling is required, even to the point of having men playing women’s parts and vice versa. The specific choices that you make will be up to the needs of your individual casting and the type and numbers of actors selected. If you want to cast twenty actors, that can be done, but part of the fun and humor of the production is seeing a smaller cast challenged to play a variety of roles.
Gillette Elvgren
(The cast enters and begin reciting lines in Middle English from the opening of Chaucer’s THE CANTERBURY TALES. Music under. )
ACTOR #1: What that Aprille with his shoures sote,
ACTOR #2: The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,
ACTOR: And bathed every veyne in swich licour
ACTOR #3: Of which vertu engendered is the flour,
ACTOR #4: When Zephirus eek with his swete breeth,
ACTOR #5: Inspired hath in every holt and heeth,
ACTOR #6: Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne,
ACTOR #7: Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
ACTOR #1: And smale foweles maken melodye. . .
HOST: Then people long to go on pilgrimages
To seek the stranger strands
Of far off Saints, hallowed in sundry lands, . . .
(The cast does a lively pole dance to a Medieval folk tune.)
At night there came into my hostelry
Some nine or twenty in a company
Of sundry folk happening then to fall
In fellowship, and they were pilgrims all,
That towards Canterbury meant to ride.
WIFE OF BATH: I’m a worthy woman from Bath City.
In Company I like to laugh and chat,
And I know the remedy for love’s mischances,
An art in which I know the oldest dances.
HOST: She’d had five husbands, all at the church door,
Apart from. . . uhem. . . other company at youth.
No need just now to speak of that, forsooth.
The Miller is a chap of sixteen stone. . .
MILLER: I have a master hand at steal. . . handlin’ grain.
I feel it, like this, with my thumb and thus I knew
It’s quality. . .
HOST: For he took three times his due.
MILLER: A thumb of gold, by God, to guage an oat.
You cast aspersions my way and I’ll smote
You here to kingdom come, ya ‘ear?
HOST: His nose displayed a wart on which there stood a tuft of hair,
Red as the bristles in an old sows ear.
And then there is the Pardoner,
With a brimful of pardons come from Rome.
PARDONER: And here a holy relic, from the catacombs
In an ancient glass filled with St. Peter’s bones.
ACTOR: A Knight there was