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Cast: Royal Shakespeare Company, including Nick Barber,
Claire Benedict, Dylan Charles, Daon Broni, Christopher Godwin, Michael Matus,
Mark Hadfield, Joshua Richards
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Review : This is probably the oldest literary
work discussed on this site (except for Homer’s Iliad). The five plus hours
are split into two shows that may be seen in any order. At least half of it
is accompanied by music and sung, so the effect is that of comic light opera
with simple and boxy but clever sets.
High school students usually read some of Canterbury Tales in senior
English, and much more of it is read in college introductory English
literature courses. This is indeed a matter then of “appreciation of
literature.” We all know the form: a frame story of religious pilgrims to Canterbury,
and each one is invited to tell a story. The stories are partly narrated and
partly acted out on stage, dogma style (like a Lars Von Tier film). Part II
begins with the Pardoner’s Tale, which for many people is the most famous.
When I took English Lit in the fall of 1962 at George
Washington University
in Monroe Hall on G Street,
I still remember the professor’s partial embarrassment in characterizing the
Pardoner as Chaucer’s idea of “a homosexual.” There are the lines about
gelding and mare, and some commentators claim that he is a eunuch. The story,
of course, involves the selling of indulgences, simony, and the authority of
a man, distant from marriage by church law and probably personal inclination,
over ordinary people. Chaucer probably saw this as ironic, if common, even in
his day. The tales tend to have
prologues and rather intricate plotting, and the Pardoner’s is typical, as he
lectures the crowd on sin, and then has three revelers plot against each
other, all to do themselves in as in a Hitchcock movie. The characters represent all walks of life
in English society at the time, and their social and
gender roles match up with social expectations, just as in our society, at
least until recently – and this all makes good satire. There is plenty of
visual material in the presentation: a fruit tree was often present, with
various backdrops of the sea and heavens. In the Physician’s Tale a man is
decapitated. The Wife of Bath is funny and has the longest tale, with a great
deal of irony in which a man is forced to sleep with a hag to whom he is not
attracted before he can have the woman he wants. There is a lot of talk about
maidenheads (PG-13 style) and the desirability of having a virgin, and about
What Women Want (the title of a modern movie, literally, around 2000). The Manciple has
angles hanging from the chandeliers, literally. The Summoner
acts like a debt collector in the days before the FCPCA and fair dunning of
debtors. (I guess they had collection agencies back then, too.) The Parson
has the last word in a candlelight devotional. The whole presentation is a
bit like a modern art film composed of short stories (like “Nine Lives”
perhaps). Maybe this would be a good project for a larger art film. (There
was a BBC TV series in 1969).
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/canterbury/section12.rhtml
http://www.librarius.com/cantales.htm
Also, I have a discussion of Christopher Marlowe’s last play, Edward II (1592) as performed by the
Shakespeare Theater Company in Nov. 2007, here. The corresponding film is a “Edward II” directed by Derek Jarman from Fine Line Features (1992) with Steven
Waddington and Andrew Tiernan (haven’t seen yet).
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