The Canterbury Tales: Love and Marriage
Description
This adaptation of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales explores the bawdy humor of “The Miller’s Tale,” “The Merchant’s Tale,” “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” and “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue.” Prochaska infuses “The Franklin’s Tale” with a hefty dose of comedy as the characters navigate their way through a rocky coastline and an awkward love triangle. Faithful to the original, this text is accessible to a young twenty-first-century audience for whom it may be an introduction to Chaucer’s wise and gentle satire on love, marriage, and sex.
Production Info
Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Period Costumes
Press Quotes
“CANTERBURY TALES is not centered on sex but [it] does not shy from the pilgrims’ raunchiness, and … it was taken directly from Chaucer’s original stories of an odd-lot of women and men headed for England’s famous cathedral … Adapter Reiner Prochaska has pulled off a marvelous script, translated into modern English; he begins with Geoffrey Chaucer’s strange language that was spoken in his time, long before the age of Shakespeare, when England still paid homage to Rome and the pope. No religious overtones, let me reassure readers, creep into the tales of fellow travelers who are much more concerned with life’s harrows and ‘country matters’ than God’s or the Vatican’s doings. In that era, they could not count on sticking around a long time and that made every day precious. And that’s what Chaucer captured and playwright Prochaska affirms.” —Roy Meachum, The Tentacle
Author
Reiner ProchaskaBorn in Germany, Reiner Prochaska, a playwright and an actor, has lived in the United States since 1990. He is a member of the Maryland Ensemble Theatre (MET) in Frederick, Maryland, where he performs, writes, teaches, and directs. His plays, A REVOLUTIONARY CHARISTMAS, THE CANTERBURY TALES: LOVE AND MARRIAGE, ANTIGONE: THROUGH THE AGES, and SNOW QUEEN have been produced at the MET to popular and critical acclaim. THE CANTERBURY TALES has been published by Broadway Play Publishing Inc and ANTIGONE has been published by New Theatre Publications in the UK. Reiner holds an M.S. degree in Professional Writing (Creative Track) from Towson University, where he teaches composition and screenwriting.
Geoffrey ChaucerGeoffrey Chaucer, c. 1343 to 1400, is known as the Father of English literature and is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages. His collection of stories told by fictional pilgrims on the road to the Canterbury Catheral, The Canterbury Tales is his best known work and a masterpiece of Middle English.
Book Information
| Publisher | BPPI |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 4/18/2018 |
| Pages | 86 |
| ISBN | 9780881457711 |
Special Notes
THE CANTERBURY TALES: LOVE AND MARRIAGE was produced
by Maryland Ensemble Theatre (Tad Janes, Artistic Director)
opening on 26 March 2010
by special arrangement with Broadway Play Publishing Inc, NYC
www.broadwayplaypublishing.com
