“That each of you to shorten of your way
    In this voyage shall tell tales tway*—­
    To Canterbury-ward I mean it so,
    And homeward ye shall tellen other two;—­
    Of adventures which whilom have befallen. 
    And which of you the beareth you best of all,
    That is to say, that telleth in this case
    Tales of best sentence, and most solace,
    Shall have a supper at all our cost,
    Here in this place, sitting at this post,
    When that we come again fro Canterbury. 
    And for to make you the more merry
    I will myself gladly with you ride,
    Right at mine own cost, and be your guide.”

    Twain.

To this every one willingly agreed, and next morning they waked very early and set off.  And having ridden a little way they cast lots as to who should tell the first tale.  The lot fell upon the knight, who accordingly began.

All that I have told you so far forms the first part of the book and is called the prologue, which means really “before word” or explanation.  It is perhaps the most interesting part of the book, for it is entirely Chaucer’s own and it is truly English.

It is said that Chaucer borrowed the form of his famous tales from a book called The Decameron, written by an Italian poet named Boccaccio.  Decameron comes from two Greek words deka, ten, and hemera, a day, the book being so called because the stories in it were supposed to be told in ten days.  During a time of plague in Florence seven ladies and three gentlemen fled and took refuge in a house surrounded by a garden far from the town.  There they remained for ten days, and to amuse themselves each told a tale every day, so that there are a hundred tales in all in The Decameron.

It is very likely that in one of his journeys to Italy Chaucer saw this book.  Perhaps he even met Boccaccio, and it is more than likely that he met Petrarch, another great Italian poet who also retold one of the tales of The Decameron.  Several of the tales which Chaucer makes his people tell are founded on these tales.  Indeed, nearly all his poems are founded on old French, Italian, or Latin tales.  But although Chaucer takes his material from others, he tells the stories in his own way, and so makes them his own; and he never wrote anything more truly English in spirit than the prologue to the Canterbury Tales.

Some of these stories you will like to read, but others are too coarse and rude to give you any pleasure.  Even the roughness of these tales, however, helps us to picture the England of those far-off days.  We see from them how hard and rough the life must have been when people found humor and fun in jokes in which we can feel only disgust.

But even in Chaucer’s day there were those who found such stories coarse.  “Precious fold,” Chaucer calls them.  He himself perhaps did not care for them, indeed he explains in the tales why he tells them.  Here is a company of common, everyday people, he said, and if I am to make you see these people, if they are to be living and real to you, I must make them act and speak as such common people would act and speak.  They are churls, and they must speak like churls and not like fine folk, and if you don’t like the tale, turn over the leaf and choose another.