General Prologue of the Canterbury Tales (Premiere) 

When you lie awake in the early hours of an English, April morning, listening to the bird song, you will recall the opening lines of the Prologue all your life. It is a celebration of Spring as it is experienced in a world that lives closer to nature than we do in the modern world. And it will always be in Middle English that you will hear the words.

It appears that the actor is reciting from memory. If so, this is an incredible feat. The tempo is much faster than other renderings exhibiting a facility that a native speaker would possess. This is brilliant.

This was unimaginably impressive ... I intended to just watch a bit to hear the beginning of the Prologue in Middle English and ended up watching the entire thing. Colin Gibbings, who played Chaucer, not only delivered the entire Prologue from memory, but did it in Middle English with great gusto, humor, and personality. This was an incredible performance. Bravo!

As an English Major who is reading Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales in Middle English, this is extremely helpful! Thank you for uploading! :)

Remarkable how talented Colin Gibbings is!

Had Colin as a TA for a course and he was absolutely brilliant. The enthuasiasm he brought to his field made learning it infinitely easier.

5:22 "the beginning"

We are really interested in people's reaction to this! Should we do more...?

By far the best recitation of the Caunterbury Tales I have ever heard.

I can recognize many french words pronounced in the french way. The great vowel shift hasn’t hit yet.

Brilliant, we can follow this amazing delivery, we can actually understand most of it, including the humour!

Evolution of language is an amazing thing.

I wish we still talked like this.

Peter Robinson - This is the type of thing I really believe the Internet was "made for." Thanks a lot - smashing, brilliant - all the other adjectives!

The Narrator looks so medieval: pale, thin and humble. 🥰

This is truly an incredible feat! What a great performance! I love hearing middle and olde English. I sometimes wish we still spoke in a way like this. Thank you for preserving the ancient vestiges of our great English for us all to enjoy!

Sir terry Jones. You will me missed

This is amazing! I am astounded by the talent. Chaucer is not easy to read, much less performing it from memory. Thank you!

Thank you so much for this! I’m studying English literature, I’m from Spain, and being able to hear the text in Old English helps me understand rhythm and pacing much more easily. Besides enjoying it much more. Of course I haven’t mastered the pronunciation of Old English either so I really needed this. I can’t help it but stop the video every few minutes to re-read the text with the actor’s voice in my head.

It's interesting despite all the 'naysaying' videos which state we modern (so-called!) English speakers haven't much chance of understanding Middle English - I understood a fair amount. I'm sure many others do, too.

Words are not enough.. Just wonderful! Thanks a lot

Love love love this.I have an exam 4 days later and I can't tell u how much just listening to him read the prologue with middle English pronunciation has helped me.Thankyou for this.

Wow, this really brought it to life, thank you so much! Please do more!

Brilliant! I recall studying the Prologue and some of the Tales back in the 1960s (A Level English). How lovely this rendering of Middle English sounds, and full marks to Master Chaucer (!) for his clarity and pronunciation of our beautiful language....

Thank you, everyone, for producing and presenting this in the original language. Marvelous!

Wonderfully done, accurate pronunciation, well acted!

Yes please. This is very well done. Mahalo (Thank You in Hawaiian).

Beautiful job sire 🎉👌🙌

He is amazing. Thank you for sharing. I'm using this to practice my middle english.

This is really good! Thank you!

Fantastic! I studied the Old and Middle English Period quite extensively in Groningen (Netherlands), and this sounds really good and well performed!.

I had a great professor, and this reminds me of him. Beautiful. Like a song, I have it playing as I work online.

Amazing.

Love the live performance. Delivering Middle English in spoken form is so satisfying.

I mastered the text when I was a student 33 years ago. After watching this I wish I could learn the recitation as well.

He reminds me of Danny Kaye towards the end. I love this ❤️

Thanks for uploading! This is helping me so much for my Chaucer class

Impressive performance, thank you!

bellissimo!!!!

قلت لحبيبي كن ما شئت ،كن عادلا كن ظالما كن متفهما كن قاسيا مجحفا ...كن ماتشاء كيفما تشاء ....والمهم ان لا تتوقف عن تدمير العواذل وان لاتتوقف عن ضرب وجوههم بالسيف ..ثم انني لا اصدق كل التصديق انك لم ترى الاحداث الاخيرة قبل حدوثها ولم ترى الفرص الكامنة في المأساة ....وبافتراض انك قابل للخداع حقا ...الاله نفسه يسمح لنفسه بالاندهاش والتفاجؤ اكثر من مرة في سفر التكوين!

Peter Robinson - Most enjoyable. Thanks to your presentation of these videos made some years ago, Colin Gibbing's brilliant performances have helped me become, at least in comprehension of the written word, 90% successful. That is, I can read the original Middle English (aided by a naturally excellent memory perhaps) version with high comprehension. These videos were key. Not so much Gwain and the Green Knight, though that too will 'fall.' I hope to conquer Gwain and understand it to the same degree when reading it off the page in Middle English some day. I've read that 'Gwain,' was composed between 1350-1400 and that is simply the dialect that makes it more difficult that Chaucer's 'South' Middle English. I'm no authority - you are. I doubt that it is the dialect creating the difficulty. I argue for a composition date of 1350 and that 50 years is 50 years less intelligible to we speakers of Modern or, New English. My feeling, purely a guess (I think) then, is that its relative age and not the dialect is the reason it is considerably more difficult. I would love to hear your expert opinion. Again, thanks to you and Colin for these brilliant videos. Breathtaking. Best, Allan

That poor man is shaking so hard

Thank you!

So awesome, kind of starts to make sense after a minute. And wow, this is a really impressive performance.

I really enjoyed this!

Many of the words that derive from French are really obvious in Middle English, they stick out like sore thumbs. I'm so glad we've anglicized the pronunciation of some of those words more than you hear here

very impressive

This is very special indeed.

@UC86I85OCIGzeNCf9FL4F9lQ, I have enormously enjoyed your staging of Colin's readings and 'reenactments' of the Canterbury Tales. I hope there are more to come. As I've paid close attention to repeated viewings, I find myself understanding a large amount of Chaucer's "London Dialect" Middle English. It seems fluency is within a few months, possibly within reach.

Fantastic read! I'm taking a Chaucer course so reading along with this helped a ton.

This is arguably the most lively performance of the GP. I will have my class watch it - thank you very much for this incredible feat! Could you do more of Chaucer's CT?

Amazing!

Very cool.

Terry Jones!!!

Outstanding performance!

The recitation in Middle English begins at 5.24.

Back! Haha! Thanks for this content ❤

Colin, I assume by now you’re a professor yourself at some university? You are truly impressive here.

Intresting work !

👍🏻👍🏻👏🏻

LOVED this. Who is performer and how did he do it? I was proud to memorize the first 18 lines! His pronunciation is exactly how I learned it. Most recitations I hear are different and, therefore, I think wrong.

An amazing job, but I think it sounds a bit too fast and not necessarily in the tempo of speech but the length at which his throat makes the words. Also when he says "Palatye" he actually says "patalye". Middle English also makes avid use in the "e's" at the end of sentences so that "son" may be quite literally pronounced "Sun'ah/son'ah. It is quite important to emphasize the "e" at the end of the word even if it feels as if it is in contrast to the first letter of the next word. Much like Norse there seems to be, in true pronunciation, a good deal of glotal stops or what seems to be glotal stops. The U in in nature when after the T is pronounced as a "oo"

"Please Sir, I want some more!"

More!

7:22 A KNYGHT ther was,

Starts 5:27. You're welcome.

Well I am a nerd. I love this! But I am not going to be a measure of popular reaction.

I love that "manly man" was a saying in the 1300s.

5:24 - you're welcome. ;)

Turn on the subtitles

Wow

Sorry, but I have to ask: was he nervous, or was the shaking due to something else?

povero...sta tremando dall'agitazione

good

How is this even possible ?.

very much respect this actor (wish I knew his name) but there are a few times where the pronounciation is questionable. The Chaucerian metre is stuck to consistantly and laudably, but words like 'face' should be 'farce' in the middle english. 'love' should be 'luuve'. perhaps he made a conscious decision to deliver some words on modern pronouncation for audience comprehension. Tremendous effort nevertheless.

Do you have Script?

25:04, is he actually swearing or did it just sound similar?

05:28

Richard Dawkins brought me here

"Knight" [k ə ' n i t] ... So when Monty Python's french guard said "kanigit" he wasn't far off 😆

Why is he scacan

Nc

He hasn’t quite nailed the rhotic ‘R’.

I don't know why, but this sounds strangely Hungarian.

this is terible i got set this fo school and now have perminant eye damadge