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The Prologue to the Book of the Tales of Canterbury
The Prologue to the Book of the Tales of Canterbury Author:Geoffrey Chaucer Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: / t t tt t His berd teas shave as ny as ever he can 688 t r r t t t His heer was by his eres ful round y-shorn 589 t t t t t t In youths he lerned... more » hadde a good mister 613 r rrtt t But hood for jolitee. wered he noon 680 / t t t tt No berd hadde he ne never sholde have -. THE TEXT The first book printed in English, The Recuyell of rhe Historyes of Troye, was put to press at Bruges in 1474 by William Caxton. About two years later he set up his wooden printing-press at the sign of the Red Pole in the Almonry of Westminster. Within a few years he had issued the first printed edition of The Canterbury Tales in that curious type which looks like Monkish script and has been since 1600 called Black Letter. Until 1478 the Tales had circulated in manuscripts alone. There are still extant some fifty of these, but none that can be safely assigned to a date earlier than a quarter of a century after Chaucer's death, or proved to be a copy of what Chaucer himself wrote or dictated. Faithful pictures of single pages have been published, and the frontispiece of this book is a sample of a part of one of these reduced in size. The Chaucer Society has published facsimiles of different manuscripts. In six of these eleven of the lines of the Prologue appear as follows: — Bifil that/in that stson ou a day In Sovthuxrk/at the Tabard as I lay Bedy/to trenden on my pilgrymage To Caunterbury / with ful deuout corage At nyght/were come/in to that hostelrye Vel nyne and twenty in a compaignye Ofsondryfolk/by atenture y-falle In felaweshipe/and pilgrimes were they alle That toward Cauntfrbury wolden ryde The chambres and the stables weren -Jtyde And wel ice we.ren esed atte beste Bifel that in that sesoun on a day In Southwerk at the Tabard /as . I. lay Bedy to wee...« less