A. C. Cawley Libros

In Chaucer's most ambitious poem, 'The Canterbury Tales' a group of pilgrims assemble in an inn just outside London and agree to entertain each other on the way to Canterbury by telling stories. The pilgrims come from all ranks of society, from the crusading Knight and burly Miller to the worldly Monk and lusty Wife of Bath.

Miracle plays were a popular form of entertainment throughout the Middle Ages, and part of the poetic and dramatic tradition on which Shakespeare drew. Everyman discovers what you can't take with you when you go. He beseeches in turn friends, family (one pleads 'cramp in my toe'), possessions ('I follow no man in such voyages'), and finally falls back on moral and religious values.