BRUSH UP YOUR CHAUCER

from Kiss Me, Tommy!

In the mid-1940s Cole Porter had his most unusual idea for a show. It would be a musical celebration of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales and Thomas Becket, brought into the modern setting of contemporary Brooklyn with the lyrics written in Brooklynese. The working title of the musical was Kiss Me, Tommy! Porter was ultimately persuaded that Shakespeare would have more caché on Broadway than Chaucer. The result was his most successful show, Kiss Me, Kate. The Poetics Lab at Penn took on the project of simulating a show based on the original idea, using our patented new Virtual Lyric Machine. We moved the show to the present and set its opening number at the final session of the 2006 Conference of the New Chaucer Society, held at Lincoln Center.

The boyz and the goils in hipoisie

All go for medieval poetry

To get them jazzed from head to toe

Declaim in mode’n American prose

Beowulf and the Roman de la Rose

And—conventioneers—

If you thoroughly detested Grendel

There’s still time to go to Henry Bendel

For a tunic to wear to The Cloisters

And a Ft. Tryon mélange with oysters

One must know a bit of Piers Plowman

To recite over late night moo-moo gai pan

And it’s not enough to give throat to Dante,

You also need to decant Cavalcanti

And—let me warn you!—

Unless you know by heart a troubadour

You’re gonna be stiffed as a true lose-or

But the poet of them all

Who thrills guys and dames

Is the poet New Yoikers call

The Bard of . . . London-isn’t-that-on-the-Thames?

Just warble a few lines from Troilus and Criseyde

And they’ll think you’re one heck of a fellida

If your date won’t respond when you put-your-arm-around-’er

Tell her what everyone keeps saying about the pardoner

Brush up your Chaucer

Tell Shakespeare the news

Geoff Chaucer’s the man of the hour

Start quoting him now

Brush up your Chaucer

And the hipoisie you’ll wow

With the mom of the coed from UConn Waterbury

Try one of the purple passages from Canterbury

If she protests she really could care less about pilgrims

Get graphic about some of their more original sins

If she says the story is nothin’ spectacular

Tell her the narrative is nothin’ compared to the vernacular

If she slaps you and says you’re much too wicked

Watch out she may be obsessed with Tom á la Becket

If she starts singin’ Canticus Troili

It’s the time to refresh her soiled doily

If that whiff of bath quickens your vowels

Time to convene the parliament of fouls

Brush up your Chaucer

Tell Shakespeare the news

Geoff Chaucer’s the man of the hour

Start quoting him now

Brush up your Chaucer

And they’ll all kow-tow

Yes they’ll all kow-tow