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