Giving Chaucer a chance
Until recently, my sole experience with Geoffrey Chaucer came to me through my husband, who once had to recite a portion of The Canterbury Tales, in its original Middle English, for a high school class. He must’ve worked quite hard on said recitation, because I overhear him muttering it (when he’s not performing it for me, unsolicited) at least once week. While I’m interested in tackling more classics, perhaps you can sympathize with me when you hear that Chaucer is not on the list. I’ve had my fill - or so I thought.
This spring, though, my sister-in-law Stef gifted me a copy of The Wife of Willesden, a play by Zadie Smith I had never heard of. It had done a run in London, and was headed for Brooklyn. I was excited about it, but shelved it in favor of another book she’d purchased for me (which I’ll be reviewing later this month).
Come this fall, I was in search of a quick, sharp read, and the slim Smith volume on my desk caught my eye. I hadn’t even read the back, but I slipped it into my bag anyways, trusting both Stef’s recommendation and Smith’s expertise (the excellent cover didn’t hurt, either). Then I did something that I never do, but felt I had to so as not to go in fully blind: I read the book’s Foreword. (I never read Forewords. Sue me!) Here’s how Smith’s winding road to rewriting a Chaucer play began:
In 2020, Smith was commissioned by the a woman named Lois on the town council of Brent to write a piece celebrating their victory as London’s Borough of Culture 2020. Smith was honored (she loves Brent - she was born, raised, and currently lives there), but paralyzed (she’d been writing about Brent - explicitly and obliquely - for her entire career. “It’s like being asked to breathe, when breathing is all you do”). Smith found herself failing to come up with a suitable concept until, one day, facing yet another follow-up from Lois, her eyes landed on a copy of The Canterbury Tales on her bookshelf. She quickly abandoned the notion of rewriting them entirely, instead offering up a modern rewrite of The Wife of Bath, set on the Kilburn High Road in Willesden, North West London. The Kilburn High Road was, actually, relevant, as a part of the medieval Canterbury pilgrimage route.
Lois agreed, drafting up a press release announcing their partnership, which Smith approved without reading. And, despite the release saying nothing of the sort, everyone who read it seemed to interpret Smith agreeing to rewrite The Wife of Bath as Smith announcing she was writing a play. This may have started with one person spreading misinformation on Twitter, but by the time Smith caught wind of it, it was too late to turn back. Which meant she was writing a Chaucer-inspired play. For those unfamiliar with Chaucer’s oeuvre: he writes in rhyming couplets, a style to which Smith adhered. (Editor’s Note: when I reached the point in the Foreword where she revealed this, I was filled with dread. But when, not a few sentences later, she referred to writing the play as one of the most delightful experiences of her career, I regained confidence and soldiered on).
And that takes us to the play itself: The Wife of Bath comes from Ellesmere (c. 1387), one of Chaucer’s earliest Canterbury Tales manuscripts. The thrust of the story is this: a knight needs to find out “what women want” or else he will get executed. On his quest to find out, he encounters a young, sexually free woman named Alison, brash and unapologetic, married five times, and all-too-willing to share her thoughts on what makes a woman happy—or not. (See what I did there? If not: that was a rhyming couplet.)
In Smith’s retelling, the play is divided into three parts: The Wife of Willesden’s Prologue, in which Alvita, sitting in a pub in Kilburn High Road, takes center stage. For most of the prologue, she soliloquizes on her relationship with each of her five ex-husbands (all of whom are present at the pub, and step in to defend themselves), and what went wrong, all while getting scoldings from her religious aunt and a potentially shady megachurch pastor.
Act II, The Wife of Willesden’s tale, then transfers the reader to Jamaica, where a handsome and charming man whom Smith simply calls Young Maroon takes the role of the Arthurian Knight - tasked with finding out what women want - or death. He meets a wise but withered and old woman known only as Queen Nanny, whom he promises to marry if she gives him the answer. She does, and - naturally - he wants to reneg on the promise.
Our final act is Smith’s own Retraction, a page and a half written, in, the “author” (aka Smith), drops the couplets, and apologizes for offending Brent with “all of her previous books” (even award-winning authors have imposter syndrome)!
The back half of the book is the actual source text, The Wife of Bath, and while I loved reading Chaucer through Smith’s eyes, I’m not sure I’m ready for that. But if and when I am, I know my husband will be ready and waiting to translate.