The Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath's Prologue Resources

Websites

Luminarium's Wife of Bath Section
This website collects lots of great resources on the Wife of Bath, including study guides, modern news items, and links to images.

Movies or TV Productions

BBC's Canterbury Tales Miniseries
This modern adaptation of the Wife of Bath's Prologue has the Wife of Bath as a fifty-three-year-old television actress and multiple divorcée who starts up a relationship with a much younger man when her husband leaves her.

Historical Documents

Ellesmere Chaucer Wife of Bath

This is an image of the first page of the Wife of Bath's tale from the Ellesmere manuscript, widely considered to be the most beautiful of the Chaucer manuscripts.

Wife of Bath Manuscript

This is an image of the Wife of Bath from Cambridge Manuscript GG 4.27.

Video

BBC's Modern Adaptation
Watch the BBC's modern adaptation of the "Wife of Bath" on YouTube.

Audio

Wife of Bath's Prologue Lines 1-22

Marie Boroff reads lines 1-22 of the Wife's Prologue aloud in Middle English.

Wife of Bath's Portrait

John Farrell reads the Wife of Bath's Portrait from the General Prologue.

Wife of Bath Theatrical Production

The Chaucer Theater presents The Wife of Bath. Here's an audio clip sample from their website.

Resources to Help Students Learn Middle English

Teach Yourself to Read Middle English

This page, provided by Harvard, offers ten lessons that start with a general explanation of the principles of Middle English pronunciation and move on to actual practice with the tales themselves.

A Basic Chaucer Glossary

This is a helpful glossary of Middle English terms often used in Chaucer. The 100 most common words are denoted by an asterisk.