Why am I writing Middle English, you ask? Well, I was remembering back to High School English class, and reading the Prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in Middle English, in Mrs. Ham's Senior English class. And not only did we have to read it, we had to memorize the beginning lines.
For some reason, I still can easily recite the first eight lines, which begin, "Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote, The droghte of Marche has perced to the roote...."
What brings this to mind now is that this spring's Shakespeare class started yesterday. This year, we're studying "Pericles," which I do not remember reading previously. As a handout to the first session, our professor gave us the source material Shakespeare used, the original "Tale of Apollonius of Tyre," written in, you guess it - Middle English. As I first looked at the handout, I thought, oh no, this is going to be difficult. But it wasn't!
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