The previous section explains why 1389 would be a possible year for Chaucer to have written and presented the Prologue. The easiest explanation of these inconsistencies within the Prologue and between the Prologue and the Tales is that the Prologue was written before it became clear to Chaucer how far his work would fall short of the aim of some 120 tales. In fact, we have just 24 tales, several of which are incomplete. Yet, it appears at the time he wrote the Prologue that he was confident he could carry out the extraordinarily ambitious program set out in the Prologue of four tales for each pilgrim: some one hundred and twenty tales in total.We do not hear any tales from the other two priests, or indeed from several other pilgrims. One of these "preestes thre" tells one of the most-fully worked of all the Tales.We get to thirty-one if we include the "preestes thre" introduced in a rather off-handed way in line 164. In line 24 Chaucer says firmly that there are "nine and twenty pilgrims", but only 28 are described in the Prologue. There is uncertainty about the number of pilgrims.There are several indications that the General Prologue, as we have it, was composed some time relatively early in the writing of the Tales: Accordingly, we suppose that by 1389 he was ready to write the General Prologue: an interim introduction, as it were, to his work-in-progress. By 1389 he would have written enough of the Tales to have conceived its whole shape and most of the cast of pilgrims who he has tell the stories which make up the Tales. The date: why 1389?Īs we explain in the discussion of the Miller's Tale, we date the beginning of Chaucer's writing of the Canterbury Tales to 1386. On the death of Queen Anne at the age of 28 in 1394, Richard was so grief-stricken that he ordered the destruction of the Palace. Sheen was the favourite palace of King Richard and his queen, Anne of Bohemia. Richmond Palace was built on the site of Sheen Palace. This is about nine miles from the Palace of Westminster, close to Twickenham rugby stadium. The royal palace of Sheen, London, on the south bank of the Thames in what is now Richmond, western London. We imagine the first formal presentation of part of Geoffrey Chaucer's new work (provisionally titled, it seems, "The Book of the Tales of Canterbury") as having taken place in the presence of Richard II and his queen at the King's court, on 6 June 1389, at Sheen Palace, London.
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