Read the retelling or try the original?

It’s certainly quicker and easier to go for Ackroyd’s retelling, and he brings across the gusto and the sheer vigour of the original well, but he does lose the poetry. Curiously, he also misses out on a lot of Chaucer’s wordplay, putting through one meaning and ignoring the other meanings that Chaucer hints at in his original text.

So if you want a quick, down and dirty (lots of four-letter words) retelling of the original, read this version.

But if you want the poetry, and the vulgarity too with all the double and triple meanings that Chaucer manages to inject into them, then invest in the original and bookmark one of the online Middle English dictionaries to help with the most difficult words.