The Wife of Bath, however, is determined to win her man. Devising a plan for this, she wagers that she will be able to get from the Prioress the brooch, bearing the inscription "Amor Vincit Omnia," that this lady wears upon her wrist. Should Alisoun win, Chaucer is bound by compact to marry her. After much plotting and by means of a disguise, the Wife of Bath wins her bet, and Chaucer ruefully contemplates the prospect of marrying her. In his plight he appeals to King Richard II, who announces that the Wife of Bath may marry a sixth time if she chooses, but only on condition that her prospective bridegroom be a miller. A devoted miller, who has long courted her, joyfully accepts the honour, and the opera ends with a reconciliation between Chaucer and the Prioress.
Mr. Mackaye in speaking of his libretto at the time of the production of the opera had this to say:
"In writing 'The Canterbury Pilgrims' one of my chief incentives was to portray, for a modern audience, one of the greatest poets of all times in relation to a group of his own characters. As a romancer of prolific imagination and dramatic insight, Chaucer stands shoulder to shoulder with Shakespeare. For English speech he achieved what Dante did for Italian, raising a local dialect to a world language.
"Yet the fourteenth-century speech of Chaucer is just archaic enough to make it difficult to understand in modern times. Consequently his works are little known today, except by students of English literature.
"To make it more popularly known I prepared a few years ago (with Professor J.S.P. Tatlock) 'The Modern Readers' Chaucer'; and I wrote for Mr. E.H. Sothern in 1903 my play 'The Canterbury Pilgrims,' which since then has been acted at many American universities by the Coburn Players, and in book form is used by many Chaucer classes.
"In the spring of 1914, at the suggestion of Mr. De Koven, I remodelled the play in the form of opera, condensing its plot and characters to the more simple essentials appropriate to operatic production. Thus focussed, the story depicts Chaucer—the humorous, democratic, lovable poet of Richard Second's court—placed between two contrasted feminine characters, the Prioress, a shy, religious-minded gentlewoman, who has retired from the world, but has as yet taken no vows; and the Wife of Bath, a merry, sensual, quick-witted hoyden of the lower middle class, hunting for a sixth husband. These three, with many other types of old England, are pilgrims, en route from London to the shrine of Thomas à Becket, at Canterbury.
"Becoming jealous of the Prioress, the Wife of Bath makes a bet with Chaucer concerning the gentlewoman's behaviour—a bet which she wins by a trick in the third act, only to lose it in the fourth.
"The work is a comedy in blank verse of various metres, interspersed with rhythmed lyrics. For the first time, I believe, in drama of any language, it inaugurates on the stage the character of the famous first poet-laureate of England—the 'Father of English Literature.'"
Mr. De Koven also tells how he came to compose the music: