Geoffrey Chaucer in a pulpit, reading his poetry to the court of Richard II

This picture has many resonances with Shakespeare: it is the frontispiece to Chaucer's narrative poem, Troilus and Criseyde, which is a precedent for Shakespeare's play, Troilus and Cressida; it shows an artistic event at the court of the over-sophisticated King Richard II, as he appears to be in Shakespeare's history play, Richard II; and it reveals that Chaucer's poetry was regularly delivered vocally to an audience rather than read silently alone, in other words performed somewhat dramatically. : frontispiece to "Troilus & Criseyde", c. 1400. MS 61, Corpus Christi College,Cambridge, courtesy of the Yorck Project, under GNU Free Document License.