When the jovial leader of the pilgrimage in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, Harry Bailey, sets forth the rules of the tale-telling competition that the pilgrims shall play en route to Canterbury, he does not mention prologues. This was one of the interesting deviations from precedent that Geoffrey Chaucer took with The Canterbury Tales. Indeed, in Italian author Boccaccio’s Decameron, which similarly uses a social framework within which each tale and teller are placed, the characters are so identical in age and status as to be indistinguishable. By contrast, the Wife of Bath is unforgettable, with her enormous hat, bright red stockings, and lust for life. Her prologue gives her character space to speak her mind, which she does in a totally new way.