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Plague and Pestilence embarks on more of a whistlestop than a leisurely pilgrimage throughout the centuries, starting with I think, one of the most “well setup” of all Chaucer’s characters – The Doctor of Physick. Safe to say he had a finely oiled machine working in his favour, giving him a life of luxury and entitlement. The fun we can have with fiction is reading between the lines, and good fiction will always, in general, get the measure of a character ‘type’, a representative of a time and place, if you will. You can have some fun surmising how things have changed since Chaucer’s gold-loving Doctor of Physick, who conveniently had a cure for every ailment (for the right price).

Dr Illona Duffy, a GP working in a large and busy practice in Monaghan, and Marian Gibbs, who retired having worked 35 years as a midwife in Dublin will juxtapose their professional lives and experiences with their counterparts throughout the centuries, especially women, and surmise how things have evolved since Chaucer’s Doctor of Physic “kept a patient from the pall / By horoscopes and magic natural”.

Written and produced by Bernie Dwan. Recorded and mixed by Declan McGlade. The series is made with the support of Coimisiún Na Meán’s Sound and Vision scheme, with the Television License fee. Recorded in Near FM studios, Coolock.

About the series

Devised and produced by Berni Dwan, and funded by Coimisiún na Meán, Charmers and Chancers: Chaucer’s Cheerleaders, is a five-part series that attempts to link five key medieval professions – military, religious, legal, medical, trading – as depicted in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, to women’s working lives today, and examine women’s participation in these professions down through the centuries. In the Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400, we meet thirty characters – only two of whom are women – The Prioress and the Wife of Bath – who agree to take part in a story-telling competition before setting off on pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Beckett, that troublesome priest who was murdered there by King Henry IIs knights in 1170.

In an innovative and entertaining way, the series will –  at a time when the gender pay gap is still a reality and childcare remains a challenge for many women who work outside the home – juxtapose aspects of these five occupational areas between late medieval and post-modern by engaging 21^st century female practitioners in discussion.