If Chaucer has a reputation for capacious social insight to rival Shakespeare's, it rests on this myth: in the General Prologue to his Canterbury Tales he describes representatives of all social classes, from high to low, and all character types, from virtuous to vicious, and all the interesting mixed cases in between. More recently, Velma Bourgeois Richmond wrote, “the large number of pilgrims is necessary to show a full range of society, and one of Chaucer's concerns is precisely that. His selection of characters, their exclusively English nationality, argues the poet's interest in analysing that social world. Nevertheless, as many scholars point out, a quick examination of that social world suggests that the socio-economic range of Chaucer's pilgrims is not comprehensive. Overall, Chaucer's method of characterization is to suggest by indirection, rather than by classification.