Why ar wee to admire y prase Chaucer wen hee speld lyk an edyot?

We all talked like that. Some might say we - and when I say we I mean us English types - still do )

He was well educated for his time, when most people were barely literate if at all, and he didn't speak like an idiot!!

There were no standard English spellings in his era, and the speaking and prose styles were very different too.

I agree with Durdle.
Just read Chaucer - it's easy to understand in spite of being Medieval English.
His insights are as true today as they were then and brilliantly expressed.

The Miller's Tale, The Farmer's Tale, no Speller's Tale.

No Speller's Tale - no, there could not have been, but that's made me wonder what Dr. Samuel Johnson, the writer who published the first standard English dictionary in 1755, thought of Chaucer!

I suspect great respect, but Johnson aimed to establish some order in an otherwise rather chaotic language, when people generally were becoming more literate and the need for written formal documents increased rapidly along with the growth in literature.

In Chaucer's time few people could read, the English vocabulary was far smaller anyway, most formal Church and legal documents were in Latin, and so rough-and-ready, vaguely-phonetic, perhaps dialectical spellings were acceptable. 

"For ther is so gret diversite
In Englissh and in writyng of oure tonge
So pray I God that non myswrite the
Ne the mysmetre for defaute of tongue:
And red wherso thow be, or elles songe,
That thow be understonde, God I biseche"