diff --git a/CHANGES b/CHANGES
index 46465f1..970a91b 100644
--- a/CHANGES
+++ b/CHANGES
@@ -1,5 +1,10 @@
 
 0.7.3
+- [bug] legacy_html_escape function, used when
+  Markupsafe isn't installed, was using an inline-compiled
+  regexp which causes major slowdowns on Python 3.3;
+  is now precompiled.
+
 - [bug] AST supporting now supports tuple-packed
   function arguments inside pure-python def
   or lambda expressions.  [ticket:201]
diff --git a/mako/filters.py b/mako/filters.py
index 37c8fe4..b4f2684 100644
--- a/mako/filters.py
+++ b/mako/filters.py
@@ -20,10 +20,12 @@
 # XXX: " is valid in HTML and XML
 #      ' is not valid HTML, but is valid XML
 
+LEGACY_HTML_ESCAPE_RE = re.compile(r'([&<"\'>])')
+
 def legacy_html_escape(string):
     """legacy HTML escape for non-unicode mode."""
 
-    return re.sub(r'([&<"\'>])', lambda m: xml_escapes[m.group()], string)
+    return LEGACY_HTML_ESCAPE_RE.sub(lambda m: xml_escapes[m.group()], string)
 
 try:
     import markupsafe