University of Virginia Library

I

I shall make the following assumptions:

• I. That shared errors indicate close relationship;
• II. That unique readings are probably spurious;
• III. That the simplest derivation (tree) which will account for the variants is to be preferred.

These are usual initial assumptions.[6] They are not laws; evidence may controvert them.

The A B C survives in sixteen manuscripts.[7] The following readings occur only in Gg and Speght:

• 9. myn (for thin)
• 11. omission of him
• 19. for to (for for)
• 38. ben (for be)
• 46. close in with þyn owene grace (for clothe with thi grace)
• 49. Gracyouse (for Glorious)
• 75. with þe (for to yow)
• 83. peyne (for peynes)
• 85. with (for of)

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227




• 87. omission of oure
• 89. of (for with)
• 103. as litil (for litel)
• 105. þo (for that)
• 124. schal (for may)
• 132. fulle (for rightful)
• 133. ioye (for merci)
• 158. on (for unto)
• 179. out (for ought)

The number of shared variants is large; some are patently errors (e.g., lines 46 and 132). Therefore, according to Assumption I Gg and Speght are closely related.

Chronology prevents the derivation of the fifteenth-century manuscript from the late Elizabethan printed book. Even so, it is useful to be able to show that the derivation of Gg from Speght is implausible on purely textual grounds (otherwise one might justifiably wonder if Speght were not simply a printed facsimile of some lost manuscript, a virtual duplicate like, say, the Chaucer Society transcriptions). Speght has the following unique readings:

• 53. nor (for not)
• 56. sinke (for stynk)
• 77. ye (for that; Gg þt )
• 84. bostaunce (for bobaunce)
• 90. then (for ther)
• 92. can (for gan)
• 121. right (for yit)
• 136. that of pitie will (for that wole of pitee)
• 137. he (for that he)
• 144. royall (for rial)
• 172. a (for as a)
• 174. sured me (for mesured)
• 175. or (for and)
• 179. will (for wel)

Again the number of variants is large; some of the variants are patently spurious (e.g., lines 84 and 174); all of the variants are opposed in Gg by the generally supported readings.[8] Therefore, according to Assumption II Gg is not derived from Speght.

Gg also has unique readings: 156. han (for have); 173. besech (for preye). Moreover, in line 90 Gg has a variant which, although not unique (it is in Gg's sister manuscript, Coventry; see fn. 7 above), is a patent error:

þere brende (for brende). All of these variants are opposed in Speght by the generally supported readings. Here the number of variants is indeed small, but this fact does not seem to have disturbed previous editors. According to Assumption II, then, Speght is not derived from Gg. Since Gg has been shown not to be derived from Speght, the (apparent) final conclusion is that the two derive from a lost common parent.

This conclusion, however, ignores a large body of sublexical evidence which has never before been presented.

"In spelling," Manly and Rickert remark (I, 177), "Gg [the entire volume] has long been recognized as unique among Chaucer MSS." The peculiarities of the Gg volume have been extensively studied by Caldwell, and both he and Manly conclude that the scribe was probably not English but a Dutchman or a Fleming. Among the forms they especially cite in evidence, quoting Canterbury Tales A 1527 and A 1579, is bosch for bush (MDu bosch).[9] This form appears twice in the Gg copy of the A B C (lines 89 and 92):

The corresponding lines in Speght are: All other manuscripts read bush or something closely resembling bush. It is hard not to believe that Speght got its strange bosh from Gg's bosch.

Manly and Rickert (I, 177) comment upon another peculiarity of the Gg scribe: "He divides and joins words wrongly and makes nonsense"; they give myn che kys as an example. In line 174 Gg reads:

The corresponding line in Speght is:

The other manuscripts all read mesured. It is hard not to believe that Speght's unique variant resulted from a misinterpretation of the Gg reading with its unnatural space.

A striking peculiarity of the Gg scribe is described by Manly and Rickert (I, 177) thus: "The n of possessive adjectives [is] regularly retained before consonants: myn self, myn lyf myn lust." This feature, foreign to Chaucer's English as well as to Speght's,[10] appears over and over in the Gg

copy of the A B C and is often paralleled in Speght's; the Speght reading is given second:

• 7. myne perlious : mine perillous
• 16. myn schip : mine ship
• 18. myn synne, myn confusioun : mine sinne, mine confusioun
• 19. þyn presense : thin presence
• 23. myn dampnacioun : mine damnatioun
• 40. myn werk : mine werke
• 41. þyn tente : thine tent
• 48. myn deth : mine death
• 52. myn fadir : mine fader
• 55. myn socour : mine soccour
• 56. myn gost : mine ghost
• 68. þyn pete : thine pitie
• 74. þyn name : thine name
• 79. myn fo : mine fo
• 81. þyn sorwe : thine sorow
• 88. þyne petous eyne : thine pitous eyen
• 111. þyn goodnesse : thine goodnes
• 123. myn soule : mine soule
• 125. þyn sone, myn mene : thine sonne, mine meane
• 126. þyn self : thine selfe

One could continue extending this listing (further examples may be found in lines 134, 143, 147, 159, 161, 167, 180). Such spellings occur in no other manuscript of the A B C.

A few additional spellings could be cited but enough evidence seems to have been given.

Assumption III asserts that the simplest derivation (tree) which will account for the variants is to be preferred. The bifid tree, with Gg and Speght deriving from a lost common parent, explains the lexical variants but leaves the strange spellings unaccounted for. The derivation of Speght directly from Gg accounts for the spellings (and for most of the lexical evidence) but leaves the variants in lines 90, 156, and 173 unexplained. Thus either of the possible trees leaves something unresolved. In this circumstance Assumption III applies. The simpler derivation is, of course, the second. Therefore the true conclusion is that Speght is derived from Gg.

How are we then to explain the three lines where Gg is wrong and Speght right? I take the Speght readings to be conscious emendations. Speght was, after all, an editor, though an early one. Three emendations to the right reading in a poem of 184 lines is not beyond the bounds of a priori probability.

Line 90 is rendered thus in Gg: Brennynge of which þere neuere a stikke þere brende. The repetition is so obviously in error that almost anyone would be inclined to strike the second þere out.

The trivial variation in line 156, haue in Speght for Gg's han, is viewable as a mere modernization, han having become archaic by Speght's day.[11]

The third variation, besech for preye in line 173, becomes much less striking when viewed in context:

Obviously, as the rhyme scheme of the poem is ababbcbc, line 173 should rhyme. Apparently preye is the only possible rhyme.[12] Anyone who tried to improve the defective rhyme scheme would produce the right reading.[13]

To summarize: Between 1598 and 1602 Speght came upon a copy of the A B C. In 1600 Gg, with the poem on its opening folios, was in the possession of Joseph Holland. The manuscript was thus in London at the right time for Speght to use it, and in the hands of a man whom he almost certainly knew. Comparison of the Speght text with the text in Gg shows the two versions to be decidedly similar, the similarity including eighteen readings found in no other manuscript and more than thirty unusual spellings, likewise in no other manuscript, of a kind peculiarly characteristic of the Gg scribe and explainable in Speght's copy only on the assumption that it derives from Gg. Textual theory also requires this derivation. Surely one may write Q. E. D. Gg.4.27 was Speght's actual source.