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It is uncommon to be able to locate with any certainty the manuscript copy for any part of an Elizabethan printed book. But one instance where it is possible to do so with a high degree of certainty occurs in John Stowe's edition of Chaucer (1561). Among the poems attributed to Chaucer in this edition is the fifteenth-century Craft of Lovers.[1] Recent work for a critical edition of this poem now makes it possible to demonstrate that Stowe's edition derives from Trinity College, Cambridge MS R.3.19. And this demonstration offers some incidental insight into Stowe's editorial practices and his unreliability as an attributor.
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