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Notes
I am indebted to the Rackham Foundation, University of Michigan, for a summer grant to pursue this project. [1] Wynkyn de Worde (de Worth) was born in Wörth, Alsace, in the Duchy of Lorraine. Possibly, he was with Caxton in Bruges and accompanied him to England in 1476. He stayed with Caxton until Caxton's death in 1491, whereupon he assumed control of the business. Wynkyn de Worde was the first printer in England to use italic type, 1524. He died 1534/35.
The confusion ranges from the number of titles Wynkyn de Worde printed, to an evaluation of his work. Thus, in one volume, the Encyclopaedia Britannica (15th ed., 1974) mentions that the printer published at least 600 books after 1501 ("Whereas Caxton and numerous continental European contemporaries were also editors and translators, Wynkyn was purely a commercial printer"). In another volume of the same edition he is given credit for some 800 titles ("His contemporary, the best of the early printers, was Richard Pynson of Normandy"). Collier's Encyclopedia reduces the number of books to "more than 700" but also praises Pynson (Plomer [pp. 8, 149] would agree): "A London contemporary, Richard Pynson, easily outdid all English rivals in the quality of work during the early 16th century." The Encyclopedia Americana, vol. 29 (1965) doubles Wynkyn de Worde's publications: "He published more than 700 distinct works known through at least one copy or fragments, although this probably represents only half of his total output."
Eleanor P. Hammond, Chaucer: A Bibliographical Manual (1908, reprinted 1933), p. 204. For the sake of convenience I am using the standard MS abbreviations found in John M. Manly and Edith Rickert, The Text of The Canterbury Tales (1940), Vols. II-VIII (cited hereafter as M-R), and the edition of F. N. Robinson, The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, 2nd edition (1957), pp. 886-887. The Corpus of Variants is found in M-R vols. V-VIII.
Professor Thomas Ross kindly supplied me with a list of 28 variants from the Miller's Tale in which Wynkyn de Worde differs from Caxton. In general, these do not seem significant and there is no consistent pattern of MS reading, though Ha4 does occur often. He notes that several Caxton typos are repeated by Wynkyn de Worde. General dependence on Caxton, with occasional separate readings, is definitely proved.
Hengwrt MS (Peniarth 392 D) found at Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, forms the text of the Variorum Chaucer. It is with the El the earliest MS of Chaucer extant (1400-10), possibly contemporary with the poet, and is in many cases superior to El. M-R's eclectic text by recension is practically identical to Hg. It is conjectured that El and Hg were written by the same scribe (M-R, I, 268).
The editions are: Caxton, ca. 1478; Caxton, ca. 1485; Pynson, ca. 1492; Wynkyn de Worde, 1498; Pynson, 1526; Thynne, 1532, Thynne, 1542; Thynne, 1545; Stow, 1561; Speght, 1598; Speght, 1602; Speght, 1687; Urry, 1721; Tyrwhitt, 1775-8; Tyrwhitt, 1798; Wright, 1847-51; Skeat, 1894; Robinson, 1933; Manly-Rickert, 1940; Robinson, 1957.
M-R have their own symbols for what they call "constant groups," that is, MSS whose variants usually appear together. Several of these, used below, are: 1) b̰=He—N̰e (Ne—C̰x1) where C̰x1=C̰x1—Tc 2; 2) B̰o1=Bo1—Ph2; 3) Ḛn1=En1—Ds; 4) M̰c=Mc—Ra1.
There is, for one thing, little space left in the right margin, and WdW may have felt the tag lines to be scribal excrescences: lines 1993, 2003, 2077 are not really necessary, and 2013 has been made superfluous by "Thyn hauberke" of line 2014. If this were so, MS Ph1 would obviously gain in importance.
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