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Notes
The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer, V (1778), xxii-xxiii; Tyrwhitt retained in the Chaucer canon The Court of Love and the "virelay," "Alone walking," (BR 267), the letter with reservation. I am indebted to the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, for permission to edit their manuscript, and to William A. Ringler, Jr., under whose direction this study began, for numerous helpful suggestions, to George Pace for a perceptive reading, and to V. Spears for help in checking collations.
W. W. Skeat, The Chaucer Canon (1900), p. 117n. The same conclusion has been reached by George Pace in his numerous articles on Chaucer's minor poems (e.g., "The Text of Chaucer's Purse," SB, 1 [1948-49], 103-21), and by Harris Chewning ("The Text of 'Envoy to Alison,'" SB, 5 [1952-53], 33-42). On the general problem of the blackletter Chaucers see also John R. Hetherington, Chaucer, 1532-1602, Notes and Facsimile Texts (Vernon House, 26 Vernon Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham; Re-issued 1967, corrected and extended to 1687), and the valuable Geoffrey Chaucer, The Works, 1532, With Supplementary Material from the Editions of 1542, 1561, 1598, and 1602, ed. D. S. Brewer, [a facsimile], (1969) which for convenience is the base of the collations in the present study. The parts of Stow there reproduced (+a-B1a, 3O2b, 3P1b-3U8b) are from the Newnham College copy of STC 5075, the earlier issue, which may be distinguished by the presence of woodcuts in the Prologue to the CT and which generally lacks press corrections found in 5076. STC 5075 is designated hereafter as s.
Stow is credited on 3P2a. For lists of the added poems see Skeat, Canon, pp. 118-126; Eleanor P. Hammond, Chaucer, A Bibliographical Manual (1908), pp. 119-122; W. W. Skeat, ed., The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, 1 (1894), 31-43, hereafter cited as Oxf. Ch.; and Brewer, Facsimile, "Introduction." Brewer is the most reliable, but the others often supply useful information.
See, e.g., Oxf. Ch., VII, xii: "The author [of the "Ten Commandments of Love"] says, truly enough, that he is devoid of cunning, experience, manner of enditing, reason, and eloquence."
W. W. Greg, "Chaucer Attributions in MS. R.3.19, in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge," MLR, 8 (1913), 539-40. Gavin Bone, "Extant Manuscripts Printed from by W. de Worde with Notes on the Owner, Roger Thorney," The Library, 4th ser., 12 (1932), 303-304.
For Stow as editor see William A. Ringler, Jr., "John Stow's Editions of Skelton's Workes and of Certaine Worthye Manuscript Poems," SB, 7 (1956), 215-217; and "Lydgate's Serpent of Division, 1559, Edited by John Stow," SB, 14 (1961), 201-203.
References to BR indicate Carleton Brown and Rossell Hope Robbins, The Index of Middle English Verse (1943) and Rossell Hope Robbins and John L. Cutler, Supplement to the Index of Middle English Verse (1965). References to Utley indicate Francis Lee Utley, The Crooked Rib (1944). (Of the present poem Utley lists several versions under the same head.) The formula "14 : 2 x RR" may be read "fourteen lines in two Rime Royal stanzas." Unless otherwise mentioned, Stow's edition is the first printing of each item. For further information reference to BR is essential and assumed.
See Eleanor P. Hammond, "Ashmole 59 and Other Shirley Manuscripts," Anglia, 30 (1907), 320-348.
A. I. Doyle and George B. Pace, "A New Chaucer Manuscript," PMLA, 83 (1968), 31, n49. See also Norman Davis, "Chaucer's Gentilesse: A Forgotten Manuscript, With Some Proverbs," RES, NS, 20 (1969), 43-50.
I assume that Pace and I are working from the same text (STC 5075). He says simply that his transcriptions are from the B.M. copy of the 1561 Chaucer; they own two copies of STC 5076 and one of STC 5075. There was evidently correction between issues; I have checked the Huntington (on film) and Harvard copies of 5076 against 5075 in cruces only; press correction is noted in the collations for individual poems.
The present binding has on it the arms of George Willmer (ob. 1626). Note that s is the only authority for several words and word endings, due to the plowing.
The former adds a stanza and inserts a "b" line between each pair of "c" lines, creating MKT stanzas. See A. G. Rigg, A Glastonbury Miscellany (1968), pp. 59-60. R. A. Klinefelter has discussed the English College MS in MLQ, 14 (1953), 3-6. He dates it 1436-56 and notes that its readings "seem close" to t and Harley 2251 (which do not to me seem to be particularly close themselves). Associations suggest that the MS was brought to Rome in the 1550's and has remained there since. R. H. Robbins, Neophilologus, 39 (1955), 132, dates the MS "second half XV century," and corrects some of the associations, but the supposition that the MS was in Rome and therefore not available to Stow is still justified. I have not examined the MS, and its text of this poem is unpublished; a full collation of Harley 2251, t and s is given below as an aid to classification of the Rome MS.
See A. I. Doyle, "An Unrecognized Piece of Piers the Ploughman's Creed and Other Work by its Scribe," Speculum, 34 (1959), 428-436.
Oxf. Ch., I, 526; Brusendorff, Tradition, pp. 225-226. Skeat believed that A was a copy of H, while Brusendorff proposes yet another lost Shirley as A's exemplar.
For instance, in the 182 lines of The Craft of Lovers found in two of his MSS (Harley 2251, Addit. 34360) he varies from himself 37 times.
This stanza, which is not identified in Utley or BR, was drawn, as was the rest of the poem, from the Fall of Princes, III, 77-84, as noted by Hammond, Manual, p. 415. It is tenuously connected with the rest of the poem.
One may add to Bone's description the observation, made independently by A. I. Doyle and myself, that the scribe of the Court, who is not the main scribe of t, is the same as that of St. John's, Oxon, MS 256, a Siege of Thebes which Bone deals with extensively as printer's copy for the de Worde, c. 1495 edition (STC 17031). He seems to have been associated with the scribe of t and that of Addit. 34360 as one of the men to continue Shirley's business.
Of course all of Stow's variations, other than the correction of obvious errors, are errors in a sense; I allow him a middle ground of justifiable emendation, however.
Axel Erdmann and Eilert Ekwall, Lydgate's Siege of Thebes, E.E.T.S., e. s., 108 (text), & 125 (notes), especially 125, pp. 80-82.
See nn. 8, 27, above. Bone does not, unfortunately, give variant readings for Thebes. His plates however show a portion of the text where copy and print agree very closely.
Related to Pepys 2011 and Christchurch 152 according to C. F. Bühler, "A New Lydgate-Chaucer MS," MLN, 52 (1937), 2n2.
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