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Notes
Apart from the printed editions of Caxton and Thynne, the poem also appears in three earlier manuscripts: Bodleian Library Fairfax 16, Bodley 368 and Magdalene College, Cambridge Pepys 2006.
Cf. John Fyler in the textual introduction to his recent edition of the poem for The Riverside Chaucer, general ed. L. D. Benson (1987): "Th[ynne] derives from C[axton] but makes use of at least one other authority" (p. 1139).
It is, of course, conceivable that Pynson had access to a copy of Caxton's edition that had corrected these errors. For evidence of resetting among the surviving copies see C. F. Bühler, "Chaucer's 'House of Fame': Another Caxton Variant," Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 42 (1948), 140-143. The evidence Bühler presents does not, however, involve any of the readings discussed above.
I am concerned here with Pynson's treatment of Caxton's unique variants. There are a few other points where Pynson does introduce other unique variants of his own other than those discussed below, which are not followed by Thynne, but they do not affect the present argument. Two are probably compositorial errors: at 1141 Pynson reads And where all other witnesses read Any; and at 1424 Pynson reads of where all others read for (an error probably occasioned by of in the same position in line 1423). At 1568 Pynson regularizes syntax and metre by reading in the where all others have in. And at 1738 Pynson makes his contribution to a reading that gave all witnesses trouble: it reads hestes, Caxton and Pepys bestes, Fairfax and Bodley lestes and Thynne questes. Thynne could have corrected these from his additional source.
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