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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2021
One of the preliminary problems that confronts the textual investigator of the Canterbury Tales is to determine which if any of the early prints can claim to rank with the manuscripts as independent authorities. It seems to be generally agreed that no account need be taken of any edition later than that which Thynne included in his collection of the Chaucer's works printed by Godfray in 1532, but of the six prints of the Tales of which that was the latest no complete investigation seems yet to have been attempted. My object in this paper is to make a beginning by subjecting to critical analysis the first 116 lines of the Knight's Tale as they stand in these six editions.
1 An apology or at least an explanation is due with regard to the manuscript notation adopted in the present article. This is itself but a fragment of a more extended inquiry, and for this I found the current symbols unsatisfactory. There is, indeed, no fixed and consistent usage, and those generally employed are both clumsy and confusing. The notation I propose and have here employed is as follows: every manuscript in the British Museum is designated by a single capital letter (the initial, as a rule, of the collection in which it is found); every manuscript at Oxford or Cambridge by a capital and a small letter (the Oxford manuscripts having the two letters different, the Cambridge the same); every other manuscript by a Latin capital followed by a small Greek letter; where there are two or more manuscripts in the same collection they are distinguished by superior numerals; prints are indicated by the initial of the printer followed by the decade number of the date. I have not yet examined all the accessible manuscripts containing the beginning of the Knight's Tale, still less all extant, but have made a beginning with those in the British Museum, a few at Cambridge, and all those that have been facsimiled or reprinted. There seem to be 68 manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales (or parts of them) known, of which 57 are believed to contain a portion at least of the selected passage. Of these I have collated 22; the following list giving their identifications and symbols:
A1 = B.M., Addit. 5140
A3 = B.M., Addit. 35286
E1 = B.M., Egerton 2726
E2 = B.M., Egerton 2863
E3 = B.M., Egerton 2864
H1 = B.M., Harley 1239
H3 = B.M., Harley 1758
H6 = B.M., Harley 7333
H7 = B.M., Harley 7334
L = B.M., Lansd. 851
R1 = B.M., Royal 17 D. xv
R2 = B.M., Royal 18 C. II
S1 = B.M., Sloane 1685
S2 = B.M., Sloane 1686
Cp = Oxford, Corpus 196
Dd = U.L.C., Dd. 4. 24
Gg = U.L.C., Gg. 4. 27
Tt1 = Camb., Trinity R. 3. 3.
Tt2 = Camb., Trinity R. 3. 15.
Eλ = Ellesmere
Hγ = Hengwrt 154
Pτ = Petworth
Whenever in my article I speak of ‘no manuscript’ or ‘all manuscripts’ I do so strictly with reference to this list; readers will kindly understand ‘manuscripts consulted’ not ‘manuscripts known’. Whether any further installments of the inquiry I have undertaken are published must depend mainly upon whether any results of value seem likely to emerge, a possibility which at the moment appears to me rather remote. Meanwhile, however, I think that some interest attaches to the solution of the more restricted problem.
2 Specimens of all the Accessible Unprinted Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales, 1890, &c.
3 The table requires some explanation. Although mere variations of spelling are excluded, whenever a variant is quoted the forms found in the different texts are reproduced exactly. Where no reading is entered exact agreement with that next preceding is to be understood. For the sake of clearness, however, substantial variants are distinguished by heavy type, the rest being mere differences of form. Such a distinction is of necessity arbitrary, but is useful in practice. Here the absence of a final ‘e’ required by the metre (but not of one required by grammar) had been treated as a variant, otherwise its presence or absence has been held indifferent. Word division and capitalization has been similarly disregarded. A caret-mark indicates the omission of a word. A letter or word in parenthesis serves to indicate the position of a reading in the line. Letters printed in italic are represented in the original by some mark of contraction. The tags found on certain final letters in the manuscripts, originally indicating an ‘e’, have been disregarded, since they have evidently degenerated into mere scribal tricks. Those found in Caxton's prints, particularly with the letters ‘d’ and ‘h’, have also been disregarded, but an exception has been made in favour of that distinguishing final ‘g’, which may possibly be significant and has been rendered by ‘e‘. For the Corpus manuscript I have relied on the Chaucer Society's print. To facilitate reference, where several variants appear in the same line, they have been distinguished by superior numbers.
4 I have not examined the manuscript at New College, Oxford, (Nw) which is said to be the closest to Tt2, but Zupitza is quite clear that it is with Tt2 and not Nw that C7 most closely agrees.
5 It is to be presumed that some of the four readings peculiar to C7 are to be found in Nw, but the greatest possible number of exclusive correspondences afforded by that manuscript is four. No doubt some of the exclusive correspondences of C7 and Tt2 are also to be found in Nw, but it seems exceedingly unlikely that they would amount to as many as sixteen.
6 It might have been a daughter of Tt2 in which a certain number of readings had been introduced from another source, say Cp. But if we allow the assumption of conflation in hypothetical manuscripts a definite conclusion becomes impossible. It is only through the exclusion of such a possibility that the statement that B is (or is not) descended from A can ever be significant.
7 It will be best to count 701,2, 731,2' and 733,4 each as a single reading, thus reducing the number to twenty-three.
8 The other thirty-four are 22, 131, 252, 26, 312, 483, 552, 561, 621, 651, 681, 71, 751, 762, 85, 872, 872, 892, 914, 92, 934, 944, 951, 952, 961, 962, 971, 972, 982, 99, 1001, 101, 111, 1141.
9 Or C7, though in that case we should expect to find some distinctive C7 readings, which we do not. So far as the eight significant readings are concerned the restorations might equally well have been made by comparison with W9, and this would seem on the face of it more likely. The supposition, however, is ruled out by the fact that P2 occasionally restores the archaic ‘hem’ for the ‘them’ of P9 in cases (873, 953) where W9 modernizes. Since we can hardly suppose that the compositor of P9 worked with a manuscript as well as C8 in front of him, we must suppose that his copy of C8 had already had manuscript alterations inserted. If so it was presumably not the same copy of C8 that was used in the preparation of P2.
10 The Chaucer Society print of the Petworth manuscript is ambiguous. In this line the word ‘ther’ is enclosed in brackets, but what is meant thereby is not stated.
