Confessio Amantis

London, s.xv, mid-century.

Contents

(pp. i–xii and pp. 1–350) Confessio Amantis, Prol. 1–VIII.3119 NB The Arabic numbering by pages is used here throughout except for the first six leaves, which are numbered by pages in small Roman numerals, i–xii (see PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION, II, below).

Prologue (p. ia); Book I (p. ia); Book II (p. 38b); Book III (p. 76b); Book IV (p. 104b); Book V (p. 144a); Book VI (p. 227b); Book VII (p. 253a) lacks six leaves (stubs remain, numbered 277–88) after p. 276, with text of VII.2083–3162; Book VIII (p. 314b) lacks VIII.3120–72end. The second leaf of the last quire is missing (pp. 341–42), but no text is lost (the text surrounding the missing leaf, on pp. 340 and 343, is the Lover’s Prayer to Venus, VIII.2217–2300, complete, with no break, twelve stanzas in rhyme royal, a change of metre which may have confused the paginator?). The last two leaves of the last quire are lost after p. 350, with text of VIII.3120–72end and presumably some of the Latin concluding apparatus. Latin glosses are sporadically omitted in Books V–VII.

Text: mostly has the character of a later version, though there are affiliations with the seven MSS that constitute Macaulay’s Recension II (ed., Works, II.cxxxiii–cxxxv), e.g. omission of glosses at V.7007 and 7022, as in San Marino, Huntington Library, MS EL 26 A 17, Cambridge, Sidney Sussex College, MS 63 and Nottingham UL, MS WLC/LM/8; addition of text at V.7015–34, 7087–7103, 7105–32, as in those same three MSS and also BL, MS Add. 12043, Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.2, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 294 and the present MS, though the additions in the Folger MS are in a later hand (see PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION, VI, below). Macaulay (ed., Works, II.clxv) records the MS as Phillipps 8942, with sigil P3, but does not collate it.