20 - Manchester, Chetham’s Library, MS 6696

Summary

Confessio Amantis, with ‘Explicit’ and ‘Quam cinxere’.

Lancashire, s.xvi, first half (1533–37, according to C. A. Luttrell, ‘Three North-West Midland Manuscripts’, Neophilologus, 42 [1958], 38–50, 45)

Contents

1

(fols 1ra–126vb) Confessio Amantis, Prol. 193–VIII.3114* end

…To thinke apon the daies olde < > Oure Ioie may ben endles | Amen Amen Amen

Prologue (fol. 1ra), wants first leaf of first quire, with lines 1–192. Book I (fol. 5rb), wants last leaf of first quire and first leaf of quire ii, after fol. 10, with lines 1092–1491; Book II (fol. 20ra); Book III (fol. 36ra); Book IV (fol. 45va); Book V (fol. 56va); Book VI (fol. 85va); Book VII (fol. 93ra); Book VIII (fol. 114vb), wants leaf 14 of eighteen-leaf quire x, after fol. 123, with lines 2111–2343.

Text collated by Macaulay (sigil Ch): Ia. Macaulay notes many corruptions and omissions, and calls the spelling of the text ‘late and bad’ (Macaulay [ed.], Works, II.cxli).

In addition to the four missing leaves, Macaulay also notes that ‘there are many omissions, apparently because the copyist got tired of his work, e.g. II.3155–84, III.41–126, 817–42, 877–930, 1119–96, IV.17–72, 261–370, 569–704, 710–22, 915–68, 1117–1236, V.72–112. [To these may be added V.2453–2642, fol. 67vb.] There is also a good deal of omission and confusion in V.6101–7082.’ (ed., Works, II.cxli). However, the omissions are not random: all have to do with the exchanges between Amans and Genius, and especially with the long complaints of Amans in Books IV and V on his lack of success in love, passages which have been particularly admired by modern readers, including Macaulay himself (ed., Works, II.xv), though other readers have emphasized the importance of the poem as a collection of exemplary stories. The omissions are deliberate, as is shown by the fact that they are bridged by careful rewriting. The almost identical practice in Princeton UL, MS Garrett 136 is suggestive of a common origin, as was first pointed out by Harris, ‘Virtues of Bad Texts’, 29. She gives further detail in ‘Ownership and Readership’, 163–65, also 283–92, where there is a full description of the abridged text, and 293–97, which lists in full the apparatus of notes in the Chetham MS.