13 - Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.15 and the Circulation of Chaucerian Manuscripts in the Sixteenth Century

Summary

Trinity College, Cambridge, MS R.3.15 [Tc²] is a late fifteenth-century copy of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales whose text is very closely affiliated to that of Caxton's first edition, although critics disagree as to the exact nature of this relationship. The presence of individual lines in Caxton's edition that are not found in Tc² rules out the possibility that the manuscript served as Caxton's exemplar, but it remains possible that the manuscript was copied from the printed text. N. F. Blake included Tc² in his listing of ‘Caxton prints for which a copy-text survives, or which were used as a copy’, suggesting that the manuscript may have been copied from Caxton's first printed edition. C. A. Owen Jr considered Tc² to have used the exemplar employed by Caxton for his edition as its copytext, while D. W. Mosser concludes that the precise nature of the association is impossible to determine.

In addition to its text of the Canterbury Tales, Tc² contains several other Middle English works, copied by a secretary hand of the sixteenth century, as follows:

• 1. (folios 1r–2r) ‘Eight goodlie questions with their answers’ (NIMEV 3183/1)

• 2. (folios 2r–3r) ‘Balade au tres noble Roy H[enri] le quint’ (Hoccleve NIMEV 3788/1)

• 3. (folio 3r) ‘Whan faithe faileth in prestes sawes’ (NIMEV 3943/10)

• 4. (folios 317r–28r) Pierce the Ploughman's Crede (NIMEV 663/1)

The three items that precede the Canterbury Tales in Tc² appear in this same position in William Thynne's edition, The Workes of Geffray Chaucer (STC 5068), first issued in 1532, and scholars have consequently assumed that they were copied directly from this edition. Collation of Thynne's version of these texts with those in Tc² confirms that they are very close to the printed text. Variants shared by both witnesses include the following readings in the opening lines of the Canterbury Tales, added by the sixteenth-century copyist as a replacement for a missing leaf: 2 droghte] drought; 5 sweete] sote; 6 in] om.; 10 the] om.; 13 for] om.; 19 Bifil] it befel; in that] om.; 21 wenden] go; 22 ful] om.; 23 At] That.