Chaucer’s Boece: A Critical Edition Based on Cambridge University Library MS Ii.3.21, ff. 9r–180v (review)

Tim William Machan’s edition of Chaucer’s Boece makes an unusual addition to the Middle English Text Series, which until now has focused on the publication of works that have not previously been edited. In contrast, the Boece is conveniently and affordably available in the Riverside Chaucer, complete with explanatory and textual notes and glossary. As a forum for unpublished Middle English texts, this series is clearly aimed at the graduate student and scholarly market, while Machan’s edition is evidently directed toward a wider audience, resulting in some rather uneasy compromises. For instance, Middle English Text Series editions generally present texts in their original spelling, whereas Machan’s edition regularizes certain features of orthography and replaces medieval characters such as thorn and yogh in line with modern practice, presumably as an aid to the general reader. But despite this concession for a less-advanced reader, the edition does not include a glossary. There is a commentary that glosses some of the harder readings, but it is by no means an exhaustive glossary, and much of it is devoted to the noting of marginal glosses and their manuscript attestation. Readers who are interested in the historical and literary allusions of Chaucer’s work are advised to consult the “full and extremely valuable notes of Hannah [sic] and Lawler (1987).” It is not clear, then, which audience this edition is intended for, while the widespread availability of the Riverside edition among scholars and students alike suggests that its market will be limited.

The most radical difference between Machan’s edition and the text of Boece as presented in the Riverside Chaucer concerns the choice of base text. Where the Riverside editors adopted Cambridge University Library MS Ii.1.38 (C1) as the base text for their edition, Machan elects to base his text on Cambridge University Library MS Ii.3.21 (C2), the manuscript used by Skeat as the basis for his Clarendon Press edition of 1894. C2 comprises a Boethian anthology in which Chaucer’s text alternates with the corresponding Latin source and is accompanied by glosses taken from Nicholas Trevet’s commentary. In the notes to the Riverside Chaucer, Hanna and Lawler express some doubts about the reliability of this manuscript, suggesting that previous editors who had used it as their base text were misled by the apparatus into overestimating its textual authority. Machan takes issue with this view and with previous editors’ support for the “smoother readings” of C1, arguing that such readings are representative of “subsequent ‘unauthoritative’ refinements of what Chaucer actually wrote” (xxxii). Despite this choice of a different base text, Machan’s edition does not present a text of the Boece that differs much from that of the Riverside edition. A sample collation of the first meter and prose sections reveals that both texts are substantially very similar, apart from a handful of differences where C2 is demonstrably inferior and has to be corrected by Machan by comparison with C1.

The most important contribution of this edition to the study of Chaucer’s text is the admirably exhaustive textual apparatus, which comprises a complete corpus of variant readings found in all witnesses. In addition to allowing readers access to the full data upon which the present text was established, this corpus of variants will be of considerable value in allowing readers access to unoriginal readings. Scribal readings, and so-called bad texts, are of particular interest to scholars working on Chaucerian transmission and reception. In supplying a complete apparatus, on a scale simply not possible for the Riverside editors, Machan has provided scholars with an invaluable resource for research of this kind. Given the comprehensive recording of manuscript variation, it is disappointing that the descriptions of the manuscripts and early printed authorities are so brief, offering little more than a list of contents with [End Page 352...