Caxton’s Malory: A New Edition of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Marte Darthur ed. by James W. Spisak (review)

REVIEWS JAMES W. SPISAK, ed. Caxton's Malory: A New Edition of Sir Thomas Malory 's Le Marte Darthur, Based on the Pierpont Morgan Copy of William Caxton's Edition of 1485. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. Pp. viii, 920. $115.00. This is a new critical edition of Malory's Marte Darthur printed by Caxton in 1485, the first since Sommer's monumental three-volume edition of 1889-91, which is still available in reprint, despite Spisak's assertion (p. vii). Vinaver once prepared such a text, based on the two extant copies of Caxton's editio princeps, but he had to abandon it in 1934, when Walter Oakeshott rediscovered the Winchester MS (now B.L. Add. 59678). The latter Vinaver undertook to edit and publish subsequently under the title The Works ofSir Thomas Malory (1947). The task of making a new edition of Caxton's Marte was initiated by William Matthews and some of his former students and soon after his sudden death in 1975 was taken up by James Spisak, who brought his predecessors' efforts to fruition with this two-volume quarto set, complete with handsome slipcase. The present edition comprises two volumes of unequal size. The first contains an edited text of the Marte (pp. 1-600), based on the Pierpont Morgan copy, with emendations from the Winchester MS and de Worde's edition of 1498. The second volume provides an introduction (pp. 601-29); Notes, mainly textual (pp. 630-773); a Glossary (pp. 775-810); a Dictionary of Names and Places, including genealogies, maps, and motifs (pp. 811-54), compiled by Bert Dillon; two Appendices, consisting of the Reset Sheets in photofacsimile (pp. 855-73) and a transcript of the Winchester version of the Roman campaign episode (pp. 874-902); and a Bibliography (pp. 903-20). Strangely enough, the Contents page of each volume bears no pagination. In Sommer's virtually diplomatic text of the now John Rylands copy, Vinaver found more than a thousand mistakes, ranging "from a confusion between fand f to a complete distortion of the original" (Works, 1973, p. cxxxi), in spite of the farmer's claim that "Caxton is reprinted page for page, line for line, word for word, and, with a few exceptions, ...letter for letter" (l:viii). In a similar way my own collation of Spisak's text with the Scolar facsimile of the Morgan copy has unearthed innumerable inauthen­ tic readings, which are found on almost every page of the text. These range from mere omissions of the final e to homoeoteleuton, the latter resulting 251 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER in nightmarish lacunae, although Spisak declares that "none of the vocab­ ulary has been changed, and the spelling has not been modernized or normalized" (p. 627). Pages 40 and 189, for instance, carry the following mistakes: 40.3 and 6 hondred] honderd, 40.5 Hondred] Honderd, 40.9 first the kynges] the kynges andknyghtes, 40.13 shoulders] sholders, 40.22 Kyng] Kynge, 40.24 XII] XIII, 40.40 both] bathe, 189.1 Syr Caradus] Syr Percy uale with Syre Caradus, 189.7 with] wyth, 189.14 Knyghte] Knyght, 189.24 When] Whan, 189.28 when] whan. However, it is a relief to see "the hoole book" (p. 599.35)-one of the most crucial phrases in the Marte-transcribed accurately in this edition. There is no doubt that modern paragraphing, punctuation, and cap­ italization and the use of quotation marks for dialogue, all of which Vinaver justifiably employed, have served to make his text as readable as a modern novel. Spisak's approach, on the other hand, lies somewhere between that of Sommer and that of Vinaver. In Spisak's text neither quotation marks nor genitive apostrophes are used, although he intended to "provide an authentic text of Caxton's Malory in readable form" (p. 627; italics added). He gives his own reasons for not using the former, but with such modern devices the text would certainly have been made more accessible, particularly for the ordinary reader who would not be familiar with fifteenth-century prose. In Spisak's Introduction we find little influence ofVinaver's formidable contribution to Malory scholarship. Spisak gives a...