The Pierpont Morgan Library Manuscript M. 817 ed. by Paul G. Ruggiers (review)

REVIEWS quantity. A translation is given on facing pages. The Latin has been rendered into stanzas of four iambic lines with an aabb rhyme scheme. This is a valiant attempt and provides a translation suggestive ofthe humor and point of the original. However, such a translation has a price far in excess of "a few departures from the literal sense" (p. 63). Even so, the translation deserves enthusiastic applause in these end times ofthe English language. This volume provides us an honestly reliable text of a very interesting poem. The study of its textual tradition illustrates the poem's popularity and furnishes an enlightening and sobering combination offact and theory about its transmission. The translation is as good as it can be, given the restrictions imposed by its literary form, and it will assure the poem a wider modern audience in undergraduate courses, discussions of misogynistic literature, etc. The whole work is, as suggested earlier, a solid point of departure both for the editor's promised editions of related materials and for other lines of research as well. DANIEL SHEERIN University of Notre Dame PAUL G. RUGGIERS, ed. The Pierpont Morgan Library Manuscript M. 817. The Facsimile Series of The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, vol. 4. Intro. byJeanne Krochalis. Norman, Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1986. Pp. xxix, 265 (120 folios.) $125.00. This volume presents a facsimile of one of the manuscripts of Tro1Jus and Cri'seyde printed in support of The Variorum Chaucer, Volume 4 of the projected six-volume facsimile series, and it is bound in the distinctive Variorum olive buckram with black spine and gold lettering. It is the original Campsall Manuscript (Robinson sigil Cm; Skeat and Riverside Chaucer sigil Cl) which had been printed for the Chaucer Society First Series Nos. 63, 64 and separately as No. 79. Skeat discusses it in Vol. 2: lxvii-ix of his edition. The manuscript is also the basis for two editions of the Troilus: Warrington, 1974 and Fisher, 1977, and was part of Root's y group classification. It is, to quote Krochalis, "the earliest securely datable text of Chaucer's Trot/us and Criseyde and the only extant Chaucer manu191 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER script which we are sure belonged to a member of the royal family." The owner in this case was the Prince of Wales, the future King Henry V The usefulness of a facsimile like this is evident. Only two pages have been reproduced prior to this time by the Chaucer Society autotypes (lr, book 1, stanzas 1-5, and 42v, book 2, stanzas 249-251, book 3, stanza 1) and Skeat's review of the "supreme carelessness" of the scribe is based only on the Chaucer Society printed text. The facsimile gives evidence of occasional errors on Skeat's part, due to misprintings in the Chaucer Society text. In fact, the facsimile shows this manuscript to be an unusually beautiful piece of work, written in a very clear, distinctive, elegant hand of the early 15th century. The 120 medieval folios contain only the Trozlus and a legal document from the reign of King Henry VIII in the lower margin of folio62r. The pages are ruled for 5 stanzas (35 lines, with no space between stanzas) and each stanza begins with asmalldecorated initial. The pencil or dry point rulings can be seen only faintly. Separate books show large illuminated initials and floral borders (book 1, f. 2r; 2, f. 17v, 18r; 3, f. 42v, 43v, which is also the colored frontispiece; 4, f. 69v; 5, f. 93r). The floral decorations, sprays of trumpet vines, gold balls, and three-leaved flowers are in the early 15th century style, and are associated with the London­ basedcircle of artists connectedwith the workshopof Herman Scheere, who from 1390-1420s produced luxury manuscripts for a noble and royal clientele. According to Krochalis, the manuscript was decorated as care­ fully as it was written, butit is curious that we have not been able to identify the scribe. Equally intriguing, in light of the elegance of the script and decoration, the care of the layout, and the royal status of the owner, is the poor state of the thin, limp vellum...