Transcriber's note: A few typographical errors have been corrected: they are listed at the end of the text.
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In this text [*e] represents the "schwa" or obscure vowel, printed as inverted-e, and [gh] represents the Middle English letter "yogh", similar to the numeral 3. [=a] signifies "a macron", [)a] "a breve", and so forth. ['e] signifies "e acute"; [`e] "e grave"; [:e] "e diaresis"; and so forth (or, mostly, stress indicators resembling these accents). aesc, eth and thorn are expanded to ae, dh and th.
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THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
EDITED, FROM NUMEROUS MANUSCRIPTS
BY THE
REV. WALTER W. SKEAT, M.A. LITT.D., LL.D., D.C.L., PH.D. ELRINGTON AND BOSWORTH PROFESSOR OF ANGLO-SAXON AND FELLOW OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
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INTRODUCTION, GLOSSARY, AND INDEXES
'Thou shall have yit, or hit be eve, Of every word of this sentence A preve, by experience; And with thyn eres heren wel Top and tail, and everydel.' The Hous of Fame, 876-880.
Oxford
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
M DCCC XCIV
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Oxford
PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON PRESS BY HORACE HART, M.A., PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
IN GRATEFUL MEMORY
OF
HENRY BRADSHAW
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CONTENTS.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION.--s. 1. Objects in view in preparing this edition. s. 2. Romaunt of the Rose. s. 3. The Minor Poems; Canon of Chaucer's works. s. 4. A Compleint to his Lady; the Former Age; Merciless Beautee; Balade to Rosemounde; Against Women Unconstaunt; Complaints. s. 5. Boethius. s. 6. Troilus. s. 7. The House of Fame. s. 8. The Legend of Good Women. s. 9. The Astrolabe. s. 10. The Canterbury Tales. s. 11. Obligations to others. s. 12. Thomas Tyrwhitt; Thomas Wright; Bell and others. s. 13. Prof. Child; Dr. Ellis; Dr. Sweet; Prof. Ten Brink; and others. s. 14. The Glossarial Index. s. 15. Aesthetic criticism. s. 16. The Dialect of Chaucer. s. 17. Chaucer's Kenticisms. s. 18. Pronunciation. s.19. The Vowels and Diphthongs. s. 20. The Consonants. s. 21. Accentuation. s. 22. Explanation of phonetic symbols. s. 23. The M.E. vowels. Example of pronunciation. s. 24. Scansion and accents. s. 25. Rimes illustrating the Pronunciation. Open and close [=o]. Long and short open o. s. 26. Long and short open o in the Minor Poems. s. 27. The same; in the Legend. s. 28. The same; in the Tales. s. 29. Open and close [=o] in Chaucer. s. 30. Open and close [=e]. s. 31. Sources of long e. s. 32. Development of long e. s. 33. Development of close [=e]. s. 34. Summary of the preceding results. s.35. Examples of unstable [=e]. s.36. Word-lists. s. 37. Apparent exceptions in the Tales. s. 38. Apparent exceptions elsewhere. s. 39. Use of the above tests. s. 40. Further examples. s. 41. Fuller word-lists; types A, B, and C, Chaucer's rules. s. 42. Some peculiarities of rime. s. 43. Rimes involving two words; other feminine rimes. s. 44. Permissible rimes. Double word-forms. s. 45. Repetitions. s. 46. Prof. Lounsbury's objections: supposed false rimes in Chaucer and Gower. s. 47. Feet, accusative, and fete, dative; entente; fore; broughte riming with nought. s. 48. Further attacks upon rimes in Chaucer and Gower. s. 49. General failure of these attacks. s. 50. Assonances. s. 51. Non-riming of -y and -y-[:e]. s. 52. Metres and Forms of Verse. s. 53. Lines of four accents; ballad-metre; four-line stanza. s. 54. The eight-line stanza. s. 55. The seven-line stanza; from Machault. s. 56. Terza Rima. s. 57. A ten-line stanza. s. 58. Two nine-line stanzas. s. 59. Stanzas of six and five lines. s. 60. Stanzas in Anelida. s. 61. Roundels. s.62. Chaucer as a metrist. s.63. Balades and Terns. s. 64. The Envoy. s. 65. The Heroic Couplet. s. 66. Grammatical Outlines. s. 67. General Rules. s. 68. The Strong Declension of Substantives. s. 69. Archaisms. s. 70. Three Types of Strong Substantives. s. 71. Effect of Accent. s. 72. Double forms. s. 73. The Weak Declension. s. 74. Genitive Singular. s. 75. Dative Singular. s. 76. Plurals. s. 77. Substantives of French origin. s. 78. Adjectives. s. 79. Comparatives. s. 80. Superlatives. s. 81. Numerals. s. 82. Pronouns. s. 83. Possessives. s. 84. Demonstratives. s. 85. Interrogatives. s. 86. Relatives. s. 87. Other pronominal forms. s. 88. Verbs. s. 89. General formulae for verbs. s. 90. Seven Conjugations of Strong Verbs. s. 91. Formation of Weak Verbs. s. 92. Three Classes of Weak Verbs. s. 93. Some other Verbs. s. 94. Negative forms. s. 95. Adverbs. s. 96. Prepositions and Conjunctions. s. 97. Constructions. s. 98. Versification. s. 99. Three Latin terms; iamb, trochee, amphibrach. s. 100. Speech-waves. s. 101. Prose and Verse. s. 102. Some new symbols. s. 103. Old French metres. s. 104. Sixteen forms of lines. s. 105. Chaucer's chief licences. s. 106. Examples of scansion. s. 107. His moveable pause. s. 108. Additional syllables explained. s. 109. Examples of additional syllables. s. 110. Syllable dropped in the midst of a line. s. 111. Accentuation. s. 112. Elision. s. 113. The vowel i not counted as a syllable. s. 114. Suppression of syllables. s. 115. Contraction. s. 116. No elision at a pause. s. 117. Four-accent metre. s. 118. Alliteration. s. 119. Chaucer's authorities ix
GLOSSARIAL INDEX 1
GLOSSARY TO FRAGMENTS B AND C OF THE ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE 311
GLOSSARY TO GAMELYN 347
INDEX OF PROPER NAMES 359
INDEX OF AUTHORS QUOTED OR REFERRED TO BY CHAUCER 381
INDEX OF BOOKS REFERRED TO IN THE NOTES 390
LIST OF MANUSCRIPTS 399
GENERAL LIST OF ERRATA 400
GENERAL INDEX 410
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GENERAL INTRODUCTION
s. 1. In the very brief Introduction to vol. I., I have given a sketch of the general contents of the present work. I here take occasion, for the reader's information, to describe somewhat more particularly the chief objects which I have had in view.
In the first place, my endeavour has been to produce a thoroughly sound text, founded solely on the best MSS. and the earliest prints, which shall satisfy at once the requirements of the student of language and the reader who delights in poetry. In the interest of both, it is highly desirable that Chaucer's genuine works should be kept apart from those which were recklessly associated with them in the early editions, and even in modern editions have been but imperfectly suppressed. It was also desirable, or rather absolutely necessary, that the recent advances in our knowledge of Middle-English grammar and phonetics should be rightly utilised, and that no verbal form should be allowed to appear which would have been unacceptable to a good scribe of the fourteenth century[1].
I have also provided a large body of illustrative notes, many of them gathered from the works of my predecessors, but enlarged by illustrations due to my own reading during a long course of years, and by many others due to the labours of the most recent critics. The number of allusions that have been traced to their origin during the last fifteen years is considerable; and much additional light has thus been thrown upon Chaucer's method of treating his originals. How far such investigation has been successful, can readily be gathered from an inspection of the Index of Authors Quoted in the present volume, in which the passages quoted by Chaucer are collected and arranged, and an alphabetical list is given of the authors whom he appears to have most consulted.
The Glossary has been compiled on a much larger scale than any hitherto attempted, wherein the part of speech of almost every word is duly marked, and every verbal form is sufficiently parsed. A special feature of the Glossary is the exclusion from it of non-Chaucerian words and forms; and in order to secure this result, separate Glossaries are given of the chief words occurring in Fragments B and C of the Romaunt of the Rose and in Gamelyn; and we are thus enabled to detect a marked difference in the vocabulary employed in these pieces from that which was employed by Chaucer[2]. And I cannot refrain from here expressing the hope, that the practical usefulness of the Glossary and Indexes may predispose the critic to forgive some errors in other parts of the work. And further, also in the interest of every true student, much pains have been bestowed on the mode of numbering the lines. It is not so easy a matter as it would seem to be. Many editors give no numbering at all; and, where it is given, it is not always correct[3]. The numbering of the Canterbury Tales, in particular, was especially troublesome. I give three distinct systems of counting the lines, and even thus have failed in giving the numbering of Wright's edition beyond l. 11928, where he suddenly begins a new numbering of his own[4].