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Add MS 16165
- Record Id:
- 032-002093906
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002093906
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000044.0x0003a7
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100181356657.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Add MS 16165
- Title:
-
Geoffrey Chaucer, Boece; Edward of Norwich, The Master of the Game; John Lydgate, The Temple of Glas, and other literary works, written by John Shirley
- Scope & Content:
-
This volume contains a compilation of works in Middle English and Latin, written by John Shirley (b. c. 1366, d. 1456). Shirley was secretary to Richard Beauchamp (b. 1382, d. 1439), 13th Earl of Warwick, as well as a translator and scribe who is now best known for his transcriptions of works by the Middle English poets John Lydgate (b. c. 1370, d. c. 1451) and Geoffrey Chaucer (b. c. 1340s, d. 1400). This manuscript is one of the earliest of Shirley's compilations and includes copies of Chaucer's Boece and Anelida and Arcite, as well as Lydgate's Temple of Glas and The Complaint of the Black Knight. It also contains a virelai in Middle English, attributed to Beauchamp and apparently made for the Earl's wife Isabel le Despenser (b. 1400, d. 1439). The poem has provided the basis for the manuscript's dating: between 1423 (the year Richard Beauchamp married Isabel le Despenser) and 1439 (the year both Richard and Isabel died).
Other surviving manuscripts copied by John Shirley include Harley MS 78 (ff. 80r-83v); Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.20; Lambeth Palace Library, MS Arc. L.40.2/E.44; Oxford Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 59; and San Marino, Huntingdon Library, MS EL 26.A.13.
For more on Shirley and further discussion of this manuscript, see Connolly, John Shirley (1998), pp. 27-51, and Hanna III, 'John Shirley and British Library MS. Additional 16165' (1996).
Contents:
f. 1r: The signature and motto of the manuscript's scribe John Shirley, followed by three items written in a smaller script, as follows:
f. 1r: A recipe in Middle English prose for proofing a 'jack or double of defence'.
f. 1r: Two Latin verses, beginning, 'Omnia terrena per...'.
f. 1r: A seven-line stanza in Middle English verse, beginning, 'Man if þow wys arte…' (DIMEV 3356).
ff. 2r-3v: A prologue to the volume by John Shirley, written in Middle English verse, beginning, 'If þat you list for to entende / Of þis booke to here legende…' (DIMEV 2387).
ff. 4r-94r: Geoffrey Chaucer, Boece, a Middle English prose translation of Boethius' De Consolatione Philosophiae (On the Consolation of Philosophy), beginning, 'Allas I weping am constreyned to begynne vers of soroful mater...'
ff. 94v-114v: John Trevisa's Middle English prose translation of the Gospel of Nicodemus, beginning, 'Whanne Pilatus was ruler and iuge of þe juwery...'
ff. 115r-190r: Edward of Norwich, 2nd Duke of York, The Master of the Game, a Middle English prose translation of Gaston Fébus' Livre de la Chasse, with a table of contents (f. 115r-v) and prologue beginning, 'In to honour reuerence of yowe my right worshipful and dredd lorde Henry...'
ff. 190v-200v: John Lydgate, The Complaint of the Black Knight, written in Middle English verse, beginning, 'Yn may whanne flourra þe freshe lusty qwene…' (DIMEV 2541).
ff. 201r-206r: Regula Sacerdotalis, a Latin prose tract on the duties and obligations of priests, beginning, 'Sacerdos Christi non debet...'
ff. 206v-241v: John Lydgate, The Temple of Glas, written in Middle English, beginning, 'For thought compleynt and greuous hevynesse...', immediately followed by the Supplicacio Amantis (ff. 231r-241v) (DIMEV 1403).
ff. 241v-243v: Geoffrey Chaucer, Anelida and Arcite, written in Middle English verse, comprising only the complaint, beginning, 'So thirlleþe with þe poynt of Remembraunce...' (DIMEV 5823); the rest of the poem in inscribed at ff. 256v-258v.
f. 244r: A poem in Middle English attributed to Halsham, beginning, 'Þe werlde so wyde þere so remuable...' (DIMEV 5534).
f. 244r: A poem in Middle English attributed to Halsham, beginning, 'Þe more I go þe firþer I am behynde...' (DIMEV 5411).
f. 244r-v: A poem in Middle English attributed to Chaucer, beginning, 'Hit is no right alle oþer lustes to leese...' (DIMEV 2739).
ff. 244v-245r: A poem in Middle English attributed to Chaucer, beginning, 'Of alle þe crafftes oute blessed be þe ploughe...' (DIMEV 4138).
ff. 245r-v: Three Latin prayers from a votive mass, the first entitled, 'Deuotissima suffragia pro mulieribus inpregnandis' (a prayer for pregnant women).
ff. 245v-246v: A virelai in Middle English by Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, made for his wife Isabelle, Countess of Warwick, beginning, 'I can not half þe woe compleyne...' (DIMEV 2147).
f. 246v: 'Proverbs', two proverbial riddles in Middle English verse, sometimes attributed to Chaucer, beginning, 'What shal þees cloþes þus many fold...' (DIMEV 6251).
ff. 247r-248r: John Lydgate, 'An Invocation to St Anne', written in Middle English verse, beginning, 'Þou first moeuer þat causest euery thing...' (DIMEV 5824).
ff. 248r-249v: John Lydgate, 'Departure of Thomas Chaucer', written in Middle English verse, beginning, 'O þow lucyna qwene and empyresse...' (DIMEV 4075).
ff. 249v-251v: John Lydgate, 'A Lover's Lament', written in Middle English verse, beginning, 'Euery maner creature...' (DIMEV 1230).
f. 251v: A poem in Middle English, attributed to Pycard, beginning, 'Take þe seventeþ in ordere sette…' (DIMEV 5108).
ff. 252r-253v: John Lydgate, 'Beware of Doublenesse', written in Middle English verse, beginning, 'Þis worlde is ful of variance...' (DIMEV 5793).
ff. 253v-254v: John Lydgate, 'A Lover's New Year's Gift', written in Middle English verse, beginning, 'ffor nowe vpon þis first day I wil my choys renuwe...' (DIMEV 1378).
ff. 255r-256r: John Lydgate, 'The Servant of Cupid Forsaken', written in Middle English verse, beginning, 'fful longe I haue a seruant be...' (DIMEV 1480).
f. 256r: A short text comprising four lines of Latin, entitled, 'Doctrina Sacerdotis', beginning, 'Per dominum dicas cum patrem presbiter oras...' (Walther, Initia 13935).
f. 256v: 'A Balade of Compleynte', associated with Chaucer, written in Middle English verse, beginning, 'Compleyne ne koude ne might myn heart neuer...' (DIMEV 1065).
ff. 256v-258v: Geoffrey Chaucer, Anelida and Arcite, written in Middle English verse, imperfect, comprising ll. 1-65, 127-192, beginning, 'þow fers god of armes mars þe red...' (DIMEV 5823).
Shirley has drawn attention to passages in the volume by adding marginal notes in Latin, e.g. 'nota per Shirley' (ff. 19r, 20r, 21r, 22r, 26r, 27v, 29v, 36r, 36v, 40r) and 'nota epris per Shirley (f. 28r).
Decoration:
Large initials in red and/or black, or black with red outlines.
Marginal headings in display script. Running titles in black.
Paraphs, double slashes, and underlining in red.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Additional Manuscripts
- Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "032-002093906", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Add MS 16165: Geoffrey Chaucer, Boece; Edward of Norwich, The Master of the Game; John Lydgate, The Temple of Glas, and other literary works, written…" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002093906
- Is part of:
- not applicable
- Hierarchy:
- 032-002093906
- Container:
- not applicable
- Record Type (Level):
- Fonds
- Extent:
- 1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100181356657.0x000001 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English, Middle
Latin - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1423
- End Date:
- 1439
- Date Range:
- 1423-1439
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Material: paper; parchment (ff. 1-3, 258).
Dimensions: 295 x 215 mm (written space approximately 205 x 120 mm).
Foliation: ff. 258 (+ 4 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning and 2 at the end); ff. 1-3 and 258 are parchment leaves.
Horizontal catchwords. Quire signatures.
Script: Gothic cursive, written by John Shirley.
Binding: Post-1600. Red leather binding, tooled in gold; gilt edges; marbled endpapers.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
England.
Scribe:
The manuscript was written and compiled by John Shirley (b. c. 1366, d. 1456), translator, scribe and secretary to Richard Beauchamp (b. 1382, d. 1439), 13th Earl of Warwick: his inscribed motto and signature, 'Ma joye Shirley' (f. 1r); his verse prologue to the volume (ff. 2r-3v); his inscribed marginal notes, 'nota per Shirley' (ff. 19r, 20r, 21r, 22r, 26r, 27v, 29v, 36r, 36v, 40r) and 'nota per epris Shirley' (f. 28r).
Provenance:
Sir Peter Arderne (d. 1467), Chief Baron of the Exchequer: possibly the volume he bequeathed to his son-in-law John Bohun (b. before 1446, d. c. 1492) upon his death in 1467. In his will, Arderne described the bequest as 'my booke of English of Boys de Consolatione Philosophiae with the booke of Huntyng therein' (Testamenta Eboracensa (1836-1902), IV, pp. 102-03), a combination of texts only attested in the present manuscript (on this suggestion, see Seymour, A Catalogue of Chaucer Manuscripts, Vol I (1995), p. 50).
Purchased by the British Museum from George Annesley Esquire, 11 July 1846, together with Add MSS 16164-16173 for £30 (see note, f. [iii] recto).
- Publications:
-
Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1846-1847 (London: British Museum, 1864), pp. 155-56.
Eleanor P. Hammond, 'The Departing of Chaucer', Modern Philology, 1 (1903), 331-36.
Eleanor P. Hammond, 'Omissions from the Editions of Chaucer', Modern Language Notes, 19 (1904), 35-38.
Henry Noble MacCracken, 'The Earl of Warwick's Virelai', PMLA, 22 (1907), 597-607.
Henry Noble MacCracken, 'Additional Light on the Temple of Glass', PMLA, 23 (1908), 128-40 (pp. 130, 132).Aage Brusendorff, The Chaucer Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925), p. 208.
A. I. Doyle, 'More Light on John Shirley', Medium Ævum, 30 (1961), 93-101.
H. Walther, Initia carminum ac versuum Medii Aevi posterioris Latinorum (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1969), no. 13935.
Richard Firth Green, Poets and Princepleasers: Literature and the English Court in the Late Middle Ages (Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press, 1980), pp. 133, 220 n. 25.
A. S. G. Edwards, 'The Unity and Authenticity of Anelida and Arcite: The Evidence of the Manuscripts', Studies in Bibliography, 41 (1988), 177-88 (pp. 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183).
Julia Boffey and John J. Thompson, 'Anthologies and Miscellanies: Production and Choice of Texts', in Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375-1475, ed. by Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 279-315 (pp. 284-87, 306-08).
Ralph Hanna III, 'Sir Thomas Berkeley and His Patronage', Speculum, 64 (1989), 878-916 (p. 902).
R. J. Lyall, 'Materials: The Paper Revolution', in Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375-1475, ed. by Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 11-29 (pp. 16-19).
Michael Seymour, A Catalogue of Chaucer Manuscripts, Vol. 1: Works before The Canterbury Tales (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1995), pp. 41, 49-50.
Ralph Hanna III, 'John Shirley and British Library MS. Additional 16165', Studies in Bibliography, 49 (1996), 95-105.
A. S. G. Edwards, ‘John Shirley and the Emulation of Courtly Culture’, in The Court and Cultural Diversity: Selected Papers from the Eighth Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society. The Queen's University of Belfast 26 July-1 August 1995, ed. by Evelyn Mullally and John Thompson (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997), pp. 309-317 (pp. 310-12, 314, 315-317).
Linne R. Mooney, 'John Shirley's Heirs', The Yearbook of English Studies, 33 (2003), 182-98 (pp. 182, 194).
Michael C. Seymour, 'Chaucer's Book of the Duchess: A Proposal', Medium Ævum, 74 (2005), 60-70 (p. 69).
Jacquelyn Fernholz and Jenni Nuttall, 'Lydgate's Poem to Thomas Chaucer: A Reassessment of its Diplomatic and Literary Contexts', in Identity and Insurgency in the Late Middle Ages, ed. by Linda Clark (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2006), pp. 123-44.
Linne R. Mooney, 'Locating Scribal Activity in Late-Medieval London', in Design and Distribution of Late Medieval Manuscripts in England, ed. by Linne R. Mooney and Margaret Connolly (York: York Medieval Press, 2008), pp. 183-204 (p. 203).
Daniel Wakelin, 'Instructing Readers in Fifteenth-Century Poetic Manuscripts', Huntingdon Library Quarterly, 73 (2010), 433-52 (p. 451).
Margaret Connolly, 'Compiling the book', in The Production of Books in England 1350-1500, ed. by Alexandra Gillespie and Daniel Wakelin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 129-49 (p. 131).
Orietta Da Rold, 'Materials', in The Production of Books in England 1350-1500, ed. by Alexandra Gillespie and Daniel Wakelin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 12-33 (p. 26 n. 80).
Linne Mooney, 'Vernacular literary manuscripts and their scribes', in The Production of Books in England 1350-1500, ed. by Alexandra Gillespie and Daniel Wakelin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 192-211 (p. 210).
Jean-Pascal Pouzet, 'Book production outside commercial contexts', in The Production of Books in England 1350-1500, ed. by Alexandra Gillespie and Daniel Wakelin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 212-38 (p. 234).
A. S. G. Edwards, 'John Shirley, John Lydgate, and the Motives of Compilation', Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 38 (2016), 245-54 (pp. 246, 247, 248, 249, 250-51).
Jenni Nuttall, 'The Vanishing English Virelai: French Complainte in English in the Fifteenth Century', Medium Ævum, 85 (2016), 59-76 (p. 64).
Margaret Connolly, 'What John Shirley Said About Adam: Authorship and Attribution in Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.20', in The Dynamics of the Medieval Manuscript: Text Collections from a European Perspective, ed. by Karen Pratt, Bart Besamusca, Matthias Meyer, and Ad Putter (Gottingen: V&R UniPress, 2017), pp. 81-100 (pp. 85, 87-90, 94-97).
Wendy Scase, ''Looke this calender and then proced': Tables of Contents in Medieval English Manuscrips', in The Dynamics of the Medieval Manuscript: Text Collections from a European Perspective, ed. by Karen Pratt, Bart Besamusca, Matthias Meyer, and Ad Putter (Gottingen: V&R UniPress, 2017), pp. 287-306 (pp. 294, 298-299, 300-303).
Margaret Connolly, John Shirley: Book Production in the Nobel Household in Fifteenth-Century England (London: Routledge, 2018), pp. 5, 6, 9, 15, 19, 27-51, 69, 75, 76, 80, 87, 103-04, 106, 107, 108, 111, 113, 145, 150, 151, 153, 161, 164, 165, 166, 177, 183, 191, 193, 194, 195, 196-203.
Seth Lerer, Chaucer and His Readers: Imagining the Author in Late-Medieval England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020), pp. 123-24, 129-31, 136.
Kara A. Doyle, The Reception of Chaucer's Shorter Poems, 1400-1450: Female Audiences, English Manuscripts, French Contexts (London: Plumbago Books, 2021), pp. 103-41.
Emily Steiner, John Trevisa's Information Age: Knowledge and the Pursuit of Literature, c. 1400 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), pp. 12-14, 36, 47.
Daniel Wakelin, Immaterial Texts in Late Medieval England: Making English Literary Manuscripts, 1400-1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), p. 119.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)