Add MS 42518

This book contains the publication by Thomas Speght (d. 1621) of the complete works of Geoffrey Chaucer: The Workes of our Antient and learned English Poet, Geffrey Chaucer, newly Printed (London: Islip, 1598). It features autograph notes by the scholar and writer Gabriel Harvey (b. 1552/3, d. 1631), famously including what may be the earliest known reference to Shakespeare's Hamlet on f. 422v: ‘The younger sort takes much delight in Shakespeares Venus, and Adonis: but his Lucrece, and his tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke, have it in them, to please the wiser sort’.

Contents:

ff. 1r-435v: Thomas Speght, The Workes of our Antient and lerned English Poet, Geffrey Chaucer, newly Printed (London: Islip [Eliot's Court Press], 1598); with a table of contents, listing: ‘(1) His Portraiture and Progenie shewed; (2) His Life collected; (3) Arguments to every Booke gathered; (4) Old and obscure Words explaned; (5) Authors by him cited, declared; (6) Difficulties opened; (7) Two Bookes of his never before printed’.

The manuscript contains later additions:

ff. 15v-18v, 24r, 45v, 52v, 59r, 80r, 86r, 87r, 113v, 115r, 122r, 125r, 130r, 130v, 141v, 148v, 149r, 151r, 163r, 224r, 225r, 226r, 227r, 229r, 238r, 293v, 366r, 373r, 383v, 393v, 395v, 397r, 398r, 400r, 403v, 421v-422v, 435v: Annotations by Gabriel Harvey in English, Latin and Italian.

ff. ii verso-iii recto: English notes on the manuscript by Pierce Meade (b. 1776, d. 1835), Archdeacon of Dromore, Archdeacon of Dromore.

ff. iv recto-iv verso: A letter from Sir Ernest Clarke (b. 1856, d. 1923) to Miss Constance Isabel Meade concerning a query on Chaucer’s reference to the Daisy as ‘day’s eye’, dated 5 March 1913.

Decoration:

1 full-page portrait of Geoffrey Chaucer, standing, holding a stylus in one hand and a rosary in the other [based on Thomas Hoccleve’s description], and surrounded by a genealogy of ‘The Progenie of Geffrey Chaucer’ from Paon de Roet, father of Philippa Roet, Chaucer’s wife, featuring coats of arms, and a depiction of the tomb of Thomas Chaucer (d. 1434) and his wife Matilda Burghersh (d. 1436) at St Mary’s Church, Newelme, Oxfordshire, below (f. 6v). 1 full-page illustration of Geoffrey Chaucer’s coat of arms and crest, hatched (f. 28v). 1 third-page illustration of a knight in full armour, holding a lance and a shield, and riding a horse (f. 29v). 1 quarter-page illustration of Geoffrey Chaucer’s coat of arms, tricked (f. 8v). 4 decorated title-pages: one decorated title-page for Speght’s Chaucer, including two helical (Solomonic) columns with Corinthian capitals, entwined with grapevines, with a decorated vase between the columns below, and supporing an entablature featurinnng a roundel with a (?) sheep on an altar (with two monograms below), and topped with a flaming orb and a scroll with the motto: ‘Possidete animas vestras’ (f. 1r); three decorated title-pages for subsections, featuring a genealogical tree that, imitating the Tree of Jesse, originates from a sleeping Edmund of Langley, 1st Duke of York, below, and ends with Henry VIII at the top (ff. 23r, 141r, 397r). Large (5-8 line) decorated initials in frames throughout the manuscript.