THE POET AND THE ANTIQUARIES
THE POET AND THE ANTIQUARIES
Chaucerian Scholarship and the Rise of Literary History, 1532–1635
Megan L. Cook
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS
PHILADELPHIA
PUBLISHED IN COOPERATION WITH FOLGER SHAKESPEARE LIBRARY
Copyright © 2019 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cook, Megan L. (Megan Leigh), 1981– author.
Title: The poet and the antiquaries : Chaucerian scholarship and the rise of literary history, 1532–1635 / Megan L. Cook.
Description: 1st edition. | Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2019] | “Published in cooperation with Folger Shakespeare Library”. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018051760 | ISBN 9780812250824 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Chaucer, Geoffrey, –1400—Criticism and interpretation—History. | Chaucer, Geoffrey, –1400—Influence. | English literature—Early modern, 1500–1700—History and criticism. | Antiquarians—England—History—16th century. | Antiquarians—England—History—17th century. | Medievalism—England—History—16th century. | Medievalism—England—History—17th century. | Civilization, Medieval, in literature.
Classification: LCC PR1924 .C594 2019 | DDC 821/.1—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018051760
For Linda Cook-Toren and Ruth Ann VanZanten
CONTENTS
A Note on Spelling and Punctuation
Introduction. “Only by Thy Books”: Knowing Chaucer in Early Modern England
Chapter 1. The First First Folios: Chaucer’s Works in Print
Chapter 2. “Noster Galfridus”: Chaucer’s Early Modern Biographies
Chapter 3. “For Every Man to Read That Is Disposed”: Chaucer the Proto-Protestant
Chapter 4. “Difficulties Opened”: Confronting Chaucer’s Archaism in Spenser and the 1598/1602 Works
Chapter 5. Chaucer’s Herald: The Work of Francis Thynne
Chapter 6. Chaucer’s Scholarly Readers in Seventeenth-Century England
Coda. Chaucer in the House of Fame
A NOTE ON SPELLING AND PUNCTUATION
Throughout, I have silently expanded abbreviations and regularized i/j and u/v spellings. Punctuation from the original sources is maintained.
INTRODUCTION
“Only by Thy Books”
Knowing Chaucer in Early Modern England
In 1598, one “H.B.” contributed a curious prefatory poem to a new edition of Chaucer’s collected works. Produced under the auspices of the schoolteacher Thomas Speght, The workes of our Antient and Learned English poet, Geffrey Chaucer distinguished itself from previous collections by the great deal of supplementary material it added to Chaucer’s poems. Perhaps most notable is an extensive glossary, the first large-scale lexicon of Middle English in print. The significance of Speght’s additions is not lost on H.B., whose poem stages the following dialogue between Chaucer and a latter-day reader. It begins:
Reader.
Where hast thou dwelt, good Geffrey, all this while,
Unknowne to us, save only by thy bookes?
Chaucer.
In haulks and hernes, God wot, and in Exile,
Where none vouchsaft to yeeld me words or lookes:
Till one which saw me there, and knew my Friends,
Did bring me forth: such grace sometime God sends:
Reader.
But who is he that hath thy Books repar’d,
And added more, whereby thou art more graced?
Chaucer.
The self same man who hath no labor spar’d,
To helpe what time and writers had defaced:
And made old words, which were unknown of many,
So plaine, that now they may be known of any.1
This exchange encapsulates the way that many early modern readers must have seen themselves in relation to Chaucer. The Reader is solicitous and polite, even delighted, but interested less in Chaucer’s stories than in the authorial persona revealed through them. Chaucer’s archaic diction—the alliterative “haulks” (nooks) and “hernes” (crannies) and “God wot” (God knows)—marks him as temporally distant from the reader, and he seems grateful for his interlocutor’s attentions, which are described as a kind of divine intervention (“such grace”).
What differentiates this piece from earlier poems celebrating the affective bond between Chaucer and his readers (“my friends”) is the prominence of the editorial figure who mediates their relationship. This is not really a poem in praise of Chaucer at all,