THE TEXTUAL TRANSITION OF THE MIDDLE ENGLISH VERSE ROMANCES FROM MANUSCRIPT TO PRINT: A CASE STUDY

There is evidence suggesting that Wynkyn de Worde used the manuscript copy of the Middle English romance Ipomydon (BL Harley 2252) to prepare his printed edition of ca. 1522. This article, first, compares the variant readings of this romance's extant textual witnesses and shows the editorial efforts that went into revising the manuscript text for its new print readership. Next, by analyzing the editorial marks and corrections still visible on the manuscript and by interpreting the envoy appended by Robert Copland to the end of the printed text, this article reveals the various processes involved in the production of this printed romance and identifies the lack of a stage of proof-reading as the ultimate cause of the printed edition's corrupt readings. Since the case of Ipomydon uniquely illustrates the print-shop practices of Wynkyn de Worde, the most prolific printer of Middle English romances and the one who made the most decided effort to exploit this genre commercially, this case study enables us to appreciate the treatment a medieval romance received in an early sixteenth-century print shop and to better understand this medieval genre's fortunes in the hands of the early English printers.