Chaucer | The Woorkes, 1561, the edition likely used as Shakespeare's source text for Troilus and Cressida

Geoffrey Chaucer

The Woorkes... Newlie Printed, with Divers Addicions, which were Never in Print Before... [Edited by John Stow]. London: John Kingston for John Wight, 1561.

Fifth edition, second issue, folio (305 x 219 mm), gothic type, text in two columns, title-page with large woodcut of Chaucer's arms dominating the page, divisional titles section titles for the Canterbury Tales and The Romaunt of the Rose within a full-page woodcut border, woodcut initials and illustrations, woodcut of a knight on horseback on the first leaf of the Knight's Tale (B1), eighteenth-century calf gilt, gilt edges, marbled endpapers, unobtrusive worming to first gathering, small paper flaw to 3L4 (with loss of a couple of letters on line 6), a few headlines slightly cropped at upper margin, rebacked

The edition of Chaucer's works which was probably used by Shakespeare as a source for the story of "Troilus and Cressida" (see Bartlett).

There were two recorded issues of this date, one (STC 5075) with the title within a woodcut border (McKerrow and Ferguson 67) and another (STC 5076, as here) omitting the preliminary woodcuts and with the title above a large woodcut of Chaucer's arms. The traditional view was that the illustrated issue was printed first, and then the cuts omitted in the second issue when the blocks were worn out. Recently however (see David R. Carlson, "The Woodcut Illustrations in Early Printed Editions of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales," in Chaucer Illustrated: Five Hundred Years of the Canterbury Tales in Pictures, British Library, 2003) it has been contested that the printer came into possession of the cuts belatedly, and the unillustrated issue appeared first.

PROVENANCE:

"Tho[mas] Loveless": early modern ownership inscription to title; purchased from Francis Edwards, November 1973 by Kenneth Rapoport: bookplate and loosely inserted purchase note, sold Swann Galleries New York, 5 May 2022, lot 76

LITERATURE:

STC 5076; ESTC S107207; Langland to Wither 42; Pforzheimer 176 (variant title)