• Codex Ashmole 61: Item 41, King Edward and the Hermit

who stands nearby / Before he takes his leave Item 41, KING EDWARD AND THE HERMIT: EXPLANATORY NOTES Abbreviations: CT: Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales; MED: Middle English Diction­ary Title No title or incipit. The text begins approximately halfway down the

• Lydgate, The Legend of St. George

Mesure is Tresour Lydgate, The Legend of St. George JOHN LYDGATE, THE LEGEND OF ST. GEORGE: EXPLANATORY NOTES ABBREVIATIONS: CT: Chaucer, Canterbury Tales; MED: Middle English Dictionary; MP: Minor Poems of John Lydgate, ed. MacCracken. Shirley describes The Legend of

• Lydgate, Troy Book: Book 2

his desir in muwe," where Chaucer describes Troilus's effort to hide his love. See also 2.3701-02. 3602 as hare among houndis. The proverb usually expresses fright rather than carelessness. It is so used by Chaucer in The Shipman's Tale (VII.103-05)

• Part Seven

165960: Thou hast set on his head a crown of precious stones. Psalm 20:4 PART SEVEN: EXPLANATORY NOTES Abbreviations: CT: Chaucer, Canterbury Tales; MED: Middle English Dictionary; OED: Oxford English Dictionary; PL: Patrologia Latina, ed. Migne. 21–26 N.b., Genesis 1:6.

• Carmen super multiplici viciorum pestilencia

CT: Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales; CVP: Gower, Carmen super multiplici viciorum pestilencia; IPP: Gower, In Praise of Peace; Mac: Macaulay edition; MO: Gower, Mirour de l'Omme; TC: Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde; Thynne: William Thynne, printer, The Works of Geffray Chaucer

• Lydgate, Troy Book: Book 5

redy to seie wel. For he that was gronde of wel-seying In al hys lyf hyndred no makyng, My maister Chaucer, that founde ful many spot; Hym liste nat pinche nor gruche at every blot, Nor meve hymsilf to parturbe

• La Belle Dame sans Mercy

la bell dame saunce mercy and by Chaucer (added in two different, later hands). P: This boke called la bele Dame Sauns mercy was translate out of Frenche in to Englysshe by Geffray Chaucer flour of peotes in our mother

• Orpheus and Eurydice

Asloan: avalit. 188 Wedlingis Streit. Watling Street, an ancient Roman road in Britain used metaphorically for the Milky Way. See Chaucer, House of Fame, lines 936-40; Fox also suggests review of the OED citation for a complete history of the

• Sir Cleges

Prologue of the Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer describes the Summoner as: "a gentil harlot and a kynde; / A bettre felawe sholde men noght fynde" (I [A] 647-48). Larry D. Benson in The Riverside Chaucer glosses harlot "buffoon, jester," which

• Thomas of Hales, Love Rune

of English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1907. Pp. 258-59. D'Angelo, Benito, O. F. M. "English Franciscan Poetry before Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?-1400)." Trans. Luke M. Ciampi, O. F. M. Franciscan Studies 21 (1983), 218-60, especially 229, 235-39. Hill, Betty. "The

• Thomas of Hales, Love Rune

line 32. Absalon. David's son, noted for his beauty. See 2 Kings 14.25; and Chaucer's LGW Prol. F 249 (Riverside Chaucer, p. 595). 85 Malone reads this line as parenthetical (p. 60). 87 The sponsa Christi theme begins here, with

• The N-Town Plays: Play 11, Parliament of Heaven; Salutation and Conception

grace; the Lord be with you, fair virgin" Play 11, PARLIAMENT OF HEAVEN; SALUTATION AND CONCEPTION: EXPLANATORY NOTES Abbreviations: CT: Chaucer, Canterbury Tales; MP: Mary Play, ed. Mere­dith (1987); S: N-Town Play, ed. Spector (1991); s.d.: stage direction; s.n.: stage

• Part Three

all thy works remember thy last end, and thou shalt never sin. Ecclesiasticus 7:40 PART THREE: EXPLANATORY NOTES Abbreviations: CT: Chaucer, Canterbury Tales; MED: Middle English Dictionary; OED: Oxford English Dictionary; PL: Patrologia Latina, ed. Migne. 27–28 See the prose

• John Lydgate (?), Prohemy of a Mariage Betwixt an Olde Man and a Yonge Wife, and the Counsail

before (see note) The big wagon often has [the] heavy load; (see note) Beware known though it pleases you little Chaucer; (see note) departed worldly; followed escape enslave apprentice unless I were; fool (see note) sigh cur barks; sly tightly

• Lydgate: Saint Austin at Compton

in The Riverside Chaucer. Lydgate's appeal for readers to "correct" his work, owing to his own declining powers, is one variation on the so-called affected modesty topos, common in the prefaces and epilogues of medieval writers. Chaucer himself asks John

• Caxton, The Game and Playe of the Chesse, Book Four

452 tofore tyme, before; disordynate, unchecked or immoderate. BOOK FOUR: EXPLANATORY NOTES Abbreviations: CA: Gower, Confessio Amantis; CT: Chaucer, Canterbury Tales; LGW: Chaucer, Legend of Good Women; OED: Oxford English Dictionary; PL: Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus, series Latina; Whiting: Whiting,

• Robin Hood and Queen Catherin

These are very large quantities of wine, though they may be thought of as sums of money; a courtier like Chaucer -- and like the Poet Laureate to the present day -- was rewarded with stipulated amounts of wine, which

• Scogan's Moral Balade

to Henry IV's dowager queen, Joan of Navarre, and as chief butler under Henry V, as a "protégé of Thomas Chaucer" (John Shirley, p. 137). See Carr, "Sir Lewis John." 26 Latin marginalia: Delicta juventutis mee et ignorancias meas ne

• Sir Degare: Introduction

its contents, and in the evidence it provides for English poetry, of book production and readership in the period before Chaucer" (p. viii). 4 See J. W. Hales and F. J. Furnivall, eds. Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript: Ballads and Romances

• Sir Owain: Introduction

tetrameters, a trimeter, two tetrameters, and a trimeter, rhyming AABCCB. The form was so commonly used in popular romance that Chaucer employed a version of it to parody romances gone bad in his Tale of Sir Thopas. In Sir Owain