Duplicate Copying of the Pardoner’s Prologue in Morgan Library and Museum MS M.249

ABSTRACT

This article considers two copies of the Pardoner’s Prologue, VI 424–61, preserved in New York, Morgan Library and Museum, MS M.249 (Mg): the passage that appears in sequence in the text, and the scribe’s first, canceled attempt at this passage (now included in the endleaves). The text on the canceled leaf, not collated by John M. Manly and Edith Rickert, includes two variant readings, which are noted here. The duplicate passages are also considered for what they can tell us about the scribe’s professional practice: his overall accuracy, the kinds of orthographical variation he was prepared to admit, and his treatment of metrical punctuation.