Stephen Hawes

printer's mark: William Caxton and Wynkyn de Worde

Two sets of three pages appear to have been printed out of order:

Page aa.vi. (11, beginning Vnto her I answerde o lady gloryous) appears before pages aa.v. and aa.v.verso (9 and 10, beginning Be to thy kynge euer true subgete).

Pages ff.iii. (69, beginning Whan I had scomfyte this serpent venymous) and ff.iiii. (71, beginning And there met me dame clennes blyue) are transposed, with ff.iii.verso (70, beginning Than came dame fayth that lady gloryous) between them.

Each involves pages from the later part of a signature, so page numbering is absent. It is not known whether the error is from the original printing or from the facsimile reprint.

Printed folio numbers show an unusual pattern:

aa, cc, ee: 16 pages each
gg: 12 pages
bb, dd, ff, hh: 8 pages

Duplicate Chapter Heads

Chapter headings for .vi. and .vii. were printed near the bottom of the page—as main text, not catchwords—and again at the top of the following page. This pattern was not consistently followed for all chapters that began at the top of a page.

Unusual Errors

A. DiscrecÕn, temptacÕn
Both words occur in full-length lines of prose. When the typesetter saw that he needed an abbreviation to make the line fit, he may have removed the wrong letter from the word to be abbreviated.

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and

text imageB. In four places the printed text has an unusual letter. It has been transcribed as “z” or “?” (yogh) according to context, though it is the same letterform every time:

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There is no apparent reason for abbreviating “kynge” in this line.

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C. bl[ey]nde
A small “e”, required by the rhyme, is printed above “y”, required by the sense.

D. so gretly slynkynge
The printed text is very slightly defective. The reading “stynkynge” fits the sense better, but the letterforms are closer to “sl-”.

E. doubtauce
Text reads “doubtauuce”, possibly through confusion with the preceding line, where the “governauce” abbreviation was required by line length:

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