The Winchester MS of Malory's narrative compilation, now known as British Library Additional MS 59678, AKA "W.," found its way to William Caxton's print shop sometime in 1483, where it lay open long enough for freshly printed pages containing ink from well-documented Caxton type fonts left offsets on several of its leaves. During this time, Caxton apparently was preparing to print an edition of this huge work (the third longest folio edition from his press), but he had access to another Malory manuscript which he generally seems to have preferred to use. He published the first edition of Malory in 1485, and it usually is called Kyng Arthur by scholars though Caxton didn't print a title page. However, Caxton's "copy text" manuscript may not have contained all the marginalia we see in W. and which appear in Caxton's list of rubrics, what we would call his "table of contents" listing the topics of the text's smaller subunits to help readers navigate the complex narrative.
The Winchester manuscript contains no title, no table of contents, and no page numbering. As you can imagine, reading such a text would be difficult without graphic assistance. The Winchester scribes provided it in the text by setting off names of characters in red ink, a practice known as "rubrication." The names in red also included two non-human nouns which acted as agents doing things in the text, the "Sankgreal" or Holy Grail (which healed and wounded like a knight), and the "Rounde Table," which was a concept in whose name knights might act of take oaths. However, the scribes main ongoing assistance to readers occurs in the manuscript's margins.
The most simple marginal guide was the pointing hand or index, but more explicit guidance took the form of marginal phrases alone, and some times both were used to signal important events. On at least one occasion, the scribes mis-read the text, announcing the death of a knight who actually was being rescued from near death. Caxton used some of the verbal annotations to construct his rubric table for the print edition. Most of the verbal annotations are in the hand of the scribes, but on one occasion a later hand from closer to 1500 annotated a "crux" where words missed while copying made reading the line difficult. This annotation is important because it is also incorporated into Caxton's printed edition, and because it announces an important principle underlying Malory's decision to assemble this vast record of knights' deeds in Arthurian England: "Vertue and man-hode ys hyed wyth In the bodye" (23r/63). Because it is later than the scribes' hands, and because it appears in Caxton's edition, and because we know the manuscript where it appears was in Caxton's print shop, it may be Caxton's own annotation, perhaps carrying over the correct reading from his copy text.
Another important form of guidance to readers of the manuscript version are Malory's own "annotations" which occur in the main text, but which attempt to orient us to the context surrounding the current action, or to guide our attention to specific issues. He starts the major segments of his narrative with "Hit befell" signals and reminders of the current state of Arthur's career and court. He interrupts twice to praise Trystram's invention of terms of the hunt, so important to fifteenth-century gentry identity, and several times to compare the behavior of knights and ladies within the narrative with the behaviors of his contemporaries. Many times he criticizes them for their failure to reward faithful service, especially in a famous oration to "all ye Englishmen" in which he condemns the instability of popular support for Arthur as a chronic failure of his contemporaries. He also adds important information in "explicits" or segment ending notes which often name him as a "knyght presoner" and help to construct his relationship with his readers, especially the last one which asks for the prayers of "all jentylmen and jentylwymen," specifically requesting they pray"that God sende me good delyveraunce" (i.e., release from prison in the Tower of London, 1260).
The final type of writing on the pages of W. serve no obvious purpose but give us tantalizing clues to the nearly unconscious writing behaviors which reading the text stimulated in its readers. One Richard Followell wrote his name in folio 438r, between the end of the enormous "Trystram" segment and the beginning of the Grail Quest or "Sankgreal." Malory announces this transition in an explicit naming him as the one who had "drawn [it] oute of Freynshe" and invoking divine guidance for his attempt to render the Grail Quest. Followell, upon turning the page, began to write, naming himself and tracing the paper's watermark, which happened to be the royal arms of France, a triple crown surmounting a shield containing three fleurs-de-lis. Rule of France by English kings had been disputed by the French throughout the fifteenth century, and as late as Edward IV's time while Malory was writing, English readers followed prophecies of a returned king, perhaps some form of Arthur, who would conquer the Continental lands once held in Henry V's day. Malory, himself, refers to such a prophecy when noting that "Yet som men say in many p[ar]tys of Inglonde that kynge Arthure ys nat dede but h[ad] by the wyll of oure lord Jesu into another place and men say that he shall lcom agayne and he shall wynne the Holy Crosse" (482v/1242). Though the scribes do not accord it an index of marginal note, Caxton sets it off with a capital and gives it a rubric in his "contents" section: "Of thoppynyon of somme men of the deth of kynge Arthur and how quene Guenever made hir a nonne in Almesburye." Belief in the prophecies apparently ran high among city-dwellers, among them merchants like Caxton. In a manuscript containing the "Holy Cross" prophecy which was owned by Caxton's contemporary, Richard Thorney, Thorney sketched a fleur-de-lis in the margin to indicate his belief that the "Edward" identified as the returned king was the same as Edward IV. That Followell turned the leaf in W. and retraced the French arms from the watermark might suggest he was among those dreaming of an English trans-channel empire in Arthurian terms.
Other, more poignant signs of early readers' struggles with literacy and the manuscript occur on three widely-separated folios, where readers less literate than Followell were prompted to practice their A-B-Cs in the margins. We should remember that reading was taught (and still is taught!) before writing, and many an English adult might still be only partially literate in the C15-17, before mass literacy spread to the cities. At least in one case, the text on the page containing the alphabet practice contained an episode in which Lancelot and Gwenyvere exchange letters with Trystram at Tyntagel (254v). The scribes also took note of characters' literacy on one important occasion which Malory adds to his source, Gawayne's death-bed letter to Lancelot absolving him of all responsibility for his death. Because Malory pays so much attention to deeds as proof of identity and quality, we would expect him, as a writer, to use a character writing to transmit an important value judgment about the battle between these two primary characters.
Note: all images were captured using a low-resolution digital camera from facsimiles and are not intended to infringe upon the copyright of either edition. They are for scholarly use only, and they should be properly cited if used in any other way. The sources are N.R. Ker, ed., The Winchester Malory: A Facsimile. London: EETS, 1976, and Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte D'Arthur Printed by William Caxton 1485, Reproduced in facsimile from the copy in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, with an introduction by Paul Needham. London: Scolar Press, 1976.
Navigating the Winchester Malory Manuscript (after 1470) and Caxton's editio princeps, (1485)
British Library Additional MS 59678, AKA "W."
Marginal phrases without "shields"
Marginal note and index for important events
Marginal note misreading the text (Malory's?)
Marginal note correcting text, used by Caxton in 1485 edition
Caxton's printed edition re: marginal note
Caxton's printed edition with capital (Rubric in Table: "Of thoppynyon of somme men of the deth of kynge Arthur and how quene Guenever made hir a nonne in Almesburye.")
Two manuscript versions of the "Holy Cross" prophecy: MS Hatton 56 (c. 1453) and Trinity MS R 3 19, owned by Caxton's contemporary, Richard Thorney (c. 1471-83)
The final type of writing on the pages of W. serve no obvious purpose but give us tantalizing clues to the nearly unconscious writing behaviors which reading the text stimulated in its readers. One Richard Followell wrote his name in folio 438r, between the end of the enormous "Trystram" segment and the beginning of the Grail Quest or "Sankgreal." Malory announces this transition in an explicit naming him as the one who had "drawn [it] oute of Freynshe" and invoking divine guidance for his attempt to render the Grail Quest. Followell, upon turning the page, began to write, naming himself and tracing the paper's watermark, which happened to be the royal arms of France, a triple crown surmounting a shield containing three fleurs-de-lis. Rule of France by English kings had been disputed by the French throughout the fifteenth century, and as late as Edward IV's time while Malory was writing, English readers followed prophecies of a returned king, perhaps some form of Arthur, who would conquer the Continental lands once held in Henry V's day. Malory, himself, refers to such a prophecy when noting that "Yet som men say in many p[ar]tys of Inglonde that kynge Arthure ys nat dede but h[ad] by the wyll of oure lord Jesu into another place and men say that he shall lcom agayne and he shall wynne the Holy Crosse" (482v/1242). Though the W. scribes do not accord this prophecy an index of marginal note, Caxton sets it off with a capital and gives it a rubric in his "contents" section: "Of thoppynyon of somme men of the deth of kynge Arthur and how quene Guenever made hir a nonne in Almesburye." Belief in the prophecies apparently ran high among city-dwellers, among them merchants and gentry who were likely customers for Caxton's books. In a manuscript containing the "Holy Cross" prophecy which was owned by Caxton's contemporary, Richard Thorney, Thorney sketched a fleur-de-lis in the margin to indicate his belief that the "Edward" identified as the returned king was the same as Edward IV. That Followell turned the leaf in W. and retraced the French arms from the watermark might suggest he was among those dreaming of an English trans-channel empire in Arthurian terms.
Other, more poignant signs of early readers' struggles with literacy and the manuscript occur on three widely-separated folios, where readers less literate than Followell were prompted to practice their A-B-Cs in the margins. We should remember that reading was taught (and still is taught!) before writing, and many an English adult might still be only partially literate in the C15-17, before mass literacy spread to the cities. At least in one case, the text on the page containing the alphabet practice contained an episode in which Lancelot and Gwenyvere exchange letters with Trystram at Tyntagel (254v). The scribes also took note of characters' literacy on one important occasion which Malory adds to his source, Gawayne's death-bed letter to Lancelot absolving him of all responsibility for his death. Because Malory pays so much attention to deeds as proof of identity and quality, we would expect him, as a writer, to use a character writing to transmit an important value judgment about the battle between these two primary characters.
Note: all images were captured using a low-resolution digital camera from facsimiles and are not intended to infringe upon the copyright of either edition. They are for scholarly use only, and they should be properly cited if used in any other way. The sources are N.R. Ker, ed., The Winchester Malory: A Facsimile. London: EETS, 1976, and Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte D'Arthur Printed by William Caxton 1485, Reproduced in facsimile from the copy in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, with an introduction by Paul Needham. London: Scolar Press, 1976.
