McGill MS 143 and the Composition of Lydgate’s Fall of Princes

Abstract

This article examines the fragment of Lydgate’s poem The Fall of Princes that is McGill University Library MS 143. The fragment is part of a form of the text that survives elsewhere in a complete form only in British Library MS Harley 1766, one that is very different from the form that appears in the standard modern edition. The article discusses the ways in which the McGill fragment contributes to an understanding of the nature and significance of this variant version.