I do not suppose this was ever supposed to be Chaucer's even by Thynne. Line 64—'Quha wait gif all that Chaucer wrait was trew?'—must have settled the question from the first. No doubt Thynne added it simply as a pendant to Troilus, and he must have had a copy before him in the Northern dialect, which he modified as well as he could. Nevertheless, he gives us can for the Southern gan in l. 6, wrate for wrote in l. 64, and has many similar Northern forms.
The poem was printed at Edinburgh in 1593 with the author's name. The title is as follows—¶ The Testament of CRESSEID, Compylit be M. Robert Henrysone, Sculemai-ster in Dunfermeling. Imprentit at Edin = burgh be Henrie Charteris. MD. XCIII. The text is in 4to, ten leaves, black-letter. Only one copy has been preserved, which is now in the British Museum; but it was reprinted page for page in the volume presented by Mr. Chalmers to the Bannatyne Club in 1824. The present edition is from this reprint, with very few modifications, such as sh for sch, and final -y for final -ie in immaterial cases. All other modifications are accounted for in the footnotes below. No early MS. copy is known; there was once a copy in the Asloan MS., but the leaves containing it are lost.
Thynne's print must have been a good deal altered from the original, to make it more intelligible. It is odd to find him altering quhisling (20) to whiskyng, and ringand (144) to tynkyng. I note all Thynne's variations that are of any interest. He must have been much puzzled by aneuch in (which he seems to have regarded as one word and as a past participle) before he turned it into enewed (110). But in some cases Thynne gives us real help, as I will now point out.
In l. 48, E. (the Edinburgh edition) has—'Quhill Esperus reioisit him agane'; where Esperus gives no good sense. But Thynne prints esperous, which at once suggests esperans (hope), as opposed to wanhope in the preceding line.
In l. 155, E. has frosnit, which Laing interprets 'frozen,' as if the pp. of freeze could have both a strong and weak pp. suffix at the same moment! But Thynne has frounsed, evidently put for fronsit, as used elsewhere by Henryson in The Fable of the Paddock and the Mous, l. 43:—'The Mous beheld unto her fronsit face.' A printer's error of sn for ns is not surprising.
In ll. 164, 178, 260, E. has gyis or gyse; but Thynne has preserved the true Chaucerian word gyte, which the printer evidently did not understand. It is true that in l. 164 he turned it into gate; but when he found it recur, he let it alone.
In l. 205, E. has upricht (!); which Thynne corrects.
In l. 290, Th. has iniure for iniurie, and I think he is right, though I have let injurie stand; iniure is Chaucer's form (Troil. iii. 1018), and it suits the scansion better.
In l. 382, Thynne corrects Unto to To; and in l. 386, has Beuer for bawar. In l. 441, he has syder for ceder. In l. 501, he has plyte for plye, where a letter may have dropped out in E.; but see the note (p. 525). In l. 590, his reading tokenyng suggests that takning (as in E.) should be takining or takinning; the line will then scan. The contracted form taikning occurs, however, in l. 232, where the word is less emphatic.