ABSTRACT
This article originally appeared in Modem Language Quarterly 53 (1992): 23-40.
A LTHOUGH Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde is cited and used by many English writers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the two major reworkings of the love story before Shakespeare are by John Lydgate in his Troy Book (1412-20) and by Robert Henryson in his late fifteenth-century Testament o f Cresseid.1 Lydgate and Henryson are perhaps the most prominent representatives of the English and Scottish Chaucerian traditions, and their two Trojan works had great influence. Lydgate’s massive Troy Book, commissioned by Henry V when still Prince of Wales, became the standard history of the Trojan War in English (as its patron hoped it would) and is one of the sources for Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida. It survives in more manuscripts than does Chaucer’s Troilus. Henryson’s short poem had an even more eventful career. First produced in relative obscurity (no early manuscripts survive or separate prints before 1593), Thynne included it following Troilus in his 1532 edition of Chaucer’s works (apparently as an afterthought). As a result, it was widely accepted as the genuine conclusion to Chaucer’s poem into the eighteenth century. Henryson’s tabloid-like revelations about Cresseid’s private life (that after being rejected by Diomede she became a prostitute and finally died of leprosy) were the most memorable incidents of the story for many later readers. Until the time of Shakespeare and well beyond, reference to Chaucer’s love story almost always includes, and is often dominated by, Henryson’s account of Cresseid’s end.
