Takamiya MS 23, its Exemplar, and the editio princeps of Piers Plowman

New Haven, Beinecke Library, MS Takamiya 23 is a mid sixteenth-century copy of the B Version of Piers Plowman, distinguished by pervasive linguistic modernization. The manuscript derives from a source very similar to that used by Robert Crowley for the editio princeps, a textual affiliation that remains unexplained. In their critical edition, George Kane and E. Talbot Donaldson collated Takamiya 23 in full but did not print its unique variant readings and the manuscript has not figured in recent textual scholarship on Piers Plowman. This neglect has led to some conclusions that should be revisited, particularly regarding the place of Crowley’s editions in the B-Version stemma and the extent and character of Crowley’s use of manuscripts other than his principal one. On the basis of textual and material features, we sketch a possible production scenario for the Takamiya manuscript and re-evaluate its relation to Crowley’s sources.