page_title: Guy of Warwick
section_title: Manuscript tradition
hierarchical_section_title: Guy of Warwick / Manuscript tradition
caption_attribution_description: Guy of Warwick as a courtier and pilgrim; detail of a miniature from BL Royal MS 15 E vi, f. 227r (the "Talbot Shrewsbury Book"). Held and digitised by the British Library.
context_page_description: Guy of Warwick, or Gui de Warewic, is a legendary English hero of Romance popular in England and France from the 13th to 17th centuries. The story of Sir Guy is considered by scholars to be part of the Matter of England.
context_section_description: The Anglo-Norman French romance was edited by Alfred Ewert in 1932 and published by Champion, and is described by Emile Littré in Histoire littéraire de la France (xxii., 841-851, 1852). A French prose version was printed in Paris, 1525, and subsequently (see Gustave Brunet, Manuel du libraire, s.v. "Guy de Warvich"); the English metrical romance exists in four versions dating from the early fourteenth century; the text was edited by J. Zupitza (1875–1876) for the Early English Texts Society from Cambridge University Library, Paper MS. Ff. 2, 38, and again (pts. 1883-1891, extra series, Nos. 42, 49, 59), from the Auchinleck manuscript and Caius College MS. A late mediaeval Irish prose version, copied in the 15th century, The Irish Lives of Guy of Warwick and Bevis of Hampton is in Trinity College Library, Dublin (Ms H.2.7), and is largely based on the English originals (this, and its translation by F. N. Robinson, are available online from the CELT project).
  The popularity of the legend is shown by the numerous versions in English: John Lydgate claimed that Guy of Warwick, his English verse version composed between 1442 and 1468, was translated from the Latin chronicle of Giraldus Cornubiensis (fl. 1350); Guy of Warwick, a poem (written in 1617 and licensed, but not printed) by John Lane, the manuscript of which (in the British Library) contains a sonnet by John Milton, father of the poet; The Famous Historie of Guy, Earl of Warwick (c. 1607) by Samuel Rowlands; The Booke of the moste Victoryous Prince Guy of Warwicke (William Copland, London, n.d.); other editions by J. Cawood and C. Bates; chapbooks and ballads of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; The Tragical History, Admirable Achievements and Various Events of Guy Earl of Warwick (1661) which may possibly be identical with a play on the subject written by John Day and Thomas Dekker, and entered at Stationers' Hall on 15 January 1618/19; three verse fragments are printed by Hales and F. J. Furnivall in their edition of the Percy Folio MS. vol. ii.; an early French MS. is described by J. A. Herbert (An Early MS. of Gui de Warwick, London, 1905). In the Valencian book "Tirant lo Blanch" appears a character based on Guy Whose name is "Guillem de Varoic"
caption: Guy of Warwick, from an illumination in Le Romant de Guy de Warwik et d'Heraud d'Ardenne, in the Talbot Shrewsbury Book (BL Royal MS 15 E vi) f. 227r
exif: {}