Thomas Speght

Thomas Speght (died 1621) was an English schoolmaster and editor of Geoffrey Chaucer.

He was from a Yorkshire family, and matriculated as a sizar of Peterhouse, Cambridge in 1566, graduating B.A. in 1570, and M.A. in 1573. At Cambridge he was supported by a scholarship from Lady Mildred Cecil. He went to London, and became a schoolmaster.

According to the epitaph on the tomb of his son Lawrence, Speght as schoolmaster was a "paragon".

In 1598 Speght edited the works of Chaucer. He had the assistance of John Stow the chronicler, and built on Stow's Chaucer edition of 1561. He included a glossary, and an influential biography of Chaucer, as well as annotations. He included works now not associated with Chaucer.

The full title of his edition ran: The Workes of our Antient and learned English Poet, Geffrey Chaucer, newly Printed. In this Impression you shall find these Additions: (1) His Portraiture and Progenie Shewed. (2) His Life collected. (3) Argument to euery Booke gathered. (4) Old and Obscure Words explained. (5) Authors by him cited declared. (6) Difficulties opened. (7) Two Bookes of his neuer before printed (i.e. his Dreame and The Floure and the Leafe), published London, folio 1598.

The volume was dedicated to Sir Robert Cecil. Some copies were published by George Bishop, and others by Thomas Wight. A prefatory letter, addressed to the editor in 1597, by Francis Beaumont (d. 1624) of West Goscote, Leicestershire, supplied "a judicious apology for the supposed levities of Chaucer". Neither the Dreame nor The Floure and the Leafe is now thought to be connected to Chaucer.

Meanwhile Francis Thynne, whose father William Thynne had published a 1532 edition of Chaucer, was preparing notes for a commentary on the poet's works. On the publication of Speght's edition, Thynne abandoned his project and criticised Speght's performance in a long manuscript letter of Animadversions addressed to Speght and dedicated to Sir Thomas Egerton. The manuscript went to the Bridgwater library, was first printed in 1810 by Henry John Todd in his Illustrations of Gower and Chaucer (pp. 1–83), and was reprinted for the Early English Text Society in 1865 (new edit. 1875). When a reprint of Speght's edition of Chaucer was called for in 1602, he used Thynne's assistance, acknowledged in the preface, with also notes and corrections supplied by John Stow.

...
Wikipedia