"Chaucer's Dreame": A Bibliographer's Nightmare

The Chaucerian apocrypha consists of some fifty spurious pieces that were included in the early folio editions of Chaucer's works between 1532 and 1721. These works present formidable bibliographical and material obstacles to anyone examining Chaucer's early canon formation. Forni focuses on the bibliographical history of one poem, now assigned number 3947 in the Brown-Robbins index, a poem first printed as "Chaucer's Dreame" in Thomas Speght's The Workes of our Antient and Learned English Poet, Geffrey Chaucer, newly Printed (1598) but now conventionally known as the Isle of Ladies.