SOURCE: Bell, Alexander. “The Royal Brut Interpolation.” Medium Aevum XXXII, no. 3 (1963): 190-202.

In the following essay, Bell suggests that a manuscript of Wace's history of England, the Roman de Brut, called the Royal Brut contains an interpolation of some six thousand lines not written by Wace.

Although the item commencing on f. 40^v of B.M. Royal 13 A xxi is introduced by the rubric:

Ci commence le brut ke maistre / Wace translata de latin en / franceis de tuz les reis ke / furent [en] bretaigne deske il / perdi son nun e fust apelé / engletere par la grant destruci / un ke daneis firent en la / terre,

it has long been known that from l. 52 onwards another translation of the Historia Regum Britannicæ has been substituted which continues for some six thousand lines, when the text of Wace's poem is taken up again. Already in his edition of the Roman de...