Shakespeare's Poems

The book is printed with remarkable accuracy, doubtless from the author's manuscript.

A second quarto edition was published in 1594, the titlepage of which differs from that of the first only in the date. A third edition in octavo form (like all the subsequent editions) was issued in 1596 from the same printing-office "for Iohn Harison."

A fourth edition was published in 1599, with the following title-page (as given in Edmonds's reprint):

This edition was not known until 1867, when a copy of it was discovered at Lamport Hall in Northamptonshire by Mr. Charles Edmonds, who issued a fac-simile reprint of it in 1870. Of course it is not included in the collation of the Cambridge ed., which was published before the discovery ;* but it was evidently printed from the 3d edition. Mr. Edmonds says: "A few corrections are introduced, but they bear no proportion to the misprints."

Of the fifth edition a single copy is in existence (in the Bodleian Library), lacking the title-page, which has been restored in manuscript with the following imprint: "LONDON | Printed by I. H. | for Iohn Harrison | 1600." The date may be right, but, according to Halliwell † and Edmonds, the publisher's name must be wrong, as Harrison had as signed the copyright to Leake four years previous. The Cambridge editors assumed in 1866 that this edition (the 4th of their numbering) was printed from that of 1596; but it is certain, since the discovery of the 1599 ed., that it must have been based on that. Of the text they say: "It

It is omitted by Hudson in his "Harvard" ed. (see account of early eds. of V. and A. vol. xix. p. 279), published in 1881.

† Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare (2d ed. 1882), p. 222.

contains many erroneous readings, due, it would seem, partly to carelessness and partly to wilful alteration, which were repeated in later eds."

Two new editions were issued in 1602, and others in 1617 and 1620. In 1627, an edition (of which the only known copy is in the British Museum) was published in Edinburgh. In the Bodleian Library there is a unique copy of an edition wanting the title-page but catalogued with the date 1630; also a copy of another edition, published in 1630 (discovered since the Cambridge ed. appeared).* A thirteenth edition was printed in 1636, "to be sold by Francis Coules in the Old Baily without Newgate."

The first edition of Lucrece was published in quarto in 1594, with the following title-page:

LVCRECE. LONDON. | Printed by Richard Field, for Iohn Harrison, and are to be sold at the signe of the white Greyhound | in Paules Churh-yard. 1594.

The running title is "The Rape of Lvcrece." The Bodleian Library has two copies of this edition which differ in some important readings, indicating that it was corrected while passing through the press. †

A second edition appeared in 1598, a third in 1600, and a fourth in 1607, all in octavo and all "for Iohn Harrison" (or "Harison ").

In 1616, the year of Shakespeare's death, the poem was reprinted with his name as "newly revised;" but "as the readings are generally inferior to those of the earlier editions, there is no reason for attaching any importance to an assertion which was merely intended to allure purchasers" (Camb. ed.). The title-page of this edition reads thus:

Bibliographical Contributions, edited by J. Winsor, Librarian of Harvard University: No. 2. Shakespeare's Poems (1879). This Bibliography of the earlier editions of the Poems contains much valuable and curious information concerning their history, the extant copies, reprints, etc.

† On variations of this kind in the early editions, cf. The Two Noble Kinsmen, p. 10.

A sixth edition, also printed for Jackson, was issued in 1624.

The fifth and sixth editions differ considerably in their readings from the first four, in which there are no important

variations.

A Lover's Complaint was first printed, so far as we know, in the first edition of the Sonnets, which appeared in 1609. It was probably not reprinted until it was included in the Poems of 1640, mentioned below.

The Passionate Pilgrim was first published in 1599, with the following title-page:

In the middle of sheet C is a second title:

The book was reprinted in 1612, together with some poems by Thomas Heywood, the whole being attributed to Shakespeare. The title at first stood thus:

The Bodleian copy of this edition contains the following note by Malone: "All the poems from Sig. D. 5 were written by Thomas Heywood, who was so offended at Jaggard

for printing them under the name of Shakespeare that he has added a postscript to his Apology for Actors, 4to, 1612, on this subject; and Jaggard in consequence of it appears to have printed a new title-page to please Heywood, without the name of Shakespeare in it. The former title-page was no doubt intended to be cancelled, but by some inadvertence they were both prefixed to this copy and I have retained them as a curiosity." The corrected title-page is substantially as above, omitting " By W. Shakespere."

It will be observed that this is called the third edition; but no other between 1599 and 1612 is known to exist.

In 1640 most of the Sonnets (see our ed. p. 10), The Passionate Pilgrim, A Lover's Complaint, The Phoenix and the Turtle, the lines "Why should this a desert be," etc. (A. Y. L. iii. 2. 133 fol.), and “Take, O take those lips away," etc. (M. for M. iv. 1. I fol.), with some translations from Ovid falsely ascribed to Shakespeare (see p. 215 below), were pub lished in a volume with the following title:

POEMS: WRITTEN BY | WIL. SHAKE-SPEARE. | Gent. | Printed at London by Tho. Cotes, and are to be sold by John Benson, dwelling in | S'. Dunstans Church-yard. 1640.

The first complete edition of Shakespeare's Poems, including the Sonnets, was issued (according to Lowndes, Bibliographer's Manual) in 1709, with the following title:

A Collection of Poems, in Two Volumes; Being all the Miscellanies of Mr. William Shakespeare, which were Publish'd by himself in the Year 1609, and now correctly Printed from those Editions. The First Volume contains, I. VENUS AND ADONIS. II. The Rape of LUCRECE. III. The Passionate Pilgrim. IV. Some Sonnets set to sundry Notes of Musick. The Second Volume contains One Hundred and Fifty Four Sonnets, all of them in Praise of his Mistress. II. A Lover's Complaint of his Angry Mistress. LONDON: Printed for Bernard Lintott, at the Cross-Keys, between the Two Temple-Gates in Fleet-street.

The Phonix and the Turtle first appeared, with Shakespeare's name appended to it, in Robert Chester's Loves Martyr: or Rosalins Complaint, published in 1601 (reprinted by the New Shakspere Society in 1878).

The earliest reference to the Venus and Adonis that has been found is in the famous passage in Meres's Palladis Tamia (see M. N. D. p. 9, and C. of E. p. 101). As to the date of its composition, Dowden says (Primer, p. 81): "When Venus and Adonis appeared, Shakspere was twenty-nine years of age; the Earl of Southampton, to whom it was dedicated, was not yet twenty. In the dedication the poet speaks of these 'unpolisht lines' as 'the first heire of my invention.' Did Shakspere mean by this that Venus and Adonis was written before any of his plays, or before any plays that were strictly original-his own 'invention?' or does he, setting plays altogether apart, which were not looked upon as literature, in a high sense of the word, call it his first poem because he had written no earlier narrative or lyrical verse? We cannot be sure. It is possible, but not likely, that he may have written this poem before he left Stratford, and have brought it up with him to London. More probably it was written in London, and perhaps not long before its publication. The year 1593, in which the poem appeared, was a year of plague; the London theatres were closed: it may be that Shakspere, idle in London, or having returned for a while to Stratford, then wrote the poem." Even if begun some years earlier, it was probably revised not long before its publication.

The Lucrece was not improbably the "graver labour" promised in the dedication of the Venus and Adonis; and, as Dowden remarks, it "exhibits far less immaturity than does the first heire' of Shakspere's invention." It is less. likely than that, we think, to have been a youthful production taken up and elaborated at a later date.

A Lover's Complaint was evidently written long after the

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Shakespeare's Poems: Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, Sonnets, Etc