I. THE HISTORY OF THE POEMS. Venus and Adonis was first published in quarto form, in 1593, with the following title-page: * VENVS AND ADONIS | Vilia miretur vulgus: mihi flauus Apollo Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua. | LONDON | Imprinted by Richard Field, and are to be sold at the signe of the white Greyhound in | Paules Church-yard. | 1593. *For this title-page, as well as for much of the other information we have given concerning the early editions, we are indebted to the "Cambridge" ed. 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): VENVS AND ADONIS. | Vilia miretur vulgus: mihi flauus Apollo | Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua. | Imprinted at London for William Leake, dwel- | ling in Paules Churchyard at the signe of the Greyhound. 1599. 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 "). 66 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. |