Presented to the LIBRARY of the UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO hy The 'Estate of the late PROFESSOR A. S. P. WOODHOIISE Head of the Department of English -» University College 1944-1964 \ '^/i^ /F. ^r:y r. -1 "^ NiL- ' 7^ ( ^S, U , - ^ ^' ^ ^/f '^i>-, '^Si^6,i(i? THE ARDEN SHAKESPEARE GENERAL EDITOR : W. J. CRAIG 1899-1906: R. H. CASE, 1909 SONNETS J^' THE WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE SONNETS EDITED BY C. KNOX POOLER ? METHUEN AND CO. LTD. 36 ESSEX STREET : STRAND LONDON First Published in igi8 z£4S CONTENTS PAOE Introduction ^* Dedication ^ Sonnets ..... 3 A Lover's Complaint *45 INTRODUCTION According to the Stationers' Registers, a license to print a book called Shakespeare's Sonnets was granted to Thomas Tjiprpe on the 20th of May, 1609. It appeared with the : Sonnets Never before following title-page Shake-speares | | At London G. Eld for T. T. and are to be ] Imprinted. | | by solde William Some instead of by Apsley. \ 1609. copies " " William have " lohn at Christ Apsley Wright, dwelling j Church gate," an indication that these two publishers shared in the venture. The publication cannot have been long delayed, for Edward Alleyn, the actor, bought a copy (for ^d.) in June. " " The words never before imprinted are not strictly accurate, as two of the sonnets, cxxxviii. and cxliv., had already ap- peared in The Passionate Pilgrim (1599). The book seems to have been issued without Shakespeare's his are knowledge, certainly without super\'ision ; misprints the often both sense unusually frequent ; punctuation neglects and and there are other errors of more rhythm ; consequence which no author or competent reader could have overlooked. It did not reach a second edition in of the ; but 1640, 146 sonnets were reprinted by John Benson in a volume containing also The Passioiiate Pilgrim, and other poems. The license was obtained in the previous year : — 1639 4° Nouembris 1639 . eodem die. John Entred for his Copie vnder the hands of doctor Benson Wykes and Master Fetherston warden An Ad- dicion of some excellent Poems to Shakespeares Poems by other gentlemen, viz'. His mistris drawne. and her mind by Beniamin : Johnson. An epistle to Beniamin Johnson by Francis Beaumont. His Mistris shade, by R : Herrick. &c. vj**. rii viii SONNETS This appeared next year with a portrait of Shakespeare and a Benson. The is : Poems written preface by title-page | | Wil. Gent, Printed by I Shake-speare. ] | [Printer's device] at London Tho. Cotes, and are to be sold lohn by | by Benson, in S^ Dunstans and the dwelling | Church-yard. 1640. | preface : To the Reader. I Here presume (under favour) to present to your view some excellent and sweetely composed Poems, of Master William Shakespeare, Which in themselves appeare of the same the Authour himselfe then avouched purity, living ; they had not the fortune by reason of their Infancie in his death, to have the due accomodatio of proportionable glory, with the rest of his everliving Workes, yet the lines of themselves will afford you a more authentick approbation than my assurance any way can, to invite your allowance, in your perusall you shall finde them Seren, cleere and eligantly plaine, such gentle straines as shall recreate and not perplex your braine, no intricate or cloudy stuffe to puzzell intellect, but perfect such as will raise admiration to his : eloquence ; your praise this assurance I know will not differ from your acknowledge- ment. And certain I am, my opinion will be seconded by the of these Lines I have beene somewhat sufficiency ensuing ; solicitus to this forth to the of all bring perfect view men ; and in so doing, glad to be serviceable for the continuance of glory to the deserved Author in these his Poems. I. B. [i.e. John Benson]. This book was reprinted "as near the original as modern type will permit" by Mr. A. R. Smith in 1885. It contains the sonnets (except eight, viz, xviii., xix., xliii., Ivi., Ixxv., Ixxvi., xcvi. ,and cxxvi.), The Lovers Complaint, the poems in a late edition of The Passionate Pilgritn, and certain others by various authors. The sonnets do not follow exactly the order in thus no. Ixvii. is first Thorpe's edition, placed ; they appear singly or in groups of from two to five, and each " sonnet or group has a separate heading, e.g. A dutiful " Message," A Lover's excuse for his long absence." They were evidently regarded as love poems, and in some cases, but not in all, pronouns indicating that a man was addressed INTRODUCTION ix are changed to feminine forms. Poems from The Passion- ate Pilgrim are interspersed singly or in groups among the sonnets. As to the text, the spelling is more modern than that of Thorpe and many of his misprints are corrected, but the book has errata of its own. That the sonnets circulated in MS. before publication, may be inferred from Meres's his allusion in 1 598 to Shakespeare's sugared sonnets among of private friends, and in the following year two them appeared in The Passionate Pilgrim. Some of these sonnets were copied into MS. books, and Sonnets ii., viii., xxxii., xlvii., to be still in Ixxi., and parts of i., ii., and liv. are known existence in such collections. The earliest of these, and is British most interesting (1610 or later). Sonnet viii., in the Museum (Add. MSS. 15,226, f. 4 b) and has been published in Halliwell's Shakespeare and in The Shakspere Allusion Book. It has been conjectured that Benson was indebted for his text to a MS. different from that used by Thorpe. In doubting whether he depended on Thorpe's printed volume, " * Sir Sidney Lee points out that the word sonnets,' which loomed so large in Thorpe's edition, finds no place in Benson's. In the title-pages, in the head-lines, and in the publisher's • ' ' Advertisement,' Benson calls the contents poems or * ' lines '. He avows no knov/ledge of Shakespeare's Sonnets '. Thorpe's dedication to Mr. W. H. is ignored The 6rder in which Thorpe printed the sonnets is dis- regarded. Benson presents his 'poems' in a wholly different sequence, and denies them unity of meaning. He offers them to his readers as a series of detached compositions. At times he runs more than one together without break. But on each detachment he bestows an independent descriptive head- ing. The variations from Thorpe's text, though not for the most part of great importance, are numerous. The separate titles given by Benson to the detached sonnets represent all the poems save three or four to be addressed to a woman. ' ' i In Sonnet civ. , Benson reads faire love instead of ' ' faire and in cviii. ' sweet love for Thorpe's friend,' 5 , ' Thorpe's sweet boy.' . Sonnets cxxxviii. and cxliv. which take the thirty-first and thirty-second places ignore Thorpe's text, and follow that of Jaggard's Passionate Pilgrim X SONNETS (1599 or 1612). The omission of eight sonnets tells the same tale. ... It is difficult to account for the exclusion of these . except on the assumption that Benson's compiler had not discovered them," This view of the case could not be better or more clearly expressed, yet I venture to think that Benson had no other materials than those furnished by Thorpe and Jaggard. He must have used an edition of The Passionate Pilgrim later than 1 599, for he prints Heywood's Epistles of Paris to Helen and Helen to Paris, which Jaggard added to his third edition of 161 2, or possibly to his second, but of it nothing is known. A man Avho labelled sonnets addressed to a man as if they " were addressed to a woman, and changed the words friend" " and boy" and the gender of certain pronouns to agree with his labels, and who yet left unaltered other sonnets equally ix. and xx, is not too or careful to significant, e.g. , scrupulous omit eight altogether. A thief leaves behind what he has not noticed as surely as if it had been too heavy or too hot. Benson agrees with Thorpe in including A Lover s Complaint. His change of title corresponds to the change of contents, and the word sonnet was in his time no longer used loosely to denote any short poem, and had never been used of such poems as Heywood's Epistles : Thorpe's dedication was like- wise no longer suitable. It is not more wonderful that in the case of Sonnets cxxxviii, and cxliv. he ignored Thorpe's text and followed Jaggard's than if he had done the opposite. He could not have followed both and his instinct may have led him to the worse. It is useless to speculate on the motives of a man who printed as part of Shakespeare's works three poems on his death. The deviation from Thorpe's order is more apparent than real. Many of the sonnets printed with separate titles follow Thorpe's order, e.g. cxx., cxxi., cxxii., cxxiii., cxxiv., cxxv., and the sonnets printed in groups invari- ably do so. Occasionally a sonnet is omitted to appear else- where with a separate heading, but within the groups a later Ixvi. never precedes an earlier, e.g. : Ix., Ixiii., Ixiv., Ixv., ; viii., xii. xci. followed ix., x., xi., ; Ixxxviii., Ixxxix., xc, by xcii., Ixix. xv. xciii., xciv., xcv. ; Ixvii., Ixviii., ; xiii., xiv., ; iv., v., vi. xxix. xxxii. ; xxvii., xxviii,, ; xxx., xxxi., INTRODUCTION xi contain Moreover, existing MSS. of the sonnets readings Benson's in this which resemble Jaggard's and differ from are of word or which, respect, viz.