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- VENUS AND ADONIS 69
A unique copy of the edition of 1620—‘Printed for I. P.’ (i.e. John Parker)—is among the books left by Capell to Trinity College, Cambridge. It is bound with a copy of *The Passionate Pilgrim* of 1599, which follows it. The volume belonged at one time to ‘Honest Tom Martin’ (1697–1771) of Palgrave, the historian of Thetford. At the end there is the note in old writing, ‘Not quite perfect, see 4 or 5 leaves back: so it cost me but 3 Halfpence.’ The measurements are $4\frac{3}{4}'' \times 3\frac{3}{4}''$. It is a small octavo, faithfully reproducing the edition of 1617, although the title-page has the comma instead of the colon in the Latin quotation, as in the early impression of the 1602 edition (No. IX).¹
A special interest attaches to the edition of 1627, of which two copies are now traceable. This edition was printed not in London, but in Edinburgh, and is the first example of the printing outside London of any work of Shakespeare. The Edinburgh printer and publisher who undertook the venture was John Wreittoun, a man of substance, with a shop, as he states on the title-page, ‘a little beneath the Salt Trone.’ It is possible that the publisher’s neighbour, Drummond of Hawthornden, the poet, who was an admiring critic of Shakespeare, suggested the venture.² A copy of an early edition of the poem was in Drummond’s library
¹ The erroneous statement of the Cambridge editors in their first edition (1866) that a second copy of the 1620 edition was bought in 1839 for the Bodleian Library is corrected in their second edition (1895). The copy of *Venus and Adonis* bought in 1839 had no title-page and was for a time wrongly identified with the edition of 1620. From that edition it differs materially. It more probably belongs to the year 1630 (see No. XVII).
² Wreittoun began business in 1624 at the Nether Bowe, Edinburgh. He removed in 1627 to ‘the Salt Trone’, where he made his reputation. There he seems to have remained till 1636, when he retired from trade, after producing as many as fifty-six books. He died in 1640. His wife, Margaret Kene, seems to have been sister of the second surviving wife of the well-known Edinburgh printer, Andro Hart (d. 1621), the friend and publisher of the poet Drummond of Hawthornden, who recommended his friend Drayton to publish with him. For my knowledge of Wreittoun’s career I am mainly indebted to information kindly given me by Mr. J. P. Edmond, now Librarian to the Writers of the Signet at Edinburgh, and by Mr. H. G. Aldis, of the Cambridge University Library.
EIGHTH EDITION, 1620. No. XIII. Capell copy, 1620.
NINTH EDITION, Edinburgh, 1627.
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