- cid
- bafkreiaaujug6csm4s7wtvxqpszh7svcdqxom5c2jhwr3kcdgo2wkseaim
- content_type
- image/jpeg
- filename
- 06_poems_pericles_facsimiles_1905_oxford_page_0055.jpg
- height
- 2400
- key
- pdf-page-1769752318061-lxi50k0g3xq
- ocr_model
- mistral-ocr-latest
- page_number
- 55
- size
- 497921
- text
- 48 VENUS AND ADONIS
The chap-book syndicate of 1675.
a London syndicate of chap-book publishers. That curious venture brings to a close the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century chapter of the bibliopolic history of the poem.
V
The parent text.
The text of all the editions is based on the original version of 1593. Each issue of subsequent date appears to reprint one or other of its near predecessors with more or less fidelity. The alterations are slight, and are due to the compositors or correctors of the press. Efforts to systematize the irregular spellings of the first issues and occasionally to remove grammatical solecisms account for most of the variations. But in a few instances new misprints or unwarrantable alterations in the order of words are introduced through the carelessness or presumptuous ignorance of compositor or proof-corrector. How trifling and arbitrary were the changes in the early editions, may be judged from the characteristic fact that in the inscription before the dedicatory epistle ‘Wriothesley’ in the 1593 edition appears as ‘Wriothesly’ in the 1594 edition, and as ‘Wriotheslie’ in the 1596 and many subsequent editions.
The misprints of 1593.
On the whole, Field’s text of 1593 may be held to have adhered to Shakespeare’s manuscript with reasonable closeness, but it presents defects of the sort which confutes the theory that Shakespeare himself corrected the proofs. The praises lavished on Field’s press-work by Shakespearean critics of the first edition of *Venus and Adonis*, seem on a thorough examination to require qualification. Misprints are few; they do not exceed ten in all, and only one of them, slight enough in itself, can cause the reader perplexity. In line 185 the present participle ‘souring’ is disguised under the unintelligible pair of words ‘so wring’. The nine other misprints are ‘Witin’
- text_extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T06:12:21.612Z
- text_extracted_by
- ocr-service
- text_has_content
- true
- text_images_count
- 0
- text_source
- ocr
- uploaded
- true
- width
- 1750