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- VENUS AND ADONIS 43
The first transfer of the copyright.
John Harrison, second owner, June 25, 1594—June 25, 1596.
Field. He had been in continuous occupation of the shop known as the White Greyhound in St. Paul’s Churchyard since 1559. Field was already in close business relations with him when he acquired the copyright of *Venus and Adonis*.¹ It was in conformity with a recognized practice that the imprint on the title-page of the first edition ran:—«Imprinted by Richard Field and are to be sold at the signe of the White Greyhound in Paules Churchyard.» Next year a second edition came out in precisely the same conditions from Field’s press. The unaltered title-page announced that copies were to be sold at Harrison’s shop.
The copyright of *Venus and Adonis*, of which Field was the first owner, has a somewhat complicated history. The details illustrate the confused methods of Elizabethan publishing. Shakespeare may be absolved from responsibility for the involutions of the story. A new chapter opens after the appearance of the second edition early in 1594. A few months later, on June 25 of that year, Field found it convenient to make over the copyright in the poem to the publisher Harrison. The transfer is thus recorded in the Stationers’ Company’s Register²:
[1594] 25 Iunij
Assigned over unto him [i.e. Master Harrison, Senior] from Richard Field in open Court holden this Day a book called *Venus and Adonis* vj.
The which was before entered to Richard Field 18 Aprilis 1593.
With this act of self-abnegation on Field’s part another has to be associated. In this same month of June, Shakespeare
¹ Field had been employed by Harrison to print in 1590 an elaborate treatise on mechanical inventions by Cyprian Lucar, and in 1592 had at Harrison’s expense produced two works by foreign authors:—Simon Verepaeus’s *De epistolis Latine conscribendis*, and an English translation of Vasco Figueiro’s *The Spaniards Monarchie and Leaguers Olygarchie*.
² Arber’s Transcript, ii. 655.
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