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- 46 VENUS AND ADONIS
by the said master harrison’s consent. A booke called. Venus and Adonis vjd.
Leake fills an important place in the bibliographical history of Shakespeare’s first poem, although Shakespeare did not presumably concern himself with his intervention. He controlled the publication for a period approaching twenty years—for the rest of Shakespeare’s lifetime and for ten months after the poet’s death. He issued three editions. The first which seems to have come out under his auspices was dated 1599, and was apparently printed for him by Peter Short. Another followed about 1600. In July, 1602, he moved to new premises in St. Paul’s Churchyard—to a building bearing the sign of the Holy Ghost—and before the end of the year he produced a new edition of the poem, on the title-page of which he gave his new address. He now seems to have employed Humphry Lownes to print the book. Other editions may have come from his press, but no copies of them survive.¹ On February 16, 1617, he transferred his chief copyrights, including *Venus and Adonis*, to ‘Master [William] Barrett’, and there the third chapter in the publishing history of the poem closed. Leake’s two successors enjoyed brief reigns. Barrett, the first of them, at once reprinted the volume in 1617, but there his interest in it ended. Three years later, on March 8, 1620, he transferred *Venus and Adonis* and the other property that he had acquired of Leake to John Parker. The title-page of one edition of 1620 bears Parker’s initials (J. P.), and then on May 7, 1626, he made the book over to John Haviland and John Wright.
¹ In 1607, Robert Raworth, a printer, who purchased Adam Islip’s press the year before, was charged before the Star Chamber with printing *Venus and Adonis*, which was ‘another’s copy’. Raworth was found guilty, and his printing office was for a time forcibly closed, by way of punishment. It is uncertain whether Raworth succeeded in circulating his piratical reprint. No copy has been met with (cf. *Arber’s Transcript*, iii. 701, 703–4).
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