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SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE
Meres³ evidence as to the ‘private’ circulation of a number of Shakespeare’s sonnets in 1598 received the best possible corroboration a year later, when two sonnets, which were undoubtedly by Shakespeare, were printed for the first time in the poetic miscellany, *The Passionate Pilgrim*. That volume was compiled piratically by the publisher, William Jaggard, from ‘private’ manuscripts, and although its contents were from various pens, all were ascribed collectively to Shakespeare on the title-page.
There are indications that separate sonnets by Shakespeare continued to be copied and to circulate in MS. in the years that immediately followed. But ten years elapsed before Shakespeare’s sonnets were distinctly heard of in public again. Then as many as 154 were brought together and were given to the world in a quarto volume.¹
On May 20, 1609, the grant of a licence for the publication of Shakespeare’s sonnets was thus entered in the Registers of the Stationers’ Company: ‘Entred [to Thomas Thorpe] for his copie under th’ andes of master Wilson and master Lownes Warden, a Booke called Shakespeares *sonnettes* vj’.²
A knowledge of the career and character of Thomas Thorpe, who was owner of the copyright and caused the sonnets to be published, is needful to a correct apprehension talk’, *Fletcher’s Licia*, 1593, Sonnet 52, l. 1; ‘sugred terms’, *R. L.’s Diella*, 1596, Sonnet 4; ‘Master Thomas Watson’s *sugred* Amintas’ in Nashe’s preface to *Greene’s Menaphen*, 1589. ‘Sucré’ is similarly used in French literature of the same date.
¹ Eleazar Edgar, a small publisher, who took up his freedom on June 26, 1597, obtained from the Stationers’ Company on January 3, 1600, a licence for the publication of *Amours*, by J. D., with Certen Oy’ (i.e. other) sonnetes by W. S.³ No book corresponding to this title seems to have been published. There is small ground for identifying the W. S. of this licence with Shakespeare. There was another sonneteer of the day, William Smith, who had published a collection of sonnets under the title of *Chloris*, in 1596. Edgar may have designed the publication of another collection by Smith.
The publication of the sonnets.
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