- cid
- bafkreih3ie7q24cr4cfofecftizgrwpyno3m5fr2xavbqq2qs5fabn6twa
- content_type
- image/jpeg
- filename
- 06_poems_pericles_facsimiles_1905_oxford_page_0469.jpg
- height
- 2400
- key
- pdf-page-1769752548798-3px45sw2icg
- ocr_model
- mistral-ocr-latest
- page_number
- 469
- size
- 509968
- text
- 58
SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE
The theory that the publisher Benson sought his copy elsewhere than in Thorpe’s treasury is supported by other considerations. *Sonnets* CXXXVIII and CXLIV, which take the thirty-first and thirty-second places respectively in Benson’s volume, ignore Thorpe’s text, and follow that of Jaggard’s *Passionate Pilgrim* (1599 or 1612). The omission of eight sonnets tells the same tale. Among these are one of the most beautiful, ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ No. XVIII, and the twelve-lined lyric numbered CXXVI, which some critics have interpreted as intended by Shakespeare to form the envoy to the sonnets addressed to the man. It is difficult to account for the exclusion of these two poems, and six others (Nos. XIX, XLIII, LVI, LXXV, LXXVI, and XCVI), except on the assumption that Benson’s compiler had not discovered them.
Eighteenth-century editions of the sonnets.
Whatever may have been the source of Benson’s text, his edition of them, although it was not reprinted till 1710, practically superseded Thorpe’s effort for more than a hundred years.¹ The sonnets were ignored altogether in the great editions of Shakespeare which appeared in the early years of the eighteenth century. Neither Nicholas Rowe, nor Pope, nor Theobald, nor Hanmer, nor Warburton, nor Capell, nor Dr. Johnson, included them in their respective collections of Shakespeare’s plays. None of these editors, save Capell, showed any sign of acquaintance with them. In collections of ‘Shakespeare’s Poems’ forming supplementary volumes to Rowe’s and Pope’s edition of the plays,
¹ In 1654 there was issued a catalogue of books *printed for Humphrey Moseley* and are to be sold at his Shop at the Prince’s Armes in St. Paule’s Churchyard’. Among the books noticed is ‘Poems written by Mr. William Shakespeare Gent.’ The entry suggests that Moseley caused to be printed and published a new issue of Shakespeare’s poems, but there is no trace of any such edition.
- text_extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T06:18:47.522Z
- text_extracted_by
- ocr-service
- text_has_content
- true
- text_images_count
- 0
- text_source
- ocr
- uploaded
- true
- width
- 1750