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SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE
when he designated Marlowe ‘that pure elemental wit’, and a good deal of dry humour in offering to ‘his kind and true friend’, Blount, ‘some few instructions’ whereby he might accommodate himself to the unaccustomed rôle of patron. Thorpe gives a sarcastic description of a typical patron. ‘When I bring you the book,’ he advises Blount, ‘take physic and keep state. Assign me a time by your man to come again. . . . Censure scornfully enough and somewhat like a traveller. Commend nothing lest you discredit your (that which you would seem to have) judgment. . . . One special virtue in our patrons of these days I have promised myself you shall fit excellently, which is to give nothing.’ Finally Thorpe, adopting the conventional tone, challenges his patron’s love ‘both in this and, I hope, many more succeeding offices’.
Three years later he was able to place his own name on the title-page of two humbler literary prizes—each an insignificant pamphlet on current events. Thenceforth for a dozen years his name reappeared annually on one, two, or three volumes. After 1614 his operations were few and far between, and they ceased altogether in 1624. He seems to have ended his days in poverty, and has been identified with the Thomas Thorpe who was granted an alms-room in the hospital of Ewelme, Oxfordshire, on December 3, 1635.
Character of his business.
Thorpe was associated with the publication of twenty-nine volumes in all, including Marlowe’s Lucan; but in almost all his operations his personal energies were confined, as in his initial enterprise, to procuring the manuscript. For a short period in 1608 he occupied a shop, the Tiger’s Head, in St. Paul’s Churchyard, and the fact was duly announced on the title-pages of three publications which he issued in that year. But his other undertakings were described on their
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