- cid
- bafkreife3gcslj3olw5lexwiuf2naayfuaj3fwzcqv67h5cqtgxgkrqhs4
- content_type
- image/jpeg
- filename
- 06_poems_pericles_facsimiles_1905_oxford_page_0444.jpg
- height
- 2400
- key
- pdf-page-1769752548771-mftuaxnq9t
- ocr_model
- mistral-ocr-latest
- page_number
- 444
- size
- 567143
- text
- SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE 33
John Wright, bookseller.
there that half of Thorpe’s edition of Shakespeare’s *Sonnets* was offered for sale in 1609. Aspley had already speculated in Shakespeare’s work. He and a partner, Andrew Wise, acquired in 1600 copyrights of both the *Second Part of Henry IV* and *Much Ado about Nothing*, and published jointly quarto editions of the two. In the grant to Aspley and his friend of the licence for publication of these two plays, the titles of the books are followed by the words ‘Wrytten by master Shakespere’. There is no earlier entry of the dramatist’s name in the Stationers’ Company Registers. In 1623 Aspley joined the syndicate which William Jaggard inaugurated for printing the First Folio edition of Shakespeare’s plays, and he lived long enough to be a member of the new syndicate which was formed in 1632 to publish the Second Folio. Aspley had business relations with Thorpe, and with Thorpe’s friend Blount, long before the issue of the *Sonnets*, and probably supplied Thorpe with capital.¹
John Wright, the youngest of the associates in the enterprise of the *Sonnets*, had been admitted a freeman *per patrimonium* on June 28, 1602. His business was largely concerned with chap-books and ballads, but he was fortunate enough to acquire a few plays of interest. The most interesting publication in which he took part before the *Sonnets*, was the pre-Shakesperean play on the subject of *Kjng Lear*, the copyright of which he took over from a printer (Simon Stafford) on May 8, 1605, on condition that he employed
¹ On June 23, 1600, Thorpe and Aspley were granted jointly a provisional licence for the publication of ‘A leter written to ye governors and assistantes of ye E[a]st Indian Merchantes in London Concerning the estat[e] of ye e[a]st Indian ilete etc.’ The licence was endorsed: ‘This is to be their copy gettinge aucthority for [it].’ The book was ultimately published by Thorpe, and was the earliest publication on the title-page of which his name figured. A similar provisional licence, granted to the two men on the same day, came to nothing, being afterwards cancelled owing to the official recognition of another publisher’s claim to the copy concerned (cf. Arber’s *Registers*, iii. 37).
E
- text_extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T06:18:30.374Z
- text_extracted_by
- ocr-service
- text_has_content
- true
- text_images_count
- 0
- text_source
- ocr
- uploaded
- true
- width
- 1750