- description
- # The Emendations of 1594
## Overview
This section, titled "The emendations of 1594," is part of a larger collection of facsimile editions of poetry, specifically within the work "[Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, Sonnets, and Pericles](arke:01KG6S3KNZT62WVVW4VT384KPF)". It was extracted from the file "[pdf-01KG6Q7Q25RHMFT3SJXPV18VFF.txt](arke:01KG6S2X2EBB305ENM00G16GWA)" and belongs to the collection "[PDF Workflow Main Test 2026-01-30T00:26:53](arke:01KG6NWQ2H2K4PGG7H4ZHYCZ3Y)". The section details textual variations and emendations found in editions of Venus and Adonis, with a particular focus on the 1594 edition.
## Context
This section discusses the textual history of Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis," highlighting the significance of the 1600 Leake edition as a precursor to later textual scholarship. It notes that while many subsequent editions introduced minor typographical changes, the core textual variations of significance were established earlier. The text also references the efforts of scholars like Malone in the 19th century to restore the poem's original form by recovering the *editio princeps*.
## Contents
The primary content of this section details specific textual emendations found in the 1594 edition of "Venus and Adonis," as observed in the 1600 Leake edition. It lists numerous word changes, such as "smothers" for "murthers," "ill-natur'd" for "ill-nurtur'd," and "kisses" for "touches." The section also points out a more substantial revision in line 574, where the original reading "What though the rose have prickles, yet tis pluckt?" was altered to "What though the rose have pricks? yet is it pluck’d." This suggests the involvement of an editor, albeit one described as "clumsy." The text concludes by noting that while later editions continued to introduce minor textual alterations, the significant emendations were largely established by the late 16th century.
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- The Emendations of 1594
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- The emendations of 1594.
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VENUS AND ADONIS 53
Leake’s edition of 1600 has some textual importance, which gives it a better title to rank with its predecessors of 1593 and 1594 than with any other issue. It contains a few typographical variations which have some intrinsic interest. The more notable changes are:—‘smothers’ (54) for ‘murthers’; ‘ill-natur’d’ (134) for ‘ill-nurtur’d’; ‘the parke’ (231) for ‘a parke’; ‘kisses’ (519) for ‘touches’; ‘sight’ (746) for ‘fight’; ‘imperial’ (748) for ‘impartial’; ‘their obscuritie’ (760) for ‘darke obscuritie’; ‘Bids the leave quaking, wills them feare no more’ (899) for ‘Bids them leave quaking, bids them feare no more’; ‘imperial’ (996) for ‘imperious’; ‘and shall be blasted’ (1142) for ‘bud, and be blasted’; ‘sharpest sight’ (1144) for ‘truest sight’; ‘seemes most’ (1157) for ‘showes most’. That the hand of an editor, albeit of a clumsy kind, is responsible for these alterations may be deduced from the somewhat complete reconstruction of line 574 by the same pen. The old reading, ‘What though the rose have prickles, yet tis pluckt?’ is replaced by ‘What though the rose have pricks? yet is it pluck’d.’
The further emendations which distinguish subsequent editions are comparatively unimportant. But typographical alterations, mostly of a minute kind, never ceased. By the time the text reached editors and printers of the eighteenth century it had gradually travelled far from that of the original issue, all copies of which for a long time disappeared. At the beginning of the nineteenth century Malone recovered a copy of the *editio princeps*, and with its aid he restored the text to its primordial shape.
- title
- The emendations of 1594.