- description
- # VI
## Overview
This is a section titled "VI" from a text discussing editions of Shakespeare's poem *Lucrece*. It covers the eight known editions published between 1594 and 1655. The section spans lines 3780-3801 of the source file [pdf-01KG6Q7Q25RHMFT3SJXPV18VFF.txt](arke:01KG6S2X2EBB305ENM00G16GWA).
## Context
This section is part of a larger section titled "The alterations of 1616." [01KG6S5J9P132XGSNDYJ7XPN8Z], which itself is part of a larger chapter. The document it comes from is part of the [PDF Workflow Main Test 2026-01-30T00:26:53](arke:01KG6NWQ2H2K4PGG7H4ZHYCZ3Y) collection. It follows the section "The editions of 1624, 1632, 1655, and 1707." [01KG6S6KNXVZCWMMDYAB67PXEQ].
## Contents
The section details the publication history of *Lucrece*, noting that four editions were published during Shakespeare's lifetime (1594, 1598, 1600, and 1607), with subsequent editions in 1616, 1621, 1632, and 1655. It mentions the scarcity of extant copies and the possibility of lost editions, referencing Malone's mention of editions from 1596 and 1602 that have not been found. The text notes that only single copies survive of two of the known editions, and that the original edition has more accessible copies than the first seven editions. It also provides information on the number of copies in Great Britain and America, including their locations in public institutions and private hands. The section references the sale of an unspecified edition of *Lucrece* in 1680 for three shillings and the highest price fetched by the first edition (£200 at the Perkins sale in 1889).
- description_generated_at
- 2026-01-30T06:25:54.346Z
- description_model
- gemini-2.5-flash-lite
- description_title
- VI
- end_line
- 3801
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T06:24:43.553Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 3780
- text
- ## VI
EIGHT editions of *Lucrece* are known to have been published between its first issue in 1594 and 1655, when the last of the seventeenth-century editions appeared. Four editions came out in Shakespeare’s lifetime respectively, in 1594, 1598, 1600, and 1607. A fifth followed in 1616, the year of his death, and others in 1621, 1632, and 1655. The number of extant copies of all these early editions are very few, and it is possible that there were other editions, of which every exemplar has disappeared. Malone mentions editions of 1596 and 1602, but no editions dated in either of these years have come to light.² Two of the known editions
¹ ‘woman’ for ‘workman’; L 1736, ‘in pure Revenge’ for ‘in poor revenge’. The substitution of ‘foul lust’ (L 684) for ‘prone lust’ and of ‘peal’d’ for ‘plld’ (in the sense of ‘peeled’) in lines 1167 and 1169 were attempts to make difficult words clear to eighteenth-century readers.
¹ See *Venus and Adonis*, Introduction, pp. 71–2.
² An edition which was once in the possession of Halliwell-Phillipps lacked a title-page and was at one time declared by him to belong to the year 1610, but this is probably a copy of the edition of 1632 (see No. XXIX *infra*).
<!-- [Page 177](arke:01KG6QCD0R54GFPPB0E3AQ6GJX) -->
38
LUCRECE
only survive in single copies. It is curious to note that a larger number of copies are accessible of the original edition than of any other of the first seven. As many as ten are now traceable. Several of these have been recovered recently. Thomas Grenville asserted some sixty years ago that only three were known. George Daniel, Frederick Locker Lampson, and other collectors of the last half-century raised their estimate to five. That number must now be doubled.
It is likely enough that of all the editions more copies will be found hereafter. At present all the known copies of the first seven editions (excluding fragments) number no more than thirty. The eighth edition stands in a somewhat different position. Some twenty copies seem traceable, but of these only six contain the rare frontispiece and are perfect, two of these being in Great Britain and the rest in America. Of the thirty copies of the first seven editions, twenty are now in Great Britain, nine are in America, and one, which has lately changed hands, is not at the moment located. Of the twenty British copies, fifteen are in public institutions,—five being in the British Museum, five in the Bodleian Library, two in the Capell Collection of Trinity College, Cambridge, one in the University Library, Edinburgh, one at Sion College, London, and one at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Five are in the hands of English private owners. Of the nine American copies, one is in a public institution—the Lenox Library, New York—and eight are in private hands.¹
¹ A copy of an unspecified edition of *Lucrece*, sold with twenty-two other pieces, brought in 1680, at the sale of Sir Kenelm Digby’s library, three shillings. Comparatively few copies have figured in public auctions of late years. The highest price which the first edition has fetched is £200, which it reached at the Perkins sale in 1889. No copy of that edition has occurred for sale since. Of the later editions, £75—the price paid for a copy of the 1632 edition at the Halliwell-Phillipps sale, also in 1889—is the auction record. For the frontispiece of the 1655 edition as much as £110 was paid at
<!-- [Page 178](arke:01KG6QCD22K58S18RXZV9Q1RMB) -->
LUCRECE 39
- title
- VI