Properties
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- 9832
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T06:24:48.293Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 9789
- text
- *Sings this to thee thou single wilt proue none.*
The superior punctuation of the last line of the manuscript is noticeable.
In like manner, *Sonnets LXXI and XXXII*, which, closely connected in subject, meditate on the likelihood that the poet will die before his friend, appear as independent poems in a manuscript commonplace book of poetry apparently kept by an Oxford student about 1633.¹
² This MS., formerly belonging to Mr. J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, is now in the library of Mr. Marsden J. Perry, of Providence, U.S.A. Mr. Winship,
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54
The edition of 1640.
# SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE
No less than thirty-one years elapsed before a second publisher repeated Thorpe's experiment. In 1640, John Benson, a publisher of St. Dunstan's Churchyard, Fleet Street, where Jaggard's memory still lingered, brought out a volume called ‘Poems written by Wil. Shakespeare Gent.’ It is a miscellaneous collection of verse by several hands,
of Providence, has kindly sent me a transcript. The text of the two sonnets only differs from Thorpe's edition in points of spelling and in the substitution of ‘me’ for ‘you’ in LXXI. 8, and of ‘loue’ for ‘birth’ in XXXII. 11. Thorpe's readings are the better. In a volume of MS. poetry now belonging to Mr. Bertram, of London, the well-known critic and bookseller, and dating about 1630, Sonnet II appears as a separate poem with a distinct title, which is not met with elsewhere. The textual variations from Thorpe's text induce Mr. Dobell to regard it as a transcript of a copy which was not accessible to Thorpe. Most of the poems in Mr. Dobell's manuscript volume bear their writers' names. But this sonnet is unsigned, and the copyist was in apparent ignorance that it was Shakespeare's work. In another similar MS. collection of poetry, which belonged to Mr. Dobell, and is now the property of an American collector, there figured several fragmentary excerpts from Shakespeare's sonnets in an order which is found nowhere else. The handwriting is of the early part of the seventeenth century, and shows slight variations in point of words, spelling, and punctuation from the printed text. In two instances distinct titles are given to the poems. One of these transcripts, headed ‘Cruel’, runs thus:—
Thou, Contracted to thine owne bright eys,
Feedst thy light flame with selfe substantial fewell,
Makeing a famine, where aboundance lies,
Thy selfe thy foe to thy sweet selfe too cruell.
Thou that art now the worlds fresh ornament,
And onely herauld to ye Gaudy spring,
Within thine owne Bud Buriest thy Contend,
And tender Churle makes wast in niggarding.
Pitty ye world or Els this Glutton bee
To Eat ye worlds due by ye world & thee.
When forty winters shall besiege thy brow
And Dig deep tranches in thy beautyes field,
Thy youths Proud lluery so gazd on now
Wil be A totterd weed of small worth held.
The Canker bloomes haue ful as deepe a dy
As ye Perfumed tincture of ye roses.
The first ten lines correspond with Sonnet I. 5–14, the next four with Sonnet II. 1–4, and the last two with Sonnet LIV. 5–6.
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SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE 55
but its main contents are 146 of Shakespeare’s sonnets interspersed with all the poems of Jaggard’s *Passionate Pilgrim* in the third edition of 1612, and further pieces by Heywood and others. A short appendix presents ‘an addition of some excellent poems . . . by other gentlemen’ which are all avowedly the composition of other pens.
There is no notice in the Stationers’ Register of the formal assignment of the copyright of either Shakespeare’s *Sonnets* or Jaggard’s *Passionate Pilgrim* to Benson. But Benson duly obtained a licence on November 4, 1639, for the publication of the appendix to his volume. The following entry appears in the Stationers’ Company’s Register under that date:—
- title
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