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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:— Entred [to John Benson] for his Copie under the hands of doctor Wykes and Master fferterston warden *An Addicion of some excellent Poems* to Shakespeares *Poems* by other gentlemen. viz. His *mistris drawne.* and *her mind* by Beniamin Johnson. *An Epistle to Beniamin Johnson* by Ffrancis Beaumont. | His *Mistris shade* by R. Herrick. etc. vj. The volume came from the press of Thomas Cotes, the printer who was at the moment the most experienced of any in the trade in the production of Shakespearean literature. Cotes had bought in 1627 and 1630 the large interests in Shakespeare’s plays which had belonged respectively to Isaac Jaggard and Thomas Pavier. He printed the Second Folio of 1632 and a new edition of *Pericles* in 1635. The device which figured on the title-page of his edition of *Pericles*, as well as on that of Pavier’s edition of that play in 1619, reappeared on Benson’s edition of the *Poems* in 1640. But, closely associated as the *Poems* of 1640 were, through the printer Cotes, with the current reissues of Benson’s text. ¹ Arber, iv. 461. <!-- [Page 467](arke:01KG6QHPT5QZETQPJDFGH1JE48) --> 56 SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE Shakespeare’s works, it may be doubted whether Benson depended on Thorpe’s printed volume in his confused impression of the sonnets.¹ The word ‘sonnets’, which loomed so large in Thorpe’s edition, finds no place in Benson’s. In the title-pages, in the head-lines, and in the publisher’s ‘Advertisement’, Benson calls the contents ‘poems’ or ‘lines’. He avows no knowledge of ‘Shakespeares Sonnets’. Thorpe’s dedication to Mr. W. H. is ignored. The order in which Thorpe printed the sonnets is disregarded. Benson presents his ‘poems’ in a wholly different sequence, and denies them unity of meaning. He offers them to his readers as a series of detached compositions. At times he runs more than one together, without break. But on each detachment he bestows an independent descriptive heading. The variations from Thorpe’s text, though not for the most part of great importance, are numerous. The separate titles given by Benson to the detached sonnets represent all the poems save three or four to be addressed to a woman. For example, that which Thorpe numbered CXXII is entitled by Benson, ‘Vpon the receit of a Table Booke from his Mistris,’ and that which Thorpe numbered CXXV is headed, ‘An intreatie for her acceptance.’ A word of the text is occasionally changed in order to bring it into accord with the difference of sex. In Sonnet CIV. 1, Benson reads ‘faire love’ instead of Thorpe’s ‘faire friend’, and in CVIII. 5, ‘sweet love’ for Thorpe’s ‘sweet boy’. ¹ Benson’s preface ‘To the Reader’ is not very clearly phrased, but he gives no indication that the poems, which he now offers his public, were reprinted from any existing publication. His opening words run:— ‘I here presume (under favour) to present to your view, some excellent and sweetely composed Poems, of Master William Shakespeare, Which in themselves appeare of the same purity, [as those which] the Authour himselfe then living avouched; they had not the fortune by reason of their Infancie in his death, to have the due accomodatio of proportionable glory, with the rest <!-- [Page 468](arke:01KG6QHPHNZNYABP8XPN9WF8B7) --> 57 # SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE

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