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- The ownership of the copyright of Shakespeare’s *Venus and Adonis* underwent a third change in the author’s lifetime in the summer of 1596, just two years to a day after Harrison acquired it. Harrison, who was advanced in age, appears to have reorganized his business in that year. He moved from his old premises, the White Greyhound in St. Paul’s Churchyard, to a house, on which he bestowed the same sign, in Paternoster Row, and he made over his former house, with some important items of his stock there, to another prominent stationer, William Leake. On June 25, 1596, the transaction, so far as it bore on Shakespeare’s *Venus and Adonis*, was duly entered in the Stationers’ Company’s Register thus:—
[1596] 25 Iunij.
Assigned ouer vnto him [i.e. William Leake] for his copie from master harrison thelder, in full Court holden this day.
¹ The *Lucrece* pattern of 1594 is more frequently met with than the *Venus* of 1593-4. The *Venus* pattern of 1593-4 appears in Field’s issue in 1596 of Sir John Harington’s *A new discourse of a stale subject called ‘The Metamorphosis of Ajax’*. Of the *Lucrece* pattern, a rough cast figures in Vautrollier’s edition of *Essais of a Prentise*, 1584; a fine impression was set by Field before Puttenham’s *Arte of English Poesie*, 1589, and the first edition of the second volume of Spenser’s *Farrie Queene*, which Field printed in 1596 for William Ponsonby. The general scheme of the device was a crude adaptation of the famous Aldine anchor, entwined with a dolphin. Antoine Tardif, a well-known sixteenth-century printer of Lyons, fashioned a new device of an anchor with a dolphin within a heavily ornamented scroll and bearing the punning motto, *Festina tarde*. The arrangement of Tardif’s device and motto resembles that adopted by Vautrollier (cf. L. C. Silvestre’s *Marques Typographiques*, Paris, 1853-67, No. 509). Vautrollier’s and Field’s motto is common. Spenser, in his *Shepheards Calendar* (1579), adopted as ‘Colin’s embleme’ the Italian words *Anchora Speme* (i.e. Hope the anchor).
² See facsimile on p. 60.
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46 VENUS AND ADONIS
by the said master harrison’s consent. A booke called. Venus and Adonis vjd.
Leake fills an important place in the bibliographical history of Shakespeare’s first poem, although Shakespeare did not presumably concern himself with his intervention. He controlled the publication for a period approaching twenty years—for the rest of Shakespeare’s lifetime and for ten months after the poet’s death. He issued three editions. The first which seems to have come out under his auspices was dated 1599, and was apparently printed for him by Peter Short. Another followed about 1600. In July, 1602, he moved to new premises in St. Paul’s Churchyard—to a building bearing the sign of the Holy Ghost—and before the end of the year he produced a new edition of the poem, on the title-page of which he gave his new address. He now seems to have employed Humphry Lownes to print the book. Other editions may have come from his press, but no copies of them survive.¹ On February 16, 1617, he transferred his chief copyrights, including *Venus and Adonis*, to ‘Master [William] Barrett’, and there the third chapter in the publishing history of the poem closed. Leake’s two successors enjoyed brief reigns. Barrett, the first of them, at once reprinted the volume in 1617, but there his interest in it ended. Three years later, on March 8, 1620, he transferred *Venus and Adonis* and the other property that he had acquired of Leake to John Parker. The title-page of one edition of 1620 bears Parker’s initials (J. P.), and then on May 7, 1626, he made the book over to John Haviland and John Wright.
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