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- Internal and external evidence alike confute the assertion of the title-page that all the contents of the volume were by Shakespeare. No more than five poems can be ascribed with confidence to his pen: Of the remaining fifteen, five were assigned without controversy to other hands in Shakespeare's lifetime; two were published elsewhere anonymously; and eight, although of uncertain authorship, lack all signs of Shakespeare's workmanship. A study of the facts attending the volume's publication shows, moreover, that it was not designed by Shakespeare, and that in its production he had no hand.
*William Jaggard.*
*The Passionate Pilgrim* owed its origin to the speculative boldness of the publisher, William Jaggard, who, according to the title-page, caused the book to be printed. Jaggard deserves respectful mention by the student of Shakespeare in virtue of the prominent part he took in the publication of the First Folio Edition of Shakespeare's Plays in 1623. He was at the head of the syndicate of stationers who defrayed the cost of that noble undertaking, and at his press the great volume was printed. The enterprise of the First Folio was the closing episode in Jaggard's career. It belonged to the zenith of his prosperity. He died at the moment that the work was completed.¹ *The Passionate Pilgrim* was a somewhat insolent tribute paid by Jaggard to Shakespeare's reputation
¹ Mr. William Jaggard, of Liverpool, who is engaged on a full biography of his namesake, kindly informs me that the Elizabethan publisher's will was dated March 28, 1623, and proved on November 17 following.
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THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM 9
four and twenty years earlier. The publisher had just then begun business for himself, and his prospects were still insecure.
Every detail in the history of the enterprise pertinently illustrates the unscrupulous methods which the customs of the trade encouraged the Elizabethan publisher to pursue. But it is erroneous to assume that it was reckoned by any extensive public opinion of the day personally discreditable in Jaggard to publish under Shakespeare’s name work for which the poet was not responsible. In all that he did Jaggard was justified by precedent, and he secured the countenance and active co-operation of an eminent member of the Stationers’ Company, whose character was deemed irreproachable.
William Jaggard, who was Shakespeare’s junior by some five years, having been born in 1569, enjoyed a good preliminary training as a publisher. His father, John Jaggard, citizen and barber-surgeon of London, died in William’s boyhood, and he and a brother, John, both apprenticed themselves on the same day, September 29, 1584, to two highly reputable printers and publishers, each of whom was in a large way of business and owned as many as three presses.¹ Henry Denham, William’s master, twice Under-Warden of the Stationers’ Company, lived at the sign of the Star in Paternoster Row. John’s master was the veteran Richard Tottel, twice Master of the Stationers’ Company, who won lasting fame at the outset of his career by his production in 1557 of that first anthology of English verse which is commonly known as Tottel’s Miscellany.² Tottel’s
¹ For the details and dates in the career of Jaggard and his brother I am indebted to Mr. Arber’s Transcript of the Stationers’ Registers.
² The full title of this volume, of which The Passionate Pilgrim was a descendant, ran:—“Songes and Sonettes, written by the ryght honorable Lorde Henry Howard, late Earle of Surrey, and other. Apud Richardum Tottel, 1557.” The book reached an eighth edition in 1587.
B
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THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM
place of business was at the sign of the Hand and Star in Fleet Street, within Temple Bar, between the two Temple gates, and there his young apprentice helped him in 1587 to prepare an eighth edition of his popular anthology.
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