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- VENUS
AND
ADONIS
S9IV
The first chapter in the history of the publication of The publica-
tion o'"
poem.
Shakespeare's
Femis and
Adonis
throws
an
interesting sidelight
"°"
°
^
^
on Shakespeare's biography. It brings the poet temporarily
into close association with a fellow townsman of Stratford-on-
Avon, Richard Field, who seems to have been born in the The printer
same year as himself. The fathers of the two men had been p/eid!*^
friends and neighbours at Stratford-on-Avon. Richard Field's
father, Henry Field, was a fairly prosperous tanner. He
died in 1^92, when his neighbour John Shakespeare, the
poet's father, attested in accordance with custom < a trew and
perfecte inventory ' of his goods and chattels. Meanwhile
Richard Field had left Stratford to follow the trade of a
printer in the metropolis of London. On September 29, 1^79,
Richard at the usual age of fifteen was apprenticed to a
London printer and stationer of good repute, George
Bishop.' But it was arranged five weeks later that he should
serve the first six years of his apprenticeship with a singularly
interesting member of the fraternity, Thomas VautroUier, a
Frenchman who had originally come to London as a Hugue-
not refugee, and had established his position by publishing
North's translation of Plutarch's Lives in ij'79, a book which
His song was vvorthie merrit {Shakspeare hee)
Sung the faire blossome, thou the withered treej
Laurell is due to him, his art and wit
Hath purchast it. Cypres thy brow will fit.
It is perhaps worth noting that copies of Barksted's Mirrha and H. A.'s Scourge
of Venus were bound up with copies oi Venus and Adonis {\6i6) and Lucrece
(i6'i5), and of some other early poetical tracts, in a volume, in the library ofThomas Pearson, which fetched £i zs. cd. at the Pearson sale of 1788.
' Besides Richard Field and his brother Jasper, who was apprenticed to
Richard in 15" 91, two other of Shakespeare's Stratford-on-Avon contemporaries
were apprenticed to London printers in the poet's early life, viz. :— Roger, son
of John Lock, a Stratford glover, on Sept. 2, 1577, to Richard Pickering,
citizen and stationer of London, and Allan, son of a Stratford tailor, Thomas
Orrian, to Thomas Fowkes, stationer, on March i, 1585-.
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