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- The chap-
book syndi-
cate of1 67 J.
48
VENUS AND ADONIS
a London syndicate of chap-book publishers. That curious
venture brings to a close the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
chapter of the bibliopolic history of the poem.
The parent
text.
The mis-
prints of
The text of all the editions is based on the original
version of 1^93. Each issue of subsequent date appears to
reprint one or other of its near predecessors with more or less
fidelity. The alterations are slight, and are due to the
compositors or correctors of the press. Efforts to systematize
the irregular spellings of the first issues and occasionally to
remove grammatical solecisms account for most of the
variations. But in a £qw instances new misprints or un-
warrantable alterations in the order of words are introduced
through the carelessness or presumptuous igTiorance of
compositor or proof-corrector. How trifling and arbitraiy
were the changes in the early editions, may be judged from
the characteristic fact that in the inscription before the
dedicatory epistle ' Wriothesl^^ ' in the 15-93 edition appears
as 'Wriothesly' in the 1^94 edition, and as 'WriotheshV in the
1^9^ and many subsequent editions.
On the whole, Field's text of 1 5-93 may be held to have
adhered to Shakespeare's manuscript with reasonable closeness,
but it presents defects of the sort which confutes the theory
that Shakespeare himself corrected the proofs. The praises
lavished on Field's press-work by Shakespearean critics of the
first edition of J^e/tus and Adonis^ seem on a thorough examina-
tion to require qualification. Misprints are £t^ j they do not
exceed ten in all, and only one of them^ slight enough in itself,
can cause the reader perplexity. In line i8y the present
participle 'souring' is disguised under the unintelligible pair
of words ' so wring '. The nine other misprints are ' Witin '
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