Part 29 (1/2)

To the same effect are some twenty poems which were published in 1624, just after Southampton's death, in a voluht, shed on the To Captaine and Governour, the right honorable Henrie, Earl of Southa stanza of the first poem by one Francis Beale:

Ye famous poets of the southern isle, Strain forth the raptures of your tragic muse, And with your Laureate pens coreat Lord: peruse His globe of worth, and eke his virtues brave, Like learned Maroes at Mecaenas' grave

V--THE TRUE HISTORY OF THOMAS THORPE AND 'MR W H'

The publication of the sonnets in 1609

In 1598 Francis Meres enuar'd sonnets a his private friends' None of Shakespeare's sonnets are known to have been in print when Meres wrote, but they were doubtless in circulation in manuscript In 1599 two of them were printed for the first ti pages of the first edition of 'The Passionate Pilgriar, a publisher of small account, obtained a license for the publication of a work bearing the title, 'A Booke called Amours by J D, with certein other Sonnetes by W S' No book answering this description is extant In any case it is doubtful if Edgar's venture concerned Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' It is more probable that his 'W S' was William Smith, who had published a collection of sonnets entitled 'Chloris' in 1596 {390} On May 20, 1609, a license for the publication of Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' was granted by the Stationers'

Company to a publisher named Thomas Thorpe, and shortly afterwards the complete collection as they have reached us was published by Thorpe for the first time To the volu terms:

TO THE ONLIE BEGETTER OF THESE INSUING SONNETS MR W H, ALL HAPPINESSE AND THAT ETERNITIE PROMISED BY OUR EVER-LIVING POET WISHETH THE WELL-WIshi+NG ADVENTURER IN SETTING FORTH

T T

The words are fantastically arranged In ordinary gra adventurer in setting forth [_ie_ the publisher] T[hoetter of these ensuing sonnets, all happiness and that eternity pro poet'

Publishers' dedication

Few books of the sixteenth or seventeenth century were ushered into the world without a dedication In most cases it was the work of the author, but numerous volumes, besides Shakespeare's 'Sonnets,' are extant in which the publisher (and not the author) fills the role of dedicator

The cause of the substitution is not far to seek The signing of the dedication was an assertion of full and responsible ownershi+p in the publication, and the publisher in Shakespeare's lifetime was the full and responsible owner of a publication quite as often as the author The ht had not yet been evolved Whoever in the sixteenth or early seventeenth century was in actual possession of a manuscript was for practical purposes its full and responsible owner

Literary work largely circulated in manuscript {391} Scrivenerswritten copies, and an enterprising publisher hadthe owner of a popular book without the author's sanction or knowledge When a volun of Elizabeth or James I was published independently of the author, the publisher exercised unchallenged all the owner's rights, not the least valued of which was that of choosing the patron of the enterprise, and of penning the dedicatory coht speciously justify the publisher's appearance in the guise of a dedicator In the case of a posthumous book it sometimes happened that the author's friends renounced ownershi+p or neglected to assert it In other instances, the absence of an author froht throw on the publisher the task of supplying the dedication without exposing hie of sharp practice But as a rule one of only two inferences is possible when a publisher's naured at the foot of a dedicatory epistle: either the author was ignorant of the publisher's design, or he had refused to countenance it, and was openly defied In the case of Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' it may safely be assumed that Shakespeare received no notice of Thorpe's intention of publishi+ng the work, and that it ing to the author's ignorance of the design that the dedication was co adventurer in setting forth'

But whether author or publisher chose the patron of his wares, the choice was determined by much the sa transactions between literary patron and _protege_

Publisher, like author, commonly chose as patron a ht be expected to acknowledge the compliment either by pecuniary reward or by friendly advertisement of the voluhtly extending the field of choice, selected a personal friend or mercantile acquaintance who had rendered him some service in trade or private life, and was likely to appreciate such general expressions of good will as were the accepted topic of dedications Nothing that was fantastic or mysterious entered into the Elizabethan or the Jacobean publishers' shrewd schemes of business, and it may be asserted with confidence that it was under the everyday prosaic conditions of current literary traffic that the publisher Thorpe selected 'Mr W H' as the patron of the original edition of Shakespeare's 'Sonnets'

Thorpe's early life

A study of Thorpe's character and career clears the point of doubt

Thorpe has been described as a native of Warwickshi+re, Shakespeare's county, and a s He was a native of Barnet in Middlesex, where his father kept an inn, and he hih thirty years' experience of the book trade held his oith difficulty in its hu {393a} At midsummer 1584 he was apprenticed for nine years to a reputable printer and stationer, Richard Watkins {393b} Nearly ten years later he took up the freedom of the Stationers' Company, and was thereby qualified to set up as a publisher on his own account {393c} He was not destitute of a taste for literature; he knew scraps of Latin, and recognised a good manuscript when he saw one But the ranks of London publishers were overcrowded, and such accomplishments as Thorpe possessed were poor compensation for a lack of capital or of fa those already established in the trade {393d} For many years he contented himself with an obscure situation as assistant or clerk to a stationer more favourably placed

His ownershi+p of the manuscript of Marlowe's 'Lucan' His dedicatory address to Edward Blount in 1600

It was as the self-appointed procurer and owner of an unprinted nised role for novices to fill in the book trade of the period--that Thorpe e of literary history In 1600 there fell into his hands in an unexplained manner a written copy of Marlowe's unprinted translation of the first book of 'Lucan' Thorpe confided his good fortune to Edward Blount, then a stationer's assistant like himself, but with better prospects Blount had already achieved a modest success in the salected 'copy' {393e} In 1598 he became proprietor of Marlowe's unfinished and unpublished 'Hero and Leander,' and found a better-equipped friends in the trade both a printer and a publisher for his treasure-trove Blount good-naturedly interested hiood offices that Peter Short undertook to print Thorpe's reed to sell it at his shop in St

Paul's Churchyard As owner of thea patron for the venture and of supplying the dedicatory epistle The patron of his choice was his friend Blount, and he ratitude for the assistance he had just received The style of the dedication was somewhat bonated Marlowe 'that pure ele to 'his kind and true friend' Blount 'soht accommodate himself to the unaccustomed _role_ of patron {394a} For the conventional type of patron Thorpe disavowed respect He preferred to place hioodwill had already stood hi him hereafter

This venture laid the foundation of Thorpe's fortunes Three years later he was able to place his own nae of two hunificant pamphlet on current events {394b} Thenceforth for a dozen years his name reappeared annually on one, two, or three volumes After 1614 his operations were few and far between, and they ceased altogether in 1624 He seems to have ended his days in poverty, and has been identified with the Thoranted an alms-room in the hospital of Ewelme, Oxfordshi+re, on December 3, 1635

{395a}