Part 29 (2/2)

Character of his business

Thorpe was associated with the publication of twenty-nine volu Marlowe's 'Lucan;' but in alies were confined, as in his initial enterprise, to procuring the manuscript For a short period in 1608 he occupied a shop, The Tiger's Head, in St Paul's Churchyard, and the fact was duly announced on the title-pages of three publications which he issued in that year {395c} But his other undertakings were described on their title-pages as printed for him by one stationer and sold for him by another; and when any address found mention at all, it was the shopkeeper's address, and not his own He never enjoyed in per his 'copy' at a press of his own, or selling books on pre pursued in this homeless fashi+on the well-defined profession of procurer of er period than any other known an their career in that capacity, all except Thorpe, as far as they can be traced, either developed into printers or booksellers, or, failing in that, betook themselves to other trades

Very few of his wares does Thorpe appear to have procured direct from the authors It is true that between 1605 and 1611 there were issued under his auspices so, besides Shakespeare's 'Sonnets,' three plays by Chapman, {395d} four works of Ben Jonson, and Coryat's 'Odcoin attached to most of his literary properties He doubtless owed thes with a scrivener's hireling; and the transaction was not one of which the author had cognisance

Shakespeare's sufferings at publishers' hands

It is quite plain that no negotiation with the author preceded the formation of Thorpe's resolve to publish for the first time Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' in 1609 Had Shakespeare associated himself with the enterprise, the world would fortunately have been spared Thorpe's dedication to 'Mr W H' T T's' place would have been filled by 'W

S' The whole transaction was in Thorpe's vein Shakespeare's 'Sonnets'

had been already circulating in manuscript for eleven years; only two had as yet been printed, and those were issued by the pirate publisher, Williaard, in the fraudulently christened volurim, by William Shakespeare,' in 1599 Shakespeare, except in the case of his two narrative poe the publication of his works Of the sixteen plays of his that were published in his lifetime, not one was printed with his sanction He made no audible protest when seven contemptible dramas in which he had no hand were published with his nae while his faht With only one publisher of his time, Richard Field, his fellonsman, as responsible for the issue of 'Venus' and 'Lucrece,' is it likely that he ca to show that he maintained relations with Field after the publication of 'Lucrece' in 1594

In fitting accord with the circumstance that the publication of the 'Sonnets' was a tradeshts, Thorpe in both the entry of the book in the 'Stationers'

Registers' and on its title-page brusquely designated it 'Shakespeares Sonnets,' instead of following theauthors, viz 'Sonnets by William Shakespeare'

The use of initials in dedications of Elizabethan and Jacobean books

In fra the dedication Thorpe followed established precedent

Initials run riot over Elizabethan and Jacobean books Printers and publishers, authors and contributors of prefatory co theured under initials in dedications somewhat less frequently than other sharers in the book's production But the conditions deter the employment of initials in that relation ell defined The enised mark of a close friendshi+p or intin that the patron's fame was limited to a small circle, and that the revelation of his full name was not a matter of interest to a wide public Such are the dominant notes of almost all the extant dedications in which the patron is addressed by his initials In 1598 Sa of Christ' to his 'deare affected _friend_ Maister H W, gentleman' An edition of Robert Southwell's 'Short Rule of Life' which appeared in the same year bore a dedication addressed 'to entleman' The poet Richard Barnfield also in the sa sonnet in his 'Poems in divers Humours' to his '_friend_ Maister R L' In 1617 Dunstan Gale dedicated a poem, 'Pyramus and Thisbe,' to the 'worshi+pfull his verie _friend_ D [_ie_ Dr] B H {397}

Frequency of wishes for 'happiness' and 'eternity' in dedicatory greetings

There was nothing exceptional in the words of greeting which Thorpe addressed to his patron 'Mr W H' They followed a widely adopted formula Dedications of the time usually consisted of two distinct parts There was a dedicatory epistle, which th, in either verse or prose, on the subject of the book and the writer's relations with his patron But there was usually, in addition, a prelile sentence as Thorpe displayed on the first page of his edition of Shakespeare's sonnets In that preliminary sentence the dedicator habitually 'wisheth' his patron one orlife, happiness, and eternity 'Al perseverance with soules happiness' Thoe of his 'Passionate Poet' in 1601 'All happines' is the greeting of Thomas Watson, the sonnetteer, to his patron, the Earl of Oxford, on the threshold of Watson's 'Passionate Century of Love' There is hardly a book published by Robert Greene between 1580 and 1592 that does not open with an adjuration before the dedicatory epistle in the form: 'To --- --- Robert Greene wisheth increase of honour with the full fruition of perfect felicity'

Thorpe in Shakespeare's sonnets left the salutation to stand alone, and omitted the supplement of a dedicatory epistle; but this, too, was not unusual There exists an abundance of contemporary examples of the dedicatory salutation without the sequel of the dedicatory epistle

Edmund Spenser's dedication of the 'Faerie Queene' to Elizabeth consists solely of the salutation in the form of an assurance that the writer 'consecrates these his labours to live with the eternitie of her fame'

Michael Drayton both in his 'Idea, The Shepheard's Garland' (1593), and in his 'Poemes Lyrick and Pastorall' (1609), confined his address to his patron to a single sentence of salutation {398} Richard Brathwaite in 1611 exclusively saluted the patron of his 'Golden Fleece' with 'the continuance of God's tes in this life, with the crowne of ireeted the patron of his 'Sonnets and Madrigals' in the same year with 'the prosperitie of times successe in this life, with the reward of eternitie in the world to come' It is 'happiness' and 'eternity,' or an equivalent paraphrase, that had the widest vogue aood wishes hich the dedicator in the early years of the seventeenth century besought his patron's favour on the first page of his book But Thorpe was too self-assertive to be a slavish imitator His addiction to bombast and his elementary appreciation of literature reco in his dedicatory salutation soested by his author's writing {399a} In his dedication of the 'Sonnets' to 'Mr W

H' he grafted on the common formula a reference to the immortality which Shakespeare, after the habit of contemporary sonnetteers, proes that succeeded With characteristic atory phrase, 'pro poet,' to the conventional dedicatory wish for his patron's 'all happiness' and 'eternitie' {399b}

Five dedications by Thorpe

Thorpe, as far as is known, penned only one dedication before that to Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' His dedicatory experience was previously limited to the inscription of Marlowe's 'Lucan' in 1600 to Blount, his friend in the trade Three dedications by Thorpe survive of a date subsequent to the issue of the 'Sonnets' One of these is addressed to John Florio, and the other two to the Earl of Pembroke {400a} But these three dedications all prefaced volumes of translations by one John Healey, whose manuscripts had becoinia, where he died shortly after landing Thorpe chose, he tells us, Florio and the Earl of Pembroke as patrons of Healey's unprinted manuscripts because they had been patrons of Healey before his expatriation and death There is evidence to prove that in choosing a patron for the 'Sonnets,' and penning a dedication for the second time, he pursued the exact procedure that he had followed--deliberately and for reasons that he fully stated--in his first and only preceding dedicatory venture He chose his patron from the circle of his trade associates, and it must have been because his patron was a personal friend that he addressed hins dedication of Southwell's poems in 1606

Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' is not the only volues of which the initials 'W H' play a prominent part

In 1606 one who concealed himself under the same letters performed for 'A Foure-fould Meditation' (a collection of pious poems which the Jesuit Robert Southwell left in manuscript at his death) the identical service that Thorpe performed for Marlowe's 'Lucan' in 1600, and for Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' in 1609 In 1606 Southwell's manuscript fell into the hands of this 'W H,' and he published it through the agency of the printer, George Eld, and of an insignificant bookseller, Francis Burton {400b} 'W H,' in his capacity of owner, supplied the dedication with his own pen under his initials Of the Jesuit's newly recovered poe have they lien hidden in obscuritie, and haply had never scene the light, had not aseriously perused theiously affected, should be deprived of so great a co unto them' 'W H'

chose as patron of his venture one Mathew Saunders, Esq, and to the dedicatory epistle prefixed a conventional salutation wishi+ng Saunders long life and prosperity The greeting was printed in large and bold type thus:--