Shakespeare, A collection of poems in two volumes, London 1710

SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM

A collection of poems, in two volume; being all the Miscellanies of Mr. William Shakespeare, which were publish' by himself in the year 1609. And now correctly printed from those editions... For Bernard Lintott, [?1709-11]

8vo, 2 volumes in 1, edited by Charles Gildon, engraved frontispiece portrait by G. Van der Gucht, contemporary panelled calf, red edges, covers detached, spotted, a few small burn-holes, covers very worn and rubbed, corners bumped

THE FIRST COMPLETE EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS TO APPEAR AFTER THE ORIGINAL (AND NOW VIRTUALLY UNOBTAINABLE) 1609 EDITION. ESTC notes that volume 1 is a reissue of the [1709?] edition, with cancel title-page and cancel divisional title-pages; as also recorded by Jaggard (p.434). Volume 2 adds the sonnets. The engraved frontispiece by Van der Gucht normally appears in the 1709 Tonson edition of Shakespeare's Works (see below).

The first edition of Shakespeare's sonnets appeared in 1609, followed by a very poorly edited and incomplete collection of the author's poetry by Benson in 1640, with corrupt text. Jacob Tonson and Nicholas Rowe published an edition of Shakespeare's plays in 1709, but this did not include the non-dramatic poetry since he didn't own the copyrights. This was followed by a piratical publication by Edmund Curll which included the poems, but using the very poor Benson text. Lintott's far superior edition, which preceded Curll's by a month, was based upon 1609 text, reinstating eight sonnets omitted by Benson and giving the poems "to the public in a form little altered from the first editions" (Giles E. Dawson, "Four Centuries of Shakespeare Publication", Lawrence, University of Kansas Libraries, 1964). It also collects, for the first time, the longer poems "The Rape of Lucrece" and "Venus and Adonis". Unfortunately Curll's vastly inferior text prevailed for most of the eighteenth-century, until Malone's 1780 edition restored the 1609 original.

LITERATURE:

Jaggard p.434

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