Benson's Alleged Piracy of
Shake-Speares
Sonnets and of Some of Jonson's Works
by
Josephine Waters
Bennett
When, in 1916, R. M. Alden demonstrated[1] that the edition of Shakespeare's
sonnets
published by John Benson in 1640 was set entirely from the Quarto
published by Thomas Thorpe in 1609, scholars and critics immediately
jumped to the conclusion that Benson's motive for the many changes he
made in the arrangement of the sonnets was to conceal a piracy. Alden
himself says that "As to the remarks in Benson's Preface, they must be
regarded as deliberately intended to deceive; the book was made by
reprinting the contents of three or four volumes [actually two] issued some
thirty years before, but purchasers were to be led to think that the material
in it was new."
[2] Hyder E. Rollins,
in his edition of
The Sonnets published in 1944, says,
"Thorpe,
who owned the copyright of Q, ceased to publish in 1624. Fifteen years
later John Benson pirated Thorpe's text, but took such great pains to
conceal his piracy that he has deceived many modern scholars, just as
apparently he hoodwinked the wardens of the Stationers' Company" (II,
18). Later he adds, "Nobody who studies the
Poems [i.e.
Benson's text] without preconceived opinions can fail to see that it was an
illegal publication. The omission of the word
sonnets and of
the
puzzling dedication to Mr. W. H., as well as the rearrangement of the
sonnets and the
P[
assionate]
P[
ilgrime] poems, was a deliberate, and
evidently
successful, attempt to deceive readers and to hide the theft."
[3] Most recently John Dover Wilson
calls
Benson's edition "a piratical treatment of the
Sonnets," and calls the volume, rather unjustly, "a
heterogeneous collection of poems by other poets including Milton, Ben
Jonson, Herrick, and anyone else from whom the editor thought he could
pilfer without infringing copyright."
[4]
There is cause for any amount of indignation at what Benson did to
Shakespeare's sonnets, but an examination of the situation shows that the
charge of piracy is entirely unwarranted, and this mistake obscures his real
motives and what they show us of the reputation of the sonnets in his day.
It also has an unfortunate effect on the evaluation of his text of some of Ben
Jonson's works, as we shall see.
Benson called his publication, Poems; Written by Wil.
Shake-speare. Gent. Printed at London by Tho.
Cotes, and are to be sold by Iohn Benson dwelling in
St. Dunstans Church-yard. 1640. The
contents of this
volume have been thoroughly analysed,[5] and all we need before us is a
summary.
After preliminaries, including the title page, a portrait, a letter "To the
Reader" signed I. B. (John Benson), and two verse tributes to Shakespeare,
comes the body of the work which consists of all the contents of the 1609
Quarto, except the dedication and eight sonnets which Benson, or his
printer, may have missed in the confusion of the rearrangement.[6] The sonnets have not only been
rearranged, and grouped into "poems" made up of from one to six sonnets,
each poem with a title, but interlarded among
these "poems" is the entire contents of the third edition of
The
Passionate Pilgrime, a miscellany containing twenty-nine poems,
five
of which are Shakespeare's, and the last nine are by ThomasHeywood.
[7] Benson's medley of
lightly disguised sonnets and other lyrics is followed by six more lyrics
from miscellaneous sources, three of which were Shakespeare's and there
was some warrant in
The Passionate Pilgrime for giving the
other three to him.
The next three pieces are: "An Epitaph" signed I. M. for John
Milton, "On the death of William Shakespeare," signed W. B. for William
Basse, and an anonymous "Elegie." This is followed by the word
Finis on sig. L1 verso, and on L2 occurs a new heading, "An
Addition of some Excellent Poems, to those precedent, of Renowned
Shakespeare, by other Gentlemen." There follow fifteen
poems
which Benson took the precaution to copyright. Under the date 4
November, 1639, in the Stationers' Register, is the entry,
"John
Benson. Entred for his Copie under the hands of doctor Wykes and Master
ffetherston warden An Addicion of some excellent Poems to
Shakespeares Poems by other gentlemen vizt. His
mistris
drawne, and her mind by Beniamin: Johnson.
An
Epistle to Beniamin Johnson by ffrancis Beaumont. His
Mistris
shade. by R; Herrick. &c."[8]
The usual sixpence was paid for this entry, and no more would have
been paid if he had entered "Shakespeares Poems with an Addicion, etc."
The entry does record that he is printing Shakespeare's
Poems.
There was nothing surreptitious about that. The only problem, therefore, is
why he copyrighted (or safeguarded his exclusive right to print) the
"Addicion" but not Shakespeare's Poems, which he featured
in
his title.
Of the two books used to make up this title, The Passionate
Pilgrime had never been entered in the Stationers'
Register and therefore the right to reprint it belonged legally to the
Company of Stationers. William Jaggard had printed three editions, one and
probably two in 1599, and what he labeled "The Third Edition" in 1612.
His printing business, including his copyrights were inherited by his son
Isaac, and on June 4, 1627, Isaac's widow consented to the assignment of
his copyrights to Thomas and Richard Cotes.[9] Thomas Cotes was the printer of
Benson's
edition of Shakespeare's Poems. He had no valid claim to
copyright in The Passionate
Pilgrime, since the Jaggards had none, but he may have
claimed
some interest in it, — may even have supplied the copy for that part
of
Benson's volume in return for the printing contract, the only certainly
profitable part of this publishing venture.
[10] There is some reason to think that
he
supplied part of the preliminary and concluding matter; but before
discussing that we must deal with Thorpe's copyright to the
Sonnets which is the crux of our problem.
Thomas Thorpe, the first publisher of Shake-speares
Sonnets (1609), has also been described as "the pirate of
Shakespeare's sonnets,"[11] but
however he came by his manuscript, he entered it in the Stationers'
Register on May 20, 1609 (Arber, III, 410), just thirty years before
Benson reprinted the Sonnets in his Poems.
Meanwhile, Thorpe had neither reprinted nor recorded a transfer of the
copyright. It is probable that he was dead by 1640, but in any case his
publishing rights had lapsed to the Company.[12] He was fifteen when he was
apprenticed
in 1584, so that he would have been seventy in 1639.[13] But his last recorded publication
was a
second edition of Chapman's Tragedy of Byron in 1625, so
that
by 1640 he was no longer an active member of the Stationers' Company,
and only active members could hold copyright.[14]
There is record of a Thomas Thorpe admitted to an almsroom in the
hospital for indigents at Ewelme in Oxfordshire on December 3,
1635.[15] This hospital was part of the
royal estates,[16] and it seemed
questionable
whether this could be Thomas Thorpe stationer, since the Stationers had
substantial funds for the care of their own members.
[17] However, a recent book, Albert
J.
Loomie's
The Spanish Elizabethans, provides the key to this
puzzle. In his investigations of the affairs of Sir Francis Englefield, he
reports that, in an
inquisition post mortem taken in London
May
27, 1597, Thomas Thorpe "stationer" testified that five months before, he
had been in Spain where "by the meanes of Father Parsons he did ly in the
said Sir Francis Englefield's house in Madrid" three weeks after the death
of Englefield.
[18] This entry throws a
flood of new light on Thomas Thorpe. As a member of the Stationers'
Company he had published nothing between February 4, 1594, when he
was admitted freeman of the Company, and 1600 when he arranged for the
publication of
Lucans First Booke translated line by line, by Chr.
Marlow. He dedicated
this volume "To His Kind and True Friend: Edward Blunt," and there is
reason to believe that Blount had a continuing interest in the
publication.
[19] The testimony of the
inquisition post mortem strongly suggests that Thorpe was a
Catholic and that he was in the employ of the English government. That
would explain why, in his old age, he found asylum in the royal almshouse
at Ewelme. It also suggests why he was Ben Jonson's publisher during the
period when Jonson professed Catholicism. "By the meanes of Father
Parsons," undoubtedly Robert Parsons, the famous Jesuit, opens a wide new
avenue of research and suggests that there is still much to learn about the
first publisher of Shakespeare's sonnets.
However, the concern of this paper is with the second edition. It is
evident that both parts of the body of Benson's volume belonged to the
Stationers, The Passionate Pilgrime because it had never been
"entered," and Shake-speares Sonnets because the copyright
had
been allowed to lapse. Therefore, if the publication cheated anyone, it must
have been the Company. Did Benson, as Rollins says, "hoodwink the
wardens of the Stationers' Company?"
If so he ran a very heavy risk, for in 1637 the Stationers were
subjected to the second "Decree of Starre-Chamber, Concerning Printing,"
which made it mandatory that every book be not only licensed but also
"entered" "upon paine that every Printer offending therein, shall be for euer
hereafter disabled to use or exercise the Art or Mysterie of Printing, and
receive such further punishment, as by this Court or the high Commission
Court . . . shall be thought fitting" (Arber IV, 528-36; Greg, First
Folio, p. 31). No wonder Benson was so careful to enter his
"Addicion." Punishment for
illegal printing fell as heavily on the printer as on the publisher,
[20] and Benson's volume was printed
by
Thomas Cotes, printer of the second Folio (1632) of Shakespeare's plays,
and part owner of copyrights to many of them. In 1639 he not only had a
financial interest in Shakespeare, but he was one of the most substantial
printers of the day. His name occurs in the list of twenty-three named by
the Stationers at the request of the Court of Star Chamber as worthy to be
an authorized printer, and he was so authorized in the decree of 1637
(Arber, IV, 528, and 532, art. XV of the Decree). The fact that Cotes did
the printing makes it highly improbable that there was anything surreptitious
about the 1640
Poems.
Several other members of the Company had financial interest in
Shakespeare. In 1609 Thorpe divided his copies between two booksellers,
William Aspley and John Wright, and both of these men were active in the
Company in 1639 when Benson entered his "Addition" with its mention that
it was an addition to Shakespeare's poems. Aspley seems to have been a
friend of Thorpe's since the Stationers' Register records
several
business arrangements between the two. He held the copyright to two of the
plays,[21] and he was a member of the
Court of Assistants, the inner circle which transacted the business of the
Company, from 1630 to 1640 when he was elected Master.[22] He had served as one of the two
Wardens,
1632-1635. The Wardens were responsible for entries and transfers of
copyrights (see Greg in Greg and Boswell, pp. lxix-lxxvii). It seems more
likely that he supplied Benson with a copy of the Quarto than that he did
not
know what of Shakespeare's Benson was printing.
John Wright was a beginner when he took half of the
Sonnets for sale in 1609,[23] but in 1626 he acquired part title
of
Venus and Adonis with John Haviland (Arber, IV, 160). He
printed the fifteenth edition of this poem in 1636 for Haviland (Rollins,
Poems, p. 378), and the two reentered the poem in 1638
(Arber, IV, 431). Both Wright and Haviland would surely be interested in
knowing just what poems of Shakespeare's Benson was publishing. So
would John Harrison who published the eighth quarto of
Lucrece in 1632 (STC No. 22352). John Smethwick, who
was
master of
the Company in 1639 when Benson made his entry, owned copyright to
four of Shakespeare's plays, including
Hamlet and
Romeo
and Juliet.
[24] Cotes certainly
knew that his press was setting type from
printed copy.
Aspley,
Wright, Haviland, Harrison, and Smethwick would all be interested to
know what poems of Shakespeare's Benson was publishing. No doubt they
did know.
Books the copyright of which had come into the possession of the
Stationers' Company were sometimes licensed for reprinting, a fee being
charged for the benefit of the poor of the Company. In 1636 both Benson
and Cotes experimented with the publication of such books. On August 1,
"John Benson Came this day vnto ye
Cort. and Craved leaue to
Imprint one Impression (here the words "one impression of Latimers
sermons" have been deleted) he giueing such Consideration vpon the
finishing of the said Impression as this Cort should thinke
fitt or usuall
in this kind, wch, the Cort taking into
Consideration hath ordered
that he shall [have] Liberty to Imprint 1500. of the said
bookes
paying therefore vpon the finishing of the Impression such fyne as this
Cort. shall thinke fitt." The marginal notation reads,
"Mr Benson
to print 1500. of the Golden Meane. giuing Consideration to
ye vse of
the Poore" (Jackson, p. 285). The change from Latimer's
Sermons to
The Golden Meane was necessary because Thomas Cotes had
already been granted the privilege of printing one impression of
Latimer's Sermons. At the next meeting of the Court,
September 28, Cotes was "warned to the table" and paid £3/6/6 for the
privilege of reprinting these sermons, as he had been given permission to
do on February 3, 1633 (Jackson, pp. 285, 254). His edition is dated
1635.[25] Benson's edition of
The
Golden Meane has a colophon dated Maii 3, 1638.
Again, on July 27, 1639, "Mr Benson desired leaue
of the
Cort. to print an Impr'ssion of the play called The
Tragedy of Albouine
made by Mr Davenant wch was printed
in Anno 1629. & neuer
entered & therefore in the disposal of this Cort. Vpon
Consideracion
thereof It was ordered that the said Mr Benson should haue
leave to
print an Imprssion of 1500. paying to the poore of this
Company
xls."[26] Benson did not print this
work, probably because the original impression was still not sold out, but
three months later he "entered" the "Addition" to Shakespeare's poems.
Quite possibly
the
Poems were substituted for
Albovine as two
years earlier
The Golden Meane had been substituted for
Latimer's Sermons.
At any rate it is reasonable to assume that proper arrangements had
been made, because in 1639 and 1640 Benson was especially dependent on
his Company for support and protection, and therefore particularly likely
to keep his transactions with them in good order. He was engaged in a
struggle with Thomas Walkley over the publication of Jonson's unpublished
works.
When Ben Jonson died in 1637 he left a substantial number of pieces
unpublished. He apparently made Sir Kenelm Digby his literary executor,
and it is commonly said that Digby edited them, although what Digby said
was that he would publish them,[27]
and what he did was to sell the papers to the publisher, Thomas Walkley
for £40, so Walkley testified.[28]
Walkley had them printed without entering them in the Stationers'
Register. Meanwhile Benson secured copies of some of the pieces
and
promptly entered them. His first publication of any of Jonson's works
appears in the "Addition" to Shakespeare's Poems entered
November 3, 1639. Six weeks later, on December 16, he entered Jonson's
"Execration against Vulcan" and "smaller Epigrams" (Arber IV, 493). Two
months later, February 8, 1640, he entered Jonson's translation of Horace's
Art of Poetry (Arber, IV, 498). Finally, on February 20,
1640,
he entered
Jonson's Masque of the Gypsies.[29] All of these pieces appeared in
1640
printed by J. Okes for John Benson.[30]
Meanwhile, on January 20, 1640, a Bill of Complaint was filed in the
Court of Chancery by Thomas Walkley complaining that Jonson had given
his unpublished works to Sir Kenelm Digby "to dispose thereof at his will
and pleasure," and Digby had sold them to Walkley who, "having procured
license for the printing thereof and having to his great charge caused them
to be printed," before they were "fully perfected, one John Benson &
Andrew Crooke"[31] having obtained
"by some casuall or other indirect meanes false and imperfect Copies of the
said workes did make an Entry in the Hall of the Company of Stationers .
. . ." Walkley, according to his own account of the affair, complained to
one of his Majesties Secretaries of State who granted a warrant "prohibiting
the sayd Benson & Crooke from further printing or publishing the
same
workes or any of them" (Ben Jonson, IX, 98-99). He was
using
the royal authority to defeat the Stationers' right to
grant copyright, and they found a way to deal with him; for the complaint
goes on to report, "But nowe . . . one John Parker a stationer also of
London prtending the said Benson to be greatly indebted
to him and
finding the name of the said Benson to be entred in the hall of the stationers
for the printing & publishing of the said workes and knowing that
diverse
of the said bookes wch yor
Orator [Walkley] had at his owne
proper charge caused to be printed were accordingly printed and ready for
to be published, And knowing also where they were, the said Parker did by
some private practice or agreemt wth
them the said Benson &
Crooke cause the said bookes wch yor
Orator had soe caused
to be printed to be attachd in London as the wares of him the said Benson
at the suite of him the said Parker for a prtended debt
supposed to be
owing to him the said Parker by the said Benson and proceeding thereupon
in the Guildhall London obtayned a Judgemt
therevpon, yor Orator being noe way
privy thereunto or knowing
thereof."
This was no bit of private chicanery, but the might of the City guilds
against the royal authority on the eve of the Civil War. John Parker was a
member of the Court of Assistants of the Stationers' Company, and in July,
1641, he was elected Underwarden. In accordance with custom, he served
as Warden twice (1644 and 1645), and then was elected Master in 1647 and
again in 1648.
[32] As early as 1628/29
Parker and William Aspley had refused to pay their part in a levy of "a
great some of money for his Ma
ties" use, and they were
suspended
from their interest in the English stock and Parker was further deprived of
his "livery." He did not make his peace until January, 1630.
[33] His services as Warden and Master
during
the early years of the Commonwealth indicate where his sympathies
lay.
Walkley, on the other hand, was a Royalist with a long record of
toadying to titles, failing to register his publications, and even
pirating.[34] He continued to publish
for the Cavalier poets, entering (prudently) works of Thomas Carew in
March and June, 1640 (Arber, IV, 504, 514). He also printed two royal
proclamations in 1641, and he persisted in his support of the King even
after Charles I was executed, for on December 1, 1649, a warrant was
issued for his arrest for dispersing scandalous declarations sent from the
King's sons in Jersey (Calendar of State Papers,
Domestic
Series, 1649-50 [1875], p. 557).
Benson's two publications of Jonson's miscellaneous works went on
sale in 1640, while Walkley's printing was delayed until 1641, and then it
was appended, without separate title page or Walkley's name, to the
remaining stock of the second volume of Jonson's Works.[35] The first volume was simply a
reprint of
the Works of 1616 printed by "Richard Bishop and are to be
sold by Andrew Crooke," and the copyright was in order. But the second
volume bore on its title page simply "London, Printed for Richard
Meighen, 1640." This leaf is followed immediately by the title page of the
1631 edition of Bartholomew fayre with the imprint, "I.B. for
Robert Allot. 1631." In
fact, the first 170 pages are the text of the three plays so badly printed in
1631 that the edition was never finished. The sheets had evidently passed
from Allot to Crooke who acquired the business after Allot's death. This
170 pages is followed by what appears to be what Walkley had printed,
beginning with page 1 (sig. Aa), and three more plays, each with a full
page title, but the imprint is simply "Printed M.DC.XL" without the names
of printer and publisher as required by law. Apparently Meighen, an
experienced and reputable member of the Stationers Company, and one of
the syndicate which published the second Folio of Shakespeare, bought
Crooke's part of the old printed sheets (after Crooke had been stopped from
further publication by the royal prohibition described by Walkley) and
Walkley's sheets (impounded by the authority of the Guildhall), bound the
two parts together, added only a general title page and sold this as the
second volume. Possibly Digby had helped in some way,
since Walkley evidently told Humphrey Moseley when he sold his rights to
him in 1658 that Digby was the publisher (See above, note 27).
Jonson's latest editors assume that Walkley published in 1641, but,
while he evidently sold his printed sheets to Meighen, he was still trying to
get a license to publish the "peece of Poetry of Mr Ben:
Johnsons
which cost him 40li" from the licensers of the
commonwealth in 1648,
since the "authority" (royal) which he had in 1640 was "excluded, and
become invalid" (Ben Jonson, IX, 100). Not until September
17, 1658, did he gain entry for his publication in the Stationers'
Register, and then a Salvo iure cuiuscunque was
added
to the entry.[36] Benson must also have
been compensated by Meighen, since his several small pieces were included
in Walkley's text, printed from a different manuscript
(Jonson,
IX, 123-28).
Because Benson's reputation had been blackened by the charge that
he "pirated" Shakespeare's sonnets, the editors of Jonson's
Works accepted Walkley's testimony without investigation,
giving an account of the affair very hostile to Benson, although they
recognize that Benson went to considerable trouble and expense to produce
a good text, of The Gypsies Metamorphosed especially, while
Walkley's text of that masque "is execrable" (Jonson, VII,
541,
542-546, 551-555, 562, and IX, 134-35).
However, if Benson's publication of Shakespeare's sonnets was in no
way illegal, surreptitious, or "pirated," we are left with the question, why
did he omit Thorpe's dedication to "Mr. W. H.," and rearrange both the
Sonnets and the poems from The Passionate
Pilgrime, omitting the word sonnets from his title?
Although Rollins raises this question, he supplied most of the answer in
another connection. He says "it was the usual thing, when an author did not
supervise the printing of his book, for Elizabethan and Jacobean publishers
to edit, title, and arrange poems as they saw fit" (Sonnets, II,
75). The sixth edition of Lucrece (1616) was provided with
a
table of "The Contents" and some marginal guides to several passages; and
the ninth edition (1655) inserts these headings into the text, like chapter
headings, omits Shakespeare's dedication, and adds one by J. Quarles who
dedicates the volume to Mr. Nehemiah Massey (Rollins,
Poems,
pp. 409-412). The first edition of
England's Helicon (1600)
was
dedicated to John Bodenham, but the copyright changed hands in 1613 and
the new owner dedicated the second edition to Lady Elizabeth Cary (Rollins
ed., Cambridge, Mass., 1935, II, 70; and see II, 63 ff. on the liberties
taken with the texts to make all poems pastorals). The change of title, from
Sonnets to
Poems may have been due to the
fact that
the 1640 volume contained not only the sonnets, but "A Lovers Complaint,"
a narrative poem of 329 lines, and 9 poems from
The Passionate
Pilgrime, including some translations from Ovid, which were
certainly not sonnets, and hardly lyrics of any kind.
Although sonnets were not so popular in 1640 as they had been in the
1590s, Benson made no effort to conceal the fact that most of these poems
were sonnets. Of the 72 poems into which he grouped 146 sonnets, many
were single quatorzains. What he did by his rearrangement and titles was
to destroy any resemblance to a long narrative poem of 14-line stanzas,
creating, instead of Thorpe's numbered order, a volume of lyrics of varied
length; and, by intermingling 29 poems from The Passionate
Pilgrime, of varied meters.
In spite of the omission, probably inadvertent, of eight sonnets, the
1640 Poems represents a gathering up of scattered and long
out-of-print poems by and about Shakespeare, such as an admirer might
collect. There has been some effort to secure a complete text, but the
compiler used everything (including many lyrics by other poets) which he
found attributed to Shakespeare in print. He printed as Shakespeare's the
whole of Marlowe's "Come live with me and be my love," Raleigh's
"Reply" and "Another of the Same Nature," because he found in The
Passionate Pilgrime a poem (no. XIX of Rollins' facsimile reprint)
made up of four of Marlowe's six quatrains and one of Raleigh's "Reply."
He took his text from England's Helicon (1600) where the
three
poems appear together (Rollins, Sonnets, II, 21;
Poems, p. 605). Obviously his copy of The Passionate
Pilgrime, like most of the surviving copies, had "by W.
Shakespeare"
printed on the title page.
He also added two songs from the plays. The first, "Take, O take
those lippes away," has only one stanza in Measure for
Measure
but he secured a version which gave two.[37] The second is from As You
Like
It.[38] Between these two he put
"The Phoenix and the Turtle," a lyric attributed to Shakespeare in the
collection of "Poeticall Essaies," appended to Loves
Martyr: or, Rosalins Complaint by Robert Chester, a long obscure
poem published in 1601. Ten years later Matthew Lownes, who had
acquired the unsold sheets, gave the work a new title, The
Anuals [sic] of Great Brittaine, in an effort to sell the
remainder.[39]
The four preliminaries and three closing pieces also indicate a desire
to honor and commemorate Shakespeare, and here Thomas Cotes'
assistance is apparent. There is a frontispiece portrait imitated from the
Droeshout portrait in the Folio, by William Marshall,[40] who also did a portrait of Jonson
for
Benson's duodecimo of that worthy. Under the portrait Marshall has
engraved eight lines, the first six of which are borrowed from Jonson's
tribute to Shakespeare in the Folio.[41]
Next comes Benson's "To the Reader" in which he says (albeit with more
elegance than clarity) that he is publishing some little-known poems
published by Shakespeare in his lifetime, and "you shall finde them
Seren, cleere and eligantly plaine," the ideal for lyrics in
Benson's day, not such "cloudy stuffe as puzzell intellect"! He says also
that he has been "some what solicitus to bring them forth" perfect, and no
doubt he tried
(Reprinted in Rollins Poems, p. 607; Sonnets
II,
23).
Following the "To the Reader" is a three-page poem "Upon Master
William Shakespeare, the Deceased Author, and his Poems," by Leonard
Digges, the step-son of William Russell, the overseer of Shakespeare's will.
Digges had a twenty-line poem in the same meter in the First Folio, and
this longer poem was written for a Folio of the plays since it is entirely
concerned with them. In fact, it is a reply to Jonson's tribute published
there. Jonson contended that "a good poet's made as well as born." Digges
begins, "Poets are borne not made." And where Jonson celebrates
Shakespeare's superiority to the ancients, Digges denies that he owes them
anything, making pointed references to Jonson's borrowings. Where Jonson
compares Shakespeare to Lyly, Marlowe, and Kyd, Digges compares him
to Jonson, taunting Jonson with the lack of popularity of his plays and the
great drawing power of Shakespeare's.[42]
Digges had been dead for five years in 1640, and Jonson had been
dead
for three. Whether this spirited poem was written for the first, or for the
second Folio it was probably among the papers in Cotes' printing house.
The second poem among the preliminaries was written by John Warren for
Benson's volume. It mentions
Jonsonus Virbius, a volume of
tributes to Jonson (1638), in a way which suggests that Warren thought of
Benson's volume as a similar tribute to Shakespeare.
Benson also took from the Folio Milton's "An Epitaph on the
admirable Dramaticke Poet, William Shakespeare," but where it is unsigned
in the second Folio it is here signed "I. M."[43] Likewise, "An Elegie on the death
of
William Shakespeare, who died in Aprill, Anno Dom. 1616," is here signed
"W.B." This famous elegy was printed among John Donne's poems in 1633
but omitted from the volume of 1635.[44] William Basse was still living in
1640 and
the inclusion of his poem in Benson's Poems may have been
arranged by the author. The final elegy is anonymous and is followed by
"Finis."
Benson no doubt hoped to make a little money on this volume, but he
took considerable pains with it, not only by the elaborate (if mistaken)
rearrangement of two neglected volumes of lyrics, but by the additions, and
the various tributes which had come into his possession, some probably
from Cotes, but perhaps others from Aspley, Wright, or some other
acquaintance who had collected some bits of Shakespeariana. The
Poems of 1640 is not a pirated edition of Shake-speares
Sonnets but an edition to rescue them from oblivion, as it did. When
they were reprinted, in 1710 their editor reprinted Benson's text. He had
never heard of Thorpe's Quarto, but that is another story.
Notes
