University of Virginia Library

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 Maties" 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