The Passionate Pilgrime By W. Shakespeare. At London Printed for W. Iaggard, and are to be sold by W. Leake, at the Greyhound in Paules Churchyard. 1599," 16mo. 30 leaves. The title-page first given to the edition of 1612 ran thus: "The Passionate Pilgrime. Or Certaine Amorous Sonnets, betweene Venus and Adonis, newly corrected and augmented. By W. Shakespere. The third Edition. Where-vnto is newly added two Loue-Epistles, the first from Paris to Hellen, and Hellen's answere backe againe to Paris. Printed by W. Iaggard. 1612." The title-page substituted for the above differs in no other respect but in the omission of “By W. Shakespere." INTRODUCTION. In the following pages we have reprinted "The Passionate Pilgrim," 1599, as it came from the press of W. Jaggard', with the exception only of the orthography. Malone omitted several portions of it; some because they were substantially repetitions of poems contained elsewhere, and others because they appeared to have been improperly assigned to Shakespeare: one piece, the last in the tract, is not inserted at all in Boswell's edition, although Malone reprinted it in 1780, and no reason is assigned for rejecting it. We have given the whole, and in our notes we have stated the particular circumstances belonging to such pieces, as there is reason to believe did not come from the pen of our great dramatist. "The Passionate Pilgrim" was reprinted by W. Jaggard, in 1612, with additions, and the facts attending the publication of the two impressions are peculiar. In 1598, Richard Barnfield put his name to a small collection of productions in verse, entitled "The Encomion of Lady Pecunia,” which contained more than one poem attributed to Shakespeare in "The Passionate Pilgrim," 1599: the first was printed by John, and the last by William Jaggard. Boswell suggests, that John Jaggard in 1598 might have stolen Shakespeare's verses and attributed them to Barnfield; but the answer to this supposition is two-fold-first, that Barnfield formally, and in his own name, printed them as his in 1598; and next, that he reprinted them under the same circumstances in 1605, notwithstanding they had been in the mean time assigned to Shakespeare'. The truth seems to be that W. Jaggard took them 1 It professes to be "printed for W. Jaggard," but he was probably the typographer, and W. Leake the bookseller. Leake published an edition of "Venus and Adonis" in 1602, contrary to what is stated on p. 369. 2 This edition of Barnfield's work was unknown to bibliographers until a copy of it was met with in the library of Lord Francis Egerton. See the Bridgwater Catalogue, 1837, p. 21. It was not a mere reprint of the edition of 1598, but it was really "newly corrected and enlarged " by the author, as stated on the title-page; so that Barnfield's attention was particularly directed to the contents of his small volume, and perhaps to the manner in which part of them had been stolen by W. Jaggard in 1599. It is to be remarked also that John Jaggard in 1599 from Barnfield's publication, printed by John Jaggard in 1598. In 1612 W. Jaggard went even more boldly to work; for in the impression of "The Passionate Pilgrim" of that year', he not only repeated Barnfield's poems of 1598, but included two of Ovid's Epistles, which had been translated by Thomas Heywood, and printed by him with his name in his "Troja Britannica,” 1609. The epistles were made, with some little ambiguity, to appear, in "The Passionate Pilgrim" of 1612, to have been also the work of Shakespeare. When, therefore, Heywood published his next work in 1612, he exposed the wrong that had been thus done to him, and claimed the performances as his own. (See the Reprint of "The Apology for Actors," by the Shakespeare Society, pp. 62 and 66.) He seems also to have taken steps against W. Jaggard; for the latter cancelled the title-page of "The Passionate Pilgrim,” 1612, which contained the name of Shakespeare, and substituted another without any name, so far discrediting Shakespeare's right to any of the poems the work contained, although some were his beyond all dispute. Malone's copy in the Bodleian Library has both title-pages. To what extent, therefore, we may accept W. Jaggard's assertion of the authorship of Shakespeare of the poems in "The Passionate Pilgrim," is a question of some difficulty. Two Sonnets, with which the little volume opens, are contained (with variations, on was not concerned in the second edition of Barnfield's "Encomion," as he had been in the first: it was printed by W. I. (probably W. Iaggard, the very person who had committed the theft in 1599) and it was "to be sold by Iohn Hodgets." Both editions contain the tribute to Spenser, Daniel, Drayton, and Shakespeare: the lines to the latter would hardly have been reprinted in 1605, if Barnfield had supposed that Shakespeare had in any way given his sanction to the transference of two pieces from the " Encomion" to "The Passionate Pilgrim." 3 On the title-page it is called "the third edition," but no second edition is known, although it is very probable that it had been republished in the interval between 1599 and 1612. Nicholas Breton seems to have written his "Passionate Shepherd," 1604, in imitation of the title and of the style of some of the poems in the "Passionate Pilgrim." The only known copy of this production is in private hands. It is very possible that a second edition of "The Passionate Pilgrim " (that of 1612, as we have observed, is called "the third impression") came out about 1604, and that on this account Breton was led to imitate the title, and the form of verse of some of the pieces in it. As "The Passionate Shepherd " is a great curiosity, not being even mentioned by bibliographers, and as it is thus connected with the name and works of Shakespeare, an exact copy of the titlepage may be acceptable : "The Passionate Shepheard, or The Shepheardes Loue: set downe in Passions to his Shepheardesse Aglaia. With many excellent conceited Poems and pleasant Sonnets, fit for young heads to passe away idle houres. London Imprinted by E. Allde for Iohn Tappe, and are to bee solde at his Shop, at the Tower-Hill, neere the Bul-warke Gate. 1604." 4to. |