Beschreibung:

SHAKESPEARE, William (1564-1616). Poems . London: Tho. Cotes, sold by John Benson 1640. 8° (130 x 78mm). (Lacking the engraved portrait, *3-4 and A1, and L2-M4, title soiled, clean tear to *2, A2 with small section torn away causing loss to several lines on verso, versos of some leaves shaved at outer margin affecting initial letter on each line, some soiling and spotting.) Late 19th-century brown morocco (spine rubbed). Proveance : Thomas Jollup 1822 (signature on front blank). FIRST EDITION, second edition of the sonnets, many being run together in order to make them 28 line poems. All are given a title, and most addressed not to a young man but a woman. 'Benson's motive for these revisions was probably less any nervousness about Shakespeare's sexuality than a publisher's desire to bring the poems up to date, and transform the book from an Elizabethan sonnet sequence to a volume of Cavalier love lyrics'. There was no subsequent edition until 1710, published by Jacob Tonson. Although Bernard Lintot produced a competing edition the next year which returned to the 1609 quarto, 'Benson's revision remained the text of the Shakespeare sonnets until late in the 18th century' (see The Sonnets , edited by G. Blakemore Evans, introduction by Stephen Orgel, 2006, pp. 8-10). This copy lacks the portrait, the commendatory poems, the second title and the additional poems after the elegies on Shakespeare, but preserves the full text of the sonnets themselves. Pforzheimer 880; STC 22344.