Note. This small pamphlet contained twenty poems, of which five were by Shakespeare. All were doubtless secured more or less dishonestly by Jaggard, and his attribution of the whole work to Shakespeare on the title-page is, as Munro says (Shakspere Allusion Book, i. 63) ‘a testimony to the market-value of Shakspere’s name.’ The book reached a third edition in 1612, and Jaggard had the further effrontery to increase the small size of this by inserting (still under Shakespeare’s name) two long poems by Thomas Heywood, filched from the latter poet’s Britain’s Troy. Heywood protested in the following words, affixed to his Apology for Actors in the same year (1612):
‘Here likewise I must necessarily insert a manifest injury done me in that work,[1] by taking the two Epistles of Paris to Helen and Helen to Paris and printing them in a less volume,[2] under the name of another,[3] which may put the world in opinion I might steal them from him[3]; and he to do himself right hath since published them in his own name: but as I must acknowledge my lines not worthy his patronage, under whom[3] he hath published them, so the author[3] I know much offended with M. Jaggard that (altogether unknown to him) presumed to make so bold with his name.’
XXVIII. FIRST MENTION OF SHAKESPEARE’S NAME IN REGISTER OF THE STATIONERS’ COMPANY (1600).
Transcript of Stationers’ Register (copyright notice of Much Ado about Nothing and 2 Henry IV).
- ↑ I.e. Britain’s Troy, of which Jaggard had also been the publisher.
- ↑ I.e. The Passionate Pilgrim, 3d edition.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 I.e. Shakespeare.
