Venus and Adonis, eighth edition

The title page of the eighth edition of Venus and Adonis claims that it was printed in 1602 by William Leake, who had acquired the rights to Venus and Adonis in 1596. However, it was printed illegally in 1607 by Robert Raworth.

On March 31, 1606, Raworth’s apprenticeship ended and he was “freed,” or permitted to go into business for himself. Although he was not yet entitled to do so under Company regulations, he purchased a printing shop jointly with the compositor John Monger. The Company seems to have turned a blind eye on this misdeed, but it was less forgiving when Leake complained that Raworth had printed Venus and Adonis illegally. A 1607 note in the Register records that Raworth was “supprest for printing anothers Copy.” To make this pirated edition look convincing, Raworth even used Leake’s device, which Leake had lent to Raworth when the latter was printing Henry Smith’s Sermons. Raworth’s career spanned 34 years, but during this time he was repeatedly barred from printing for years at a time because of his frequent involvement with questionable and sometimes illegal printing ventures.

Although Shakespeare is now known primarily as a playwright, in his own time he was equally revered as the author of Venus and Adonis, first printed in 1593, and Lucrece, his two sensationally successful Ovidian narrative poems. Venus and Adonis appeared in more printed editions than any other work of vernacular poetry in his lifetime, and was published twice as many times as his most successful play, Henry IV Part 1. 

The Bodleian owns the only known surviving copy of this edition. It was part of a bequest from seventeenth-century author Robert Burton, who signed the title page and added a note that the poem was “by Wil. Shake-Spear.” Had Burton not donated this copy, it is possible that we would only know about this pirated edition through the Stationers’ Company records.

To learn more about the plot and early printing history of Venus and Adonis, please visit the Folger's Shakespeare's Works; to read a modernized edition of the poem, see the Folger Shakespeare edition.