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The rape of Lucrece.
1616

STC 22350, title page

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STC 22350, title page
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Images that are under Folger copyright are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This allows you to use our images without additional permission provided that you cite the Folger Shakespeare Library as the source and you license anything you create using the images under the same or equivalent license. For more information, including permissions beyond the scope of this license, see Permissions. The Folger waives permission fees for non-commercial publication by registered non-profits, including university presses, regardless of the license they use. For images copyrighted by an entity other than the Folger, please contact the copyright holder for permission information.

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Creator: William Shakespeare
Title: The rape of Lucrece. By Mr. William Shakespeare. Newly reuised.
Date: London : Printed by T[homas] S[nodham] for Roger Iackson, and are to be solde at his shop neere the Conduit in Fleet-street, 1616.
Repository: Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC
Call number and opening: STC 22350, title page, sigs. A2r & A3v-A4r
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Item Creator
William Shakespeare
Item Title
The rape of Lucrece. By Mr. William Shakespeare.
Item Date
London : Printed by T[homas] S[nodham] for Roger Iackson, and are to be solde at his shop neere the Conduit in Fleet-street, 1616.
Repository
Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, USA
Call Number
STC 22350, title page

STC 22350, signature A2 recto

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STC 22350, signature A2 recto
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Institution Rights and Document Citation

Terms of use
Images that are under Folger copyright are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This allows you to use our images without additional permission provided that you cite the Folger Shakespeare Library as the source and you license anything you create using the images under the same or equivalent license. For more information, including permissions beyond the scope of this license, see Permissions. The Folger waives permission fees for non-commercial publication by registered non-profits, including university presses, regardless of the license they use. For images copyrighted by an entity other than the Folger, please contact the copyright holder for permission information.

Copy-specific information
Creator: William Shakespeare
Title: The rape of Lucrece. By Mr. William Shakespeare. Newly reuised.
Date: London : Printed by T[homas] S[nodham] for Roger Iackson, and are to be solde at his shop neere the Conduit in Fleet-street, 1616.
Repository: Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC
Call number and opening: STC 22350, title page, sigs. A2r & A3v-A4r
View online bibliographic record

Item Creator
William Shakespeare
Item Title
The rape of Lucrece. By Mr. William Shakespeare.
Item Date
London : Printed by T[homas] S[nodham] for Roger Iackson, and are to be solde at his shop neere the Conduit in Fleet-street, 1616.
Repository
Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, USA
Call Number
STC 22350, sig. A2r

STC 22350, signatures A3 verso & A4 recto

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STC 22350, signatures A3 verso & A4 recto
Click image to enlarge

Institution Rights and Document Citation

Terms of use
Images that are under Folger copyright are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This allows you to use our images without additional permission provided that you cite the Folger Shakespeare Library as the source and you license anything you create using the images under the same or equivalent license. For more information, including permissions beyond the scope of this license, see Permissions. The Folger waives permission fees for non-commercial publication by registered non-profits, including university presses, regardless of the license they use. For images copyrighted by an entity other than the Folger, please contact the copyright holder for permission information.

Copy-specific information
Creator: William Shakespeare
Title: The rape of Lucrece. By Mr. William Shakespeare. Newly reuised.
Date: London : Printed by T[homas] S[nodham] for Roger Iackson, and are to be solde at his shop neere the Conduit in Fleet-street, 1616.
Repository: Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC
Call number and opening: STC 22350, title page, sigs. A2r & A3v-A4r
View online bibliographic record

Item Creator
William Shakespeare
Item Title
The rape of Lucrece. By Mr. William Shakespeare. Newly reuised.
Item Date
London : Printed by T[homas] S[nodham] for Roger Iackson, and are to be solde at his shop neere the Conduit in Fleet-street, 1616.
Repository
Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC
Call Number
STC 22350, sigs. A3v-A4r

Institution Rights and Document Citation

Terms of use
Images that are under Folger copyright are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This allows you to use our images without additional permission provided that you cite the Folger Shakespeare Library as the source and you license anything you create using the images under the same or equivalent license. For more information, including permissions beyond the scope of this license, see Permissions. The Folger waives permission fees for non-commercial publication by registered non-profits, including university presses, regardless of the license they use. For images copyrighted by an entity other than the Folger, please contact the copyright holder for permission information.

Copy-specific information
Creator: William Shakespeare
Title: The rape of Lucrece. By Mr. William Shakespeare. Newly reuised.
Date: London : Printed by T[homas] S[nodham] for Roger Iackson, and are to be solde at his shop neere the Conduit in Fleet-street, 1616.
Repository: Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC
Call number and opening: STC 22350, title page, sigs. A2r & A3v-A4r
View online bibliographic record

Erin A. McCarthy, "Lucrece, sixth edition," Shakespeare Documented, https://doi.org/10.37078/198.

Folger Shakespeare Library, STC 22350. See Shakespeare Documentedhttps://doi.org/10.37078/198.

The sixth edition of Lucrece was printed by Thomas Snodham for Roger Jackson in 1616, the year of Shakespeare’s death.

This “Newly Reuised” edition bears a significantly different title page than the five previous editions: the title is changed from “Lucrece” to “The Rape of Lucrece,” and for the first time in an edition of Lucrece or Venus and Adonis, “Mr. William Shakespeare” is identified as the author. The original dedication to Henry Wriothesley, earl of Southampton, remains, but Snodham adds a table of contents and marginal notes to the text (as shown in image 3). As the title page suggests, this edition also incorporates some revised readings, such as the insertion of the word “oft” in line 135 as well as the substitution of “if once” for “ay, if” (l. 240), “Blacke” for “The blackest” (l. 354), “fowle” for “prone” (l. 684), and “held” for “hild” (l. 2157). These changes, though seemingly small, affect the meter and sometimes the meaning of the lines in which they occur. It is not clear whether Shakespeare made any of them himself.

Lucrece, first printed in 1594, would eventually reach an eighth edition before 1640, a number that equals Shakespeare's most popular play, Henry IV Part 1. Although Shakespeare is now known primarily as a playwright, in his own time he was equally revered as the author of Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, his two sensationally successful Ovidian narrative poems.

At least five copies of this edition survive, at the British Library, the Bodleian Library, the Huntington Library, the New York Public Library, and the Folger Shakespeare Library. The title page of the Folger’s copy, shown here, includes a now-illegible provenance marking, likely by a contemporary reader, as well as bookplates of later owners Thomas Fenwick Earsdon and Frank J. Hogan.

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

 

Written by Erin A. McCarthy

Sources

Katherine Duncan-Jones and H.R. Woudhuysen, Shakespeare’s Poems. Arden 3. (London: Thomson Learning, 2007).
John Roe, ed., The Poems: Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, The Phoenix and the Turtle, The Passionate Pilgrim, A Lover’s Complaint. Updated edition. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, 2006).

Last updated June 8, 2020