Venus and Adonis, fifth edition

The fifth edition of Shakespeare’s perennially popular poem Venus and Adonis appeared in 1599. Although it is often known as Q5 (the “Q” designating a “quarto”) it is actually in the octavo format, as were the third and fourth editions. This disparity points to the relative lack of attention given to later editions of the poem, due to the supposition that Shakespeare himself authorized the printing of the first edition.

Although it may not be of value to editors and textual critics, the fifth edition is invaluable for the ways in which it demonstrates Shakespeare’s contemporary reputation as an Ovidian love poet. This edition was printed by Peter Short for the publisher William Leake, who had acquired the rights to the poem on June 25, 1596 from John Harrison. Leake also inherited the location of Harrison’s shop, the White Greyhound. Although Harrison retained that name for his new shop, Leake continued to use the name “Greyhound,” and it is this name that appears in the imprint shown above.

William Leake was also named as the bookseller for The Passionate Pilgrim, the slim collection of poetry published by William Jaggard in 1599 that was attributed to Shakespeare, although he probably wrote just five of its poems. Several of the poems in The Passionate Pilgrim are on the theme of Venus and Adonis, thus capitalizing on Shakespeare’s notorious best-seller. Further, the title refers to the sonnet shared by Romeo and Juliet when they first meet; the second edition  of Romeo and Juliet was also published in 1599. In William Leake’s shop, then, Shakespeare’s renown as an Ovidian poet can be given a local habitation and a name.

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. 

This is the only known copy of this edition of Venus and Adonis to survive, and is part of the Huntington Library collection. This copy was discovered in Lamport Hall in Northamptonshire in 1867, bound together in a composite volume that also contained The Passionate Pilgrime and Epigrammes and Elegies (ca. 1599), which contained satirical epigrams by Sir John Davies, and ten elegies from Ovid’s Amores translated by Christopher Marlowe (including the elegy from which the Latin motto on the title-page of Venus and Adonis is taken). The volume seems to have been owned by Thomas Isham, a seventeenth-century book collector. Upon its rediscovery, the volume was sold to the Britwell library, and eventually acquired by Huntington in 1919. This remarkable bound volume preserves the perceptive actions of an early modern customer, collector, and reader who was clearly interested in the Ovidian poetry of the 1590s.

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.