STC 3191 copy 1, title page
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Title: Englands Helicon. Casta placent superis, pura cum veste venite, et manibus puris sumite fontis aquam.
Date: At London : Printed by I. R[oberts] for Iohn Flasket, and are to be sold in Paules Church-yard, at the signe of the Beare, 1600.
Repository: Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, USA
Call number and opening: STC 3191 copy 1, title page & sig. H1r
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STC 3191 copy 1, signature H1 recto
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
Title: Englands Helicon. Casta placent superis, pura cum veste venite, et manibus puris sumite fontis aquam.
Date: At London : Printed by I. R[oberts] for Iohn Flasket, and are to be sold in Paules Church-yard, at the signe of the Beare, 1600.
Repository: Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, USA
Call number and opening: STC 3191 copy 1, title page & sig. H1r
View online bibliographic record
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
Title: Englands Helicon. Casta placent superis, pura cum veste venite, et manibus puris sumite fontis aquam.
Date: At London : Printed by I. R[oberts] for Iohn Flasket, and are to be sold in Paules Church-yard, at the signe of the Beare, 1600.
Repository: Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, USA
Call number and opening: STC 3191 copy 1, title page & sig. H1r
View online bibliographic record
Folger Shakespeare Library staff, "Englands Helicon, first edition: contains a sonnet from Love's Labor's Lost ascribed to Shakespeare," Shakespeare Documented, https://doi.org/10.37078/229.
Folger Shakespeare Library, STC 3191 copy 1. See Shakespeare Documented, https://doi.org/10.37078/229.
Englands Helicon, a collection of poetry first printed in 1600 by John Roberts for John Flasket, includes a sonnet from act 4, scene 3 of Love’s Labor’s Lost (1598). The poem in Englands Helicon is ascribed to “W. Shakespeare,” identical to the “W. Shakespeare” attribution on the title page of the first edition of Love’s Labor’s Lost.
Englands Helicon titles the sonnet “The passionate Sheepheards Song.” In Love’s Labor’s Lost, the sonnet is spoken by Dumaine, one of the three lords who joins the King of Navarre on his scholarly retreat (4.3.105-124). The same sonnet also appears in The Passionate Pilgrim (London, 1599).
Englands Helicon was part of a series of literary anthologies initiated by John Bodenham (ca. 1559–1610), including Bel-vedére (1600), which includes over 200 extracts from Shakespeare’s plays and poems. In 1601, the poet and anthologist Francis Davison, evidently preparing for his compiled Poetical Rhapsody (1602), created his own table of contents for Helicon, including “On a day alack the day” (the first line of the sonnet) by “W. Shakespeare.” A second edition of Helicon was printed in 1614, including a table of contents listing Shakespeare.
Written by Folger Shakespeare Library staff
Sources
G. Blakemore Evans, general ed., The Riverside Shakespeare, 2nd ed., (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997): 1881.
David Kathman, “Chronological List of References to Shakespeare as Author/Poet/Playwright” <http://shakespeareauthorship.com/name3.html>.
Hyder Edward Rollins, England's Helicon: 1600, 1614 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935): 2:37.
Martin Wiggins and Catherine Richardson, British Drama, 1533-1642: A Catalogue. Vol. III, 1590-1597 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), s.v. "324. Love’s Labor’s Lost".
Last updated June 8, 2020
