Did part or all of Shakespeare's The Passionate Pilgrim (TPP) actually predate 1593 Venus & Adonis (V&A) and 1594 Rape ofLuereee (RofL)? Oddly enough, that may be the case, because the sole extant copy of it...Did part or all of Shakespeare's The Passionate Pilgrim (TPP) actually predate 1593 Venus & Adonis (V&A) and 1594 Rape ofLuereee (RofL)? Oddly enough, that may be the case, because the sole extant copy of its first edition has no title page, thus no date. Copies of its second edition do have a title page and are clearly dated 1599, plus a 1612 augmented project was marked "third edition". Thus, it should be significant that some of TPP's poetry have been found in manuscript or early publications back to the early 1590s, and in one case perhaps as early as 1585. But TPP may be a relic of a much larger anthology of poetry which possibly existed in manuscript circa 1589-94, was revised circa 1610-12 to accompany an intended publication of all of Shakespeare's works (poetry and drama), but was not fully published until nearly three decades later. It is also notable that the 1640 anthology attributed to Shakespeare contained TPP plus lengthy poetic paraphrases from Ovid in much the same mold as V&A and RofL. Moreover, the 1640 anthology may hold a key to radically earlier dating of the 1623 First Folio (F1). We will briefly delve into the murky world of the Elizabethan publishing world of the 1580s and beyond, wherein the 17th Earl of Oxford's former servant, Anthony Munday, may have had an important role in the disposition of each "Shake-speare" work.展开更多
文摘Did part or all of Shakespeare's The Passionate Pilgrim (TPP) actually predate 1593 Venus & Adonis (V&A) and 1594 Rape ofLuereee (RofL)? Oddly enough, that may be the case, because the sole extant copy of its first edition has no title page, thus no date. Copies of its second edition do have a title page and are clearly dated 1599, plus a 1612 augmented project was marked "third edition". Thus, it should be significant that some of TPP's poetry have been found in manuscript or early publications back to the early 1590s, and in one case perhaps as early as 1585. But TPP may be a relic of a much larger anthology of poetry which possibly existed in manuscript circa 1589-94, was revised circa 1610-12 to accompany an intended publication of all of Shakespeare's works (poetry and drama), but was not fully published until nearly three decades later. It is also notable that the 1640 anthology attributed to Shakespeare contained TPP plus lengthy poetic paraphrases from Ovid in much the same mold as V&A and RofL. Moreover, the 1640 anthology may hold a key to radically earlier dating of the 1623 First Folio (F1). We will briefly delve into the murky world of the Elizabethan publishing world of the 1580s and beyond, wherein the 17th Earl of Oxford's former servant, Anthony Munday, may have had an important role in the disposition of each "Shake-speare" work.