March 1708/9 Tonson was advertising for materials "serviceable to
[the] Design" of publishing an edition of Shakespeare's works in six
volumes octavo, which would be ready "in a Month." There was a delay,
however, and it was on 2 June that Tonson finally announced: "There is
this day Publish'd ... the Works of Mr. William Shakespear, in six Vols.
8vo. adorn'd with Cuts, Revis'd and carefully Corrected: With an Account
of the Life and Writings of the Author, by N. Rowe, Esq; Price 30s."
Subscription copies on large paper, some few to be bound in nine
volumes, were to be had at his shop.[3]

The success of the venture must have been immediately apparent. By 1710
a second edition, identical in title page and typography with the first,
but differing in many details, had been printed,[4] followed in 1714 by
a third in duodecimo. This so-called second edition exists in three
issues, the first made up of eight volumes, the third of nine. In all
three editions the spurious plays were collected in the last volume,
except in the third issue of 1714, in which the ninth volume contains
the poems.

That other publishers sensed the profits in Shakespeare is evident from
the activities of Edmund Curll and Bernard Lintot. Curll acted with
imagination and promptness: within three weeks of the publication of
Tonson's edition, he advertised as Volume VII of the works of
Shakespeare his forthcoming volume of the poems. This volume, misdated
1710 on the title page, seems to have been published in September 1709.
A reprint with corrections and some emendations of the Cotes-Benson
Poems _Written By Wil. Shake-speare. Gent._, 1640, it contains Charles
Gildon's "Essay on the Art, Rise, and Progress of the Stage in _Greece_,
_Rome_, and _England_," his "Remarks" on the separate plays, his
"References to Classic Authors," and his glossary. With great shrewdness
Curll produced a volume uniform in size and format with Rowe's edition
and equipped with an essay which opens with an attack on Tonson for
printing doubtful plays and for attempting to disparage the poems
through envy of their publisher. This attack was certainly provoked by
the curious final paragraph of Rowe's introduction, in which he refused
to determine the genuineness of the 1640 poems. Obviously Tonson was
perturbed when he learned that Curll was publishing the poems as an
appendix to Rowe's edition.

Once again a Shakespearian publication was successful, and Tonson
incorporated