poems is an easy tale, _Venus and Adonis_
in 1593, and _The Rape of Lucrece_ in 1594, were first printed in
quarto by Richard Field, a native of Stratford, who had come to London.
In each case a dedication accompanying the text was signed by
Shakespeare, so that we may guess that the poet not only consented to
the printing, but took care that the printing should be accurate.
Twelve editions of one, eight of the other, were issued before 1660.
The other volume of poetry, the Sonnets, was printed in 1609 by Thomas
Thorpe, without Shakespeare's consent. Two of them, numbers 138 and
144, had appeared in the collection known as _The Passionate Pilgrim_,
a pirated volume printed by W. Jaggard in 1599. No reedition of the
Sonnets appeared till 1640.

With regard to the plays it is different. It is first {114} to be said
that in no volume containing a play or plays of Shakespeare in
existence to-day is there any evidence that Shakespeare saw it through
the press. All we can do is to satisfy ourselves as to how the copy of
Shakespeare's plays may have got into the hands of the publishers, and
as to how far that copy represents what Shakespeare must have written.

The editions of Shakespearean plays may be divided into two
groups,--the separate plays which were printed in quarto[1] volumes
before 1623, and the First Folio of Shakespeare, which was printed in
1623, a collected edition of all his plays save _Pericles_. Our text
of Shakespeare, whatever one we read, is made up, either from the First
Folio text, or in certain cases from the quarto volumes of certain
plays which preceded the Folio; together with the attempts to restore
to faulty places what Shakespeare must have written--a task which has
engaged a long line of diligent scholars from early in the eighteenth
century up to our own day.

+The Stationers' Company+.--In the early period of English printing,
which began about 1480 and lasted up to 1557, there was very little
supervision over the publishing of books, and as a result the
competition was unscrupulous. There was a guild of publishers, called
{115} the Stationers' Company, in existence, but its efforts to control
its members were only of a general character. In 1557, however, Philip
and Mary granted a charter to the Stationers' Company under which no
one not a member of the Stationers' Company could legally possess a
printing press. Queen Mary was, of course, interested in controlling
the press direct