A memorial Shakespeare library was opened at Birmingham on
April 23, 1868, to commemorate the tercentenary of 1864, and, although
destroyed by fire in 1879, was restored in 1882; it now possesses nearly
ten thousand volumes relating to Shakespeare.

XIX--BIBLIOGRAPHY

Quartos of the poems in the poet's lifetime.

Only two of Shakespeare's works--his narrative poems 'Venus and Adonis'
and 'Lucrece'--were published with his sanction and co-operation. These
poems were the first specimens of his work to appear in print, and they
passed in his lifetime through a greater number of editions than any of
his plays. At the time of his death in 1616 there had been printed in
quarto seven editions of his 'Venus and Adonis' (1593, 1594, 1596, 1599,
1600, and two in 1602), and five editions of his 'Lucrece' (1594, 1598,
1600, 1607, 1616). There was only one lifetime edition of the 'Sonnets,'
Thorpe's surreptitious venture of 1609; {299} but three editions were
issued of the piratical 'Passionate Pilgrim,' which was fraudulently
assigned to Shakespeare by the publisher William Jaggard, although it
contained only a few occasional poems by him (1599, 1600 no copy known,
and 1612).

Posthumous quartos of the poems.

Of posthumous editions in quarto of the two narrative poems in the
seventeenth century, there were two of 'Lucrece'--viz. in 1624 ('the
sixth edition') and in 1655 (with John Quarles's 'Banishment of
Tarquin')--and there were as many as six editions of 'Venus' (1617, 1620,
1627, two in 1630, and 1636), making thirteen editions in all in
forty-three years. No later editions of these two poems were issued in
the seventeenth century. They were next reprinted together with 'The
Passionate Pilgrim' in 1707, and thenceforth they usually figured, with
the addition of the 'Sonnets,' in collected editions of Shakespeare's
works.

The 'Poems' of 1640.

A so-called first collected edition of Shakespeare's 'Poems' in 1640
(London, by T. Cotes for I. Benson) was mainly a reissue of the
'Sonnets,' but it omitted six (Nos. xviii., xix., xliii., lvi., lxxv.,
and lxxvi.) and it included the twenty poems of 'The Passionate Pilgrim,'
with some other pieces by other authors. Marshall's copy of the
Droeshout engraving of 1623 formed the frontispiece. There were
prefatory poems by Leonard Digges and John Warren, as well as an address
'to the reader' signed with the initials of the publisher. There
Shakespeare