was determined by much the same considerations. Self-interest was the
principle underlying transactions between literary patron and _protege_.
Publisher, like author, commonly chose as patron a man or woman of wealth
and social influence who might be expected to acknowledge the compliment
either by pecuniary reward or by friendly advertisement of the volume in
their own social circle. At times the publisher, slightly extending the
field of choice, selected a personal friend or mercantile acquaintance
who had rendered him some service in trade or private life, and was
likely to appreciate such general expressions of good will as were the
accepted topic of dedications. Nothing that was fantastic or mysterious
entered into the Elizabethan or the Jacobean publishers' shrewd schemes
of business, and it may be asserted with confidence that it was under the
everyday prosaic conditions of current literary traffic that the
publisher Thorpe selected 'Mr. W. H.' as the patron of the original
edition of Shakespeare's 'Sonnets.'
Thorpe's early life.
A study of Thorpe's character and career clears the point of doubt.
Thorpe has been described as a native of Warwickshire, Shakespeare's
county, and a man eminent in his profession. He was neither of these
things. He was a native of Barnet in Middlesex, where his father kept an
inn, and he himself through thirty years' experience of the book trade
held his own with difficulty in its humblest ranks. He enjoyed the
customary preliminary training. {393a} At midsummer 1584 he was
apprenticed for nine years to a reputable printer and stationer, Richard
Watkins. {393b} Nearly ten years later he took up the freedom of the
Stationers' Company, and was thereby qualified to set up as a publisher
on his own account. {393c} He was not destitute of a taste for
literature; he knew scraps of Latin, and recognised a good manuscript
when he saw one. But the ranks of London publishers were overcrowded,
and such accomplishments as Thorpe possessed were poor compensation for a
lack of capital or of family connections among those already established
in the trade. {393d} For many years he contented himself with an obscure
situation as assistant or clerk to a stationer more favourably placed.
His ownership of the manuscript of Marlowe's 'Lucan.' His dedicatory
address to Edward Blount in 1600.
It was as the self-appointed procurer and owner of an unprinted
manuscript--a recognised role for novices to fill in the book trade of
the period--that Thorpe made his first distinguishable appearance on the
stage of literary history. In 1600 there fell into his hands in an
unexplained manner a written copy of Marlowe's unprinted translation of
the first book of 'Lucan.' Thorpe confided his good fortune to Edward
Blount, then a stationer's assistant like himself, but with better
prospects. Blount had already achieved a modest success in the same
capacity of procurer or picker-up of neglected 'copy.' {393e} In 1598 he
became proprietor of Marlowe's unfinished and unpublished 'Hero and
Leander,' and found among better-equipped friends in the trade both a
printer and a publisher for his treasure-trove. Blount good-naturedly
interested himself in Thorpe's 'find,' and it was through Blount's good
offices that Peter Short undertook to print Thorpe's manuscript of
Marlowe's 'Lucan,' and Walter Burre agreed to sell it at his shop in St.
Paul's Churchyard. As owner of the manuscript Thorpe exerted the right
of choosing a patron for the venture and of supplying the dedicatory
epistle. The patron of his choice was his friend Blount, and he made the
dedication the vehicle of his gratitude for the assistance he had just
received. The style of the dedication was somewhat bombastic, but Thorpe
showed a literary sense when he designated Marlowe 'that pure elemental
wit,' and a good deal of dry humour in offering to 'his kind and true
friend' Blount 'some few instructions' whereby he might accommodate
himself to the unaccustomed _role_ of patron. {394a} For the
conventional type of patron Thorpe disavowed respect. He preferred to
place himself under the protection of a friend in the trade whose
goodwill had already stood him in good stead, and was capable of
benefiting him hereafter.
This venture laid the foundation of Thorpe's fortunes. Three years later
he was able to place his own name on the title-page of two humbler
literary prizes--each an insignificant pamphlet on current events. {394b}
Thenceforth for a dozen years his name reappeared annually on one, two,
or three volumes. After 1614 his operations were few and far between,
and they ceased altogether in 1624. He seems to have ended his days in
poverty, and has been identified with the Thomas Thorpe who was granted
an alms-room in the hospital of Ewelme, Oxfordshire, on December 3, 1635.
{395a}
Character of his business.
Thorpe was associated with the publication of twenty-nine volumes in all,
{395b} including Marlowe's 'Lucan;' but in almost all his operations his
personal energies were confined, as in his initial enterprise, to
procuring the manuscript. For a short period in 1608 he occupied a shop,
The Tiger's Head, in St. Paul's Churchyard, and the fact was duly
announced on the title-pages of three publications which he issued in
that year. {395c} But his other undertakings were described on their
title-pages as printed for him by one stationer and sold for him by
another; and when any address found mention at all, it was the
shopkeeper's address, and not his own. He never enjoyed in permanence
the profits or dignity of printing his 'copy' at a press of his own, or
selling books on premises of his own, and he can claim the distinction of
having pursued in this homeless fashion the well-defined profession of
procurer of manuscripts for a longer period than any other known member
of the Stationers' Company. Though many others began their career in
that capacity, all except Thorpe, as far as they can be traced, either
developed into printers or booksellers, or, failing in that, betook
themselves to other trades.
Very few of his wares does Thorpe appear to have procured direct from the
authors. It is true that between 1605 and 1611 there were issued under
his auspices some eight volumes of genuine literary value, including,
besides Shakespeare's 'Sonnets,' three plays by Chapman, {395d} four
works of Ben Jonson, and Coryat's 'Odcombian Banquet.' But the taint of
mysterious origin attached to most of his literary properties. He
doubtless owed them to the exchange of a few pence or shillings with a
scrivener's hireling; and the transaction was not one of which the author
had cognisance.
Shakespeare's sufferings at publishers' hands.
It is quite plain that no negotiation with the author preceded the
formation of Thorpe's resolve to publish for the first time Shakespeare's
'Sonnets' in 1609. Had Shakespeare associated himself with the
enterprise, the world would fortunately have been spared Thorpe's
dedication to 'Mr. W. H.' T. T.'s' place would have been filled by 'W.
S.' The whole transaction was in Thorpe's vein. Shakespeare's 'Sonnets'
had been already circulating in manuscript for eleven years; only two had
as yet been printed, and those were issued by the pirate publisher,
William Jaggard, in the fraudulently christened volume, 'The Passionate
Pilgrim, by William Shakespeare,' in 1599. Shakespeare, except in the
case of his two narrative poems, showed utter indifference to all
questions touching the publication of his works. Of the sixteen plays of
his that were published in his lifetime, not one was printed with his
sanction. He made no audible protest when seven contemptible dramas in
which he had no hand were published with his name or initials on the
title-page while his fame was at its height. With only one publisher of
his time, Richard Field, his fellow-townsman, who was responsible for the
issue of 'Venus' and 'Lucrece,' is it likely that he came into personal
relations, and there is nothing to show that he maintained relations with
Field after the publication of 'Lucrece' in 1594.
In fitting accord with the circumstance that the publication of the
'Sonnets' was a tradesman's venture which ignored the author's feelings
and rights, Thorpe in both the entry of the book in the 'Stationers'
Registers' and on its title-page brusquely designated it 'Shakespeares
Sonnets,' instead of following the more urbane collocation of words
invariably adopted by living authors, viz. 'Sonnets by William
Shakespeare.'
The use of initials in dedications of Elizabethan and Jacobean books.
In framing the dedication Thorpe followed established precedent.
Initials run riot over Elizabethan and Jacobean books. Printers and
publishers, authors and contributors of prefatory commendations were all
in the habit of masking themselves behind such symbols. Patrons figured
under initials in dedications somewhat less frequently than other sharers
in the book's production. But the conditions determining the employment
of initials in that relation were well defined. The employment of
initials in a dedication was a recognised mark of a close friendship or
intimacy between patron and dedicator. It was a sign that the patron's
fame was limited to a small circle, and that the revelation of his full
name was not a matter of interest to a wide public. Such are the
dominant notes of almost all the extant dedications in which the patron
is addressed by his initials. In 1598 Samuel Rowlands addressed the
dedication of his 'Betraying of Christ' to his 'deare affected _friend_
Maister H. W., gentleman.' An edition of Robert Southwell's 'Short Rule
of Life' which appeared in the same year bore a dedication addressed 'to
my deare affected _friend_ M. [_i.e._ Mr.] D. S., gentleman.' The poet
Richard Barnfield also in the same year dedicated the opening sonnet in
his 'Poems in divers Humours' to his '_friend_ Maister R. L.' In 1617
Dunstan Gale dedicated a poem, 'Pyramus and Thisbe,' to the 'worshipfull
his verie _friend_ D. [_i.e._ Dr.] B. H. {397}
Frequency of wishes for 'happiness' and 'eternity' in dedicatory
greetings.
There was nothing exceptional in the words of greeting which Thorpe
addressed to his patron 'Mr. W. H.' They followed a widely adopted
formula. Dedications of the time usually consisted of two distinct
parts. There was a dedicatory epistle, which might touch at any length,
in either verse or prose, on the subject of the book and the writer's
relations with his patron. But there was usually, in addition, a
preliminary salutation confined to such a single sentence as Thorpe
displayed on the first page of his edition of Shakespeare's sonnets. In
that preliminary sentence the dedicator habitually 'wisheth' his patron
one or more of such blessings as health, long life, happiness, and
eternity. 'Al perseverance with soules happiness' Thomas Powell
'wisheth' the Countess of Kildare on the first page of his 'Passionate
Poet' in 1601. 'All happines' is the greeting of Thomas Watson, the
sonnetteer, to his patron, the Earl of Oxford, on the threshold of
Watson's 'Passionate Century of Love.' There is hardly a book published
by Robert Greene between 1580 and 1592 that does not open with an
adjuration before the dedicatory epistle in the form: 'To --- --- Robert
Greene wisheth increase of honour with the full fruition of perfect
felicity.'
Thorpe in Shakespeare's sonnets left the salutation to stand alone, and
omitted the supplement of a dedicatory epistle; but this, too, was not
unusual. There exists an abundance of contemporary examples of the
dedicatory salutation without the sequel of the dedicatory epistle.
Edmund Spenser's dedication of the 'Faerie Queene' to Elizabeth consists
solely of the salutation in the form of an assurance that the writer
'consecrates these his labours to live with the eternitie of her fame.'
Michael Drayton both in his 'Idea, The Shepheard's Garland' (1593), and
in his 'Poemes Lyrick and Pastorall' (1609), confined his address to his
patron to a single sentence of salutation. {398} Richard Brathwaite in
1611 exclusively saluted the patron of his 'Golden Fleece' with 'the
continuance of God's temporall blessings in this life, with the crowne of
immortalitie in the world to come;' while in like manner he greeted the
patron of his 'Sonnets and Madrigals' in the same year with 'the
prosperitie of times successe in this life, with the reward of eternitie
in the world to come.' It is 'happiness' and 'eternity,' or an
equivalent paraphrase, that had the widest vogue among the good wishes
with which the dedicator in the early years of the seventeenth century
besought his patron's favour on the first page of his book. But Thorpe
was too self-assertive to be a slavish imitator. His addiction to
bombast and his elementary appreciation of literature recommended to him
the practice of incorporating in his dedicatory salutation some
high-sounding embellishments of the accepted formula suggested by his
author's writing. {399a} In his dedication of the 'Sonnets' to 'Mr. W.
H.' he grafted on the common formula a reference to the immortality which
Shakespeare, after the habit of contemporary sonnetteers, promised the
hero of his sonnets in the pages that succeeded. With characteristic
magniloquence, Thorpe added the decorative and supererogatory phrase,
'promised by our ever-living poet,' to the conventional dedicatory wish
for his patron's 'all happiness' and 'eternitie.' {399b}
Five dedications by Thorpe.
Thorpe, as far as is known, penned only one dedication before that to
Shakespeare's 'Sonnets.' His dedicatory experience was previously
limited to the inscription of Marlowe's 'Lucan' in 1600 to Blount, his
friend in the trade. Three dedications by Thorpe survive of a date
subsequent to the issue of the 'Sonnets.' One of these is addressed to
John Florio, and the other two to the Earl of Pembroke. {400a} But these
three dedications all prefaced volumes of translations by one John
Healey, whose manuscripts had become Thorpe's prey after the author had
emigrated to Virginia, where he died shortly after landing. Thorpe
chose, he tells us, Florio and the Earl of Pembroke as patrons of
Healey's unprinted manuscripts because they had been patrons of Healey
before his expatriation and death. There is evidence to prove that in
choosing a patron for the 'Sonnets,' and penning a dedication for the
second time, he pursued the exact procedure that he had
followed--deliberately and for reasons that he fully stated--in his first
and only preceding dedicatory venture. He chose his patron from the
circle of his trade associates, and it must have been because his patron
was a personal friend that he addressed him by his initials, 'W. H.'
'W. H.' signs dedication of Southwell's poems in 1606.
Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' is not the only volume of the period in the
introductory pages of which the initials 'W. H.' play a prominent part.
In 1606 one who concealed himself under the same letters performed for 'A
Foure-fould Meditation' (a collection of pious poems which the Jesuit
Robert Southwell left in manuscript at his death) the identical service
that Thorpe performed for Marlowe's 'Lucan' in 1600, and for
Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' in 1609. In 1606 Southwell's manuscript fell
into the hands of this 'W. H.,' and he published it through the agency of
the printer, George Eld, and of an insignificant bookseller, Francis
Burton. {400b} 'W. H.,' in his capacity of owner, supplied the
dedication with his own pen under his initials. Of the Jesuit's newly
recovered poems 'W. H.' wrote, 'Long have they lien hidden in obscuritie,
and haply had never scene the light, had not a meere accident conveyed
them to my hands. But, having seriously perused them, loath I was that
any who are religiously affected, should be deprived of so great a
comfort, as the due consideration thereof may bring unto them.' 'W. H.'
chose as patron of his venture one Mathew Saunders, Esq., and to the
dedicatory epistle prefixed a conventional salutation wishing Saunders
long life and prosperity. The greeting was printed in large and bold
type thus:--
To the Right Worfhipfull and
Vertuous Gentleman, Mathew
Saunders, Efquire
W.H. wifheth, with long life, a profperous
achieuement of his good defires.
There follows in small type, regularly printed across the page, a
dedicatory letter--the frequent sequel of the dedicatory salutation--in
which the writer, 'W.H.,' commends the religious temper of 'these
meditations' and deprecates the coldness and sterility of his own
'conceits.' The dedicator signs himself at the bottom of the page 'Your
Worships unfained affectionate, W.H.' {401}
The two books--Southwell's 'Foure-fould Meditation' of 1606, and
Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' of 1609--have more in common than the appearance
on the preliminary pages of the initials 'W. H.' in a prominent place,
and of the common form of dedicatory salutation. Both volumes, it was
announced on the title-pages, came from the same press--the press of
George Eld. Eld for many years co-operated with Thorpe in business. In
1605 he printed for Thorpe Ben Jonson's 'Sejanus,' and in each of the
years 1607, 1608, 1609, and 1610 at least one of his ventures was
publicly declared to be a specimen of Eld's typography. Many of Thorpe's
books came forth without any mention of the printer; but Eld's name
figures more frequently upon them than that of any other printer.
Between 1605 and 1609 it is likely that Eld printed all Thorpe's 'copy'
as matter of course and that he was in constant relations with him.
'W. H.' and Mr. William Hall.
There is little doubt that the 'W. H.' of the Southwell volume was Mr.
William Hall, who, when he procured that manuscript for publication, was
an humble auxiliary in the publishing army. Hall flits rapidly across
the stage of literary history. He served an apprenticeship to the
printer and stationer John Allde from 1577 to 1584, and was admitted to
the freedom of the Stationers' Company in the latter year. For the long
period of twenty-two years after his release from his indentures he was
connected with the trade in a dependent capacity, doubtless as assistant
to a master-stationer. When in 1606 the manuscript of Southwell's poems
was conveyed to his hands and he adopted the recognised role of procurer
of their publication, he had not set up in business for himself. It was
only later in the same year (1606) that he obtained the license of the
Stationers' Company to inaugurate a press in his own name, and two years
passed before he began business. In 1608 he obtained for publication a
theological manuscript which appeared next year with his name on the
title-page for the first time. This volume constituted the earliest
credential of his independence. It entitled him to the prefix 'Mr.' in
all social relations. Between 1609 and 1614 he printed some twenty
volumes, most of them sermons and almost all devotional in tone. The
most important of his secular undertaking was Guillim's far-famed
'Display of Heraldrie,' a folio issued in 1610. In 1612 Hall printed an
account of the conviction and execution of a noted pickpocket, John
Selman, who had been arrested while professionally engaged in the Royal
Chapel at Whitehall. On the title-page Hall gave his own name by his
initials only. The book was described in bold type as 'printed by W. H.'
and as on sale at the shop of Thomas Archer in St. Paul's Churchyard.
Hall was a careful printer with a healthy dread of misprints, but his
business dwindled after 1613, and, soon disposing of it to one John
Beale, he disappeared into private life.
'W. H.' are no uncommon initials, and there is more interest attaching to
the discovery of 'Mr. W. H.'s' position in life and his function in
relation to the scheme of the publication of the 'Sonnets' than in
establishing his full name. But there is every probability that William
Hall, the 'W. H.' of the Southwell dedication, was one and the same
person with the 'Mr. W. H.' of Thorpe's dedication of the 'Sonnets.' No
other inhabitant of London was habitually known to mask himself under
those letters. William Hall was the only man bearing those initials who
there is reason to suppose was on familiar terms with Thorpe. {403a}
Both were engaged at much the same period in London in the same
occupation of procuring manuscripts for publication; both inscribed their
literary treasure-trove in the common formula to patrons for whom they
claimed no high rank or distinction, and both engaged the same printer to
print their most valuable prize.
'The onlie begetter' means 'only procurer'.
No condition of the problem of the identity of Thorpe's friend 'Mr. W. H'
seems ignored by the adoption of the interpretation that he was the
future master-printer William Hall. The objection that 'Mr. W. H.' could
not have been Thorpe's friend in trade, because while wishing him all
happiness and eternity Thorpe dubs him 'the onlie begetter of these
insuing sonnets,' is not formidable. Thorpe rarely used words with much
exactness. {403b} It is obvious that he did not employ 'begetter' in the
ordinary sense. 'Begetter,' when literally interpreted as applied to a
literary work, means father, author, producer, and it cannot be seriously
urged that Thorpe intended to describe 'Mr. W. H.' as the author of the
'Sonnets.' 'Begetter' has been used in the figurative sense of inspirer,
and it is often assumed that by 'onlie begetter' Thorpe meant 'sole
inspirer,' and that by the use of those words he intended to hint at the
close relations subsisting between 'W. H.' and Shakespeare in the
dramatist's early life; but that interpretation presents numberless
difficulties. It was contrary to Thorpe's aims in business to invest a
dedication with any cryptic significance, and thus mystify his customers.
Moreover, his career and the circumstances under which he became the
publisher of the sonnets confute the assumption that he was in such
relations with Shakespeare or with Shakespeare's associates as would give
him any knowledge of Shakespeare's early career that was not public
property. All that Thorpe--the struggling pirate-publisher, 'the
well-wishing adventurer in setting forth' wares mysteriously come
by--knew or probably cared to know of Shakespeare was that he was the
most popular and honoured of the literary producers of the day. When
Thorpe had the luck to acquire surreptitiously an unprinted manuscript by
'our ever-living poet,' it was not in the great man's circle of friends
or patrons, to which hitherto he had had no access, that he was likely to
seek his own patron. Elementary considerations of prudence impelled him
to publish his treasure-trove with all expedition, and not disclose his
design prematurely to one who might possibly take steps to hinder its
fulfilment. But that Thorpe had no 'inspirer' of the 'Sonnets' in his
mind when he addressed himself to 'Mr. W. H.' is finally proved by the
circumstance that the only identifiable male 'inspirer' of the poems was
the Earl of Southampton, to whom the initials 'W. H.' do not apply.