‘The Passionate Pilgrim.’
But poems no less than plays, in which Shakespeare had no hand, were deceptively placed to his
credit as soon as his fame was established. In 1599 William Jaggard, a well-known pirate publisher, issued a poetic anthology which he entitled ‘The Passionate Pilgrim, by W. Shakespeare.’ The volume opened with two sonnets by Shakespeare which were not previously in print, and there followed three poems drawn from the already published ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost;’ but the bulk of the volume was by Richard Barnfield and others. [182] A third edition of the ‘Passionate Pilgrim’ was printed in 1612 with unaltered title-page, although the incorrigible Jaggard had added two new poems which he silently filched from Thomas Heywood’s ‘Troia Britannica.’ Heywood called attention to his own grievance in the dedicatory epistle before his ‘Apology for Actors’ (1612), and he added that Shakespeare resented the more substantial injury which the publisher had done him. ‘I know,’ wrote Heywood of Shakespeare, ‘[he was] much offended with M. Jaggard that (altogether unknown to him) presumed to make so bold with his name.’ In the result
the publisher seems to have removed Shakespeare’s name from the title-page of a few copies. This is the only instance on record of a protest on Shakespeare’s part against the many injuries which he suffered at the hands of contemporary publishers.