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’s ‘Sonnets’ were described as ‘serene, clear, and elegantly plain; such gentle strains as shall re-create and not perplex your brain. No intricate or cloudy stuff to puzzle intellect. Such as will raise your admiration to his praise.’ A chief point of interest in the volume of ‘Poems’ of 1640 is the fact that the ‘Sonnets’ were printed then in a different order from that which was followed in the volume of
1609. Thus the poem numbered lxvii. in the original edition opens the reissue, and what has been regarded as the crucial poem, beginning
Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
which was in 1609 numbered cxliv., takes the thirty-second place in 1640. In most cases a more or less fanciful general title is placed in the second edition at the head of each sonnet, but in a few instances a single title serves for short sequences of two or three sonnets which are printed as independent poems continuously without spacing. The poems drawn from ‘The Passionate Pilgrim’ are intermingled with the ‘Sonnets,’ together with extracts from Thomas Heywood’s ‘General History of Women,’ although no hint is given that they are not Shakespeare’s work. The edition concludes with three epitaphs on Shakespeare and a short section entitled ‘an addition of some excellent poems to those precedent by other Gentlemen.’ The volume is of great rarity. An exact reprint was published in 1885.