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Title page of the first quarto (1593) of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, printed by Richard Field, adorned with his emblem the Anchora Spei, "anchor of hope.". Richard Field (or Feild) (1561–1624) was a printer and publisher in Elizabethan London, best known for his close association with the poems of William Shakespeare, with whom he grew up in Stratford-upon-Avon.
Title page of the first quarto (1593). Venus and Adonis is a narrative poem by William Shakespeare published in 1593. It is probably Shakespeare's first publication. The poem tells the story of Venus, the goddess of Love; of her unrequited love; and of her attempted seduction of Adonis, an extremely handsome young man, who would rather go hunting.
Venus and Adonis, of which there are versions from the 1520s onward; Venus and Adonis (Veronese, Augsburg), 1562; Venus and Adonis (Veronese, Madrid), 1580; Venus and Adonis, c. 1626; Venus and Adonis (Rubens, 1614) Venus and Adonis (Rubens, 1635)
After April – William Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis probably becomes his first published work, printed from his own manuscript. In his lifetime it will be his most frequently reprinted work: at least nine times. [1]
Counting by number of editions published before 1623, the best-selling works were Venus and Adonis (12 editions), The Rape of Lucrece (6 editions), and Henry IV, Part 1 (6 editions). Of the 23 editions of the poems, 16 were published in octavo; the rest, and almost all of the editions of the plays, were printed in quarto. [8]
Shakespeare's first published work, Venus and Adonis, was registered with the Stationers' Company on 18 April 1593, with no named author, and appears to have been on sale—now with his name included—by 12 June, when a copy is first known to have been bought. [37]
William Shakespeare's erotic narrative poem Venus and Adonis (1593), a retelling of the courtship of Aphrodite and Adonis from Ovid's Metamorphoses, [55] [56] was the most popular of all his works published within his own lifetime.
This is taken to imply that he published under a pseudonym. In the following year Marston used Bacon's Latin motto in a poem and seems to quote from Venus and Adonis, which he attributes to Labeo. [15] [16] Theobald argued that this confirmed that Hall's Labeo was known to be Bacon and that he wrote Venus and Adonis.