In some copies the imprint is as follows:
AT LONDON | By G. Eld for T. T. and are | to be solde by Iohn Wright, dwelling | at Christ Church gate. | 1609.
At the end of the volume A Lover's Complaint was printed.
In 1640 the Sonnets (with the exception of Nos. 18, 19, 43, 56, 75, 76, 96, and 126), re-arranged under various titles, with some of the pieces in The Passionate Pilgrim, A Lover's Complaint, and sundry translations from Ovid and other poems ascribed to Shakespeare, but evidently none of his, were published with the following title:
POEMS: | Written | by | Wil. Shake-speare. | Gent. | Printed at London by Tho. Cotes, and are | to be sold by Iohn Benson, dwelling in | St. Dunstans Church-yard. 1640.
There is an introductory address "To the Reader" by Benson, in which he asserts that the poems are "of the same purity the Authour himselfe then living avouched," and that they will be found "seren, cleere and eligantly plaine." He adds that by bringing them "to the perfect view of all men" he is "glad to be serviceable for the continuance of glory to the deserved Author."
The order of the poems in this volume is followed in the editions of Gildon (1710) and of Sewell (1725 and 1728); also in those published by Ewing (1771) and Evans (1775). In all these editions the sonnets mentioned above (18, 19, etc.) are omitted, and 138 and 144 are given in the form in which they appear in The Passionate Pilgrim.
The first complete reprint of the Sonnets, after the edition of 1609, appears to have been in the collected edition of Shakespeare's Poems, published by Lintott in 1709 (see our ed. of Venus and Adonis, etc., p. 13).
The earliest known reference to the Sonnets is in the Palladis Tamia of Meres (cf. M. N. D. p. 9, and C. of E. p. 101), who speaks of them as "his sugred Sonnets among
