Typography, Genre, and Authorship in The Passionate Pilgrim (1599) and Shake-speares Sonnets (1609)

Abstract

This chapter argues that Thomas Thorpe’s 1609 edition of Shake-speares Sonnets was stymied by the success of The Passionate Pilgrim, a poetry collection first published by William Jaggard in 1599 and reprinted in 1612. Critics have suggested that the success of Jaggard’s volume may “have spoiled the market for authentic ‘sugred Sonnets’ by Shakespeare.” But to date, no one has read The Passionate Pilgrim as a sonnet sequence in its own right. This chapter outlines a history of sonnet publication that reveals striking resemblances between The Passionate Pilgrim and the printed English sonnet sequences then in fashion. Moreover, every element of the book—the title page, the poems it contained, and even its format—seems designed to highlight its place within Shakespeare’s oeuvre. Thus, when Thorpe’s Shake-speares Sonnets was printed in 1609, it appeared to be less sequence-like and less Shakespearean than The Passionate Pilgrim.