Pericles, second edition

The second edition of Pericles was printed in 1609, the same year as the first. Although the play was entered in the Stationers’ Register on May 20, 1608 as being published by Edward Blount, Henry Gosson in fact published this and the previous edition. William White and Thomas Creede shared the printing of both editions. Gosson appears to have obtained the right to copy the play from Blount, but the transfer was not recorded in the Stationers’ Register.

The second edition is a line-by-line reprint of the first, and some standing type was re-imposed, or re-used before being redistributed into the compositors’ cases, for the edition shown here. The second edition was therefore printed very soon after the first, suggesting that copies of the first edition must have been selling quickly. This edition’s title page also includes that the play was written “By William Shakespeare.” Many scholars now believe that Shakespeare co-authored Pericles, most likely with George Wilkins, who wrote a prose romance version of Pericles published in 1608. Like Two Noble Kinsmen, Pericles is notably absent from the First Folio.

Pericles was among the most popular plays in print during the early 17th century, with a total of six editions published by 1635. The copy shown above is one of six known copies listed in the English Short Title Catalogue; this copy and one other are part of the Folger Shakespeare Library collection. The copy shown here includes the name of a previous owner, Matthew Bell, inscribed on the front endleaf. The title page has been inscribed with the names of two other previous owners, Edward Palmer and Sir John Fenn, and Fenn’s inscription includes the year 1782.

To learn more about this play, please see the page about Pericles on the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Shakespeare's Works and the British Library’s Shakespeare in Quarto, which also includes another copy of this edition.