STC 22356, signature B1 recto
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Copy-specific information
Creator: William Shakespeare
Title: [Venus and Adonis].
Date: [London : R. Field? for J. Harrison I, 1595?]
Repository: Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, USA
Call number and opening: STC 22356, sig. B1r
View online bibliographic record
Terms of use
Images that are under Folger copyright are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This allows you to use our images without additional permission provided that you cite the Folger Shakespeare Library as the source and you license anything you create using the images under the same or equivalent license. For more information, including permissions beyond the scope of this license, see Permissions. The Folger waives permission fees for non-commercial publication by registered non-profits, including university presses, regardless of the license they use. For images copyrighted by an entity other than the Folger, please contact the copyright holder for permission information.
Copy-specific information
Creator: William Shakespeare
Title: [Venus and Adonis].
Date: [London : R. Field? for J. Harrison I, 1595?]
Repository: Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, USA
Call number and opening: STC 22356, sig. B1r
View online bibliographic record
Heather Wolfe, "Venus and Adonis, third edition," Shakespeare Documented, https://doi.org/10.37078/201.
Folger Shakespeare Library, STC 22356, signature B1 recto. See Shakespeare Documented, https://doi.org/10.37078/201.
This is the only known surviving copy of the third edition of Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare’s first printed work. It is a heavily-repaired fragment, with the first section now lost.
Although Shakespeare is now known primarily as a playwright, in his own time he was equally revered as the author of Venus and Adonis, first printed in 1593, and Lucrece, his two sensationally successful Ovidian narrative poems. Venus and Adonis appeared in more printed editions than any other work of vernacular poetry in his lifetime, and was published twice as many times as his most successful play, Henry IV Part 1.
To learn more about the plot and early printing history of Venus and Adonis, please visit the Folger's Shakespeare's Works; to read a modernized edition of the poem, see the Folger Shakespeare edition.
Written by Heather Wolfe
Last updated June 8, 2020
