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LVCRECE.
1598

Capell *.19[1], title page

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Capell *.19[1], title page
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This work is property of the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Users must contact the Library to request additional use at wren.library@trin.camb.ac.uk

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Creator: 
William Shakespeare 
Title: Lvcrece.
Date: 1598
Repository: Wren Library, Trinity College Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Call number and opening: Capell *.19[1], title page & A2r-v
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Item Creator
William Shakespeare
Item Title
Lvcrece.
Item Date
1598
Repository
Wren Library, Trinity College Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Call Number
Capell *.19[1], title page

Capell *.19[1], signature A1 verso & A2 recto

View Image Assets
Capell *.19[1], signature A1 verso & A2 recto
Click image to enlarge

Institution Rights and Document Citation

Terms of use
This work is property of the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Users must contact the Library to request additional use at wren.library@trin.camb.ac.uk

Copy-specific information
Creator: 
William Shakespeare 
Title: Lvcrece.
Date: 1598
Repository: Wren Library, Trinity College Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Call number and opening: Capell *.19[1], title page & A2r-v
View online bibliographic record

Item Creator
William Shakespeare
Item Title
Lvcrece.
Item Date
1598
Repository
Wren Library, Trinity College Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Call Number
Capell *.19[1], sigs. A1v-A2r

Capell *.19[1], signature A2 verso & A3 recto

View Image Assets
Capell *.19[1], signature A2 verso & A3 recto
Click image to enlarge

Institution Rights and Document Citation

Terms of use
This work is property of the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Users must contact the Library to request additional use at wren.library@trin.camb.ac.uk

Copy-specific information
Creator: 
William Shakespeare 
Title: Lvcrece.
Date: 1598
Repository: Wren Library, Trinity College Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Call number and opening: Capell *.19[1], title page & A2r-v
View online bibliographic record

Item Creator
William Shakespeare
Item Title
Lvcrece.
Item Date
1598
Repository
Wren Library, Trinity College Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Call Number
Capell *.19[1], sigs. A2v-A3r

Institution Rights and Document Citation

Terms of use
This work is property of the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Users must contact the Library to request additional use at wren.library@trin.camb.ac.uk

Copy-specific information
Creator: 
William Shakespeare 
Title: Lvcrece.
Date: 1598
Repository: Wren Library, Trinity College Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Call number and opening: Capell *.19[1], title page & A2r-v
View online bibliographic record

Erin A. McCarthy, "Lucrece, second edition," Shakespeare Documented, https://doi.org/10.37078/296.

Trinity College, Cambridge, Capell *.19[1]. See Shakespeare Documentedhttps://doi.org/10.37078/296.

The second edition of Lucrece, like the first, was published by John Harrison, but was printed by Peter Short. This edition and subsequent editions of the poem are imposed—that is, type-set and printed—in octavo rather than in quarto, perhaps so readers could bind their copies with other short poetic pamphlets like Venus and Adonis.

Lucrece, first printed in 1594, would eventually reach an eighth edition before 1640, a number that equals Shakespeare's most popular play, Henry IV Part 1. Although Shakespeare is now known primarily as a playwright, in his own time he was equally revered as the author of Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, his two sensationally successful Ovidian narrative poems.

Only two copies of this edition are known to survive, according to the English Short Title Catalogue. This copy shown here is held in the Wren Library at Trinity College, and is bound with a 1563 copy of Barnabe Googe’s Eglogs. The only other extant copy is held less than a mile away in the Cambridge University Library.

To learn more about the plot and early printing history of Lucrece, please visit the Folger Shakespeare Librarys's Shakespeare's Works; to read a modernized edition of the poem, see the Folger Shakespeare edition.

 

 

Written by Erin A. McCarthy

Sources
Harry Farr, “Notes on Shakespeare’s Printers and Publishers with Special Reference to the Poems and Hamlet.” The Library, 4th series, 3.4 (March 1923): 225–60.

John Roe, ed., The Poems: Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, The Phoenix and the Turtle, The Passionate Pilgrim, A Lover’s Complaint. Updated edition. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, 2006).

Last updated July 1, 2020