A Life of William Shakespeare with portraits and facsimiles. Sir Sidney Lee
as to his share in the production by printing above his initials a dedicatory preface from his own pen. The appearance in a book of a dedication from the publisher’s (instead of from the author’s) pen was, unless the substitution was specifically accounted for on other grounds, an accepted sign that the author had no hand in the publication. Except in the case of his two narrative poems, which were published in 1593 and 1594 respectively, Shakespeare made no effort to publish any of his works, and uncomplainingly submitted to the wholesale piracies of his plays and the ascription to him of books by other hands. Such practices were encouraged by his passive indifference and the contemporary condition of the law of copyright. He cannot be credited with any responsibility for the publication of Thorpe’s collection of his sonnets in 1609. With characteristic insolence Thorpe took the added liberty of appending a previously unprinted poem of forty-nine seven-line stanzas (the metre of ‘Lucrece’) entitled ‘A Lover’s Complaint,’ in which a girl laments her betrayal by a deceitful youth. The poem, in a gentle Spenserian vein, has no connection with the ‘Sonnets.’ If, as is possible, it be by Shakespeare, it must have been written in very early days.
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