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Following Malone’s interpretation, the 19th century was eager to read the Sonnets for evidence of Shakespeare’s intimate personal life. The introduction to the facsimile volume assumes that the “Dark Lady,” as the sonnet mistress became known, was a…

By 1880, photolithography was able to convey the feel of the original pages of the book, while adding features that frame a reader’s interpretive encounter with the text, such as the line numbering here.

This 1880 photolithographic facsimile reproduces Shakespeare’s Sonnets’ title page. No evidence exists tying Shakespeare directly to the publication of his sonnets. We don’t know whether he chose the order of the poems.

Title Page
Though this volume of Shakespeare’s poetry was printed on its own, its title (“Volume the Seventh”) and layout were designed to invite the owner to add it to Rowe’s 6-volume edition of Shakespeare’s plays.

Excerpt
The volume reprinted…

A Doodle (left)

Catalogue

Frontispiece

Modern children contemplate Shakespearean theatrical institutions and historical difference in the book’s apt endpapers.

The daughters rebel at the moral of female submission at the end of The Taming of the Shrew. Their mother suggests that their strong responses testify to Shakespeare’s power as a dramatist.

White’s children are critical thinkers, challenging both their mother and Shakespeare’s period’s cultural and theatrical practices. Here they assess the virtues and limitations of the bare-bones Shakespearean thrust stage.