[PUTTENHAM, George.] The Arte of English Poesie. Contrived into three Bookes: The first of Poets and Poesie, the second of Proportion, the third of Ornament. Published: London: by Richard Field, 1589.
Presented by Adam Douglas, Senior Rare Book Specialist at Peter Harrington.
Quarto (184 x 127 mm). Dark green levant morocco by Rivière, floral and ornamental gilt border on pointillé ground on sides, gilt dentelles, spine gilt, edges gilt. Bookplate. Woodcut device (McKerrow 222) on title page, woodcut portrait of Elizabeth I, woodcut initials, head- and tailpieces, and diagrams; bound without first and last blanks.
First and only contemporary edition; “an ambitious work of literary history and criticism as well as a rhetorical handbook for the practising poet” (ODNB). Puttenham’s examples are drawn mostly from early to mid-16th-century writers, poetry such as Richard Tottel’s Songs and Sonnets or the works of George Gascoigne and George Turberville. Ben Jonson owned a copy and carefully annotated it. The book was published anonymously with a dedication to Burghley subscribed “R. F.” by the printer Richard Field, the Stratford contemporary of William Shakespeare. Field was associated with the printing or publishing of many important sources for Shakespeare’s plays, suggesting the possibility that the playwright may have had access to his townsman’s shop. William Lowes Rushton itemizes an impressive number of parallels between The Art of English Poesie and the language displayed in Shakespeare’s plays.
