The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - Israel Gollancz William Shakespeare [3465]
Thorpe’s early life.
A study of Thorpe’s character and career clears the point of doubt. Thorpe has been described as a native of Warwickshire, Shakespeare’s county, and a man eminent in his profession. He was neither of these things. He was a native of Barnet in Middlesex, where his father kept an inn, and he himself through thirty years’ experience of the book trade held his own with difficulty in its humblest ranks. He enjoyed the customary preliminary training. At midsummer 1584 he was apprenticed for nine years to a reputable printer and stationer, Richard Watkins. Nearly ten years later he took up the freedom of the Stationers’ Company, and was thereby qualified to set up as a publisher on his own account. He was not destitute of a taste for literature; he knew scraps of Latin, and recognised a good manuscript when he saw one. But the ranks of London publishers were overcrowded, and such accomplishments as Thorpe possessed were poor compensation for a lack of capital or of family connections among those already established in the trade. For many years he contented himself with an obscure situation as assistant or clerk to a stationer more favourably placed.
His ownership of the manuscript of Marlowe’s ‘Lucan.’ His dedicatory address to Edward Blount in 1600.
It was as the self-appointed procurer and owner of an unprinted manuscript—a recognised role for novices to fill in the book trade of the period—that Thorpe made his first distinguishable appearance on the stage of literary history. In 1600 there fell into his hands in an unexplained manner a written copy of Marlowe’s unprinted translation of the first book of ‘Lucan.’ Thorpe confided his good fortune to Edward Blount, then a stationer’s assistant like himself, but with better prospects. Blount had already achieved a modest success in the same capacity of procurer or picker-up of neglected ‘copy.’ In 1598 he became proprietor of Marlowe’s unfinished and unpublished ‘Hero and Leander,’ and found among better-equipped friends in the trade both a printer and a publisher for his treasure-trove. Blount good-naturedly interested himself in Thorpe’s ‘find,’ and it was through Blount’s good offices that Peter Short undertook to print Thorpe’s manuscript of Marlowe’s ‘Lucan,’ and Walter Burre agreed to sell it at his shop in St. Paul’s Churchyard. As owner of the manuscript Thorpe exerted the right of choosing a patron for the venture and of supplying the dedicatory epistle. The patron of his choice was his friend Blount, and he made the dedication the vehicle of his gratitude for the assistance he had just received. The style of the dedication was somewhat bombastic, but Thorpe showed a literary sense when he designated Marlowe ‘that pure elemental wit,’ and a good deal of dry humour in offering to ‘his kind and true friend’ Blount ‘some few instructions’ whereby he might accommodate himself to the unaccustomed rôle of patron. For the conventional type of patron Thorpe disavowed respect. He preferred to place himself under the protection of a friend in the trade whose goodwill had already stood him in good stead, and was capable of benefiting him hereafter.
This venture laid the foundation of Thorpe’s fortunes. Three years later he was able to place his own name on the title-page of two humbler literary prizes—each an insignificant pamphlet on current events. Thenceforth for a dozen years his name reappeared annually on one, two, or three volumes. After 1614 his operations were few and far between, and they ceased altogether in 1624. He seems to have ended