A BOOKLEG, OR NOT A BOOKLEG? THAT IS THE QUESTION . . .

This is the story of a “bookleg.”

The most famous “bookleg” of them all: Shake-speares Sonnets.

What, you may well ask, is a “bookleg”?

Well, it is a book that is also a bootleg, an unauthorized collection of previously unavailable material that has been published, usually surreptitiously, without the author’s permission.

In the case of the Sonnets, the centuries-old presumption, that it was another example of the “divers stolen and surreptitious copies” that plagued Shakespeare’s professional life, has recently been under assault.

In the past twenty-five years, academic opinion has shifted toward viewing the 1609 text as, in some way, approved. But, as I aim to show, once a bookleg, always a bookleg . . .

—C.H.