The Passionate Pilgrim is a small book of love poems that a London publisher sold under Shakespeare’s name in 1599, although only five of its poems are accepted as his, and its real value lies in those five: the first printed versions of two of his sonnets, in texts that differ from the ones we know.
At a Glance
Here are the key facts about The Passionate Pilgrim for quick reference.
What Is The Passionate Pilgrim?
By the late 1590s, Shakespeare’s name sold books. His narrative poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, had sold well, and in 1598 the critic Francis Meres praised “his sugared Sonnets among his private friends,” poems that readers had heard of but could not buy. The publisher William Jaggard stepped into that gap. Around 1599, he issued a slim anthology of love poems called The Passionate Pilgrim, and the title page of the surviving 1599 edition announced it as “By W. Shakespeare.”
The attribution was misleading. The book gathers about twenty short poems from several sources. Five are accepted as Shakespeare’s. Several others are known to be by other poets, and the rest are anonymous. The book was not entered in the Stationers’ Register, and there is no sign that Shakespeare had any part in it. Scholars generally regard it as an unauthorized collection built to trade on his name.
Even so, The Passionate Pilgrim matters to anyone who reads Shakespeare’s poetry. It printed two of his sonnets ten years before the 1609 Quarto of the Sonnets, and its texts of those two poems differ in revealing ways from the versions we know. It also shows what a Shakespeare book looked like when someone else assembled it: a mix of his work, his rivals’ work, and poems written in his manner.
The Five Poems by Shakespeare
Two of Shakespeare’s poems open the book, and three more come from one of his comedies.
“When My Love Swears That She Is Made of Truth”
The first poem in the book is an early version of Sonnet 138, in which an aging lover and his mistress lie to each other and both know it. The opening two lines match the 1609 text, but much of the rest differs. The full poem and a comparison with the later version follow below.
“Two Loves I Have, of Comfort and Despair”
The second poem is Sonnet 144, in which the speaker is torn between “a man right fair” and “a woman colored ill,” his better and worser angels. It is one of the few sonnets that brings the fair young man and the dark woman together in a single poem. Its Passionate Pilgrim text also differs from the 1609 version, and in one place modern editors prefer it. Where the 1609 Quarto has the woman tempting the speaker’s better angel “from my sight,” editors since Edmond Malone have printed the Passionate Pilgrim reading, “from my side.”
Three Poems from Love’s Labour’s Lost
In Love’s Labour’s Lost, the King of Navarre and three of his lords swear off women for three years of study, fall in love at once, and secretly write love poems. Jaggard took three of those poems for his book. “Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye” is Longaville’s sonnet to Maria. “If love make me forsworn, how shall I swear to love?” is Berowne’s poem to Rosaline, written in long twelve-syllable lines. “On a day, alack the day” is Dumaine’s song to Katherine. In the play, the poems belong to a comic scene of broken vows, as each man is caught writing verse he has sworn not to write. Printed alone, they read as straightforward love lyrics.
The Other Poems
The rest of the book is a mixture of borrowed and anonymous verse, and several poems can be traced to other writers.
Two poems belong to Richard Barnfield, one of Shakespeare’s contemporaries: “If music and sweet poetry agree” and “As it fell upon a day,” both printed under his own name in 1598. “Venus, with young Adonis sitting by her” had appeared in Bartholomew Griffin’s sonnet sequence Fidessa in 1596. Near the end of the book comes a short, garbled text of Christopher Marlowe’s famous “Come live with me and be my love,” followed by the first stanza of Sir Walter Raleigh’s reply to it. Another poem, “My flocks feed not,” had already been printed in Thomas Weelkes’s book of madrigals in 1597.
Several of the anonymous poems seem written to recall Shakespeare. Four poems, including Griffin’s, retell the story of Venus and Adonis, the subject of one of his most popular poems, and others use the same six-line stanza. Most scholars do not think they are his, although a few have argued that some may be. The last six poems sit under a separate title page, Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music, though the reason for the division is not clear.
Publication History
The book’s early history survives only in fragments, and its later history includes one of the few recorded complaints about how Shakespeare’s name was used.
The first edition survives only in pieces, bound into a single composite copy at the Folger Shakespeare Library, and its title page is lost. A second edition, dated 1599, survives in two complete copies, and its title page names Shakespeare and says the book was sold by William Leake. Leake also held the rights to Venus and Adonis, and he published several editions of that poem in the same years.
In 1612, Jaggard issued a third edition with new material: two verse letters between Paris and Helen of Troy. They were taken from Thomas Heywood’s Troia Britannica, which Jaggard had printed in 1609. Heywood protested in print. In his Apology for Actors, he complained of the “manifest injury done to me” and added that Shakespeare, too, was “much offended” with Jaggard for making “so bold with his name.” It is the closest thing we have to Shakespeare’s own reaction to the book. Jaggard seems to have responded by printing a new title page without Shakespeare’s name, and copies survive with both versions. In 1623, Jaggard’s printing house produced the First Folio.
The First Poem: Full Text
Here is the first poem in the book, the early version of Sonnet 138, as printed in The Passionate Pilgrim in 1599.
When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutor’d youth,
Unskilful in the world’s false forgeries.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although I know my years be past the best,
I smiling credit her false-speaking tongue,
Outfacing faults in love with love’s ill rest.
But wherefore says my love that she is young?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love’s best habit is a soothing tongue,
And age, in love, loves not to have years told.
Therefore I’ll lie with love, and love with me,
Since that our faults in love thus smother’d be.
Text from The Passionate Pilgrim (1599), in modernized spelling.
A Closer Reading: Two Versions of One Lie
Set the 1599 poem beside Sonnet 138 as printed in 1609, and the same situation turns into a sharper poem. The relationship between the two texts is unresolved. Some scholars read the Passionate Pilgrim version as an earlier draft, and others think it may be a faulty copy of the poem as it circulated. Either way, the differences show what the 1609 text gained.
In 1599, the lie runs mostly one way. The speaker says, “Although I know my years be past the best,” and the question he raises is about her age: “But wherefore says my love that she is young?” Both lovers are pretending to be young, and the poem is a wry joke about vanity. In 1609, the line becomes “Although she knows my days are past the best.” Now she knows the truth too, and each lover is deceiving someone who is not deceived. The question changes as well: “But wherefore says she not she is unjust?” “Unjust” here means unfaithful. The lie is no longer about her age but about her fidelity, and the stakes rise from vanity to betrayal.
The later version also names what the lovers are doing. In 1599, the speaker is found “Outfacing faults in love with love’s ill rest,” a line that is hard to pin down. In 1609, it becomes “On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed,” which is plain and damning. Love’s “soothing tongue” becomes “seeming trust,” a phrase that admits the trust is only an appearance.
The couplet shows the change most clearly. In 1599, it reads:
Therefore I’ll lie with love, and love with me,
Since that our faults in love thus smother’d be.
In 1609, it reads:
Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flatter’d be.
The abstract “love” becomes a real woman, “her.” The future “I’ll lie” becomes a present habit, “I lie.” And the pun on “lie” (to deceive and to sleep with) is now spelled out in the last line, where the faults are not just “smother’d” but “by lies” made flattering. The early version is a clever complaint. The later one is a confession: two people who know each other’s lies and keep telling them because the lies are what hold them together. If the Passionate Pilgrim text is Shakespeare’s first draft, then Jaggard’s pirated book lets us watch one of the great sonnets being made.
Common Questions
The questions readers ask most often about The Passionate Pilgrim, answered briefly.
Did Shakespeare Write The Passionate Pilgrim?
Only in part. The title page credits him, but only five of its poems are accepted as his: versions of Sonnets 138 and 144, and three poems from Love’s Labour’s Lost. Several others are known to be by other poets, and the rest are anonymous.
Who Published The Passionate Pilgrim?
William Jaggard, a London publisher, around 1599. His printing house later produced the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays in 1623.
Which Sonnets Appear in The Passionate Pilgrim?
Sonnets 138 and 144, printed as the first two poems in the book. They were the first poems from the future 1609 collection to appear in print, ten years before the Quarto.
How Many Poems Are in The Passionate Pilgrim?
Twenty or twenty-one, depending on the edition. One poem was originally printed as two, so some editors count it once and others count it twice.
Was Shakespeare Angry About The Passionate Pilgrim?
According to Thomas Heywood, yes. In 1612, Heywood wrote that Shakespeare was “much offended” with Jaggard for making “so bold with his name.” No statement from Shakespeare himself survives.
Related Reading
Three pages that take The Passionate Pilgrim further.