t far to seek. The signing of the
dedication was an assertion of full and responsible ownership in the
publication, and the publisher in Shakespeare's lifetime was the full and
responsible owner of a publication quite as often as the author. The
modern conception of copyright had not yet been evolved. Whoever in the
sixteenth or early seventeenth century was in actual possession of a
manuscript was for practical purposes its full and responsible owner.
Literary work largely circulated in manuscript. {391} Scriveners made a
precarious livelihood by multiplying written copies, and an enterprising
publisher had many opportunities of becoming the owner of a popular book
without the author's sanction or knowledge. When a volume in the reign
of Elizabeth or James I was published independently of the author, the
publisher exercised unchallenged all the owner's rights, not the least
valued of which was that of choosing the patron of the enterprise, and of
penning the dedicatory compliment above his signature. Occasionally
circumstances might speciously justify the publisher's appearance in the
guise of a dedicator. In the case of a posthumous book it sometimes
happened that the author's friends renounced ownership or neglected to
assert it. In other instances, the absence of an author from London
while his work was passing through the press might throw on the publisher
the task of supplying the dedication without exposing him to any charge
of sharp practice. But as a rule one of only two inferences is possible
when a publisher's name figured at the foot of a dedicatory epistle:
either the author was ignorant of the publisher's design, or he had
refused to countenance it, and was openly defied. In the case of
Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' it may safely be assumed that Shakespeare
received no notice of Thorpe's intention of publishing the work, and that
it was owing to the author's ignorance of the design that the dedication
was composed and signed by the 'well-wishing adventurer in setting
forth.'

But whether author or publisher chose the patron of his wares, the choice
was determined by much the same considerations. Self-interest was the
principle underlying transactions between literary patron and _protege_.
Publisher, like author, commonly chose as patron a man or woman of wealth
and social influence who might be expected to acknowledge the compliment
either by pecuniary reward or by friendly advertisement of the volume