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Shakespeare’s Sonnets were first printed in 1609 in a quarto published by Thomas Thorpe. That edition is generally considered the authoritative text, and modern editors usually follow it as their source. Two of the poems in the 1609 sonnets (Sonnets 138 and 144) were published in the 1599 collection The Passionate Pilgrim; although the entire volume was attributed to Shakespeare, the collection is in fact a miscellany of poems by different authors. Some scholars, however, believe that the two sonnets by Shakespeare in that volume represent versions closer to Shakespeare’s manuscript than the 1609 versions. The sonnets were republished in 1640 by John Benson in a form very different from the 1609 collection, including a different order and individually titled poems. The Folger edition of the sonnets, like that of other modern editions, follows the 1609 text.
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