Bassanio.  Sweet Portia,
If you did know to whom I gave the Ring,
If you did know for whom I gave the Ring,
And would conceive for what I gave the Ring,
And how unwillingly I left the Ring,
When naught would be accepted but the Ring,
You would abate the strength of your displeasure.

Portia.
If you had knowne the virtue of the Ring,
Or halfe her worthinesse that gave the Ring,
Or your owne honour to contains the Ring,
You would not then have parted with the Ring.

[Footnote 34:  First Folio, “Comedies”, p. 183, col.  B, lines 36-46.]

It was probably more than a coincidence that Shakespeare’s first printed book, “Venus and Adonis”, was published, in 1593, by a fellow-townsman, Richard Field, who had come up to London from Stratford when a mere boy.  Undoubtedly, when Shakespeare met him in the bustle of city life, the common memories of their quieter native town served at once as an introduction and as a link between them.  Field also published Shakespeare’s “Lucrece” in the year 1594.  He had been a freeman of the Stationers’ Company from February 6, 1587, and died either in the year the First Folio was issued, or in the succeeding year, 1624.

[Illustration:  Printer’s mark of Richard Field, as shown on the title-page of the first edition of Shakespeare’s “Venus and Adonis”, 1593, the unique copy of which is in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.  A hand emerging from a cloud upholds the “Anchor of Hope”, about which are twined two laurel branches.]