“Upon thy well-made choice of friends, and books;

Then do I love thee, and behold thy ends

In making thy friends books, and thy books friends.”

Ben Jonson, Epigrams, LXXXVI, ‘To the Same’ (addressed to Sir Henry Goodyere).[1]

Introduction

I received something quite special in the post yesterday: an original copy of Ben Jonson’s unfinished pastoral, The Sad Shepherd; or, A Tale of Robin Hood, first published posthumously in 1641 as part of the collection of Jonson’s works commonly known as the Second Folio (1640–41).[2] Those who follow my writings know that, like Walter Scott’s antiquary Jonathan Oldbuck, I have something of a weakness for old books:

“How often have I stood haggling on a halfpenny, lest, by a too ready acquiescence in the dealer’s first price, he should be led to suspect the value I set upon the article!—how have I trembled, lest some passing stranger should chop in between me and the prize, and regarded each poor student of divinity that stopped to turn over the books at the stall, as a rival amateur, or prowling bookseller in disguise!—And then, Mr. Lovel, the sly satisfaction with which one pays the consideration, and pockets the article, affecting a cold indifference, while the hand is trembling with pleasure!”[3]

Although I cannot claim, like Oldbuck, to have haggled over a halfpenny, I certainly understand Oldbuck’s trembling hand. The arrival of a book printed nearly four centuries ago is a special occasion, particularly when the book concerns Robin Hood and what is probably the most beautiful Robin Hood tale ever written.

The Physical Book

The volume is also interesting as a physical object. Originally printed as part of the Second Folio collection of Jonson’s works, this particular copy has subsequently acquired a separate existence, with its own binding, history, and evidence of repair. It raises fascinating questions about how seventeenth-century books were collected, preserved, and occasionally taken apart.

The volume I received contains several of Jonson’s works:

• Under-Woods. Consisting of Divers Poems
• Epithalamion; or, A Song: Celebrating the Nuptials of that Noble Gentleman, Mr Hierome Weston
• Eupheme; or, The Faire Fame
• The Kings Entertainment at Welbeck in Nottinghamshire
• Loves Welcome and the King and Queenes Entertainment at Bolsover
• Mortimer His Fall. A Tragedie
• The Sad Shepherd; or, A Tale of Robin Hood

I purchased the volume from Besley’s Books in Diss, Norfolk, for £190, although its earlier ownership history remains unknown. The volume contains 80 leaves and measures approximately 30 × 20 cm. Several leaves have been repaired with what appears to be nearly transparent Japanese tissue. The volume appears to have been rebound in the twentieth century, judging from the character of its binding and its relatively modern endpapers, although a more precise date has yet to be established. Two pairs of gilt rules decorate the spine, which bears the title ‘BEN JONSON’ in gilt lettering.

Although complete as a copy of the surviving printed text, The Sad Shepherd preserves several errors in its original pagination. For example, the Prologue occupies pages 119–120, while Act I, Scenes I–III begin on pages 121–22. Scene III then continues onto a leaf incorrectly paginated 133, after which the numbering proceeds to page 150. The pagination reverts to page 143 for the Argument of the Third Act before continuing to page 155, where Jonson’s surviving text concludes. These discrepancies are found in other surviving copies and do not indicate missing leaves in mine.[4]

It is therefore better to understand the structure of The Sad Shepherd in terms of its quires, or gatherings. In early modern printing, books were generally constructed from printed sheets of paper that were folded and assembled into groups of leaves. These groups were known as quires or gatherings and were subsequently sewn together to form a book. Depending on the format and construction of the volume, a gathering might contain several folded sheets.

To ensure that gatherings were assembled in the correct order, printers commonly placed identifying letters, known as signatures, at the foot of certain pages. These usually followed an alphabetical sequence, with additional numbers identifying individual leaves within a gathering. Thus, a signature such as B2 identifies the second leaf of gathering B, while B2r and B2v designate its recto (front) and verso (back), respectively.[5]

Such signatures are especially useful when examining early printed books, since errors in pagination do not necessarily indicate missing or displaced leaves. By tracing the sequence of signatures and examining the physical arrangement of the gatherings, it is possible to establish whether a text is complete even when its printed page numbers are irregular. In the case of The Sad Shepherd, the apparent gaps and repetitions in pagination must therefore be distinguished from the actual sequence of surviving leaves.

The Sad Shepherd occupies gatherings R–V⁴ (R⁴ S⁴ T⁴ V⁴), comprising four gatherings of four leaves each, or sixteen leaves (thirty-two pages) in total. Thus, rather than citing the incorrectly numbered page 133, a scholar wishing to refer to a passage on that page would cite ‘sig. S1r’. This identifies the recto of the first leaf of gathering S, irrespective of its erroneous printed pagination.[6]

The Contents of the Volume

My copy is not a complete example of the later portions of Jonson’s Second Folio. Several important works are absent, including The Magnetic Lady, A Tale of a Tub, his translation of Horace’s Art of Poetry, The English Grammar, and Timber; or, Discoveries. Most of the later masques are also missing. Instead, the volume preserves a selection of Jonson’s poetry, occasional entertainments, and two unfinished dramatic works. When these particular works were brought together in their present arrangement remains unknown.

The following table compares the contents of my volume with the principal constituent works of the 1640–41 Second Folio.[7]

Whether all these works were collected together at the same time, or gathered separately and subsequently rebound, remains unknown. The compiler—if there was a single compiler—may have been particularly interested in Jonson’s posthumous works, for Under-Woods, Mortimer His Fall, and The Sad Shepherd were all first published after his death.

Despite the absence of many of the masques, one unexpected bonus was the inclusion of The Kings Entertainment at Welbeck in Nottinghamshire, in which reference is made to the outlaw:

Fitz. Sixe hoods they are, and of the blood,

They tell of ancient Robinhood.

Jonson, The Kings Entertainment at Welbeck in Nottinghamshire, sig. Oo2v.[8]

The lines were cited in the 1832 edition of Joseph Ritson’s Robin Hood: A Collection of All the Ancient Poems, Songs, and Ballads, edited by Joseph Frank, in a discussion of Robin Hood’s supposed ancestry.[9]  Although the entertainment is not a Robin Hood play, the allusion illustrates continued engagement with the legend in the early modern period, and possibly reflects the popularity of the aristocratic Robin Hood tradition dramatised in Anthony Munday’s The Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon and The Death of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon (1597–98). But, of course, the real star of the volume I received is The Sad Shepherd.

Curiously, The Sad Shepherd is the only work in my volume exhibiting evidence of repairs. Both Under-Woods and Mortimer His Fall survive in remarkably clean condition, while several leaves of The Sad Shepherd have sustained damage to their corners and lower edges, subsequently repaired with tissue. Such damage is consistent with repeated handling, although it cannot establish how frequently the play was read. It is nevertheless tempting to wonder whether The Sad Shepherd was a particular favourite of an earlier owner.

The Sad Shepherd; or, A Tale of Robin Hood

I can truly say that, though I have read the Prologue to The Sad Shepherd multiple times, it was all the more special to encounter it in something approaching the manner in which a person in the seventeenth century might have done.

HE that hath feasted you these forty yeares,

And fitted Fables, for your finer eares,

Although at first, he scarce could hit the bore;

Yet you, with patience harkning more and more,

At length have growne up to him, and made knowne,

The Working of his Pen is now your owne:

He pray’s you would vouchsafe, for your owne sake,

To heare him this once more, but, sit awake.

And though hee now present you with such wooll,

As from meere English Flocks his Muse can pull,

He hopes when it is made up into Cloath;

Not the most curious head here will be loath

To weare a Hood of it; it being a Fleece,

To match, or those of Sicily, or Greece.

His Scene is Sherwood:  And his Play a Tale

Of Robin-hood’s inviting from the Vale

Of Be’ voir, all the Shep’ards to a Feast:

Where, by the casuall absence of one Guest,

The Mirth is troubled much, and in one Man

As much of sadnesse showne, as Passion can.

The sad young Shep’ard, whom wee here present.

Ben Jonson, The Sad Shepherd, Prologue, sig. R3r.[10]

Only fellow antiquaries will understand: there is just something about the feel of the paper and the impression left by the type on the page, or the ‘V’ in place of ‘U’ in ‘THE PROLOGVE’. But I digress. In literary terms, I love the Prologue for several reasons. I find it quite poignant: here is Jonson, reflecting on a career of some forty years and imploring the audience’s indulgence in his later years. Although his plays were not always received successfully, he acknowledges how Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences eventually warmed to him, so that ‘the working of [his] pen’ is ‘now [their] own’.

The English Arcadia

Later in his Prologue Jonson promises audiences that his play will be a pastoral. The word derives from the Latin pastor, meaning ‘shepherd’. Literary pastoral developed in the Greek-speaking world, notably in the poetry of Theocritus, and acquired a powerful association with Arcadia, a mountainous region of the Peloponnese. The historical region was hardly the untroubled idyll imagined by later writers. As Allan R. Ruff observes, ancient Arcadians were described as:

“Hunters and gatherers, warriors and sensualists, inhabiting a landscape, notorious for its brutal harshness […] Arcadians were believed to dwell in caves or crude shelters subsisting on acorns and the meat and milk of their goats. The presiding divinity of Arcadia was Pan, half man, half goat with woolly thighs and cloven feet, who could appear at any place and at any time. He was the god of the shepherds and their flocks, fields, and the wooded glens of Arcadia.”[11]

The Arcadians’ entertainments were simple. Pipes and other rudimentary instruments supplied their music. Their woodland melodies were even said to be capable of ‘bewitch[ing] the hearer into states of pan-ic or pan-demonium’. Theocritus, in his[12] Idylls, developed an idealised vision of shepherd life. In the Roman period, Virgil’s Eclogues and Georgics extended the pastoral tradition, which was subsequently adapted by writers such as Calpurnius Siculus and Nemesianus.[13]

Some English playwrights before Jonson retained classical pastoral settings. John Fletcher’s The Faithful Shepherdess (c. 1609), for instance, is set in Thessaly. Shakespeare, on the other hand, left the geographical identity of his Forest of Arden in As You Like It ambiguous. There was, however, a Robin Hood connection with Shakespeare’s forest: Charles, describing the exiled Duke Senior and his followers to Oliver, says:

“there they live like the old Robin Hood of England.”[14]

Jonson, by contrast, promises a native English pastoral, spun from ‘meere English Flocks’, that can equal those ‘of Sicily, or Greece’. What is presented in The Sad Shepherd is an Arcadia, but an English Arcadia, set in Sherwood Forest. Yet although Jonson’s Sherwood is idealised, it is not without its tensions. As the ‘Argument of the First Act’ reveals:

“RObin-hood, having invited all the Shep’erds and Shep’erdesses of the Vale of Be’voir, to a Feast in the Forrest of Sherwood, and trusting to his Mistris, Maid Marian, with her Wood-men, to kill him Venison against the day: Having left the like charge with Friar Tuck his Chaplaine and Steward, to command the rest of his merry men, to see the Bowre made ready, and all things in order for the entertainment; meeting with his Guests at their entrance into the Wood, welcomes and conducts them to his Bowre. Where, by the way hee receives the relation of the sad Shep’ard Eglamour, who is falne into a deepe Melancholy, for the losse of his beloved Earine; reported to have beene drowned in passing over the Trent, some few dayes before. They endeavour in what they can to comfort him: but, his disease having taken so strong root, all is in vaine, and they are forced to leave him. In the meane time Marian is come from hunting with the Hunts-men, where the Lovers interchangeably expresse their loves. Robin-hood enquires if she hunted the Deere at force, and what sport he made, how long hee stood, and what head hee bore: All which is briefly answer’d with a relation of breaking him up, and the Raven, and her Bone. The suspect had of that Raven to be Maudlin, the Witch of Paple-wick, whom one of the Huntsmen met i’ the morning, at the rowsing of the Deere, and is confirm’d by her being then in Robin-hoods Kitchin, i’ the Chimney-corner, broiling the same bit, which was throwne to the Raven, at the Quarry or Fall of the Deere. Marian being gone in, to shew the Deere to some of the Shepherdesses returnes instantly to the Scene discontented, sends away the Venison she had kill’d, to her they call the Witch, quarrels with her Love Robin-hood, abuseth him, and his Guests the Shep’erds; and so departs, leaving them all in wonder and perplexitie.”[15]

Robin Hood the Outlaw?

The central narrative of Jonson’s play concerns a feast for the shepherds. Jonson effectively removes Robin Hood’s traditional outlaw status. Robin is described in the ‘Persons of the Play’ as:

“The Chiefe Wood-man and Master of the Feast.”[16]

He is not presented as a robber or an outlaw. Rather, he is the leading figure in a rustic community troubled by Eglamour’s grief and by the witch Maudlin’s activities. The forest has become a place of hospitality rather than outlawry.

Unfortunately, the play survives only as an unfinished fragment. Nevertheless, its lyrical quality has earned considerable praise: Anne Barton, for example, observes that it contains ‘passages of great lyrical beauty’.[17] Richard Harp praised “the excellence of the play’s poetry, decorous and vigorous without sentimentality or affectation.”^[18]

How Jonson intended to conclude The Sad Shepherd remains unknown, for he died before completing the play. Barton, however, suggests that the presence of a character named ‘Reuben, the Reconciler’ indicates that Jonson may have intended a reconciliation between Maudlin, her children, and the other inhabitants of Sherwood Forest, culminating in their participation in Robin Hood’s long-delayed venison feast. Such an ending would be remarkable, particularly given Maudlin’s malicious activities throughout the surviving acts.

Barton’s reconstruction nevertheless allows for the possibility that Maudlin would ultimately have been accommodated within the pastoral community rather than permanently excluded from it. She also associates Alken, the wise old shepherd who helps lead the pursuit of Maudlin, with Jonson’s recurring dramatic self-representations. If her interpretation is correct, the play may have concluded with the restoration of communal harmony rather than simply the punishment of the witch.[19]

Francis Waldron supplied a continuation in 1783. Although it cannot tell us how Jonson intended to finish his play, Waldron’s version contains passages which testify to his abilities as a poet and dramatist and to his understanding of Jonson’s work.[20]

Conclusion

I am currently preparing a new critical edition of Jonson’s The Sad Shepherd, to be combined with Francis Waldron’s continuation of 1783 and Alan Porter’s dramatic revival of 1935. The acquisition of this volume is more than an exercise in antiquarian collecting. Having access to an original printing allows me to examine the text as it appeared in 1641, paying close attention to its typography, pagination, signatures, and physical construction. Although digital facsimiles have made early printed books more accessible than ever, they cannot entirely reproduce the experience of examining an original artefact.

Ultimately, the volume reminds us that literary works do not survive merely as abstract texts. They survive through physical objects that have been printed, handled, collected, repaired, and passed from one generation to another. My copy of Jonson’s Second Folio is materially incomplete, but The Sad Shepherd is bibliographically complete as a surviving printed text, while Jonson’s play itself remains artistically unfinished.

A Note on Image Reproduction and Licensing

All original photographs of my 1641 copy of Ben Jonson’s The Sad Shepherd published in this article are made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Researchers, students, and other interested parties may reproduce, distribute, and adapt these photographs for scholarly, educational, or commercial purposes, including publication in academic books, journals, and digital repositories, without seeking prior permission.

The following conditions apply:

• Appropriate attribution must be given to Stephen Basdeo, Reynolds’s News and Miscellany, with a link to the original article where practicable.
• Any modifications to the photographs must be identified.
• Reuse must not imply my endorsement of the resulting publication or project.
• This licence applies only to my original photographs, not to third-party images or other material reproduced in the article.
• The licence does not impose new restrictions on Jonson’s original seventeenth-century text, which is in the public domain.

The full licence terms are available here.

[1] Ben Jonson, ‘Epigrams’, LXXXVI, ‘To the Same’, in Ben Jonson, ed. by C. H. Herford, Percy Simpson, and Evelyn Simpson, 11 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925–52), VIII, 55, ll. 2–4.

[2] For the complicated printing and issue history of the Second Folio, see W. W. Greg, A Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903), pp. 71–72.

[3] Walter Scott, The Antiquary (1816; Project Gutenberg, updated 20 February 2026), vol. I, ch. III, https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/7005/pg7005-images.html [accessed 12 November 2026].

[4] Greg, Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell, p. 72; the original printed sequence omits the numbers 123–132 and misnumbers pages 151 and 154.

[5] Philip Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), pp. 328–31; see also Folger Shakespeare Library, ‘Glossary of Book History Terms’, Folgerpedia, <https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/Glossary_of_book_history_terms&gt; [accessed 14 November 2026].

[6] Greg, Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell, p. 72 (the sequence is R–V⁴, with U omitted in conventional signature alphabets). The signature reference S1r is based on the copy described here.

[7] For the constituent sections of the 1640–41 volume, see Greg, Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell, pp. 71–72. Surviving copies are not invariably bound in the same order.

[8] Ben Jonson, ‘The Kings Entertainment at Welbeck in Nottinghamshire’, in The Workes of Benjamin Jonson, second volume (London: Richard Meighen, 1640), sig. Oo2v (author’s copy).

[9] Joseph Ritson, Robin Hood: A Collection of All the Ancient Poems, Songs, and Ballads, 2nd edn, ed. by Joseph Frank, 2 vols (London: William Pickering, 1832), I, ‘Notes and Illustrations’ (discussion of the surname Hood).

[10] Ben Jonson, The Sad Shepherd; or, A Tale of Robin Hood (1641), Prologue, sig. R3r (author’s copy). The extract follows the spelling and punctuation of the original printing.

[11] Allan R. Ruff, Arcadian Visions: Pastoral Influences on Poetry, Painting and the Design of Landscape (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2015), p. 1.

[12] Ruff, Arcadian Visions, p. 1. Ruff quotes the phrase concerning Pan’s melodies from an earlier authority, identified in his note 2.

[13] Ruff, Arcadian Visions, pp. 1–4.

[14] William Shakespeare, As You Like It, I.1.112–17, Folger Shakespeare Library, <https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/as-you-like-it/read/1/1/&gt; [accessed 14 November 2026].

[15] Jonson, The Sad Shepherd (1641), ‘Argument of the First Act’, sig. R2v (author’s copy).

[16] Jonson, The Sad Shepherd (1641), ‘The Persons of the Play’, sig. R2r (author’s copy). On Robin’s status, see also Anne Barton, ‘Introduction’, in The Sad Shepherd, ed. by Anne Barton and Eugene Giddens, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson Online, https://hcmc.uvic.ca/eol/cambridge/benjonson/works/plays/ver_sadshep_msp.html [accessed 14 November 2026].

[17] Anne Barton, ‘Introduction’, in Jonson, The Sad Shepherd, ed. by Barton and Giddens, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson Online, https://hcmc.uvic.ca/eol/cambridge/benjonson/works/plays/ver_sadshep_msp.html [accessed 14 November 2026].

[18] Richard Harp, ‘Jonson’s Late Plays’, in The Cambridge Companion to Ben Jonson, ed. by Richard Harp and Stanley Stewart (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 90–102 (p. 101).

[19] Barton, ‘Introduction’, in Jonson, The Sad Shepherd, Cambridge Edition online. Barton proposes a role for the as-yet-unseen Reuben in reconciling the characters at a final feast; the ending remains hypothetical.

[20] For a sympathetic assessment of Waldron’s continuation, see Barton, ‘Introduction’, in Jonson, The Sad Shepherd; see also Thomas Lockwood, ‘Francis Godolphin Waldron and Ben Jonson’s The Sad Shepherd’, The Library, 7th ser., 3 (2002), 390–412.