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Events on Sunday 18 April 1593 1
1593Venus and Adonis publishedShakespeare's first published work, Venus and Adonis, is registered at the Stationers' Company on 18 April 1593 and printed by Richard Field, a Stratford man. The long narrative poem — 1,194 lines of rhyme royal — retells the Ovidian story of the goddess of love pursuing the reluctant Adonis. It becomes the bestselling work published in Shakespeare's lifetime, reprinted at least sixteen times before his death. He calls it "the first heir of my invention" in the dedication to Southampton.