John Gerard’s Herball of 1597 was remarkably successful: it was twice reprinted, and it remained an authoritative botanical textbook through the eighteenth century. Copies of the book were regularly bequeathed by name in wills, and as we have seen, poets such as John Milton profitably mined its descriptions for details about plants and their uses. Yet, despite the evidence of Gerard’s wide renown among his contemporaries, his reputation as a herbalist has suffered from accusations of plagiarism that have plagued discussions of his work since the publication of the book’s revised second edition in 1633. This chapter explains how this narrative about Gerard’s 1597 Herball came about, paying close attention to the perspectives of the volume’s publishers to reveal that the logic of the traditional account of Gerard as a plagiarist makes little sense in the context of early modern herbal publication.

This chapter charts the second phase of the Tonson Shakespeare editions, examining texts produced from the mid eighteenth century onwards. The editorial work of Samuel Johnson is explored, with particular attention being paid to his registering of the principle that those texts published closest to an author's own time have a greater authority than later editions. The editorial work of those who inherited Johnson's edition – George Steevens and Isaac Reed – is examined. Edward Capell and Edmond Malone are presented as exemplary figures, whose work anticipated much editorial practice in the modern era, though it is noted that the logistical complexity of Capell's edition (and his obscure prose style) meant that his achievements were not fully appreciated until a later period. Malone's edition is seen as offering a kind of capstone to the editorial achievements of the eighteenth century and setting compass points for Shakespeare editing in the nineteenth century and beyond.