Davenant (Sir William) Gondibert: an Heroick Poem, first edition, title with woodcut printer's device, woodcut decorated initials and tail-pieces, N2 and N4 cancellanda, lacks first and last ff. blank, slight stain in margin of title, slightly browned, contemporary calf, rubbed, rebacked in later calf, [Wing D324; Pforzheimer 252], sm. 4to, printed by Tho. Newcomb for John Holden, and are to be sold at his shop at the sign of the Anchor in the Nevv-Exchange, 1651.

⁂ "John Dryden, who succeeded Davenant as laureate at his death, described the poem [Gondibert] as 'rather a play in narrative ... than an heroic poem'." - Oxford DNB.

Rumours circulated in the seventeenth century, not least from Davenant himself, that he was Shakespeare's illegitimate son, conceived by the poet at a sojourn with Jane Davenant at the Tavern in Oxford.