He has also been credited by some critics with editing England's Helicon (1600), a collection of Elizabethan lyric poems.
[6] A few months later James Roberts printed the much more substantial and accurate second quarto according to the "true and perfect copy" of Shakespeare's manuscript.
[7] Gerald D. Johnson suggests that Trundell had acquired a garbled version of the text, which was quickly published in association with Ling to meet demand.
Roberts had been given official access to Shakespeare's manuscript by the company, as he had entered it as a forthcoming publication in the Stationers' Register in 1602.
[8] In 1607 he transferred 16 copyrights to John Smethwick, among them three Shakespeare plays (Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Love's Labour's Lost) as well as The Taming of a Shrew.