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SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE
Bryskett, the friend of Spenser and Sidney. One-half of the edition bore the imprint, ‘London for Edward Blount,’ and the other half, ‘London for W. Aspley.’
Thorpe’s printer, Eld, and his bookseller, Aspley, were in well-established positions in the trade. George Eld, who had taken up his freedom of the Stationers’ Company on January 13, 1600, married in 1604 a widow who had already lost in rapid succession two husbands—both master-printers. The printing-press, with the office at the White Horse, in Fleet Lane, Old Bailey, which she inherited from her first husband Gabriel Simson (d. 1600), she had handed over next year to her second husband Richard Read (d. 1604). On Read’s death in 1604, she straightway married Eld and her press passed to Eld. In 1607 and subsequent years Eld was very busy both as printer and publisher. Among seven copyrights which he acquired in 1607 was that of the play called *The Puritaine*, which he published with a title-page fraudulently assigning it to W. S.—initials which were clearly intended to suggest Shakespeare’s name to the unwary.
William Aspley the bookseller.
Aspley, the most interesting of the three men engaged in producing Thorpe’s venture, was the son of a clergyman of Royston, Cambridgeshire. After serving an apprenticeship with George Bishop, he was admitted a freeman on April 11, 1597. He never owned a press, but held in course of time the highest offices in the Company’s gift, finally dying during the year of his mastership in 1640. His first shop was at the sign of the Tiger’s Head in St. Paul’s Churchyard, where Thorpe carried on business temporarily a few years later, but in 1603 he succeeded Felix Norton in the more important premises at the sign of the Parrot in the same locality. It was
¹ There are two copies in the British Museum with the two different imprints.
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