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SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE
**THREEDITION OF 1609.**
Trinity College, Cambridge, copy.
No. VI.
The John Rylands Library copy.
Cambridge, is defective, wanting eight leaves (A1-2, B1, K2-L2) including the title. The missing pages are supplied in manuscript by Capell, who transcribed a Wright title-page. The volume measures 7" × 5".
The John Rylands Library, in Manchester, contains a very fine copy which was acquired with Lord Spencer's Althorp collection, in 1892. It measures 7½" × 5", and has the Wright imprint. Earl Spencer purchased it in 1798, at the sale of Dr. Richard Farmer's library, for £8. It is in excellent condition, and is bound by Roger Payne in green morocco. Two peculiarities give the copy exceptional interest. On the last page of the volume, below the ornament, is the following manuscript note, in a somewhat ornamental handwriting of the early seventeenth century:—‘Comendacons to my very kind & approved ffreind 23: M:’. The numeral and capital at the end of the inscription may be the autograph of the donor in cipher, or may indicate the date of gift, March or May 23. Nothing is known of the history of this inscription, and there is no internal or external evidence to associate it in any way with Shakespeare. The copy was clearly presented by one friend to another about the date of publication. Another manuscript note in the volume is of more normal character. At the top of the title-page—to the left above the ornament—is the symbol ‘5d’ written in the same hand as the inscription at the end. There is no doubt that this represents the cost of the volume, and it is curious to note that Edward Alleyn records in his account-book for June, 1609, that he paid fivepence for a copy of Shakespeare's *Sonnets*. The suggestion based on this fact that the Spencer copy originally belonged to Alleyn seems hazardous.¹
An interesting history attaches to the copy in the library of the Earl of Ellesmere at Bridgewater House. Originally acquired by the second Earl of Bridgewater, it was sold by
**No. VII.**
The Bridgewater House copy.
¹ Cf. Dibdin's *Aedes Althorpionae*, i. 194. Mr. Guppy, the librarian of the John Rylands library, has kindly given me a very full description of this volume and careful tracings of the manuscript inscriptions.
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