Letter from Thomas Bowker to Edward Alleyn about a dog, with numerous notes on the verso by Alleyn of payments, including for a book of Shakespeare's Sonnets

Edward Alleyn (1566-1626), the famous Elizabethan actor and wealthy Jacobean gentleman, purchased a copy of Shake-speares Sonnets, published in 1609, recording his acquisition under “Howshowld stuff”:

a book Shaksper Sonets                        5d

A man of affairs and a man of the theater par excellence for most of his adult life, Alleyn is known to have maintained a personal library, making his purchase of the Sonnets unsurprising.

Edward Alleyn is connected with William Shakespeare, often as the leader of a rival company, in many contemporary documents. He was head of the Lord Admiral’s Men (later Prince Henry’s Men), just as Shakespeare was head of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (later the King’s Men). Though Alleyn may have regarded Shakespeare as a competitor, this note shows that he paid five pence for a copy of his Sonnets, a conventional price for a quarto of its size. In fact, the University of Manchester copy of the first edition also includes a note recording a purchase price of “5d.”

Alleyn’s note is written in his own hand among many other notes on the back of a letter addressed to Alleyn as Master of the Bears. The conventional date given to this document, June 19, 1609, is somewhat misleading. The letter, from a so far unidentified Thomas Bowker, is clearly dated June 19, from Roehampton, but without a year. As Alleyn and his father-in-law Philip Henslowe became joint Masters of the Bears in 1604, the letter could have been written in any year from 1604 onward. For his part, Alleyn could have written his note in any year from 1609, the publication year of the Sonnets, to the time of his death in 1626. While the second half of 1609, after the entry of the Sonnets in the Stationers Register on May 20, is a reasonable estimate for the note, it could have been written in 1610 or even later.

The note regarding the purchase of the Sonnets has been suspected as a John Payne Collier forgery (see Duncan-Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare). It is, after all, written into what started out as a blank space beneath other notes, and is, perhaps, “too good to be true.” But a close inspection of Alleyn’s handwriting, especially his “long-s” and his symbol for “pence,” will reveal that the entry is unquestionably authentic, far beyond the imitative skills of any known forger, including Collier.

Alleyn’s entry is written “sideways” at the top right of the document as presented here. The text of the letter is visible on the Henslowe-Alleyn Digitisation Project (featuring documents from Dulwich College), edited by Professor Grace Ioppolo.