Richard Stonley, Shakespeare's First Reader!

STONLEY, RICHARD. Manuscript Document Signed, “Ric. Stonley”, with his distinctive “knot” flourish, 1 p., on vellum, November 3, 1568, Staffordshire, 9.75” x 2”, being an Elizabethan Exchequer’s bill written in court hand from a debtor in “StafRD”. Slight grubbiness, loss at center not affecting Stonley’s bold, dark signature, adhesive remnants at verso.

Richard Stonley (1520-1599) was an Elizabethan court official, book collector (including the first work published by Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis, in 1593*) and is known as “Shakespeare’s first reader”. He is most famously a diarist, and infamously, an embezzler from the Treasury of the enormous 16th century sum of £12,000 for which he was imprisoned in Fleet Prison.

Stonley was one of the four tellers of the Exchequer under Queen Elizabeth I. A man of enormous wealth but precarious finances, he maintained residences in Itchington, Warwickshire; in Doddinghurst, Essex; and in Aldersgate Street, St. Botolph’s without Aldersgate parish, London. Stonley’s Itchington estate lay about a dozen miles east of Stratford-upon-Avon, on the far side of Charlecote, while his Doddinghurst estate was purchased from Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, on 1 December 1579. That Stonley and Oxford were acquaintances, if not friends, is demonstrated by the fact that in 1575 Oxford owed Stonley £140.

According to the Folger Library: “Like other officers of the royal court, Stonley was probably wont to mingle private funds with monies which came to him via his office. Perhaps he had truly been “on the take”; or perhaps he was not sufficiently cautious in distinguishing “mine” from “thine.” In any case, the Crown confiscated his personal property, including the books in his Aldersgate house”, generating a famous 1597 inventory of fabulous books. However tragic this was for Stonley, the inventory, now in The National Archives, Kew, permits us to reconstruct a substantial part of his library. Stonley is best known for his “Diary”; which, though incomplete, records the movements, financial transactions, and personal interests of an important Elizabethan gentleman over three different periods, 1581-82, 1593-94, and 1597-98.

The last period is of particular interest as it records the life of a high-ranking prisoner in the Fleet Gaol. To take two examples, Stonley defended his claim to a room, in fact a cell, which had relatively good access to light and air; and he reveals that he was allowed out of prison during daytime hours so long as he paid a keeper to accompany him and returned by nightfall. Each day’s diary entry consists of four parts: 1) the date; 2) a passage or adage from the Bible or other standard source, often classical; 3) a list of expenses, often under categories given in the margin (“books”, “law”, “leases”); and 4) a summary of the day’s activities (e.g., “This day I kept Westminster and at home as the day before with thankes to god at night.”

*Richard Stonley recorded in his diary the purchases he had made that day [June 12, 1593] in the city: Ten shillings spent on food, three shillings spent on buttons and fabric for making clothing, and twelve pence for two books; "the Survey of France with the Venus & Adhonay[s] p[er] Shakespere". This small, inconsequential note makes Richard Stonley the earliest documented purchaser (and presumably reader) of a work by William Shakespeare.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses

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