The Double
AA
Headpiece
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From
The Tragedie of King Richard The
Third
As it is printed in the Quarto editon
of 1602
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From
The Tragedie of Hamlet Prince of
Denmark
As it is printed in the Quarto edition
of 1604
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|
|
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First Page of the
Sonnets
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Dedication Page
To
Venus & Adonis
1594 edition
Henry Wriothesly, Earl of Southampton was
a close friend of The Earl of Essex ,Anthony Bacon and
Francis Bacon
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Peter Dawkins comments on the AA
"The ‘AA’ headpiece to Hugh Holland’s dedicatory
poem ‘Upon the Lines and Life of the Famous Scenicke Poet,
Master William Shakespeare’ prefacing
the Shakespeare 1st Folio (1623). This particular version of the
‘AA’ headpiece is also used in Spenser’s Faerie Queene
(1609) and in Daemonology (1603).
Many of the finest examples of English literature in the 16th-17th
century Elizabethan-Jacobean period carried the ‘AA’ device
in one form or another, the authors or pseudonymous authors of which
included Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sydney, Thomas Lodge, Ben Jonson,
Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and Sir
Francis Bacon, amongst others. Altogether there were at least
six basic designs for the ‘AA’ headpiece, with several
significant variations of these basic designs. "
***
In "The Author's Preface to the
Reader" in the British Museum copy of the first (1612) edition of
Thomas Shelton's version of Don Quixote can be seen the
decorative light and dark AA design.
See
PLUS ULTRA and the AA
****
