Spelling of Shakespeare's name
Encyclopedia
The spelling of William Shakespeare
's name has varied over time. It was not consistently spelled any single way during his lifetime, in manuscript or in printed form. After his death the name was spelled variously by editors of his work and the spelling was not fixed until well into the 20th century.
The standard spelling of the surname as "Shakespeare" was the most common published form in Shakespeare's lifetime, but it was not one used in his own hand-written signatures. It was, however, the spelling used by the author as a printed signature to the dedications of the first editions of his poems Venus and Adonis
and The Rape of Lucrece
. It is also the spelling used in the First Folio
, the definitive collection of his plays published in 1623, after his death.
In later centuries the spelling of the name was modernised, "Shakespear" becoming popular in the 18th century. In the Romantic and Victorian eras the spelling "Shakspere", used in the poet's own signature, became more widely adopted in the belief that this was the most authentic version. From the mid-19th to the early 20th century a wide variety of spellings was adopted for various reasons, although, following the publication of the Cambridge and Globe editions of Shakespeare in the 1860s, "Shakespeare" began to gain ascendancy. It later became a habit of writers who believed that someone else wrote the plays
to use different spellings when they were referring to the "real" playwright and to the man from Stratford upon Avon. With rare exceptions, the spelling is now standardised in English-speaking countries as "Shakespeare".
The signatures appear as follows:
Most of these are abbreviated versions of the name, using breviographic
conventions of the time.
The three signatures on the will were first reproduced by the 18th-century scholar George Steevens
. The two relating to the house sale were identified in the 19th century. Photographs of these five signatures were published by Sidney Lee
. The final signature was discovered by 1909 by Charles William Wallace
. There is also a signature on the fly-leaf of a copy of John Florio's translation of the works of Montaigne, which reads "Willm. Shakspere". This is no longer considered genuine, but was accepted by some scholars until the late 20th century.
's William Shakespeare: A Documentary Life. He states that of "non-literary references" in Shakespeare's lifetime (1564-1616) the spelling "Shakespeare" appears 71 times, while "Shakespere" appears second with 27 usages. These are followed by "Shakespear" (16); "Shakspeare" (13); "Shackspeare" (12) and "Shakspere" (8). There are also many other variations that appear in small numbers or as one-offs.
R.C. Churchill notes that such variations were far from unusual:
Kathman notes that the spelling is typically more uniform in printed versions than in manuscript versions, and that there is a greater variety of spelling in provincial documents than in metropolitan ones.
Shakespeare's surname was hyphenated as "Shake-speare" or "Shak-spear" on the title pages of 15 of the 48 individual quarto
(or Q) editions of Shakespeare's plays (16 were published with the author unnamed) and in two of the five editions of poetry published before the First Folio
. Of those 15 title pages with Shakespeare's name hyphenated, 13 are on the title pages of just three plays, Richard II
(Q2 1598, Q3 1598, Q4 1608, and Q5 1615), Richard III
(Q2 1598, Q3 1602, Q4 1605, Q5 1612, and Q6 1622), and Henry IV, Part 1
(Q2 1599, Q3 1604, Q4 1608, and Q5 1613). A hyphen is also present in the first quartos of Hamlet
(1602), King Lear
(1608). The name printed at the end of the poem The Phoenix and the Turtle
, which was published in a collection of verse in 1601, is hyphenated, as is the name on the title page of Shake-speares Sonnets
(1609). It is used in one cast list
and in six literary allusion
s published between 1594 and 1623.
If unhyphenated the name is most commonly spelled "Shakespeare" (or Shakeſpeare, with a long s). It is spelled this way in the first quartos of The Merchant of Venice
(1600), A Midsummer Night's Dream
(1600), Much Ado About Nothing
(1600), The Merry Wives of Windsor
(1602), Pericles, Prince of Tyre
(1609), Troilus and Cressida
(1609), Othello
(1622). The second, or "good", quarto of Hamlet (1604) also uses this spelling. It is also spelled this way on the misattributed quarto of Sir John Oldcastle
(1600; 1619) and on the verse collection The Passionate Pilgrim
(1599).
Rarer spellings are "Shakeſpere", in the first quarto of Love's Labour's Lost (1598), and "Shakſpeare", on the quartos of A Yorkshire Tragedy
(1608) and The Two Noble Kinsmen
(1634).
James S. Shapiro
argues that Shakespeare's name was a "typesetter's nightmare" if the spelling without the central "e" is adopted. This is because the conjunction of letters in moveable type is liable to damage the type, "When setting a "k" followed by a long "s" in italic font — with the name Shakspeare, for example — the two letters could easily collide and the font might snap". He suggests that this is one reason why the form with the "e" in the centre is most commonly used, and why it is sometimes hyphenated. Kathman argues that any name that could be divided into two clear parts was liable to be hyphenated, especially if the parts could be interpreted as distinct words.
. This retained the original title page, but included a section with additional plays. The title page of this new add-on adopted the new spelling. It was also adopted by other authors of the Restoration Era
. John Downes and Nahum Tate
both use the spelling.
This was followed by 18th-century writers. Shakespeare's first biographer, Nicholas Rowe, also spelled the name "Shakespear", in his book Some Account of the Life &c. of Mr. William Shakespear (1709) and in his new edition of the works. This spelling was followed by Alexander Pope
in his edition of the Works of Shakespear (1725) and George Sewell (The Works of Mr. William Shakespear). The spelling with an "e" at the end persisted, however. Pope's rival Lewis Theobald
retained it in his edition, Shakespeare Restored (1726), which pointedly rejected attempts to modernise and sanitise the original works.
The "Shakespear" spelling continued to be used by scholars throughout the 18th century, including William Warburton
. However, many, like Theobald, preferred the First Folio spelling, most notably Samuel Johnson
. "Shakespear" was less widely used into the 19th and 20th centuries, increasingly by advocates of rational spelling. William Hazlitt
used it in his book Characters of Shakespear's Plays
. George Bernard Shaw
, a strong advocate of spelling reform, insisted on the use of this spelling in all his publications.
, who recorded variations in the spelling of the name. Malone declared a preference for the spelling "Shakspeare", using it in his major publications including his 1790 sixteen volume edition of the complete works of the playwright. George Steevens
also used this spelling. Steevens and Malone had both examined Shakespeare's will, and were convinced that the final signature was spelled this way, which also conformed to the spelling used on Shakespeare's tomb
. However, Malone admitted that the signature was difficult to read and that the others were clearly spelled without the final "a". This spelling continued to be popular throughout the later Georgian period. Indeed "virtually every edition" of the playwright's work in the early 19th century before 1840 used this spelling. Even German scholars such as Friedrich Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck
adopted it.
The antiquarian Joseph Hunter
was the first to publish all known variations of the spelling of the name, which he did in 1845 in his book Illustrations of the Life, Studies, and Writings of Shakespeare. He gives an account of what was known at the time of the history of the name of Shakespeare, and lists all its variant forms, including the most idiosyncratic instances such as "Shagsper" and "Saxpere". He linked this to a history of the Shakespeare family and its descendants, though he was not able to add much to the material already identified by Edmond Malone. Hunter noted that "there has been endless variety in the form in which this name has been written." He criticised Malone and Steevens, writing that "in an evil hour they agreed, for no apparent reason, to abolish the e in the first syllable." Hunter argued that there were probably two pronunciations of the name, a Warwickshire version and a London version, so that "the poet himself might be called by his honest neighbours at Stratford and Shottery, Mr. Shaxper, while his friends in London honoured him, as we know historically they did, with the more stately name of Shakespeare." Kathman argues that while it is possible that different pronunciations existed, there is no good reason to think so on the basis of spelling variations.
first revived the spelling "Shakspere" in the belief that this was the correct form as "traced by the poet's own hand" in his signatures. Pinkerton did so in Letters on Literature, published under the pen-name Robert Heron. However, a later scholar identified a reference in The Gentleman's Magazine
in 1784 to the deplorable "new fashion of writing Shakespeare's name SHAKSPERE", which suggests that the trend had been emerging since Steevens published facsimiles of the signatures. Nevertheless, Pinkerton gave it wide circulation. The "Shakspere" spelling was quickly adopted by a number of writers and in 1788 was given official status by the London publisher Bell in its editions of the plays. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
, who published a large quantity of influential literature on the playwright, used both this and the "Shakspeare" spelling. His major works were published after his death with the new spelling. The spelling continued to be preferred by many writers during the Victorian era, including the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
in The Germ
.
The matter was widely debated. The Gentleman's Magazine became the forum for discussion of the topic. There was a heated debate in 1787, followed by another in 1840 when the spelling was promoted in a book by Frederic Madden
, who insisted that new manuscript evidence proved that the poet always wrote his name "Shakspere". Isaac D'Israeli
wrote a strongly worded letter condemning this spelling. There followed a lengthy correspondence, mainly between John Bruce, who insisted on "Shakspere" because "a man's own mode of spelling his own name ought to be followed" and John William Burgon, who argued that "names are to be spelt as they are spelt in the printed books of the majority of well-educated persons", insisting that this rule authorised the spelling "Shakspeare". Various other contributors added to the debate. A number of other articles covered the spelling dispute in the 19th century, in which the "Shakspere" spelling generally was promoted on the grounds that it was the poet's own. Albert Richard Smith
in the satirical magazine The Month claimed that the controversy was finally "set to rest" by the discovery of a manuscript which proved that the spelling changed with the weather, "When the sun shone he made his 'A's, / When wet he took his 'E's." In 1879 The New York Times
published an article on the dispute, reporting on a pamphlet by James Halliwell-Phillipps attacking the "Shakspere" trend.
Many of the most important Victorian Shakespeare publishers and scholars used this spelling, including Charles Knight
, whose The Pictorial Edition of the Works of Shakspere was very popular, and Edward Dowden
, in Shakspere: a critical study of his mind and art. In Britain the New Shakspere Society was founded in 1873 by Frederick James Furnivall
and in America the Shakspere Society of Philadelphia adopted the spelling. The former folded in 1894, but the latter still exists under its original name. The spelling was still common in the early to mid 20th century, for example in Brander Matthews', Shakspere as a Playwright (1913), Alwin Thaler's Shakspere to Sheridan (1922), and T.W. Baldwin's Shakspere's five-act structure (1947).
, John Glover, and William Aldis Wright
, all Fellows of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, had been published by the university. This edition (soon generally known as "The Cambridge Shakespeare") spelled the name "Shakespeare". A related edition, including Shakespeare's text from the Cambridge Shakespeare but without the scholarly apparatus, was issued in 1864 as "The Globe Edition". This became so popular that it remained in print and established itself as a standard text for almost a century. With the ubiquity and authority of the Cambridge and Globe editions, backed by the impeccable academic credentials of the Cambridge editors, the spelling of the name as "Shakespeare" soon dominated in publications of works by and about Shakespeare. Although this form had been used occasionally in earlier publications, and other spellings continued to appear, from that point "Shakespeare" gained the dominance which it retains to this day.
began to claim that someone other than Shakespeare of Stratford wrote the plays, they drew on the fact that variant spellings existed in order to distinguish between the supposed pseudonym used by the hidden author and the name of the man born in Stratford, who is claimed to have acted as a "front man".
The use of different spellings was sometimes simply a convenience, to clarify which "Shakespeare" was being discussed. In other cases it was linked to an argument about the meaning supposed to be attached to "Shakespeare" as a pseudonym. In some instances it arose from a belief that different spelling literally implied, as R.C. Churchill puts it, "that there must have been two men: one, the actor, whom they mostly call 'Shaksper' or 'Shakspere', the other the real author (Bacon, Derby, Rutland, etc.) whom they call 'Shakespeare' or 'Shake-speare' (with the hyphen)." In some cases there were even imagined to be three Shakespeares: the author, the actor and the Stratford man.
The choice of spelling for the Stratford man varied. Because he is known to have signed his name "Shakspere" when writing it out in full, this is the spelling sometimes adopted. However, H.N. Gibson notes that outlandish spellings seem sometimes to be chosen purely for the purpose of ridiculing him, by making the name seem vulgar and rustic, a characteristic especially typical of Baconians such as Edwin Durning-Lawrence
:
Some authors claim that the use of a hyphen in early published versions of the name is an indication that it is a pseudonym. It is argued that fictional descriptive names (such as "Master Shoe-tie" and "Sir Luckless Woo-all") were often hyphenated in plays, and pseudonyms such as "Tom Tell-truth" were also sometimes hyphenated. Kathman argues that this is not the case, and that real names are as likely to be hyphenated as pseudonyms. He states that the pseudonym "Martin Marprelate
" is sometimes hyphenated, but usually not. Robert Waldegrave, who printed the Marprelate tracts, never hyphenated the name, but did hyphenate his own: "If hyphenation was supposed to indicate a pseudonym, it is curious that Waldegrave repeatedly hyphenated his own name while failing to hyphenate an undisputed pseudonym in the same texts."
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
's name has varied over time. It was not consistently spelled any single way during his lifetime, in manuscript or in printed form. After his death the name was spelled variously by editors of his work and the spelling was not fixed until well into the 20th century.
The standard spelling of the surname as "Shakespeare" was the most common published form in Shakespeare's lifetime, but it was not one used in his own hand-written signatures. It was, however, the spelling used by the author as a printed signature to the dedications of the first editions of his poems Venus and Adonis
Venus and Adonis (Shakespeare poem)
Venus and Adonis is a poem by William Shakespeare, written in 1592–1593, with a plot based on passages from Ovid's Metamorphoses. It is a complex, kaleidoscopic work, using constantly shifting tone and perspective to present contrasting views of the nature of love.-Publication:Venus and Adonis was...
and The Rape of Lucrece
The Rape of Lucrece
The Rape of Lucrece is a narrative poem by William Shakespeare about the legendary Lucretia. In his previous narrative poem, Venus and Adonis , Shakespeare had included a dedicatory letter to his patron, the Earl of Southampton, in which he promised to write a "graver work"...
. It is also the spelling used in the First Folio
First Folio
Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. is the 1623 published collection of William Shakespeare's plays. Modern scholars commonly refer to it as the First Folio....
, the definitive collection of his plays published in 1623, after his death.
In later centuries the spelling of the name was modernised, "Shakespear" becoming popular in the 18th century. In the Romantic and Victorian eras the spelling "Shakspere", used in the poet's own signature, became more widely adopted in the belief that this was the most authentic version. From the mid-19th to the early 20th century a wide variety of spellings was adopted for various reasons, although, following the publication of the Cambridge and Globe editions of Shakespeare in the 1860s, "Shakespeare" began to gain ascendancy. It later became a habit of writers who believed that someone else wrote the plays
Shakespeare authorship question
Image:ShakespeareCandidates1.jpg|thumb|alt=Portraits of Shakespeare and four proposed alternative authors.|Oxford, Bacon, Derby, and Marlowe have each been proposed as the true author...
to use different spellings when they were referring to the "real" playwright and to the man from Stratford upon Avon. With rare exceptions, the spelling is now standardised in English-speaking countries as "Shakespeare".
Shakespeare's signatures
There are six surviving signatures written by Shakespeare himself. These are all attached to legal documents. The six signatures appear on four documents:- A deposition in the Bellott v. MountjoyBellott v. MountjoyThe case of Bellott v. Mountjoy was a lawsuit heard at the Court of Requests in Westminster on 11 May 1612 that involved William Shakespeare in a minor role....
case, dated May 11, 1612. - The purchase of a house in Blackfriars, London, dated March 10, 1613.
- The mortgage of the same house, dated March 11, 1613.
- His Last Will & Testament, which contains three signatures, one on each page, dated March 25, 1616.
The signatures appear as follows:
- Willm Shakp
- William Shaksper
- Wm Shakspe
- William Shakspere
- Willm Shakspere
- By me William Shakspeare
Most of these are abbreviated versions of the name, using breviographic
Breviograph
A breviograph is a type of scribal abbreviation in the form of an easily written symbol, character, flourish, or stroke based on a modified letter form used to take the place of a common letter combination, especially those occurring at the beginning or end of a word...
conventions of the time.
The three signatures on the will were first reproduced by the 18th-century scholar George Steevens
George Steevens
George Steevens was an English Shakespearean commentator.He was born at Poplar, the son of a captain and later director of the East India Company. He was educated at Eton College and at King's College, Cambridge, where he remained from 1753 to 1756...
. The two relating to the house sale were identified in the 19th century. Photographs of these five signatures were published by Sidney Lee
Sidney Lee
Sir Sidney Lee was an English biographer and critic.He was born Solomon Lazarus Lee at 12 Keppel Street, Bloomsbury, London and educated at the City of London School and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he graduated in modern history in 1882. In the next year he became assistant-editor of the...
. The final signature was discovered by 1909 by Charles William Wallace
Charles William Wallace
Charles William Wallace was an American scholar and researcher, famed for his discoveries in the field of English Renaissance theatre.Wallace was born in Hopkins, Missouri to Thomas Dickay Wallace and Olive McEwen...
. There is also a signature on the fly-leaf of a copy of John Florio's translation of the works of Montaigne, which reads "Willm. Shakspere". This is no longer considered genuine, but was accepted by some scholars until the late 20th century.
Other spellings
The writer David Kathman has tabulated the variations in the spelling of Shakespeare's name as reproduced in Samuel SchoenbaumSamuel Schoenbaum
Samuel Schoenbaum was a leading 20th century Shakespearean biographer and scholar.Born in New York, Schoenbaum taught at Northwestern University from 1953 to 1975, serving for the last four years of this period as the Frank Bliss Snyder Professor of English Literature. He later taught at the City...
's William Shakespeare: A Documentary Life. He states that of "non-literary references" in Shakespeare's lifetime (1564-1616) the spelling "Shakespeare" appears 71 times, while "Shakespere" appears second with 27 usages. These are followed by "Shakespear" (16); "Shakspeare" (13); "Shackspeare" (12) and "Shakspere" (8). There are also many other variations that appear in small numbers or as one-offs.
R.C. Churchill notes that such variations were far from unusual:
Kathman notes that the spelling is typically more uniform in printed versions than in manuscript versions, and that there is a greater variety of spelling in provincial documents than in metropolitan ones.
Printed spellings
Quarto
Quarto could refer to:* Quarto, a size or format of a book in which four leaves of a book are created from a standard size sheet of paper* For specific information about quarto texts of William Shakespeare's works, see:...
(or Q) editions of Shakespeare's plays (16 were published with the author unnamed) and in two of the five editions of poetry published before the First Folio
First Folio
Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. is the 1623 published collection of William Shakespeare's plays. Modern scholars commonly refer to it as the First Folio....
. Of those 15 title pages with Shakespeare's name hyphenated, 13 are on the title pages of just three plays, Richard II
Richard II (play)
King Richard the Second is a history play by William Shakespeare believed to be written in approximately 1595. It is based on the life of King Richard II of England and is the first part of a tetralogy, referred to by some scholars as the Henriad, followed by three plays concerning Richard's...
(Q2 1598, Q3 1598, Q4 1608, and Q5 1615), Richard III
Richard III (play)
Richard III is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1591. It depicts the Machiavellian rise to power and subsequent short reign of Richard III of England. The play is grouped among the histories in the First Folio and is most often classified...
(Q2 1598, Q3 1602, Q4 1605, Q5 1612, and Q6 1622), and Henry IV, Part 1
Henry IV, Part 1
Henry IV, Part 1 is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written no later than 1597. It is the second play in Shakespeare's tetralogy dealing with the successive reigns of Richard II, Henry IV , and Henry V...
(Q2 1599, Q3 1604, Q4 1608, and Q5 1613). A hyphen is also present in the first quartos of Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
(1602), King Lear
King Lear
King Lear is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. The title character descends into madness after foolishly disposing of his estate between two of his three daughters based on their flattery, bringing tragic consequences for all. The play is based on the legend of Leir of Britain, a mythological...
(1608). The name printed at the end of the poem The Phoenix and the Turtle
The Phoenix and the Turtle
The Phoenix and the Turtle is an allegorical poem about the death of ideal love by William Shakespeare. It is widely considered to be one of his most obscure works and has led to many conflicting interpretations. It has also been called "the first great published metaphysical poem". The title "The...
, which was published in a collection of verse in 1601, is hyphenated, as is the name on the title page of Shake-speares Sonnets
Shakespeare's sonnets
Shakespeare's sonnets are 154 poems in sonnet form written by William Shakespeare, dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality. All but two of the poems were first published in a 1609 quarto entitled SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS.: Never before imprinted. Sonnets 138 and 144...
(1609). It is used in one cast list
Cast member
A cast member is:* An actor who performs in a theatrical production, motion picture, or television program. The actors who perform in the show are collectively referred to as the cast....
and in six literary allusion
Allusion
An allusion is a figure of speech that makes a reference to, or representation of, people, places, events, literary work, myths, or works of art, either directly or by implication. M. H...
s published between 1594 and 1623.
If unhyphenated the name is most commonly spelled "Shakespeare" (or Shakeſpeare, with a long s). It is spelled this way in the first quartos of The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice is a tragic comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. Though classified as a comedy in the First Folio and sharing certain aspects with Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is perhaps most remembered for its dramatic...
(1600), A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play that was written by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta...
(1600), Much Ado About Nothing
Much Ado About Nothing
Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy written by William Shakespeare about two pairs of lovers, Benedick and Beatrice, and Claudio and Hero....
(1600), The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merry Wives of Windsor is a comedy by William Shakespeare, first published in 1602, though believed to have been written prior to 1597. It features the fat knight Sir John Falstaff, and is Shakespeare's only play to deal exclusively with contemporary Elizabethan era English middle class life...
(1602), Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Pericles, Prince of Tyre is a Jacobean play written at least in part by William Shakespeare and included in modern editions of his collected works despite questions over its authorship, as it was not included in the First Folio...
(1609), Troilus and Cressida
Troilus and Cressida
Troilus and Cressida is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1602. It was also described by Frederick S. Boas as one of Shakespeare's problem plays. The play ends on a very bleak note with the death of the noble Trojan Hector and destruction of the love between Troilus...
(1609), Othello
Othello
The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1603, and based on the Italian short story "Un Capitano Moro" by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565...
(1622). The second, or "good", quarto of Hamlet (1604) also uses this spelling. It is also spelled this way on the misattributed quarto of Sir John Oldcastle
Sir John Oldcastle
Sir John Oldcastle is an Elizabethan play about John Oldcastle, a controversial 14th-15th century rebel and Lollard who was seen by some of Shakespeare's contemporaries as a proto-Protestant martyr.-Publication:...
(1600; 1619) and on the verse collection The Passionate Pilgrim
The Passionate Pilgrim
The Passionate Pilgrim is an anthology of 20 poems that were attributed to "W. Shakespeare" on the title page, only five of which are accepted by present-day scholars as authentically Shakespearean.-Editions:...
(1599).
Rarer spellings are "Shakeſpere", in the first quarto of Love's Labour's Lost (1598), and "Shakſpeare", on the quartos of A Yorkshire Tragedy
A Yorkshire Tragedy
A Yorkshire Tragedy is an early Jacobean era stage play, a domestic tragedy printed in 1608. The play was originally assigned to William Shakespeare, though the modern critical consensus rejects this attribution, favouring Thomas Middleton....
(1608) and The Two Noble Kinsmen
The Two Noble Kinsmen
The Two Noble Kinsmen is a Jacobean tragicomedy, first published in 1634 and attributed to John Fletcher and William Shakespeare. Its plot derives from "The Knight's Tale" in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales....
(1634).
James S. Shapiro
James S. Shapiro
James S. Shapiro is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University who specialises in Shakespeare and the Early Modern period...
argues that Shakespeare's name was a "typesetter's nightmare" if the spelling without the central "e" is adopted. This is because the conjunction of letters in moveable type is liable to damage the type, "When setting a "k" followed by a long "s" in italic font — with the name Shakspeare, for example — the two letters could easily collide and the font might snap". He suggests that this is one reason why the form with the "e" in the centre is most commonly used, and why it is sometimes hyphenated. Kathman argues that any name that could be divided into two clear parts was liable to be hyphenated, especially if the parts could be interpreted as distinct words.
Spellings in later publications
Later editions of Shakespeare's works adopted differing spellings, in accordance with fashions of modernised spelling of the day, or, later, of attempts to adopt what was believed to be the most historically accurate version of the name. When he was referred to in foreign languages, he acquired even more variant spellings. 18th-century French critics were known to use "Shakpear, Shakespehar, Shakespeart, or Shakees Pear."Shakespear
A shift from "Shakespeare" to the modernised spelling "Shakespear" occurs in the second printing of the Third Folio, published in 1664 by Philip ChetwindePhilip Chetwinde
Philip Chetwinde was a seventeenth-century London bookseller and publisher, noted for his publication of the Third Folio of Shakespeare's plays.-A rough start:Chetwinde was originally a clothworker...
. This retained the original title page, but included a section with additional plays. The title page of this new add-on adopted the new spelling. It was also adopted by other authors of the Restoration Era
Restoration literature
Restoration literature is the English literature written during the historical period commonly referred to as the English Restoration , which corresponds to the last years of the direct Stuart reign in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland...
. John Downes and Nahum Tate
Nahum Tate
Nahum Tate was an Irish poet, hymnist, and lyricist, who became England's poet laureate in 1692.-Life:Nahum Teate came from a family of Puritan clergymen...
both use the spelling.
This was followed by 18th-century writers. Shakespeare's first biographer, Nicholas Rowe, also spelled the name "Shakespear", in his book Some Account of the Life &c. of Mr. William Shakespear (1709) and in his new edition of the works. This spelling was followed by Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
in his edition of the Works of Shakespear (1725) and George Sewell (The Works of Mr. William Shakespear). The spelling with an "e" at the end persisted, however. Pope's rival Lewis Theobald
Lewis Theobald
Lewis Theobald , British textual editor and author, was a landmark figure both in the history of Shakespearean editing and in literary satire...
retained it in his edition, Shakespeare Restored (1726), which pointedly rejected attempts to modernise and sanitise the original works.
The "Shakespear" spelling continued to be used by scholars throughout the 18th century, including William Warburton
William Warburton
William Warburton was an English critic and churchman, Bishop of Gloucester from 1759.-Life:He was born at Newark, where his father, who belonged to an old Cheshire family, was town clerk. William was educated at Oakham and Newark grammar schools, and in 1714 he was articled to Mr Kirke, an...
. However, many, like Theobald, preferred the First Folio spelling, most notably Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
. "Shakespear" was less widely used into the 19th and 20th centuries, increasingly by advocates of rational spelling. William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt was an English writer, remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism, and as a grammarian and philosopher. He is now considered one of the great critics and essayists of the English language, placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell. Yet his work is...
used it in his book Characters of Shakespear's Plays
Characters of Shakespear's Plays
Characters of Shakespear's Plays is an 1817 book of criticism of Shakespeare's plays, written by early nineteenth century English essayist and literary critic William Hazlitt. Composed in reaction to the neoclassical approach to Shakespeare's plays typified by Dr. Johnson, it was among the first...
. George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
, a strong advocate of spelling reform, insisted on the use of this spelling in all his publications.
Shakspeare
Archival material relating to Shakespeare was first identified by 18th century scholars, most notably Edmond MaloneEdmond Malone
Edmond Malone was an Irish Shakespearean scholar and editor of the works of William Shakespeare.Assured of an income after the death of his father in 1774, Malone was able to give up his law practice for at first political and then more congenial literary pursuits. He went to London, where he...
, who recorded variations in the spelling of the name. Malone declared a preference for the spelling "Shakspeare", using it in his major publications including his 1790 sixteen volume edition of the complete works of the playwright. George Steevens
George Steevens
George Steevens was an English Shakespearean commentator.He was born at Poplar, the son of a captain and later director of the East India Company. He was educated at Eton College and at King's College, Cambridge, where he remained from 1753 to 1756...
also used this spelling. Steevens and Malone had both examined Shakespeare's will, and were convinced that the final signature was spelled this way, which also conformed to the spelling used on Shakespeare's tomb
Shakespeare's funerary monument
The Shakespeare funerary monument is a memorial to William Shakespeare located inside Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, UK, the same church in which Shakespeare was baptised....
. However, Malone admitted that the signature was difficult to read and that the others were clearly spelled without the final "a". This spelling continued to be popular throughout the later Georgian period. Indeed "virtually every edition" of the playwright's work in the early 19th century before 1840 used this spelling. Even German scholars such as Friedrich Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck
Ludwig Tieck
Johann Ludwig Tieck was a German poet, translator, editor, novelist, writer of Novellen, and critic, who was one of the founding fathers of the Romantic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.-Early life:...
adopted it.
The antiquarian Joseph Hunter
Joseph Hunter (antiquarian)
Joseph Hunter was a Unitarian Minister and antiquarian best known for his publications Hallamshire. The History and Topography of the Parish of Sheffield in the County of York and the two-volume South Yorkshire , still considered among the best works written on the history of Sheffield and South...
was the first to publish all known variations of the spelling of the name, which he did in 1845 in his book Illustrations of the Life, Studies, and Writings of Shakespeare. He gives an account of what was known at the time of the history of the name of Shakespeare, and lists all its variant forms, including the most idiosyncratic instances such as "Shagsper" and "Saxpere". He linked this to a history of the Shakespeare family and its descendants, though he was not able to add much to the material already identified by Edmond Malone. Hunter noted that "there has been endless variety in the form in which this name has been written." He criticised Malone and Steevens, writing that "in an evil hour they agreed, for no apparent reason, to abolish the e in the first syllable." Hunter argued that there were probably two pronunciations of the name, a Warwickshire version and a London version, so that "the poet himself might be called by his honest neighbours at Stratford and Shottery, Mr. Shaxper, while his friends in London honoured him, as we know historically they did, with the more stately name of Shakespeare." Kathman argues that while it is possible that different pronunciations existed, there is no good reason to think so on the basis of spelling variations.
Shakspere
According to Hunter it was in 1785 that the antiquarian John PinkertonJohn Pinkerton
John Pinkerton was a Scottish antiquarian, cartographer, author, numismatist, historian, and early advocate of Germanic racial supremacy theory....
first revived the spelling "Shakspere" in the belief that this was the correct form as "traced by the poet's own hand" in his signatures. Pinkerton did so in Letters on Literature, published under the pen-name Robert Heron. However, a later scholar identified a reference in The Gentleman's Magazine
The Gentleman's Magazine
The Gentleman's Magazine was founded in London, England, by Edward Cave in January 1731. It ran uninterrupted for almost 200 years, until 1922. It was the first to use the term "magazine" for a periodical...
in 1784 to the deplorable "new fashion of writing Shakespeare's name SHAKSPERE", which suggests that the trend had been emerging since Steevens published facsimiles of the signatures. Nevertheless, Pinkerton gave it wide circulation. The "Shakspere" spelling was quickly adopted by a number of writers and in 1788 was given official status by the London publisher Bell in its editions of the plays. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
, who published a large quantity of influential literature on the playwright, used both this and the "Shakspeare" spelling. His major works were published after his death with the new spelling. The spelling continued to be preferred by many writers during the Victorian era, including the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti...
in The Germ
The Germ (periodical)
The Germ was a periodical established by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to disseminate their ideas. It was not a success, only existing for four issues between January and April 1850....
.
The matter was widely debated. The Gentleman's Magazine became the forum for discussion of the topic. There was a heated debate in 1787, followed by another in 1840 when the spelling was promoted in a book by Frederic Madden
Frederic Madden
Sir Frederic Madden , was an English palaeographer.-Biography:Madden was the son of an officer of Irish extraction, he was born at Portsmouth. From his childhood he displayed a flair for linguistic and antiquarian studies...
, who insisted that new manuscript evidence proved that the poet always wrote his name "Shakspere". Isaac D'Israeli
Isaac D'Israeli
Isaac D'Israeli was a British writer, scholar and man of letters. He is best known for his essays, his associations with other men of letters, and for being the father of British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli....
wrote a strongly worded letter condemning this spelling. There followed a lengthy correspondence, mainly between John Bruce, who insisted on "Shakspere" because "a man's own mode of spelling his own name ought to be followed" and John William Burgon, who argued that "names are to be spelt as they are spelt in the printed books of the majority of well-educated persons", insisting that this rule authorised the spelling "Shakspeare". Various other contributors added to the debate. A number of other articles covered the spelling dispute in the 19th century, in which the "Shakspere" spelling generally was promoted on the grounds that it was the poet's own. Albert Richard Smith
Albert Richard Smith
Albert Richard Smith , was an English author, entertainer, and mountaineer.-Biography:Smith was born at Chertsey, Surrey. The son of a surgeon, he studied medicine in London and in Paris, and his first literary effort was an account of his life there, which appeared in the Mirror. He gradually...
in the satirical magazine The Month claimed that the controversy was finally "set to rest" by the discovery of a manuscript which proved that the spelling changed with the weather, "When the sun shone he made his 'A's, / When wet he took his 'E's." In 1879 The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
published an article on the dispute, reporting on a pamphlet by James Halliwell-Phillipps attacking the "Shakspere" trend.
Many of the most important Victorian Shakespeare publishers and scholars used this spelling, including Charles Knight
Charles Knight (publisher)
Charles Knight was an English publisher and author.-Early life:The son of a bookseller and printer at Windsor, he was apprenticed to his father...
, whose The Pictorial Edition of the Works of Shakspere was very popular, and Edward Dowden
Edward Dowden
Edward Dowden , was an Irish critic and poet.He was the son of John Wheeler Dowden, a merchant and landowner, and was born at Cork, three years after his brother John, who became Bishop of Edinburgh in 1886. Edward's literary tastes emerged early, in a series of essays written at the age of twelve...
, in Shakspere: a critical study of his mind and art. In Britain the New Shakspere Society was founded in 1873 by Frederick James Furnivall
Frederick James Furnivall
Frederick James Furnivall , one of the co-creators of the Oxford English Dictionary , was an English philologist...
and in America the Shakspere Society of Philadelphia adopted the spelling. The former folded in 1894, but the latter still exists under its original name. The spelling was still common in the early to mid 20th century, for example in Brander Matthews', Shakspere as a Playwright (1913), Alwin Thaler's Shakspere to Sheridan (1922), and T.W. Baldwin's Shakspere's five-act structure (1947).
Shakespeare
Although Dowden, the most influential voice in Shakespearean criticism in the last quarter of the 19th century, used the spelling "Shakspere", between 1863 and 1866 the nine-volume The Works of William Shakespeare, edited by William George ClarkWilliam George Clark
William George Clark , English classical and Shakespearean scholar, was born at Barford Hall, Darlington.He was educated at Sedbergh School and Shrewsbury School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was elected fellow after a brilliant university career. In 1857 he was appointed Public Orator...
, John Glover, and William Aldis Wright
William Aldis Wright
William Aldis Wright , was an English writer and editor.William Aldis Wright was son of George Wright, a Baptist minister in Beccles. He was educated at Beccles Grammar School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated BA in 1858...
, all Fellows of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, had been published by the university. This edition (soon generally known as "The Cambridge Shakespeare") spelled the name "Shakespeare". A related edition, including Shakespeare's text from the Cambridge Shakespeare but without the scholarly apparatus, was issued in 1864 as "The Globe Edition". This became so popular that it remained in print and established itself as a standard text for almost a century. With the ubiquity and authority of the Cambridge and Globe editions, backed by the impeccable academic credentials of the Cambridge editors, the spelling of the name as "Shakespeare" soon dominated in publications of works by and about Shakespeare. Although this form had been used occasionally in earlier publications, and other spellings continued to appear, from that point "Shakespeare" gained the dominance which it retains to this day.
Shakespeare authorship question
When the advocates of the Shakespeare authorship questionShakespeare authorship question
Image:ShakespeareCandidates1.jpg|thumb|alt=Portraits of Shakespeare and four proposed alternative authors.|Oxford, Bacon, Derby, and Marlowe have each been proposed as the true author...
began to claim that someone other than Shakespeare of Stratford wrote the plays, they drew on the fact that variant spellings existed in order to distinguish between the supposed pseudonym used by the hidden author and the name of the man born in Stratford, who is claimed to have acted as a "front man".
The use of different spellings was sometimes simply a convenience, to clarify which "Shakespeare" was being discussed. In other cases it was linked to an argument about the meaning supposed to be attached to "Shakespeare" as a pseudonym. In some instances it arose from a belief that different spelling literally implied, as R.C. Churchill puts it, "that there must have been two men: one, the actor, whom they mostly call 'Shaksper' or 'Shakspere', the other the real author (Bacon, Derby, Rutland, etc.) whom they call 'Shakespeare' or 'Shake-speare' (with the hyphen)." In some cases there were even imagined to be three Shakespeares: the author, the actor and the Stratford man.
The choice of spelling for the Stratford man varied. Because he is known to have signed his name "Shakspere" when writing it out in full, this is the spelling sometimes adopted. However, H.N. Gibson notes that outlandish spellings seem sometimes to be chosen purely for the purpose of ridiculing him, by making the name seem vulgar and rustic, a characteristic especially typical of Baconians such as Edwin Durning-Lawrence
Edwin Durning-Lawrence
Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence, 1st Baronet was a British lawyer and Member of Parliament.He is best known for his advocacy of the Baconian theory of Shakespeare authorship, which asserts that Francis Bacon was the author of Shakespeare's plays. He published a number of books on the subject and...
:
Some authors claim that the use of a hyphen in early published versions of the name is an indication that it is a pseudonym. It is argued that fictional descriptive names (such as "Master Shoe-tie" and "Sir Luckless Woo-all") were often hyphenated in plays, and pseudonyms such as "Tom Tell-truth" were also sometimes hyphenated. Kathman argues that this is not the case, and that real names are as likely to be hyphenated as pseudonyms. He states that the pseudonym "Martin Marprelate
Martin Marprelate
Martin Marprelate was the name used by the anonymous author or authors of the seven Marprelate tracts which circulated illegally in England in the years 1588 and 1589...
" is sometimes hyphenated, but usually not. Robert Waldegrave, who printed the Marprelate tracts, never hyphenated the name, but did hyphenate his own: "If hyphenation was supposed to indicate a pseudonym, it is curious that Waldegrave repeatedly hyphenated his own name while failing to hyphenate an undisputed pseudonym in the same texts."