name which has the least support of any of the variations. The result of the whole evidence on this point, which in regard to any other English author would hardly be worth examining, but which has its interest to thousands of Shakespeare's readers on both sides of the Atlantic, is simply this: The Poet, for some reason, thought fit to adapt the spelling of his name to the popular mode of pronouncing it, according to the pronunciation of London, and his more cultivated readers; bat this was done in his public, literary, and dramatic character only,-while as a Warwickshire gentleman, and a burgher of Stratford-upon-Avon, he used his old family orthography, in the form he thought most authentic. Such variations in the spelling of surnames were not at all unusual in the Poet's age, and before, and half a century after, of which many instances have fallen under my own casual observation. The reason of a fact which we should now think strange, I suppose may be found in the changes of the habits and of the law of ordinary business. When half the business of life is transacted, as now, by checks, notes, bills, receipts, and all those informal evidences of contract that the old law contemptuously designated as mere "parole contracts," although written, the identity of spelling, like a certain similarity of hand-writing, becomes of absolute necessity for all persons who have any business of any kind. In the older modes of life, where few transactions were valid without the attestation of a seal and witnesses, both law and usage were satisfied with the similarity of sounds, (the idem sonans of the courts;) and a man might vary his signature as he pleased. Thus the Poet could see no objection to having, like his own Falstaff, one name for his family and townsfolk, and another for the public-Shakspere for his domestic use and his concerns at Stratford-upon-Avon, and Shakespeare for the rest of England;-we may add, though he did not, for posterity, and the whole world. We subjoin the substance of Mr. Knight's remarks on the Poet's several autographs, with his fac-similes of them. These are conclusive as to the modern error of spelling the name with Malone, Shakspeare, as well as to the fact of the Poet's own private signature; but, fully agreeing with them on both points, we still see no reason for the adoption of the name as he wrote it for his private use, in place of that variation which he appears to have deliberately chosen for his poetic and dramatic surname, and by which he was known and mentioned by all his literary contemporaries. not upon the mode in which it was printed during the Poet's life, and in the genuine editions of his own works. which was Shakespeare, but upon this signature to the last sheet of his will, which they fancied contained an a in the last syllable. When William Henry Ireland, in 1795, produced his Miscellaneous Papers and Legal Instruments,' it was necessary that he should fabricate Shakespeare's name, and the engraving published by Stevens enabled him to do so. He varied the spelling. as he found it said to be varied in the signatures to the will; but he more commonly spelled the name with the a in the final syllable. His confidence in the Shakespeare editors supplied one of the means for his detection. Malone, in his Inquiry,' (1796,) has a confession upon this subject, which is almost as curious as any one of Ireland's own:-In the year 1776, Mr. Stevens, in my presence, traced with the utmost accuracy the three signatures affixed by the Poet to his will. While two of these manifestly appeared to us Shakspere. we conceived that in the third there was a variation: and that in the second syllable an a was found. Accordingly we have constantly so exhibited the Poet's name ever since that time. It ought certainly to have struck us as a very extraordinary circumstance, that a man should write his name twice one way, and once another, on the same paper: however, it did not; and I had no suspicion of our mistake till, about three years ago, I received a very sensible letter from an anonymous correspondent, who showed me very clearly that, though there was a superfluous stroke when the Poet came to write the letter r in his last signature, probably from the tremor of his hand, there was no a discoverable in that syllable; and that this name, like both the others. was written Shakspere. Revolving this matter in my mind, it occurred to me, that in the new fac-simile of his name which I gave in 1790, my engraver had made a mistake in placing an ▲ over the name which was there exhibited, and that what was supposed to be that letter was only a mark of abbreviation, with a turn or curl at the first part of it, which gave it the appearance of a letter. If Mr. Stevens and I had maliciously intended to lay a trap for this fabricator to fall into, we could not have done the business more adroitly.' * "The new fac-simile to which Malone alludes continued to be given with the a over the name, in subsequent editions; and we have now no alternative but to copy it from the engraving. It was taken from the mortgage deed executed by Shakespeare, on the 11th of March, 1613. When Malone's engraver turned the re of that signatnre into an a, the deed was in the pos"The will of Shakespeare, preserved in Doctors' session of Mr. Wallis, a solicitor. It was subsequently Commons, is written upon three sheets of paper. The presented to Garrick; but after his death was no where name is subscribed at the right-hand corner of the first to be found. Malone, however, traced that the coun sheet; at the left-hand corner of the second sheet; and terpart of the deed of bargain and sale, dated the 10th immediately before the names of the witnesses upon of March, 1613, was also in the possession of Mr. Wallis ; the third sheet. These signatures, engraved from a and he corrected his former error by engraving the sig tracing by Stevens, were first published in 1778. The nature to that deed in his 'Inquiry.' He says, 'Notfirst signature has been much damaged since it was withstanding this authority, I shall still continue to write traced by Stevens. It was long thought that, in the our Poet's name Shakspeare, for reasons which I have first and second of these signatures, the Poet had writ- assigned in his Life. But whether in doing so I am ten his name Shakspere, but in the third Shakspeare; right or wrong, it is manifest that he wrote it himself and Stevens and Malone held, therefore, that they had Shakspere; and therefore if any original letter or other authority in the hand-writing of the Poet for spelling his manuscript of his shall ever be discovered, his name name Shakspeare They rested this mode of spelling || will appear in that form.' This prophecy has been partly realized. The autograph of Shakespeare, corresponding in its authority with the other documents, was found in a small folio volume, the first edition of Florio's translation of Montaigne, having been sixty years in the possession of the Rev. Edward Patteson, minister of Smethwick, near Birmingham. In 1838 the volume was sold by auction, and purchased by the British Museum, for one hundred pounds. The deed of bargain and sale, the signature of which was copied by Malone in 1796, was sold by auction in 1841, and 98 was purchased by the Corporation of London, for one hundred and forty-five pounds. "We subjoin fac-similes of the six authentic autographs of Shakespeare. That at the head of the page is from the Montaigne of Florio: the left, with the seal, is from the counterpart of the Conveyance in the possession of the Corporation of London; the right, with the seal, is from Malone's fac-simile of the Mortgage deed which has been lost; the three others are from the three sheets of the Will." |
