[1] Posterity is even in some danger of losing the real name of our great dramatic poet. In the days of Shakespeare, and long after, proper names were written down as the ear caught the sound, or they were capriciously varied by the owner. It is not therefore strange that we have instances of eminent persons writing the names of intimate friends and of public characters in a manner not always to be recognised. Of this we are now furnished with the most abundant evidence, which was not sufficiently adverted to in the early times of our commentators.
The autographs we possess of our national bard are unquestionably written Shakspere, according to the pronunciation of his native town; there the name was variously written,—even in the same public document,—but always regulated by the dialectical orthoepy. The marriage license of the poet, recovered in the “Gentleman’s Magazine” for September, 1836, offers a striking evidence of the viciousness of the pronunciation and the utter carelessness with which names were written, for there we find it Shagspere.
That the poet himself considered that the genuine name was Shakespeare, accordant with his own (a spear, the point upward), seems certain, notwithstanding his compliance with the custom of his country; for his “Rape of Lucrece,” printed by himself in 1594, in the first edition bears the name of William Shakespeare, as also does the “Venus and Adonis,” that first heir of his invention; these first editions of his juvenile poems were doubtlessly anxiously scrutinised by the youthful bard. In the literary metropolis the name was so pronounced. Bancroft has this allusion in his Epigrams—“To Shakespeare:”—
| “Thou hast so used thy pen, or shook thy speare, That poets startle.” |
The well-known allusion of Robert Greene, to a shake-scene, confirms the pronunciation. I now supply one more evidence—that of Thomas Heywood, the intimate of Shakespeare and his brother dramatists; he, like some others, has printed the name with a hyphen, which I transcribe from the volume open before me,—
| “Mellifluous Shake-speare,” Hierarchie of Angels, 206. |
The question resolves itself into this—Is the name of our great bard to descend to posterity with the barbaric curt shock of Shakspere, the twang of a provincial corruption; or, following the writers of the Elizabethan age, shall we maintain the restoration of the euphony and the truth of the name of Shakespeare?
[2] Mr. J. Payne Collier, in his “New Facts regarding the Life of Shakespeare.”
[3] Roscius Anglicanus.—They were Richard Burbage and John Lowin.