[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.
[4] Greene was then lying on his last pallet of rhyme and misery,
dictating this sad legacy of "a groat's worth of wit bought with a
million of repentance."
[5] _Bombast_ is not here used in the present application of the
term, in a depreciating sense, but is a simile derived from the
cotton used in stuffing out or quilting the fashionable dresses.
[6] Collier's "New Facts," 13. Dyce's edition of "Greene's Dramatic
Works."
[7] Heywood's "Apology for Actors."--The Epistle to his bookseller at
the end.
[8] In the comedy of _Eastward Ho!_ the joint production of Jonson,
Marlowe, and Chapman,--Shakespeare is ridiculed, particularly the
madness of Hamlet and Ophelia.
[9] ROBERT CHESTER, a fantastical versifier, whose volume is priced
in the "Bib. Anglo-Poetica" at 50_l._, but this price was too
moderate; for, at the sale of Sir M. Sykes, some ingenious lover of
absurd poetry willingly gave 61_l._ 19_s._ I have not yet seen this
extraordinary production, and derive my knowledge only from a
specimen in the catalogue.
[10] In 1612 or 13.
[11] Most of our old plays come before us in a corrupt and mangled
state. They were often imperfectly caught by the scribe, or otherwise
surreptitiously obtained; hurried through the press from some
illegible manuscript by a careless printer, who would throw three
distinct speeches into the mouth of one character, transpose the
names of the dramatis personae, and omit the change of scene; while
others again with indiscriminate fidelity, from a stolen transcript
of the prompter's book, preserved his private memorandums and
directions in the stage-copy. Even in the first folio of Shakespeare,
so absent from their work were the player-editors, that "tables and
chairs" are introduced to direct the property-man, or the
scene-shifters, to be in readiness. Verse is printed as prose, to
save the expenditure of those small blank spaces which divide those
two regions of genius. The dramatists themselves, who probably
conceived that they had consigned all their property in their vended
plays, never read their own proof-sheets. The reader may form a clear
conception of the injuries inflicted on these writers by the existing
presentation copy of Massinger's "Duke of Milan," in which may be
seen how the poet, after its publication, indignantly corrected the
multiplied and the strange errata. The printer gave this text--
"Observe and honour her as if the SEAL
Of woman's goodness only dwelt in hers."
The poet corrected this to "the SOUL." The sagacity of an English
Bentley could hardly have conjectured the happy emendation; only the
poet himself could have supplied it.