William Shakespeare George Hunter Popular Books

William Shakespeare George Hunter Biography & Facts

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 handwritten signatures. It was, however, the spelling used as a printed signature to the dedications of the first editions of his poems Venus and Adonis in 1593 and The Rape of Lucrece in 1594. It is also the spelling used in the First Folio, the definitive collection of his plays published in 1623, after his death. The spelling of the name was later modernised, "Shakespear" gaining popular usage in the 18th century, which was largely replaced by "Shakspeare" from the late 18th through the early 19th century. In the Romantic and Victorian eras the spelling "Shakspere", as 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 were used 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". 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 Mountjoy case, dated 11 May 1612 the purchase of a house in Blackfriars, London, dated 10 March 1613 the mortgage of the same house, dated 11 March 1613 his Last Will & Testament, which contains three signatures, one on each page, dated 25 March 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 conventions of the time. This was common practice. For example Edmund Spenser sometimes wrote his name out in full (spelling his first name Edmund or Edmond), but often used the abbreviated forms "Ed: spser" or "Edm: spser". The three signatures on the will were first reproduced by the 18th-century scholar George Steevens, in the form of facsimile engravings. The two relating to the house sale were identified in 1768, and the document itself was acquired by Edmond Malone. Photographs of these five signatures were published by Sidney Lee. The final signature was discovered by 1909 by Charles William Wallace. Though not considered genuine, there is a signature on the fly-leaf of a copy of John Florio's translation of the works of Montaigne, which reads "Willm. Shakspere"; it was accepted by some scholars until the late 20th century. Another possibly authentic signature appears on a copy of William Lambarde's Archaionomia (1568). Though smudged, the spelling appears to be "Shakspere". Other spellings The writer David Kathman has tabulated the variations in the spelling of Shakespeare's name as reproduced in Samuel Schoenbaum'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 once or in small numbers. Critics of Kathman's approach have pointed out that it is skewed by repetitions of a spelling in the same document, gives each occurrence the same statistical weight irrespective of context, and does not adequately take historical and chronological factors into account. R.C. Churchill notes that name variations were far from unusual in the Elizabethan era: The name of Sir Walter Raleigh was written by his contemporaries either Raleigh, Raliegh, Ralegh, Raghley, Rawley, Rawly, Rawlie, Rawleigh, Raulighe, Raughlie, or Rayly. The name of Thomas Dekker was written either Dekker, Decker, Deckar, Deckers, Dicker, Dickers, Dyckers, or (interestingly enough) Dickens. 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 Fifty-eight quarto (or Q) editions of Shakespeare's plays and five editions of poetry were published before the First Folio. On 20 of the plays, the author is not credited. On 15 title pages, his name is hyphenated, "Shake‑speare", 13 of these spellings being 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 quarto of Hamlet (1603) and the second of King Lear (1619). 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 and the poem A Lover's Complaint of Shake-speares Sonnets (1609). It is used in the cast list of Ben Jonson's Sejanus His Fall, and in six literary allusions published between 1594 and 1623. The un-hyphenated spelling "Shakespeare" (or Shakeſpeare, with a long s) appears on 22 of the 58 quartos. 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 "Shak‑speare" on the first quarto of King Lear (1608), and "Shakeſpere", in the first quarto of Love's Labour's Lost (1598). On the misattributed quarto A Yorkshire Tragedy (1608) his name is spelled "Shakſpeare", a spelling that also appears on the quarto of The Two Noble Kinsmen (1634), which was published after the First Folio. James S. Shapiro argues that Shakespeare's name caused difficulties for typesetters, and that 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, espec.... Discover the William Shakespeare George Hunter popular books. Find the top 100 most popular William Shakespeare George Hunter books.