The Six Signatures

I don't know where this started, but I have read in a couple of blog posts recently (for example) that an authenticated signature of William Shakespeare could be sold for 3 million dollars, presumably US dollars.  There are six undisputed examples of Shakespeare's signature.  Facsimiles of all six can be found on Google Book Search.  Get out your screen capture programs, quills and Elizabethan-age paper and get ready to make a fortune.

Three of the undisputed signatures come from Shakespeare's will, a facsimile copy of the third page of which (and a transcript of the whole) can be found at the National Archive.  We could make a fair use argument for capturing the signature off that document, but fortunately for us, Google Book Search has scanned a books containing most of the signatures from the public domain.  The most comprehensive book is by George Wise, The Autograph of William Shakespeare, With Fac Similes of His Signature As Appended to Various Legal Documents; Together with 4000 Ways of Spelling the Name According to English Orthography, P. E. Able, 1869.  In it  we will find five of the six authentic signatures.  Here are the three from the will:

The first and second signatures on the will are simply the name:

Signature 1:

 

Signature 2:

 

The third signature (which can be seen on the National Archive facsimile) says "By me William Shakespeare"  I have taken this one from Halliwell-Phillipps' The Life of William Shakespeare. Including Many Particulars Respecting the Poet and His Family Never Before Published, London: J.R. Smith, 1848, because the illustration in Ward is a little obscured by the page border on which it is printed:

The Halliwell-Phillipps volume is an excellent source of other facsimile illustrations also.

The fourth authenticated signature comes from a conveyance for a gatehouse in Blackfriars, a property Shakespeare purchased on March 10, 1613.

A fifth signature is also related to the Blackfriars property and is on the deed of mortgage:

And the sixth authenticated signature is Shakespeare's autograph on his deposition in the Bellott-Mountjoy case of 1612:

I have taken the above signature from Charles Hamilton's Cardenio, or The Second Maiden's Tragedy, Glenbridge, 1994 (p. 136), a view of which can be found on Google Book Search.  The book is definitely covered by copyright, but the use of this image, I believe, falls under fair use in a scholarly/critical discussion.  Hamilton's arguments for Shakespeare's authorship of the version of Cardenio he publishes in this volume are controversial and, I think, not generally accepted today, but that does not concern us here.  The book itself is fascinating.

Now, I'm no paleographer, but the signatures appear somewhat different.  The spelling of the name seems to vary, as does the formation of some of the letters.  Wise, as an appendix to his volume, provides 4000 ways to spell Shakespeare!  Hamilton, in the Cardenio book, addresses these issues:

"The three tremulous signatures on Shakespeare's will, plus three other widely known signatures of Shakespeare, all of them different, have inspired a few ridiculous speculations about the dramatist's lack of formal education.  The truth is that the handwriting of many famous Elizabethans is so wretchedly indited that it may require hours for an expert paleographer to make out a single hard-to-decipher word, or pin down with certainty a hastily penned signature" (p. 126).

Hamilton supplies examples from well known Elizabethans showing the same "volatility" in their signatures.

Well, there you have it.  The six signatures.  Now, if someone would just pony up the $18 million for this post...

Comments

[Julia]

My tongue-tied Muse in MANNERS holds her still!!!!!........
Roger Manners is a Real Shake-Speare!!!!!!!!!

[Terry Gray]

Hi Jennifer, Thanks. I'm looking forward to reading your new book. If possible I'll review it for the Mr. Shakespeare web site. Re the signatures and your comments, I have thought from the beginning, in spite of spammers and phishers and all the "paradise lost" aspects of the Internet as it has evolved, that we could, in spite of it all, work together to make it truly useful. Google Book Search and the Internet Archive are big parts of that. I like to participate in this little way. --Terry

[Jennifer Lee Carrell]

Wow! Thanks for gathering all this. Much easier to see and compare here than in a lot of the books I've seen....