No handwriting of Shakspere has ever been discovered except five autographs. In March 1613, when he was nearly 49 years old, he signed his name to a mortgage, and again to a deed relative to the same transaction. Three years later he subscribed his name to three briefs or sheets of his will. The five facsimiles are here reproduced:

They are all such signatures as an illiterate person, unaccustomed to write, would be likely to scrawl; and

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they are so different that an acquaintance with one is little help to the recognition of another.

In the first signature he writes Wm. for William.

The second and third autographs have William written above Shakspere. Who but an illiterate person would sign his name thus?

In the last two signatures (being told perhaps that his name ought to be written on one line) he puts William before Shakspere; but the fourth William reads Willin.

See now how differently each letter is formed in the name Shakspere, beginning with the initial:

Did anybody ever write the first letter of his name so differently? After four attempts to form a capital S he succeeds tolerably well the fifth time. The second S, though of singular shape, appears to have been a customary one as early as 1598. (See examples of that year below.) Shakspere’s first attempt to form the crooked letter is a failure, but the second passably good. So again in 1616, when he has a different form to copy, his first attempt is futile, the second is passable, and the third quite successful.

But in attempting the next letter he makes it worse every time:

With the letter a he is more successful, making it legible three times out of five:

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But the attempt to form a k is a signal failure:

With the long s he succeeds best the first time, and worst the second and third:

The letter p is legible the first time, but grows worse and worse to the last:

It seems as if in the first attempt to sign his name in 1613 he thought it was complete when he made it end with sp e; but being reminded that it lacked a letter or two he undertook to add one by putting an a over the e thus:

The next time, which was probably the same day,(1) he seems to have written his name Shaksper, though the terminal letters are uncertain:

The third time he gets it more like Shakspoze:

The deed to Shakspere and two other trustees is dated March 10 and signed Henry Walker. The mortgage from Shakspere and the other trustees is dated March 11. But for some unaccountable reason a duplicate verbatim copy of the deed from Henry Walker is signed by William Shakspere. This duplicate is in the Library of the city of London; the mortgage is in the British Museum. The duplicate deed we suspect was signed after the mortgage. Hence the improvement in the autograph; it was probably Shakspere’s second attempt to write. Compare it with the third.

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The fourth time he seems to have tried to disguise the termination with awkward flourishes, making the letters totally illegible:

Finally, he omits the flourishes and comes nearer legibility, but still it is impossible to tell whether he meant to write ear, ere, or eare:

And now let the reader mark, that notwithstanding the orthodox spelling of the name from 1593 to 1616, and indeed up to the present time, was and is Shakespeare, there is no e in the first syllable and no a in the last, although some have imagined the letter a to exist in the last part of the final autograph.

We have said that these signatures are all that. Shakspere is known to have written; we ought to add that he prefixed to the last one the following scrawl:

For a long time we puzzled over this. Could it be an attempt to write “25th of March,” the day of the execution of the will? At last we read the following in Hallowell-Phillipps’s Shakspere:

“It may be observed that the words By me, which, the autograph excepted, are the only ones in the poet’s handwriting known to exist, appear to have been penned with ordinary firmness.”

Presuming that the signatures were made in a sick bed, the author concedes that the words “By me” were penned with ordinary firmness. Very good; but could not almost any five-year-old boy do as well the first time?

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In 1775 certain papers and legal instruments were published, attributed to Shakspere, Queen Elizabeth, and Southampton. In 1796 Edmund Malone proved them to be forgeries. Here is one of the forged autographs of Shakspere:

This is superior to any of the genuine ones, which in some degree it resembles. The letter a is pretty clearly written in the last syllable, as if the forger meant to establish the proper spelling of that part of the name. Malone, who at first pronounced the genuine orthography to be Shakspeare, subsequently declared Shakspere to be the poet’s own mode of spelling his name beyond all doubt. But others do not accede to this decision, because they think there is an a in the last of the five genuine signatures.

The solution of the whole mystery is in the fact that Shakspere was unable to write or even to spell his own name.

In 1598 Richard Quiney addressed a letter to him asking for a loan of £30, and the name was written Shackesper:

In the same year among thirteen names of holders of corn in Stratford the last but one is Shakesper:

The form of the letter a in both these fac-similes

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was peculiar to that time. It occurs in Shakspere’s second autograph. Why did he thus vary the form? Probably because he followed the copy set for him.

Note now the various spellings of his name:

In 1582, as a bridegroom, Shagsper.

In 1593 and 1594, as a poet, Shakespeare; and the same uniformly as a playwright from 1598 to 1623. but sometimes with a hyphen—Shake-speare.

In 1596, as an inhabitant of Southwark, Shaksper.

In 1598, as addressed by letter, Shackesper.

In 1598, as owner of corn, Shakesper.

In 1604, as plaintiff in a suit, Shexpere.

In 1604 and 1605, as author of plays performed at Whitehall before King James, Shaxberd.

In 1609, as plaintiff in a suit, Shackspeare.

In 1612, as plaintiff in a suit, Schackspeare.

In 1614, as written by his cousin, Shakspear.

In 1616, as twice written in his will, Shackspeare; but in signing the same three times he omits the c in the first syllable, and it is impossible to tell what the last three or four letters are. And although in the two Deeds of 1613 the name is written repeatedly Shakespeare, in signing them he omits the e in the first syllable both times, and varies the termination of the name, just as an illiterate person would be likely to do.

But there are more of these various spellings. All the records of Shakspere’s lifetime have been hunted up and printed. From these documents, consisting of deeds, bills of complaint, letters, poems, plays, etc.,— most of which especially concerned either the father or son or both—we extract the following spellings, giving; the dates:

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Shakspere 1558, ’62, ’63, ’64, ’66, ’69, ’71, ’79, 80, ’83,

’85, ’90, ’96, 1616, ’17. (John Shakspere and all his offspring so registered, except Richard Shaks peer, baptized 1574.)

Shaxpere 1558, ’79, 1607, ’08.

Shakspeyr 1567, (“Mr.,” meaning John.)

Shakysper 1568, (“Mr. John.”)

Shackespere 1573, ’89, 1602.

Shakespere 1575, ’79, ’96, ’97, ’98, ’99,1602, ’04, ’06, ’08,

’09, ’10, ’11, ’13.

Shackspere 1579, (Deed. “Joannis Shaxpere -j-.”) 1608.

Shagsper 1582, (Marriage bond—twice so written.)

Shake-scene 1592, (Greene, the playwright, in derision.)

Shakespeare 1593-1594, (Poems,) 1596, ’98, 1603, ’05, ’13, (and all Plays from 1598 to 1623.)

Shaksper 1596, ’98, 1613, (Signature,) 1616.

Shakesper 1598, (Owner of corn.)

Shackesper 1598, (Letter from Quiney to Shakspere.)

Shakspeare 1601, ’03, ’07, ’12, ’13, ’14, 1623.

Shackespeare 1603, ’14, (Agreement.)

Shexpere 1604, (Suit for mult sold.)

Shaxberd 1604, ’05, (Dramatist, Whitehall.)

Shakespear 1605, (Conveyance.)

Shakesphear 1605, (Same conveyance.)

Shackspeare 1608, ’12, ’14, ’16.

Scliackspeare 1612, ’14, (Complaint and agreement.) Shaksp; 1613, (Signature.)

Shakspear 1614, (Cousin’s letter.)

Shaksp.... 1616, (Signatures to Will.)

Shaxper 1616, (“Bell and pall for Mr. Shaxpers

dawghter, viii. d.”)

If we divide the name between the s and p we have the following variations of each part:

Shaks, Shakes, Shakys, Shacks, Shackes, Schacks, Shags, Shax, Shex; per, pere, peer, pear, peare, peyr, phear, berd, pj, p ....

Shakspere’s daughter Judith in 1611 witnessed two instruments by making her mark. And his other

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daughter Susanna in 1642 disputed the unmistakable handwriting of her deceased husband in such a manner as to betray her illiteracy.

Mr. C. F. Gunther, of Chicago, claims to have obtained a copy of the Shakspere Folio of 1632, (i.e., the second Folio,) containing the author’s autograph pasted on a fly-leaf, underneath which is written:

“The works of William Shakespeare. Born in April, 1564, and died in April, 1616. John Ward.”

And on the same fly-leaf is pasted a letter from Charles Godwin, of Bath, dated February 16, 1839, to Dr. Charles Severn, of London, who was then editing “The Diary of the Rev. John Ward, A. M.,” Vicar of Stratford-upon-Avon from 1648 to 1679.

The book is said to have been owned by a Mormon, and is supposed to have been brought from England by an emigrant to Utah. Aside from the impossibility of such an autograph escaping from England to the wilds of America and remaining undiscovered so many years, the fac-simile in the Chicago Current of May 23, 1885, betrays most certain evidence of fraud. Compare it with the five genuine scrawls of Shakspere. It is so exact a copy of the last signature to the will as to indicate that it was traced therefrom.

Shakspere’s last signature:

Pretended autograph in Chicago:

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This close resemblance in so clumsy an autograph would be extraordinary, if not impossible; but how easy to forge it by first tracing it lightly with a pencil and then completing it with a pen. Here is a hair-line tracing of the spurious over the genuine autograph:

Even the most illiterate man who is obliged often to sign his name, will do it uniformly, so that when you have seen his signature once you will know it again. For example, take the following autographs:

The undersigned, aged 78 years, wrote the above autographs in presence of the two subscribing witnesses. And he never wrote and cannot write anything but his name, though he can read print with ease. And he further says that he learned to write his name in the course of one month in the administration of President Polk (1845-’9) while serving as a Capitol policeman; otherwise he would have been obliged to sign the pay-roll with his cross.

Witness:

1. Watson, JOHN W. SMITH.

Wm. Henry Burr.

Bacon required a mask, and he found it in the illiterate play-actor Shakspere.

Washington, D. C., May 31, 1885.

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