Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown | Page 8

de plume"
adopted by the Great Unknown "concealed poet."
When I use the word "author" here, I understand Mr. Greenwood to
mean that in the plays called "Shakespearean" there exists work from
many pens: owing to the curious literary manners, methods, and ethics
of dramatic writing in, say, 1589-1611. In my own poor opinion this is
certainly true of several plays in the first collected edition, "The Folio,"
produced seven years after Will's death, namely in 1623. These curious
"collective" methods of play-writing are to be considered later.
Matters become much more perplexing when we examine the theory
that "William Shake-speare" (with or without the hyphen), on the title-
pages of plays, or when signed to the dedications of poems, is the
chosen pen-name, or "nom de plume," of Bacon or of the Unknown.
Here I must endeavour to summarise what Mr. Greenwood has written
{11a} on the name of the actor, and the "nom de plume" of the
unknown author who, by the theory, was not the actor. Let me first
confess my firm belief that there is no cause for all the copious writing
about the spellings "Shakespeare" or "Shake-speare"--as indicating the
true but "concealed poet"--and "Shakspere" (&c.), as indicating the
Warwickshire rustic. At Stratford and in Warwickshire the clan- name
was spelled in scores of ways, was spelled in different ways within a
single document. If the actor himself uniformly wrote "Shakspere" (it
seems that we have but five signatures), he was accustomed to seeing
the name spelled variously in documents concerning him and his affairs.
In London the printers aimed at a kind of uniformity, "Shakespeare" or
"Shake-speare": and even if he wrote his own name otherwise, to him it
was indifferent. Lawyers and printers might choose their own mode of
spelling--and there is no more in the matter.
I must now summarise briefly, in my own words, save where
quotations are indicated in the usual way, the results of Mr.
Greenwood's researches. "The family of William Shakspere of
Stratford" (perhaps it were safer to say "the members of his name")

"wrote their name in many different ways--some sixty, I believe, have
been noted . . . but the form 'Shakespeare' seems never to have been
employed by them"; and, according to Mr. Spedding, "Shakspere of
Stratford never so wrote his name 'in any known case.'" (According to
many Baconians he never wrote his name in his life.) On the other hand,
the dedications of Venus and Adonis (1593) and of Lucrece (1594) are
inscribed "William Shakespeare" (without the hyphen). In 1598, the
title-page of Love's Labour's Lost "bore the name W. Shakespere,"
while in the same year Richard II and Richard III bear "William
Shake-speare," with the hyphen (not without it, as in the two
dedications by the Author). "The name which appears in the body of
the conveyance and of the mortgage bearing" (the actor's) "signature is
'Shakespeare,' while 'Shackspeare' appears in the will, prepared, as we
must presume, by or under the directions of Francis Collyns, the
Stratford solicitor, who was one of the witnesses thereto" (and received
a legacy of 13 pounds, 6s. 8d.).
Thus, at Stratford even, the name was spelled, in legal papers, as it is
spelled in the two dedications, and in most of the title-pages-- and also
is spelled otherwise, as "Shackspeare." In March 1594 the actor's name
is spelled "Shakespeare" in Treasury accounts. The legal and the
literary and Treasury spellings (and conveyances and mortgages and
wills are NOT literature) are Shakespeare, Shackspeare, Shake-speare,
Shakespere--all four are used, but we must regard the actor as never
signing "Shakespeare" in any of these varieties of spelling--if sign he
ever did; at all events he is not known to have used the A in the last
syllable.
I now give the essence of Mr. Greenwood's words {13a} concerning
the nom de plume of the "concealed poet," whoever he was.
"And now a word upon the name 'Shakespeare.' That in this form, and
more especially with a hyphen, Shake-speare, the word makes an
excellent nom de plume is obvious. As old Thomas Fuller remarks, the
name suggests Martial in its warlike sound, 'Hasti-vibrans or Shake-
speare.' It is of course further suggestive of Pallas Minerva, the goddess
of Wisdom, for Pallas also was a spear-shaker (Pallas a'p?' t?? p???e??

t?' d???); and all will remember Ben Jonson's verses . . . " on
Shakespeare's "true-filed lines" -
"In each of which he seems to shake a lance, As brandished at the eyes
of ignorance."
There is more about Pallas in book-titles (to which additions can easily
be made), and about "Jonson's Cri-spinus or Cri-spinas," but perhaps
we have now the gist of Mr. Greenwood's remarks on the "excellent
nom de plume" (cf. pp. 31-37. On the whole of this, cf. The
Shakespeare