Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1920-10-09
THREE PAGES OF MANUSCRIPT
WRITTEN BY SHAKESPEARE
some Experts Believe That the Great Draast Colaboruted
IN the Production of Mundays "Sir Thomas More''
... BY FELIX Il. SCHELIING
Professor Of University Of

is matter of common regret that
we should have so little whcrewith
to reconstruct the life aud personality
OF the greatest individual writer in our
tongue, and 1t Is as commonly forgotten
that we possess far more pieces Of eyi-
dence, both circumstantial and direct.
concerning Shakespeare than we possess
concerning any other man of his time
who was similarly placed IN life. OF
late interest has centered In the hand
writing of Shakespeare, and an old sug-
gestion has been revived and defended.
with zeal and the ammunition of ex-'
pert knowledge to the effect that a GER
tain contemporary dramatic manuscript
Is not only Of Shakespeare authorship
In part, but is actually written III his
own hand. Controversy on this topic
is still wa. ing In England, and, as
Shakespeare is always contemporary. n
brief attention to the subject cannot
be out of order.
Until the discovery in the records
~ Office in London by Professor Wal
lace, an American, Of a sixth signature
a Few years ago, appended to his de-
position in n lawsuit. there had been
only five unquestioned signatures of
Shakespeare cxtant. Three Of them were
appended to his will, which is carefully
preserved in locked cases ut Somerset
House, London. These have the disad-
vantage of having been written by a
dying man and disclose plainly his in
trinity. Two others are affixed to the
conveyance and the mortgage respective.
" of house in Blackfriars, purchased
by Shakespeare in 1918. some three
years before his death. Both of these
are written on the band which, accord
ing to the old usage, attached the seal
ment was written; and the writer ap-
peared to feel himself constrained in
both cases to crowd his name into this
narrow space. wherefore in both an alb
breviation Of the last syllable. The
new sixth signature alone is cursively
written, but 1t, too. exhibits an abbre-
Walton or contraction of the last syl-
liable. This abbrevintion was custom
ary in the writing of the time so. too.
was the variety in spelling. which seems
another Characteristic of Shakespeare s
way of signing his name. The poet s
handwriting is quite as offhand and, ar
tistically speaking, quite as bad as that
of many other men of letters In his time
and in ours. 1t seems worse to us than
we might expect because it, is in the
Olucr manner, Hu eldDOTHUe style In
forming the letters not unlike that still
in vogue in Germany to the present day,
1t was only after Shakespeare had
grown to manhood that the Italian
hand, as it was called, our simpler man :
ner of forming the letters, came gen =
orally into use. And apparently, like
many other older men, Shakespeare did
not trouble himself to adopt It. In
deed, it is the opinion Of experts that
the poets handwriting conforms SO well
to the average manner Of this older style
of his day that that very circumstance
adds new difficulty to the problem,
what writing is his.
TN THE havoc which time has wrought
l. among the dramatic manuscripts of
Shakespeare's day. leaving us out of
some 5000. separate dramas scarcely
one sixth preserved in print. it Is not
surprising to learn that there are
scarcely q score extant automatically in
the handwritings of their authors. 4
manuscript copy of "Romeo and Juliet
or of "The Merchant Of Venice in the
author s own hand would be miracle.