Spelling of Shakespeare's name

A shift from "Shakespeare" to the modernised spelling "Shakespear" occurs in the second printing of the Third Folio, published in 1664 by Philip Chetwinde. This retained the original title page, but included a section with additional plays.[12] The title page of this new add-on adopted the new spelling.[13] It was also adopted by other authors of the Restoration Era. John Downes and Nahum Tate both use the spelling.[14]

This was followed by 18th-century writers. Shakespeare's first biographer, Nicholas Rowe, also spelled the name "Shakespear", in his book Some Account of the Life &c. of Mr. William Shakespear (1709) and in his new edition of the works. This spelling was followed by Alexander Pope in his edition of the Works of Shakespear (1725) and George Sewell (The Works of Mr. William Shakespear).[15] The spelling with an "e" at the end persisted, however. Pope's rival Lewis Theobald retained it in his edition, Shakespeare Restored (1726), which pointedly rejected attempts to modernise and sanitise the original works.[16]

The "Shakespear" spelling continued to be used by scholars throughout the 18th century, including William Warburton. However, many, like Theobald, preferred the First Folio spelling, most notably Samuel Johnson.[15] "Shakespear" was less widely used into the 19th and 20th centuries, increasingly by advocates of rational spelling. William Hazlitt used it in his book Characters of Shakespear's Plays. George Bernard Shaw, a strong advocate of spelling reform, insisted on the use of this spelling in all his publications.[13]

Edmond Malone used the spelling "Shakspeare", which was most common in the Georgian era.

Archival material relating to Shakespeare was first identified by 18th-century scholars, most notably Edmond Malone, who recorded variations in the spelling of the name. Malone declared a preference for the spelling "Shakspeare", using it in his major publications including his 1790 sixteen-volume edition of the complete works of the playwright. George Steevens also used this spelling. Steevens and Malone had both examined Shakespeare's will, and were convinced that the final signature was spelled this way, which also conformed to the spelling used on Shakespeare's tomb. However, Malone admitted that the signature was difficult to read and that the others were clearly spelled without the final "a".[13] This spelling continued to be popular throughout the later Georgian period. Indeed "virtually every edition" of the playwright's work in the early 19th century before 1840 used this spelling. Even German scholars such as Friedrich Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck adopted it.[13]

The antiquarian Joseph Hunter was the first to publish all known variations of the spelling of the name, which he did in 1845 in his book Illustrations of the Life, Studies, and Writings of Shakespeare. He gives an account of what was known at the time of the history of the name of Shakespeare, and lists all its variant forms, including the most idiosyncratic instances such as "Shagsper" and "Saxpere". He linked this to a history of the Shakespeare family and its descendants, though he was not able to add much to the material already identified by Edmond Malone.[17] Hunter noted that "there has been endless variety in the form in which this name has been written." He criticised Malone and Steevens, writing that "in an evil hour they agreed, for no apparent reason, to abolish the e in the first syllable."[18] Hunter argued that there were probably two pronunciations of the name, a Warwickshire version and a London version, so that "the poet himself might be called by his honest neighbours at Stratford and Shottery, Mr. Shaxper, while his friends in London honoured him, as we know historically they did, with the more stately name of Shakespeare." Kathman argues that while it is possible that different pronunciations existed, there is no good reason to think so on the basis of spelling variations.[6]

Title page of Knight's Pictorial Shakspere, 1867 edition.

According to Hunter it was in 1785 that the antiquarian John Pinkerton first revived the spelling "Shakspere" in the belief that this was the correct form as "traced by the poet's own hand" in his signatures.[18] Pinkerton did so in Letters on Literature, published under the pen-name Robert Heron.[19] However, a later scholar identified a reference in The Gentleman's Magazine in 1784 to the deplorable "new fashion of writing Shakespeare's name SHAKSPERE", which suggests that the trend had been emerging since Steevens published facsimiles of the signatures in 1778.[13] Nevertheless, Pinkerton gave it wide circulation. The "Shakspere" spelling was quickly adopted by a number of writers and in 1788 was given official status by the London publisher Bell in its editions of the plays.[13] Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who published a large quantity of influential literature on the playwright, used both this and the "Shakspeare" spelling. His major works were published after his death with the new spelling.[20] The spelling continued to be preferred by many writers during the Victorian era, including the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in The Germ.[21]

The matter was widely debated. The Gentleman's Magazine became the forum for discussion of the topic. There was a heated debate in 1787, followed by another in 1840 when the spelling was promoted in a book by Frederic Madden, who insisted that new manuscript evidence proved that the poet always wrote his name "Shakspere". Isaac D'Israeli wrote a strongly worded letter condemning this spelling as a "barbaric curt shock". There followed a lengthy correspondence, mainly between John Bruce, who insisted on "Shakspere" because "a man's own mode of spelling his own name ought to be followed" and John William Burgon, who argued that "names are to be spelt as they are spelt in the printed books of the majority of well-educated persons", insisting that this rule authorised the spelling "Shakspeare". Various other contributors added to the debate.[22] A number of other articles covered the spelling dispute in the 19th century, in which the "Shakspere" spelling generally was promoted on the grounds that it was the poet's own. Albert Richard Smith in the satirical magazine The Month claimed that the controversy was finally "set to rest" by the discovery of a manuscript which proved that the spelling changed with the weather, "When the sun shone he made his 'A's, / When wet he took his 'E's."[23] In 1879 The New York Times published an article on the dispute, reporting on a pamphlet by James Halliwell-Phillipps attacking the "Shakspere" trend.[24]

Many of the most important Victorian Shakespeare publishers and scholars used this spelling, including Charles Knight, whose The Pictorial Edition of the Works of Shakspere was very popular, and Edward Dowden, in Shakspere: a critical study of his mind and art. In Britain the New Shakspere Society was founded in 1873 by Frederick James Furnivall and, in America, the Shakspere Society of Philadelphia adopted the spelling. The former folded in 1894, but the latter still exists under its original name.[24][25] The spelling was still common in the early to mid 20th century, for example in Brander Matthews', Shakspere as a Playwright (1913),[26] Alwin Thaler's Shakspere to Sheridan (1922),[27] and T.W. Baldwin's Shakspere's five-act structure (1947).[28]

The spelling "Shakespeare" was vigorously defended by Isaac D'Israeli in his original letter to the Gentleman's Magazine. Joseph Hunter also expressly stated it to be the most appropriate spelling. D'Israeli argued that the printed spellings of the poems would have been chosen by the author. He also insisted that the spelling represents the proper pronunciation, evidenced by puns on the words "shake" and "spear" in Shakespeare's contemporaries. Hunter also argued that the spelling should follow established pronunciation and pointed to the poems, stating that "we possess printed evidence tolerably uniform from the person himself" supporting "Shakespeare".[18]

Although Dowden, the most influential voice in Shakespearean criticism in the last quarter of the 19th century,[29] used the spelling "Shakspere", between 1863 and 1866 the nine-volume The Works of William Shakespeare, edited by William George Clark, John Glover, and William Aldis Wright, all Fellows of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, had been published by the university. This edition (soon generally known as "The Cambridge Shakespeare") spelled the name "Shakespeare". A related edition, including Shakespeare's text from the Cambridge Shakespeare but without the scholarly apparatus, was issued in 1864 as "The Globe Edition". This became so popular that it remained in print and established itself as a standard text for almost a century.[30] With the ubiquity and authority of the Cambridge and Globe editions, backed by the impeccable academic credentials of the Cambridge editors, the spelling of the name as "Shakespeare" soon dominated in publications of works by and about Shakespeare. Although this form had been used occasionally in earlier publications, and other spellings continued to appear, from that point "Shakespeare" gained the dominance which it retains to this day.[31]