We have six examples of William Shakspere’s handwriting. All six are signatures on legal documents where some sort of mark had to be made to make the document legal. Here are the six signatures:
a) From the 1612 Mountjoy suit deposition: Willm Shackper
b) From the 1612 Blackfriars Gatehouse deed: (William) Shakspear
c) From the 1612 Blackfriars mortgage: Wm Shakspea
d) From the 1615 will, page 1: William Shackspere
e) From the will, page 2: Wllm. Shakspere
f) From the will, page 3: (by me William) Shakspear
The spellings on all six differ. On a) and c) he didn’t complete the word, as though perhaps, he couldn’t recall how it ended. Note that in b) the clerk has written the “William,” and that in the final signature on page 3 of his will, the first three words, “By me William,” were also written by the clerk. Also note that despite spelling his own name six different ways, not once does he spell it as it was spelled on play titles and elsewhere in London, the way we spell it today.
On similar documents William’s father showed that he was illiterate by using his “mark,” a drawing of a glover’s tool, instead of a signature. William’s daughter also used a mark, showing that she too was illiterate.
Were signatures in Shakespeare’s time written as we do today, often just a unique scrawl originally based on the name? They do not have to represent every letter of a name. And usually they change over time and on occasion are written differently, but with the same general characteristics.
Shakespeares examples above seem to follow this model. Writing instruments of the time would also have had a marked effect on the quality of the signature. To me they seem to be by the same man.
Because all six signatures occur on legal documents, there’s no argument that all (the surnames that is) were written by William himself since a person’s signature (or mark, if illiterate) was required to make documents legally binding. No one has ever questioned whether or not he wrote these versions of his surname himself. Certainly no lettered person would have made such a bad job of it.
As for the nature of his signatures, yes, idiosyncratic scrawls were used then as now, but where these are obviously signatures, William’s suggest the kind of labored effort shown by the signature of a six-year-old, a drawn image, taught by his parents, that as yet has no meaning for him in terms of a sequence of known letters. Although this copy can’t reproduce the shades of ink that give greater clarity to the signatures, there’s no doubt that the man who wrote these versions of Shakspeare did not know how to write anything but his last name, and that not well. He seems to have remembered it up to the k, at which point his memory would fail him. In (e) and possibly (d) it seems he actually attempted the William. Orthodox scholars tend to agree that the other Williams were written by the scribe who penned the rest of the document.
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