Studies in Philology

Volume XXII

April, 1925

Number 2

SHAKSPERE'S UNQUESTIONED AUTOGRAPHS AND THE ADDITION TO SIR THOMAS MOORE

BY SAMUEL A. TANNENBAUM.

In the following pages I shall deal with the interesting and important question whether one of the several additions to the MS. play of Sir Thomas Moore (now in the British Museum and known as Harl. MS. 7368), written on three pages, folios 8a, 8b, and 9a, and consisting of 147 lines, is in the handwriting of Shakspere himself.

The theory that it is a Shakspere holograph was first put forward in 1871 by the Reverend Richard Simpson,1 a frequent contributor to the Publications of the New Shakspere Society, the editor of the valuable School of Shakespeare, and the author of two interesting books on Shaksperian topics. He declared several sections of this play (folios 8 and 9, dealing with the insurrection of the London apprentices, as well as folios 7b, 11bb, 12, 13a, half of 13b and 14aa) to be Shakspere's, mainly on literary evidence (to wit: "the Shakespearian flavor" of More's speech to the insurgents, his reflections on his sudden preferment, and the unprecedented humor and naturalness of two comic scenes with Fawkner), but also asserting that "the way in which the letters were formed is absolutely the same as the way in which they are formed in the signatures of Shakspere." The following year James Spedding, the eminent editor of Francis Bacon's works, announced his agreement with Simpson as to folios 8 and 9, in which More quells the riot, but not as to the rest. It is generally agreed now that the

1 Notes and Queries, July 1, 1871, pp. 1-3.

*Notes and Queries, Sept. 21, 1872, pp. 227-8; also "Reviews and Discussions," London, 1879, pp. 376-384.

person-designated as "C" by Dr. Greg-who wrote the other pages mentioned was only a copyist and, probably, a stage director. Since 1908, when Mr. C. F. Tucker Brooke reprinted this old and, in all probability, unacted chronicle play in his very serviceable edition of the Shakespeare Apocrypha, it has received a great deal of attention. Recently a number of England's ablest scholars (A. W. Pollard, E. M. Thompson, J. D. Wilson, W. W. Greg, and R. W. Chambers), under the distinguished editorship of Professor Pollard, have united in producing a very plausible and instructive book (Shakespeare's Hand in the Play of Sir Thomas More, Cambridge, 1923) which sets forth the respective writers' arguments in favor of the claim that in these three folio pages we have what has been called "the most valuable manuscript in the world," a genuine Shakspere holograph.3

The "Moore" MS. is undated. Dyce, one of the most learned and industrious Shaksperians of the last century, edited this play for the (old) Shakespeare Society in 1844 and assigned it to "about 1590 or perhaps a little earlier "; Simpson, to 1587; Fleay, the noted scholar and chronicler of the Elizabethan drama, to 1590; Mr. W. J. Lawrence, whose knowledge of the Elizabethan stage and stage history is the envy of scholars, thinks it was acted in 1589 and written in the late 1580's; Greg, the editor of a most scholarly edition of the play for the Malone Society, in 1911 assigned the play to some such year as 1592 or 1593" but now favors a slightly later date,-between 1598 and 1600, although in 1913 he thought such a late date would be fatal to the Shaksperian attribution. The studies of the group of scholars included in the

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An only fairly good collotype facsimile of the whole of The Booke of Sir Thomas Moore was published in 1910 under the supervision and editorship of the late John S. Farmer. The three pages of "the Addition (as the three pages under consideration have been designated and as they will hereafter be referred to), i. e., folios 8a, 8b and 9a, have been somewhat better reproduced, but by no means so well as they might be, in Sir Edward M. Thompson's artistically printed book, Shakespeare's Handwriting, Oxford 1916.

F. G. Fleay, Shakespeare Manual, 1876, p. 98, but in 1890 he assigned it to 1594.

a In a recent letter to me Mr. Lawrence writes: "The belief in me grows stronger and stronger that Shakespeare had nothing to do with the [Addition]. I very much doubt if he and Munday ever wrote for the same company."

Modern Language Review, 1913, Vol. 8, p. 89.

recent publication referred to above, assign the Addition to "late in 1593 or early in 1594, possibly a year later," i. e., when Shakspere was in his thirtieth year." The matter of the date will prove of some importance in this investigation even from a caligraphic viewpoint.

The determination of the question at issue is one of the most difficult and important graphiologic problems that have arisen recently in the domain of letters.5

The six unquestioned Shakspere signatures constituting our standard for comparison were all written within the poet's last four years, between May 11, 1612, and March 25, 1616. Now, it is a principle in the science of "bibliotics"-as Dr. Persifor Frazer has designated the study of documents and the determination of the individual character of handwriting-that a questioned document must be compared with unquestioned writings of the same species, i. e., signatures with signatures, scribbled notes with scribbled notes, formal writing with formal writing, etc. Notwithstanding this, however, it must be admitted that with enough writing of one species as a standard of comparison, it is not impossible to reach a positive conclusion as to the genuineness or non-genuineness of a questioned specimen of another species. But -and this bears repetition-there must be enough standard writing available. What is to be considered enough in any particular instance depends on the quantity and the quality of the standard writing. This means a group of standard (undisputably authentic) specimens showing a sufficient number of the writer's individual

* Professor L. L. Schücking of Breslau who at one time assigned the play to 1604-5 now argues for 1601 or 1602. Cf. The Review of English Studies, Lond., Jan. 1925, pp. 40-59. He attributes the Addition to Heywood.

sb Three weeks after the acceptance of this essay for publication the news reached me that Messrs. Cecil Palmer & Co., of London had just brought out a book on Shakspere's Signatures and "Sir Thomas More George Greenwood.

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by Sir

• For a detailed discussion of these and other important principles involved in the study of handwriting, the reader is referred to Mr. A. S. Osborn's authoritative works on the subject, Questioned Documents, Rochester, 1910, and The Problem of Proof, especially as exemplified in Disputed Document Trials, N. Y., 1922, as well as Dr. Frazer's book, Bibliotics, or the Study of Documents, Philadelphia, 1901.

peculiarities to enable one to identify him or distinguish him from other possible claimants. By quality is meant writings of the same kind, i. e., of the same species, written under similar circumstances (e. g., while in motion, while lying in bed, etc.), with the same kind of pen and on the same kind of medium, etc.

That these conditions are not fulfilled in regard to the acknowledged Shakspere signatures is obvious from the following considerations: "Deposition" was written hurriedly and impatiently with a bad quill or with very watery ink (hence the blot in the W); "Guildhall" was written on a narrow strip of parchment under circumstances which called for no particular hesitation or reflection; "British Museum" was written on insufficiently cured parchment which took the ink so poorly that the signature had to be "printed" (hence the letters are almost vertical, disjointed, and fragmentary); and the three will-signatures were written, in all probability, with the testator propped up in bed, the document placed before him on a yielding surface, and he liable at any moment to be seized with an attack of faintness or giddiness.

The difficulties in the comparison of the writings in question would be even further increased if it were a fact, as some writers have maintained, that from 1612 to the time of his death Shakspere suffered from some form of nervous disease, e. g., locomotor ataxia, or from the neurosis known as "scrivener's palsy" or "writer's cramp." Those who maintain this theory in one form or another (Dr. Nisbet, Dr. Leftwich, Mr. Thompson), offer no plausible evidence other than the broken curves at the base of Shakspere's capital S's (Thompson does not include "Deposition" in this category) and the faltering manner in which "T2" and

'For convenience of reference I have named the signature discovered by Professor Wallace, "Deposition"; that on the Blackfriars conveyance, preserved at the Guildhall Library, "Guildhall"; that on the Blackfriars mortgage-deed at the British Museum, "British Museum"; that on the first page of the will, "T1"; etc. Inasmuch as the genuineness of the Shakspere signature in the British Museum's copy of Florio's translation of Montaigne is still in question, I make no reference to it in this study, though I am convinced it is a genuine Shakspere autograph. These signatures, enlarged to twice or thrice their natural size, so as to enable the student to become easily acquainted with Shakspere's handwriting peculiarities, are shown in facsimiles 2-9. Such half-tone facsimiles of these signatures as have been heretofore published are all but worthless in such an investigation as that in which we are now engaged.