Spelling of Shakespeare's name

The spelling of William Shakespeare's name has varied over time. It was not consistently spelled any single way during his lifetime, in manuscript or in printed form. After his death the name was spelled variously by editors of his work, and the spelling was not fixed until well into the 20th century.

The standard spelling of the surname as "Shakespeare" was the most common published form in Shakespeare's lifetime, but it was not one used in his own handwritten signatures. It was, however, the spelling used by the author as a printed signature to the dedications of the first editions of his poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. It is also the spelling used in the First Folio, the definitive collection of his plays published in 1623, after his death.

The spelling of the name was later modernised, "Shakespear" gaining popular usage in the 18th century, which was largely replaced by "Shakspeare" from the late 18th through the early 19th century. In the Romantic and Victorian eras the spelling "Shakspere", as used in the poet's own signature, became more widely adopted in the belief that this was the most authentic version. From the mid-19th to the early 20th century, a wide variety of spellings were used for various reasons; although, following the publication of the Cambridge and Globe editions of Shakespeare in the 1860s, "Shakespeare" began to gain ascendancy. It later became a habit of writers who believed that someone else wrote the plays to use different spellings when they were referring to the "real" playwright and to the man from Stratford upon Avon. With rare exceptions, the spelling is now standardised in English-speaking countries as "Shakespeare".

There are six surviving signatures written by Shakespeare himself. These are all attached to legal documents. The six signatures appear on four documents:

The signatures appear as follows:

Most of these are abbreviated versions of the name, using breviographic conventions of the time. This was common practice. For example Edmund Spenser sometimes wrote his name out in full (spelling his first name Edmund or Edmond), but often used the abbreviated forms "Ed: spser" or "Edm: spser".

The three signatures on the will were first reproduced by the 18th-century scholar George Steevens, in the form of facsimile engravings. The two relating to the house sale were identified in 1768, and the document itself was acquired by Edmund Malone. Photographs of these five signatures were published by Sidney Lee. The final signature was discovered by 1909 by Charles William Wallace. There is also a signature on the fly-leaf of a copy of John Florio's translation of the works of Montaigne, which reads "Willm. Shakspere". This is no longer considered genuine, but was accepted by some scholars until the late 20th century. Another possibly authentic signature appears on a copy of William Lambarde's Archaionomia (1568). Though smudged, the spelling appears to be "Shakspere".

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