B 1.2 Hand D - Handwriting Argument

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From the course by University of London

Introduction to Who Wrote Shakespeare

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University of London

Introduction to Who Wrote Shakespeare

58 ratings

This free course from the University of London explores critical thinking, and the interpretation of texts, through the Shakespeare authorship question. Using doubt about Shakespeare’s authorship as our playground, we will explore the key concept of authorship attribution, while developing skills in literary analysis, interpretation, and argument. Through forensic exploration of key texts, you will learn why Shakespeare’s authorship is questioned, and what evidence is cited on both sides of the debate. For those of you interested in exploring the works of Shakespeare from a new angle, or just wanting to hone your analytical thinking skills, this course offers an introduction to a fascinating area of interest. Those of you already interested in the Shakespeare authorship question will be encouraged to question your own assumptions in fruitful ways. Whether undertaken as a standalone course, or as preparation for the University of London BA in English, this course will be food for thought.

From the lesson

The Man and the Author

In this module we’ll look at questions of identity; chiefly at arguments that attempt to link William Shakspere the man to William Shakespeare the author – or to sever that link. The arguments surrounding “Hand D” in Sir Thomas More claim to establish a firm link between Shakspere and Shakespeare, and Shakespeare’s authorship of the “Hand D” pages is now being presented as fact, so it’s important to understand the evidence, arguments, and reasons for this attribution. You’ll look in detail at the non-Stratfordian argument that Shakespeare authorship doubt was first expressed within only four years after the first “Shakespeare” publication in the works of John Marston and Joseph Hall. You’ll consider some of the key Stratfordian and non-Stratfordian arguments related to William Shakspere’s coat of arms. And lastly, you’ll look critically at an important cornerstone of Shakespeare biography, Robert Greene’s reference to a plagiarising actor, the “upstart Crow”.

B 1.1 Shakespeare and the Hand D additions to Sir Thomas More4:21

B 1.2 Hand D - Handwriting Argument8:58

B 1.3 Hand D - Spelling Argument5:51

B 1.4 Hand D - Content Argument6:42

B 1.5 Hand D - Author or Scribe?8:20

Meet the Instructors

Ros Barber
Dr
English and Comparative Literature

There are three types of evidence which have been used to identify

Hand D as Shakespeare: handwriting, spellings, and content.

All of these have inherent problems as we shall see.

The handwriting argument, which is completely

critical to demolishing the authorship question,

attempts to establish Shakspere as Hand D. Paleography,

the study of handwriting,

is an established practice for identifying the authors of manuscripts.

To determine that Hand D is

the handwriting of William Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon,

one must compare it with a suitable sample.

The only sample of his handwriting consists of the six signatures,

which are, as we've seen, inconsistent as the signatures of a single person will often be.

We must begin with the assumption that they are all by

William Shakspere because every one of them is on a legal document,

which the person in question would normally sign for themselves.

There is an immediate problem, though.

Six signatures - the same two words repeated six times and

the additional words "by me" - does not constitute an adequate sample size for comparison.

Paleographers would not normally consider matching to such a small sample.

They would also not attempt to match this text to

these signatures because they were not written at a similar time.

The text was originally dated to 1593 or 1594,

whereas the signatures were produced around 20 years later.

Handwriting changes over time and in a 1911 edition of Sir Thomas More,

the editor, looking for sample handwriting to match against Hand E,

discounted a letter by Thomas Decker for

exactly this reason, because the letter was written in 1616,

the same year as three of Shakespeare's signatures.

This is one of many examples of scholars

suspending normal scholarly standards when they are working on

Shakespeare because of how important it is to

them that the orthodox authorship attribution is upheld.

So already, as you can see,

the paleographic argument to establish Shakspere as Hand D is a little suspect

because it requires scholars to break

the usual rules pertaining to sample size and dating.

Nevertheless, let's see what similarities between

the two sets of handwriting scholars have found. There are four.

One, a form of joined 'ha' featuring a spurred 'a' found in Shakspere's first signature,

the one on the court case deposition.

Two, the upstrokes on the 'm' and 'w' of

Shakspere's sixth signature from the final page of his will.

Three, a form of 'w' found in Shakspere's sixth signature,

an upstroke traced over a downstroke.

Four, an eccentric formation of 'k' in all of Shakspere's surviving signatures.

Giles Dawson looked for these Hand D features in

a collection of 250 Elizabethan and Jacobean letters.

The peculiar 'a' formation noted in the first signature

and in some places in the Hand D addition

- a sharp point touching the upstroke and forming the flat bottom of the letter 'a' - is

caused when a loop to a spurred 'a' (a common feature of handwriting of the period) goes wrong.

Dawson found twelve letter writers who used spurs,

but none where it had gone wrong to create the flat-bottomed 'a'.

This doesn't mean, however,

that Shakspere and Hand D are the same person.

The second and third features are really a single feature and a variant of it.

Occurring only on the final signature on Shakspere's will,

there are upstrokes on the small 'm' of me,

and the capital 'W' of William,

the latter beginning with a retraced downstroke.

The Hand D writer makes upstrokes on certain initial letters,

including some 'm's and 'w's,

a few of which also begin with the downstroke.

Giles Dawson found upstroke in seven of

the 250 letter writers whose handwriting he studied.

But he did find their incidence low compared with

the incidences (approximately half on 'm' and 'w') in

Hand D. But the 'w' with an upstroke

retraced over the downstroke occurs only on the final signature of the will.

The other 'w's do not all have upstrokes,

and where they do, they are differently formed.

Strictly speaking, the comparison between

the capital 'W' of the signatures and the small 'w' of Hand D should be

discounted in any case; normal paleographic standards

disallow the comparison of small letters with their capital equivalents.

What's more, the upstroke and downstroke

features only come from the phrase "By me William",

a phrase that is seemingly in different and more controlled handwriting than,

for example, the William on the previous page.

It has been suggested that Shakspere was ailing to

the degree that after struggling to sign the first two pages,

"By me William" was written for him by the clerk.

In which case, it would be the clerk's handwriting,

which accounts for the second and third features of

the four features also found in Hand D. The fourth feature,

the eccentric formation of the letter 'k', is present in four of the six signatures.

It looks a bit like a letter 'b'.

None of these 'k's would be recognizable as 'k's out of context.

Dawson looked at every 'k' in 40 specimens of

handwriting and perceived that none of them looked like Shakspere's

'k'. Dawson determined that in 147 lines of Hand D, the writer used 'k' 34 times:

11 were normal, 10 abnormal but recognizable out of context,

two looked like 'b's,

and two looked like 'l's.

So whereas 67 percent of Shakespeare's 'k's

looked like 'b's just six percent of Hand D's did.

If levels of incidence are supposed to be significant in the case of upstrokes,

why is the disparity in levels of incidence not a reason to dismiss

the b-shaped 'k'? This handwriting argument is problematic for other reasons.

The different types of writing and the different conditions under

which they were executed have not been taken into account.

Letters in the period tended to be written with a certain care,

whereas the Hand D additions bear the signs of someone writing at speed.

A signature, on the other hand,

is a particular kind of writing that often bears little

or no relationship to a person's regular handwriting.

Three of these four shared peculiarities only

occur in a single Shakspere signature and not the other five.

Scholars are asking us to consider a single match of significance,

when there are five signatures where that feature is not matched.

Even if the total sample size were not an issue

(but it is), you might more accurately describe such a match as an anomaly.

Finally, we should ask, if these four features are

the only similarities between Shakspere's signatures and Hand D,

should we not logically consider the discrepancies?

McDonald P Jackson says we simply can't evaluate them.

"The significance of shared peculiarities can be evaluated,

whereas disparities between the signatures and Hand D cannot,

since they might be accounted for by the contrasting nature of

materials: Hand D's pages are the 'foul papers' of a play-scene,

whereas the signatures are formal appendages to legal documents,

and two of them are constrained by the width of parchment rectangles,

set each with a waxen seal, on which they are penned.

Signatures are, in any case,

rather special pieces of writing."

If the contrasting nature of the materials are valid reasons why

the disparities between Hand D and the Shakspere signatures cannot be evaluated,

why is this contrasting nature not equally a reason for

discounting their very few and inconsistent shared features?

But the palaeographic argument is not the only leg of

the three-legged stool on which Hand D as Shakespeare sits.

In the next lecture,

we'll look at arguments connected to spelling.

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