that they were written as six entire poems in the sonnet stanza,- -five of them to William Herbert, afterwards Earl of Pembroke, and the sixth to Shakespeare's own mistress. Mr. Brown certainly shows the true appreciation of Shakespeare in his book, and very great ingenuity in the support of his favorite theory; but in my judgment he leaves the latter but just where it was when he first stated it. Mr. Brown alludes to "an ingenious supposition" of the Rev. Mr. Dyce's with regard to the Sonnets. I am familiar with all of that gentleman's critical writings upon Shakespeare, but have not met with this supposition. Mr. Collier, as I find, had forestalled me in my deduction that Shakespeare wrote the Sonnets for other persons; but he briefly states it, merely to abandon it without assigning any reason for or against it. I may be pardoned for thinking that the arguments which I have brought forward make the probability of the hypothesis which they sustain amount almost to moral certainty. An observation on one of these Sonnets may interest some of my readers. The 127th is addressed to a brunette, -called a black beauty' in Shakespeare's day,-and commences thus : "In the old age black was not counted fair, Or if it were, it bare not beauty's name." This is an allusion to the remarkable fact, that during the chivalric ages brunettes were not acknowledged as beauties any where in Christendom. In all the old contes, fabliaux, and romances, the heroines are blondes. Such a thing as a brunette beauty is unknown in chivalric poetry : more than that,-the possession of dark eyes and hair, and the complexion which accompanies them, is referred to by the troubadours as a misfortune. But the brunettes have changed the fashion since that day. SHAKESPEARE'S NAME. Of late years the attempt has been renewed, chiefly through the agency of Mr. Charles Knight, to change the orthography of Shakespeare's name to Shakspere, on the ground that it is but proper to spell a man's name as he himself spells it; Sir Francis Madden having shown, beyond a question, that in four of the six genuine signatures of Shakespeare which have come down to us, the name is written by the poet himself,-Shakspere. The remaining two, though most illegibly written, plainly contain ten or eleven letters. More than this, it is very evident that the name was originally, and, indeed, as late as the earlier years of William Shakespeare himself, pronounced Shaksper. The manner in which it is spelled in the old records in which it is found, varies almost to the extreme capacity of letters to change places and produce a sound approximating to that of the name as we pronounce it. It appears as Chacksper-Shaxpur-Shaxper-Schaksper-Schakesper-Schakespeyr-Shagspere-Saxpere-Shaxpere— Shaxpeare Shaxsper - Shaxspere-Shaxespere - Shakspere Shakspear - Shakspeere-Shackspeare-Shackespeare Shackespere-Shakspeyr-Shaksper-Shakespere -Shakyspere - Shakespire - Shakespeire-ShakespearShakaspeare; and there are even other varieties of its orthography. It is remarkable that the older the record, the more the spelling conforms to the pronunciation, Shak-sper or Shaxpur. But it is equally remarkable that on the title-pages of all the editions of Shakespeare's plays published during his life, almost without exception, as well as upon that of the original folio, his name is spelled Shakespeare. More than this in the first folio edition of Ben Jonson's works, published in 1616, and carefully edited by Jonson himself, Shakespeare's name occurs twice in the lists of principal actors, and is in both instances spelled with the e in the first syllable and the a in the second; and not only so, but in the second list, that appended to Sejanus, the syllables are separated with a hyphen, and the second begins with a capital letter, thus-SHAKE-SPEARE. Robert Green's unconscious testimony is also conclusive. The often quoted passage in his Groatsworth of Wit, published in 1592, in which he sneeringly says that the great dramatist "is, in his own conceit, the only Shake-scene in the country," shows plainly that the first syllable of the name was pronounced with the long, pure sound of a. This, when taken in connection with the evidence of the title-pages of the quartos and the original folio, and also of the list of actors given in the latter, shows, beyond a question, that the name was pronounced and written Shakespeare in Shakespeare's day, and by those who were in habits of constant intercourse with him who made it illustrious. For it is impossible to pronounce Shake-speare, Shak-sper. It is also important to notice that in all the lists of actors given in Jonson's folio of 1616, nine in number, the several names, which are frequently repeated, are always spelled in the same way,—a rare, in fact, an unparalleled coincidence in any book of the time. This shows how carefully Jonson corrected his proof; and also that the spelling, Shakespeare, was not the result of capricious orthography. But, it may be asked, did not Shakespeare know how to write his own name? and must we not conform to his mode of spelling it? To the latter query the answer is no ; not of necessity. For, as Mr. Hunter asks, shall Lady Jane Grey become Lady Jane Graye? shall the Dudleys become Duddeleys, or the Cromwells, Crumwells, &c. &c. &c., because it is certain that they spelled their names thus ? This is a decisive question. As to Shakespeare's knowledge of the mode of writing his own name, it must be remembered that, in his lifetime, there arose a necessity for a change in the spelling. When Robert Cook, Clarencieux King at Arms, because John Shaksper had become a man of substance and consideration, and had married into the gentle blood of the Ardens, gave him armorial bearings, the herald saw and seized the opportunity which the name afforded for punning blazonry; and giving the worthy high bailiff the right to bear a spear or on a bend sable, he changed him and his descendants from Shakspers to Shakespeares from that time forward. But old customs change. with difficulty, and endured longer then than now; and thus it was that something of the old style of spelling the name clung to the Shakespeares in Stratford; and even that William Shakespeare himself, when he went to London, did not entirely lay aside the habit of his early youth; though all those to whom his name then was new wrote it, as they and he pronounced it,-Shakespeare. These reasons, and the explicit testimony of Jonson, the printers of the quartos, and the editors of the original folio, and the indirect but no less decisive evidence of Green, are all-sufficient for the retention of the spelling of the poet's daySHAKESPEARE. |