Shakespeare’s Handwriting

Summary

On the controversy over Shakespeare's handwriting in Sir Thomas More, the best arguments supporting Shakespeare are to be found in Shakespeare and the Play of Sir Thomas More (Cambridge, 1923), edited by A. W. Pollard. Here, the most persuasive contributions are those of Sir Edward Maunde Thompson, J. Dover Wilson, and R. W. Chambers. A chapter by the last of these in his Man's Unconquerable Mind (London, 1939) made a further cogent contribution.

All the best work on the subject up to 1948 is reviewed and expanded by R. C. Bald in his 'Booke of Sir Thomas More and its Problems' in Shakespeare Survey 2. Bald believed that the attribution of the 147 lines of Hand D was correct. Greg a little later concurred in that view. In my own view, Thompson's article in the book cited above, 'The Handwriting of the Three Pages Attributed to Shakespeare Compared with his Signatures', by itself leaves little room for doubt. Yet the steady stream of contrary argument runs on apace, and most of those who count themselves believers are but 90 per cent believers. Had it been otherwise when the 1983 meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America was being planned, the need for a seminar on 'Shakespeare and Sir Thomas More' would hardly have been felt.