III - THE HANDWRITING OF THE THREE PAGES ATTRIBUTED TO SHAKESPEARE COMPARED WITH HIS SIGNATURES

Summary

When I contributed, in 1916, to Shakespeare's England–the work compiled under the auspices of the Oxford University Press in celebration of the Tercentenary of the death of Shakespeare–a chapter on the ‘Handwriting of England’ at that period, I ventured to suggest that a close study of, and the resulting intimacy with, the English hand which Shakespeare wrote might be applied with a fair prospect of success to the solution of some of the doubtful passages in his plays. In the subsequent study on Shakespeare's Handwritings in which I attempted to show that the handwriting of one of the Additions in the play of Sir Thomas More, now the Harleian MS. 7368 in the British Museum, is the handwriting of Shakespeare himself, I submitted an examination of the six surviving authentic signatures of the poet, and also of the handwriting of the Addition, in support of my contention. It has now been suggested that it would be of use to Shakespearian scholars if I were to analyse and compare still more closely the individual letters of these writings and record the results of such further study, and at the same time notice how imperfect and hurried writing may have affected the normal shapes of the letters and have led to confusion and misinterpretation, and how the grouping and linking of certain letters may have been misunderstood or misapplied.