Shake-hyphen-speare
Art Neuendorffer
<<Lest the always wary Oxfordians suspect Price's study of the Dugdale
sketch is just another contrivance, another obstacle to get around or
under, put in their way by a pesky Shakespearean, this is the same
Diana Price who is the author of Shakespeare's Unorthodox Biography.
It reveals her to be a successor to Sir George Greenwood, agnostic as
to who is the True Author of the legendary plays and poems, but
definitely gnostic about who Truly It-is-not: why, William Shakespeare
of Stratford-upon-Avon, of course.
If you are still not convinced, how about this? In her book, Price
takes issue with my evidence regarding the hyphenation of
Shakespeare's name - "Shake-speare" - as it appears on the title pages
of editions of some of his plays and in a smattering of other printed
texts of the time (pages 28-30 of Shakespeare, In Fact.). This,
Oxfordians contend, and Price apparently agrees, is evidence that
William Shakespeare was a pseudonym.
I must begin by asking your patience, dear reader. To argue over a
hyphen - a mere '-' - may seem ridiculous, but it bears a great burden
in the mythos of Oxfordianism because on its narrow shoulders hangs
the full weight of their evidence that Shakespeare was indeed a
pseudonym, known to those in the know. (Which leaves the question of
why those in the know needed a hyphen to know they know it.) I here
endeavor to lift this load from the poor, overburdened hyphen.
Price begins her argument by disputing an example of another
hyphenated Elizabethan that I offered, Robert Waldegrave, a printer
whose name first appears in the imprint of a book in 1578. Four years
later he decided to put a hyphen in his name - Walde-grave - and did
so in all future works from his press. Price, however, notes this was
evidently Waldegrave's choice, which "therefore makes it a poor
comparison to the idiosyncratic hyphens in Shakespeare's name." Let's
grant this, for the time being.
Next we learn that Shake-speare was recognized by the Jacobethan
literati not as a mere pseudonym but a "made up name." She offers as
an example Martin Mar-prelate, "the notorious pen name cloaking the
author(s) of inflammatory pamphlets critical of the Anglican Church in
the 1580s." We are also offered Master Shoe-tie in Measure for
Measure, and Ben Jonson's Sir Luckless Woo-all as "other examples of
made up names" (pages 60-61 of her book.)
Oh my! It appears I made a mess of things, doesn't it? Except for a
detail so insignificant or so irrelevant that Price apparently doesn't
consider it worth mentioning: I began my discussion of the hyphenation
of Shakespeare with this quote from Ogburn's The Mysterious William
Shakespeare:
Orthodox professors have been unable to come up with a single case of
a genuine English name similarly hyphenated in common usage [my
italics].
It was to this I responded when I offered Waldegrave as an example of
a hyphen in "a genuine English name." Which Martin Mar-prelate is not,
any more than are Master Shoe-tie or Sir Luckless Woo-all, fictitious
names in fictional works both. But then, Shakespeare hardly qualifies
as a "made up name" to begin with, being as it is both a genuine and
common English name. What's more, it is a name attached to a very
specific person, by which he appears in numerous theatrical records
and miscellaneous private and public documents, as well as the name by
which he was on very public, constant exhibition as a player in a
popular acting company.
(There is a curious footnote in regard to Waldegrave, who happens to
have been an unusually conspicuous figure. Twice imprisoned for
publishing puritan pamphlets, he was, ironically, the printer of
Marprelate pamphlets. He left London, moving his press from town to
town to keep ahead of the law. Having run out of England, he next fled
to France before taking refuge in Edinburgh in 1590, where he became
the king's printer. The king, James VI of Scotland, was to become King
James I of England, and Waldegrave followed him to London. Clearly the
hyphen he inserted into his name did him no service inasmuch as what
was on either side of it spelled trouble.)
Also too negligible for Price to mention are additional examples in my
book of genuine English names that were hyphenated, including a very
famous one: the medieval protestant martyr Sir John Oldcastle. His was
the name originally given to the roistering character in Part One of
Shakespeare's Henry IV that, after protests, was changed to Sir John
Falstaff. There is an allusion to this in the epilogue of Henry IV,
Part Two:
Where for anything I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless
already 'a be killed by your hard opinions, for Old-castle died a
martyr, and this is not the man."
Yes, the original name has a hyphen in the original edition.
Shakespeare's apologia was not sufficient, spawning a play for the
Admiral's Men entitled The First Part of the True and Honorable
History of Sir John Old-castle, the Good Lord Cobham. When this play
was printed in 1600, his name was hyphenated as shown not only on the
title page but on the running headings at the top of each page of text
as well. Except for the title of the play on the first page of text,
that is, where the name appears as "Oldcastle" - without a hyphen.
Hyphens come, hyphens go.
For another, Campbell is certainly a familiar, genuine English name,
and Sir Thomas Campbell was certainly a name familiar to Londoners. He
was inaugurated as the city's mayor on October 29, 1609, with all the
pageantry that went with this annual event. The pageant itself was
devised by the all-purpose author Anthony Munday, and when his efforts
were put into print the mayor's name appears as "Camp-bell."
These examples of Price's excisions are but a warm up to what she
omits in regard to the most familiar place where Shake-speare is
found: the title pages of individual plays (known as quartos). In
Shakespeare, In Fact I wrote that "it was a common practice in the
printing trade for title-page information to be repeated from one
edition to the next and even outdated references would survive one
printing or more." But Price is at the ready to poke holes in what she
terms "Matus's theory."
It's times like this that I think of the remark of a reviewer of my
book, who said of its author, "Bending the old saying, someone has
asserted that nobody likes a fact man." (If he didn't like the author,
he liked my book. I'll settle for that.) For Price begins her hole-
poking with a single, concise observation, which is that a "hyphen
appeared [in Shakespeare's name] in 45% (fifteen out of thirty-three)
of the plays published before the First Folio in 1623." So
straightforward. So precise. So misleading. And setting it right
requires a dive off the deep end into a pool of data, some arcane,
some unfamiliar, and for those reasons confusing to many, and
unexciting to just about everyone.
(Here's some now: For the record, 52 editions of the plays were
printed before the folio, including the 1619 quartos printed by
William Jaggard, some of which were given the dates of earlier
printings, one with a hyphen as in the first edition. All told, there
were actually 36 editions with the author's name on the title page, in
16 of which it is hyphenated - a mere 44%. I will, however, continue
to use Price's figures.)
What better an example can there be of the challenges to a reader's
patience that a fact man faces than when disputing terminology; in
this case Price's assertion that thirty-three plays had been published
before 1623? Actually, there were thirty-three editions - not plays.
But is this just a matter of terminology? Does it really make any
difference? It is the difference of Mark Twain's epigram that
controversialists like quoting: "The difference between the right word
and the nearly right word is the same as that between lightning and
the lightning bug." Except "plays" is not a nearly right word; it is a
misleading word.
Price's word gives the impression that all but a few of the 36 plays
in the First Folio had already been put into print individually and
that nearly half of them had the telltale hyphen in the author's name.
This is not so. More to the point, this word spares her from having to
present facts that alter what she portrays as an epidemic of Shake-
speares. The first omitted fact is that, rather than 33 plays, only
nineteen different plays had been published before the First Folio.
This in turn allows her to omit another fact: his name was hyphenated
in 26% of these plays, only five of nineteen. Which points to still
another omitted fact: 87% - thirteen of the fifteen with a hyphen -
appear in only three plays: Richard II, Richard III and Henry IV, Part
One. (The other two are the first, "Bad Quarto," Hamlet, and King
Lear.) One more omitted fact to go: 100% of the editions of these
three plays were printed for one bookseller, Andrew Wise, and later
for Matthew Law, to whom Wise transferred his copyrights in 1603.
Why Wise should have been nearly the sole proprietor of the secret
that these were psuedonymous works is a puzzle. Richard II and Richard
III, possibly Henry IV, Part One also, are the first plays with
Shakespeare's name on their title-pages. Was Wise chosen as the
conduit for introducing Oxford's pseudonym to the public by a
purported syndicate that some Oxfordians suggest oversaw the
publication of the earl's plays? If so, when Wise teamed with another
bookseller, William Aspley, to publish Much Ado About Nothing and
Henry IV, Part Two in 1600, why was Shakespeare without a hyphen in
both?
Let me to play the part of the controversialist here and come up with
a reason. Hmm ... I've got it! Having established Shake-speare as a
signal to the cognoscenti that this was a pseudonym, Wise decided it
was no longer necessary to include the hyphen in the two later plays.
(See how easy it is to do this?) But if this is so, why then was the
hyphen not dropped in the many subsequent editions of the previously
published history plays? Then again, perhaps he was thinking about it.
It so happens that a dropped hyphen is Price's means of refuting my
assertion that "title-page information was repeated from one edition
to the next and even outdated references would survive one printing or
more." She rejoins that Shake-speare was, "for example, on the 1598
and 1605 quartos of Richard III, but not on the intervening 1602
quarto." Richard III was one of the most popular of Shakespeare's
plays, running to six editions before the First Folio, and it happens
that the omitted hyphen in the 1602 Richard III is not "for example"
but the only example of a hyphen-less Shakespeare among the fourteen
editions of the three Wise / Law plays with the author's name on the
title page.
Does the unhyphenated Shakespeare in Richard III contradict my
"theory"? Is it that rare exception that disproves the rule? Now Price
becomes quite precise. She notes that "the relevant title pages reveal
too many arbitrary variations in wording, typeface, layout, spelling,
and punctuation to support Matus's conclusion." However, I said only
that "title-page information was repeated from one edition to the
next." This does not mean, as Price would have it, that new editions
sought to reproduce faithfully a previous edition of a given book. No
one familiar with printing in this period would.
In practical terms, printers did not have only one book in preparation
at any given time. The type that was used in the prior edition might
have been in use for the composition of another book and, therefore, a
different typeface might be used for the new edition, which could
affect the layout. And while it is true that a spelling may be altered
(hardly a novelty at the time), that a punctuation mark may be changed
or omitted, the cause is unlikely to have been anything more than a
burst of virtuosity, a personal taste, or mere indifference on the
part of the compositor.
The persistence of title-page content may be best illustrated by the
most popular play of the 17th century, Mucedorus, which had two
earlier editions before it was printed in 1610 to include additions
for a performance before King James. The title page reads:
A Most pleasant | Comedie of Muce- | dorus the King, sonne of Valen- |
tia, and Amandine the Kinges | daughter of Aragon. || With the merry
conceits of Mouse || Amplified with new additions, as it was | acted
before the Kings Majestie at | White-hall on Shrove- | sunday night ||
By his Highnes Servants usually | playing at the Globe. || Very
delectable and full of conceited mirth.
Thirteen more editions survive of this version of the play up to the
last in 1668. There are to be sure variations in typeface, layout,
spelling, and punctuation in these editions. But not in the wording,
which stayed the same, from edition to edition, despite the fact that
the Shrove Sunday night performance was 58 years earlier, that the
king referred to (James I) had been dead 43 years and that the Globe
had been torn down 24 years earlier.
The authoritative word on the suspicious hyphen in Shakespeare's name
may be found in a book by a contemporary of his who is the last word
on England in that age, William Camden. In Remains of a Greater Worke,
Concerning Britaine, published in 1605, a miscellany of minutiae that
was not included in his masterpiece, Britannia, Camden gives the
sources of English surnames, among which we find the names of:
Some from that which they commonly carried, as Palmer, that is
Pilgrim, for that they carried Palme when they returned from
Hierusalem. Long-sword, Broad-speare; Fortescu, that is, Strong-
shield, and in some such respect, Breake-speare, Shake-Speare [sic],
Shotbolt, Wagstaff, Bagot, in the old Norman [etc.].
Curiously, in his chapter entitled "Poems," having quoted works by
some late medieval poets, he concludes:
These may suffice for some Poetical descriptions of our ancient Poets,
if I would come to our time, what a world I could present you out of
Sir Philip Sidney, Ed. Spencer, Samuel Daniel, Hugh Holland, Ben
Jonson, Th. Campion, Mich. Drayton, George Chapman, John Marston,
William Shakespeare, & other most pregnant wits of these of our times,
whom succeeding ages may justly admire.
Here Shakespeare's name does not have a hyphen. Perhaps this suggests
a whole new area for exploration by Oxfordians: that it's really the
absence of a hyphen in Shakespeare's name that indicates it is a
pseudonym. Which leads to another thought. You will recall that
Shakespeare was hyphenated in only five of nineteen plays. Well, it
was not hyphenated in eleven plays. These include the "authorized
version" quartos of Hamlet (much better than the one in the bad quarto
that Shake-speare wrote), as well as Othello, A Midsummer Night's
Dream, The Merchant of Venice, among others. If the absence of a
hyphen signifies that these were the works of the imposter, he
apparently was every bit as good a writer as Shake-speare.
All said and done, it should be recognized that Price really needn't
have gone down this long, twisty road. There is, after all, a very
simple thing that can prove beyond all doubt that a hyphen in
Shakespeare is indicative of a pseudonym. All she needed to do is give
one other example of what she, like many before her, would have us
believe was a practice well known in Elizabethan England: a genuine
English name with a hyphen that is known to have been a pseudonym and
which was used to hide a person's identity. All their "sleuthing" and
argumentation are merely to divert attention from the fact that they
have not found one.>>