Jane Cox and Shakespeare's signatures
Tom Reedy
Shakespeare's signatures could possibly not be authentic and could have
been written by a clerk.
Since I have demolished Robert Detobel's theory along the same lines, I
thought I'd take a look at what Jane Cox wrote and see how well her
speculations stand up. In preparation, I thought I'd post the pertinent part
of her essay. I'll follow up with my comments in the next few days and
weeks.
You can read a biography of Jane Cox at
http://www.open2.net/breakingtheseal/church/biog/biogp1.htm.
TR
From *Shakespeare in the Public Records*
Text and selection of documents by David Thomas
Section on the will and signatures by Jane Cox
Photographs by John Millen
From section IV "Shakespeare's Will and Signatures," pages 24-34. Most
citations deleted.
As the most personal and the richest in biographical detail of the surviving
Shakespeare documents, his will has been the subject of intense critical
scrutiny. Its innocent legal phrases have triggered the wildest flights of
scholarly fancy; every pen stroke, every blot, every fold in the paper is
fraught with significance. A detailed study of the provisions of the will
made by B. Roland Lewis earlier this century led him to proclaim that the
'essential spirit of Shakespeare is found in his will... It more than any
one thing mirrors his personality. His business astuteness and the hopes and
ambitions of his busy life here find virile and definite expression.
Probably nearer the truth is the opinion of Joseph Green, the Stratford
antiquarian who was the first to look among the records of the probate court
for the will: 'the Legacies and Bequests therein are undoubtedly as he
intended; but the manner of introducing them appears to me so... absolutely
void of the least particle of that Spirit which Animated Our great Poet.'
Shakespeare had no telling final words for his audience; his last wishes
were dictated to a local lawyer, Francis Collins, who had drawn up the tithe
purchase document and whatever intensity of feeling there may have been in
the words he spoke, however, beautifully expressed, there is no hint of it
in the written version. It is a standard legal document and, with one or two
exceptions, the provisions are exactly those one would expect from a fairly
wealthy small-town gentleman. There is nothing remarkable about the language
used in the will -- no other sixteenth or seventeenth century poet is known
to have broken into blank verse on his deathbed -- but its austerity is a
disappointment. There is no reference to a 'good and faithful servant', a
'sweet grandchild', an 'obedient daughter' or a 'loving wife'. The
impersonal drafting may be ascribed entirely to Francis Collins or it may be
partly a reflection of Shakespeare's own legal knowledge; he was almost
certainly familiar with the work of Henry Swinburne, the author of the
leading testamentary manual of the day.
[...]
The will was taken for probate to the Prerogative Court of Canterbury in
London, the most senior of a network of church courts handling testamentary
business. There John Hall, his son-in-law and one of the executors, took the
oath promising to duly administer the estate, on behalf of himself and his
wife. This is shown in the probate clause written in Latin on the bottom of
the will. The original will was filed and a copy was 'engrossed' on
parchment and bound up together with other wills proved that year. The
register still survives [UK National Archives catalog reference PROB 11/127
s.59] as does the entry of probate made in the 'Probate Act Book' [PROB
8/16]. There would have been various other documents associated with the
grant of probate, possibly affidavits and certainly an inventory of
Shakespeare's personal estate, that is to say a list of his household goods,
including cash, leases, plate, crops, animals and probably his books and
manuscripts. Unfortunately most of the inventories for this date were lost
in the Great Fire of 1666. F.J. Furnivall searched through vast quantities
of then unsorted Prerogative Court records, leaving in the boxes notes:
'Searched for the inventory of Mr. Shakespeare'.
The original will was written on three pages of paper and there are a number
of interlineations and crossings out. It was not unusual for corrected
drafts to be submitted for probate; John Combe's will, which was also drawn
by Francis Collins, is similar in appearance, though clearly in a different
hand. Shakespeare's will was probably written by Collins' clerk; a glance at
the lawyer's signature on the last page is enough to show that he did not
write it himself, Similarly a comparison of Shakespeare's signatures with
the text of the will shows that the will is not holograph, indeed it would
be most unusual if it was, no seventeenth-century gentleman, literary or
otherwise, penned his own last wishes. (24-25)
[.]
The document was attested by the lawyer and four friends: Julius Shawe, from
a Henley Street family, Hamnet Sadler, Hamnet Shakespeare's godfather,
Robert Whatcote, the chief character witness for Susanna Hall in a slander
action in the Worcester Consistory Court, and a John Robinson who has not
been identified . . . . There is no particular significance in the number of
witnesses, the legal authorities recommended two but many wills of the time
had five. (25)
[.]
Six 'authenticated' Shakespeare signatures survive and three of these are on
his will. There is one on the Court of Requests document in the Public
Record Office and the two others are on deeds connected with the purchase of
the Blackfriars house, in the British Library and the Guildhall Library
respectively. All are reproduced below, with the exception of the first will
signature which is of very poor quality.
It is obvious at a glance that these signatures, with the exception of the
last two, are not the signatures of the same man. Almost every letter is
formed in a different way in each. Literate men in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries developed personalized signatures much as people do
today and it is unthinkable that Shakespeare did not. Which of the
signatures reproduced here is the genuine article is anybody's guess. Some
scholars, perhaps more familiar with literature than the calligraphy of the
period have failed to recognize the problem; Tannenbaum saw a 'striking
similarity' between the last will signature and that on the Guildhall deed.
The anti-Stratfordians, on the other hand, have argued that Shakespeare did
not sign the documents himself because he was illiterate or that he did sign
them, but because he was not used to writing, each time the signature and
the spelling was different. An article by Sir Hilary Jenkinson, published in
1922, gives a clue to what the solution might be. It was his opinion that
clerks taking down the evidence of witnesses in law suits often 'signed' it
with the deponent's name themselves, using a different hand from that which
they had used for the body of the text to give it 'an air of
verisimilitude'. So much for the signature on the deposition given by
Shakespeare to the Court of Requests. If this was the practice in the equity
courts, why should it not also have been the practice of attorneys' clerks
when drawing up conveyancing documents? Possibly Shakespeare was not even in
London to sign the mortgage deed and the deed of purchase for the
Blackfriars gatehouse.
The will signatures have been regarded as sacrosanct, in the main, but in
the light of Sir Hilary Jenkinson's observations and practice in the
Prerogative Court of Canterbury, the authenticity of even these signatures
must be questioned. There is a possibility that the so called original will
is a facsimile copy made either by the court or by Collins' clerk. The
court's ancient practice had been to return the original will to the
executor and to keep a copy; among the bundles of wills proved in 1538, for
instance, there are hardly any originals. By the time Shakespeare died the
court was more likely to keep the original but there are instances of
facsimile copies being made for the court's files. The will of John Borlas,
part of which is reproduced below, is an example. Borlas's name and the name
of the witnesses are in a different hand from each other and from the text
of the will and it is only when the paper is turned over that the will is
revealed to be vera copia. It is not very likely that Shakespeare's will
comes into this category as the contemporary copy now kept by the Birthplace
Trust is probably the executor's copy which was retained by them when the
grant of probate was made and the original was kept by the court. Another
possibility is that the clerk who wrote the will 'forged' Shakespeare's
signatures. Until the Statute of Frauds of 1667 there was no necessity for a
will to bear the testator's signature at all. Manuals of the period indicate
the form preferred by the doctors of civil law, namely that a will should be
signed on every page and witnessed, but virtually any form was acceptable so
long as it seemed to be a true representation of the dying man's wishes. The
will of one Jacob Westcombe, proved in 1593, was signed and sealed only by
the overseer.' Among fifty-five wills proved in the Prerogative Court in the
same month as Shakespeare's, there are numerous examples of 'forgeries' of
witnesses' signatures; the attorney's clerk simply wrote the names on the
document, sometimes using a contrived hand to make them look like
signatures, sometimes not. It is not unlikely that Collins' clerk wrote the
names of Shaw, Robinson and Sadler on Shakespeare's will; the hands of the
three witnesses are suspiciously similar. There is no positive evidence that
Shakespeare did not sign his will; the shaky pen strokes certainly look like
those made by a sick man. But if one must select one of the four signed
documents as being the sole example of our greatest playwrights hand, the
will has no better claim than the Requests deposition, the mortgage deed or
the Guildhall conveyance. As we have seen, the legal sanctity of the
signature was not firmly established; the medieval tradition was that of an
illiterate landowning class with scribes to do their writing and signing.
Wills were proved by the executor's oath, nothing more, unless objections
were raised by some interested party, in which case witnesses would be
examined. It was not until later in the seventeenth century that handwriting
experts began to be used by the court. (33-34)
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
> last two, are not the signatures of the same man. Almost every letter is
> formed in a different way in each. Literate men in the sixteenth and
> seventeenth centuries developed personalized signatures much as people do
> today and it is unthinkable that Shakespeare did not.
Just the above excerpt from her rwaddle about the Shakespeare
signatures is enough fpr me to count Jane Cox out as a scholar worth
listening to. "Obvious at a glance?" "Unthinkable" that Shakespeare
could not have written his signature in more than one way? Ridiculous.
Nonetheless, I look forward to your comments, Tom.
--Bob G.
Mouse
Tom Reedy wrote:
> Jane Cox is regularly cited by antiStratfordians for her opinion that
> Shakespeare's signatures could possibly not be authentic and could have
> been written by a clerk.
>
> Since I have demolished Robert Detobel's theory along the same lines, I
> thought I'd take a look at what Jane Cox wrote and see how well her
> speculations stand up. In preparation, I thought I'd post the pertinent part
> of her essay. I'll follow up with my comments in the next few days and
> weeks.
>
> You can read a biography of Jane Cox at
> http://www.open2.net/breakingtheseal/church/biog/biogp1.htm.
>
> TR
Hi Tom,
If you're going to mount a response based on what Cox writes, could you
possibly post the entire article, or give a link to it, as I (and
possibly others) have never seen it? With citations, please, if you
can. Otherwise you may simply be responding to the bits that are
convenient to you rather than the argument as a whole.
Thanks a bunch,
LynnE
Spam...@yahoo.com
Mouse wrote:
> Tom Reedy wrote:
> > Jane Cox is regularly cited by antiStratfordians for her opinion that
> > Shakespeare's signatures could possibly not be authentic and could have
> > been written by a clerk.
> >
> > Since I have demolished Robert Detobel's theory along the same lines, I
> > thought I'd take a look at what Jane Cox wrote and see how well her
> > speculations stand up. In preparation, I thought I'd post the pertinent part
> > of her essay. I'll follow up with my comments in the next few days and
> > weeks.
> >
> > You can read a biography of Jane Cox at
> > http://www.open2.net/breakingtheseal/church/biog/biogp1.htm.
> >
> > TR
>
> Hi Tom,
>
> If you're going to mount a response based on what Cox writes, could you
> possibly post the entire article, or give a link to it, as I (and
> possibly others) have never seen it? With citations, please, if you
> can. Otherwise you may simply be responding to the bits that are
> convenient to you rather than the argument as a whole.
>
> Thanks a bunch,
> LynnE
That would stretch "fair use" pretty far, wouldn't it? Her work is
copyrighted, after all.
Tom Reedy
news:1154807599.7...@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
I wasn't aware that governments could hold copyrights. And even if they did,
I wouldn't let that stop me from posting a government publication, seeing
that it was published with tax money.
But be that as it may, the amount of typing involved is too much for me to
grant Lynne's request, although I might be able to scan it sometime next
week. So short answer for Lynne: no; or at least, not right now.
In any case, the only part I'm responding to is the section on the
handwriting. Most of the rest involves the bequests of the will itself.
TR
Tom Reedy
news:mo7Bg.179$Qu4.77@trnddc04...
This might help. Ron Hess' Web site has part of the article transcribed
here, along with summaries of the rest:
http://home.earthlink.net/~beornshall/index.html/id14.html.
TR
T.M. Sommers
>
> I wasn't aware that governments could hold copyrights.
The US government doesn't, but others can and do.
--
Thomas M. Sommers -- t...@nj.net -- AB2SB
gk...@vcn.bc.ca
so I don't know as much about the will and the signatures as I should.
Some, perhaps obvious, questions follow -
On Sat, 05 Aug 2006 04:57:05 GMT, "Tom Reedy" <tomr...@verizon.net>
wrote:
How many copies of the will are in play here? It says here
that one copy was bound up with other wills and presumably held by the
Perogative Court in London, correct? It also says that the original
will was "filed". Where was it filed? Later on in the essay, it's
mentioned that a copy was returned to the executor. That makes it
sound as though there are three versions of the will kicking around -
one that was held in Canterbury, one that was "filed" somewhere, and
one which was returned to the executor.
>The
>register still survives [UK National Archives catalog reference PROB 11/127
>s.59] as does the entry of probate made in the 'Probate Act Book' [PROB
>8/16]. There would have been various other documents associated with the
>grant of probate, possibly affidavits and certainly an inventory of
>Shakespeare's personal estate, that is to say a list of his household goods,
>including cash, leases, plate, crops, animals and probably his books and
>manuscripts.
Anti-Stratfordians please take note.
>Unfortunately most of the inventories for this date were lost
>in the Great Fire of 1666. F.J. Furnivall searched through vast quantities
>of then unsorted Prerogative Court records, leaving in the boxes notes:
>'Searched for the inventory of Mr. Shakespeare'.
Was the copy of the will held by the Perogative Court
destroyed in the fire? Or does it still exist, as well as the copy
that apparently is held by the Trust?
Assertions aren't much of an argument, are they?
>Which of the
>signatures reproduced here is the genuine article is anybody's guess. Some
>scholars, perhaps more familiar with literature than the calligraphy of the
>period have failed to recognize the problem; Tannenbaum saw a 'striking
>similarity' between the last will signature and that on the Guildhall deed.
>The anti-Stratfordians, on the other hand, have argued that Shakespeare did
>not sign the documents himself because he was illiterate or that he did sign
>them, but because he was not used to writing, each time the signature and
>the spelling was different. An article by Sir Hilary Jenkinson, published in
>1922, gives a clue to what the solution might be. It was his opinion that
>clerks taking down the evidence of witnesses in law suits often 'signed' it
>with the deponent's name themselves, using a different hand from that which
>they had used for the body of the text to give it 'an air of
>verisimilitude'.
Who were they trying to fool with this "air of versimilitude"?
>So much for the signature on the deposition given by
>Shakespeare to the Court of Requests. If this was the practice in the equity
>courts, why should it not also have been the practice of attorneys' clerks
>when drawing up conveyancing documents? Possibly Shakespeare was not even in
>London to sign the mortgage deed and the deed of purchase for the
>Blackfriars gatehouse.
>
>The will signatures have been regarded as sacrosanct, in the main, but in
>the light of Sir Hilary Jenkinson's observations and practice in the
>Prerogative Court of Canterbury, the authenticity of even these signatures
>must be questioned.
>There is a possibility that the so called original will
>is a facsimile copy made either by the court or by Collins' clerk.
Now we have the possiblility of a fourth copy! And if a copy
was made in London, would they have taken care to mimic the
interlineations as interlineations, rather than simply placing them in
the body of the will?
>The
>court's ancient practice had been to return the original will to the
>executor and to keep a copy; among the bundles of wills proved in 1538, for
>instance, there are hardly any originals. By the time Shakespeare died the
>court was more likely to keep the original but there are instances of
>facsimile copies being made for the court's files. The will of John Borlas,
>part of which is reproduced below, is an example. Borlas's name and the name
>of the witnesses are in a different hand from each other and from the text
>of the will and it is only when the paper is turned over that the will is
>revealed to be vera copia. It is not very likely that Shakespeare's will
>comes into this category as the contemporary copy now kept by the Birthplace
>Trust is probably the executor's copy which was retained by them when the
>grant of probate was made and the original was kept by the court.
Does it have this "vera copia" on it?
>Another
>possibility is that the clerk who wrote the will 'forged' Shakespeare's
>signatures. Until the Statute of Frauds of 1667 there was no necessity for a
>will to bear the testator's signature at all. Manuals of the period indicate
>the form preferred by the doctors of civil law, namely that a will should be
>signed on every page and witnessed, but virtually any form was acceptable so
>long as it seemed to be a true representation of the dying man's wishes. The
>will of one Jacob Westcombe, proved in 1593, was signed and sealed only by
>the overseer.' Among fifty-five wills proved in the Prerogative Court in the
>same month as Shakespeare's, there are numerous examples of 'forgeries' of
>witnesses' signatures; the attorney's clerk simply wrote the names on the
>document, sometimes using a contrived hand to make them look like
>signatures, sometimes not.
Again, what would be the point of that? Who were they trying
to fool? Either witnesses had to sign the thing or they didn't.
>It is not unlikely that Collins' clerk wrote the
>names of Shaw, Robinson and Sadler on Shakespeare's will; the hands of the
>three witnesses are suspiciously similar. There is no positive evidence that
>Shakespeare did not sign his will; the shaky pen strokes certainly look like
>those made by a sick man. But if one must select one of the four signed
>documents as being the sole example of our greatest playwrights hand, the
>will has no better claim than the Requests deposition, the mortgage deed or
>the Guildhall conveyance. As we have seen, the legal sanctity of the
>signature was not firmly established; the medieval tradition was that of an
>illiterate landowning class with scribes to do their writing and signing.
>Wills were proved by the executor's oath, nothing more, unless objections
>were raised by some interested party, in which case witnesses would be
>examined. It was not until later in the seventeenth century that handwriting
>experts began to be used by the court. (33-34)
Over to you, Tom.
- Gary
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
Spam...@yahoo.com
Sorry Tom, I don't understand. Is this a trial transcript or a tax
form? I took it to be Ms. Cox's intellectual property. Perhaps this is
a knee-jerk response, but the idea of a writer's work being
republished in full online without his consent is offensive to me. I
realize there are people such as Sam Sloan and "bookburn" who don't
believe copyright exists online; I don't want to think you are one of
them.
Tom Reedy
news:1154821346.3...@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
Mr. Sommers has informed me that governments other than the U.S. can and do
hold copyrights.
In the United States, all government documents are in the public domain, no
matter who wrote them.
> Perhaps this is
> a knee-jerk response, but the idea of a writer's work being
> republished in full online without his consent is offensive to me.
Are you familiar with the term "work for hire?" Many writers' work is online
without their consent, because persons and corporations other than
themselves hold the copyright.
> I
> realize there are people such as Sam Sloan and "bookburn" who don't
> believe copyright exists online; I don't want to think you are one of
> them.
No, I believe copyright exists from the moment something is written and
without registration. I also believe that anything you write for usenet goes
into the public domain as soon as you post it.
I consider the part of Jane Cox's essay I posted to be fair use, as I intend
to criticize it.
TR
T.M. Sommers
>
> In the United States, all government documents are in the public domain, no
> matter who wrote them.
That is generally, but not strictly true. If the document was
written by a contractor, the copyright status will be determined
by the contract terms.
> No, I believe copyright exists from the moment something is written and
> without registration.
Correct. Registration will affect the kind of damages you can
get if your copyright is infringed.
> I also believe that anything you write for usenet goes
> into the public domain as soon as you post it.
Not as far as I know. I think there would be an implied consent
to propogate the article through the usual netnews system, but
the writer would still own the copyright.
Tom Reedy
> I haven't paid much attention to these will signature debates,
> so I don't know as much about the will and the signatures as I should.
> Some, perhaps obvious, questions follow -
<snip>
>>The will was taken for probate to the Prerogative Court of Canterbury in
>>London, the most senior of a network of church courts handling
>>testamentary
>>business. There John Hall, his son-in-law and one of the executors, took
>>the
>>oath promising to duly administer the estate, on behalf of himself and his
>>wife. This is shown in the probate clause written in Latin on the bottom
>>of
>>the will. The original will was filed and a copy was 'engrossed' on
>>parchment and bound up together with other wills proved that year.
>
> How many copies of the will are in play here?
Three. The original (PROB 1/4), the copy written in the Prerogative Court
book (PROB 11/127), and a copy at the Birthplace Trust Records Office (DR
59/1).
> It says here
> that one copy was bound up with other wills and presumably held by the
> Perogative Court in London, correct?
That would be PROB 11/127. Whether it was "bound up" after being "engrossed
on parchment" is open to question. The National Archives says that register
contains quire numbers 1-67, and that the quires in PROB 11 almost
invariably consist of eight leaves, so I'm thinking the copies are on paper
rather than parchment. This is just one example of Jane Cox's unreliability.
> It also says that the original
> will was "filed". Where was it filed?
In the Prerogative Office at Doctors' Commons near St. Paul's Churchyard in
London (http://www.londonancestor.com/views/vb-wills.htm) where the
ecclesiastical and admiralty courts and the Registrary of the Archbishop of
Canterbury were located
(http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=45043). It was razed in
1861 or 1867, and the will was moved to Somerset House. In 1962 it was moved
to the PRO, now Natioanl Archives.
> Later on in the essay, it's
> mentioned that a copy was returned to the executor.
That copy has not survived, but the copy at the Birthplace Trust is thought
to have been made from it around 1635. George Vertue said in 1737 that
Shakespeare Hart had a copy of the will, and that is thought to be the same
copy that Rev. Joseph Greene discovered a decade later.
> That makes it
> sound as though there are three versions of the will kicking around -
One original and two copies.
> one that was held in Canterbury, one that was "filed" somewhere, and
> one which was returned to the executor.
>
>>The
>>register still survives [UK National Archives catalog reference PROB
>>11/127
>>s.59] as does the entry of probate made in the 'Probate Act Book' [PROB
>>8/16]. There would have been various other documents associated with the
>>grant of probate, possibly affidavits and certainly an inventory of
>>Shakespeare's personal estate, that is to say a list of his household
>>goods,
>>including cash, leases, plate, crops, animals and probably his books and
>>manuscripts.
>
> Anti-Stratfordians please take note.
You're out of luck. If there's one thing antiStratfordians don't do, it's
take note.
Well, when they're all you've got, you have to pretend they are.
>>Which of the
>>signatures reproduced here is the genuine article is anybody's guess. Some
>>scholars, perhaps more familiar with literature than the calligraphy of
>>the
>>period have failed to recognize the problem; Tannenbaum saw a 'striking
>>similarity' between the last will signature and that on the Guildhall
>>deed.
>>The anti-Stratfordians, on the other hand, have argued that Shakespeare
>>did
>>not sign the documents himself because he was illiterate or that he did
>>sign
>>them, but because he was not used to writing, each time the signature and
>>the spelling was different. An article by Sir Hilary Jenkinson, published
>>in
>>1922, gives a clue to what the solution might be. It was his opinion that
>>clerks taking down the evidence of witnesses in law suits often 'signed'
>>it
>>with the deponent's name themselves, using a different hand from that
>>which
>>they had used for the body of the text to give it 'an air of
>>verisimilitude'.
>
> Who were they trying to fool with this "air of versimilitude"?
Perhaps those aristocrat poets who suffered from the "stigma of print?"
>
>>So much for the signature on the deposition given by
>>Shakespeare to the Court of Requests. If this was the practice in the
>>equity
>>courts, why should it not also have been the practice of attorneys' clerks
>>when drawing up conveyancing documents? Possibly Shakespeare was not even
>>in
>>London to sign the mortgage deed and the deed of purchase for the
>>Blackfriars gatehouse.
>>
>>The will signatures have been regarded as sacrosanct, in the main, but in
>>the light of Sir Hilary Jenkinson's observations and practice in the
>>Prerogative Court of Canterbury, the authenticity of even these signatures
>>must be questioned.
>>There is a possibility that the so called original will
>>is a facsimile copy made either by the court or by Collins' clerk.
>
> Now we have the possiblility of a fourth copy!
No, she's talking about the original.
> And if a copy
> was made in London, would they have taken care to mimic the
> interlineations as interlineations, rather than simply placing them in
> the body of the will?
She is obviously speculating for the sake of rattling cages. Why would
anyone would make a "facsimile copy?"
The original is a draft copy, as it was written on so-called "pot" paper,
which was used by lawyers to make drafts before engrossing on parchment. And
the interlineations were not copied as such in the registered copy.
>>The
>>court's ancient practice had been to return the original will to the
>>executor and to keep a copy; among the bundles of wills proved in 1538,
>>for
>>instance, there are hardly any originals. By the time Shakespeare died the
>>court was more likely to keep the original but there are instances of
>>facsimile copies being made for the court's files. The will of John
>>Borlas,
>>part of which is reproduced below, is an example. Borlas's name and the
>>name
>>of the witnesses are in a different hand from each other and from the text
>>of the will and it is only when the paper is turned over that the will is
>>revealed to be vera copia. It is not very likely that Shakespeare's will
>>comes into this category as the contemporary copy now kept by the
>>Birthplace
>>Trust is probably the executor's copy which was retained by them when the
>>grant of probate was made and the original was kept by the court.
>
> Does it have this "vera copia" on it?
Not that I know.
>>Another
>>possibility is that the clerk who wrote the will 'forged' Shakespeare's
>>signatures. Until the Statute of Frauds of 1667 there was no necessity for
>>a
>>will to bear the testator's signature at all. Manuals of the period
>>indicate
>>the form preferred by the doctors of civil law, namely that a will should
>>be
>>signed on every page and witnessed, but virtually any form was acceptable
>>so
>>long as it seemed to be a true representation of the dying man's wishes.
>>The
>>will of one Jacob Westcombe, proved in 1593, was signed and sealed only by
>>the overseer.' Among fifty-five wills proved in the Prerogative Court in
>>the
>>same month as Shakespeare's, there are numerous examples of 'forgeries' of
>>witnesses' signatures; the attorney's clerk simply wrote the names on the
>>document, sometimes using a contrived hand to make them look like
>>signatures, sometimes not.
>
> Again, what would be the point of that?
The point is that Cox is trying to get attention. And she doesn't say how
she knows the signatures are "contrived."
> Who were they trying
> to fool? Either witnesses had to sign the thing or they didn't.
>
>>It is not unlikely that Collins' clerk wrote the
>>names of Shaw, Robinson and Sadler on Shakespeare's will; the hands of the
>>three witnesses are suspiciously similar. There is no positive evidence
>>that
>>Shakespeare did not sign his will; the shaky pen strokes certainly look
>>like
>>those made by a sick man. But if one must select one of the four signed
>>documents as being the sole example of our greatest playwrights hand, the
>>will has no better claim than the Requests deposition, the mortgage deed
>>or
>>the Guildhall conveyance. As we have seen, the legal sanctity of the
>>signature was not firmly established; the medieval tradition was that of
>>an
>>illiterate landowning class with scribes to do their writing and signing.
>>Wills were proved by the executor's oath, nothing more, unless objections
>>were raised by some interested party, in which case witnesses would be
>>examined. It was not until later in the seventeenth century that
>>handwriting
>>experts began to be used by the court. (33-34)
>
> Over to you, Tom.
More later.
TR
Tom Reedy
Just a quibble: the grammar and punctuation in this section is sometimes
grating, as in the above sentence. It would seem to me that the government's
printing office would be able to hire someone to proofread its copy, but
evidently they cut corners on this particular publication.
She has no clue about paragraphing, either.
> It is a standard legal document and, with one or two exceptions, the
> provisions are exactly those one would expect from a fairly wealthy
> small-town gentleman. There is nothing remarkable about the language used
> in the will -- no other sixteenth or seventeenth century poet is known to
> have broken into blank verse on his deathbed -- but its austerity is a
> disappointment. There is no reference to a 'good and faithful servant', a
> 'sweet grandchild', an 'obedient daughter' or a 'loving wife'. The
> impersonal drafting may be ascribed entirely to Francis Collins or it may
> be partly a reflection of Shakespeare's own legal knowledge; he was almost
> certainly familiar with the work of Henry Swinburne, the author of the
> leading testamentary manual of the day.
Later on Ms. Cox, who supposedly specializes in "ancient probate law,"
reveals her unfamiliarity with Swinburne.
I suppose this is as good a place as any to say this: I have no personal
animosity toward Ms. Cox, so please do not take my criticisms as such. I
suspect that she has learned a lot since she wrote this 20-some-odd years
ago, and might not be of the same opinion today as she was then.
My only purpose is to show the unreliability of her opinion about
Shakespeare's signatures. I realize, of course, that Oxfordians continue to
cherish their delusions, no matter how many times they're proven false or
shown to be unreliable.
> [...]
>
> The will was taken for probate to the Prerogative Court of Canterbury in
> London, the most senior of a network of church courts handling
> testamentary business. There John Hall, his son-in-law and one of the
> executors, took the oath promising to duly administer the estate, on
> behalf of himself and his wife. This is shown in the probate clause
> written in Latin on the bottom of the will. The original will was filed
> and a copy was 'engrossed' on parchment and bound up together with other
> wills proved that year.
You would think that having worked at the Public Record Office, that Jane
Cox would know what she is talking about, but perhaps she wrote this early
in her career. Or perhaps, since she left the PRO three years after writing
this article after 23 years on the job, she's just a sloppy researcher and
writer.
According to the National Archives, the registered copy wills are copies of
original probates written into volumes by clerks at the church courts. They
are written on paper, not parchment, and they were written on 8-page quires
and then bound together. You can go here
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documentsonline/wills.asp and see a
picture of a probate copybook binding and inside pages.
> The register still survives [UK National Archives catalog reference PROB
> 11/127 s.59] as does the entry of probate made in the 'Probate Act Book'
> [PROB 8/16]. There would have been various other documents associated with
> the grant of probate, possibly affidavits and certainly an inventory of
> Shakespeare's personal estate, that is to say a list of his household
> goods, including cash, leases, plate, crops, animals and probably his
> books and manuscripts. Unfortunately most of the inventories for this date
> were lost in the Great Fire of 1666. F.J. Furnivall searched through vast
> quantities of then unsorted Prerogative Court records, leaving in the
> boxes notes: 'Searched for the inventory of Mr. Shakespeare'.
>
> The original will was written on three pages of paper and there are a
> number of interlineations and crossings out. It was not unusual for
> corrected drafts to be submitted for probate; John Combe's will, which was
> also drawn by Francis Collins, is similar in appearance, though clearly in
> a different hand.
Here Cox clearly follows Chambers, who said, "Why then was the will executed
in the form of a much-corrected draft, unpunctuated and unparagraphed,
instead of a fair copy? One answer is that such was the practice of Francis
Collins. John Combe's will, made by Collins long before his death, is in the
same condition." (EKC, II, 177)
But Cox misunderstands Chambers. The very next line makes it clear that
Chambers is talking about the "unpunctuated and unparagraphed" condition of
the will. It reads, "Lawyers, indeed, are never fond of relying on
punctuation."
As far as I know, Combe's original will does not exist, so nobody knows what
the appearance of it is. If you look at Combes' will in the will book PROB
11/126 knows that Chambers has to be talking about the punctuation of the
will, because the copy in the will book is a fair copy done in neat legal
hand. It begins at the bottom of page 419, with the end of another will
written just above it, and it ends at the top of page 422, with the will of
Nicholas Tailor beginning on the same page. You can go to
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documentsonline/wills-sample.asp and look
at some examples of how the clerks wrote the wills into the registers.
What does this tell us about Jane Cox? That she didn't even bother to look
up John Combe's will, because if she had she would have known that Chambers
was referring to the punctuation -- not the appearance -- of the will. I
admit I have made the same mistake, and I took the reproduction in
Schoenbaum to be that of Combe's original will, but it is not so.
> Shakespeare's will was probably written by Collins' clerk; a glance at the
> lawyer's signature on the last page is enough to show that he did not
> write it himself, Similarly a comparison of Shakespeare's signatures with
> the text of the will shows that the will is not holograph, indeed it would
> be most unusual if it was, no seventeenth-century gentleman, literary or
> otherwise, penned his own last wishes. (24-25)
It is obvious that Cox relies on "glances" rather than considered research.
Given what we've learned so far about her methods, I wouldn't take her word
that "no seventeenth-century gentleman, literary or otherwise, penned his
own last wishes."
> The document was attested by the lawyer and four friends: Julius Shawe,
> from a Henley Street family, Hamnet Sadler, Hamnet Shakespeare's
> godfather, Robert Whatcote, the chief character witness for Susanna Hall
> in a slander action in the Worcester Consistory Court, and a John Robinson
> who has not been identified . . . . There is no particular significance in
> the number of witnesses, the legal authorities recommended two but many
> wills of the time had five. (25)
Jane Cox, if she really was a specialist in "ancient probate law," would
know the significance of five witnesses. That she would say that "there is
no particular significance in the number of witnesses" indicates her
unfamiliarity with early modern wills.
Shakespeare's will was a solemn testament, a form of will that was
particularly hard to break if anybody contested it. Originally requiring
seven witnesses, Swinburne notes marginally that the number of witnesses had
been reduced to four. See page 27 of *The Second Best Bed: Shakespeare's
Will in a New Light* by Joyce Rogers.
And note that the witnesses attest to the publishing of the will by
Shakespeare's hand, and that each sheet was signed. Later on Cox reveals her
further ignorance of the probate law when she suggests that Shakespeare
might not have signed the document.
That's all for now. More later.
TR
Terry Ross
Tom Reedy wrote:
[snip]
> "Tom Reedy" <tomr...@verizon.net> wrote in message
Tom quotes Jane Cox:
> > Shakespeare's will was probably written by Collins' clerk; a glance at the
> > lawyer's signature on the last page is enough to show that he did not
> > write it himself, Similarly a comparison of Shakespeare's signatures with
> > the text of the will shows that the will is not holograph, indeed it would
> > be most unusual if it was, no seventeenth-century gentleman, literary or
> > otherwise, penned his own last wishes. (24-25)
>
Tom himself:
> It is obvious that Cox relies on "glances" rather than considered research.
Do you disagree with Cox here -- that is, do you think Collins himself
wrote the will?
> Given what we've learned so far about her methods, I wouldn't take her word
> that "no seventeenth-century gentleman, literary or otherwise, penned his
> own last wishes."
I agree her word alone would not be enough, but the refutation of her
word on this point would be provided by giving us a counter-example, a
17th century gentleman who penned his own will. Do you know of such
counterexamples? I don't think you need to disagree with her unless
you wish to claim that the will was in Shakespeare's hand.
Cox's other "glance" as quoted in Tom's first post:
> > It is obvious at a glance that these signatures, with the exception of
> > the last two, are not the signatures of the same man. Almost every
> > letter is formed in a different way in each. Literate men in the sixteenth
> > and seventeenth centuries developed personalized signatures much
> > as people do today and it is unthinkable that Shakespeare did not.
I agree that Cox's glances are not the same as "considered research,"
but the "glance" of an experienced person can be worth attending. A
person with an ear for jazz may be able to identify a musician in a
recording he has never heard before within a few notes. An expert
birder may be able to identify a species before another person has even
registered the presence of a bird at all. Of course if one is
submitting a desciption of a rare bird for an ornithological article we
would need more than an author's "at a glance" statement.
I am persuaded that the six canonical signatures are genuine (and I
think Dawson's arguments for the *Archaionomia* signature and Hand D of
*Sir Thomas More* are persuasive), but the signatures DO seem to my
untrained eye to vary more than the signatures of many other people
have. We have quite a few Spenser signatures, for example, and they
appear much more standardized than Shakespeare's signatures --e.g.,
Spenser seems always to have abbreviated his name in signatures;
Shakespeare sometimes did and sometimes did not. There are reasonable
explanations for some of the variations in Shakespeare's signatures
(e.g., the will signatures are made by a dying man; the surface where
Shakespeare signed the Blackfriars mortgage may have been uneven), but
the best counters to Cox on THIS glance would, I think, involve both
showing that the signatures have more in common than she suggests (she
exaggerates when she says "that "almost every letter is formed in a
different way in each [of the six signatures]") and also giving other
cases where the genuine signatures of a person were quite varied.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Terry Ross Visit the SHAKESPEARE AUTHORSHIP home page
http://ShakespeareAuthorship.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tom Reedy
news:1154868076....@i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>A few glancing comments on glances.
>
> Tom Reedy wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>> "Tom Reedy" <tomr...@verizon.net> wrote in message
>
> Tom quotes Jane Cox:
>
>> > Shakespeare's will was probably written by Collins' clerk; a glance at
>> > the
>> > lawyer's signature on the last page is enough to show that he did not
>> > write it himself, Similarly a comparison of Shakespeare's signatures
>> > with
>> > the text of the will shows that the will is not holograph, indeed it
>> > would
>> > be most unusual if it was, no seventeenth-century gentleman, literary
>> > or
>> > otherwise, penned his own last wishes. (24-25)
>>
>
> Tom himself:
>
>> It is obvious that Cox relies on "glances" rather than considered
>> research.
>
> Do you disagree with Cox here -- that is, do you think Collins himself
> wrote the will?
No, I don't disagree with her, but I don't agree with her, either. Collins
might have written the will. I haven't studied the matter in any detail. At
one time, I was of the opinion that the will was holograph, but I am no
longer of that opinion, although the possibility remains open, but remote.
>> Given what we've learned so far about her methods, I wouldn't take her
>> word
>> that "no seventeenth-century gentleman, literary or otherwise, penned his
>> own last wishes."
>
> I agree her word alone would not be enough, but the refutation of her
> word on this point would be provided by giving us a counter-example, a
> 17th century gentleman who penned his own will. Do you know of such
> counterexamples? I don't think you need to disagree with her unless
> you wish to claim that the will was in Shakespeare's hand.
I wasn't so much disagreeing with her as casting suspicion on her conclusion
because of what I've been able to deduce of her methods, i.e. she doesn't
check things out and then claims to be a specialist.
But as it turns out, Cox is wrong here, also (no surprise to me). These are
all from Honigmann and Brock's *Playhouse Wills: 1558-1642*
Alexander Cooke, an actor with the King's Men and a sharer, wrote his own
will in 1614. I don't know that he was a gentleman, though.
James Shirley, a playwright and masque writer, was a gentleman, and his 1666
will was holograph.
Master of the Revels Edmund Tilney, esquire (above a gentleman). His 1610
will says it was "written with my owne hand," although we only have a
scribal copy.
Thomas Gilbourne, gentleman, a sharer in the new Fortune Theatre, 1627
Arthur Wilson, gentleman, playwright, 1652.
and possibly Master of the Revels Sir John Astley, 1640.
If we have this many examples of theatre personages ( 5 or 6 of 77), think
how many examples there are in the general population if the same proportion
holds.
>
> Cox's other "glance" as quoted in Tom's first post:
>
>> > It is obvious at a glance that these signatures, with the exception of
>> > the last two, are not the signatures of the same man. Almost every
>> > letter is formed in a different way in each. Literate men in the
>> > sixteenth
>> > and seventeenth centuries developed personalized signatures much
>> > as people do today and it is unthinkable that Shakespeare did not.
>
> I agree that Cox's glances are not the same as "considered research,"
> but the "glance" of an experienced person can be worth attending.
I am not persuaded of her expertise nor of the reliability of her "glances,"
and that is the reason I am posting this detailed critique. As I said in my
introduction, she is quoted extensively by anti-Stratfordians, and I wanted
to see how reliable her speculations are in actuality. So far, not very,
IMO.
If anyone knows how to contact her to make her aware of my critque, she
might want to rebut it.
> A
> person with an ear for jazz may be able to identify a musician in a
> recording he has never heard before within a few notes. An expert
> birder may be able to identify a species before another person has even
> registered the presence of a bird at all. Of course if one is
> submitting a desciption of a rare bird for an ornithological article we
> would need more than an author's "at a glance" statement.
>
> I am persuaded that the six canonical signatures are genuine (and I
> think Dawson's arguments for the *Archaionomia* signature and Hand D of
> *Sir Thomas More* are persuasive), but the signatures DO seem to my
> untrained eye to vary more than the signatures of many other people
> have. We have quite a few Spenser signatures, for example, and they
> appear much more standardized than Shakespeare's signatures --e.g.,
> Spenser seems always to have abbreviated his name in signatures;
> Shakespeare sometimes did and sometimes did not. There are reasonable
> explanations for some of the variations in Shakespeare's signatures
> (e.g., the will signatures are made by a dying man; the surface where
> Shakespeare signed the Blackfriars mortgage may have been uneven), but
> the best counters to Cox on THIS glance would, I think, involve both
> showing that the signatures have more in common than she suggests (she
> exaggerates when she says "that "almost every letter is formed in a
> different way in each [of the six signatures]") and also giving other
> cases where the genuine signatures of a person were quite varied.
Right, but that is beyond the scope of my examination here. I've done a
comparison of the two Blackfriars signatures, but I'm not ready to post it
yet.
TR
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
> word on this point would be provided by giving us a counter-example, a
> 17th century gentleman who penned his own will.
Actually, Terry, a counter-example--though it'd be nice to have--is not
needed. Any knowledge of human nature assures us that people are
variable. Ergo, in any group of more than a hundred people, one of
them will carry out some quotidian non-physiological activity
differently from the others. A 17th century gentleman will pen his own
will even if 90% of such persons don't. One playwright out of a
hundred will write his name in all sorts of ways, even in health. Etc.
> Do you know of such
> counterexamples? I don't think you need to disagree with her unless
> you wish to claim that the will was in Shakespeare's hand.
>
> Cox's other "glance" as quoted in Tom's first post:
>
> > > It is obvious at a glance that these signatures, with the exception of
> > > the last two, are not the signatures of the same man. Almost every
> > > letter is formed in a different way in each. Literate men in the sixteenth
> > > and seventeenth centuries developed personalized signatures much
> > > as people do today and it is unthinkable that Shakespeare did not.
>
> I agree that Cox's glances are not the same as "considered research,"
> but the "glance" of an experienced person can be worth attending.
How about the glance at Cox's glances by an experienced student of
stupidity?
--Bob G.
Bianca Steele
Several years ago, I was confronted with a compelling, if not exactly
ingenious, argument, to the effect that "everyone knows" the Internet
is lawless, therefore posting anything on the Internet implies consent
to any and all uses of posted material. (It sounds a little like the
short-skirt defense to rape; the context was of re-posting with names
and with commentary that bordered on libel.) My subsequent whining on
Usenet produced increasingly strongly-reasoned support for the argument
-- not a single post in support of what I considered my common-sense,
and also legally supportable, position.
Eventually -- after lots of confirmation -- I was compelled to conclude
that if there is anything like a Usenet consensus, this consensus is
that this is indeed the case. Moreover, I saw that following out, to
their ultimate conclusion, principles that I understand to be part of
correct legal reasoning and practice, could lead to what seemed to me a
cogent position in support (however bizarrely) of what they said. The
problem with their argument is that the American legal system does not
proceed on a wholly _a priori_ basis -- though this, too, was
challenged, with scholarly citations to which I had no refutation other
than a weak and for all I know untenable contention to the effect that
the authors of the books cited were not authorities in the relevant
sense. (In any event, I don't walk in dangerous neighborhoods at night
and I no longer use my own name on Usenet.)
If you, apparently a lawyer, can persuade anyone otherwise, more power
to you.
The corollary might be that everything happens in accordance with law
and therefore that whining is a sign of criminality: the apparent
lawlessness of the Internet is perhaps then a sign of the higher virtue
of those who please themselves by doing whatever feels good at the
moment. After all, "everyone knows" that "our society's" institutions
are corrupt and that the anarchistic instincts of the generation of the
Sixties were correct, so it must therefore be important that the
Internet have no authorities present or even represented. (That was
sarcasm, incidentally, in case I didn't add enough disclaimers to make
this clear.)
Similarly -- and I think relevant to Hr. Detobel's practice -- one has
seen the argument made to the effect that a practice which an outsider
would consider illegitimate may be legal, either because (a) the law
does not or cannot reach within the walls of the establishment where
the practice is carried out, or (b) the practitioners, being respected
members of a societally recognized profession, must necessarily have
what amounts to a special license to perform acts that would be
criminal or tortious if done by a private citizen. Thus, Hr. Detobel's
arguments concerning Groatsworth, as I read them at the SF site, are
essentially that the reason a surprising person published Greene's
posthumous text is, the publisher in question had been requested by the
government to do so, because of irregularities in the author's
situation, requiring this licensed publisher to take over some author's
rights; in spite of the fact there are no records of any such
government request. (I left off trying to deal with the SF when
Bassanio jumped in with an incomprehensible explanation of my
unfortunate differences with Hr. Detobel, who himself proved more
interested in Bassanio than in me, and who IIRC at that point switched
to an argument involving Portia's legal errors as proof of Oxfordian
authorship.)
--
Bianca Steele
P.S. I was disappointed that my last week's mention of "the Danvers
file" didn't result in any Seinfeld quotes from Art.
Terry Ross
> > I agree her word alone would not be enough, but the refutation of her
> > word on this point would be provided by giving us a counter-example, a
> > 17th century gentleman who penned his own will.
>
> Actually, Terry, a counter-example--though it'd be nice to have--is not
> needed.
Perhaps not, but isn't it nice that Tom came up with such a good one so
quickly? Shirley was not merely a 17th-Century gentleman but also a
playwright.
> Any knowledge of human nature assures us that people are
> variable. Ergo, in any group of more than a hundred people, one of
> them will carry out some quotidian non-physiological activity
> differently from the others. A 17th century gentleman will pen his own
> will even if 90% of such persons don't. One playwright out of a
> hundred will write his name in all sorts of ways, even in health. Etc.
>
I grant your general observation, but I'm not happy when Shakespeare is
made too extraordinary in too many things, especially in areas where he
may not really an outlier. Shakespeare is clearly the person
concerned in each of the documents where we find his signatures, and
since I know of no good reason to think any of them were forged or were
penned by clerks, the evidence is that his signatures were more
variable than those of, say, Spenser. Still, I would like to know of
a few more cases.
> > Do you know of such
> > counterexamples? I don't think you need to disagree with her unless
> > you wish to claim that the will was in Shakespeare's hand.
> >
> > Cox's other "glance" as quoted in Tom's first post:
> >
> > > > It is obvious at a glance that these signatures, with the exception of
> > > > the last two, are not the signatures of the same man. Almost every
> > > > letter is formed in a different way in each. Literate men in the sixteenth
> > > > and seventeenth centuries developed personalized signatures much
> > > > as people do today and it is unthinkable that Shakespeare did not.
> >
> > I agree that Cox's glances are not the same as "considered research,"
> > but the "glance" of an experienced person can be worth attending.
>
> How about the glance at Cox's glances by an experienced student of
> stupidity?
That may be fine if your point is that Cox is a stupid person (which I
don't think she is), but her observations have been taken seriously by
some literary historians -- although I don't know of any who endorse
what she has said or who have tried to provide the evidence to back up
her hunches. A good refuation of her essay would be more thorough than
she was -- Tom's initial response and his earlier posts on Cox have
provided a good beginning.
Tom Reedy
news:1154883243....@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
I don't think everything on the Internet is public domain -- quite the
opposite, in fact. But I think anybody who believes Usenet postings are
protected is being naive, no matter what the strict interpretation of the
law might be.
And as far as I know, nobody makes any money from quoting protected
material, and the purpose for quoting such material is primarily for
discussion, so I'm pretty sure it would be considered fair use.
TR
gk...@vcn.bc.ca
may...
On Sun, 06 Aug 2006 04:29:04 GMT, "Tom Reedy" <tomr...@verizon.net>
wrote:
><gk...@vcn.bc.ca> wrote in message news:44d527d8...@free.teranews.com...
>> It also says that the original
>> will was "filed". Where was it filed?
>
>In the Prerogative Office at Doctors' Commons near St. Paul's Churchyard in
>London (http://www.londonancestor.com/views/vb-wills.htm) where the
>ecclesiastical and admiralty courts and the Registrary of the Archbishop of
>Canterbury were located
>(http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=45043). It was razed in
>1861 or 1867, and the will was moved to Somerset House. In 1962 it was moved
>to the PRO, now Natioanl Archives.
Ah! So *that's* the important one, the one where
Shakespeare's signature exists! On the copies, the one that was
returned to the executor and the one filed at the Perogative Court,
what did the copying clerks do about the signatures? Did they simply
note the name in their own hands, or did they try to use a different
hand to give them an "air of versimilitude"? (BTW: I'm assuming these
copies would be made by clerks in London once Hall had brought the
original down from Stratford. Is this correct?)
>> Later on in the essay, it's
>> mentioned that a copy was returned to the executor.
>
>That copy has not survived, but the copy at the Birthplace Trust is thought
>to have been made from it around 1635. George Vertue said in 1737 that
>Shakespeare Hart had a copy of the will, and that is thought to be the same
>copy that Rev. Joseph Greene discovered a decade later.
How do we know this copy of a copy was made around 1635? More
to the point, how do we know this copy isn't the original copy that
was handed to Hall in London?
Bianca Steele
> I don't think everything on the Internet is public domain -- quite the
> opposite, in fact.
What do you mean by "quite the opposite"?
>But I think anybody who believes Usenet postings are
> protected
What do you mean by "protected"?
>is being naive, no matter what the strict interpretation of the
> law might be.
My understanding of the American legal system is that, regardless of
whether an act contrary to "the strict interpretation of the law" can
be prosecuted in 9,999 out of 10,000 of cases, if a case can be brought
in that 10,000th case, the case may well be good. It is up to the
initiative of the lawyer whether a risky case is to be brought. A
lawyer does not consult someone who determines whether the case matches
what usually happens, and nixes the idea of pursuing the case if it
does not.
Thus what seems to be your implication, that the law is more lax than a
"strict interpretation" might have it, is not a valid conclusion.
--
Bianca Steele
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Terry Ross wrote:
> bobgr...@nut-n-but.net wrote:
> > > I agree her word alone would not be enough, but the refutation of her
> > > word on this point would be provided by giving us a counter-example, a
> > > 17th century gentleman who penned his own will.
> >
> > Actually, Terry, a counter-example--though it'd be nice to have--is not
> > needed.
>
> Perhaps not, but isn't it nice that Tom came up with such a good one so
> quickly? Shirley was not merely a 17th-Century gentleman but also a
> playwright.
> > Any knowledge of human nature assures us that people are
> > variable. Ergo, in any group of more than a hundred people, one of
> > them will carry out some quotidian non-physiological activity
> > differently from the others. A 17th century gentleman will pen his own
> > will even if 90% of such persons don't. One playwright out of a
> > hundred will write his name in all sorts of ways, even in health. Etc.
> >
>
> I grant your general observation, but I'm not happy when Shakespeare is
> made too extraordinary in too many things, especially in areas where he
> may not really an outlier. Shakespeare is clearly the person
> concerned in each of the documents where we find his signatures, and
> since I know of no good reason to think any of them were forged or were
> penned by clerks, the evidence is that his signatures were more
> variable than those of, say, Spenser. Still, I would like to know of
> a few more cases.
Sure, Terry, me, too. (Hmmm, I don't think I've ever written a
sentence with a comma between every two words before.) I was just
making the point that we don't absolutely need the counter-examples. I
have to admit I was dealing more with Cox than with her argument.
As for the outlying business, I should have said, AT LEAST one in a
hundred," rather than "one in a hundred," for I certainly meant that,
AT WORST, Shakespeare was one in a hundred. That, of course, is where
the not absolutely necessary research helps, for beng one in ten or one
in two demolishes the zero in a hundred argument better than one in a
hundred does.
> > > Do you know of such
> > > counterexamples? I don't think you need to disagree with her unless
> > > you wish to claim that the will was in Shakespeare's hand.
> > >
> > > Cox's other "glance" as quoted in Tom's first post:
> > >
> > > > > It is obvious at a glance that these signatures, with the exception of
> > > > > the last two, are not the signatures of the same man. Almost every
> > > > > letter is formed in a different way in each. Literate men in the sixteenth
> > > > > and seventeenth centuries developed personalized signatures much
> > > > > as people do today and it is unthinkable that Shakespeare did not.
> > >
> > > I agree that Cox's glances are not the same as "considered research,"
> > > but the "glance" of an experienced person can be worth attending.
> >
> > How about the glance at Cox's glances by an experienced student of
> > stupidity?
>
> That may be fine if your point is that Cox is a stupid person (which I
> don't think she is), but her observations have been taken seriously by
> some literary historians -- although I don't know of any who endorse
> what she has said or who have tried to provide the evidence to back up
> her hunches. A good refuation of her essay would be more thorough than
> she was -- Tom's initial response and his earlier posts on Cox have
> provided a good beginning.
I think Tom's doing a great job. My point was not that Cox is stupid
but guilty at times of stupidity. Or so my glances have told me.
--Bob
Tom Reedy
news:44d67357...@free.teranews.com...
> Thanks for the info, Tom. A couple more questions, if I
> may...
>
>
> On Sun, 06 Aug 2006 04:29:04 GMT, "Tom Reedy" <tomr...@verizon.net>
> wrote:
>
>><gk...@vcn.bc.ca> wrote in message
>>news:44d527d8...@free.teranews.com...
>>> It also says that the original
>>> will was "filed". Where was it filed?
>>
>>In the Prerogative Office at Doctors' Commons near St. Paul's Churchyard
>>in
>>London (http://www.londonancestor.com/views/vb-wills.htm) where the
>>ecclesiastical and admiralty courts and the Registrary of the Archbishop
>>of
>>Canterbury were located
>>(http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=45043). It was razed
>>in
>>1861 or 1867, and the will was moved to Somerset House. In 1962 it was
>>moved
>>to the PRO, now Natioanl Archives.
>
> Ah! So *that's* the important one, the one where
> Shakespeare's signature exists! On the copies, the one that was
> returned to the executor
I haven't seen that one.
> and the one filed at the Perogative Court,
> what did the copying clerks do about the signatures? Did they simply
> note the name in their own hands,
Yes. The register copy has just "By me William Shackspere" at the end.
> or did they try to use a different
> hand to give them an "air of versimilitude"?
No.
> (BTW: I'm assuming these
> copies would be made by clerks in London once Hall had brought the
> original down from Stratford. Is this correct?)
Right.
>
>>> Later on in the essay, it's
>>> mentioned that a copy was returned to the executor.
>>
>>That copy has not survived, but the copy at the Birthplace Trust is
>>thought
>>to have been made from it around 1635. George Vertue said in 1737 that
>>Shakespeare Hart had a copy of the will, and that is thought to be the
>>same
>>copy that Rev. Joseph Greene discovered a decade later.
>
> How do we know this copy of a copy was made around 1635? More
> to the point, how do we know this copy isn't the original copy that
> was handed to Hall in London?
I'm not up on this one, but I think it's the style of handwriting that dates
it. I believe a Shakespeare Survey, No. 4, IIRC, discusses this, but I
haven't read it.
TR
Tom Reedy
> Tom Reedy wrote:
>> I don't think everything on the Internet is public domain -- quite the
>> opposite, in fact.
>
> What do you mean by "quite the opposite"?
I believe that most of what is on the Internet is copyrighted.
>
>>But I think anybody who believes Usenet postings are
>> protected
>
> What do you mean by "protected"?
Protected by copyright.
>
>>is being naive, no matter what the strict interpretation of the
>> law might be.
>
> My understanding of the American legal system is that, regardless of
> whether an act contrary to "the strict interpretation of the law" can
> be prosecuted in 9,999 out of 10,000 of cases, if a case can be brought
> in that 10,000th case, the case may well be good.
I'm not a lawyer, so you'll have to ask someone else if that is the case.
> It is up to the
> initiative of the lawyer whether a risky case is to be brought. A
> lawyer does not consult someone who determines whether the case matches
> what usually happens, and nixes the idea of pursuing the case if it
> does not.
That last sentence doesn't make sense to me.
> Thus what seems to be your implication, that the law is more lax than a
> "strict interpretation" might have it, is not a valid conclusion.
How many people do you know that have been prosecuted for violating
copyright law on the Internet? How many have you heard of or read about?
TR
>
> --
> Bianca Steele
>
Bianca Steele
> "Bianca Steele" <bianca...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:1154905982....@i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> > Tom Reedy wrote:
> >> I don't think everything on the Internet is public domain -- quite the
> >> opposite, in fact.
> >
> > What do you mean by "quite the opposite"?
>
> I believe that most of what is on the Internet is copyrighted.
I'm not sure what you mean by "copyrighted."
>
>>
>>> But I think anybody who believes Usenet postings are
>>> protected
>>
>> What do you mean by "protected"?
>
> Protected by copyright.
What does "protected" mean to you?
>
>>
>>> is being naive, no matter what the strict interpretation of the
>>> law might be.
>>
>> My understanding of the American legal system is that, regardless of
>> whether an act contrary to "the strict interpretation of the law" can
>> be prosecuted in 9,999 out of 10,000 of cases, if a case can be brought
>> in that 10,000th case, the case may well be good.
>
> I'm not a lawyer, so you'll have to ask someone else if that is the case.
I'm not asking you, I'm saying that is my understanding of the legal
climate in which I live and do business every day.
>
>> It is up to the
>> initiative of the lawyer whether a risky case is to be brought. A
>> lawyer does not consult someone who determines whether the case matches
>> what usually happens, and nixes the idea of pursuing the case if it
>> does not.
>
> That last sentence doesn't make sense to me.
You seemed to be implying that you could consult some true
interpretation of the law, and that was the end of it. If this were
the case, someone could say, before a case was initiated, whether it
was just or not.
>
>> Thus what seems to be your implication, that the law is more lax than a
>> "strict interpretation" might have it, is not a valid conclusion.
>
> How many people do you know that have been prosecuted for violating
> copyright law on the Internet? How many have you heard of or read about?
There was a time when nobody had ever been prosecuted for copying
commercial PC software, too. The only reason people are prosecuted for
music-sharing is that the RIAA is extremely aggressive. It's also
probably true that there is a precedent for prosecuting people for
stealing music, but I'm sure that is an effect of the RIAA's
aggressiveness. I don't know why American publishers don't in general
prosecute similar behavior w/r/t written texts. I've only heard people
say, "You shouldn't do that, it's a copyright violation." That is how
the "Arts & Letters Daily" site began, in fact -- there had been a
general consensus on the "Philosophy and Literature" listserv that
copyrighted material should not be reposted to the list.
You're probably right, though. I know of lots of cases where
regulations, etc., regarding use of electronic data, are violated, and
don't know of any prosecutions. On the contrary, I know of a handful
of attempts to rationalize the pattern of violations as representing
some kind of higher law. Both are confessed to regularly, in this
newsgroup and in others.
--
Bianca Steele
Tom Reedy
> Tom Reedy wrote:
>> "Bianca Steele" <bianca...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>> news:1154905982....@i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>> > Tom Reedy wrote:
>> >> I don't think everything on the Internet is public domain -- quite the
>> >> opposite, in fact.
>> >
>> > What do you mean by "quite the opposite"?
>>
>> I believe that most of what is on the Internet is copyrighted.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by "copyrighted."
I suggest you consult a dictionary.
>
>>
>>>
>>>> But I think anybody who believes Usenet postings are
>>>> protected
>>>
>>> What do you mean by "protected"?
>>
>> Protected by copyright.
>
> What does "protected" mean to you?
Again, I suggest you consult a dictionary.
>
>>
>>>
>>>> is being naive, no matter what the strict interpretation of the
>>>> law might be.
>>>
>>> My understanding of the American legal system is that, regardless of
>>> whether an act contrary to "the strict interpretation of the law" can
>>> be prosecuted in 9,999 out of 10,000 of cases, if a case can be brought
>>> in that 10,000th case, the case may well be good.
>>
>> I'm not a lawyer, so you'll have to ask someone else if that is the case.
>
> I'm not asking you, I'm saying that is my understanding of the legal
> climate in which I live and do business every day.
I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know that your understanding of the legal
climate in which you live and do business every day is valid.
For instance, what does "understanding" mean to you?
What does "legal" mean to you?
"Climate?"
"In?"
"Which?"
"You?"
You seem to be saying that your understanding of those terms are universal.
I doubt that is the case. I doubt it more and more as this thread lengthens.
>>
>>> It is up to the
>>> initiative of the lawyer whether a risky case is to be brought. A
>>> lawyer does not consult someone who determines whether the case matches
>>> what usually happens, and nixes the idea of pursuing the case if it
>>> does not.
>>
>> That last sentence doesn't make sense to me.
>
> You seemed to be implying that you could consult some true
> interpretation of the law, and that was the end of it. If this were
> the case, someone could say, before a case was initiated, whether it
> was just or not.
I'm not implying anything. I am saying that your last sentence, "A lawyer
does not consult someone who determines whether the case matches what
usually happens, and nixes the idea of pursuing the case if it does not,"
does not make sense to me.
The first clause, "A lawyer does not consult someone who determines whether
the case matches what usually happens," does not support the second, "and
nixes the idea of pursuing the case if it does not."
How would the lawyer determine whether the case is worth pursuing if he does
not determine "whether the case matches what usually happens," whether by
his own or someone else's inquiry?
Perhaps you should moderate your mushroom ingestion. It might help your
grammar and consequantly enhance your communication skills.
>>
>>> Thus what seems to be your implication, that the law is more lax than a
>>> "strict interpretation" might have it, is not a valid conclusion.
>>
>> How many people do you know that have been prosecuted for violating
>> copyright law on the Internet? How many have you heard of or read about?
>
> There was a time when nobody had ever been prosecuted for copying
> commercial PC software, too.
So?
> The only reason people are prosecuted for
> music-sharing is that the RIAA is extremely aggressive. It's also
> probably true that there is a precedent for prosecuting people for
> stealing music, but I'm sure that is an effect of the RIAA's
> aggressiveness. I don't know why American publishers don't in general
> prosecute similar behavior w/r/t written texts. I've only heard people
> say, "You shouldn't do that, it's a copyright violation." That is how
> the "Arts & Letters Daily" site began, in fact -- there had been a
> general consensus on the "Philosophy and Literature" listserv that
> copyrighted material should not be reposted to the list.
>
> You're probably right, though. I know of lots of cases where
> regulations, etc., regarding use of electronic data, are violated, and
> don't know of any prosecutions. On the contrary, I know of a handful
> of attempts to rationalize the pattern of violations as representing
> some kind of higher law. Both are confessed to regularly, in this
> newsgroup and in others.
Then your conclusion of the invalidity of my implication that the law is
more lax than a "strict interpretation" might have it, is not a valid
conclusion, is false, then, isn't it?
TR
>
> --
> Bianca Steele
>
Bianca Steele
> "Bianca Steele" <bianca...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:1154909137.9...@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>> Tom Reedy wrote:
>>> "Bianca Steele" <bianca...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>>> news:1154905982....@i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>>>> Tom Reedy wrote:
>>>>> I don't think everything on the Internet is public domain -- quite the
>>>>> opposite, in fact.
>>>>
>>>> What do you mean by "quite the opposite"?
>>>
>>> I believe that most of what is on the Internet is copyrighted.
>>
>> I'm not sure what you mean by "copyrighted."
>
> I suggest you consult a dictionary.
>
>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>> But I think anybody who believes Usenet postings are
>>>>> protected
>>>>
>>>> What do you mean by "protected"?
>>>
>>> Protected by copyright.
>>
>> What does "protected" mean to you?
>
> Again, I suggest you consult a dictionary.
I know what the words mean. Either you don't, or your statements are
false. You evidently think you do, which would be pretty damn
impressive -- if it's true, you should congratulate yourself on being
so far above the common run of humanity who don't.
>
>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>> is being naive, no matter what the strict interpretation of the
>>>>> law might be.
>>>>
>>>> My understanding of the American legal system is that, regardless of
>>>> whether an act contrary to "the strict interpretation of the law" can
>>>> be prosecuted in 9,999 out of 10,000 of cases, if a case can be brought
>>>> in that 10,000th case, the case may well be good.
>>>
>>> I'm not a lawyer, so you'll have to ask someone else if that is the case.
>>
>> I'm not asking you, I'm saying that is my understanding of the legal
>> climate in which I live and do business every day.
>
> I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know that your understanding of the legal
> climate in which you live and do business every day is valid.
Yet, amazingly, you do know whether it's likely my understanding is
valid or not! And equally amazingly, you also know that your
understanding is more likely to be valid than mine! And even without
knowing how much I know about the law, or how much my everyday business
brings me into contact with the law. That is truly impressive. Again,
you should be congratulating yourself on your knowledge.
Next, I imagine, you'll be telling Robert Stonehouse he's ignorant
concerning the basic requirements regarding preservation of business
records, and telling Peter Farey he knows nothing about the way big
corporations treat their employees.
[snip]
--
Bianca Steele
Tom Reedy
Amazingly, you must have read my mind, or think you did!
> And equally amazingly, you also know that your
> understanding is more likely to be valid than mine!
Another feat of mind-reading, and at a distance of what, 1,400 miles?
> And even without
> knowing how much I know about the law, or how much my everyday business
> brings me into contact with the law. That is truly impressive. Again,
> you should be congratulating yourself on your knowledge.
>
> Next, I imagine, you'll be telling Robert Stonehouse he's ignorant
> concerning the basic requirements regarding preservation of business
> records, and telling Peter Farey he knows nothing about the way big
> corporations treat their employees.
Really, Janice, you should lay off the mushrooms. You really can't read
minds over long distances; you just think you can.
TR
>
> [snip]
>
> --
> Bianca Steele
>
jrblunt
I may be an old-fashion researcher, but I think Tom Reedy gave us
enough bibliographical information to find the book which contains
the chapter he will analyze. Reprinting a whole chapter online seems
to violate the rights of both the publisher (who owns the rights to
re-distribute or reprint the chapter) and Jane Cox.
Reedy's analysis, of course, should contain a detailed summary of the
chapter, focusing on Cox's main argument and the evidence Cox uses to
support the argument. A detailed summary of the chapter demonstrates
that Mr. Reedy "objectively" understands Cox's argument and that any
"demolition" or refutation of the argument and its evidence is not a
case of knocking down an overly simplified version of Cox's argument.
I also recommend a detailed summary because quoting large chunks of
text out of context makes quotes seem meaningless. And although
referring readers to another person's online summary may seem
reasonable, it doesn't demonstrate that Reedy has carefully read and
understood the text. It doesn't guarantee that the linked information
will still be there, either.
Johnnie
Bianca Steele
Why would I have to ask anyone else if I already know? I wouldn't,
therefore you must think I don't know.
>
>> And equally amazingly, you also know that your
>> understanding is more likely to be valid than mine!
>
> Another feat of mind-reading, and at a distance of what, 1,400 miles?
How would you know whom I should ask unless you know more about it than
me? You wouldn't, therefore you must think you know more than I do.
If this is what you think of as mindreading, you must have a low
threshold for something, I don't know what.
>
>> And even without
>> knowing how much I know about the law, or how much my everyday business
>> brings me into contact with the law. That is truly impressive. Again,
>> you should be congratulating yourself on your knowledge.
>>
>> Next, I imagine, you'll be telling Robert Stonehouse he's ignorant
>> concerning the basic requirements regarding preservation of business
>> records, and telling Peter Farey he knows nothing about the way big
>> corporations treat their employees.
>
> Really, Janice, you should lay off the mushrooms. You really can't read
> minds over long distances; you just think you can.
There's nothing unusual in the mushrooms except garlic, and I ran out
of them last week. Maybe potato chips?
And it's Bianca.
And your obsession with the idea that certain other people are using
drugs is creepy.
--
Bianca Steele
Tom Reedy
If you already knew what? And what does "know" mean to you?
>
>>
>>> And equally amazingly, you also know that your
>>> understanding is more likely to be valid than mine!
>>
>> Another feat of mind-reading, and at a distance of what, 1,400 miles?
>
> How would you know whom I should ask unless you know more about it than
> me? You wouldn't, therefore you must think you know more than I do.
>
> If this is what you think of as mindreading, you must have a low
> threshold for something, I don't know what.
>
>>
>>> And even without
>>> knowing how much I know about the law, or how much my everyday business
>>> brings me into contact with the law. That is truly impressive. Again,
>>> you should be congratulating yourself on your knowledge.
>>>
>>> Next, I imagine, you'll be telling Robert Stonehouse he's ignorant
>>> concerning the basic requirements regarding preservation of business
>>> records, and telling Peter Farey he knows nothing about the way big
>>> corporations treat their employees.
>>
>> Really, Janice, you should lay off the mushrooms. You really can't read
>> minds over long distances; you just think you can.
>
> There's nothing unusual in the mushrooms except garlic, and I ran out
> of them last week. Maybe potato chips?
>
> And it's Bianca.
Oh really? And are you married to Cary Grant?
>
> And your obsession with the idea that certain other people are using
> drugs is creepy.
Your obsession with writing as if you were on drugs is creepier.
TR
>
> --
> Bianca Steele
>
Bianca Steele
Are you making fun of me?
>
> >
> >>
> >>> And equally amazingly, you also know that your
> >>> understanding is more likely to be valid than mine!
> >>
> >> Another feat of mind-reading, and at a distance of what, 1,400 miles?
> >
> > How would you know whom I should ask unless you know more about it than
> > me? You wouldn't, therefore you must think you know more than I do.
> >
> > If this is what you think of as mindreading, you must have a low
> > threshold for something, I don't know what.
> >
> >>
> >>> And even without
> >>> knowing how much I know about the law, or how much my everyday business
> >>> brings me into contact with the law. That is truly impressive. Again,
> >>> you should be congratulating yourself on your knowledge.
> >>>
> >>> Next, I imagine, you'll be telling Robert Stonehouse he's ignorant
> >>> concerning the basic requirements regarding preservation of business
> >>> records, and telling Peter Farey he knows nothing about the way big
> >>> corporations treat their employees.
> >>
> >> Really, Janice, you should lay off the mushrooms. You really can't read
> >> minds over long distances; you just think you can.
> >
> > There's nothing unusual in the mushrooms except garlic, and I ran out
> > of them last week. Maybe potato chips?
> >
> > And it's Bianca.
>
> Oh really? And are you married to Cary Grant?
What's wrong with you is more than nothing, I can tell you that.
--
Bianca Steele
T.M. Sommers
> T.M. Sommers wrote:
>>Tom Reedy wrote:
>>
>>>I also believe that anything you write for usenet goes
>>>into the public domain as soon as you post it.
>>
>>Not as far as I know. I think there would be an implied consent
>>to propogate the article through the usual netnews system, but
>>the writer would still own the copyright.
>
> Several years ago, I was confronted with a compelling, if not exactly
> ingenious, argument, to the effect that "everyone knows" the Internet
> is lawless, therefore posting anything on the Internet implies consent
> to any and all uses of posted material.
As I said, I think posting to Usenet give implicit permission to
do the things that are normally done with Usenet posts (quoting,
archiving, etc.), but I don't think the permission extends
outside of Usenet. That is, if I publish all your Usenet
articles in a dead-trees book, I think you could successfully sue
me for copyright infringement. There is no question at all in my
mind that Usenet articles, when created, are subject to
copyright, and I see no way they can be put into the public
domain except explicity, as with any other copyrighted material.
I could, of course, be wrong.
> If you, apparently a lawyer,
Hey, let's not get nasty. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a
member of the Comm^H^H^H^H^H bar.
Tom Reedy
> "Tom Reedy" <tomr...@verizon.net> wrote in message
> news:ByVAg.80$Qu4.16@trnddc04...
<snip>
> > The original will was written on three pages of paper and there are a
> > number of interlineations and crossings out. It was not unusual for
> > corrected drafts to be submitted for probate; John Combe's will, which was
> > also drawn by Francis Collins, is similar in appearance, though clearly in
> > a different hand.
>
> Here Cox clearly follows Chambers, who said, "Why then was the will executed
> in the form of a much-corrected draft, unpunctuated and unparagraphed,
> instead of a fair copy? One answer is that such was the practice of Francis
> Collins. John Combe's will, made by Collins long before his death, is in the
> same condition." (EKC, II, 177)
>
> But Cox misunderstands Chambers. The very next line makes it clear that
> Chambers is talking about the "unpunctuated and unparagraphed" condition of
> the will. It reads, "Lawyers, indeed, are never fond of relying on
> punctuation."
>
> As far as I know, Combe's original will does not exist, so nobody knows what
> the appearance of it is.
I could be wrong on this.
B. Roland Lewis, in Vol. II of *Shakespeare Documents*, says in a note
on page 473, "The will of the wealthy John Combe was written by the
same clerk who wrote the last will and testament of William
Shakespeare. Combe's will, also, was drawn up by Francis Collins.
Combe's will is preserved today at Somerset House, catalogued as '118
Rudd.' It is written on nine folio pages, on one side of the sheet
only, each page numbered at the bottom. Like Shakespeare's will it
contains a number of deletions, alterations, and interlineations. Like
Shakespeare's will it, too, is not paragraphed, and has no signatures
of witnesses. Like many of that day, the will calls for the testator's
signature 'unto everye sheete hereof'; but John Combe's signature
appears at the bottom of the last sheet only."
Chambers gives the same reference, which is the old quire reference,
and says the official copy is at the Birthplace Trust archives.
Schoenbaum gives both the modern and the old reference, but reproduces
the register copy. Charles Hamilton in *Cardenio* follows Lewis on the
description of the will and the number of pages, and he says he has
studied it, but then reproduces the register copy and says it is the
original in a fair hand.
I have contacted the UK National Archives about this and I expect an
answer within a week.
I contacted the Birthplace Trust and got this answer from Assistant
Archivist Jo Wong: "The original, which bears the signature of John
Combe, is held by The National Archives amongst the PCC wills (although
obviously it is not online). We know this for certain as we have a
reference photocopy of it here in our collection . . . ." I replied
asking for a reference number.
If it turns out I am wrong, this part of my criticism will not apply.
I expect to post the rest of my rebuttal to Cox tonight.
TR
> If you look at Combes' will in the will book PROB
> 11/126 knows that Chambers has to be talking about the punctuation of the
> will, because the copy in the will book is a fair copy done in neat legal
> hand. It begins at the bottom of page 419, with the end of another will
> written just above it, and it ends at the top of page 422, with the will of
> Nicholas Tailor beginning on the same page. You can go to
> http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documentsonline/wills-sample.asp and look
> at some examples of how the clerks wrote the wills into the registers.
<snip>
Bianca Steele
> Bianca Steele wrote:
> > T.M. Sommers wrote:
> >>Tom Reedy wrote:
> >>
> >>>I also believe that anything you write for usenet goes
> >>>into the public domain as soon as you post it.
> >>
> >>Not as far as I know. I think there would be an implied consent
> >>to propogate the article through the usual netnews system, but
> >>the writer would still own the copyright.
> >
> > Several years ago, I was confronted with a compelling, if not exactly
> > ingenious, argument, to the effect that "everyone knows" the Internet
> > is lawless, therefore posting anything on the Internet implies consent
> > to any and all uses of posted material.
>
> As I said, I think posting to Usenet give implicit permission to
> do the things that are normally done with Usenet posts (quoting,
> archiving, etc.), but I don't think the permission extends
> outside of Usenet.
Yes. OTOH, what is "normally" done? Forwarding things to family
members is "normally" done. Cross-posting without the original
poster's permission or knowledge, for example, to start a discussion
about the original poster in another group, is IMHO not. Similarly,
using others' posted work as your own in other contexts (coursework,
work-for-hire, etc.) is no more normally done than it would be if the
work had been made available in some other way.
Yet, the more people contend, "We could be doing anything we want, and
it is naive of you to complain," the more the presumption that anyone
knows what is "normal" seems to be weakened.
>That is, if I publish all your Usenet
> articles in a dead-trees book, I think you could successfully sue
> me for copyright infringement.
I would have thought so, but I seem to remember a notice of a book that
was created just that way, in part, and the impression given by the
published article about that book was that the Usenet postings
republished had been treated as "found" work -- or, more accurately, as
"material" rather than "a work" -- and the usual authors' permissions
not sought.
OTOH, I suppose I would have to identify damages you had caused me by
infringing. Since I had expected no direct financial gain from my
Usenet posts, one might think damages impossible.
>There is no question at all in my
> mind that Usenet articles, when created, are subject to
> copyright,
That is also my understanding. Every business book, book or article on
intellectual property law for middle managers, handbook of information
for writers, etc., (that I have seen) says the same thing.
OTOH, the authors of those books do not IMHO shy away from stating as
fact what (it seems to me) cannot possibly yet be settled law: I have
seen some truly odd statements regarding the World Wide Web, for
example. I assume the problem derives from the ignorance of the
authors and of their expert sources, concerning technical matters.
Most readers have no way to tell the difference.
>and I see no way they can be put into the public
> domain except explicity, as with any other copyrighted material.
I am less sure of the rules governing "public domain." Certainly
stating, "the attached material is now in the public domain" is
sufficient to place the material in the public domain (from everything
I have seen -- and assuming the publisher has the legal right to do so,
of course). I think some people have been arguing, also, though not
here, that contracts such as "Copyleft" are unenforceable and that
attempts to use them automatically put the materials into the public
domain. To my knowledge, this is not, as it happens, settled law.
> I could, of course, be wrong.
Me too. For example, I know photojournalists in the United States get
subject releases, and so I would expect them to be required in all
similar contexts, however, Major League Baseball, for example, does
not.
--
Bianca Steele
Tom Reedy
news:ByVAg.80$Qu4.16@trnddc04...
<snip already rebutted points of Jane Cox's essay>
> Six 'authenticated' Shakespeare signatures survive and three of these are
> on his will. There is one on the Court of Requests document in the Public
> Record Office and the two others are on deeds connected with the purchase
> of the Blackfriars house, in the British Library and the Guildhall Library
> respectively. All are reproduced below, with the exception of the first
> will signature which is of very poor quality.
I'm assuming everyone who reads this thread knows the signatures by now. For
the sake of convenience, I'm going to number them for reference.
1. Willm Shakp - Belott-Mountjoy deposition, May 11, 1612. This is about as
good an image as you can find on the Internet:
http://home.eol.ca/~cumulus/Shakespeare/3.1.htm
2. William Shaksper - Guildhall Blackfriars conveyance, March 10, 1613,
3. Wm Shakspe - British Library Blackfriars deed, March 11, 1613,
http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/CD56275D-8B86-4A7A-A709-7D14EE69D78C/0/LH_CL_GL_manuscripts.pdfhttp://www.imagesonline.bl.uk/britishlibrary/controller/textsearch?text=shakespeare&&idx=1&startid=12663
(2.8 MB)
4. Willm Shakspere - will page 2, March 25, 1616.
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/dol/images/examples/pdfs/shakespeare.pdf
5. William Shakspeare - will page 3, March 25, 1616, same as above
If anybody wants them all on the same sheet, e-mail me and I'll send them to
you. The page includes the Archaionomia signature and the first will page
signature from Thompson's 1916 study. The picture of the Belott-Mountjoy
signature was taken by me.
> It is obvious at a glance that these signatures, with the exception of the
> last two, are not the signatures of the same man.
Here Cox again uses the "glance" method.
> Almost every letter is formed in a different way in each.
Let's see just how accurate that statement is.
Obvious points of correspondence:
The "illiam" in No. 2 and No. 5 seem to be to be extremely similar, in both
slant and letter formation.
The medial "a" in the given name of No. 2 and No.5, and in the surname of
Nos. 3, 4 and 5, are all formed the same.
The initial "S" in all the surnames are formed alike, save for the reversed
loop in No. 5, which doesn't make it all the way over the letter. that point
seems to be the beginning of the deterioration of the handwriting in that
signature.
The medial "a" in Nos. 1 and 2 are formed similarly: both are open, both
begin well above the letter. No. 1 is linked with the previous "h" and No. 2
appears as that it was at one time or that both letters were made cursively,
the pen leaving the paper as the upstroke of the upward bow of the "h" was
formed.
The slant of the "h" stem in Nos. 3, 4 and 5 are the same.
The "W" in 2 and 4 are what I call (very unscientifically, Roger) "triple
U," with an extra small ornamental curve attaching the final leg and the
arm.
The "W" in 1, 2 and 5 have a scrivener's dot in the curve of the final arm,
which curves back down to the base line.
All of the signatures use the italic long "s."
So it is hardly true that "Almost every letter is formed in a different way
in each."
> Literate men in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries developed
> personalized signatures much as people do today and it is unthinkable that
> Shakespeare did not.
I don't think that anyone would not call Sir Walter Raleigh a literate man,
but it is well known that his signature -- both the spelling and the
writing -- varied considerably.
> Which of the signatures reproduced here is the
> genuine article is anybody's guess.
I'm guessing all of them.
> Some scholars, perhaps more familiar
> with literature than the calligraphy of the period have failed to
> recognize the problem; Tannenbaum saw a 'striking similarity' between the
> last will signature and that on the Guildhall deed.
Well, as I said above, the "illiam" in the given names are extremely similar
in both slant and letter formation. Both also have a flourish over the final
"m," and both have a dot in the "W."
> The
> anti-Stratfordians, on the other hand, have argued that Shakespeare did
> not sign the documents himself because he was illiterate or that he did
> sign them, but because he was not used to writing, each time the signature
> and the spelling was different.
I'm not going to try to speak for the antiStratfordians, except to invite
their opinion on her representation of their argument.
> An article by Sir Hilary Jenkinson,
> published in 1922, gives a clue to what the solution might be. It was his
> opinion that clerks taking down the evidence of witnesses in law suits
> often 'signed' it with the deponent's name themselves, using a different
> hand from that which they had used for the body of the text to give it 'an
> air of verisimilitude'.
Here's what Sir Hilary actually wrote:
"For example, it is apparently not known generally that in the Elizabethan
period (and later) a clerk taking down or copying a deposition might himself
sign it with the name of the deponent: I believe it could easily be
established that quite frequently he would give an air of verisimilitude by
writing the signature in a different hand."
Unfortunately for those who follow Sir Hilary, he never established that
that was indeed the case, easily or otherwise. And whether he meant the
clerk signed it using a different hand, such as Italic, or he meant that a
clerk would actually try to forge a signature, he doesn't say.
I can say this: In April I searched through hundreds of depositions from the
Court of Requests from the late 1590s to the 1620s, and I never saw one
example of a clerk doing that. In all the depositions I looked at, if a
witness was illiterate, he or she would make a mark. You can see an example
of this in Joan Johnson's deposition on pages 27 and 28 of Schoenbaum's WS:
Records and Images.
> So much for the signature on the deposition given
> by Shakespeare to the Court of Requests.
It really doesn't take much evidence to establish this as a fact for Cox:
one 60-year-old opinion.
> If this was the practice in the
> equity courts,
See how she has morphed it into established fact?
> why should it not also have been the practice of attorneys'
> clerks when drawing up conveyancing documents? Possibly Shakespeare was
> not even in London to sign the mortgage deed and the deed of purchase for
> the Blackfriars gatehouse.
I suppose if you've accepted forgery as a daily occurrence in the courts
it's just a short step to perjury.
On the back of both Blackfriars documents, it is written "Sealed and
delivered by the said William Shakespeare, William Johnson, and John
Jackson, in the presence of Will: Atkinson; Ed: Ouery; Robert Andrewes scr.;
Henry Lawrence, servant to the same scr."
So much for Jane Cox's speculations on the legal practices of the day.
> The will signatures have been regarded as sacrosanct, in the main, but in
> the light of Sir Hilary Jenkinson's observations
From "opinion" to "observations." Quite a stretch, wouldn't you say?
> and practice in the
> Prerogative Court of Canterbury,
It might be instructive to read again what she has said about the practice
of the PCC:
The will was taken for probate to the Prerogative Court of Canterbury in
London, the most senior of a network of church courts handling testamentary
business. There John Hall, his son-in-law and one of the executors, took the
oath promising to duly administer the estate, on behalf of himself and his
wife. This is shown in the probate clause written in Latin on the bottom of
the will. The original will was filed and a copy was 'engrossed' on
parchment and bound up together with other wills proved that year. The
register still survives [UK National Archives catalog reference PROB 11/127
s.59] as does the entry of probate made in the 'Probate Act Book' [PROB
8/16]. There would have been various other documents associated with the
grant of probate, possibly affidavits and certainly an inventory of
Shakespeare's personal estate, that is to say a list of his household goods,
including cash, leases, plate, crops, animals and probably his books and
manuscripts.
> the authenticity of even these signatures
> must be questioned.
I'm not following how anything in the above makes a case for questioning the
authenticity of the signatures.
Oh, wait a minute. Could she be referring to her "if this was the practice
in the equity courts" comment?
That's it for now. The last paragraph is so rich in fractured logic and
misleading statements that itdeserves a post of its own, which I will try to
finish by the end of this week.
TR
> There is a possibility that the so called original
> will is a facsimile copy made either by the court or by Collins' clerk.
> The court's ancient practice had been to return the original will to the
> executor and to keep a copy; among the bundles of wills proved in 1538,
> for instance, there are hardly any originals. By the time Shakespeare died
> the court was more likely to keep the original but there are instances of
> facsimile copies being made for the court's files. The will of John
> Borlas, part of which is reproduced below, is an example. Borlas's name
> and the name of the witnesses are in a different hand from each other and
> from the text of the will and it is only when the paper is turned over
> that the will is revealed to be vera copia. It is not very likely that
> Shakespeare's will comes into this category as the contemporary copy now
> kept by the Birthplace Trust is probably the executor's copy which was
> retained by them when the grant of probate was made and the original was
> kept by the court. Another possibility is that the clerk who wrote the
> will 'forged' Shakespeare's signatures. Until the Statute of Frauds of
> 1667 there was no necessity for a will to bear the testator's signature at
> all. Manuals of the period indicate the form preferred by the doctors of
> civil law, namely that a will should be signed on every page and
> witnessed, but virtually any form was acceptable so long as it seemed to
> be a true representation of the dying man's wishes. The will of one Jacob
> Westcombe, proved in 1593, was signed and sealed only by the overseer.'
> Among fifty-five wills proved in the Prerogative Court in the same month
> as Shakespeare's, there are numerous examples of 'forgeries' of witnesses'
> signatures; the attorney's clerk simply wrote the names on the document,
> sometimes using a contrived hand to make them look like signatures,
> sometimes not. It is not unlikely that Collins' clerk wrote the names of
> Shaw, Robinson and Sadler on Shakespeare's will; the hands of the three
> witnesses are suspiciously similar. There is no positive evidence that
> Shakespeare did not sign his will; the shaky pen strokes certainly look
> like those made by a sick man. But if one must select one of the four
bookburn
My comment is that when you get your intellectual property
copyrighted by submitting an original copy and formal application,
along with a few bucks, you then have federal law in force to
impose a substantial fine on someone who violates your ownership
rights, independent of what you collect in court by suing for
damages.
Outside of that, it seems that anytime you create something, like on
usenet, and sign it, you have created an intellectual property, so
there is considerable question about use by others without your
permission. School kids create stuff that seems to belong to the
individual, even little books with their name, date, and the
copyright "C", but school administrators commonly claim the right
to keep it and/or pass it around in classes and to the public.
Employers claim anything you create while their employee belongs to
them, etc..
I notice seems to be this question about what is an original
composition, whether anyone taking something that is not protected
by copyright law can use it and make it their property by changing
it in some small way, like changing the fonts. I can imagine the
legal train wreck resulting from a new company taking an 189Os OED
version no longer protected by copyright and reprinting if in a
different format for sale on CDs. Then there is the argument about
shared creativity.
I like the classical story about the Greek father maintaining a boat
who told his son he could have the old planks as he replaced them.
The son then commenced putting the old planks together in the
configuration of the boat, with the result that there were finally
two boats. When the question came up of which boat was entitled to
keep the original name, the son said the original boat was now the
one he assembled, so it should have the old name. The father said
the boat he maintained should keep the name, as the identity of the
boat had not changed. bookburn
Tom Reedy
<snip>
>
> I contacted the Birthplace Trust and got this answer from Assistant
> Archivist Jo Wong: "The original, which bears the signature of John
> Combe, is held by The National Archives amongst the PCC wills (although
> obviously it is not online). We know this for certain as we have a
> reference photocopy of it here in our collection . . . ." I replied
> asking for a reference number.
>
I received another message from Archivist Wong: "We only seem to have
copies of 4 pages of the will, but the numbering on these pages
indicates that the original is in fact 9 pages long. There are just a
couple of strikeouts on the pages we have, but these are only
alterations to the wording of the will (e.g. striking through 'said' in
'the said Bayliffe'. There is only one substantial interlineation,
regarding bequests of money for rings."
Since the ring bequests in the register will PROB 11/126 aren't
interlineated, I think we can accept that an original will for John
Combes exists, and so therefore my criticism of Cox on this matter is
not valid. Whether she followed Chambers or checked the original will,
we have no way of knowing.
I'll post on this again when I hear back from the National Archives.
TR
John W. Kennedy
>
> My comment is that when you get your intellectual property copyrighted
> by submitting
Anything you write is ipso-facto copyright as soon as you write it.
--
John W. Kennedy
"The blind rulers of Logres
Nourished the land on a fallacy of rational virtue."
-- Charles Williams. "Taliessin through Logres: Prelude"
bookburn
"John W. Kennedy" <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote in message
news:QZICg.5$G_...@newsfe12.lga...
I was under the impression that intellectual property pretected by
copyright issued by the Library of Congress office had special
protections when involved in a legal suit, like payment of court
costs and a federal fine in addition to other civil findings, but
now I see that The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998
spells out more stringent criminal fines and sentences, although it
has Congress concerned about its inability to prevent blatent piracy
and unreasonable restriction on innocent activities, like copying of
back-ups.
If anything you write is protected by the DMCA, the number of
frivelous lawsuits by monopolies would increase, more "safe harbour"
would have to be spelled out, and there will be more legal logger
heads with intermediaries like Microsoft, who sells programs for
copying movies, music, etc..
Where educational purposes apply, like on usenet, the concept of
Fair Use still seems to be one of the "safe harbours," and when we
post it's okay to copy that in replies because it's assumed to be so
intended, as I understand it. bookburn
John W. Kennedy
> If anything you write is protected by the DMCA,
Anything you write is protected by the Berne Convention, which has
applied in the US since long before the DMCA.
Under US law, there are advantages to registering, but it is not
necessary to register to obtain copyright, which is inherent in the act
of "fixing" (writing, painting, sculpting, or whatever it is you do to
the particular creation to make it concrete).
Tom Reedy
<snip already rebutted points of Jane Cox's essay>
> There is a possibility that the so called original
> will is a facsimile copy made either by the court or by Collins' clerk.
> The court's ancient practice had been to return the original will to the
> executor and to keep a copy; among the bundles of wills proved in 1538,
> for instance, there are hardly any originals.
This is what I call a self-refuting sentence. "[T]here are hardly any
originals" means there are some. If "The court's ancient practice had been
to return the original will to the executor and to keep a copy," there would
be no originals. However, since she is discussing a will from 1538 (a year
in which only 285 wills were proved before the court, as opposed to ~1,500
in
1616), this observation is a non sequitur when discussing Shakespeare's
will.
This is from the National Archives explanation of PROB 10 wills: "The rate
of survival of original wills is uncertain before the early seventeenth
century and particularly poor before the mid sixteenth century.
Many of the pre 1600 documents are copies, the original wills having been
returned to the executors."
> By the time Shakespeare died
> the court was more likely to keep the original but there are instances of
> facsimile copies being made for the court's files. The will of John
> Borlas, part of which is reproduced below, is an example. Borlas's name
> and the name of the witnesses are in a different hand from each other and
> from the text of the will
This is at least closer to being true than some things she says.
There are six names subscribed to the will in the part that is reproduced.
The testator's name is in the left column in a fair Italic hand, two of the
witnesses are in an identical slanted Italic hand, and three are in an
English Secretary hand that matches the body of the will.
The will of John Borlas of Little Marlow, Buckinghamshire, was proved May
14, 1593, so it is consistent with what the National Archives Web site says,
"Many of the pre 1600 documents are copies, the original wills having been
returned to the executors."
> and it is only when the paper is turned over
> that the will is revealed to be vera copia. It is not very likely
Indeed. A point that those who like to reference Cox mysteriously leave out
when quoting her.
> that
> Shakespeare's will comes into this category as the contemporary copy now
> kept by the Birthplace Trust is probably the executor's copy which was
> retained by them when the grant of probate was made and the original was
> kept by the court.
The Birthplace Trust copy is thought to have been made after 1635 from Dr.
Hall's copy.
> Another possibility is that the clerk who wrote the
> will 'forged' Shakespeare's signatures.
Where does she get this? Nothing she has written earlier would lead one to
think that would ever be the case.
And we have seen that, even though she tried to pass off the Borlas will as
having "forged" signatures, that is not the case.
> Until the Statute of Frauds of
> 1667 there was no necessity for a will to bear the testator's signature at
> all.
There was also no necessity for a will to be in writing, but mysteriously, a
lot of them were!
> Manuals of the period indicate the form preferred by the doctors of
> civil law, namely that a will should be signed on every page and
> witnessed, but virtually any form was acceptable so long as it seemed to
> be a true representation of the dying man's wishes. The will of one Jacob
> Westcombe, proved in 1593, was signed and sealed only by the overseer.
We're back in 1593 again.
> Among fifty-five wills proved in the Prerogative Court in the same month
> as Shakespeare's, there are numerous examples of 'forgeries' of witnesses'
> signatures; the attorney's clerk simply wrote the names on the document,
> sometimes using a contrived hand to make them look like signatures,
> sometimes not.
This statement raises many questions. Dos she mean that of the 211 wills
proved the same month as Shakespeare's (June 1616), that 55 of them have
what she calls "forged" signatures? That's the way it appears to me, but she
could mean that she looked at 55, and in that group "there are numerous
examples of 'forgeries' . . . ." (How many, we are not told.)
Is she talking about PROB 10 wills, which are loose wills, some of them
original? Again, we are not told.
But given that her example of "forged" signatures turns out to be not what
she said ("Borlas's name and the name of the witnesses are in a different
hand from each other and from the text of the will."), I don't believe she
is a reliable witness. After all, if I were looking for an example of
"forged" signatures, I think I would come up with a better example than what
she gave, which makes me think she probably picked the best example she
could find.
> It is not unlikely that Collins' clerk wrote the names of
> Shaw, Robinson and Sadler on Shakespeare's will; the hands of the three
> witnesses are suspiciously similar.
I have already addressed this point in a 2002 post to Pat Dooley: "She is
quite the palaeographer. the hands "*are* "suspiciously similar* (I like
that word, "suspiciously."). Except for the J's, H's, M's, N's, E's, L's and
S's, the letters are almost the same!"
Unfortunately for those who trust in Cox's suspicions, as Rob Zigler pointed
out in 2002 -- well, I'll just quote his post:
BEGIN QUOTE
<Xr...@pXcr8.pXcr.com> wrote in message
news:Pine.A41.4.44.020312...@pcr8.pcr.com...
<snip>
> > > > the hands of the three witnesses are suspiciously similar.
That statement alone is enough to make me
suspicious of Cox's expertise. (Or is that not
a quote from her?)
Hamilton's _In Search of William Shakespeare_
wouldn't at all useful, except for the fact that
it contains a fair number of samples of the
handwriting of a good number of Elizabethans.
Among those samples are two signatures each
for Shawe and Sadler. (Two taken from
Shakespeare's will and two taken from other
documents.)
Sadler's two signatures are not exactly the
same, but they are close enough that I doubt
any expert would claim that each was executed
by a different hand.
Julyns Shawe's two signatures look quite different.
However, one thing that stands out pretty quickly
is that in 1616, he drew the capital 'J' in his name
in the same unusual way that we see him drawing it
back in 1597. Additionally, the way Shawe formed
the 'J' in his name is not seen anywhere else in
the will.
> > > She is quite the palaeographer. the hands "*are* "suspiciously
> > > similar* (I like that word, "suspiciously."). Except for the J's, H's,
> > > M's, N's, E's, L's and S's, the letters are almost the same!
It *would* be nice to know what features she thinks are
similar. In fact, it would be nice to know which three
of the five signatures she finds suspicious.
Most amazingly, I've seen it stated several places that
Jane Cox thinks that Shakespeare's will may actually be
a scribal copy. For that to be the case, the copyist
would have had to intentially attempt to duplicate
defects in the original will, something which appears to
be extremely unlikely. (It seems much more likely that
Cox is not competent to make any paleographic
judgements.)
Rob
END QUOTE
> There is no positive evidence that
> Shakespeare did not sign his will; the shaky pen strokes certainly look
> like those made by a sick man.
A point of agreement between Ms. Cox and myself.
> But if one must select one of the four
> signed documents as being the sole example of our greatest playwrights
> hand,
What kind of thinking is this?
> the will has no better claim than the Requests deposition, the
> mortgage deed or the Guildhall conveyance.
Who said it did?
> As we have seen, the legal
> sanctity of the signature was not firmly established;
"Not firmly established?" Why, then, did people sign wills and deeds?
> the medieval
> tradition was that of an illiterate landowning class with scribes to do
> their writing and signing.
This is a complete non sequitur. What possible relevance could this have to
Shakespeare's 1616 will?
> Wills were proved by the executor's oath,
> nothing more,
Same way they are today.
> unless objections were raised by some interested party, in
> which case witnesses would be examined.
Just like today.
> It was not until later in the
> seventeenth century that handwriting experts began to be used by the
> court. (33-34)
And so ends probably one of the most ill-written, illogical and
ill-whatever-else-you-want-to-say-about-it essay that goes round and round
and ends with nothing relevant to say about Shakespere's handwriting.
Perhaps Ms. Cox has learned better and changed her mind, but her efforts
have obscured, rather than enlightened, the subject of Shakespeare's
signatures, and provided antiStratfordians with a seeming-expert that I'm
sure they will quote from now until doomsday.
Next: a summary.
TR
Tom Reedy
<SNIP>
>
>> Among fifty-five wills proved in the Prerogative Court in the same month
>> as Shakespeare's, there are numerous examples of 'forgeries' of
>> witnesses'
>> signatures; the attorney's clerk simply wrote the names on the document,
>> sometimes using a contrived hand to make them look like signatures,
>> sometimes not.
>
> This statement raises many questions. Dos she mean that of the 211 wills
> proved the same month as Shakespeare's (June 1616), that 55 of them have
> what she calls "forged" signatures? That's the way it appears to me, but
> she could mean that she looked at 55, and in that group "there are
> numerous examples of 'forgeries' . . . ." (How many, we are not told.)
>
> Is she talking about PROB 10 wills, which are loose wills, some of them
> original? Again, we are not told.
>
She does give a reference, PROB 10/332, which are wills from June 1616, C
through W. PROB 10/331 contains A-B.
But we still don't know if there are 55 wills that exhibit "forged"
signatures, or if "numerous examples" means some of the wills out of 55.
TR
Tom Reedy
aticle on the Shakespeare signatures.
From section IV "Shakespeare's Will and Signatures," pages 24-34,
*Shakespeare in the Public Records* . Most citations deleted.
> [...]
> The will was taken for probate to the Prerogative Court of Canterbury in
> London, the most senior of a network of church courts handling
> testamentary business. There John Hall, his son-in-law and one of the
> executors, took the oath promising to duly administer the estate, on
> behalf of himself and his wife. This is shown in the probate clause
> written in Latin on the bottom of the will. The original will was filed
> and a copy was 'engrossed' on parchment and bound up together with other
> wills proved that year.
That is not correct. According to the National Archives, the registered copy
wills are copies of original probates written into volumes by clerks at the
church courts. They are written on paper, not parchment, and they were
written on 8-page quires and then bound together. You can go here
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documentsonline/wills.asp and see a
picture of a probate copybook binding and inside pages.
> The register still survives [UK National Archives catalog reference PROB
> 11/127 s.59] as does the entry of probate made in the 'Probate Act Book'
> [PROB 8/16]. There would have been various other documents associated with
> the grant of probate, possibly affidavits and certainly an inventory of
> Shakespeare's personal estate, that is to say a list of his household
> goods, including cash, leases, plate, crops, animals and probably his
> books and manuscripts. Unfortunately most of the inventories for this date
> were lost in the Great Fire of 1666. F.J. Furnivall searched through vast
> quantities of then unsorted Prerogative Court records, leaving in the
> boxes notes: 'Searched for the inventory of Mr. Shakespeare'.
> The original will was written on three pages of paper and there are a
> number of interlineations and crossings out. It was not unusual for
> corrected drafts to be submitted for probate; John Combe's will, which was
> also drawn by Francis Collins, is similar in appearance, though clearly in
> a different hand.
> Shakespeare's will was probably written by Collins' clerk; a glance at the
> lawyer's signature on the last page is enough to show that he did not
> write it himself, Similarly a comparison of Shakespeare's signatures with
> the text of the will shows that the will is not holograph, indeed it would
> be most unusual if it was, no seventeenth-century gentleman, literary or
> otherwise, penned his own last wishes. (24-25)
Cox is wrong here, also. These counterexamples are all from Honigmann and
Brock's *Playhouse Wills: 1558-1642.*
Alexander Cooke, an actor with the King's Men and a sharer, wrote his own
will in 1614. I don't know that he was a gentleman, though.
James Shirley, a playwright and masque writer, was a gentleman, and his 1666
will was holograph.
Master of the Revels Edmund Tilney, esquire (above a gentleman). His 1610
will says it was "written with my owne hand," although we only have a
scribal copy.
Thomas Gilbourne, gentleman, a sharer in the new Fortune Theatre, 1627
Arthur Wilson, gentleman, playwright, 1652.
and possibly Master of the Revels Sir John Astley, 1640.
I’ll be conservative and say there are three holograph wills by gentlemen
out of 77, or 3.9 percent.
The National Archives holds about 210,000 17th century wills. If the same
proportion for theatrical persons holds true in the general population,
there should be around 8,200 holograph wills written by gentlemen.
8,200 is a long way from none.
> The document was attested by the lawyer and four friends: Julius Shawe,
> from a Henley Street family, Hamnet Sadler, Hamnet Shakespeare's
> godfather, Robert Whatcote, the chief character witness for Susanna Hall
> in a slander action in the Worcester Consistory Court, and a John Robinson
> who has not been identified . . . . There is no particular significance in
> the number of witnesses, the legal authorities recommended two but many
> wills of the time had five. (25)
Shakespeare's will was a solemn testament, a form of will that was
particularly hard to break if anybody contested it. Originally requiring
seven witnesses, Swinburne notes marginally that the number of witnesses had
been reduced to four. See page 27 of *The Second Best Bed: Shakespeare's
Will in a New Light* by Joyce Rogers.
And note that the witnesses attest to the publishing of the will *by
Shakespeare's hand,* (i.e. they saw him sign it) and that each sheet was
signed.
> Six 'authenticated' Shakespeare signatures survive and three of these are
> on his will. There is one on the Court of Requests document in the Public
> Record Office and the two others are on deeds connected with the purchase
> of the Blackfriars house, in the British Library and the Guildhall Library
> respectively. All are reproduced below, with the exception of the first
> will signature which is of very poor quality.
I'm assuming everyone who reads this thread knows the signatures by now. For
the sake of convenience, I'm going to number them for reference.
1. Willm Shakp - Belott-Mountjoy deposition, May 11, 1612. This is about as
good an image as you can find on the Internet:
http://home.eol.ca/~cumulus/Shakespeare/3.1.htm
2. William Shaksper - Guildhall Blackfriars conveyance, March 10, 1613,
3. Wm Shakspe - British Library Blackfriars deed, March 11, 1613,
4. Willm Shakspere - will page 2, March 25, 1616.
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/dol/images/examples/pdfs/shakespea...
5. William Shakspere - will page 3, March 25, 1616, same as above
If anybody wants them all on the same sheet, e-mail me and I'll send them to
you. The page includes the Archaionomia signature and the first will page
signature from Thompson's 1916 study. The picture of the Belott-Mountjoy
signature was taken by me.
> It is obvious at a glance that these signatures, with the exception of the
> last two, are not the signatures of the same man.
Here Cox again uses the "glance" method.
> Almost every letter is formed in a different way in each.
Cox is wrong again. Obvious points of correspondence:
The "illiam" in No. 2 and No. 5 are extremely similar, in both slant and
letter formation.
The medial "a" in the given name of No. 2 and No.5, and in the surname of
Nos. 3, 4 and 5, are all formed the same.
The initial "S" in all the surnames are formed alike, save for the reversed
loop in No. 5, which doesn't make it all the way over the letter. that point
seems to be the beginning of the deterioration of the handwriting in that
signature.
The medial "a" in Nos. 1 and 2 are formed similarly: both are open, both
begin well above the letter. No. 1 is linked with the previous "h" and No. 2
appears as that it was at one time or that both letters were made cursively,
the pen leaving the paper as the upstroke of the upward bow of the "h" was
formed.
The slant of the "h" stem in Nos. 3, 4 and 5 are the same.
The "W" in 2 and 4 are what I call "triple U," with an extra small
ornamental curve attaching the final leg and the arm.
The "W" in 1, 2 and 5 have a scrivener's dot in the curve of the final arm,
which curves back down to the base line.
In every case, the “W” begins below the baseline of the rest of the
signature.
All of the signatures except for No. 4 use the italic long "s."
So it is not true that "Almost every letter is formed in a different way in
each."
> Literate men in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries developed
> personalized signatures much as people do today and it is unthinkable that
> Shakespeare did not.
I don't think that anyone would not call Sir Walter Raleigh a literate man,
but it is well known that his signature -- both the spelling and the
writing -- varied considerably.
> Which of the signatures reproduced here is the genuine article is
> anybody's guess.
I'm guessing all of them.
> Some scholars, perhaps more familiar with literature than the calligraphy
> of the period have failed to recognize the problem; Tannenbaum saw a
> 'striking similarity' between the last will signature and that on the
> Guildhall deed.
Well, as I said above, the "illiam" in the given names are extremely similar
in both slant and letter formation. Both also have a flourish over the final
"m," both have a dot in the "W," and both “W”s begin below the baseline.
> The anti-Stratfordians, on the other hand, have argued that Shakespeare
> did not sign the documents himself because he was illiterate or that he
> did sign them, but because he was not used to writing, each time the
> signature and the spelling was different.
I'm not going to try to speak for the antiStratfordians, except to invite
their opinion on her representation of their argument. So far they seem to
be curiously silent on this topic, perhaps because even they can see my
analysis is on target.
> An article by Sir Hilary Jenkinson, published in 1922, gives a clue to
> what the solution might be. It was his opinion that clerks taking down the
> evidence of witnesses in law suits often 'signed' it with the deponent's
> name themselves, using a different hand from that which they had used for
> the body of the text to give it 'an air of verisimilitude'.
Here's what Sir Hilary actually wrote:
"For example, it is apparently not known generally that in the Elizabethan
period (and later) a clerk taking down or copying a deposition might himself
sign it with the name of the deponent: I believe it could easily be
established that quite frequently he would give an air of verisimilitude by
writing the signature in a different hand."
Unfortunately, Sir Hilary, never established that that was indeed the case,
easily or otherwise. And whether he meant the clerk signed it using a
different hand, such as Italic, or he meant that a clerk would actually try
to forge a signature, he doesn't say.
I can say this: In April I searched through hundreds of depositions from the
Court of Requests from the late 1590s to the 1620s, and I never saw one
example of a clerk doing that. In all the depositions I looked at, if a
witness was illiterate, he or she would make a mark. You can see an example
of this in Joan Johnson's deposition on pages 27 and 28 of Schoenbaum's WS:
Records and Images.
> So much for the signature on the deposition given by Shakespeare to
> the Court of Requests.
It is surprising how much weight Cox gives to one 60-year-old unproven
opinion.
> If this was the practice in the equity courts,
She not only gives the opinion undue weight, she morphs it into established
fact.
> why should it not also have been the practice of attorneys' clerks when
> drawing up conveyancing documents? Possibly Shakespeare was not even in
> London to sign the mortgage deed and the deed of purchase for the
> Blackfriars gatehouse.
I suppose if you've accepted forgery as a daily occurrence in the courts,
Could she be referring to her "if this was the practice in the equity
courts" comment?
> There is a possibility that the so called original will is a facsimile
> copy made either by the court or by Collins' clerk. The court's ancient
> practice had been to return the original will to the executor and to keep
> a copy; among the bundles of wills proved in 1538, for instance, there are
> hardly any originals.
This is what I call a self-refuting sentence. "[T]here are hardly any
originals" means there are some. If "The court's ancient practice had been
to return the original will to the executor and to keep a copy," there would
be no originals. However, since she is discussing a will from 1538 (a year
in which only 285 wills were proved before the court, as opposed to ~1,500
in 1616), this observation is a non sequitur when discussing Shakespeare's
will.
This is from the National Archives explanation of PROB 10 wills: "The rate
of survival of original wills is uncertain before the early seventeenth
century and particularly poor before the mid sixteenth century. Many of the
pre 1600 documents are copies, the original wills having been returned to
the executors."
> By the time Shakespeare died the court was more likely to keep the
> original but there are instances of facsimile copies being made for the
> court's files. The will of John Borlas, part of which is reproduced below,
> is an example. Borlas's name and the name of the witnesses are in a
> different hand from each other and from the text of the will
There are six names subscribed to the will in the part that is reproduced.
Cox’s statement suggests that there are six different hands. That is not
true.
The testator's name is in the left column in a fair Italic hand, two of the
witnesses are in an identical slanted Italic hand, and three are in an
English Secretary hand that matches the body of the will.
The will of John Borlas of Little Marlow, Buckinghamshire, was proved May
14, 1593, so it is consistent with what the National Archives Web site says,
"Many of the pre 1600 documents are copies, the original wills having been
returned to the executors."
> and it is only when the paper is turned over that the will is revealed
> to be vera copia. It is not very likely that Shakespeare's will comes
> into this category
Indeed. A point that those who like to reference Cox mysteriously leave out
when quoting her.
> as the contemporary copy now kept by the Birthplace Trust is probably the
> executor's copy which was retained by them when the grant of probate was
> made and the original was kept by the court.
The Birthplace Trust copy is thought to have been made after 1635 from Dr.
Hall's copy.
> Another possibility is that the clerk who wrote the will 'forged'
> Shakespeare's signatures.
Where does she get this? Nothing she has written earlier would lead one to
think that would ever be the case.
And we have seen that, even though she tried to pass off the Borlas will as
having "forged" signatures, that is not the case.
> Until the Statute of Frauds of 1667 there was no necessity for a
> will to bear the testator's signature at all.
This is a misleading statement of the law and the early modern English
practice concerning wills. Swinburne, whom Cox quotes above, says the
signature of a testator could be dispensed with if the will could be
otherwise proved by witnesses (189b).
> Manuals of the period indicate the form preferred by the doctors of civil
> law, namely that a will should be signed on every page and witnessed, but
> virtually any form was acceptable so long as it seemed to be a true
> representation of the dying man's wishes.
This is not true.
I don’t know what “manuals of the period” she is referring to, but Swinburne
says that unless a will was properly prepared (lettered or otherwise marked
paragraphed items), that even if it was signed by the testator or in his
hand it would be presumed to be a rough draft, and not a legal will, *UNLESS
IT WAS WITNESSED* (190).
Shakespeare’s will certainly falls in that category.
> The will of one Jacob Westcombe, proved in 1593, was signed and
> sealed only by the overseer.
We're back in 1593 again, for some reason.
> Among fifty-five wills proved in the Prerogative Court in the same month
> as Shakespeare's, there are numerous examples of 'forgeries' of witnesses'
> signatures; the attorney's clerk simply wrote the names on the document,
> sometimes using a contrived hand to make them look like signatures,
> sometimes not.
Given that her example of "forged" signatures turns out not to be exactly
what she said above, ("Borlas's name and the name of the witnesses are in a
different hand from each other and from the text of the will."), I don't
believe she is a reliable witness in this case. After all, if I were looking
for an example of "forged" signatures, I think I would come up with a better
example than what she gave, which makes me think she probably picked the
best example she could find.
> It is not unlikely that Collins' clerk wrote the names of Shaw, Robinson
> and Sadler on Shakespeare's will; the hands of the three witnesses are
> suspiciously similar.
This is not true, either.
I have already addressed this point in a 2002 post to Pat Dooley: "She is
quite the palaeographer. the hands "*are* "suspiciously similar* (I like
that word, "suspiciously."). Except for the J's, H's, M's, N's, E's, L's and
S's, the letters are almost the same!"
Unfortunately for those who trust in Cox's suspicions, as Rob Zigler pointed
out in 2002 -- well, I'll just quote his post:
BEGIN QUOTE
<X...@pXcr8.pXcr.com> wrote in message
news:Pine.A41.4.44.020312...@pcr8.pcr.com...
<snip>
Rob
END QUOTE
> sole example of our greatest playwright’s hand,
What kind of thinking is this? This is just baffling to me.
> the will has no better claim than the Requests deposition, the mortgage
> deed or the Guildhall conveyance.
Who said it did?
> As we have seen, the legal sanctity of the signature was not firmly
> established;
"Not firmly established?" Why, then, did people sign wills and deeds? Why
does Swinburne say that a signature could be dispensed with only with two or
more witnesses?
> the medieval tradition was that of an illiterate landowning class with
> scribes to do their writing and signing.
This is a complete non sequitur. What possible relevance could this have to
Shakespeare's 1616 will?
> Wills were proved by the executor's oath, nothing more,
Same way they are today.
> unless objections were raised by some interested party, in which case
> witnesses would be examined.
Just like today.
> It was not until later in the seventeenth century that handwriting
> experts began to be used by the court. (33-34)
This is not true, either.
What were called “recognition witnesses” were used by courts, persons who
claimed familiarity with the testator’s handwriting, but they were extremely
unreliable and were hardly “handwriting experts.”
It was not until 1792 with the case Goodtitle d. Revett v. Braham that
specially-qualified witnesses were allowed to testify before the court in
matters concerning handwriting. Their special qualifications were that they
were inspectors of franks, who checked the authenticity of signatures of
members of Parliament and others on mail that was sent under the franking
privilege. See *Handwriting Identification: Facts and Fundamentals* by Huber
and Headrick, page 4.
TR
Art Neuendorffer
_________ *WIlli SHak*
_________ *a kill WISH*
------------------------------------------------
http://home.eol.ca/~cumulus/Shakespeare/3.1.htm
.
1. Willi Shak
2. William Shakspe
3. Wm Shakspi
4. Deteriorated: William Sh??kp??r = a possible translation
5. Willim; Shakp???
6. Shaksp(??)?r?
.
<<This becomes interesting. It seems that he never finishes spelling
his name. He knows he's William, and Shaksp or Shakp plus a few other
letters, but he makes no serious attempt to formulate them. And these
are all legal documents. We know Elizabethans spelt their names in
different ways at different times, but this is not different spelling,
it's incompletion.
.
There's something else. As these are all legal documents, where he had
to write his name, we see that his legal name was Shaksper or Shakspre,
probably pronounced 'Shackspurr'. This is not the same as Shakespeare.
I suggest you could probably duplicate the writing style yourself. Are
you right handed or left handed? Whichever you are, take a pen and paper
and write William Shakspre not with your usual hand but the other one,
the one you never use. Use a fairly thick ball if it's a ball point,
or a roller pen, if you have one, assuming you don't have an
old-fashioned nib pen and ink which would be best.
.
Now look at what you've done. It's probably very uneven and jerky:
why did you write like that? Because you don't write with that hand.
And that I suggest is the situation we're looking at with the
signature of "William Shakespeare". The writer is not used to
writing with a pen nib, he presses too hard and makes blots,
and in his day there was no other way to write.
.
If you study the signatures yourself, you can make your own judgement.
But I don't see how anyone could, in a world where you had to use a
quill pen, write your plays and poems, with an enormous vocabulary
and reams of paper, if you couldn't write properly.
.
I know for a fact that being barely able to write doesn't mean you can't
be a successful business person. In my earlier days as an accountancy
student, one of the clients of the firm I trained with could not sign
his name, he put an X with a witness on his tax return. He could not
write. But he had lawyers and accountants and secretaries to do that for
him. He owned shopping malls and apartment buildings, and was a wealthy
and successful business man. He talked well enough and could calculate
quickly in his head. But he could not write.
.
And what documentary evidence we have for the life of 'William
Shakespeare' of Stratford on Avon shows him to be involved in leases,
rents, buying property, investing in a theatre company, collecting
payments, making loans, dealing in malt, corn in a big way, and wool,
owning tithes, all of which from the evidence of my own experience,
can be done with even less ability to sign his name than 'William
Shakespeare' of Stratford on Avon had. I conclude the Stratford man had
been taught in his youth to write his name but in mature years had
almost forgotten how to write and how to spell. So his penmanship that
is all we see of his writing ability was adequate for his purposes,
but hopelessly inadequate for a professional writer in the 1500s
in Elizabethan England.
.
As someone who has seen many thousands of clients sign tax returns
and/or financial statements and other documents over many years whether
cabinet minister, Metropolitan Opera star, TV and film personalities,
writers, broadcasters, academics, actors, painters, lawyers, engineers,
architects, stockbrokers, doctors, dentists, land developers, builders,
many many presidents of corporations, many other trades and professions,
and simple charity cases, I can assure you after having sat across the
desk watching well over 50,000 signatures by my rough calculation, that
no one who wrote a signature such as these of "William Shakespeare"
could possibly be a writer by profession in the 16th century. So now we
know that William Shakspe??, of Stratford on Avon was not, and could not
have been, William Shakespeare the poet/dramatist for the simple reason
that he did not have the ability to write the work down.
.
And the writing would have to be readily legible so that actors,
copyists, and printers could quickly and accurately read what
was written to memorize it, hand copy it or print it.
.
There is one other possibility to rescue William Shakspe?? of Stratford
on Avon. He had an amanuensis who did all the writing, and WS merely
dictated all the poems and plays. There is an actual example of this.
John Milton, born before WS died, had become blind when Paradise Lost
was written. But at least we know how this was done. Before he became
blind he had held the Secretaryship for Foreign Tongues to the Council
of State of the new Commonwealth, Oliver Cromwell's government, writing
official documents mostly in Latin and English with a salary of £288 per
year. As his eyesight began to fail he was permitted to work mostly at
home with assistance in the more routine work. Born in 1608, he was
totally blind by 1652 and died in 1674. For Paradise Lost he was only
paid £10. It was published in 1667. But he was already famous as a
writer of poems and political pamphlets and taught many pupils during
the time when he could see perfectly well. These students, when adults,
his friends, and others who were paid, would drop by at his house and
write a page or so at a time from his dictation. But that was only at
the height of his career. For William Shakspe?? of Stratford on Avon
this would have had to begin with his very first poem, and continued
throughout his life. It seems very improbable. And there is no evidence
for it. Nor is there evidence that he wrote anything at all, or for
that matter, that he didn't.
.
If he was unfamiliar with writing, he could not possibly be the
poet/dramatist. Now that we know this to be the case, we have to find
out who the poet/dramatist was. There have been apparently about 60
candidates over the years since the 1500s. Any one of them, or someone
else, could perhaps have been the mysterious writer. But it will have
to have been someone who could write copiously with ease, as a basic
requirement. And whoever he was there will have to be practical
reasons we can accept for this writer's anonymity,
using the name William Shakespeare.>>
-------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer