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Re Shakespeards name change

  • Thread starter Robert Harrison
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R

Robert Harrison

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All indications are that the spellings "Shakespeare" and "Shakspere" (and their variants) did not represent a consistent pronunciation difference, despite our intuition based on modern spelling rules. The foremost authority on the subject, Fausto Cercignani, says in Shakespeare's Works and Elizabethan Pronunciation (p. 1) that "we do not even know how Shakespeare pronounced his own surname, since the first part of his signature (Shakspere and Shakspeare) may imply either the antecedent of present shake or a variant pronounced like shack, while both -spere and -speare may conceal either the antecedent of present spear or a form rhyming with pear." It is entirely possible that the name was pronounced differently in Stratford and London, and this may be one more factor among several contributing to the greater occurrence of "Shak-"-type spellings in Stratford. (Though recall that in London, "Shake-"-type spellings were used more often in non-literary referernces to "the Stratford man" than in literary references to Shakespeare.) If we look at Stratford and London references separately, though, the distribution of "Shake-" and "Shak-" spellings gives no indication that they represented any consistent difference in pronunciation

Robert
 
Robert, Thanks for all what you posted, I have just finished reading about his house in Stratford upon Avon (19th account) the chap who owned it burnt it down and fled the town as he was sick of people coming to see it. If you want to read it I will scan it in Word for you
 
Was that the place where he hath anne away? ;)
Sorry, couldn't resist that but seriously it is of some interest but at the end of the day somebody once said "What's in a name"?
 
Hi Robert: That's very interesting and it would be hard to prove conclusively. On the Public TV service here we have just seen the series(four parts) with Michael Wood" In Search of Shakespeare". I was really fascinated by this because of it's history and being sort of local. William Shakespeare's father seemed to sign his name in different ways accordingly to the records that Michael Wood turned up.
Don't think the prounounciation of the family name was touched on in the series. Many people could not read in William's day so perhaps word of mouth may have changed the way his name was pronounced and may be he changed it himself when he did go to London. Michael Wood really got into the subject in this series and it was amazing to me all the places he found that Shakespeare could be traced to that were still standing. I thought it was an excellent programme.

For a while a few years back I found myself in the company of people who believed Francis Bacon wrote most of Shakespeare's work and there is a lot of writing along those lines around. A sort of conspiracy theory really I suppose.
 
Jerry,

I am prepared to give Bill the credit for all that he claims to have written. The work is so good that I do not mind if
Donald Duck claims the credit.


Robert
 
I was impressed with 'In Search Of Shakespeare'. I bought the CD as a gift for a family member. It seems to me he used the name Shakeshaft at one time. The religious politics of the times were very complex and even then material had to be screened to have a politically correct nuance.
 
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