How many ways did William Shakespeare spell his name?

Answer 1

Nowadays, there is only one way to spell Shakespeare S-H-A-K-E-S-P-E-A-R-E.

In Shakespeare's day, language was not so well defined as it is now, there were not all of the dictionaries and other reference books that we have now, so spellings of any word were not standardised.

There are examples of Shakespeare's own signature with several different spellings - it did not matter so much how it was spelt so long as you knew who it was.

Answer 2

Shakespeare spelled his name in different ways, according to remaining records. We have six signatures, all of which spell the name differently: Willm Shakp, William Shaksper, Wm Shakspe, William Shakspere, Willm Shakspere, and William Shakspeare.

Does this mean that Shakespeare was an illiterate? No. Everybody else spelled his name in a wide variety of ways: it is Shake-speare in the cast list of Sejanus, Shakespeare in the cast list of Every Man in his Humour, Shaxspere in Thomas Whittington's Will, Shackspre in a letter of Richard Quiney, Shakspere in a writ for his arrest in 1596, Shagspere on his marriage licence bond, but Shaxpere on the licence itself (and his wife's name is totally misspelled!), Shakespears in a record of honours given to the King's Men, and my favourite, Shaxberd as author of the plays in the Revels accounts of 1604/5.

And Shakespeare was not alone. Lists of variant spellings can be drawn up for any of Shakespeare's contemporaries, including Sir Walter Raleigh, Thomas Dekker, and the Earl of Oxford.

Answer 3

In Shakespeare's time, people were not such sticklers for "correct" spellings as we are today. This is probably because mass production of printed texts was not to happen for another 300 years.

There are six surviving examples of William Shakespeare's signature; they are all different, and none of them are spelled "William Shakespeare."

Answer 4

There are six examples of Shakespeare's signature, which do not have a consistent spelling. The six spellings are Willm Shakp, William Shaksper, Wm Shakspe, William Shakspere, Willm Shakspere, and William Shakspeare. It was not uncommon for people to abbreviate their names in their signatures.

Shakespeare did not write his name in any of the following forms:

1. William Shakespear

2. Bill Shakespear

3. McBeth

4. Shakespearnator

5. Willy Shakespear

6. William to the Shakespear

7. Raepsekahs Mailliw

8. Bob Jones

9. Shakespear William

10. Romeo Montague

Answer 5

William Shakespeare and his contemporaries were notorious for not giving a hoot how things were spelled. Shakespeare himself generally spelled his surname "Shackspere", but it appears in documents in any number of variants, perhaps the most bizarre of which is "Shaxberd".

Nowadays when people are a lot more obsessive about spelling names, the accepted and standard spelling is "Shakespeare". Best to leave it at that.

Answer 6

The simplest answer to this is six, since there are six surviving examples of Shakespeare's name, written by Shakespeare, and all different. However, many of them clearly are abbreviated forms: the given name is William or an abbreviation of it and the surname is Shakspere or Shakspeare or an abbreviation of one of them. However, and this is where it gets tricky, the legal documents containing those signatures spell his surname in ways different from the signature, including William Shackspeare on the will and William Shakespeare on the depositions to the Bellett and Mountjoy legal case. He must have approved of these spellings since he signed the papers. Among papers which he did not review, we find even more bizarre spellings, including Shaxper and Shaxberd. However, his preferred spellings appear to be Shakespeare, Shakespear, Shakspeare and Shakspere.

Answer 7

i read in a strange fact book, that you could spell his name over 4,000 different ways

Answer 8

Shakespeare never spelled his name the same way twice.

Answer 9

There are six examples of Shakespeare's signature and his name is spelled differently on each one.

thats odd...

Answer 10

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