chosen pen-name, or "nom de plume," of Bacon or of the Unknown.

Here I must endeavour to summarise what Mr. Greenwood has written
{11a} on the name of the actor, and the "nom de plume" of the unknown
author who, by the theory, was not the actor. Let me first confess
my firm belief that there is no cause for all the copious writing
about the spellings "Shakespeare" or "Shake-speare"--as indicating
the true but "concealed poet"--and "Shakspere" (&c.), as indicating
the Warwickshire rustic. At Stratford and in Warwickshire the clan-
name was spelled in scores of ways, was spelled in different ways
within a single document. If the actor himself uniformly wrote
"Shakspere" (it seems that we have but five signatures), he was
accustomed to seeing the name spelled variously in documents
concerning him and his affairs. In London the printers aimed at a
kind of uniformity, "Shakespeare" or "Shake-speare": and even if he
wrote his own name otherwise, to him it was indifferent. Lawyers and
printers might choose their own mode of spelling--and there is no
more in the matter.

I must now summarise briefly, in my own words, save where quotations
are indicated in the usual way, the results of Mr. Greenwood's
researches. "The family of William Shakspere of Stratford" (perhaps
it were safer to say "the members of his name") "wrote their name in
many different ways--some sixty, I believe, have been noted . . . but
the form 'Shakespeare' seems never to have been employed by them";
and, according to Mr. Spedding, "Shakspere of Stratford never so
wrote his name 'in any known case.'" (According to many Baconians he
never wrote his name in his life.) On the other hand, the
dedications of Venus and Adonis (1593) and of Lucrece (1594) are
inscribed "William Shakespeare" (without the hyphen). In 1598, the