PROLUSIONS ON THE FAMILY OF SHAKESPEARE, &c. THE SHAKESPEARES. THE surname Shakespeare binds together in bonds of consanguinity a tribe of Englishmen, who, for the most part, have affected only the commonest names in the English vocabulary, John, Thomas, William, and Richard. This cannot be said of surnames in general. It is the peculiarity of the surname Shakespeare which creates a presumption that all of the name are of the same lineage, almost equal to the certainty which historical evidence for each particular link would produce. The name we may presume to have been first adopted in the reign of King Edward the Third, when persons in the middle ranks of life began to be sensible to the convenience of having an invariable adjunct to what is properly the name, which should be common to every individual of the lineage. It does not occur in many copious lists of surnames of Englishmen of the period before that reign; and it does occur in the reign of King Henry the Fourth. During the fifteenth century our means of arriving at genealogical knowledge are very imperfect, when the sub B ject of inquiry is a family in whom there inhered neither dignities nor large estates. The difficulty continues in full force till the time of the institution of parish registers. We know something of the Shakespeares in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and following centuries; but still, as a family, it is but little that has been recovered concerning them. They have never had an antiquary of their own to arrest the fleeting facts of their history, and they have never risen to a distinction which led to the searching out their descent by public officers, and the recording it in the genealogical registers of the realm. The great mass of the family are among those who are remembered in the offices of the ancient Christian church as the forgotten dead.' Even that great problem of all, to determine the grandfather of the poet, has never yet been solved, and the reader may be warned in limine that he will find nothing more on that subject than an approximation to the truth, in the ensuing pages. The Shakespeares have been of that rank only which gives monks to the monasteries, ministers to the church, and officers to the army; respectable, but not great. One member of the family has in recent times gained honourable distinction in an unfrequented walk of literature, and that is all. Yet is this race distinguished and adorned by one name, which is pre-eminent above every name, and the proudest house of Englishmen might be glad to attract to themselves the glories which will for ever encircle the name of—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. There is something so peculiar in the name, that it must have been adopted originally on some very peculiar suggestion. We want a good book on the English Personal Nomenclature. The chapter in Camden's Remains is almost every thing we have, but it is hardly worthy of so great a man. The notes in Verstegan's Restitution of decayed Intel ligence, are less valuable still. Among the few names which both have noticed, is Shakespeare, led to do so, as is probable, by the fame of the poet, to whose father Camden had, in his character of Clarencieux King of Arms, lately concurred in a grant of the insignia of gentry. "Some," says Camden," are named from what they commonly carried, as Palmer, that is pilgrim, for that they carried palme when they returned from Hierusalem; Long-sword, Broad-spear, Fortescue, that is, Strong-shield; and in some such respect, Break-speare, Shakespeare, Shotbolt, Wagstaff."* This does not satisfactorily answer any of the three questions which arise in considering a surname, (1) whether it were adopted in the first instance, or imposed; (2) what is the real meaning of the word; and (3) how that meaning can be made congruous with the use of it by an individual or a family as the designation under which they are to pass. That it was given or assumed without a reason, and without some propriety, is an inadmissible presumption here as it is concerning words in the whole field of philology: and yet it is hard to say how the circumstance that he shook a spear can have given a name to any person. Zachary Bogan, a writer of the seventeenth century, who was struck with the singularity of so celebrated a surname, says, "that it is equivalent to soldier," which, if really so, would account very satisfactorily for it as a family designation: "The custom first, wádλew, to vibrate the spear before they used it, was so constantly kept, that exéσraλos, a shake-speare, came at length to be an * Remains concerning Britain, 4to. 1629, p. 107.-To these names might have been added Shakeshaft, which seems to be of the same mintage. It occurs not unfrequently as the surname of persons in the counties of Warwick and Worcester. A Walter de Shakenshaft was Sheriff of Worcestershire under the Earl of Warwick, in the 15th of Edward the Third. A Maurice Drawsword appears in the reign of Edward the Second. ordinary word, both in Homer and other poets, to signify a soldier."* What we want is evidence that shake-spear was used in England as a familiar word for a soldier, and that cannot, I apprehend, be produced. There has been endless variety in the form in which this name has been written. I can vouch for the following forms, all taken from writings of nearly the poet's own age, and those not the mere scrawls of rude and uneducated persons, but for the most part traced by the pens of professional scribes, or at least by persons who paid as much attention to uniformity of orthography as any of their neighbours: but, in truth, uniformity in the orthography of proper names was in those times not thought of, nor aimed at. Schaksper-Schakesper-Schakespeyr. Shakyspere -- Shakesper― Shakespere - Shakeseper They are all manifestly of the same type, and to these varieties others might be added. In two instances I have met with the name written Saxpere. An Oliver Saxpere was a tenant of the honour of Ampthill in the time of King Charles the First; and in the parish-register of St. Nicholas, Warwick, is the following entry among the burials:-" 1579. Junii; sexto die hujus mensis sepultus fuit Gulielmus Saxpere, qui demersus fuit in rivulo aquæ qui vel quæ vocatur Avona:"-a William Shakespeare drowned in the Avon, a Archæologie Attica, by Francis Rous, with Additions by Zachary Bogan, scholar of C. C. C. in Oxon. 5th edit. 4to. 1658, p. 324. few miles from Stratford, when the poet was in the sixteenth year of his age.* We may discern through these varieties of orthography, that there were in the poet's time three modes of pronouncing the name. First, that which is presented to the mind by the word Shaksper: (2) that in which the first syllable is short, being pronounced as if there was no medial e; but the second syllable is lengthened into spere or spear: and (3) the form which the poet used in his printed works, with or without an hyphen, Shakespeare. It is no unreasonable conjecture that there was a rustic and a courtly mode. The poet himself might be called by his honest neighbours at Stratford and Shottery, Mr. Shaxper, while his friends in London honoured him, as we know historically they did, with the more stately name of Shakespeare. Shakespeare or Shakespear kept its ground as the received and proper orthography of the poet's name till the time of the two very eminent commentators Steevens and Malone. In an evil hour they agreed, for no apparent reason, to abolish the e in the first syllable, so that if the orthography is to represent the pronunciation or the pronunciation to be conformable with the orthography, the name should be pronounced as in the second of the three modes above mentioned. A contemporary critic of inferior note in 1785 introduced another variation. In his hands the name became Shakspere, with the object, no doubt, of bringing back the orthography to the form in which the name is said to be found traced by the poet's own hand† in his * I must not omit to acknowledge, were it only that I might express publicly my regret for the recent loss of so excellent a genealogist, that I owe my acquaintance with this entry in the Warwick Register to the kindness of Mr. G. F. Beltz, the late Lancaster Herald. † The critic here alluded to is Mr. Pinkerton, the author of a work entitled, Letters on Literature, by Robert Heron, Esq. 8vo. 1785. There are several |