> > > > was actually named William Shaksper... if I need to refer to that man, I'll say
> > > > Shaksper...
> > >
> > > Hey. There are, what, 6 signatures of Shakespeare remaining that are thought to be
> > > authentic, no? And several of them have variant spelling on the last name; it isn't
> > > consistent. All the works date from a time when orthography really was not standardized.
> >
> > actually, there are records of the man who was born in Statford-on-Avon, a part of the London
> > acting group, all that stuff.... and in every single one, his name is spelled Shaksper.

Mayhap that was the work of one set of town-hall clerks who had a preference for that spelling? Personally, I'd go with whatever Mr.S prefered to usually use himself.


> Apart from the First Folio... :o)
>
>
>
>
> In the de-Vere-is-Shakespere book I'm reading as a result of this conversation, it says that the cry of "non-standard spelling" is irrelevant, because the *pronunciation* didn't change, so there is a difference between "Shakespeare" and "Shakspere".

Non-standardized spelling, by simple definition, means people decide to write words according to the way they *are* pronounced (phonetics). So then if his name was pronounced with the first syllable having a short "a", I'd go ahead and write "Shaxspeer" too, myself :-) :-)


> They spell it "Shakspere", though, not "Shaksper", who would be somebody else again.
>
> Paul

Wonder how the book explains the difference between the the two name endings "-spere" with e and no e.