Shakespeare and hyphens

In her Doubter substack, Ros Barber tries to tackle the hyphen issue where, frankly, both sides have often been guilty of overelaborate explanations. Doubters have to preserve the idea that hyphens are a clue to pseudonyms. Barber’s EEBO search finds 18 instances of hyphenated Shake-speare but she is trying to weigh that count off against similar numbers for other title pages where the hyphen is omitted and the similar number anonymous editions. She is not trying to illuminate the underlying reasons for the hyphen in practice here but to reveal only selective, shaped data helpful to keeping alive the idea that names on title pages cannot be relied upon.

Since the earliest days of doubt, the spelling of Shakespeare’s name with a hyphen on some of the quarto editions has been interpreted, with no basis in reality, as a clue indicating a hidden author. Oxfordians like Alexander Waugh chose to call him Shagsper, Marlovians like Ros Barber call him Shaksper and attempt to treat him as a separate person with a separate career. A wool brogger, a play broker, a money lender, a farmer, a jack of all trades, all without evidence. All in direct contradiction of what is plainly in front of their eyes—the life scholars attribute to him, and the life Lena Orlin describes in detail1.

Spelling was not standardised. Often left to the typesetter who had no reference other than his own knowledge, arguments can still rage about how many different Shakespeares existed and how the hyphen got there. Was it to spread the ink evenly or to avoid breaking the adjacent glyph. Was it a time honoured signal of a pseudonym?

None of the above.

EEBO can dispense with claims like this with simple frequency analysis but unlike the table above, where the data has been pruned like a show poodle, torturing results until they take on helpful forms is not allowed. The table below shows 34 variations of spelling of Shakespeare’s name in print up to the year 1700. All bar two refer, without the smallest inflection of doubt, to the author of the plays, the armigerous playwright from Stratford, or to members of his family. A fraction of the names are hyphenated, around 1 in 50.

Scroll the down the table to see the distribution of ‘Cartwright’ and ‘Arrowsmith’. Cartwright has the same number of variant spellings as Shakespeare and Arrowmith,2 in contrast, is more unusual and has only eight. They are each a combination of two words between which, not coincidentally, sometimes get hyphenated, Arrowsmith most frequently.

Hyphenated spelling and wild variations are simply par for the period and this table and its grown up companion, extracting all 1,145 mentions of Shakespeare in their context, demonstrate why we do not need to take down a book from the conspiracy shelf to explain it.

Shakespeare, Cartwright & Arrowsmith

Shakespeare
No. Query result No.of occurrences Percent
1 Shakespeare 850 71.97%
2 Shakespear 133 11.26%
3 Shakespears 37 3.13%
4 Shakspear 29 2.46%
5 Shake-speare 22 1.86%
6 Shakspeare 20 1.69%
7 Shakespeares 19 1.61%
8 Shake-spear 6 0.51%
9 Shake-speares 6 0.51%
10 Shakespere 6 0.51%
11 Shackspear 5 0.42%
12 Shakesphear 5 0.42%
13 Shakespeer 4 0.34%
14 shakspears 4 0.34%
15 Shackspeers 3 0.25%
16 Shak-speare 3 0.25%
17 Shakespar 3 0.25%
18 Shakespeere 3 0.25%
19 Shake-spears 2 0.17%
20 Shakspeares 2 0.17%
21 Shaksphear 2 0.17%
22 Shack-spear 1 0.08%
23 Shackespeers 1 0.08%
24 Shackspeare 1 0.08%
25 Shackspears 1 0.08%
26 Shackspeer 1 0.08%
27 Shak-spear 1 0.08%
28 Shakesp 1 0.08%
29 Shakespea 1 0.08%
30 Shakespeaks 1 0.08%
31 Shakesperum 1 0.08%
32 Shakespheare 1 0.08%
33 Shakesphere 1 0.08%
34 Shakesprear 1 0.08%
35 Shaksper 1 0.08%
36 Shaksperus 1 0.08%
37 Shakspher 1 0.08%
38 Shaksphere 1 0.08%
Cartwright
No. Query result No.of occurrences Percent
1 Cartwright 2904 85.89%
2 Cartwrights 254 7.51%
3 Cartwright. 57 1.69%
4 Cartwrightes 47 1.39%
5 Cart-wright 23 0.68%
6 Cartwrighti 12 0.35%
7 Cartwrightists 10 0.30%
8 Cartwrightus 10 0.30%
9 Cartwrite 10 0.30%
10 Cartright 7 0.21%
11 cart-wrights 5 0.15%
12 Cartwrightum 5 0.15%
13 Cartwrith 5 0.15%
14 Cartwrighte 4 0.12%
15 Cartwrightian 4 0.12%
16 Cartrite 2 0.06%
17 Cartwright- 2 0.06%
18 Cartwrighto 2 0.06%
19 Cartwrites 2 0.06%
20 Cartwritus 2 0.06%
21 Cartrights 1 0.03%
22 Cartrit 1 0.03%
23 Cartwrightin 1 0.03%
24 Cartwrights. 1 0.03%
25 Cartwrighttisme 1 0.03%
26 Cartwrightus. 1 0.03%
27 Cartwrigt 1 0.03%
28 Cartwrigts 1 0.03%
29 Cartwrigtus 1 0.03%
30 Cartwriht 1 0.03%
31 Cartwrit 1 0.03%
32 Cartwritghts 1 0.03%
33 Cartwrithe 1 0.03%
34 Cartwritian 1 0.03%
Arrowsmith
No. Query result No.ÿof occurrences Percent
1 Arrowsmith 143 78.57%
2 Arrowsmiths 23 12.64%
3 Arrowsmith. 6 3.30%
4 Arrow-smith 5 2.75%
5 arrow-smitten 2 1.10%
6 Arosmith 1 0.55%
7 Arowsmith 1 0.55%
8 Arrow-smiths 1 0.55%

Footnotes

  1. Lena Cowen Orlin, The Private Life of William Shakespeare, (OUP Oxford: Oxford, 2021).↩︎

  2. I have left the the vulgar nouns in the cartwrights and the obvious false positive in Arrowsmith rather than tamper with the output data.↩︎