Reply to Elton


Times Literary Supplement20 Dec. 1996

 

 

Sir, - W. R. Elton (Letters, November 29) treats the well-known spelling “Hamnet” as the best evidence about how the Shakespeares named their infant son. But this shows only how two other Stratfordians wrote that name. The real question relates to Shakespeare himself; so the evidence of his own spelling, from his own hand or lips in his own will, must surely remain paramount. Common sense also confirms his preference for Hamlet, not “Hamnet”. Further, Mr. Elton fails to mention the Stratford records concerning (a) KatherineHamlett (whose death by drowning was adjudged accidental by a 1580 inquest) and (b) Hamlet Sadler (the friend after whom young Shakespeare was named) among other Hamlets.

   Nor does Elton mention the inclusion of John Shakespeare in a 1592 list of people known or suspected to be Catholic recusants. Such documentation is what I call good evidence. Of course, I was not invoking Professor Honigmann as further “proof”; my point was that his book (Shakespeare: The “lost years”, 1985) combines detailed documentation with cogent inference, a procedure from which I thought Elton might benefit. I’m sorry, incidentally, that my reply as printed (November 15) omitted my reference to my own attempt, in The Real Shakespeare, to tackle this topic among others.

  As to my statement that modern specialists now generally assign Edward III to Shakespeare, I offered only a few examples, for brevity’s sake; but I referred to my own recent edition, which names dozens of them, lists their books and articles, and seeks to supplement their hundreds of arguments. What further evidence for their existence does Mr Elton require?

 

Eric Sams

32 Arundel Avenue

SandersteadSurrey

 

 

W. R. Elton had written:

 

Sir, - Eric Sams's response (Letters, November 15) to my request for evidence offers "authoritative instruction" for his Shakespearean assertions (Commentary, October 18). Such "authoritative instruction", however, raises issue of scholarly consensus and scholarly proof:

(1) Regarding his assertion that Edward III is "now generally assigned to Shakespeare by specialists in the subject", his evidence for "generally assigned" is two recent writers, and his own books.

(2) For his assertion that Shakespeare's father was a "Catholic recusant", he cites as proof another modern writer.

(3) For his assertion that Shakespeare's son was named "Hamlet", or "little Hamlet", he cites as proof a reference in Shakespeare's will to Hamlett Sadler. (Yet among the witnesses to what Sams calls "the world-famous will" is Hamnet Sadler. Shakespeare named his twins, Hamnet and Judith, after his long-term friends, Hamnet and Judith Sadler.)

   Of more evidential pertinence, however, is the Stratford parish register (photographs in S. Schoenbaum's William Shakespeare: A documentary life, 1975, pp. 76, 164): baptisms, recording the christening, February 2, 1585, of the dramatist's son, Hamnet Shakespeare; and burials, recording the burial, August 11, 1596, of the son, Hamnet Shakespeare.

 

W. R. Elton

Editor, Shakespearean International Yearbook,

Graduate School, City University of New York