Shakespearean Assertions

Letter to  the Editor

Times Literary Supplement, 15 Nov. 1996

Sir, - W. R. Elton, the Editor of the Shakespearean International Yearbook, seeks authoritative instruction (Letters, November 8) on three factual points. I recommend him to consult Professor Mac Donald Jackson or Professor Gary Taylor on Edward III attribution, and Emeritus Professor Ernst Honigmann on John Shakespeare’s recusancy. On the third point, Shakespeare’s sadly short-lived only son (1585-96) was named after Hamlett Sadler, so spelt in the dramatist’s world-famous will of 1616.

    Mr. Elton will find further relevant information and evidence in my two books published in 1995 and 1996 respectively: The Real Shakespeare (young Hamlet) and Shakespeare’s “Edward III” (attribution).

Eric Sams

32 Arundel Avenue

Sanderstead, Surrey

Reference to Honigmann prompted the following reply by Prof. Honigmann himself (TLS, Jan. 10, 1997):

Sir, — It has been my alarming experience to be commended twice in your columns by Eric Sams (Letters, November 15, December 20). Can it be the same Eric Sams who now admires my book,

Shakespeare: The "lost years" (1985), for combining "detailed documentation with cogent

inference", who in The Real Shakespeare (1995) marked the very same book, along with scores of

books by much more worthy authors, with an asterisk, to signify that they "incorporate un‑

proved preconceptions about how, what or when Shakespeare must or must not have written"?

Whether it is or not, I would like to assure the real Eric Sams that I cherish his opinions and

have precisely the same degree of respect for whatever he chooses to say.

E. A. J. HONIGMANN

18 Wilson Gardens, Gosforth,

Newcastle upon Tyne.