Mrs Shakespeare


Times Literary Supplement19 March 1993

 

 

Sir, - I am sorry to have disturbed Arthur Freeman (Letters, March 12 [see below]), who is known to me only as a believer in the "memorial reconstruc­tion„ theory of Shakespeare texts. Of course I reject all his imputations. But I entirely agree with him that proper scholarly principles should be applied; and I'd like to show him that these same principles require his own acceptance of "Hamlet” as the name Mr and Mrs Shakespeare gave their son, with crucial consequences which Freeman's actual approach typically turns its back on and walks away from.

     The boy, as all agree, was named after the baker Sadler, whose forename could be spelt as Hamnet or Hamlet; Freeman himself economically describes it in the mixed form "Hamnet/Hamlet". So that was young Shakespeare's name too. Here I appeal to the world at large. Hamnet or Hamlet; that is the question. Given those two alternatives, which did Shakespeare prefer for his son; the world's most famous hero, or the world's most obvious misprint? Only a scholar would need to be told the answer; but scholars refuse to be told anything. Freeman insists on addressing some totally different and utterly irrelevant questions, such as the alternative preferred by Sadler for himself, or by the church clerk for the child, just so that the answer can then be "Hamnet", which has become "scholarly". But on Freeman's own showing, the child could still have been called Hamlet, as Sadler also was. So now we have to consider the actual documentary evidence relevant to Shakespeare's own actual preference, namely the vital "Hamlett Sadler" in the 1616 will. Yet Freeman blindly sets this aside a priori as worthless; a clutched straw, a draft spelling in a text neither autographed nor dictated, and in any case allegedly invalidated because the name Hamnet/Hamlet Sadler was appended to the will in the Hamnet form.

     All this exactly exemplifies the kind of fantasy or folly about which I have indeed had cause to complain; and I hope that everyone will recognize it as such, and perhaps even sympathize. It contains no trace of objective truth or logical relevance; its sole authority is Freeman's personal opinion; its sole raison d'étre is his personal prejudice. Here, by contrast, is an actual fact, which some readers may find interesting: in Elizabethan and Jacobean wills, the words "By me", as in "By me William Shakespeare", very often meant that the will was written in the testator's own hand.

     As to Robert Nye (Letters, March 12), I think he is wise to withdraw from our debate. His reason for doing so, however, sounds all too typical; he knows my edition of Edmund Ironside is worthless without even looking at it. I wonder what he would think of a parallel dismissal of his own works? Besides, he seems to have forgotten his professed respect for serious scholarship; the Shakespeare Survey, no less, has conceded that I may be right in attributing Ironside to Shakespeare. But who cares? Not Nye, anyhow.

 

Eric Sams                                                                            

32 Arundel Avenue,

Sanderstead, Surrey