3 days ago
Shakespeare signature shows his London was as bureaucratic as ours
You might have seen his plays, read his sonnets, visited Stratford-upon-Avon or the Globe theatre and paid all manner of homage to William Shakespeare, but you will never get closer to the man himself than this.
On the bottom of an old property deed usually stored in the stacks of the London Archives is one of only six surviving examples of the Bard's signature, which is about to be shown in public. The rare document — part of Shakespeare in London, opening on June 30 — will be on display alongside other artefacts that illustrate the capital at the time of the playwright and the impact he had on other writers down the years, including the poet John Keats.
'It's been really exciting to pull this together — the material doesn't get displayed that often,' said Sharon Tuff, the collections and engagement manager at the London Archives. 'We want to show Shakespeare's impact, but also life in London in his times.'
Compared with a modern equivalent, the property deed looks very grand and is written in flowing hand on a large piece of parchment. It details a property in Blackfriars, within walking distance of the Globe and Blackfriars theatres, which Shakespeare appears to have bought as an investment with some associates. At the bottom, above an attached seal, is Shakespeare's signature, written in 1613, three years before his death.
The 'William' is clear to read though the 'Shakespeare' is rather squished, suggesting that he, like many of us, was familiar with trying to squeeze a name into a small box on a form. The location of the house he purchased is not clear; it was close to Puddle Wharf, or what is now St Andrew's Hill, but the building would have been destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666.
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The archives, which belong to the City of London Corporation, are displaying other items to flesh out the capital's Shakespeare connections. Most striking is the Civitas Londinum, a 1560s map; the archives's version is one of only three extant copies. It shows a capital at turns both strange and recognisable to us today.
The city of the map is enveloped by the old London Wall, beyond which lie fields. To the west, buildings creep down 'Fleate Streate' towards Westminster. To a modern eye, names like 'More Gate' and 'Holburne' read like a Tube map in need of proofreading.
Some landmarks are recognisable, albeit in a very different form. 'Charing Crosse' stands in the middle of a roundabout, while St Paul's Cathedral is there in its pre-Great Fire form, without its spire. London Bridge, meanwhile, is packed with buildings.
Other places of note on the map have faded from prominence or vanished altogether. Christchurch Greyfriars survives only as a ruin of the Blitz today, but the original church dominated the 16th-century landscape. South of the river there were arenas near where the modern-day Globe now stands, used for the baiting of bears and bulls.
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That may well have been the world Shakespeare knew, but his impact on the capital only grew down the centuries. The display also includes a facsimile of his First Folio owned and annotated by John Keats. The copy is filled with the poet's marginalia and underlining.
He was particularly interested in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Henry IV Part 1, Troilus and Cressida, Romeo and Juliet and King Lear. Some of his notes are lengthy, and the plays even inspired him to jot down the odd verse on some blank paper.
Yet Shakespeare's signature is the box-office draw for this display, which will run until September. Tuff says it is a 'relatable' document, showing Shakespeare engaging with the bureaucracy we know well even today.
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The clerk who drew up the document had a less-than-perfectionist approach, which we may also find familiar. For instance, a large section of the parchment has been simply crossed out.
'He made a mistake,' Tuff said. 'He isn't going to rewrite it all. He's just scored it through.'
