ignatures, though it is difficult to be certain of all the letters,
seem to show a variation in spelling--Shakspere, Shakespere, or
Shakspeare. His father's name appears in the records of the town in
sixteen different forms, an illustration of the inconsistency in the
orthography of proper names, as of other words, which was common with
people of that time of greater worldly consequence and education than
the poet or his father. The form of the name used in the present edition
is that which generally appears on the title-pages of plays ascribed to
him; it is that which he himself used in signing the dedications of his
two poems to the Earl of Southampton; it is that which occurs in the
legal documents having to do with his property; and it is the common
spelling in the literary allusions of the seventeenth century.

[Page Heading: Signatures and Portraits]

[Illustration: THREE AUTOGRAPH SIGNATURES WRITTEN BY SHAKESPEARE ON
THREE SHEETS OF HIS WILL

From the document now at Somerset House, London]

Our knowledge of Shakespeare's personal appearance is also far from
being definite. The bust on the monument in the church at Stratford was
cut apparently before 1623 by a Dutch stone cutter called Gerard
Janssen. It was originally colored; probably the eyes light hazel, and
the hair auburn. Its crude workmanship renders it unreliable as a
likeness. The frontispiece to the First Folio was engraved for that work
by Martin Droeshout, who was only twenty-two years old at the time, so
that he is more likely to have made it from a portrait than from memory.
No portrait has been found that seems actually to have served this
purpose, though there are resemblances between the engraving and the
portrait, dated 1609, presented to the Memorial Picture Gallery at
Stratford by Mrs. Charles Flower. The numerous other portraits that have
been claimed as likenesses of the dramatist have varying degrees of
probability, but none has a pedigree without a flaw. Those with most
claim to interest are the Ely Palace portrait, the Chandos portrait,
the Garrick Club bust, and the Kesselstadt death-mask.[2]

[2] See frontispieces in the Tudor Shakespeare to editions of _Henry V_
(Droeshout original), _King Lear_ (Ely Palace), _Romeo and Juliet_
(Chandos), _Pericles_ (Garrick Club bust), and _The Tempest_
(Death-mask). The Stratford Monument and the Droeshout engraving are
reproduced in the present volume.

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