Shakespeare’s Hand Unknown in Sir Thomas More: Thompson, Dawson, and the Futility of the Paleographic Argument

There should be no mystery about the study of handwriting. He who undertakes to explain to others the identity of this hand with that hand has a simple and straightforward task to perform.

—E. Maunde Thompson (1916)

To this conviction [the identity of Hand D and Shakespeare’s hand] on the part of an experienced paleographer at the end of an exhaustive investigation I cannot but attach great weight. But nothing is more difficult than to convey to others the grounds, however valid, upon which such a conviction is based.

—W. W. Greg (1927)¹

I. Introduction

It would be wonderful if paleographers could identify Shakespeare as the writer of three folio pages known as Addition IIc of the Sir Thomas More manuscript.² The identification of Shakespeare’s handwriting and the handwriting in Addition IIc, termed Hand D, would resolve a century-long controversy. It would support efforts to better understand Shakespeare’s life in the theater. It would seem to prove that he was an author of plays as well as an actor and shareholder in the company that owned and performed them. It would seem to rebuff the dubious efforts, grown more numerous, energetic, and vociferous of late, by those who deny that Shakespeare of Stratford and Shakespeare of London are the same person.

Renewed interest in the Sir Thomas More manuscript presents an opportunity to reevaluate the paleographic argument identifying Hand D as Shakespeare’s handwriting and to reconsider what support paleography can give this interest. For approximately one hundred years and twenty-five years, respectively, E. Maunde Thompson’s and Giles E. Dawson’s arguments have been loci classici of the paleographic argument favoring identification. Thompson (1840–1929), former principal librarian and director of the British Museum, originated the modern paleographic argument identifying the writer of Addition IIc as Shakespeare, and Dawson (1903–94), former curator of books and manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare Library, was his direct successor.³ Thompson’s argument has been criticized from the beginning; Dawson’s argument has been either excused from criticism out of respect or accepted by some scholars who have ignored its deficiencies.

Thus, some paleographic experts continue to believe that the paleographic argument can and does establish as certain the identification of Hand D and Shakespeare’s hand. They support this paleographic identification with arguments on other grounds and conclude that Shakespeare is the author of Addition IIc. The resulting consensus is well represented by the introduction to Sir Thomas More in the latest Norton Shakespeare:

The passage is almost certainly in Shakespeare’s hand. As such, it represents by far the most extensive surviving sample of Shakespeare’s handwriting, in the plays or anywhere else. It is therefore of considerable scholarly, as well as theatrical and literary, value. It shows what a Shakespearean draft looks like. . . . The attribution to Shakespeare is based on resemblances to his other extant handwriting (almost exclusively signatures), spelling similarities to printed texts that probably are directly based on manuscripts in Shakespeare’s hand, word-frequency tests, parallel phrases in other plays by Shakespeare, metrical tests, and stylistic affinities.⁴

Although the stakes are clearly high, in what follows, I argue against the paleographic argument identifying Hand D as Shakespeare’s. My previous essay on the topic criticizes Thompson’s argument and W. W. Greg’s support for the paleographic argument for identification.⁵ Dawson’s 1990 article chides Thompson for ineffectively communicating the paleographic argument and implies that restating two of his specific points and stating three of his own make all clear and convincing.⁶ Here I criticize the general and these five specific arguments to expose their technical and rhetorical deficiencies. I contextualize them in the history of the paleographic effort to identify Hand D as Shakespeare’s handwriting and to consider that effort as a scientific one. I evaluate them according to the standards of science and question their ability to present data, methods, and results cogently and convincingly.

II. History...