Excerpt from Shakespere's Handwriting: Greenwood, (Sir) Granville George Shakespere's Handwriting

That John and Mary Shakspere, William's father and mother, both made use of marks in lieu of signatures is indisputable, sup ported as it is by documentary evidence.1 It was, accordingly, an accepted fact among reasonable men that, as Mr. Halliwell Phillipps wrote of William Shakspere, Both his parents were absolutely illiterate. That, however, did not satisfy some of the orthodox, who perceived that this fact somewhat helped the case of those who entertained doubts concerning the Stratfordian authorship of the plays and poems of Shakespeare. Thus Sir Sidney Lee wrote, in the illustrated Library Edition of his Life of William Shakespeare, published in 1899 (preface, p. Xii.) The sceptics base their destructive criticism on few grounds that merit respect. The only position with the smallest pretensions to con sideration which they have hitherto held rests on the assumption that Shakespeare's father and near kinsmen and kinswomen were illiterate and brainless peasants. I pause here to remark that this is an overstatement The sceptics certainly made a point of the facts that neither Shakspere's father nor mother could write, and that some of their kinsmen and kinswomen including their grand-daughters, Judith and Susanna, Shakspere 5 children, were similarly illiterate, but I am not aware that any sceptic has con tended that any of these persons could be properly described as brainless. In fact, this epithet seems to be gratuitously thrown in by Sir Sidney Lee in order to prejudice the sceptical case. Then Sir Sidney continues the passage I have quoted by the following important statement Good ground is here Offered for the belief that the poet's father wielded a practised pen. And, further, at p. 5 of the same edition, he wrote of Shakspere's father: When attesting documents he occasionally made his mark, but there is evidence in the Stratford archives that he could write with facility.

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