CHAPTER 3

PART 2

Here are some variants for secretary hand letter h

and letter k below

letter e below

small letter s below

letter p below

and letter r below

You can see these are more individualized letters, less easy to flow from one to another than in the 'Italian hand' which, during Elizabethan times, gradually came to replace the 'secretary hand' even among the more general public.

Now we have to attempt to correlate Shakespeare's signature shown in Part 1 above with these letters to determine how well he wrote. We'll refer to the example letters in each case counting from the left.

The 'h' is the 5^th type

The 'a' is the 5^th or 6th type, but closed instead of open

The 'k' is probably the 4^th type, which involves more pen strokes, and which appears to have suffered an ink blot.

That's all we have, the rest is a flourish. So the name is apparently actually written as 'Willi Shak'.

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