Excerpts from her biography page in
Wikipedia:
Judith Quiney (baptised 2 February 1585 – buried 9 February 1662), née Shakespeare, was the youngest daughter of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway. She married Thomas Quiney, a vintner of Stratford-upon-Avon...
She was the younger sister of Susanna and the twin sister of Hamnet. Hamnet however, died at the age of eleven. Her baptism on 2 February 1585 was recorded by the vicar, Richard Barton of Coventry, in the parish register for Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon...
Judith Shakespeare was probably illiterate. In 1611 she was asked to witness a deed of sale for a house belonging to her sister-in-law, Elizabeth Quiney, and to Elizabeth's son Adrian. Judith signed twice with a mark instead of her name...
Note her "signature" is the pigtail-shaped mark at the left. The surname was appended by a court scribe.
But wasn't William's signature equally illiterate?
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shakespeare_sigs_collected.png
That is really the only piece of evidence in the authorship debate that to me calls into question his penmanship.
Not really "illiterate," but certainly showing poor penmanship (and variable spelling of his name).
ReplyDeleteThat will be the subject of a separate post; I need to do some research first.
By all means, do bring it upon.
ReplyDeleteBut I really wonder how he could actually "produce" plays with that kind of scrawl.
Or maybe he was just scrawling with us.