The so-called signature "Wilm Shaxp'r," is written by the lawyer or law
clerk who wrote the lower part of Shakespeare's depositions, and this
same clerk also wrote the depositions above the name of another witness
who really _signs_ his own name, viz., "Daniell Nicholas." The only mark
William Shakespeare put to the document was the blot above which the
abbreviated name "Wilm Shaxp'r" was written by the lawyer or law clerk.
The documents shew that Shakespeare of Stratford occasionally "lay" in
the house in Silver Street, and Ben Jonson's words in "The Staple of
News" (Third Intermeane; Act iii.), to which Dr. Wallace refers viz.,
that "Siluer-Streete" was "a good seat for a Vsurer" are very
informing, because as we have before pointed out the Stratford man was
a cruel usurer.
Dr. Wallace's contention that Mountjoy, the wig-maker, of the corner
house in Silver Street where Shakespeare, of Stratford-upon-Avon,
Gentleman, occasionally slept, was the original of the name of the
Herald in Henry V.[14] really surpasses, in want of knowledge of History,
anything that the writer has ever previously encountered, and he is
afraid that it really is a measure of the value of Dr.
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