(Shakespeare an illiterate? A fake? - CL)
As Sobran pointed out, that will included three of Shakespeare’s six surviving signatures, all of which were quite irregular, hardly what we would expect from someone who wrote so frequently. Indeed, a document expert cited by a leading Shakespeare scholar claimed that all of Shakespeare’s signatures were probably made by different hands. Since we have no solid evidence that Shakespeare ever attended grammar school, this suggested the astonishing possibility that Shakespeare may have been unable to write his own name. Indeed, both of Shakespeare’s parents, his wife Anne Hathaway, and his daughter Judith were apparently illiterate, signing their names with a mark.
Unlike so many of his contemporaries, whether literary figures or otherwise, not a single letter written by Shakespeare has ever been found despite enormous research efforts, nor a single book that he had ever owned.
