Wentworth Smith - Possible Identification With "W.S." and "W. Smith"

Possible Identification With "W.S." and "W. Smith"

In addition to the works in which his hand is certain, Smith may have been responsible in whole or part for three plays of the period published under the initials "W. S." These were Locrine (1595), Thomas Lord Cromwell (1602) and The Puritan (1607). It is thought more probable that the initials are spurious, added to the published plays in an attempt by the publishers to suggest and capitalize on a connection with William Shakespeare, to whom indeed they were later misattributed. A like motivation might have held even if the initials were genuine, and have lain behind the abbreviation of the author's name.

Smith has also been suspected to be the W. Smith who wrote The Hector of Germany, acted about 1613 at the Red Bull and The Curtain and printed in 1615; in the dedication to this play "W. Smith" mentions a lost play he had written called The Freeman's Honour which was performed by the King's Men, probably before 1603 in their earlier incarnation as the Lord Chamberlain's Men. The actual author of this play, however, has been identified as the herald William Smith.

Smith is sometimes erroneously confused with another writer who signed his name W. Smith, the sonneteer William Smith who published a sonnet sequence entitled Chloris, or the Complaint of the Passionate Despised Shepherd in 1596.