[Pallas]

Pallas Athene

"Pallas Athene, as we know, was the national divinity of the greeks and her latin name was Minerva. She was the protector of the state, the goddess of wisdom and knowledge, poetry, drama and the fine arts. ... The name Pallas was derived from to shake , and according to the Greek classical lexicon she was known to the Greeks as the 'brandisher of the spear.' her helmet was supposed to confer invisibility at will and her shield and breast-plate were made of goat skin, for the goat was sacred to the drama, the word 'goat' combined with the verb 'to sing', forming tragedy , or literally, 'goatsong'.
 "Servius, the commentator on Virgil's Aenied, 1.43, tells us that Pallas was wont to shake her spear.'
 "shake (her) spear (e); Shake-speare! Bacon's nom de plume derived from his tenth muse, pallas! ...
 "The hyphenated spelling of the name was never used by the actor of Stratford-on-Avon, nor by any member of his family. Sir Edmund K. Chambers collected eighty-three variations in the spelling of the name in England, the large majority of which phonetically require the short 'a'. Not one of these eighty-three variations hyphenated the two syllables into the artificial-looking name, Shake-speare." (@ Beckett 79-80)

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