New Shakespeare plays?

Dr John Casson claims to have discovered six new works which he attributes to William Shakespeare.

He added: "What we thought were the first plays by Shakespeare appeared anonymously in the early 1590s. It is inconceivable, however, that his first plays were the massive trilogy of Henry VI. Writers develop over time from simpler beginnings."

Only portrait of Shakespeare found

A painting that has been hanging in the home of the Cobbe family for 300 years is now believed to be the only portrait of William Shakespeare painted in his lifetime.

For many people he is the round-headed bald man seen on the First Folio of his collected works but evidence was presented yesterday arguing that we should rethink this. Instead we should visualise Shakespeare as a rosy-cheeked, long-nosed man who was something of a looker.

The portrait appear to be in good condition and Shakespeare looks a lot like Joseph Fiennes, who played the Bard in Shakespeare in Love.

Video of Peter Sellers reciting The Beatles

Video of Peter Sellers reciting The Beatles A Hard Day's Night in the style of Laurence Olivier doing Shakespeare's Richard III. Got all that? (via cyn-c)

The BBC is planning to produce Shakespeare's

The BBC is planning to produce Shakespeare's entire canon for TV...all 37 plays.

(via crazymonk)

Which of the following works would you

Which of the following works would you choose to be lost, if only three could be saved: Michelangelo's Pieta, Shakespeare's Hamlet, Mozart's Don Giovanni, or Einstein's 1905 paper on relativity? Not so sure I agree with the conclusion here...surely Einstein's paper stands as a work unto itself, apart from the discovery it contains. Plus, maybe someone else (or a group of someone elses) wouldn't have given us relativity as elegantly and usefully as Einstein did. (via 3qd)

How would Shakespeare do in Hollywood today?

How would Shakespeare do in Hollywood today? He'd be raking in the dough on royalties, but because most of his stories were based on previous work, he might not have been able to write them in the first place without being sued for copyright infringement.

O students! Pray teachers! Behold: a Shakespeare search engine.

O students! Pray teachers! Behold: a Shakespeare search engine.

It's neither high quality nor rare, so

It's neither high quality nor rare, so why is a copy of Shakespeare's First Folio fetching such high prices at auction?

Tenser, said the Tensor looked a little

Tenser, said the Tensor looked a little more closely at the list of cliches from Shakespeare that I posted earlier in the week and found that (at least) 18 of the expressions have earlier citations in the OED.

List of lines from Shakespeare plays that have become cliches.

List of lines from Shakespeare plays that have become cliches.

Everything and Nothing rounds up a list

Everything and Nothing rounds up a list of searchable versions of the work of that most famous of English wordsmiths, William Shakespeare. The public domain rocks.

Shakespeare put coded messages about Catholicism into

Shakespeare put coded messages about Catholicism into his plays that, due to the "Protestant, Whig ascendancy", have not been decoded until now.