CNN: Will real Shakespeare please stand up?

[@James-el6lj]

Shakesperea did not write all those plays.

[@marbleswan6664]

You know the bootstrap paradox? Where if you get a time machine, try to get hamlet signed by shakespear, turns out he never existed, so you publish for him under the name shakespear, which is what you read in the present? So who wrote it first? What if this is why we dont have a good picture, every picture is just a different time traveler who dressed as him

[@nospacesallowed]

I got to say it does look like thomas overbry and it would make sense that it could get copied even if it was not Shakespeare. We already know this happened once with another Shakespeare portrait. All it would take is one person to see the portrait for some reason thinks it is the bard and then myth takes over. Or for someone to make copies of the portrait realize no one wants thomas overbury's portrait and then switch the name and then we have legend again.

[@MandyJMaddison]

Well, it didn't take very much research to find out who this is. It's almost certainly Thomas Overbury. And given that he was the victim of a gruesome murder in the Tower of London, with all sorts of intrigue and sexual scandal, it makes a much more thrilling read than the life of William Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon about whom very little is known.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

MandyJMaddison At least we agree on something. I don't know what possessed Stanley Wells to stake his reputation on this.

[@MandyJMaddison]

This portrait brings no-one closer to knowing what the man looked like. It is a very nice, GENERIC portrait, clearly based upon the well-known Chandos Portrait. It is, however, much less reliable an image of the person who it is supposed to represent (whoever that might be). Every detail of the face is less specific and contains less characterisation than the Chandos Portrait. The subject (the person depicted) in the Chandos Portrait is an ENGLISHMAN. This is beyond question because he has a unique set of distinctive features that are characteristic of a certain type of English face. The characteristics are always grouped, and are very specific. 1. The eyes slant upward at the outer corners. 2. The nose is flattened to a chisel shape at the tip. 3. The nostrils flare upwards so that from the side, the philtrum is visible. 4. The mouth has a marked cupid's bow, with its sides being concave, not convex (like a cherubic mouth) This gives the mouth a sardonic look. 5. The bottom lip is full. 6. It is also characteristic that the outer edge of the lips is very well defined, and that when smiling (not visible here, the mouth turns up, and the curls downward at the corners. People who have these facial characteristics are typically "foxy faced". This recently-discovered portrait has a very ordinary set of features, that are all of similar proportions to the Chandos Portrait, as if based on it, but wih none of the defining characteristics that make the Chandos Portrait interesting, and suggest it is an actual PORTRAIT. NOTE: I am not stating here that I believe that the Chandos Portrait represents Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, but merely that it is an incomparably finer work of portraiture than the typically generic copy with which we are now presented. Well-known English actors who are distinguished by the "foxy features" include: Tmothy Dalton (James Bond) and David Thewlis (Professor Lupin)

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

MandyJMaddison Dalton is only half English. His mother is (or was) a Yank. There have been so many invasions of England from so many places over the years that I would have a hard time calling a nothing but horse teeth typically English.

[@MandyJMaddison]

I see. So Dalton's American mother is not from an English background? Probably not You want to argue about absolutely everything?

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

MandyJMaddison I think cranial morphology is pseudo-science, and I think you have strange interests. But hey, it doesn't mean we can't be friends!

[@nicholasennos4431]

People who are interested in the Shakespeare authorship question may like to know that there is also a Jane Austen authorship question. In my book "Jane Austen - a New Revelation" I show that the true author of the Jane Austen novels was her cousin, Eliza de Feuillide. She could not publish under her own name because she was the illegitimate daughter of Warren Hastings, the Governor General of India. Show less REPLY

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

How many ebooks have you sold? Two? Three? You wrote one of your two reviews on amazon. That's just desperate.

[@c15jugendvagddenfriedencam61]

the man is great one and only renessainse wrighter king.magnificient mindsty

[@critics13]

i rlly don't know what to say

[@3wademiami]

Can the title be any more cornier.

[@ztoronto5011]

😂😂