His face I know not

I’m sure you’ve all seen Country Life’s earth-shattering scoop* where they claim to have found an engraving of William Shakespeare – which if true would be the only likeness of Shakespeare created during his lifetime. In case you aren’t avid subscribers of Country Life** there’s a pretty comprehensive write-up in the Guardian here .

But things removed that hidden in thee lie

I’m currently in the process of moving laptops – a fraught business which leaves me with a dread of losing all my photos (and I’ve had a digital camera for more than ten years, so that’s a lot of photos) and temporarily unable to properly access all my notes. Hopefully normally service will be resumed by the weekend, and I can tell you all about my trip to the Folger Library in Washington (spoiler alert: I didn’t steal one of their 82 First Folios…)

Two Gentlemen of Verona

Udderbelly (on the Southbank)

I really don’t know whether I can count this as a Shakespeare production – it only lasted just over an hour to begin with, and I don’t think of that hour the more than half of it was *actually* Shakespeare’s dialogue. I’m not complaining though – it was very very funny…

He Speaks at Random IV

Even after all of the excitement of the birthday last week, Shakespeare continues to be in the news… Thanks to my pa for bringing some of the following random factoids to my attention.