tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33504324287213650432024-03-05T21:31:16.525-08:00ART & WILLAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07579992524124124425noreply@blogger.comBlogger218125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350432428721365043.post-60996843261966681112016-06-12T10:23:00.000-07:002016-06-12T10:23:25.949-07:00Scars in their Eyes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNQSYxh-mBK2xkZXQXjXk0Jt0flyslPZievTS2ttOD0VDKcvDu4qc5L-0ANIJeujjZ-Joa3m3-dpShw3oVgH-Wxy0MJ4ob3rphsOFa7AFb-k07ThglfiUvglhxDqoaMzLjJcM27CSRcxQk/s1600/%2528Wadlow%2529+Photo+taken+by+Chris+Titmus+HKI+%25282%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNQSYxh-mBK2xkZXQXjXk0Jt0flyslPZievTS2ttOD0VDKcvDu4qc5L-0ANIJeujjZ-Joa3m3-dpShw3oVgH-Wxy0MJ4ob3rphsOFa7AFb-k07ThglfiUvglhxDqoaMzLjJcM27CSRcxQk/s320/%2528Wadlow%2529+Photo+taken+by+Chris+Titmus+HKI+%25282%2529.JPG" width="209" /></a></div>
In my last blog post, I provided a link to a new website which provides a wealth of information in support of the likelihood that the "Wadlow" portrait (detail, left) is a genuine portrait of William Shakespeare.<br />
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I believe it is, and in this blog post I shall point to just one of the features which helps to identify the sitter.<br />
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We'll be concentrating on the left eye (the sitter's left, that is) and, in particular, a distinctive scar immediately above the left eye. It's clearly visible on the "Wadlow", cutting down from above the eyebrow to slice through the outer end of it. Just in case, I'll provide another detail of the portrait, which brings us in a little closer.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMpAJEuAPwwpL60rhQMWV8i0h_rSQq6uzFZ2vVlNRb0Dk_U2gS1-iFTJF277KBhYRij-dpjZYjQ8O3G7pY_GDuM-7f5foASiDzdUnD29LkgLnIbX0SL7ARDPGuEaoHhCw474sWRv4tIBn9/s1600/%2528Wadlow%2529+scar_edited.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMpAJEuAPwwpL60rhQMWV8i0h_rSQq6uzFZ2vVlNRb0Dk_U2gS1-iFTJF277KBhYRij-dpjZYjQ8O3G7pY_GDuM-7f5foASiDzdUnD29LkgLnIbX0SL7ARDPGuEaoHhCw474sWRv4tIBn9/s320/%2528Wadlow%2529+scar_edited.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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There, see? The scar comes down over the left forehead, meeting the left eyebrow about halfway across. Something similar can be seen in the "Chandos" portrait of Shakespeare at the National Portrait Gallery:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8fAFbeg6LAguQhu_6a-r1mXMoZRSdCVA5lEdjNabVG624Pi0aCS704uaPDqlodEcshCGW_kmocHOdTooj0lXyocUQKDg9WCzbua_7JrF3wxBiKaQhTlZWKqBiyO6cyZvJRLvk_Yev-laK/s1600/Chandos+Portrait_edited.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8fAFbeg6LAguQhu_6a-r1mXMoZRSdCVA5lEdjNabVG624Pi0aCS704uaPDqlodEcshCGW_kmocHOdTooj0lXyocUQKDg9WCzbua_7JrF3wxBiKaQhTlZWKqBiyO6cyZvJRLvk_Yev-laK/s320/Chandos+Portrait_edited.jpg" width="216" /></a></div>
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It might look a little clearer in this detail of the above:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMqPPhK_jxf8hXY2yZ9m0BSZ7woGEQQx2w_lsR8ogfeklAr1seAt_4ybhcPnpgOAailzrhO1sHyG8avY3DQx5CM-rI4xIdM1CSDe1E427TDr9PAAYrfE_kQLbc1n1JIqOrAzGOFC57oBUj/s1600/Chandos+Portrait+%25283%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMqPPhK_jxf8hXY2yZ9m0BSZ7woGEQQx2w_lsR8ogfeklAr1seAt_4ybhcPnpgOAailzrhO1sHyG8avY3DQx5CM-rI4xIdM1CSDe1E427TDr9PAAYrfE_kQLbc1n1JIqOrAzGOFC57oBUj/s320/Chandos+Portrait+%25283%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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This scar was, apparently, something that Shakespeare bore for much of his life. The evidence for this, I would suggest, is visible on the contested skull of Shakespeare at Beoley in Worcestershire (detail of photo by Richard Peach for <i>The Village </i>magazine):</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl5IPyb8e6nIDq-mbbEHDgcu2oha9rTtQFm_Si_NaZ9s-VhYRjHwjL6QyrNdFe5MGf0czdsLXslAXfBe_NSvafDPqp37aUPGCjCx1MR6hRJFHi0Mqj35fHRXSFDf8qeVEIdaMmXSR6SZ7c/s1600/Skull_cropped_edited.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl5IPyb8e6nIDq-mbbEHDgcu2oha9rTtQFm_Si_NaZ9s-VhYRjHwjL6QyrNdFe5MGf0czdsLXslAXfBe_NSvafDPqp37aUPGCjCx1MR6hRJFHi0Mqj35fHRXSFDf8qeVEIdaMmXSR6SZ7c/s1600/Skull_cropped_edited.jpg" /></a></div>
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A photo of the Beoley skull, taken at around the time of the Second World War, shows the scar over the left eyebrow very clearly:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH-Cml19IMPFVdJXEGrtKCWeaEQjLhf_W5gQfBS5m40tG70yXvj2TKuRSd91T2CJCEudIOlujth7vqRuYx8ch5r8afHWj_DgrTZZ1TTiSbma6hagi3KLnoj6QUbwRtNbf27Vq0KiMxoPoD/s1600/Beoley+bw+1+%25282%2529_edited.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH-Cml19IMPFVdJXEGrtKCWeaEQjLhf_W5gQfBS5m40tG70yXvj2TKuRSd91T2CJCEudIOlujth7vqRuYx8ch5r8afHWj_DgrTZZ1TTiSbma6hagi3KLnoj6QUbwRtNbf27Vq0KiMxoPoD/s1600/Beoley+bw+1+%25282%2529_edited.jpg" /></a></div>
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Just in case, here's a detail of the same, showing the left eye socket and the scar above it:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9GWCwourQuitKVc3EcU0bkpeNnreb8mo3N9DS44dgqYJ5b9xB4b3lzpSiEn3S0TFH6kIR_iC7JRSpZCyGev3ddlriffjAxxhKWVEBTtFJpHOr2c9kKIgDjxB9R2k5Zx85QGoyX2YXO3RC/s1600/Beoley+bw+1+cropped_edited+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9GWCwourQuitKVc3EcU0bkpeNnreb8mo3N9DS44dgqYJ5b9xB4b3lzpSiEn3S0TFH6kIR_iC7JRSpZCyGev3ddlriffjAxxhKWVEBTtFJpHOr2c9kKIgDjxB9R2k5Zx85QGoyX2YXO3RC/s320/Beoley+bw+1+cropped_edited+%25282%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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So, Shakespeare had a scar over his left eye, cutting down over his left eyebrow, which is precisely what we see on the "Wadlow" portrait.</div>
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But, wait - what's that you say? The Beoley skull was "proven" to have belonged to a mysterious, unknown female in her seventies and can't, therefore, have been Shakespeare?</div>
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Hmmnn ... tell you what: let's check one more image.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL_Ll40SNsSEjhnyGtnxWU3htyU6bVWSEherv-u9dkBVmhTVHFOc63jgPlNYnZoXX8Y0zbz2hNs7aYWeWVbr9TSY7S9TFCBLorfIGm9H1Y7xugGducBYVDnflG07qsx1uoq2Zl5oA4URgN/s1600/article-1309047-0AFF6893000005DC-226_634x845+%25283%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL_Ll40SNsSEjhnyGtnxWU3htyU6bVWSEherv-u9dkBVmhTVHFOc63jgPlNYnZoXX8Y0zbz2hNs7aYWeWVbr9TSY7S9TFCBLorfIGm9H1Y7xugGducBYVDnflG07qsx1uoq2Zl5oA4URgN/s320/article-1309047-0AFF6893000005DC-226_634x845+%25283%2529.jpg" width="290" /></a></div>
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This is a detail from a facial reconstruction of the contested Shakespeare Death Mask in Darmstadt, Germany. There it is, just above the left eyebrow - a scar which runs down to meet the eyebrow about halfway across. The same reconstruction of Shakespeare's face from the death mask, only taken at a different angle, shows this scar very clearly:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvbrxrV0zyJtKqz9zu8bkcbW9ukvMB68qj6TeR-svB1NtIoE1N-_I8YoeMY467dwlidllhkq6D_giMZrHyqCQ0b7tlLvdM4w62WFoCIonwa27vmFwl4ktX0vc5hMSouIHHH8B4LCRvZZtY/s1600/3c02ce66efefedfcb1dc3240c2be4c3d+%25283%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvbrxrV0zyJtKqz9zu8bkcbW9ukvMB68qj6TeR-svB1NtIoE1N-_I8YoeMY467dwlidllhkq6D_giMZrHyqCQ0b7tlLvdM4w62WFoCIonwa27vmFwl4ktX0vc5hMSouIHHH8B4LCRvZZtY/s320/3c02ce66efefedfcb1dc3240c2be4c3d+%25283%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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And, for comparison, the scar on the death mask facial reconstruction alongside the scar on the Beoley skull:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxKwsjPCBygLoPz2AAjOEoIE5Ubwe8M2gOIWNX57gjS1gDU0IAAiJ4qnjT8hyphenhyphen36xguvewriyot7XnI0dDDY13gwjR0sRsNDbhXWplqhf_wxnPnqhWfw89DU0Rgo0-ciC865ftLmR5nNkQR/s1600/left+eye+scar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="282" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxKwsjPCBygLoPz2AAjOEoIE5Ubwe8M2gOIWNX57gjS1gDU0IAAiJ4qnjT8hyphenhyphen36xguvewriyot7XnI0dDDY13gwjR0sRsNDbhXWplqhf_wxnPnqhWfw89DU0Rgo0-ciC865ftLmR5nNkQR/s400/left+eye+scar.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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They look pretty much the same, don't they?</div>
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Well, here's the odd thing. That facial reconstruction of the death mask was done by Dr Caroline Wilkinson - the same expert who claimed that the Beoley skull was that of a woman in her seventies!</div>
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Admittedly, the Channel 4 <i>Shakespeare's Tomb</i> documentary, shown earlier this year, did rather railroad Dr Wilkinson into making that statement ... but maybe if Caroline Wilkinson had compared the skull <i>with her own facial reconstructions of Shakespeare</i>, she might have been less certain in her analysis.</div>
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The scar - on portraits, death mask, facial reconstructions and the Beoley skull - is one of Shakespeare's distinguishing features.</div>
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That, or a <b>massive </b>coincidence, requiring us to believe that the only skull to have been identified as the "veritable skull of William Shakespeare" actually belonged to an unknown septuagenarian, even thought it has <i>exactly the same scar</i> as Shakespeare had!</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07579992524124124425noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350432428721365043.post-76850304946931948312016-06-03T06:01:00.000-07:002016-06-03T06:01:16.385-07:00Is This William Shakespeare?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh565QmBHY4OvOWDm-5n7YfLtszrDyqpQcgRJWahyjlfuyhV8LWoh5bqTuxmFFd8DGYk9TD5-YqJMTVgEzFr_Mfck_FdKp4oj2or6gyaZp7xf1DINqh2BOz20yooMltjj-MxLoLcI4mgi6u/s1600/%2528Wadlow%2529+Photo+taken+by+Chris+Titmus+HKI_edited.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh565QmBHY4OvOWDm-5n7YfLtszrDyqpQcgRJWahyjlfuyhV8LWoh5bqTuxmFFd8DGYk9TD5-YqJMTVgEzFr_Mfck_FdKp4oj2or6gyaZp7xf1DINqh2BOz20yooMltjj-MxLoLcI4mgi6u/s320/%2528Wadlow%2529+Photo+taken+by+Chris+Titmus+HKI_edited.jpg" width="228" /></a></div>
Apologies, first of all, for my absence from the blog for a little while. Things have been busy on a number of fronts.<br />
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My very good friend Steve Wadlow has created an excellent website around the painting in his family's possession. Regular readers of this blog will know that I have been working with Steve for over two-and-a-half years now, examining this remarkable portrait.<br />
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It is, as far as I'm concerned, a particularly good, near-contemporary portrait of William Shakespeare. For more information, please visit Steve's <a href="https://www.isthiswilliamshakespeare.co.uk/" target="_blank">Is This William Shakespeare? website.</a><br />
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One of the pages of the website - entitled "TECHNICAL" - shows some images created by Lumiere Technologie in Paris. Of those, one clearly shows the "touching up" which had been done, at a later date, to cover up the visible damage to the left eye socket.<br />
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Another image, which is presented in the same animated graphic, shows a clear line running down the left cheek of the portrait from the outside of the left eye.<br />
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These lines are a feature of Shakespeare portraiture. If you can find an image of the Shakespeare portrait which now hangs in the old schoolroom at King Edward VI Grammar School in Stratford-upon-Avon (where Shakespeare is presumed to have gone to school), you'll see a very similar line to that made visible on the Wadlow portrait by the technological wizardry of Lumiere.<br />
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One day, when the ultra-conservative mafia is no longer in a position to dictate what is known, and what is not allowed to be known, about Shakespeare, the Wadlow portrait will be recognised for what it is - the face of Shakespeare.<br />
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And maybe - just maybe - that time isn't so far away.<br />
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Do check out Steve's website. It really is very good indeed.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07579992524124124425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350432428721365043.post-1935783878112150172016-04-26T03:13:00.002-07:002016-04-26T03:13:51.764-07:00That's OxfordshireHere, as promised - the link to the YouTube clip of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqKaDKI-1bc&sns=fb" target="_blank">my piece for That's Oxfordshire, </a>with thanks to Alex Iszatt.<br />
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More to follow ...Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07579992524124124425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350432428721365043.post-25956821225341262492016-04-21T06:41:00.000-07:002016-04-21T06:47:34.940-07:00Then They Fight You<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixf8oNhnlfyo215nKMfplcQT9AorNin50RDbEkgW1gcp4d5d8ljMM9oh4seCdtYdm0_-Ycs-cby-4ezXaGD6fZ-kAgBgXtkvdMoF7oj2NSA-1w7E_AV4MFVMN2ih5yOH8z68ECuCTTyQ1H/s1600/golden_cross.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixf8oNhnlfyo215nKMfplcQT9AorNin50RDbEkgW1gcp4d5d8ljMM9oh4seCdtYdm0_-Ycs-cby-4ezXaGD6fZ-kAgBgXtkvdMoF7oj2NSA-1w7E_AV4MFVMN2ih5yOH8z68ECuCTTyQ1H/s320/golden_cross.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
A lovely morning in Oxford, on Tuesday. I was there to be filmed by Alex Iszatt for a <i>That's Oxfordshire</i> piece on Oxford's community Freeview channel.<br />
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<i></i>Alex interviewed me in the courtyard between what used to be the Davenants' Taverne on Cornmarket and the Cross Inn next door (seen here in an old photo). I spoke about Sir William Davenant, and why I'd written my book about him. No one, I pointed out, had ever taken the trouble to ask whether or not the rumours surrounding Davenant's paternity - <i>was</i> he the product of a liaison between William Shakespeare and Jane, the comely mistress of the Taverne? - might be true, so I had done so.<br />
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We then went for a walk around Oxford, Alex filming me as we wandered past Christ Church and back up to Lincoln College, where Davenant studied as a young man, before he moved to London.<br />
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The piece goes out this Friday and will then be put up on YouTube. I'll do my best to remember to post the link.<br />
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I got back home to hear that there will be some sort of review or mention of my book, <i>Shakespeare's Bastard</i>, in the Oxford Times this week. So - today, Oxford; tomorrow, the world!<br />
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Still, there had to be a backlash, didn't there? And it came this morning, in the form of a piece in the <i>Spectator</i>.<br />
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I'm not all that familiar with the <i>Spectator</i>, but apparently the magazine has a regular column referred to as "The Heckler". It would seem to be a slightly schizophrenic column. Only last May, Lloyd Evans, writing as "The Heckler", decreed that "Shakespeare's duds should be struck from the canon". Lloyd Evans professed to "love Shakespeare. But when he pulls on his wellies and hikes into the forest I yearn for the exit." Consequently, Evans felt, "<i>Winter's Tale</i>, <i>Twelfth Night</i>, <i>As You Like It</i>, <i>even Midsummer Night's Dream deserve to sink"</i>.<br />
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Evidently, by writing about the Woodland he came from, the old Forest of Arden with which he so identified, being half-Arden himself, Shakespeare let himself down.<br />
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Well, this week's "Heckler" column comes to us courtesy of Kate Maltby, who frets that "the Shakespeare anniversary has stripped the Bard of his beauty". I give you her opening paragraph:<br />
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"The feeding frenzy over the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare's death has reached its peak. Recently we've had Shakespeare's complete works performed through the puppetry of kitchenware. On books pages, you can read about everything from Edward Wilson-Lee's <i>Shakespeare in Swahililand</i> (surprisingly beguiling) to Simon Andrew Stirling's <i>Shakespeare's Bastard: The Life of Sir William Davenant </i>(he wasn't)."<br />
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Now, grateful as I am for the name check, I can only assume that Kate Maltby, or someone she knows, was actually present at the conception of Sir William Davenant and therefore capable of signing an affidavit stating that John and Jane Davenant were exclusively concerned in the act. Failing that, only a DNA test could say for certain whether or not Sir William was a little closer to Shakespeare than a mere "godson", as Oxford remembered him.<br />
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Ah, but I forget. The fact that no one had previously looked into the possibility that Davenant was (as he apparently claimed to be) Shakespeare's son is <i>ipso facto</i> proof that "he wasn't". The very avoidance of an investigation is evidence of there being no need for an investigation. We shouldn't consider the possibility because nobody else has.<br />
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Perhaps, if Kate Maltby had read my book, she'd have noticed that I tackle this argument in my opening pages. For years, it was widely rumoured - and seemingly accepted - that Sir William Davenant was Shakespeare's illegitimate son. A close examination of his life and career certainly suggests that Davenant modelled himself on his celebrated godfather, and almost certainly believed - or liked to believe - that he was the bastard son of Shakespeare.<br />
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And didn't Shakespeare use the word "godson" just once in all of his known works - in <i>King Lear</i>, a play obsessed with bastards, illegitimacy, adultery and female sexuality, which was written at about the same time as William Davenant was born?<br />
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Why bother with any of this, though, when all one has to do is ignore it? Just because one pesky author dared to ask "Might Davenant have been Shakespeare's son?" and set out to explore the possibility, doesn't mean we have to take a look at his results. Those who have never asked themselves the question or looked into the possibility have been saying for years that Davenant wasn't Shakespeare's son (the absence of any evidence to support this statement being irrelevant, apparently) and, hey, why break with tradition?<br />
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<a href="http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/04/the-heckler-the-shakespeare-anniversary-has-stripped-the-bard-of-his-beauty/" target="_blank">Kate Maltby's full piece can be read here.</a> I found it slightly odd, in that it seemed to be saying that we can only preserve the "beauty" of Shakespeare if we try not to think of him as a real person. In fact, let's forget that he ever existed and just concentrate on the plays (presumably, if Lloyd Evans has anything to do with it, not those Shakespeare plays which involve trees).<br />
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The upshot being that even to commemorate the 400th anniversary of his death is an act of cultural desecration, almost as bad as wondering if our second-ever poet laureate was telling the truth about his relationship to his godfather.<br />
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Of course, what Kate Maltby is really calling for is a kind of censorship. It's an old trick: if we ignore Shakespeare and just concentrate on the words he left behind, we can construe those words in pretty much any way we choose. We can tell other people what we want them to believe about Shakespeare (who didn't really exist, other than as a sort of disembodied quill). We can continue to cover up what was going on in England when he was writing his masterpieces.<br />
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There is one aspect of Maltby's piece I agree with: I've long argued that what the major Shakespeare organisations are flogging is a brand. Not Shakespeare <i>per se</i>, but an unhistorical idea of what they want Shakespeare to have been. And in recent months we have seen the extraordinary lengths to which organisations will go to protect and preserve their rather false image of Shakespeare. It's a cash cow, no doubt, and the tourists seem to love it. But it's not Shakespeare.<br />
<br />
However, Kate Maltby's solution is even more alarming (though not quite as alarming as "The Heckler's" previous call to expunge Shakespeare's more arboreal works). It's also regressive. For years, scholars tried to argue that Shakespeare's writings were no guide whatsoever to what he might have thought or believed. As arguments go, that one is utter nonsense. Dramatists write in character, but they draw their inspiration from the world around them, and everything that happens in their work is coloured by their outlook, their perspective.<br />
<br />
So, once again, it's back to the Dark Ages. The scientific investigation of Shakespeare's skull was smothered, and now we're told - on no authority whatsoever - that Davenant "wasn't" Shakespeare's bastard.<br />
<br />
Long live the Shakespeare who never was!<br />
<br />
Or, better still, let's do what nobody seems prepared to tolerate, these days: ask questions, do some research, and little by little feel our way towards an understanding of the man who wrote those glorious works. There's little if any reward in this, but it's better than claiming to admire the "beauty" of the Bard while trying not to know anything about him.<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07579992524124124425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350432428721365043.post-68446200497859955202016-04-12T07:22:00.001-07:002016-04-12T07:22:54.032-07:00Sneaky Leaks and Press ReleasesCan anyone out there help me?<br />
<br />
You see, I'm intrigued and somewhat mystified. Let me take you back a bit.<br />
<br />
Something rather odd happened around the start of November 2015. I didn't know it, but I had just been written out of the Arrow Media/Channel 4 documentary, <i>Shakespeare's Tomb</i>.<br />
<br />
In between a message being left on my phone by the director, explaining that she wanted to bring me up to date on the project, and an actual phone conversation with the director, in which she informed me that I was no longer involved with the documentary (or, rather, she didn't tell me - it was another three weeks before I found out), a story appeared out of the blue in the <i>Telegraph</i>.<br />
<br />
The story - <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/11968936/Shakespeares-skull-rumours-DNA-testing-barred-by-Church.html" target="_blank">Could Shakespeare's skull have been found? Why church ruling means we may never know</a> - seemed rather bizarre from the outset. For a start, it appeared on the <i>Telegraph</i> website on a Sunday evening. The reporter who wrote the piece generally writes on energy and climate change issues. And the story was eight months old.<br />
<br />
The <i>Telegraph</i> article sparked a rash of copycat pieces in the world's press, most of which took the slant that a rather potty rural vicar had been chasing up a bit of folklore but had been slapped down by the Chancellor of the Diocese, who dismissed the original story as "a piece of Gothic fiction".<br />
<br />
There were some inaccuracies in the article: "The author of [<i>How Shakespeare's Skull was Stolen and Found</i>, published in 1879 and 1884] is not known but is thought may have [been] Rev C J Langston, vicar of Beoley from 1881 to 1889."<br />
<br />
Langston identified himself as the "compiler" of <i>How Shakespeare's Skull was Stolen</i> in a letter he wrote from "Beoley Vicarage" to C.M. Ingleby on 2 January 1884. In 1881, though, he was still Rector of Sevington in Kent. By 1889, he had moved to the City of Bath.<br />
<br />
The article quoted Rev Richard Clark, "Team Rector at Holy Trinity Redditch, overseeing the parish including Beoley", who seemed disappointed at the decision not to allow DNA testing of the mysterious skull in the crypt at Beoley to go ahead: "the problem for us now is that the failure to conduct a detailed investigation will result in a higher level of uniformed speculation".<br />
<br />
Nobody at the time seemed to know how the <i>Telegraph</i> had got hold of this story. The Chancellor's judgement on the matter had been delivered in March 2015. Suddenly, out of nowhere, on a Sunday in November the story was presented to a table full of journalists, and a young energy/climate change reporter offered to cover it.<br />
<br />
Flash forward, now, to 27 March 2016 - another Sunday. Channel 4 broadcast the <i>Shakespeare's Tomb</i> documentary the previous evening. With admirable speed and efficiency, the BBC News website published an article, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-35892218" target="_blank">Shakespeare's skull: New chapter in hunt for missing head.</a><br />
<br />
Rev Richard Clark was quoted again (although diligent readers of this blog might have noticed the comment under my previous post, which indicates that the quotation was "a paraphrase" of what Rev Clark had actually said). As were Kevin Colls, the archaeologist on the documentary project, Chris Laoutaris, of the University of Birmingham's Shakespeare Institute (based in Stratford-upon-Avon), and John Hogg, who has run the Stratford Town Walk with his wife Helen since 2002.<br />
<br />
The article referenced the earlier report in the <i>Telegraph</i>: "Clergymen had previously applied to the Consistory Court to use DNA testing to discover the identity of the skull - but <b>had the application thrown out, the Daily Telegraph reported</b> in November 2015."<br />
<br />
The last two people quoted - Rev Richard Clark and John Hogg - poured cold water over the whole thing, although we now know that Rev Clark did not, in fact, say "We've discovered that the story of the removal of his [Shakespeare's] skull and reburial at St Leonard's [Beoley] is rubbish", although that was what he was quoted as saying in the BBC piece.<br />
<br />
Now, here's my problem. I emailed Rebecca Wood, the BBC journalist (and weather person) who wrote up the article, asking if she could tell me who sent out the press release which quoted - and, indeed, misquoted - four individuals on the documentary screened the previous evening, but I've had no reply.<br />
<br />
So what I'd like to know is this: who's been leaking stories to the press on Sundays? Why, at the very time I was being dropped from the Channel 4 documentary, did a story magically appear in the <i>Telegraph</i>, scoffing at the very idea that we should be investigating the Beoley skull and quoting the words of Prof Stanley Wells (Shakespeare Birthplace Trust) - "Gothic fiction" - as if that was the term coined by Charles Mynors, Chancellor of the Diocese of Worcester.<br />
<br />
Why did the BBC feel the need to remind readers of its website of that peculiar story which appeared in the <i>Telegraph</i>, and for which no one has been prepared to take the credit?<br />
<br />
Why would Channel 4 issue a press release on a Sunday, just a few hours after <i>Shakespeare's Tomb</i> aired on the Saturday evening, giving the immediate responses of individuals all connected to Stratford-upon-Avon, including a tour guide they'd probably never heard of? Or was it the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust who issued the press release, quoting the same Rev Richard Clark who was quoted in the leaked story to the <i>Telegraph</i>, in an attempt to bury the skull story once and for all.<br />
<br />
If it was the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, wouldn't that suggest that someone at the SBT had come to see the documentary, and its questionable findings, not as Channel 4's, but as their own. Someone, perhaps, who had already done their utmost to stop the investigation in its tracks when they gave evidence at the Consistory Court hearing? Someone who doesn't want anyone to know that they've been steering the media throughout?<br />
<br />
Somebody out there must know who leaked the story to the <i>Telegraph </i>on a Sunday in November and sent a press release to the BBC on a Sunday in March - in both instances, seeking to do maximum damage to the ongoing investigation into the Beoley skull and Rev C.J. Langston's accounts.<br />
<br />
And if anyone does know who is responsible, could they please email me: art-and-will@hotmail.co.uk?<br />
<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07579992524124124425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350432428721365043.post-7953729646953380372016-04-08T12:40:00.000-07:002016-04-08T12:40:14.858-07:00A Bit of Balance<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhth8jie7MvedtL79wurCF4TilTnJlZleZ94HBlzsm4ElknYAAdyMtcn1jwXy4V0M64bQlM64ZoR9iq9bQurYLAtYs3bt67g0IwBj_SuqNUKuh8b9_zfj09OvQ7OvXNHCdV-8hkF9Gq7ywW/s1600/Redditch+Advertiser+6.4.16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhth8jie7MvedtL79wurCF4TilTnJlZleZ94HBlzsm4ElknYAAdyMtcn1jwXy4V0M64bQlM64ZoR9iq9bQurYLAtYs3bt67g0IwBj_SuqNUKuh8b9_zfj09OvQ7OvXNHCdV-8hkF9Gq7ywW/s400/Redditch+Advertiser+6.4.16.jpg" width="180" /></a></div>
It's been standard practice for some years now, in certain quarters of the British media, to strive for journalistic "balance".<br />
<br />
So that, for example, if BBC Newsnight do a piece on climate change, they are obliged to wheel in some corporate shill who receives money from the fossil fuels lobby to pretend that there's no such thing as climate change.<br />
<br />
Balance, geddit?<br />
<br />
Well, the requirement for balance doesn't apply to all of the media. Channel 4's <i>Shakespeare's Tomb</i> went out of its way to avoid any form of balance, which meant that the vast majority of the available evidence in the matter was ignored and only those with a certain point-of-view were featured. Similarly, press coverage in advance of the documentary, and in response to it, was equally one-sided (see below).<br />
<br />
Thank heavens, then, for Ben Russell, who wrote this piece for the <i>Bromsgrove Advertiser</i> and its sister papers, including the <i>Redditch & Alcester Advertiser</i>, this week. Ben was genuinely interested in the background to the story and the way the documentary team mishandled it. The result - a piece which allows another perspective to be heard.<br />
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So thank you, Ben. I'll post a link to the article when I can find one.<br />
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Otherwise, as I say, the media really just parroted whatever came their way in a press release. <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-35892218" target="_blank">This is an interesting example.</a> It appeared on the BBC News Online website the day after the C4 documentary was broadcast. I've been trying - with little success - to find out if the copy and quotations were all supplied to the BBC in a press release, which is how things tend to happen these days, and if so, who issued the press release.<br />
<br />
I doubt it was Channel Four, who probably don't know much about the Stratford tour guide who is quoted in the piece. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, however, do know him. Could it be the SBT, then, that got its press release out to the BBC ready to be published within hours of the broadcast? The mention in the BBC article of the thwarted attempt to secure permission to study the skull properly sounds like an authentic SBT touch, given that it was the two top guys at the SBT who successfully shot down that application.<br />
<br />
And why, we might ask, is nobody telling tales about this outside of school (so to speak)? I've emailed the Church of England Team Leader responsible for Beoley church, who is quoted in the article, partly to find out if he really did say that the story of the skull at Beoley is "rubbish", but I've received no reply.<br />
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Where's the balance, then? One side of the argument, if we can call it that, has direct access to the media. That same side took control of the Channel 4 documentary and kept all other voices out of it. They scotched the investigation, then co-opted the production.<br />
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It was quite a surprise, then, to find <a href="http://www.cultofweird.com/death/shakespeare-skull-stolen/" target="_blank">this piece on the curious Cult of Weird website.</a> I know nothing about the site, or who runs it, but they'd obviously done their homework - far more so than the mainstream media - because for once, my work gets a mention.<br />
<br />
It's going to take a long, long time, and an awful lot of hard work, to combat the misinformation broadcast to the world by Channel 4 in <i>Shakespeare's Tomb</i> and uncritically taken up by the press, left, right and centre. The very fact that there are still journalists and commentators who are prepared to look a little deeper, and to present the other side of the story, is verily a welcome relief.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07579992524124124425noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350432428721365043.post-40967165103250924472016-04-04T09:35:00.000-07:002016-04-04T09:35:34.588-07:00The Mind's Construction in the Face<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In a phone conversation on Thursday 26 November 2015, the director of the Channel Four documentary <i>Shakespeare's Tomb</i> tried very hard to assure me that the programme would not be spending very much time at Beoley, was not terribly interested in the skull, and didn't expect to discover much about the mysterious "veritable skull of William Shakespeare."<br />
<br />
The director seemed startled when I mentioned Dr Caroline Wilkinson, who I already knew was involved. No, I was told, Caroline Wilkinson probably wasn't going to be doing much with the skull - at most, maybe coming up with some thoughts about possible age and gender - and she almost certainly wouldn't be doing any sort of facial reconstruction from the skull or anything like that at all.<br />
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I'm still at a loss to explain why the director told me all that, unless it was to throw me off the scent. Given that I had only just been made aware of the fact that I was no longer involved with the documentary, I can imagine that she was trying to mollify my (i.e. "No, don't worry, we won't be doing anything that directly concerns you and your work") or, to put it another way, I was being fobbed off and kept in the dark.<br />
<br />
Anyway, surprise-surprise, Dr Wilkinson did do something of a facial reconstruction from the skull after all. Maybe she had a bit of time on her hands, I don't know, or maybe that was the plan all along but the director didn't want me to know about it. The image above is partly that of Dr Wilkinson's reconstruction, made under the apprehension that the skull is that of an "unknown woman in her seventies". Obviously, for copyright reasons, I haven't reproduced the whole image.<br />
<br />
Something about the eyes in the reconstruction reminded me of an early 17th-century portrait in the royal collection. This portrait of an unknown man was flagged up by Lee Durkee on his fascinating <a href="http://lostshakespeareportraits.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/update-3d-shakespeare-royal-collections.html" target="_blank">Lost Shakespeare Portraits blog.</a> Lee Durkee knows his stuff, and when he suggests that the "unknown man" in the portrait might be Shakespeare, I'm inclined to think he might be onto something.<br />
<br />
So the image of an "unknown female" you see at the top of the blog has been merged with the features of the "unknown man" from the portrait in the royal collection. Look closely: it's difficult to see where the "unknown man" ends and the "unknown female" begins.<br />
<br />
Now to the reproduction image proper. For some bizarre reason, the forehead reproduced from the skull has been blurred. This has the effect of focusing attention on the central features of the face - eyes, nose and mouth. It is unfortunate, because (as those who follow my work will know) many of the identifying features of the skull which also show up, with a remarkable degree of consistency, in the Shakespeare portraiture, are to be found on the forehead. Which, in the image taken from the <i>Shakespeare's Tomb</i> documentary, has been blurred.<br />
<br />
Moreover, the forehead is one of the best-preserved parts of the skull. It is pretty much intact. The face of the skull has been smashed to bits (much of that damage, I believe, done at around the time of death). Which means that much of what we see most clearly of the face in the reconstruction is not actually taken from the skull, because those parts don't actually exist. Where it is most in focus, then, the reconstruction is based on a reconstruction.<br />
<br />
You have a laser scan of a damaged skull, onto which have been projected (we must assume) the missing parts of the structure (cheekbones, maxilla, lower jaw). In other words, the facial reconstruction shown in the programme is based on another reconstruction - the conjectural reconstruction of the missing parts of the skull - which is itself based, not on the original skull, but on a laser scan thereof.<br />
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Complicated, isn't it? But the point to be made here is that those parts of the skull which do exist, and which we ought to be able to see very clearly in the facial reconstruction, have been largely blurred, while those parts of the skull which don't exist, and therefore had to be speculatively reconstructed, have been rendered rather clearly.<br />
<br />
Odd, hunh? Even so, the image yields some interesting surprises. Let me concentrate on the left eye, temple and forehead as shown in the facial reconstruction (part of which is blurred) for the Channel Four programme:<br />
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Let's start with the forehead. Blurred though it is - so as not to give the game away - some features can still be made out. Looking up from the outside half of the eye, it is quite clear that there are a couple of grooves or indentations, running down from the hairline, with something resembling a raised area in between.<br />
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I've blogged about this feature before: in <a href="http://artandwill.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/call-ye-midwife.html" target="_blank">Call ye Midwife</a> I suggested that, along with a defining depression high up in the forehead, just left of centre, they were the result of the rushed and insanitary midwifery practices of the day, while in <a href="http://artandwill.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/shakespeares-face-3.html" target="_blank">Shakespeare's Face (3)</a> I used them as part of my evidence to indicate that the somewhat controversial Cobbe portrait is indeed of William Shakespeare.<br />
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Basically, that double groove running down the left side of the forehead is a fairly consistent feature of the Shakespeare portraiture. And, let's remember, it's there on the skull - one of the remaining parts of the skull - from which Dr Wilkinson made her reconstruction.<br />
<br />
Moving down a bit, there seems to be evidence of a scar running across the top of the left eyebrow. I examined this in my 2014 paper for Goldsmiths University, <a href="http://www.gold.ac.uk/glits-e/glits-e2013-2014/the-faces-of-shakespeare-revealing-shakespeares-/" target="_blank">The Faces of Shakespeare.</a> Again, the skull concurs with the portraiture, the scar being especially visible on the Wadlow portrait.<br />
<br />
The outside of the left eye shows what appear to be two lines descending to meet in a sort of V-shape immediately to the left of the eye. I have written about this extensively, describing and illustrating this feature in <i>Who Killed William Shakespeare?</i> and elsewhere. It is another defining feature of Shakespeare portraiture and is caused by the breakage of the end of the facial bone and the lower edge of the orbit showing through the skin. The crease which comes round from the left, just under the eye, in the reconstruction is also a feature of Shakespeare portraiture, clearly visible in the Droeshout engraving (First Folio, 1623) and the Chandos portrait (National Portrait Gallery).<br />
<br />
The damage to the lower part of the eye socket shows up both in the Shakespeare portraiture (often as a faint, thin, bluish or greyish line, as in the Wadlow portrait) and is replicated in the facial reconstruction as a sort of puffy, saggy, bags-under-the-eyes look. Indeed, a forensic archaeologist and biological anthropologist who studied the photos of the skull told me that the "guttering" at the bottom of the eye sockets would produce just such a look in the portraits.<br />
<br />
Just inside the eye, alongside the nose, there is shading and a minor blemish, consistent with the portraits (the Cobbe shows this as a sort of bluish tinge with what a friend, who has seen the Cobbe portrait at Hatchlands Park in Surrey, described as a "slight boil or deformity on the nose side of the left eye orbit"). This is where a pointed instrument, a stabbing weapon such a poignard, was jabbed into the eye socket, puncturing the inner medial wall of the left eye. This forced the eyeball forwards, and slightly to the left, as we see in the death mask and the "wall-eyed" look of the portraits. The death mask shows the scar made by this weapon. The portraits, and the facial reconstruction, reflect the damage that was done to the inner eye socket by this stabbing weapon (for more on this, see my paper for Goldsmiths and my Historical Honey article, <a href="http://historicalhoney.com/exclusive-shakespeare-dragonfly/" target="_blank">Shakespeare and the Dragonfly.</a>)<br />
<br />
Finally, the cheek. First of all, there appears to be something of a swelling, a raised area, where the (missing) cheekbone should be - and curiously enough, something very similar appears in much the same place on Dr Wilkinson's facial reconstruction of the Darmstadt death mask (Shakespeare, again). <br />
<br />
Look more closely at the facial reconstruction and you'll see a thin line meandering slightly as it runs down the left cheek, from just beneath the eye to just to the side of the mouth. That really is a giveaway: you'll find it in the portraits, too, especially the Chandos, where I first noticed it - a thin grey slightly wavy line running own the left cheek, with another, fainter but similar, immediately to the left of it.<br />
<br />
That's the outline of the broken maxilla (upper jaw).<br />
<br />
So - even though they did their best to misinterpret certain features of the skull and to obscure the others, the facial reconstruction which Dr Wilkinson apparently wasn't going to do but then went ahead and did anyway does, in fact, confirm that the Beoley skull matches the portraiture of William Shakespeare.<br />
<br />
How much longer, I ask you, must we allow the cover-up to go unchallenged and the world to remain in the dark about the true identity of the owner of the Beoley skull?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07579992524124124425noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350432428721365043.post-9921804478055852842016-04-03T12:27:00.000-07:002016-04-03T15:44:08.716-07:00Shakespeare's Skull: The Eyebrow Test<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<img border="0" height="282" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjPQHbdZAQTkVnc26GrHml7L_UxL9j-m0Ozwacj5uMy90i598hNQMFlbADlAf1b6UjH5fj4bEnQXWL0dZ0BlVKm8kjyHUl29T7CgflAMVDoJI_wUyecUybCuayViQ57KySwMOiaPXmLGvQ/s400/Wilkinson+eyebrow.jpg" width="400" /></div>
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This is a still from the Channel Four documentary, <i>Shakespeare's Tomb</i>. Dr Caroline Wilkinson is analysing the laser scan made of the rogue skull in the ossuary at Beoley church. What she's saying is this:</div>
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"In male skulls you tend to see a bulge just where the eyebrows sit, and you can see on this skull that we don't have a bulge of bone."</div>
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Ergo, we hear, the skull is probably female.</div>
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And, yes, Dr Wilkinson has a point: the skull really doesn't show much in the way of eyebrow bulges:</div>
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One might even suggest that the right eyebrow ridge (the one she's pointing to on the laser scan) looks somewhat damaged. An earlier photo of the skull shows this quite clearly:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr0HUokOCJE1PUnQP5vdIY4Uq_-jLxcV-hPWep0ojI6KV-8G3FhqM8gQfE7ZOj-lLbIZM4GNwQyiahvxnt1qsvpmVBD7-xXBT3DxbB5d1BCc2fgTQFHjXLMzLzdco1wV2TN3nlQuM0qGCi/s1600/Beoley+bw+1+cropped_edited+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr0HUokOCJE1PUnQP5vdIY4Uq_-jLxcV-hPWep0ojI6KV-8G3FhqM8gQfE7ZOj-lLbIZM4GNwQyiahvxnt1qsvpmVBD7-xXBT3DxbB5d1BCc2fgTQFHjXLMzLzdco1wV2TN3nlQuM0qGCi/s320/Beoley+bw+1+cropped_edited+%25282%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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So we're agreed. Eyebrow bulges not much to write home about. But what's interesting is that, in the TV documentary, Dr Wilkinson had just been shown lining up the laser scan of the skull with two of the most familiar images of Shakespeare, the Droeshout engraving and the Chandos portrait. Let's look first at the Droeshout:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1D4CZOKp2ReBT6iN0E6VCPvqkG_WflG3F31ijCJogFXgPWNtwhC2JFKfH_9If4khO2ReL3uJAqEOc8SuBfCNBQx2Uhm3Wc3EbLc_FtmAMuZbnk2APOYSBtxBlMKP04-ytDuJAyL7yt3Ma/s1600/Droeshout+Engraving+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1D4CZOKp2ReBT6iN0E6VCPvqkG_WflG3F31ijCJogFXgPWNtwhC2JFKfH_9If4khO2ReL3uJAqEOc8SuBfCNBQx2Uhm3Wc3EbLc_FtmAMuZbnk2APOYSBtxBlMKP04-ytDuJAyL7yt3Ma/s320/Droeshout+Engraving+%25282%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Well, that's odd. No real eyebrow bulges there, and especially not in the area indicated by Dr Wilkinson on the laser scan of the skull. What about the Chandos, then?</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibxdUTpSYK3fMeQ1z1TGEV5nw4O61MpWc6BkIiWU6LjSEEP6Vp_MfcXL24W9G8y9PzkzzGWNGrGFfNQue9CSC-WwVa6jLOhvLzejWEdQlIbvluh2Ni-sYVsthFaK9O7FsgmDXV18oIe1dU/s1600/Chandos+Portrait+eyebrow_edited.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="123" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibxdUTpSYK3fMeQ1z1TGEV5nw4O61MpWc6BkIiWU6LjSEEP6Vp_MfcXL24W9G8y9PzkzzGWNGrGFfNQue9CSC-WwVa6jLOhvLzejWEdQlIbvluh2Ni-sYVsthFaK9O7FsgmDXV18oIe1dU/s320/Chandos+Portrait+eyebrow_edited.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Hmmnn. You know what? There aren't really any eyebrow bulges there, either. And what's so strange about this is that Dr Wilkinson had been looking at both of the above images, apparently, before she told Kevin Colls and Dr Helen Castor that the absence of eyebrow bulges on the skull suggested that the skull might be female.</div>
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Funny, though, that she didn't think to mention the comparable absence of eyebrow bulges in the most famous images of Shakespeare, given that she'd just been looking at them. Surely she can't imagine that the face in the Droeshout and the Chandos is female?</div>
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Okay. Let's try some others. How about that fond favourite of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, the Cobbe portrait:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoXfowAMj2yJJiyDKxtf4E04t7l2rDtR3HbIMhPIdT_SpuliRIDl6nt82xBIuo5ZvFvwj8v4lIxrvdzKNc1DMtoGxqnMBu6gcj4C1nI041HTbW9yxsNv6Ggyah-29k3isZpZ8Y37ligpkB/s1600/Cobbe+Portrait_edited.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoXfowAMj2yJJiyDKxtf4E04t7l2rDtR3HbIMhPIdT_SpuliRIDl6nt82xBIuo5ZvFvwj8v4lIxrvdzKNc1DMtoGxqnMBu6gcj4C1nI041HTbW9yxsNv6Ggyah-29k3isZpZ8Y37ligpkB/s320/Cobbe+Portrait_edited.jpg" width="236" /></a></div>
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Well, whaddya know? A remarkable lack of eyebrow bulges. And what about the latest contender in the world of Shakespeare portraiture, the Wadlow?</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6E8s6xAnDWcHGnu8z2RtKWPZ_gE3NEui1_E6Hu2YFGIeRqCeXLSSMkj7bKwb9b8IvJWu8mDp7dc_RS78iT2NJ070Cup7TU1aBeGSAFvYUudL7BjsU_vXLwUC_4CFvEGw2XzgqHBDj99FL/s1600/%2528Wadlow%2529+Photo+taken+by+Chris+Titmus+HKI+%25283%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6E8s6xAnDWcHGnu8z2RtKWPZ_gE3NEui1_E6Hu2YFGIeRqCeXLSSMkj7bKwb9b8IvJWu8mDp7dc_RS78iT2NJ070Cup7TU1aBeGSAFvYUudL7BjsU_vXLwUC_4CFvEGw2XzgqHBDj99FL/s320/%2528Wadlow%2529+Photo+taken+by+Chris+Titmus+HKI+%25283%2529.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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Nope. Same again - no visible bulging in the eyebrow area. The Wadlow, of course, is interesting because it helped me to propose the theory that Shakespeare had a condition known as eyebrow ptosis (which he passed on to his illegitimate son, Sir William Davenant). I came to that theory by way of the Beoley skull and the observation, made by a research student in forensic archaeology and biological anthropology, that the <i>left</i> eyebrow of the skull appears "bumpier" than the right, probably because the fatty deposits of the eyebrow were missing. They had, it would seem, slipped. As can be seen in the Wadlow. That's eyebrow ptosis.</div>
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The Wadlow also shows a scar, immediately above the left eyebrow, which also shows up <i>in the same place</i> on the skull.</div>
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Now, either all of these portraits are actually of females, or the skull isn't necessarily female at all. That, or portrait artists didn't understand eyebrows when the above portraits were made. So let's look at this another way.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5pFJhawJpG0nDxNEoC4mtrOtaXLvLlnvQAQwSWeupWU_s456CQlIDt5u0ZKi876KBoRIROGFAsmK5JO1Y6zZoIJjQFrb_w4wUar-Kb_DvRfKzp9AVKNcwX3bnfmwQEcZ18E5Z8Zo3xPmf/s1600/Effigy+profile+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5pFJhawJpG0nDxNEoC4mtrOtaXLvLlnvQAQwSWeupWU_s456CQlIDt5u0ZKi876KBoRIROGFAsmK5JO1Y6zZoIJjQFrb_w4wUar-Kb_DvRfKzp9AVKNcwX3bnfmwQEcZ18E5Z8Zo3xPmf/s1600/Effigy+profile+%25282%2529.jpg" /></a></div>
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The above diagram comes from <i>An Anthropological Study of some Portraits of Shakespeare and of Burns</i> by Professor Arthur Keith, Conservator of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, who gave his paper on this subject on 20 February 1914. The outside line of the diagram shows the profile of the Shakespeare effigy in the funerary monument in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon. The inner image is a drawing of a Bronze Age skull (enlarged 10%).</div>
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Look at the outline of the profile of the Shakespeare effigy. No noticeable eyebrow bulge, is there? This effigy was looking down on the programme makers when William Shakespeare's grave was being scanned - and yet no one looked up and noticed that the effigy has no significant bulges where the eyebrows sit:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6tELr_z46or9b9c-t6OudjOmFlnr4QtwlJeMVeTf0-z621O09D5zKE1JmA1VS5tDJ8r2onn-0gTddMrz7Bu3EXiCGH9_2oSfZ1b8cYwPeHfc5v02JGGmrZCO8mfw2pJufmorI73SzUvtn/s1600/Stratford+bust_edited.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6tELr_z46or9b9c-t6OudjOmFlnr4QtwlJeMVeTf0-z621O09D5zKE1JmA1VS5tDJ8r2onn-0gTddMrz7Bu3EXiCGH9_2oSfZ1b8cYwPeHfc5v02JGGmrZCO8mfw2pJufmorI73SzUvtn/s1600/Stratford+bust_edited.jpg" /></a></div>
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Must be female, then.</div>
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Tell you what - just one more (though there are many I could choose from). Look for the eyebrow bulges:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDElZRwzyp2bbPq24BlO71zfu0lJIHhY_vcvEd0YyTCjMVxndJT4wrA6XhBSJiYg2wR3fZlW7q6AGXJ8h2ZgTziDSMOpNagdAK5Yj2bbX6eVo5OLmWS0LQfnb20hbl7ZQ1b1xHHbOhChh2/s1600/3c02ce66efefedfcb1dc3240c2be4c3d+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDElZRwzyp2bbPq24BlO71zfu0lJIHhY_vcvEd0YyTCjMVxndJT4wrA6XhBSJiYg2wR3fZlW7q6AGXJ8h2ZgTziDSMOpNagdAK5Yj2bbX6eVo5OLmWS0LQfnb20hbl7ZQ1b1xHHbOhChh2/s320/3c02ce66efefedfcb1dc3240c2be4c3d+%25282%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Now, what's interesting about this one is that we do see, quite clearly, certain features that also visible on the skull - the scar over the left eyebrow, the discoloured and depressed region over the right eyebrow, the damage to the lower edges of the eye sockets, and the loss of fatty deposits about halfway across the left eyebrow, which I described above in connection with the eyebrow ptosis. What we don't really see is any major eyebrow bulges. Some fatty deposits, yes, because we can also see where they're missing, but bulges in the bone? Not many.</div>
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And this is where things get a little weird, because the image above is a detail from a 3-D computer reconstruction of the face of the Darmstadt death mask of Shakespeare. It was made by ... Dr Caroline Wilkinson.</div>
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Who apparently had no idea that Shakespeare's eyebrows were remarkably and noticeably not very bulgy. Even though she had been looking at his portraits and had previously done a facial reconstruction from his death mask.</div>
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But then, maybe she did realise that. And the programme makers didn't want her to mention it. Maybe careful editing made sure no one got to hear that the skull displays the same characteristics as the Shakespeare portraiture. </div>
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Because let's be clear: in no way was Channel Four's <i>Shakespeare's Tomb </i>the serious scientific investigation it made itself out to be. That would have left certain people with egg on their faces.</div>
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It would also have let the viewers know what they deserved to know. That the Beoley skull probably isn't an "unknown woman in her seventies" and probably is what Rev C.J. Langston said it was - the "veritable skull of William Shakespeare."</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07579992524124124425noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350432428721365043.post-28066192546919591662016-03-28T17:48:00.000-07:002016-03-28T18:18:09.656-07:00Confirmation BiasIt's a fair point.<br />
<br />
A journalist has put it to me that "it was not in the interests of [the Channel 4/Arrow Media] documentary makers to debunk the Beoley skull. It would have been a much better story for them if they had found a skull that could be Shakespeare's."<br />
<br />
I wholeheartedly agree. It would have been a much better programme if proper consideration had been given to the Beoley skull.<br />
<br />
Here's why I think that didn't happen.<br />
<br />
<b><i>Stage 1: Cognitive Dissonance</i></b><br />
<br />
We all have our own sets of prejudices and firmly held ideas about the world, based on what we've been taught and told, our cultural background, political and religious beliefs, and so on. When someone comes along with evidence that challenges one or other of those firmly held ideas, some if not all of us can react pretty strongly, as if we were under physical attack. The fight-or-flight instinct kicks in. The person goes into a state of denial. They cannot accept this new evidence because it clashes with what they already believe, and to engage with it might throw their entire world-view into crisis.<br />
<br />
Example: when I met with the documentary director, she surprised me somewhat by saying, "You don't believe the skull is Shakespeare's." I told her that I was uncomfortable with the concept of belief, in these circumstances, but that I was roundabout 98.9% convinced that it is.<br />
<br />
Why did she assume that I didn't believe that the skull might be Shakespeare's? Hadn't she been briefed on who I was, what I'd written and published, how I'd been involved in the process so far?<br />
<br />
When I showed her some of the evidence, including the graphic illustrations in my <i>Who Killed William Shakespeare? </i>book highlighting the specific comparisons between the Beoley skull and the Shakespeare portraiture, she said "I can't see it."<br />
<br />
Small wonder, then, that having told me they'd want to film me going down into the vault ("How do you think you'll feel, seeing the skull for the first time?") and giving a potted account of Langston's story, they later decided to dispense with my services and film somebody else going down into the vault and describing Langston's story ... someone who <i>doesn't </i>think that the skull is Shakespeare's.<br />
<br />
Because as far as the director was concerned, the skull couldn't be Shakespeare's. The idea was too radical. It challenged her firmly-held set of beliefs about life, the universe and everything.<br />
<br />
<b><i>Stage 2: Confirmation Bias</i></b><br />
<br />
Having decided that the Beoley skull couldn't be - mustn't be - Shakespeare's, the documentary was prepped along those very lines.<br />
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Let's say you've heard or read something which challenges your deeply-held convictions, triggering cognitive dissonance. You want to fight back, to reassure yourself, to put your previous ideas back together and be comfortable with them again. So you go hunting for evidence.<br />
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Not any old evidence, of course. You look for the evidence that supports your point-of-view. Any other evidence, especially anything that confirms the thing you didn't like hearing, has to be ignored, denied, mocked or destroyed. What you want - what you need to overcome that uncomfortable feeling of cognitive dissonance - is anything that agrees with what you want to believe.<br />
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Anything else has to go.<br />
<br />
So, in comes the reassuring Shakespeare expert who told the church court hearing into the application to remove the skull for analysis that the Rev C.J. Langston's account of <i>How Shakespeare's Skull was Stolen and Found</i> was nothing but "Gothic fiction".<br />
<br />
Out goes the guy who provided you with evidence that the story was written by someone who knew what he was on about.<br />
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The original plan, to have an actor present the programme, is ditched. An actor might ask awkward questions. Instead, a historian is hired - one less likely to challenge the consensus - so as to give the show an air of irreproachable authority.<br />
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A facial reconstruction expert who had previously commented on the photos of the skull - and then denied ever having seen them - is approached with a laser scan of the Beoley skull. Though she is briefly glimpsed superimposing the scan of the skull over the Droeshout engraving of Shakespeare from the First Folio of 1623, this will not be discussed or commented upon in the show.<br />
<br />
(Before the crypt was opened and the scan was made, and before Dr Caroline Wilkinson had seen it, the director tried to convince me that Beoley and the skull would not form a significant part of the programme, that they weren't expecting any results, and when - shock horror! - I mentioned Dr Wilkinson, that she wouldn't be doing any facial reconstruction or anything else with the skull, for that matter. Would I mind signing a form and promising not to mention her name?)<br />
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The expert offers a tentative opinion based on insufficient evidence, and that is pounced on. PROOF, ladies and gentlemen! The proof we've all been waiting for! Everything we previously believed was true! The Beoley skull story was just a myth!<br />
<br />
(Except that, having scanned Shakespeare's grave in Stratford, Kevin Colls, archaeologist, began to suspect that the first half of Langston's story might, in fact, be true. He has vowed to keep looking for the missing skull. And good luck to him. He could spend the rest of his life doing that, now that the Beoley skull business has been kicked into the long grass. So, nothing to worry our pretty little heads about there, then.)<br />
<br />
I have very little doubt that, within a week or two of the director being appointed to oversee the making of the documentary, any hope that the skull would be properly examined had gone right out of the window. From that point on, the programme was essentially biased in one particular direction. The Beoley skull theory must be disproved, even if it means surrounding ourselves with people who don't believe it, discarding all the available evidence and any uncontrollable witnesses, asking one expert for their opinion, and then misrepresenting what that expert actually said.<br />
<br />
Of course, it would have made a better programme if the skull had not been so summarily debunked, and on the basis of hardly any evidence whatsoever.<br />
<br />
It would have made a much better programme. And it would have paved the way for a more intensive and detailed examination of the skull.<br />
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But that wouldn't have helped get rid of that nasty sense of cognitive dissonance, would it? So it didn't happen.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07579992524124124425noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350432428721365043.post-70088611965391660692016-03-27T12:34:00.000-07:002016-03-27T12:34:27.691-07:00History Repeats ItselfAt the start of <i>Who Killed William Shakespeare?</i> (the contract for which I signed four years ago today) I tried to explain how, in the second half of the 18th century, a metropolitan elite - or what we might now call "The Establishment" - seized control of Shakespeare's memory, rudely dismissing what the locals knew and creating their own version of events.<br />
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Significantly, they achieved this partly by losing as much evidence as possible and ignoring or misrepresenting the rest.<br />
<br />
Well, old habits die hard, and the net result of last night's Channel 4 documentary seems to have been as damaging, hopeless and borderline-farcical as David Garrick's infamous Shakespeare "Jubilee" of 1769. Back then, hordes of educated sophisticates descended on Stratford-upon-Avon, much to the alarm and consternation of the natives, who were abused and mocked by the visitors. Then Garrick went home and produced his own show, which made out that only he and his supporters really knew or cared about Shakespeare, and the locals up in Warwickshire were rustic clowns with no idea about Stratford's most famous son.<br />
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<i>Shakespeare's Tomb</i> spent an awful lot of its time showing us pretty pictures of Stratford. For some reason, a man who had conspired to try to prevent the documentary team from investigating the Beoley skull was given a prominent part in the programme as the authority on all things Shakespearean.<br />
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The programme stuck to the party line about the story published by the Rev C.J. Langston in 1879 and 1884 concerning the theft of Shakespeare's skull and its discovery at Beoley. Even though the programme makers had been given abundant evidence that the Vicar of Beoley had identified himself as the author of the story, and that a surprising number of details in the story are verifiable, that was all ignored.<br />
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The skull at Beoley was scanned and then Dr Helen Castor and Kevin Colls sat with Dr Caroline Wilkinson, who showed them the scan on her screen. The conversation went something like this:<br />
<br />
Wilkinson: "This little bit here suggests that it might be dark greyish."<br />
<br />
Castor: "So you're saying it's black?"<br />
<br />
Wilkinson: "Well, we have to be cautious ..."<br />
<br />
Castor: "No - you're saying it's black!"<br />
<br />
Cue press release: "Skull is black."<br />
<br />
I've altered the wording slightly. But when an osteoarchaeologist/biological anthropologist tweets: "I'm intrigued #ShakespearesTomb - how did you come to the conclusion it was a 70yr old woman?! Magic new ageing techniques?!" you do have to ask how conclusive the results really were.<br />
<br />
And the answer appears to be, not conclusive at all. But right there, on screen, the expert was cornered and forced to make a definitive statement which, as she had tried to point out, couldn't really be made. This instantly became a Truth Universally Acknowledged.<br />
<br />
Of course, if the programme-makers had bothered to explore the existing research into the similarities between the skull and the Shakespeare portraiture, as well as Rev C.J. Langston and his skull story, we'd have got something more nuanced. But they didn't want that. They didn't even want any <i>suggestions</i> from the one and only witness called. They wanted an Unequivocal Statement indicating that the skull is of no interest whatsoever, so we can all move on.<br />
<br />
In the meantime, the folks at Beoley seem to be up in arms over the way they've been treated (see comment under previous blog post). A geologist informs me that anyone who started a university paper claiming that Shakespeare's skull was stolen from the grave, based on the evidence shown in the programme, would be in very big trouble. And now I hear from somebody else who helped out with the documentary, but who went unpaid and uncredited.<br />
<br />
So what happened - apart from two years wasted (in my case)?<br />
<br />
The best I can suggest is that, for a good long while, as the documentary project was being developed, it was all in the hands of an intelligent and amicable person who worked hard to bring all the relevant parties together and to lay the foundations for a genuinely interesting, and potentially startling, investigative programme.<br />
<br />
Then a director was hired, along with a couple of producers. The development producer stepped aside. From that point on, things quickly began to unravel.<br />
<br />
It was as if the "metropolitan elite" had come to town, determined to put the locals back in their place. Yes, use them for as long as they're useful. Then dump them. They're not important. Their local knowledge and their research are irrelevant. They might as well be on zero-hours contracts. We don't need to worry about them.<br />
<br />
But the POSH people, the ones who've been on TV before, THEY'RE important. Better still, they can (by and large) be trusted not to stray from the script.<br />
<br />
Remember, we're not here to rock any boats, folks. Langston's story is <i>anonymous</i> - got it? The skull at Beoley? Pah! Who cares? Skull, no skull, what's the difference? Let's have some nice shots of Stratford, talk to some nice people, then back to London as quick as we can.<br />
<br />
And if an expert isn't being quite as emphatic as we'd like in denying a very promising lead, we can force her - Inquisition-like - to say what we want her to say, and we can do it on camera, just in case anybody else feels like being properly scientific about all this. No one will notice. The press release will already have told everybody what we want them to think. Now, where's my BAFTA?<br />
<br />
It's shocking to realise how much hard work and good will was completely and utterly trashed in such a short space of time, by people who were new to the project, and what an unashamedly wasted opportunity the programme turned out to be. Our knowledge of Shakespeare and the fate of his skull wasn't advanced one iota. If anything, we've gone backwards. And the programme-makers are surely patting themselves on the back for stirring up much ado about nothing and making a very pretty looking documentary that avoided upsetting their sophisticated metropolitan friends.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, the rest of us continue the ongoing work of trying to find out and publicise what really happened to Shakespeare and his skull.<br />
<br />
By the way - that subsidence in the chancel at Holy Trinity Church, under Shakespeare's gravestone? That's Will Shakespeare turning in his grave.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07579992524124124425noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350432428721365043.post-21471039376858552212016-03-24T07:33:00.000-07:002016-03-27T16:42:55.990-07:00I've Seen That Face BeforeIt is with great anticipation that we await the screening of the Channel 4 documentary <i>Shakespeare's Tomb</i> on Saturday evening. Apparently, said documentary has determined that the Beoley skull is that of an "unknown woman in her seventies" and not William Shakespeare after all.<br />
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Obviously, it would be wrong of me to prejudge the documentary without having seen it. And, for now, we can pass over the multiple similarities between the Beoley skull and the Shakespeare portraiture, which I have published and blogged about ad nauseam.<br />
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Instead, allow me to outline one area of concern I have regarding the identification of the skull.<br />
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Back in 2012, I was working on the manuscript for my book <i>Who Killed William Shakespeare?</i> in which there was a fair amount of discussion and analysis concerning Shakespeare portraiture, the Beoley skull and the supposed death mask of Shakespeare in Darmstadt. As well as spending a lot of time studying these images, I also went through the prolonged and costly process of acquiring permissions to reproduce some of those images in my book.<br />
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One image I had seen which intrigued me was a computer reconstruction of the face of the subject of the Darmstadt death mask. This reconstruction had been carried out by Dr Caroline Wilkinson of the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification at the University of Dundee. Dr Wilkinson is the media's go-to person for facial reconstruction from human remains.<br />
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I wrote to Dr Wilkinson on 20 August 2012, explaining that I was working on my book about Shakespeare and enquiring about the copyright status of the image she had previously created for a History Channel documentary - the reconstruction of the face from the death mask. In my letter I mentioned the photographs of the Beoley skull, which I had been studying, and offered to forward them to her. I also explained that I aimed to follow up the publication of my book with a documentary analysing the skull, the death mask and the portraiture, and rather hoped to be able to call upon her services for any such documentary.<br />
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I received no reply.<br />
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<i>Who Killed William Shakespeare? </i>was published about a year later. I had succeeded in negotiating the rights to the death mask reconstruction image through an agency - which made it the most expensive image in my book, by far. Very quickly, Lion Television, a documentary production company, expressed interest in following up the results of my research into the skull. However, they would need a little more hard evidence before approaching a broadcaster (the rule of thumb being that documentaries don't tend to film these things until they're pretty sure of what they're going to find).<br />
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The producer at Lion TV contacted Dr Wilkinson to ask if it were possible for a 3-D reconstruction of the Beoley skull to be made using 2-D photographic images, and if that could then be compared with the 3-D laser scan image she already had of the Darmstadt death mask. Dr Wilkinson confirmed that this was theoretically possible, and so she was invited to go ahead with the comparisons and Richard Peach's high-quality photos of the Beoley skull were sent up to Dundee.<br />
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We had a bit of a wait after that. The initial findings were positive - Caroline Wilkinson concluded that there were "superficial similarities" between the skull and the death mask. However, when she and/or her research students measured the orbits of the eye sockets of the death mask and the skull, they determined that there was no obvious match.<br />
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A bit of a blow, that, because it meant that the project with Lion TV ground to a halt. However, I soon made contact, through a research student in biological anthropology, with a research fellow who showed immediate interest in the skull and the comparisons with the Shakespeare portraiture.<br />
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At the same time, I discovered that documentary makers from Arrow Media had very recently visited Beoley church in connection with a documentary on Shakespeare that they were developing. This is the documentary which is due out this Saturday.<br />
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I worked fairly closely with Arrow Media over a period of about a year and a half, although bizarrely I was not invited to present evidence at the church court held to determine whether or not the Beoley skull should be "exhumed" for laboratory analysis - although I had been called in to help them prepare for the hearing. The programme makers subsequently told me that Dr Caroline Wilkinson would be brought in to carry out a facial reconstruction of the skull based on a laser scan which would be made in the vault at Beoley.<br />
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When the development producer for the programme explained that they would want to bring in experts who had no previous connection with the material, and no way of knowing that we were investigating the possibility that the skull was Shakespeare's, to examine the relevant evidence, I felt it necessary to point out that Dr Wilkinson had already seen the photos of the skull in 2013-14, and would recognise them as part of a Shakespeare-related investigation. The producer thanked me for letting them know and suggested that they might look instead for an expert in the United States who would be in no way prejudiced about the case.<br />
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A short while later, the producer assured me that Caroline Wilkinson had not seen the photos. She had denied all knowledge of them.<br />
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Which struck me as odd. It meant that, either her earlier statement regarding the skull/death mask mismatch was questionable, because she hadn't actually seen the photos of the skull ... or that she was not being entirely frank with the Arrow Media documentary team.<br />
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There's a coda to all this: when I finally discovered that I was no longer to play a part in the <i>Shakespeare's Tomb </i>documentary, the recently-appointed director tried to assure me that Beoley and the skull would not be playing a large part in the documentary, that they weren't spending much time on it, and they didn't expect to be able to reveal any results about it. I raised the question of what Dr Caroline Wilkinson would be doing then, given that it's a long way to travel, all the way to Dundee (<i><u>correction</u></i>: Dr Wilkinson is now at Liverpool John Moores University), just to feature a facial reconstruction expert not doing any facial reconstruction.<br />
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The line went rather quiet, and then a bit of stammering happened. Caroline Wilkinson, I was told, wasn't really going to be doing very much at all in the documentary. Certainly nothing in the nature of a facial reconstruction.<br />
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And then the director rang back. If I wanted to pop over to Beoley, go down into the vault and see the skull (for the first time) during a break in the filming, I would have to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement. Was I prepared to do that? And if I did, of course, I would not be allowed to mention Caroline Wilkinson to anybody (those were the director's words).<br />
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In the end, I did not sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement. I felt that I had been elbowed out of my own story, after I had spent many hours helping the documentary along, and was now being bribed into silence with the offer of a chance to see the skull - the skull which I had spent more than four years studying.<br />
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I raise these matters here because I believe they are germane to the issue of the skull and the (provisional?) identification of the skull as that of an "unknown woman in her seventies". Presumably, that is based on the opinion of an expert who had already seen and passed judgement on the photos of the skull, and whom I was asked not to talk about.<br />
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No other evidence was considered - including the rather extensive body of evidence which I have marshalled over the past four years, and which I have published and talked about in illustrated lectures.<br />
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Is it just me, or does something seem not-quite-right about all this?<br />
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(PS: viewers of the programme would have seen Dr Wilkinson offer opinions about possible age and gender of skull, only to have those magically transformed ON SCREEN into incontrovertible statements of fact by a historian. That's not how science works - or history, for that matter. Worse, a genuine investigation with abundant research already on its side has now been set back by an irresponsible and woefully inaccurate documentary, though hopefully not irremediably. <i>Ed.</i>)<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07579992524124124425noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350432428721365043.post-19560527732599897122016-03-22T18:44:00.000-07:002016-03-22T20:46:33.107-07:00Shakespeare's TombWell, the wait is nearly over. Channel 4 TV started showing a trailer, this evening, for the forthcoming documentary, <i>Shakespeare's Tomb</i>. You can view the trailer <a href="https://youtu.be/cOfvLTSgmME" target="_blank">here.</a><br />
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So a tense few days lie ahead. What do we know? Well, judging by the trailer, the team from Arrow Media and the University of Staffordshire spent quite a bit of time in the vault beneath the Sheldon Chapel at Beoley, and then working with Caroline Wilkinson (University of Dundee) on some sort of analysis of the laser scan that was made of the skull when the team were in the vault.<br />
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(Incidentally, the documentary producer tried to convince me that they really weren't devoting much time or attention to the Beoley skull, and I was asked to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement to stop me mentioning that Caroline Wilkinson was involved in the programme.)<br />
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Elsewhere, the <i>Telegraph </i>recently revealed that <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/12184086/Shakespeares-grave-to-be-radar-scanned-despite-famous-curse.html" target="_blank">Shakespeare's grave is to be subjected to a high-tech laser scan</a> - apparently, a follow-up to the scan performed last year, the results of which will be revealed in the Channel 4 documentary (one instantly wonders what the "initial" scan failed to reveal). So something's afoot.<br />
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Anyway, the <i>Shakespeare's Tomb</i> documentary will be aired in the UK this Saturday - 26 March 2016 - at 8.00pm. Regular readers of this blog will recognise the skull in the vault at Beoley, and will probably have some idea of the background to the documentary. More background to the story is currently being researched - and some interesting things have already been found. <br />
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But for those who don't know much about the background, and why the <i><b>only researcher ever to have studied the skull and published his findings was excluded from the Channel 4 documentary</b></i>, allow me to include <a href="http://juliarobb.com/tag/simon-stirling/" target="_blank">this link to an interview I did with Julia Robb in Texas</a>, which lifts the lid on some rather shifty behaviour.<br />
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Watch this space ...<br />
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(PS: just in case link to the trailer does not work, <a href="http://www.channel4.com/programmes/shakespeares-tomb/videos/all/trailer" target="_blank">here's another one.</a>)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07579992524124124425noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350432428721365043.post-72654097825515571842016-03-14T09:47:00.001-07:002016-03-14T09:47:45.573-07:00Historical Honey is Back!Those wonderful honeys have relaunched their Historical Honey website. <br />
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First up, a piece by yours truly, flagging up a rather interesting development concerning a certain disarticulated human skull, an archaeologist from the University of Staffordshire, and a forthcoming Channel 4 documentary.<br />
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Read all about it <a href="http://historicalhoney.com/the-secrets-of-shakespeares-skull/" target="_blank">here.</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07579992524124124425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350432428721365043.post-33003821992081460642016-02-25T08:51:00.000-08:002016-02-25T08:51:08.020-08:00Research or Resistance? My History Press Blog PieceWell, it's been an interesting couple of weeks, with a lot more excitement to come.<br />
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For now, allow me to post a link to a piece I wrote for the History Press blog, entitled: <a href="http://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/articles/why-is-shakespeares-real-life-and-his-death-so-undebatable/" target="_blank">"Why is Shakespeare's real life (and his death) so undebatable?"</a><br />
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It kind of looks at some of my experiences while researching various aspects of Shakespeare's life (and death) and wonders why so many historians haven't done that research.<br />
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Happy reading!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07579992524124124425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350432428721365043.post-49933247571083490382016-02-18T08:39:00.000-08:002016-02-18T08:39:04.279-08:00Two Wills, Two Brows<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It all kicked off in <i>The Times </i>on Monday, with a piece entitled "Lowbrow clue that poet was Shakespeare's secret son". Not entirely a surprise: Dominic Kennedy, Investigations Editor, had already been in touch with me, and rather charmingly said, "I really enjoyed this book [<i>Shakespeare's Bastard: The Life of Sir William Davenant</i>] and congratulate you on your research."<br />
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And then, the story went everywhere. And, predictably, the backlash started straightaway.<br />
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Out of a book of some 95,000 words, Dominic Kennedy had zeroed in on two key issues. One is Shakespeare's Sonnet 126, "O Thou my lovely Boy", which I suggest might have been written to the infant William Davenant, Shakespeare's "godson" and, in all probability, his actual son.<br />
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The other is the matter of the drooping eyebrow. Both Sir William Davenant and William Shakespeare appear to have had left eyebrows which drooped. As this condition, known as ptosis, can be inherited, I had included the information in <i>Shakespeare's Bastard</i>, albeit in all of about three sentences.<br />
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If I was a little taken aback that the eyebrow comparisons should have attracted so much attention, I have been even more surprised that a largely unknown portrait, said to be of Davenant as a young man, should have been given so much exposure. The portrait (above, photographed by Keith Barnes) hangs in the Fellows' Common Room at Davenant's old Oxford college, Lincoln, and was all but forgotten. The only accepted image of Davenant was the engraving by William Faithorne, based on a lost portrait, which adorned the title page of Davenant's <i>Works</i>, published in 1673:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSku323e8it60VCjLxina3tSrhlKRU7O2JUOiRFeipv5eSqAe2RaBo_vxQ4KAwMsAXhSlrA2NCF6VrXZP9NeG8Ji8LF-9L_ftQQQfUIvugjy7F3J_g5ddKua_roV3kQMns7popAhbqgF_J/s1600/William_Davenant.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSku323e8it60VCjLxina3tSrhlKRU7O2JUOiRFeipv5eSqAe2RaBo_vxQ4KAwMsAXhSlrA2NCF6VrXZP9NeG8Ji8LF-9L_ftQQQfUIvugjy7F3J_g5ddKua_roV3kQMns7popAhbqgF_J/s320/William_Davenant.jpg" width="209" /></a></div>
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Frankly, I prefer the Lincoln College portrait, even if the provenance is uncertain. But it's worth returning to the Faithorne engraving because, as it focuses on the left side of Davenant's face, the misshapen left eyebrow is more clearly visible than it is in the portrait:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7FLq8899q4lY2mVnj_ULBu0MvIwkhnSNTMVclkGx0ryWOstKtXNZyTP0X_d1A8K0ba1cJPfATvM0fvgXbIYWXqNVlFrBxmbdSVI31OyxJCftCM7zDzU2Rjd1fYVzzF0PHmBXoJCsVQT2j/s1600/William_Davenant+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7FLq8899q4lY2mVnj_ULBu0MvIwkhnSNTMVclkGx0ryWOstKtXNZyTP0X_d1A8K0ba1cJPfATvM0fvgXbIYWXqNVlFrBxmbdSVI31OyxJCftCM7zDzU2Rjd1fYVzzF0PHmBXoJCsVQT2j/s1600/William_Davenant+%25282%2529.jpg" /></a></div>
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Okay, so let's go back to Shakespeare. The subject of Shakespeare's left eye had much preoccupied me while writing <i>Who Killed William Shakespeare?</i> (The History Press, 2013). One thing that is clear from such portraits as the Chandos (National Portrait Gallery) and the Droeshout engraving from the First Folio is that there was something wrong with the outside corner of Shakespeare's left eye socket:</div>
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(* An x-ray of the Chandos portrait, reproduced at the bottom of this piece, illustrates the peculiarity of the left eye, the shading indicating some sort of abnormality in the left eyebrow.)<br />
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Close inspection of those images, and comparison with the Beoley skull - which will soon hit the world's media, by way of a Channel 4 documentary - suggested that the extreme corner of Shakespeare's left eye socket was damaged, probably very shortly before his death. However, that does not necessarily explain the oddity of Shakespeare's left eye as it appears in many portraits.</div>
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In several portraits thought to be of Shakespeare, the artists appear to have struggled with the left eye, making it look lower than the right eye, as if the shape of the eyebrow demanded an adjustment to the placing of the left eye - as below, in the Grafton, Janssen, and Coblitz portraits:</div>
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If these portraits appear to "drop" the left eye, in order to accommodate the deformed left eyebrow, the Soest portrait takes a different approach, squashing the left eye somewhat:</div>
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Two portraits which arguably do a better job of representing the swollen "droop" or overhang of Shakespeare's left eyebrow are the Cobbe and the Wadlow:</div>
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The fold of the overhanging left eyebrow is surely unmistakable in these images, the first trumpeted by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust as Shakespeare, the second identified by yours truly as a portrait of Shakespeare in my paper for Goldsmiths, <a href="http://www.gold.ac.uk/glits-e/glits-e2013-2014/the-faces-of-shakespeare-revealing-shakespeares-/" target="_blank">The Faces of Shakespeare</a>.</div>
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The question of what was going on with Shakespeare's left eyebrow was first raised for me by a research student in biological anthropology. Perusing the images I had of the Beoley skull and assorted Shakespeare busts and portraits, including the Darmstadt death mask, the student noticed something:</div>
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<i>... if you look at both temples on the skull, you may notice that the left temple is more "bumpy" than the right. This happens in areas where the bone needs to hold on to the soft tissue more than it normally would. If there was scar tissue in that area, that would explain why the temple bone is "bumpy" on the left and not the right. The scar tissue need not be on the skin, it could be in the muscle or facia (the stuff that holds the muscle on to the bone ...) Scar tissue often makes a depressed area in the skin so that would explain the depression behind the left eye in the portraiture. There are also a few ways this can occur developmentally with essentially the same results.</i><br />
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"And interestingly," she added, "the Davenant Bust has fatty deposits (we all have them) across all of his right eyebrow, only half of his left (near facial midline). If this is true, it would fit. Fatty tissue often doesn't grow in regions where there is scar tissue."<br />
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Evidently, seen through the eyes of a biological anthropologist, the "bumpy" texture of the bone above the left eye of the Beoley skull (above, from a photo by Richard Peach, 2009) corresponds with the imbalance of the fatty tissue of the eyebrows, visible on the Davenant Bust of Shakespeare (Garrick Club). A significant amount of the fatty tissue above Shakespeare's left eye was, apparently, missing, causing the bone to become "bumpy" as it sought to hold on to the skin.</div>
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The clue seemed to be the presence of a scar, clearly visible in a photo of the Beoley skull taken in about 1939, and also on the portraiture (the Wadlow replicates this scar exactly):<br />
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So, it appeared at first that a scar above Shakespeare's left eyebrow might have displaced the fatty tissue, causing the bone to become "bumpy" and the eyebrow to "droop" (it might have been this scar that the poet Ted Hughes had in mind when he wrote in a letter to Nicholas Hagger, "But what do you think of the deep scar on Shake's left temple (in the Chandos, & on the [death] mask)." - I'm grateful to Deivis Garcia of Jersey City for pointing that out to me). Obviously, this scar had been a long-term feature of Shakespeare's appearance, because the bone of the skull had adapted to the lack of fatty tissue, and was therefore unrelated to the manner of his death.<br />
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The problem came when I was analysing the Davenant portraits. The Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford - who, along with the Fellows, was kind enough to give me permission to reproduce the portrait in <i>Shakespeare's Bastard</i> - was unconvinced that the portrait at Lincoln was of Davenant. Comparing the portrait with the Faithorne engraving (the latter post-dating the syphilis which ravaged Davenant's nose), I became fairly convinced that the chin, lips and cheekbones offered a pretty good match:<br />
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But what to make of that slightly odd fold over the left eye in the Faithorne engraving? Although the left eye is less visible in the Lincoln College portrait, the left eyebrow does seem to descend at a rather steep angle, apparently matching the swollen or drooping left eyebrow seen in the engraving.<br />
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If Shakespeare's eyebrow was made to droop by a wound, the scar from which caused the fatty deposits of the eyebrow to slip, then that feature could not have been inherited. Whereas, if the drooping left eyebrow was caused by something else - one of the other ways that the loss or displacement of the fatty tissue could occur developmentally - then perhaps it was an inherited feature.<br />
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Such a drooping of the eyebrow as can be seen in the Davenant and Shakespeare portraiture is known as "ptosis". It can be an autosomal dominant inheritance, meaning that a single copy of the relevant gene is enough to cause the defect. Even if the mother had no such mutation, the fact that the father had it would mean that it was passed on to the child.<br />
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Hence my remark, in <i>Shakespeare's Bastard</i>, concerning the line in Ben Jonson's 1623 poem to Shakespeare in the First Folio: "<i>Looke how the fathers face / Lives in his issue ...</i>" When Ben Jonson wrote those words, William Davenant was already settled in London and working for the sister-in-law of Ben Jonson's patron. <br />
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Might not Davenant's drooping left eyebrow have produced in Ben Jonson a shock of recognition, that the father's face had lived on in his issue - given that Ben would have been familiar with the unusual shape of Shakespeare's left eyebrow caused, it would seem, by congenital ptosis?<br />
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(* X-ray of the Chandos portrait:)<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07579992524124124425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350432428721365043.post-39826624841535372432016-01-28T08:00:00.000-08:002016-01-28T08:00:05.439-08:00Breaking my SilenceHi, folks!<br />
<br />
Julia Robb is a Texas-based writer. I've known her - online - for a while now, and have reviewed a couple of her books, which I thoroughly enjoyed.<br />
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She's passionate about Shakespeare and has been very interested in developments since <i>Who Killed William Shakespeare?</i> was published in 2013.<br />
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Now she's interviewed me for her website/blog about Shakespeare, the Beoley skull, and the forthcoming Channel 4 documentary which will feature the skull. It's a pretty free and frank, no-holds-barred interview, and you can read it here:<br />
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<a href="http://juliarobb.com/blog/skull-duggery-battle-william-shakespeare/" target="_blank">Skull-Duggery - Julia Robb interview with Simon Stirling</a><br />
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So I'm no longer biting my tongue, and the truth is out there.<br />
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Meanwhile, my very first copy of <i>Shakespeare's Bastard: The Life of Sir William Davenant</i> is on its way to me from The History Press.<br />
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All in all, it's going to be an interesting time ...Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07579992524124124425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350432428721365043.post-15067323153242777312016-01-18T07:06:00.001-08:002016-01-18T07:11:09.137-08:002016: Year of the Skull and the BastardBelated New Year greetings!<br />
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You know, I've a feeling that it's going to be quite a year. Come April, we'll be hearing a <b>lot</b> about Shakespeare, it being the 400th anniversary of his death.<br />
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Before then, my latest book - <i>Shakespeare's Bastard: The Life of Sir William Davenant </i>- will be published by The History Press. And we can also look forward to a documentary, to be broadcast on Channel 4 here in the UK, which will show the very skull, hidden in a crypt under St Leonard's Church, Beoley, which might well be Shakespeare's (long time followers of this blog will know something about this skull already, as will anyone who's read <i>Who Killed William Shakespeare?</i>). So there's a lot to look forward to in just the first four months of this year.<br />
<br />
In anticipation of which, I take great pleasure in linking the reader to a <a href="http://superscholar.org/shakespeare-in-pop-culture/" target="_blank">fascinating and colourful infographic</a> on the subject of "Shakespeare in Pop Culture". This was sent to me, a little while ago now, by Roslyn Willson, and it is with great thanks to Roslyn that I include the link <a href="http://superscholar.org/shakespeare-in-pop-culture/" target="_blank">here.</a><br />
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Enjoy!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07579992524124124425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350432428721365043.post-44155116484549624782015-12-04T06:47:00.000-08:002015-12-04T06:47:28.568-08:00Shakespeare's Skull - Latest<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Working through the proofs of my Davenant book, <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shakespeares-Bastard-Life-William-Davenant/dp/0750961074/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1449237983&sr=8-1&keywords=shakespeare%27s+bastard" target="_blank">"Shakespeare's Bastard"</a>, due out in February, and coming to the sections which deal with St Leonard's Church, Beoley, the Sheldon Chapel, and the "veritable skull of William Shakespeare" ...<br />
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It's been an interesting week, as far as "Shakespeare's Skull" goes. The crypt in which it resides was opened up, this Tuesday, and the skull scanned by archaeologists from the University of Staffordshire. All this was filmed for a Channel 4 documentary, due to be aired in April.<br />
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I didn't get to see the crypt, pictured above in a photo from circa 1939, so I didn't get to see the skull either. But here I am, going through the passages on Beoley and the skull in <i>Shakespeare's Bastard</i>,<i></i> and I turn to an endnote I made about Anthony Wood, an Oxford antiquarian who wrote about Sir William Davenant.<br />
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Anthony Wood's close friend and benefactor was "The Great Sheldon", Ralph (1623-84), whose grandfather (also called Ralph) built the Sheldon Chapel alongside the chancel of Beoley church. It was in the elder Ralph Sheldon's funerary urn, deposited in a small ossuary adjoining the vault underneath the Sheldon Chapel, that the Reverend C.J. Langston apparently found the "veritable skull of William Shakespeare" in about 1884.<br />
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Wood attended the burial of his patron, "The Great Sheldon", which took place "in a vault situate & being under the Chappell of our Lady joining to St Leonards Church of Beoly". Presumably, then, Anthony Wood saw the crypt, under the Sheldon Chapel, in which Ralph Sheldon was laid to rest. Maybe he also saw Shakespeare's skull in there.<br />
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Although the Sheldon Chapel itself was built by the elder Ralph Sheldon in 1580, there is little to indicate when the crypt underneath it was constructed. The assumption tends to be that the chapel came first, and at a later date - before 1684, the year in which "The Great Sheldon" was buried in it - the crypt was constructed underneath the chapel. But is that necessarily the case?<br />
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The elder Ralph Sheldon appears to have built the Sheldon Chapel (or Chapel of Our Lady, as Anthony Wood seems to have thought of it) strictly for the use of his own family. It was invisible from the road but accessible from the Sheldons' manor house nearby. The Sheldons were Catholic, and no doubt wanted a chapel to worship in (the black marble altar table in the Sheldon Chapel was reputedly blessed by Pope Gregory XIII). However, the law required everyone to attend a Church of England place of worship. Cunningly, Ralph Sheldon created a chapel which would allow his Catholic family to <i>appear</i> to be attending an Anglican church, as the law required, without actually setting foot in an Anglican church. They attended, rather, their own Catholic chapel, alongside the Anglican chancel. Clever, eh?<br />
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But what if a priest had been celebrating Mass in the Sheldon Chapel? What if the family had been in attendance? Where would they hide in the event of a government raid?<br />
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The obvious answer would be - <i>under the chapel</i>.<i></i> Access to the crypt is by removing a couple of steps which lead up to the Sheldon Chapel (the chapel, like the adjacent chancel, being a fair deal higher than the body of the church). Today, concrete steps lead up to the chapel, and these had to be removed to allow Arrow Media to film the skull inside the crypt this week. Previously, the steps would have been stone or, more probably, wood.<br />
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Examples exist of priest-holes which were accessed via "false" steps in staircases. A step or two would be removed, or swung on a hinge, to open up the secret entrance to the hiding place. Steps would also have to have been installed to connect the main body of the church to the Sheldon Chapel, and so it would be reasonable to expect that these stairs could have been designed to "open up", allowing access to the secret vault underneath the chapel to those who knew about it.<br />
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So, if the G-Men suddenly appeared, surrounding the church and its Catholic chapel, any priest or celebrant in the Catholic chapel could quickly disappear into the vault beneath the chapel, and the pursuivants would find the chapel empty.<br />
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The vault is large enough to hold a number of people, possibly for quite some length of time. It would need to have been somewhat more capacious than the average priest-hole if it might have to accommodate several celebrants, plus a priest, all at once. Only later did the readymade crypt become a handy burial vault for the family that built it.<br />
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A gap in the wall of the crypt opens into the little ossuary adjoining it - the "bone-house" in which the skull which looks suspiciously like it might be Shakespeare's was "found". This can be thought of as an additional hiding place - a cramped "priest-hole" of last resort, in which a small priest could hide if the entrance to the vault was discovered. It could also have been a repository for all that Catholic paraphernalia (rosaries, vestments, prayer books, candles, etc.) which could not be safely hidden anywhere else. Everything needed for an illicit Catholic Mass in the Sheldon Chapel would be stored directly underneath it, and if it all went wrong, the priest - and some of his flock - could hide in the vault till the priest-hunters had gone.</div>
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I suspect, then, that the crypt and the ossuary were constructed at the same time as the chapel above, but not as a burial vault. They were hiding places.</div>
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Shakespeare's head, collected after his sudden death - probably by his first love, Anne Whately, whose relatives were supported by the Sheldons of Beoley, and whose family name appears in various parts of the church, including on a churchwardens' chest in the Sheldon Chapel - would have been taken to Beoley church <i>because</i> there was a safe hiding place under the Sheldon Chapel. It would have joined those priestly items necessary to hold a Mass in the chapel above.</div>
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There could have been no safer or more sacred a place for such an extraordinary relic as the head of the Catholic martyr, William Shakespeare.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07579992524124124425noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350432428721365043.post-82232406686348101092015-11-24T16:28:00.001-08:002015-11-24T16:30:17.558-08:00I'm Not Going to Say "I told you so ..."More than three years after <i>The King Arthur Conspiracy</i> <i></i>was published, the British media have been all over this story (<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/nov/23/glastonbury-myths-made-up-by-12th-century-monks" target="_blank">representative sample from The Guardian</a>).<br />
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Apparently, a research team from the University of Reading have concluded that the monks of Glastonbury made up the story that King Arthur was buried there, and an awful lot more besides.<br />
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I said as much in <i>The King Arthur Conspiracy </i>(<i></i>and, incidentally, in <i>The Grail</i>,<i></i> published earlier this year). So - vindicated!<br />
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Wonder what else the media will suddenly discover in the coming months, that I also wrote about a few years back ...<br />
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(Watch this space)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07579992524124124425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350432428721365043.post-83670747228189617012015-11-24T09:29:00.001-08:002015-11-24T09:29:22.009-08:00Heads Up: Shakespeare's BastardJust came across this on the <a href="http://www.foyles.co.uk/witem/biography/shakespeares-bastard-the-life-of,simon-andrew-stirling-9780750961073" target="_blank">Foyle's website</a>.<br />
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<i>Shakespeare's Bastard: The Life of Sir William Davenant</i> <i></i>by Yours Truly is now available for pre-order. And it'll be published on my birthday!<br />
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That makes me strangely happy.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07579992524124124425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350432428721365043.post-25418510059575829932015-11-03T18:15:00.000-08:002015-11-03T18:15:37.919-08:00Shakespeare's Skull - Setting the Record StraightThe news broke on Sunday evening. <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/11968936/Shakespeares-skull-rumours-DNA-testing-barred-by-Church.html" target="_blank">Could Shakespeare's skull have been found? Why Church ruling means we may never know</a> ran the headline in <i>The Telegraph</i>.<i></i> Since then, the story has gone around the globe.<br />
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It came as a surprise, partly because those of us involved in the story have been keeping pretty quiet about how it's all going (hence the lack of blogging in recent months) and partly because it is, in fact, old news.<br />
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I was informed - by a TV producer - back in March that the Chancellor of the Diocese of Worcester had turned down our application for a faculty to remove the rogue skull in the ossuary beneath the Sheldon Chapel at Beoley for forensic analysis. That judgement came after a consistory court hearing, paid for by the TV production company and held as a sort of appeal against the Chancellor's previous ruling, made some six months before, that we had no real grounds to justify the exhumation of the skull.<br />
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I'll come back to the Chancellor and his rulings in a minute. The first question, I guess, is: why did the news suddenly break this weekend, when the decision to deny us the faculty was made months ago?<br />
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I can only suggest that it's because a TV documentary is about to go into production, with the story of the Beoley skull playing a part in that forthcoming documentary. And, I suspect, somebody is out to scupper that documentary, and its findings, before the camera even starts rolling.<br />
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Some background: I first picked up a hint that Shakespeare's skull might not be in Stratford ten years ago. After a while, I tracked down the story - and I've been working on it, one way or another, ever since.<br />
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Charles Jones was born in Alcester, Warwickshire, in 1837, the son of an attorney. He grew up in Alcester, and the neighbouring parish of Wixford, and studied theology in Birmingham before taking holy orders. By the 1870s, he was Rector of the small parish of Sevington, close to Ashford in Kent.<br />
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It was while he was in Sevington that, in 1879, he did two interesting things. First, according to <i>The Times</i> <i></i>of 26 September 1879, he changed his name, adopting his mother's maiden name of Langston. Secondly, he published a story in the <i>Argosy</i> <i></i>magazine, that October, under the nom de plume of "A Warwickshire Man".<br />
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Langston's extraordinary tale was entitled, "How Shakespeare's Skull was Stolen". It described how a local doctor had been inspired by a conversation around the dinner table at Ragley Hall to steal Shakespeare's skull from the grave in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford. This was apparently because Horace Walpole, the antiquarian, had offered George Selwyn MP 300 guineas if the latter could acquire the skull of Will Shakespeare for him during David Garrick's farcical Shakespeare "Jubilee" in 1769. According to Langston, Dr Frank Chambers recruited three local ne'er-do-wells and stole the skull, but could not agree terms with Horace Walpole. Chambers arranged for the skull to be returned to its grave, although the story ended with some doubt in the air as to whether this had actually happened.<br />
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Langston's story did not come out of nowhere. There was something of an international debate raging at the time, initiated in part by Hermann Schaaffhausen, Professor of Anatomy at the University of Bonn, who in 1875 published a piece calling for Shakespeare's skull to be exhumed. Others were equally keen to examine the skull of the Bard, principally to know what he looked like and to compare the skull with the supposed death mask of Shakespeare, which is now in the library at Darmstadt Castle. Langston's story appears to have been a deliberate attempt to attract attention to the possibility that Shakespeare's skull was not in the grave at Holy Trinity Church after all.<br />
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Rev. C.J. Langston had to wait a few years before someone took the bait. Then, in 1883, the Shakespeare scholar Clement Mansfield Ingleby published his own proposal to disinter Shakespeare's Bones. In a footnote, Ingleby praised <i>How Shakespeare's Skull was Stolen </i>b<i></i>y "A Warwickshire Man" for its amazing "<i>vraisemblance</i>" - its likelihood, or believability. All bar the concluding part of the story which, Ingleby felt, wasn't up to scratch.<br />
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C.M. Ingleby was rewarded with a letter from Rev. C.J. Langston, sent from the Vicarage at Beoley, Worcestershire, and dated 2 January 1884. In this letter - a copy of which I have received from the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C. - Langston identified himself as the "compiler" of <i>How Shakespeare's Skull was Stolen</i> <i></i>(thereby undermining the claims that "A Warwickshire Man" has never been identified) and added, "Further revelations are in progress which will probably set at rest this much agitated question." That question being, should Shakespeare's skull be exhumed from his Stratford grave?<br />
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Langston was as good as his word. Later that year - 1884 - he published an engaging booklet, price one shilling, which he entitled, "How Shakespeare's Skull was Stolen and Found". The first part was merely a reprint of the story he had published in the <i>Argosy</i>,<i></i> five years earlier. The second part described how the narrator had finally tracked "THE VERITABLE SKULL OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE" down to a private family vault beneath a chapel in an "outlandish parish". That chapel was the Sheldon Chapel, built in about 1580 by Ralph Sheldon on the side of St Leonard's Church, Beoley - the very church of which Langston was now the Vicar.<br />
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Langston's story is without doubt intriguing. There were two important aspects, in particular, which struck me when I first read it. They chimed with my own research into Shakespeare. And so I resolved to dig a little deeper.<br />
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After several weeks spent combing through census records and the like, I had discovered that most of the individuals named in Langston's remarkably detailed accounts had been real people and were in the area during the period in which Langston's story was set. These included some extremely obscure local personages - like the grave-robbers recruited by Dr Frank Chambers - and an ancestor of Langston's, Lieutenant Joseph Langston of the Royal Marines, who appears to have been a close friend of Frank Chambers's. The places were real, and the people were real ... so could the story have been true?<br />
<br />
Well, no. I doubted it very much - and Langston himself was cagey about how much of his story was fact and how much was fiction. All the same, a Church of England clergyman had, over the space of five years, published two halves of a minutely detailed and meticulously researched account of how Shakespeare's skull had been tracked down to the funerary urn which once held the viscera of Ralph Sheldon. Ralph Sheldon, a wealthy Catholic, died three years before Shakespeare and was related to him by marriage, via the Sheldon-Throckmorton-Arden nexus of Catholic families in the Midlands.<br />
<br />
It was only after I had started putting together the manuscript for <i>Who Killed William Shakespeare? The Murderer, The Motive, The Means </i>(<i></i>The History Press, 2013) that I discovered, to my surprise, that there is a spare skull in the ossuary beneath the Sheldon Chapel at Beoley. Better still, that skull had been photographed by Richard Peach for <i>The Village</i>,<i></i> a local magazine, in September 2009. Peach had been put onto the story by Morris Jephcott, a villager who now lies buried in Beoley churchyard. Like others in the village, Jephcott believed the story of the skull to be substantially true.<br />
<br />
When I first saw Richard Peach's excellent photos, my eye was drawn to two parts of the skull. My research had already suggested that there should be some sort of damage or discoloration to Shakespeare's right forehead, just above the eye. And then there is the evidence of the Droeshout and Chandos portraits of Shakespeare, which both show a distinct swelling on the outside edge of the left eyebrow.<br />
<br />
Startlingly, there was an area of actual damage and discoloration clearly visible on the right side of the skull, above the right eye, and on the outside edge of the left eyebrow, where the bone is broken, jagged burrs poke out in the exact same spot where, in the Droeshout and Chandos images, there is clear evidence of a noticeable swelling or injury.<br />
<br />
Over the next nine months, while I wrote <i>Who Killed William Shakespeare?</i>,<i></i> I went back to the photos of the skull time and time again, comparing them with the death mask and portraits of Shakespeare. I met Richard Peach and studied the photos he had taken of the skull in as much detail as I could. Little by little, I spotted more distinguishing features and anomalies, linking the skull to the Shakespeare images, which I graphically illustrated in my book:<br />
<br />
Such as the thin scar across the bridge of the nose on the death mask, which seems to correspond to a couple of small, triangular puncture wounds on the inside of the left eye socket. It would appear that a sharp pointed weapon - a poniard - was driven into the eye socket here, forcing the left eyeball forward (hence the "wall-eye" look in the Shakespeare portraits);<br />
<br />
Or the distinctive depression, high up on the forehead, very near the top of the frontal bone, which looks a bit like a crater on the skull and is clearly visible in the Shakespeare portraiture (including the so-called Davenant Bust of Shakespeare, which belongs to the Garrick Club, and the half-length effigy of Shakespeare in his funerary monument in Holy Trinity, Stratford, not to mention the Droeshout engraving in the First Folio, which replicates the depression very faithfully);<br />
<br />
Or the strange jagged lines running down and across the cheeks of the death mask and the Chandos portrait (National Portrait Gallery), amongst others, which appear to show the damage to the cheekbones and maxilla (upper jaw) instantly visible on the skull;<br />
<br />
And so on. In March 2014, I was invited to give a paper on these matters, which I entitled, "The Faces of Shakespeare", at Goldsmiths, University of London. That paper was later published in the university's GLITS online journal.<br />
<br />
By then, I already knew that a television documentary company was looking into all of this, with a great deal of willing help and co-operation from the Vicar and churchwardens of St Leonard's, Beoley. Plans were drawn up to extricate the skull and subject it to a range of scientific examinations, including radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis. The application was submitted to the Diocese, with the full support of the church, for a faculty to remove the skull for laboratory tests.<br />
<br />
Sadly, although the advisers to the Chancellor (chief legal officer) of the Diocese were rather in favour of the project, Sir Charles Mynors - the Chancellor himself - was sceptical. As such, he was only doing his job, and I believe he did so as assiduously as anyone could want. It would have been natural and proper for him to have sought the opinions and advice of leading Shakespeare experts. And I have no doubt whatsoever that they gravely misled him.<br />
<br />
I know of no one who has looked into Langston's story, researched it, and followed it through to an analysis of the skull identified by Langston as Shakespeare's. No one. Until, that is, I undertook that research myself, publishing the results in <i>Who Killed William Shakespeare?</i> <i></i>and <i>The Faces of Shakespeare</i> <i></i>(plus, I might add, in my forthcoming biography of Sir William Davenant, due out next February). No one has ever looked into this. Nobody from Stratford, to the best of my knowledge, has ever shown the slightest interest in Langston and his story or been moved - by curiosity, if nothing else - to inspect the skull. No one.<br />
<br />
Rather, the line coming out of Stratford has been consistent. The experts don't want to believe the story, so they rubbish it. They pretend that it's "folklore" (which it isn't), that the skull was returned to Stratford (which it wasn't), and that Langston only published his story to raise money for the restoration of the church (which doesn't stand up to reasonable scrutiny). Indeed, there are reasons for believing that Langston made little if any impact with or money from his publication, and certainly not enough to repair his church, if a rather forlorn and desperate letter he sent to James Orchard Halliwell-Phillips in 1887 is anything to go by (I have a copy of that letter too - again, Langston identifies himself as the author of <i>How Shakespeare's Skull was Stolen</i>,<i></i> only now he is living in Bath and looking for someone who will actually pay him for an article he has written entitled, <i>Shakespeare in his cups</i>.<i></i>)<br />
<br />
The point needs to be made: the Shakespeare experts have gone to quite extraordinary lengths to bury the story of Shakespeare's skull, written by a local clergyman with local knowledge. It doesn't fit in with their idea of Shakespeare, so it must be ignored, ridiculed, rejected out of hand. They have refused to look into it and they certainly don't want anybody else to go delving. The very subject is taboo.<br />
<br />
And I'm pretty sure that when Sir Charles Mynors, in all good faith, approached them for their expert opinion, they just showered him with their prejudices. Which is not, in fact, expert opinion. Truth be told, they've never bothered to research or investigate the story at all. Ever.<br />
<br />
And now, shortly before filming starts on the TV documentary, a story mysteriously appears out of nowhere in <i>The Telegraph</i>,<i></i> and then all across the world, rubbishing the very idea that the story of the skull is anything other than "Gothic Fiction". Sir Charles Mynors had found no evidence to link Shakespeare to the skull. Of course he hadn't. Because the Shakespeare fraternity had absolutely no idea that such evidence exists, and if they did, they certainly weren't going to let Sir Charles know about it.<br />
<br />
The last thing they want is for someone actually to study the skull, forensically, and compare the idiosyncrasies of the skull - all those dinks and dents and breakages - with the portraits of Shakespeare. Still less to compare the skull's DNA with a sample taken from one of the descendants of Shakespeare's sister. You'd think, if they were so sure of themselves, they'd say, "Why not? Go ahead! You'll be proven wrong." But that's not what they've done. Rather, they've tried to obstruct a legitimate investigation.<br />
<br />
There is evidence linking Shakespeare to the skull, be it Langston's painstakingly researched (if somewhat fictionalised) accounts, the visible similarities between the skull and the Shakespeare portraiture, or the links between Shakespeare and the Sheldons, whose funerary vault his skull apparently shares.<br />
<br />
Or how about this? The story began, so Langston claimed, with Horace Walpole's offer to George Selwyn MP of 300 guineas in return for the skull. Horace Walpole was in a better position than most to know that Shakespeare's skull was not in Stratford but underneath the Sheldon Chapel at Beoley. Walpole's "intimate friend" and neighbour in Twickenham - he jokingly called her his "wife" - was Lady Browne, born Frances Sheldon, in Beoley.<br />
<br />
There is also the matter of why Rev. Charles Jones chose to change his name to Charles Jones Langston just as his first instalment of the story was going to press. Could it have had something to do with the fact that, shortly after Shakespeare died in 1616, his "cousin", Thomas Greene, promptly resigned his post as steward and town clerk of Stratford-upon-Avon? The man elected to replace Greene as town clerk was one Anthony Langston. On 18 August 1619, this same Anthony Langston witnessed a deed by which Shakespeare's old friend and colleague, Henry Condell, conveyed some property in Worcestershire to Edward Sheldon of Beoley. Was Rev. C.J. Langston seeking to highlight his ancestral link to Anthony Langston, town clerk of Stratford and a man who had a connection with both the co-editor of the First Folio and the son of Ralph Sheldon, in whose funerary urn Shakespeare's skull was allegedly found?<br />
<br />
The Chancellor's judgement that no evidence exists to justify the proper forensic examination of the Beoley skull was wrong. Not his fault, though. He was misinformed or misguided by those very experts he had turned to for advice.<br />
<br />
The same experts who, I suspect, are now trying to undermine the TV documentary about these things by letting the world know that we have been debarred from running DNA tests on the skull and so the case might well never be proven.<br />
<br />
One really needs to ask - what are they so afraid of?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07579992524124124425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350432428721365043.post-59253788157468194692015-05-29T04:00:00.000-07:002015-05-29T04:00:40.788-07:00Shakespeare and the Ear of Corn<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Well, it was pretty big news. The face of Shakespeare discovered on the cover of <em>The Herball</em>, published in 1597 by John Gerard. Certainly set the Twitterati a-flutter.<br />
<br />
Do I think it's Shakespeare? Truth be told, it's a bit difficult for me to apply my acid tests for determining whether a portrait is of Shakespeare or not. The "dent" at the top of the forehead isn't visible, being hidden behind a laurel wreath and what looks like a curly fringe, and the left side of the face is so densely shaded that it's hard to tell if there's any drooping (<em>ptosis</em>) of the left eyebrow (a condition which Shakespeare appears to have passed on to his son).<br />
<br />
That said, I think Mark Griffiths' arguments about the image are fascinating and fairly compelling. And there may be a good reason to suspect that the image is indeed that of Shakespeare - not least of all on the basis of what he is holding.<br />
<br />
The "Fourth Man", as Griffiths calls him, is a full-figure portrait of a rather handsome chap wearing some sort of Roman costume. In his right hand, he holds (raised) a fritillary, which Griffiths convincingly relates to the "purple flower ... chequered with white" in Shakespeare's <em>Venus and Adonis</em> (1593). In his left hand, the Fourth Man holds (lowered) an ear of sweetcorn. Griffiths suggests that the appearance of this plant was inspired by the lines:<br />
<br />
<em>Oh let me teach you how to knit again</em><br />
<em>This scattered corn into one mutual sheaf.</em><br />
<em></em><br />
from Shakespeare's <em>Titus Andronicus</em> (published in 1594). But that connection seems a little tenuous to me.<br />
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<br />
Griffiths does point out that the ear of corn which the Fourth Man (Shakespeare) is holding was an American crop. The botanist John Gerard, who wrote <em>The Herball</em>, and with whom Shakespeare might have collaborated (hence the inclusion of his image on the frontispiece), had apparently grown and harvested maize. This could only have happened, of course, after a few samples of maize had been brought back to Britain from America. And this is why I think the image might indeed be of William Shakespeare.<br />
<br />
In <em>Who Killed William Shakespeare?</em> I suggested that the 21-year old Shakespeare actually went on an expedition to Virginia in 1585. This would have been shortly after his twins, Hamnet and Judith, were born, and so we are into the period known as his "Lost Years". Shakespeare needn't have travelled as a mariner; Sir Richard Grenville, who commanded the expedition, liked to have music played loud and raucously when he was dining. Shakespeare might have joined the expedition, then, as a musician.<br />
<br />
The flagship, lent by Queen Elizabeth to Sir Walter Raleigh for the Virginia expedition, was the <em>Tiger</em>. Years later, the <em>Tiger</em> crops up in Shakespeare's <em>Macbeth</em>. The experiences of the colonists appear to have informed <em>The Tempest</em>, while the sea storm which very nearly wrecked the <em>Tiger</em> on the Virginia coast recurs in such works as <em>Twelfth Night</em> and <em>The Winter's Tale</em>.<br />
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There are other hints that Shakespeare might have been on that expedition. Ben Jonson couldn't help satirising Shakespeare's acquisition of a coat of arms, joking in <em>Every Man Out of his Humour </em>(1598) that the "essential Clown" should have chosen for his motto, "Not without mustard" (Shakespeare's actual motto was <em>Non Sanz Droict</em> - "Not without right"). The "Not without mustard" line was in fact borrowed from the satirist Thomas Nashe, who wrote of a young tearaway caught up in a sea storm and threatened with shipwreck, begging the Lord to save him and promising never to eat haberdine (dried salted cod) ever again. When the crisis had passed, the "mad Ruffian" added, "Not without mustard, good lord, not without mustard."<br />
<br />
I've since discovered another piece of evidence. In <em>Shakespeare Rediscovered </em>(1938) Clara Longworth, Comtesse de Chambrun, referred to a letter, dated 20 December 1585, which was sent to Queen Elizabeth I. The letter was signed, "Your Majesty's loyal and devoted true servant, W. H."<br />
<br />
W. H. is, of course, one of the great Shakespearean mysteries: the Sonnets were published in 1609 with a dedication to "the only begetter" of the sonnets, "Mr W. H." In <em>Who Killed William Shakespeare?</em> I argued (after Phillips and Keatman) that "W. H." were the initials of William Hall, and that "Will Hall" was the codename used by Shakespeare whenever he did the State some service.<br />
<br />
(Back to Thomas Nashe - who threw "brave Hall" into a pantomime he wrote for the amusement of the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1592, at the same time as "Will Hall" was being paid for services rendered to the archbishop's priest-hunter, Anthony Munday, and Shakespeare was collaborating with Munday on <em>The Book of Sir Thomas More</em>.)<br />
<br />
The letter sent to Queen Elizabeth by "W. H." in December 1585 therefore pushes the existence of this mysterious figure back to the beginning of Shakespeare's "Lost Years" period. The letter writer described himself as a "man of judgment and action neither decrepit in body or in mind and whose present necessities crave to be provided for". He complained that he had been blackballed or blacklisted by men of superior rank. This all fits in with Shakespeare's biography, for the Shakespeares had been persecuted in Stratford by the more obsessive Puritans in the area - the Lucys and the Grevilles - not least of all because of their Catholic connections. In marrying Anne Hathaway, whose family seem to have been Puritan, Shakespeare was making something of an effort to appear "honest" (in the Puritan sense of the word). But he would still have been under suspicion and, indeed, the letter to Queen Elizabeth does mention certain "Papists" who were good patriots all the same.<br />
<br />
The key element in the letter concerns the advice "W. H." presumed to give to her majesty regarding the planting of colonies in Virginia. The <em>Tiger</em> had returned to London, after depositing the first hapless settlers in Virginia, just two months before the "W. H." letter was written. And Shakespeare ("W. Hall"), as I have suggested, went on that expedition. So he would have had some idea of what he was talking about when he wrote to Elizabeth I about colonising Virginia.<br />
<br />
Which brings us back to the sweetcorn held by the Shakespeare figure on the cover of Gerard's <em>Herball </em>(1597). Shakespeare's <em>Venus and Adonis</em> had been a huge success, so it would make sense that the totemic flower from that poem - the fritillary - was pictured in his right hand. The not-entirely-realistic Roman costume would have established Shakespeare's stage credentials (as well as, perhaps, his Roman Catholic connections). The ear of maize, however, needn't relate to Shakespeare's theatrical career or his poetry at all. Its presence in the image might simply have recalled the fact that Shakespeare was one of the very first Englishmen to set foot in Virginia. He had sailed there on the <em>Tiger</em> in 1585.<br />
<br />
The sweetcorn is held downwards, as if to suggest the act of planting. The planting of colonists in Virginia had been the whole point of the 1585 expedition, and the author of the "W. H." letter to Queen Elizabeth in 1585 also discussed the matter of planting colonies in Virginia.<br />
<br />
In that respect, the ear of corn held by the Fourth Man on the cover of <em>The Herball</em> might be one of the best clues as to the Fourth Man's identity. He was William Shakespeare, alias Will Hall, the man who went to Virginia in 1585 and, we can assume, brought some maize back with him.<br />
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07579992524124124425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350432428721365043.post-32796461255125532352015-04-20T15:58:00.000-07:002015-04-20T15:58:34.170-07:00Review of "The Grail"Well, there's already been an encouraging comment - I suppose you could call it an endorsement - on <em>The Grail: Relic of an Ancient Religion </em>from the all-round Arthurian expert John Matthews:<br />
<br />
<em>"A brisk rattle through the well-worn paths of the Grail and King Arthur. Some challenging new theories, applied with a kind of relish reminiscent of Robert Graves, make this a fascinating book."</em><br />
<em></em><br />
I'd call that praise. And now, this new review has just been published on the <a href="http://godmotherascending.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/poisoned-by-holy-grail.html" target="_blank">Radical Goddess Thealogy blog.</a> <br />
<br />
Definitely worth a read!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07579992524124124425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350432428721365043.post-44788617433745211542015-04-03T05:45:00.001-07:002015-04-03T05:45:31.767-07:00Breaking the Mother Goose Code<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A strange conversation on Facebook, the other day.<br />
<br />
Somebody I sort of know had put up a post demanding that we all boycott Cadburys because they're selling "Halal Easter eggs".<br />
<br />
Now, the idea of halal chocolate was a new one on me, so I thought I'd check it out. What had actually happened was this: Cadburys had put up a page on their website, indicating which of their many products are "halal certified". In other words, it's essentially dietary guidance - a bit like listing which Cadburys products are "Suitable for vegetarians". There was nothing "halal" about any of it, just a page letting Muslims know which Cadburys chocolate bars and so on are okay for them to eat.<br />
<br />
I pointed this out. But, no, that wasn't good enough. Because, apparently, Easter eggs are <strong>Christian</strong> and so, by making them "halal" Cadburys were pandering to the Islamists and helping to sell Britain downriver.<br />
<br />
So I came back - no religious text, to the best of my knowledge, refers to chocolate eggs and no religion has a monopoly on them (let's face it, God neglected to let most of the world know that chocolate even existed until comparatively recently). But I was wrong, it seems, because the word <strong>Easter</strong> in front of "eggs" makes them Christian, and exclusively so. And I was apparently attacking my friend's religion, which was a big No-No. And that's when I explained that "Easter" comes from "Eostre", a pagan goddess - which explains the eggs, bunnies, chicks and other Eastery thingies. There's no "Easter" in the Bible, only Passover.<br />
<br />
And there endeth the Facebook friendship.<br />
<br />
Which brings me to the subject of this post. I was very keen to read Jeri Studebaker's <em>Breaking the Mother Goose Code - How a Fairy-Tale Character Fooled the World for 300 Years</em>, partly because it looked interesting, and partly because my theatrical hero - Joey Grimaldi, King of Clowns - appeared in the first modern pantomime, <em>Harlequin and Mother Goose; or, the Golden Egg</em>, which did great business when it hit the stage at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, in December 1808.<br />
<br />
I wondered - just wondered - whether Jeri Studebaker might mention the <em>Mother Goose</em> pantomime in her book. And I was not disappointed. Jeri had done her homework.<br />
<br />
The first part of <em>Breaking the Mother Goose Code</em> really does focus on the character of Mother Goose, drawing attention to the similarities between this alternately beautiful and grotesque figure and certain ancient European mother-goddesses, especially Holda-Perchta. The second half takes the argument further, beyond Mother Goose herself, to examine the ways in which so-called "fairy tales" function as a kind of oral memory of the time when Goddess worship was widespread (and largely uncontested), and how these fairy tales - especially when shorn of their latter-day accretions - can be thought of as shamanic journeys and/or magical rituals and spells.<br />
<br />
The idea, overall, is that patriarchy is a fairly new phenomenon. And it's a stinker. Whenever and wherever it appears, it pursues a sort of scorched earth policy. But people - whole populaces - don't just alter everything they believe overnight because an angry man tells them to. Those pre-patriarchal belief systems were natural and hardwired into our collective psyche. In the face of barbaric violence and blanket intolerance, the old ways lived on - surreptitiously - and did so, partly, through the transmission of fairy tales.<br />
<br />
I like this idea. Mainstream history has been rather naughty, I feel, in taking such a dismissive and lofty attitude towards "folk" history (local legends, place-names, fairy tales). Just because these things weren't written down till a late stage, doesn't mean that they don't provide us with important glimpses of ancient knowledge. The Australian aboriginal sang the world back into existence with his song-lines, re-making the landscape by telling its stories, long before the White Man arrived to tell him he'd got it all wrong, and then make a slave of him.<br />
<br />
Jeri Studebaker's research for this book is ample and impressive. She really knows her subject and has gone into it in great depth, producing a book that is both readable and stimulating. Hard facts mingle with interesting theories and speculations. And nowhere, I feel, is Jeri at her best more than when she is taking a wrecking-ball to patriarchy.<br />
<br />
The differences between patriarchy (recent, bloody) and pre-patriarchal societies (been around for ever, generally equitable and non-violent) are brought out in such a way as to illustrate, not only what a disaster patriarchal structures have been for the species and the planet, but what we lost when we allowed our more natural societies to be steamrollered by the maniacs of patriarchal thinking. So many lives lost. So much wisdom lost. So much damage done.<br />
<br />
In fact, Studebaker doesn't belabour this point, but chooses her examples carefully, citing experts in these matters. Her argument - that fairy tales like Mother Goose represent a sort of quiet resistance, a continuation of pre-patriarchal values in a time of patriarchal thuggery - grows, little by little, from her near-forensic analysis of Mother Goose (Holda-Perchta) herself to the wider world of fairy tales and their magical methodology - until, in my case at least, I was convinced. Strip away the Disneyfication, and fairy tales really can take us back to a pre-patriarchal age of equality and possibilities.<br />
<br />
For an illustration of how disgusting and despicable patriarchal thinking can be, one has only to consider that online run-in with my "friend" over the matter of halal chocolate eggs. The intolerance, the ignorance, the "I can attack anybody's religion if I choose, but nobody can attack mine!" attitude (even though nobody was actually attacking her Christian faith) and that vague sense of a call-to-arms, a sort of "Let's have another crusade" subtext, are all indicative of patriarchal thinking. It is crude, divisive, and usually ends in tears.<br />
<br />
Mother Goose and her fellows, as Jeri Studebaker shows in her rather wonderful book, can show us that it doesn't have to be like that. The Golden (Easter) Egg has nothing to do with Christianity, and those who squabble over it - "I can have it, you can't!" - are infantile and deluded. The Egg was delivered by Mother Goose, the Eternal Feminine, and we can all have it, if we're prepared to play the game.<br />
<br />
Click <a href="http://www.moon-books.net/books/breaking-mother-goose-code" target="_blank">here to go to the Moon Books page</a> for <em>Breaking the Mother Goose Code</em>.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07579992524124124425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350432428721365043.post-25501588477270187962015-03-23T09:24:00.000-07:002015-03-23T09:24:19.792-07:00Gods of the Solar EclipseNaughty me. I should have posted this a couple of days ago.<br />
<br />
It's a post I wrote for the Moon Books blog, timed to coincide with last Friday's eclipse.<br />
<br />
Click here to read it: <a href="http://moon-books.net/blogs/moonbooks/gods-of-the-solar-eclipse/" target="_blank">Gods of the Solar Eclipse.</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07579992524124124425noreply@blogger.com0