The Authentic Shakespeare

I had written back in December about our visit to the British Library and the interesting bit of trivia that only two depictions of Shakespeare - a print on the title page of the First Folio and a bust - are widely regarded as authentic. ("Authentic" here generally means either created during a sitting of Shakespeare himself or at least approved by those who knew him when he was living.) According to an article posted today at TIME Magazine, it turns out that what may be an authentic painting of the Bard has long been at the home of a family that lives outside Dublin. The current owner just happened to notice one day that his painting looked an awful lot like another painting of William Shakespeare! It turns out his painting was probably the original from which the one he saw was copied.

I have often thought about how much cooler "junk" must be in Europe than in the United States. Surely throughout Europe there are many people with timeless treasures in their attic, a priceless antique at their store, or some historically significant document in their drawers that is quietly awaiting the right set of eyes to discover it. Such possibilities must make European markets, estate sales, etc. very exciting for true treasure hunters. To discover a soon-to-be priceless painting of Shakespeare in one's own collection? That must be...well, priceless.

British Library

On Sunday one of our stops was the British Library. The British Library is the world's second largest research library after only The Library of Congress. It may not sound like much fun walking around a library, but the British Library actually has a number of very famous works in a museum-style display. We saw, for instance, original editions of William Shakespeare's First Folio and Isaac Newton's Principia, pages from Leonardo Da Vinci's notebooks, a Gutenberg Bible, and Magna Carta. (As an aside, here's an interesting bit of trivia... The title page of Shakespeare's First Folio at right features one of only two depictions of W.S. that are widely believed to be authentic.)

Matt standing in front of a statue of Newton outside the British Library