Shakespeare Minus His Earring

Stanley Wells presented in London a portrait of, he assured, William Shakespeare, the only one painted of him when he was still alive. This painting formed part of the collection belonging to an aristocratic family. Shakespeare posed for it when he was 46 years old, with sharp features, languid looks, without the earring in his most famous portrait; reddish beard, lips tainted red too, and too much rouge on the cheeks.

Professor Wells, who is the head of the studies of Shakespeare in the University of Birmingham confirmed, after making a series of 'circumstantial' examinations which left no doubt at all that it's literary master himself.

Wells' strongest conviction is: the gentleman in the portrait was a rich man, and Shakespeare, at that age, was already living a leisurely life retired in a grand mansion in Stratford-upon-Avon, after having made a lot of money with his theatre company.

Of Shakespeare, who died 6 years after posing for this only recently discovered portrait, so little is known that there's not even guarantee that he was the author of the work of Shakespeare, the monster of literature. Born in Stratford in 1564, and died there in 1616. Between one date and another, it's known that he bought a company of actors that made some of the plays very famous and these were attributed to him afterwards.

In the meticulous testament which he wrote before he died, there's no reference of him having written any book. It's also known that he had never had academic formation, and his daughters were illiterate. Yet he was the man that was said to have written Hamlet.

Tags:earring,Shakespeare

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