

'True face of Shakespeare' appears in botany book? - grflynn
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-32782267

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benbreen
This article has a bit more information about the specific "code" that has
supposedly been cracked:

[http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/may/19/shakespeare-w...](http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/may/19/shakespeare-
writer-claims-discovery-of-only-portrait-made-during-his-lifetime)

I wish this were true but it doesn't even come close to passing Occam's razor
to me. Shakespeare, as we know well by now, was not particularly famous in his
lifetime (indeed, our contemporary concept of "fame" or "celebrity" didn't
exist at the time). Short of some new discovery that Gerard (the author of the
herbal) was personally associated with Shakespeare, I don't see why we should
be convinced by the evidence available. A lot of it is a huge stretch, like
the AW / OR lettering in the image being interpreted as a reference to the
golden background ("or") of Shakespeare's father's coat of arms, or the fact
that Shakespeare mentions corn at one point in his plays and the figure here
is holding an ear of sweetcorn - "corn" could refer to any grain in
Elizabethan times so it's hardly surprising that the word shows up in his
work. At any rate, here's a high res scan of the actual image for anyone
interested:

[http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/109874#page/1/mode/1...](http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/109874#page/1/mode/1up)

Edit: this guess that it's actually Sir Francis Drake strikes me as being much
more likely, though still impossible to prove:

[http://www.historyneedsyou.com/blog/the-language-of-
flowers-...](http://www.historyneedsyou.com/blog/the-language-of-flowers-
speaks-clearly-not-in-riddles)

