středa 3. dubna 2013

Shakespeare: Hoarder, Playwright, Fake? (Popular Science)



"In the absence of solid evidence, statistics can help you decide for yourself.

Shakespeare was a grain hoarder and a flagrant tax evader, according to a new study that explores the Bard of Avon’s financials. It’s kind of surprising, and it means, weirdly, that he may have starred in a real-life version of one of his own tragedies. But that's OK. Another piece of research, in the form of a new book, suggests he couldn't have been a singular jerk: He might not have been a singular person at all.
To be clear, the idea that Shakespeare is not Shakespeare, or at least the man named William Shakespeare did not write the works attributed to him, is neither a new nor a popular theory. But it's getting new treatment from a scientist who has long been known for a very different field: Astrophysics.
When he isn’t studying the sun or distant pulsars, Stanford emeritus physicist Peter Sturrock reads and writes poetry, which he said got him interested in the so-called authorship question. In short, there’s a school of thought that holds the person who wrote Shakespeare's poems and plays was not a guy named William from Stratford-upon-Avon, but rather some other famous writer using a pen name. Sturrock (and a few others) think the real writer of works like “Romeo and Juliet” and “Coriolanus” (that’s the grain-hoarding one) could really be Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford."

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