Fakespeare

Pictures of Willy, Part 2. Forget everything you think you know. These two paintings, forever burned into our consciousnesses as likenesses of William Shakespeare, are in fact not. The one on the left, of Will at 24, called the Grafton Portrait and reproduced on many a Bard book cover, has been proven by experts at the National Portrait Gallery in London to be a fake, since, among other factors, the young actor and writer would not have been able to afford such expensive clothing at that age. (It's probably Christopher Marlowe.) On the right, an older Shakespeare stares out from the so-called Flower Portrait, now known to have been painted in the 19th century. (Incidentally, the estate of Shakespeare, whose works have been translated into 118 languages, including Klingon, would today be worth $15 million annually, experts reckon, if his copyrights hadn't run out long ago and if he had an estate.)

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