Edmund Ironside, Shakespeare's Face and other musings

Went shopping today and picked up 2 very interesting books about Shakespeare. And I have found a new website. Elizabethan Authors.

I have finally been able to purchase a copy of the book Shakespeare's Face, by Stephanie Nolen. This book is about the discovery and research on the Sanders Portrait.

Has anyone ever heard of a play called Edmund Ironside? This book Shakespeare's Edmund Ironside The Lost Play was published around 1986 by Eric Sams.

E.B. Everitt and Eric Sams have argued that this play is perhaps Shakespeare's first drama. According to Sams, Edmund Ironside "contains some 260 words or usages which on the evidence of the Oxford English Dictionary were first used by Shakespeare himself.... Further, it exhibits 635 instances of Shakespeare's rare words including some 300 of the rarest." However, this argument has failed to convince the majority of Shakespearian scholars. [Wikipedia]


And back in April, some nice person left a comment that suggested that I read the book The Mysterious [William] Shakespeare by Charlton Ogburn - all 890 pages of it. First I have to find it. Here's an interview with Mr Ogburn before he died.

Just a reminder that you can see the 6 supposedly authentic Shakespeare signatures here.

So Who was Shakespeare?