Mural From Shakespeare’s Day Uncovered
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LONDON — Workmen renovating a 600-year-old tavern have uncovered a wall painting believed by some experts to depict a scene in Shakespeare’s first published work, the narrative poem “Venus and Adonis.”
The mural was described as a “major national treasure” by art historian Clive Rouse, who said it was the best Elizabethan wall painting outside the great houses of the era, such as Hampton Court.
Experts from the Warburg Institute at London University said the scene, showing a wounded Elizabethan courtier on the ground while other horsemen fend off an attacking boar, dates the painting to a few years after publication of Shakespeare’s poem in 1593.
The discovery of the painting in the town of St. Albans, 20 miles north of London, may revive an old theory that Francis Bacon, later Viscount St. Albans, either wrote some of the Shakespeare works or collaborated with the playwright.
Baconians used to argue that Shakespeare was too much the country boy to have had the erudition or foreign background implicit in the plays.
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