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The recent claim that a veritable portrait of Shakespeare has resurfaced in Dublin after centuries of mistaken identity has reignited the debate about what the Bard actually looked like

LAST SUMMER, in a hole dug more than a metre below a street in Shoredith, in London’s north inner city, archaeologists found something very exciting. There, they believed, were the remnants of the original theatre in which William Shakespeare’s early plays were staged. Strictly speaking, they were staged in a part of the theatre that’s still buried under a housing estate. But a gravel slope was where the audience would have watched his works and, at times, seen the man himself.