Will at centre of legal battle over Shakespeare’s home unearthed after 150 years

61 pointsby forthelose26 days ago20 comments(www.theguardian.com)

Comments (5)

carom•25 days ago

>Will at centre of legal battle over Shakespeare’s home unearthed after 150 years

What a confusing title. I read it as the home being unearthed after 150 years and that there was a will involved in an active dispute over this newly unearthed home.

dwattttt•25 days ago

There are more absurd interpretations, when you remember that his first name was William.

convnet•25 days ago

They had to dig up Ole William to get his side of the story

krapp•24 days ago

Preferably with a lawyer delivering a soliloquy while holding Shakespeare's skull in one hand.

userbinator•25 days ago

I've noticed that UK news in general seems to like these sorts of headlines.

clbrmbr•25 days ago

it's a brilliant title that's both technically correct and extremely misleading!

I thought it implied that there was an ongoing legal battle over the home and some original will that upsets those proceeds had been found underground. That'd be a very dramatic story!

Instead, there was a legal battle long in the past, and this was the will that was submitted to the government at the time, and kept in the archives. They make no mention of whether Shakespeare's original will survives. It's basically hey look at this document from the old archives that somebody thought was might be of historical value so they put it in a box but really doesn't change anything. It's just available online for the first time.

bryanrasmussen•24 days ago

I think there would need to be some punctuation for that interpretation to make any sense.

djmips•24 days ago

It's a headline and it requires a skill to interpret.

plasticsoprano•24 days ago

I fully recommend Bill Bryson’s “Shakespeare: The World as Stage”. I don’t have a lot of interest in Shakespeare but I love Bryson and gave this book a chance. Like most of his books it is super fascinating and entertaining. We know so little about Shakespeare including the fact we don’t actually know what he looked like.

ahazred8ta•23 days ago

> don’t actually know what he looked like

His effigy was carved by a sculptor who lived around the corner from the Globe theater, so he probably got the likeness right. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gheerart_Janssen_(sculptor)#Ni...>

bn-l•24 days ago

That was great.

Absolute favourite of his is “one summer” about America in the 1920s. It’s a masterpiece.

gsinclair•24 days ago

And “A short history of nearly everything” should be considered required reading for anyone who is interested in anything.

Thanks for the reminder of “one summer”. I haven’t read that yet.

plasticsoprano•22 days ago

One summer is amazing. Who knew so many monumental things happened that year?

supportengineer•25 days ago

Are living relatives still fighting over the home?

lentil_soup•25 days ago

The article says it was demolished in the 1700s

jhardcastle•24 days ago

To summarize the article, I think...

A will was rediscovered that was written by Shakespeare's granddaughter's husband, who never owned the home, stating that his cousin should get the house.

The husband died first, the granddaughter (who actually owned the house) remarried, and the cousin never got the house. The granddaughter later died, and the home was demolished shortly thereafter, almost 350 years ago, and at least 200 years before this legal document was last in the news.

kyt•25 days ago

[flagged]

dr_dshiv•24 days ago

I was thinking of a Google News competitor that rewrites original headlines — so they are in the readers best interest — based on the content of the article. So, no clickbait, minimal confusion and more learning from merely reading the headline itself.

sema4hacker•24 days ago

I've often wished for a "headline corrector", where clickbait like "Coroner announces cause of death for Celebrity X" transforms to "Celebrity X died of a fentanyl overdose" and then I can decide whether to click through or not.

aspenmayer•24 days ago

I don’t know of one for Google News, but there is DeArrow for YouTube.

https://dearrow.ajay.app/

> DeArrow is an open source browser extension for crowdsourcing better titles and thumbnails on YouTube. The goal is to make titles accurate and reduce sensationalism. No more arrows, ridiculous faces, and no more clickbait.

Edit:

Found this, which does claim support for Google News:

https://github.com/iorate/ublacklist

https://ublacklist.github.io/subscriptions

I’m not sure if these are compatible with uBlock Origin, but some of them seem to be.

The demo gif is pretty clear on what it does and how it works, but it only makes it easier to block domains from the looks of it. It doesn’t actually rewrite titles which was your request.

dr_dshiv•24 days ago

Yes, exactly like that.