The Mystery of Shakespeare’s Tomb
Consortium News April 5
Special Report: A radar scan of William
Shakespeare’s supposed tomb in a Stratford church came up empty, fueling
the old debate about who really wrote the famous plays and sonnets,
writes ex-CIA analyst Peter W. Dickson.
By Peter W. Dickson
The 400th-anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare —
to be observed in late April — was supposed to be a moment for global
celebration of the literary genius long believed to have been from
Stratford-on-Avon. But, in a classic case of “unintended consequences,” a
reluctant decision by Anglican Church officials to permit scientists to
use modern technology to study his presumed grave inside the local
church has backfired because the inconclusive results of this
investigation — the apparent failure to confirm conclusively the
presence of any human remains in the tomb — is casting a shadow over the
celebration.
Indeed, the fiasco may cause more people to doubt – or even reject –
the longstanding claim that the man with this famous name from a market
town in the British Midlands was the true author of the Shakespearean
works.
That concern may explain, in part, why the scientists who conducted a
radar scan of Shakespeare’s alleged tomb have been busy obscuring the
curious results of their inspection and refusing to admit the
possibility that no one was buried in the floor tomb. Instead, the
scientists have been distracting a media with a dubious suggestion that
the Bard’s skull is missing from the tomb and perhaps was stolen.
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