Signature of the Bard ‘recreated’
Using an advanced photographic technique, researchers have reconstructed a signature which they believe could be that of William Shakespeare — or the work of a clever forger.
The technology which involves 12 different wavelengths of light helped researchers to reconstruct “Wm Shakespeare” on the title page of the legal treatise “Archaionomia” — a collection of Saxon laws published in Britain during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.
It’s not yet known who scrawled the words across the title page and it may never be clear, said lead author Gregory Heyworth, a professor of English at the University of Mississippi.
The research, which was part of The Lazarus Project, is an effort to revive damaged texts using a technique called multispectral imaging, said Prof. Heyworth.
In the study, Prof. Heyworth and his team examined the work at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington using light from ultraviolet to infrared beyond the range of the human eye.
They take very high-resolution photographs of old text, art or objects using 12 different wavelengths of light, ranging from ultraviolet to infrared, beyond the boundaries of the human eye.
Next, they used software to combine these images into the clearest possible picture of the text. In this way, the researchers can reconstruct writing that has been erased and written over, scratched out, singed or even damaged by water, Heyworth told LiveScience.
For example, last year, the Lazarus Project used this technology to discover five new poems from the writer William Faulkner from a collection that had been damaged by fire.
The group is currently deciphering a line above the signature, which is written in a 16th-century hand based on the style of the lettering, Heyworth said. That line is written in different ink than the signature. “We have a clear idea now of what the signature looks like, and we can compare it to Shakespeare’s signatures and forgers’ signatures,” Prof. Heyworth said.
Prof. Heyworth now plans to compare the signature with that of well-known forgers as well as known Shakespeare signatures such as those on his wills.
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