16 comments

  • carom 9 hours 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 9 hours ago

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

      • convnet 8 hours ago

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

        • krapp 6 hours ago

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

    • userbinator 8 hours ago

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

    • djmips an hour ago

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

    • clbrmbr 8 hours 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.

  • plasticsoprano 5 hours 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.

    • bn-l 5 hours ago

      That was great.

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

      • gsinclair 3 hours 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.

  • dr_dshiv 6 hours 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 5 hours 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 22 minutes 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.

  • supportengineer 8 hours ago

    Are living relatives still fighting over the home?

    • lentil_soup 8 hours ago

      The article says it was demolished in the 1700s

      • jhardcastle 6 hours 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.