“To be, or not to be: that is the question.” This is the most famous line in all of English literature. Yet, it also has everything to do with modern China.
Historian Mark Griffiths claims to have cracked a code in an Elizabethan book on botany, to discover a true portrait of Shakespeare made within the bard’s own lifetime.
The Shakespeare First Folio (1623), the first collected edition of his plays and the sole source for half of them (including Macbeth, Antony & Cleopatra, All’s Well, As You Like It, and The Tempest), is one of the most valuable books in the world: Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, recently paid US$6 million for a copy.
To mark to William Shakespeare’s 450th birthday, The Drilling Company members sang his songs in Bryant Park—accompanied by guitars, ukeleles, and the sound of traffic.