William Shakespeare
There is still a lot of debate over what William Shakespeare really looked like, though many historians and scholars agree that the most accurate is this engraving made by Martin Droeshout. The man who created literary classics, such as Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, surely had some facial hair in spite of a receding hairline. In 1975, Professor Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel discovered the death mask of William Shakespeare in London. In the 1800s, death masks were made by using plaster or wax over a dead person’s face. There is ongoing debate over the fact that the mask may not be that of Shakespeare, but someone decided to make it the real thing.
William Shakespeare
What William Shakespeare Really Looked Like
In 2010, Dundee University’s Dr. Caroline Wilkinson used Shakespeare’s alleged death mask in order to make a rendering of his face. Wilkinson used 3D imaging on the mask to map every feature of Shakespeare’s face and created this rather somber rendering. Most would agree that Wilkinson’s depiction is to some extent similar to other interpretations out there, except for the fact that Shakespeare’s entire head is not seen here. The literary genius died when he was 52 years old on April 23, 1616.
What William Shakespeare Really Looked Like
