Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Shakespeare for the Sneaky 4


Segment 1: Breaking News Story

Kim: And in other news, in Pasadena, CA, in the Huntington Library, 4 lost Shakespeare plays have been discovered.  News Correspondent Moriah Manwerring has the story.

Moriah: Here in Pasadena, CA, the Huntington Library has always been famous for its extensive collection of rare books, manuscripts, prints, photographs, maps, and other materials in the fields of British and American historyThe Library collections range in time period from the Middle Ages to the 21st century. The greatest concentration is in the English Renaissance, about 1500 to 1641.  Much of the content for the library was purchased back in the 1890s by the library’s founder Henry E. Huntington.  Recently, horticulture expert Dr. Dan Adcock was taking advantage of the library’s ancient collection of horticulture documentation, and discovered something remarkable.  Dan, would you mind telling us what happened?

Dan: I was looking through one of the really large portfolios on horticulture they have here, discovered that some of the sections were missing.  I spoke with the horticulture curator and he told me that there was a duplicate of this particular portfolio they kept in the vault.  We opened it up and as I was going through this duplicate book which quite obviously had not been opened for many years, towards the back I came across a collection of older looking documents; they looked like they were manuscripts from some kind of play or something.  I asked the curator about the documents; she was baffled.  We contacted the manuscript section of the library, and after some precursory examination, they’re saying it looks like Shakespeare! 

Moriah:  Wow, that’s a pretty incredible discovery!  Kim, back to you.

Kim: Thanks Moriah.  After only a couple days of analysis, the results are still inconclusive as to the origin of this play, but the Shakespeare world is abuzz with the news of this possibility.  Experts are performing ink and carbon tests; handwriting and manuscript experts are pouring over this recently discovered text, trying to piece together what really we have here.  But an initial examination it looks like there were pieces from 4 separate plays that quite possibly might be Shakespeare originals.  We’ll have more as this story continues to unfold.  

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