Today is the 114th anniversary of Evelyn Waugh’s birthday. This has been announced in several news sites that track this sort of thing. Perhaps not coincidently, the Guardian has chosen this date to report that Waugh’s grandson, Alexander, will announce tomorrow (Sunday) at a conference in the Globe Theatre, Southwark, that he has decoded a notation in an early edition of Shakespeare that identifies the poet’s burial place as Westminster Abbey, not Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-on-Avon. According to the Guardian:
Waugh said he would show hidden geometries, grid patterns and other clues which reveal that Shakespeare’s final resting place is underneath his 1740 monument in Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey and that they spell out the words “Edward de Vere lies here”. He said he had “finally decoded the mysterious dedication” to the sonnets. “Stratfordians and anti-Stratfordians have said that this dedication page must be encrypted, because it doesn’t seem to make any sense. It’s got those funny dots all over the place and there’s something very weird about it. I’ve finally cracked it….”
A similar story, datelined yesterday, appears in the Daily Mail’s online edition, apparently scooping the Guardian.
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