A University of Windsor professor believes he has identified a book that once belonged to William Shakespeare. It’s a 1575 book of Horace’s work i

Canadian professor says he has determined a 1575 book of Horace once belonged to William Shakespeare

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2021-05-25 14:00:04

A University of Windsor professor believes he has identified a book that once belonged to William Shakespeare. It’s a 1575 book of Horace’s work in Latin that was heavily annotated; the annotations were 'washed' in about 1731, but the professor, Robert Weir, has used technology to reveal them, and has found corresponding references in Shakespeare’s early plays.

For Shakespeare historians, academics and aficionados, it is the Holy Grail. People have searched high and low for any book that belonged to the Bard for hundreds of years. It has been called the greatest mystery in literature.

To write as he did, William Shakespeare must have owned books. Could they have melted into thin air? Is the search for any extant volumes a wild goose chase?

A Canadian professor believes he has made a momentous discovery on this front. Robert Weir has spent more than four years researching the provenance of a 16th-century book of works in Latin by the Roman poet Horace. Using a method of reverse-referencing, followed by years of research , Weir feels confident that it belonged to and was marked up by the Bard. And he’s ready to make his findings public.