An Oxford academic has found a “tantalising” link between Shakespeare’s tragic heroine Ophelia and a real-life girl who died at the age of two in 1569, when the Bard would have been around five years old.
Admitting his discovery could be pure coincidence, Steven Gunn of the university’s Faculty of History said he had unearthed records of the death of a Jane Shaxspere some 20 miles from Stratford-Upon-Avon, where Shakespeare was raised. She fell into a mill pond and drowned while picking flowers, called “yelowe boddles”, or corn marigolds.
“If Jane was his younger cousin, the parallels to Ophelia — who picked flowers and drowned when she fell into a river in Hamlet — are intriguing,” said a statement from Oxford University. Gunn is leading research into coroners’ reports of accidental deaths in Tudor England.
“It was quite a surprise to find Jane Shaxspere’s entry in the coroners’ reports — it might just be a coincidence, but the links to Ophelia are certainly tantalising,” he said.
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Jacko concert insurers refuse to pay out
Los Angeles: The insurers of Michael Jackson’s ill-fated This Is It London comeback concerts have asked a judge to nullify a $17.5 million policy taken out by promoters, saying they were never told that the singer was taking powerful drugs.
Underwriters at Lloyds of London filed a lawsuit against AEG Live and Jackson’s company in Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday, asking a judge to solve the insurance dispute almost two years after the Thriller singer’s death.
Jackson, 50, died in Los Angeles on June 25 after rehearsing for the upcoming series of 50 concerts in London. Authorities said he died of a massive dose of the anaesthetic propofol and a cocktail of other sedatives and painkillers.
Jackson’s personal doctor is scheduled to stand trial in September on charges of giving the singer a fatal dose of propofol as a sleep aid.
The insurance policy was taken out to cover the cancellation or postponement of the London concerts in the case of the death, accident or illness of Jackson.
—Reuters