Surprising Shakespeare discover
May 6, 2024 ⚊ 1 Min read ⚊ Views 26 ⚊ BLOG
These findings follow a previous discovery made by Stone back in 2000 when he learned that the Shakespeare play The Two Noble Kinsmen had made its way to Spain around 1640. According to his recent research, which he shared in March 2024, two copies of Othello, which were sent from London to Lisbon in 1765, are the first known Shakespeare plays to have entered Portugal. As Stone explains “What you would expect in a century in which French was the Lingua Franca, is that French copies of Shakespeare’s work would circulate more widely than copies in English.” Therefore, John Preston’s request for these English books for Portuguese readers means that “Either they were collecting books in English as trophies, or they were collecting the books because they wanted to read them – the latter hypothesis being the more likely”.
