It's one of the most heartbreaking scenes in drama. With heavy heart, Queen Gertrude returns to Elsinore to tell Laertes that his sister Ophelia, driven mad (or is she?) by the death of her father, has drowned. "There is a willow grows aslant a brook," she wails. "There with fantastic garlands she did come/Of crow-flowers nettles, daisies and long purples… till that her garments, heavy with their drink/ Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay/To muddy death." Shakespeare's command of both language and imagination at this crucial point in Hamlet, his most famous tragedy, is total. But new research revealed this week suggests that the inspiration may have come from a far more prosaic source: a 1569 coroner's report.
That year, a little girl similarly laden with flowers was happily picking "yelowe boddles" (corn marigolds) when she suddenly fell into a mill pond and drowned, just 20 miles away from Shakespeare's home in Stratford-upon-Avon. Why (or indeed if) Shakespeare remembered this case 40 years later remains unclear, but historians at the University of Oxford have speculated that her familiar name - Jane Shaxpere - may have been one reason the sad tale stuck with The Bard. It's even possible, they've suggested, that she was a relative: Tudors were notoriously unfussy when it came to spelling.
If further research confirms what is, at this stage, speculation, then it would hardly be a surprise. For, right from the beginning of his writing career, Shakespeare was inspired by real-life events; his early plays charting in semi-fictional form the successive reigns of Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V. Whether, though, he was actually inspired by the dramatic potential of this seismic period in English history, or merely impressed by the distinctly similar stories already laid down in Raphael Holinshed's posthumous 1587 book Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, remains something of a moot point.
Nevertheless, one of the many reasons Shakespeare has endured is undoubtedly thanks to plays rooted in real life rather than flights of fancy. The name Hamlet wasn't just made up on a whim, but borrowed from a history of the Danes, based on Scandinavian sagas written in the 10th and 11th centuries. When we think of the archetypal tale of star-crossed lovers, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet immediately comes to mind. But the warring families of the Montagues and Capulets are referred to in Dante's Divine Comedy, written in the early 14th century. Shakespeare based the plot on Arthur Brooke's translated poem The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, liberally adding elements from Ovid's Metamorphoses.
And King Lear sees Shakespeare at his most brazen: using Holinshed's Chronicles as a base text, he added Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (which also includes a character by the name of Cordelia who meets a grisly end) and shoehorned in a subplot from Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia by Philip Sidney. Quite frankly, Shakespeare was lucky copyright legislation was still a few centuries in the making.
In fact, finding examples of totally original Shakespeare plays is virtually impossible. Those who prefer to think of artists working in vacuum-sealed environments, though, might be heartened by The Tempest, Shakespeare's last play and perhaps his most original. Even then, it's allegedly based on eye-witness reports of a 1609 shipwreck on the island of Bermuda, which Shakespeare, it's suggested, would have read.
Does such reliance on material by others really matter? In the end, of course, it's King Lear that we still flock to see, while the works of Spenser and Sidney are mere footnotes in Shakespeare's story. And if Ophelia's death was based on that of the real-life Jane Shaxpere, then arguably that makes the image of a flower-laden girl drowned in an idyllic pool all the more powerful.
It's no different from the Booker Prize nominee Emma Donoghue using the horrific actions of the kidnapper Josef Fritzl as the starting-off point for her book Room, but then moulding her own completely different story from the initial components.
And, in the end, that's how Shakespeare approached his storytelling: he compressed history, streamlined source material and, sometimes, made stuff up. But he was better at combining all these elements - in so doing, fashioning thrilling theatre - than virtually anybody else in history. It's the very human drama of his stories rather than their sources that has made his plays timeless.
If, of course he actually wrote them at all, which is the subject of continued discussion. In the end, though, even that debate is redundant. We have the work. The play's the thing.
What is a robo-adviser?
Robo-advisers use an online sign-up process to gauge an investor’s risk tolerance by feeding information such as their age, income, saving goals and investment history into an algorithm, which then assigns them an investment portfolio, ranging from more conservative to higher risk ones.
These portfolios are made up of exchange traded funds (ETFs) with exposure to indices such as US and global equities, fixed-income products like bonds, though exposure to real estate, commodity ETFs or gold is also possible.
Investing in ETFs allows robo-advisers to offer fees far lower than traditional investments, such as actively managed mutual funds bought through a bank or broker. Investors can buy ETFs directly via a brokerage, but with robo-advisers they benefit from investment portfolios matched to their risk tolerance as well as being user friendly.
Many robo-advisers charge what are called wrap fees, meaning there are no additional fees such as subscription or withdrawal fees, success fees or fees for rebalancing.
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
The specs: 2018 Jaguar F-Type Convertible
Price, base / as tested: Dh283,080 / Dh318,465
Engine: 2.0-litre inline four-cylinder
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic
Power: 295hp @ 5,500rpm
Torque: 400Nm @ 1,500rpm
Fuel economy, combined: 7.2L / 100km
WITHIN%20SAND
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Your rights as an employee
The government has taken an increasingly tough line against companies that fail to pay employees on time. Three years ago, the Cabinet passed a decree allowing the government to halt the granting of work permits to companies with wage backlogs.
The new measures passed by the Cabinet in 2016 were an update to the Wage Protection System, which is in place to track whether a company pays its employees on time or not.
If wages are 10 days late, the new measures kick in and the company is alerted it is in breach of labour rules. If wages remain unpaid for a total of 16 days, the authorities can cancel work permits, effectively shutting off operations. Fines of up to Dh5,000 per unpaid employee follow after 60 days.
Despite those measures, late payments remain an issue, particularly in the construction sector. Smaller contractors, such as electrical, plumbing and fit-out businesses, often blame the bigger companies that hire them for wages being late.
The authorities have urged employees to report their companies at the labour ministry or Tawafuq service centres — there are 15 in Abu Dhabi.
UAE%20Warriors%2045%20Results
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Nepotism is the name of the game
Salman Khan’s father, Salim Khan, is one of Bollywood’s most legendary screenwriters. Through his partnership with co-writer Javed Akhtar, Salim is credited with having paved the path for the Indian film industry’s blockbuster format in the 1970s. Something his son now rules the roost of. More importantly, the Salim-Javed duo also created the persona of the “angry young man” for Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan in the 1970s, reflecting the angst of the average Indian. In choosing to be the ordinary man’s “hero” as opposed to a thespian in new Bollywood, Salman Khan remains tightly linked to his father’s oeuvre. Thanks dad.
NYBL PROFILE
Company name: Nybl
Date started: November 2018
Founder: Noor Alnahhas, Michael LeTan, Hafsa Yazdni, Sufyaan Abdul Haseeb, Waleed Rifaat, Mohammed Shono
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: Software Technology / Artificial Intelligence
Initial investment: $500,000
Funding round: Series B (raising $5m)
Partners/Incubators: Dubai Future Accelerators Cohort 4, Dubai Future Accelerators Cohort 6, AI Venture Labs Cohort 1, Microsoft Scale-up
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
THE LIGHT
Director: Tom Tykwer
Starring: Tala Al Deen, Nicolette Krebitz, Lars Eidinger
Rating: 3/5
The biog
Family: Parents and four sisters
Education: Bachelor’s degree in business management and marketing at American University of Sharjah
A self-confessed foodie, she enjoys trying out new cuisines, her current favourite is the poke superfood bowls
Likes reading: autobiographies and fiction
Favourite holiday destination: Italy
Posts information about challenges, events, runs in other emirates on the group's Instagram account @Anagowrunning
Has created a database of Emirati and GCC sportspeople on Instagram @abeermk, highlight: Athletes
Apart from training, also talks to women about nutrition, healthy lifestyle, diabetes, cholesterol, blood pressure
