Behold A New Portrait of Shakespeare

An image of Shakespeare from a first edition of "The Herball" a sixteenth century book on plants is seen at an office in London

(KMJ) A British magazine says it has published an image it claims is the first and only known authentic portrait of William Shakespeare made in his lifetime.

The picture, of a young, bearded man wearing a Roman-style laurel crown and holding an ear of sweetcorn was identified by botanist and historian Mark Griffiths and will be published in the magazine “Country Life” today.

Until now, the only accepted authentic likenesses of Shakespeare, in which he is depicted as bald, have been found in the First Folio of his works and his monument at Holy Trinity Church located in his birth city of Stratford-Upon-Avon.

But both likenesses were created posthumously.