N = Narrator W1 = Woman 1 etc.
N: In Shakespeare's play Antony and Cleopatra the Egyptian Queen is a very beautiful woman, and this is what people believed, up to now. This two thousand year old coin shows Antony on one side, and Cleopatra on the other. She doesn't look beautiful at all.
W1: It's very difficult to find out when this idea that Cleopatra was a great beauty came into vogue. Cleopatra has a very low brow, a very hooked nose, and she does look as if she's forgotten to put her teeth in.
N: This coin, now on display at Newcastle University, is a recent discovery. Because of it we now think of Cleopatra in a different way.
W2: It's pretty ugly, um, I'm not sure how Cleopatra would have taken it.
W3: This coin has given a lie really to how, ah – that she was what we now think of as a beautiful woman.
N: This man wears fashionable clothes. He's got a long nose, a fine beard, and long brown hair. He is handsome, and looks intelligent. Is this a portrait of the man who wrote Hamlet? Is it a portrait of William Shakespeare?
We know very little about Shakespeare's life. This famous portrait was made seven years after his death. He has a thin beard, and he's nearly bald. In Stratford Upon Avon, in the church where he is buried, there is a statue of Shakespeare. He doesn't look like a great poet.
So is this portrait painted in his lifetime a true picture of William Shakespeare? We don't know. But a lot of people will go to Stratford Upon Avon to see it.
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