The diary of Elizabethan lawyer John Manningham reveals a Bugs-Bunny-like episode from the life of William Shakespeare. When Richard Burbidge was playing Richard III, a female audience member “greue soe farr in liking w^th him” that she asked him to visit her that evening using the name Richard III. Shakespeare overheard this, beat Burbidge to the lady’s house and “was intertained.” When word came that Richard III was at the door, Manningham says, Shakespeare sent the reply that “William the Conqueror came before Richard III.”

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