what is the AE 44 in the top left corner mean? Anyone?
And the name plate? shakeFpeare?
Middle English often replaced “S” with “F”.
It means he was “aged 44 years” when the portrait was made.
Oh and what looks like an “F” in Shakespeare is just another way they used to write the letter “s”.
That was the way they wrote the letter “s” at that time. That carried through to our Colonial and early nationhood days. The Declaration of Indepedence among other documents contain that same penmanship.
I was guessing the 44th year of Queen Elizabth’s reign, but that would have been 1602 or 03; so off by half a decade from 1608. So that can’t be it.
I’m wondering if it’s a dipthong? I think I’ve seen that coupling in an old Henry VIII portrait of some kind.
https://thesocialselect.com/what-does-ae-mean-after-a-date/
“What does AE mean for dates?
It is an abbreviation of the Latin Aetatis for “at age”.
I guess he was 44?
F=S
But I don’t know what the grammar rules were as to when you used it.
“shakeFpeare?”
That “F” is actually a “medial S”, the second form of the lowercase S:
https://www.onlinewritingjobs.com/fun-stuff/medial-s-the-old-english-s-that-looks-like-f/