hDo we finally know what the Bard looked like?

hDo we finally know what the Bard looked like?

LONDON — The Bard, or not the Bard? That is the question posed by Monday’s unveiling of a centuries-old portrait of a dark-eyed, handsome man in Elizabethan finery.

Experts say it is the only portrait of William Shakespeare painted during his lifetime — in effect, the sole source of our knowledge of what the great man looked like.

But they can’t be certain. In the shifting sands of Shakespeare scholarship, where even the authorship of the plays is sometimes disputed, nothing is written in stone.

“We’re 90 percent sure that it’s Shakespeare,” said Paul Edmondson, director of learning at the Shakespeare Learning Trust, which plans to exhibit the portrait in Stratford-on-Avon.

Incredibly, the portrait has been in private hands for several centuries but the owners — the Cobbe family — had no idea the man in the painting was responsible for so many enduring masterpieces.

All that changed three years ago, Edmondson said, when one of the Cobbes walked into the National Portrait Gallery in London’s Trafalgar Square to see a traveling exhibit called “Searching for Shakespeare.”

One of the first things he saw was a famous portrait of the Bard that usually hangs in the renowned Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington.

“His jaw dropped,” said Edmondson. “He realized he had one at home. And the one he had at home turned out to be the original.”

San Francisco considers crackdown on ‘flash mob’

SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco officials say they’re considering a crackdown on “flash mob” gatherings after some recent events left the city with a hefty bill.

The counterculture fad involves a mob of participants that suddenly materializes in a public place, engages in odd behavior and then disperses.

The events, promoted through Web sites and word of mouth, range from street-corner pie fights to seemingly spontaneous sidewalk dances.

San Francisco’s Recreation and Park Department says a massive Valentine’s Day pillow fight cost the city more than $20,000 to clean up mounds of feathers that clogged storm drains and caked up sidewalks.

Octuplets’ mom may move, get help with children

WHITTIER, Calif. — Southern California’s octuplets mother may be moving to a new home and getting help to raise her brood.

Nadya Suleman’s father, Ed Doud, is buying a $564,900 house in the city of La Habra in a deal expected to close Friday, said Prudential Realty listing agent Mike Patel.

In a related development, television’s Dr. Phil McGraw said Monday that Suleman will accept a volunteer group’s offer of nursing care for her children.

Suleman has been living in a Whittier home that is owned by her mother. But that property is being foreclosed on because her mother is more than $20,000 behind in mortgage payments. Doud is divorced from her mother.

Officer killed in N. Ireland

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — Gunmen killed an officer in an attack on a Northern Ireland police patrol Monday, authorities said, just 48 hours after Irish Republican Army dissidents shot to death two British soldiers. The shootings fanned fears of a return to retaliatory violence after years of fragile peace.

The latest killing came even as British security chiefs appealed for public help to catch the soldiers’ killers — a hunt that challenges Catholics to inform on their own as never before.

No group claimed responsibility, but politicians blamed the Real IRA, the splinter group that admitted blame for Saturday’s fatal shooting of two soldiers who were collecting pizzas from outside an army base.

Associated Press