Was Shakespeare the man behind the mask?

from New Scientist, 21 October 1995

A 17th-century death mask that has been in Germany for two centuries is that of William Shakespeare, who may have died of a rare form of eye cancer. These are the intriguing conclusions of the first scientific investigation into the authenticity of disputed images of the Bard carried out by a German academic.

Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel, professor of English literature at Mainz University, says that a diagnosis by a German eye specialist and an examination by German forensic scientists have convinced her that the mask and two famous English portraits are all true likenesses of Shakespeare. Her conclusion is likely to provoke a revolution among Shakespeare scholars, who have assumed for most of this century that the images were fakes.