Shakespeare played jealous husband in Ben Jonson play, academic claims

He was an actor, as well as the greatest dramatist of all time, but no one has been able to name with certainty a single role that William Shakespeare performed himself.

- Dalya Alberge

Now a leading scholar has concluded from linguistic analysis that Shakespeare played an obsessively jealous husband in a 1598 drama by fellow playwright Ben Jonson.

Dr Darren Freebury-Jones, a lecturer in Shakespeare studies at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon, has discovered "striking similarities" between phrases recited by Thorello in Every Man in His Humour and those in Shakespeare's Othello, Hamlet and Twelfth Night - all written between 1600 and 1603.

He told the Guardian: "What I've found are some really interesting connections in terms of language, which suggest that Shakespeare was, perhaps unconsciously, remembering his own lines."

Elizabethan actors generally did not have copies of an entire play.

Instead, their scripts were limited to their particular lines and their cues just the last few words of preceding speeches.

Freebury-Jones said: "Players like Shakespeare would therefore need to be alert during performance, relying heavily on their aural understanding. So there was a real emphasis on listening during the period...