Malvasia Malmsey was one of the three major wines exported from Greece in medieval times. (For other examples, see Rumney wine and Cretan wine). It is alleged that when Edward IV of England convicted his brother, George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence, of high treason, his private execution consisted of being "drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine," which is dramatized in Shakespeare's "Richard III". Both Monemvasia and Candia have lent their names to modern grape varieties. In Greece, there is a variety known as Monemvasia, evidently named after the port, though now grown primarily in the Cyclades. In western Europe,
Gilbert Shakespeare is not recorded, but according to William Oldys he survived to a patriarchal age." Oldys wrote in the mid-18th century, without certainty as to identity: "One of Shakespeare's younger brothers, who lived to a good old age, even some years, as I compute, after the restoration of King Charles the Second... The curiosity at this time of the most noted actors to learn something from him of his brother, etc., they justly held him in the highest veneration..." Gilbert Shakespeare Gilbert Shakespeare (baptised 13 October 1566, buried probably 3 February 1612) was a younger brother of William Shakespeare. His name