Shakespeare's Face: Unraveling the Legend and History of Shakespeare's Mysterious Portrait

by Stephanie Nolen

The story of a recently discovered portrait of a young William Shakespeare traces its origins and history to discuss how it came into being, its possession by the same family for more than four hundred years, the painstaking forensic study that confirmed its age, and the plausibility of its authenticity. 20,000 first printing.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Shakespeare, Biography Memoir, Art

Hardcover

First published July 2, 2002

Reviews

[S.M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this when it came out but I am posting it now to encourage others to read this fascinating book. Current information from 2013: the label, ink and glue on the back of the painting which identify the sitter as William Shakespeare, have been tested and proven to date between 1600-1640. Extensive research has been done on the family of the owner, further linking the owner's direct ancestor to Wm Shakespeare. See http://www.canadianshakespeares.ca/mu...
for more information.
(If link doesn't work, search for "The Sanders Portrait")

[Hugh Coverly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember when this story broke in the Globe and Mail. Knowing enough of the story at the time, I chose not to get the book in 2002. Over the years I’ve forgotten much of the detail and I’m glad to have finally read it. The book reads much like a mystery novel. Stephanie Nolan’s approach is interesting, to say the least. She has Shakespearean experts and other professionals tell their roles in the uncovering the solution to the mystery. The portrait itself is consistent with its alleged age, but it’s the label chiefly that prevents a final verdict being given. No one can say whether or not it is a portrait of Shakespeare, but in the end it doesn’t change the fact that his plays and poems have endured and will continue to do so.

[Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

My rating might be influenced by my fascination with Shakespeare, but I think this multi-faceted collection of essays will appeal to loads of people, even those who give not a fig whether a painting owned by a retired Ontario engineer actually depicts the Bard of Avon.
The process of determining the authenticity of a portrait -- from the clues in the way the fabric is painted to the C-14 dating -- is absorbing.
Nolen, the report who brought this story to the Globe and Mail in the early 2000s, has wisely decided to let the experts -- the art historians, the chemists, the Shakespeare scholars, the archivists -- express their own views.
In the end, it doesn't change the plays if this is a real portrait. The process of the detective work is a fascinating read.

[Alex McVeigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good story about an interesting painting interweaved with (then) relatively contemporary Shakespeare scholarship. Would have liked an update in there, as it was published in 2002.

[Dianne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reads like a mystery novel with no definite decision as to if it is a true painting of Shakespeare but it does not alter the fact why his plays and poems have endured for so long.

[Harvey · Rating 4 out of 5]

- I enjoyed this collection of essays, and book-long debate, regarding the verification of this 'found' portrait of Shakespeare.
- book quotes:
- "Why should the 'discovery' of what might be a portrait of William Shakespeare make it to the front page of the newspapers? Because, the answer will come, Shakespeare was the greatest writer in the history of the world."
- "After God," proclaimed Alexandre Dumas, the nineteenth-century French author "Shakespeare created most."
- "...the mythic and legendary nature of Shakespeare's narratives, the richness and density of his work, the self-sufficiency of his dramatic structures, his plays' susceptibility to cultural translation, and his theatrical openness. It is needless to say that he portrays situations that affect us all, both personally and politically, that he creates - or gives his actors the stimulus to represent - characters in whom we can believe, that he deals with fundamental human concerns - love and marriage, birth and death, relationships between levels of society, the need for good government on a personal and a national level. Many other dramatists do these things too, but Shakespeare is concerned not only with human beings in society, but also with our place in the universe. He is, in the most important sense of the word, a religious dramatist - not a proponent of any particular religion, but a writer who is aware, and makes his spectators aware, of the mystery of things, of humankind's' need to seek, however unavailingly, for an understanding of how we came to be on earth and how we should conduct ourselves now we are here."

[Alethea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nolen was surprisingly introduced to the tale of the Sanders portrait by her parents; her father had stopped to chat with a neighbor, Lloyd Sullivan, one evening, and during the conversation, Sullivan told Nolen's father that his retirement plans came down to one thing, a portrait in his possession and passed down through generations of his family that was allegedly of the Bard himself, painted during his lifetime, when Shakespeare was 39 years old. So begins this very interesting journey through Sullivan's attempts to authenticate the painting; Nolen also has chapters written by various Shakespeare experts dissecting the pros and cons of the validity of the painting, which are interspersed with Sullivan's work. The owner spent tens of thousands of dollars having the Sanders portrait examined by experts, carbon dated, and inspected for technical painting methods which would have been used in Elizabethan times. The book also examines our relationship with Shakespeare on the whole, how he and his genius have informed our modern world, and how we do not truly know what the man looked like, how we put our own expectations onto the portraits done of him, most of which are posthumous. Experts still debate and dismiss the Sanders portrait, and Nolen's chronicling of Sullivan's journey was extremely interesting.