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Literary Criticism & Bard
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Another Shakespeare Portrait?
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In his biography
William Shakespeare
, Anthony Holden gives novelist John Updike's reason for reading literary biographies (and, presumably by extension, viewing literary portraits):to prolong and extend our intimacy with the author--to partake again, from another angle, of the joys we have experienced within this author's oeuvre, in the presence of a voice and mind we have come to love.
"We read, those of us who do": John Updike, New York Review of Books, Vol. XLVI, No. 2, 4 February 1999.
You have to remember that the only surviving picture of Shakespeare that claims to represent him is the engraving from the first folio (our graphic you can see top right) and even that was done several years after his death. It's unlikely that the commisioned artist would have known Shakespeare. And I think it is to some extent an idealised portrait. The expanse of forehead suggests intellect rather than baldness and so on.All the other "portaits" merely have a flimsy similarity with this image. The famous Chandos portrait looks to me like some merchant, not a poet.
I can't find the frontispiece portrait of Alexander Pope from the 1717 Works anywhere on line: it is highly idealised. Even the more conventional portraits of Pope give us no idea of the reality --
-- that he was a hunchbacked dwarf.
But poet portraits, especially of the frontispiece kind, were often idealised. Lofty brows, sensitive features, laurel wreaths and so on.
Occasionally you can compare the idealised poet,
[image error]
with the actual
Anyway, I don't believe any of them are portraits of Shakespeare. My favourite picture of Shakespeare is the little drawing by Picasso, which used to be on the front cover of the "Cambridge Shakespeare" series,
[image error]
Mod
"The expanse of forehead suggests intellect rather than baldness"I love it. That is how I'm going to start describing myself.
Ben Jonson ... wrote a poem that praises how well the engraver [of the First Folio portrait:], Martin Droeshout, "hath hit his face."Jonson goes on to lament that it was impossible for Droeshout to portray Shakespeare's wit equally well - at a time when the word "wit" had a much broader meaning than today: "...the Print would then surpasse/ All, that was ever writ in brasse./ But, since he cannot, Reader, looke/ Not on his Picture, but his Booke."
Excerpt from "A face by any other name," Editorial in the print edition of The Globe and Mail, March 14, 2009
way off topic here -- but how are you adding the pictures into the messages (vs. just posting links to the pictures)?
Jenna, Click on some html is ok above the comment box and look for image in the list of formatting tips. I think that is what people are doing.
Mod
http://www.william-shakespeare.info/w...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/wor...
Dear me Candy, this is poor quality information. For a more rational view of this painting, seehttp://mrshakespeare.typepad.com/mrsh...
(This blog is really well-informed and interesting.)
For a little on the possible background to the Droeshout engraving, see
http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/...
But errors abound. The brit. mus. article calls it a frontispiece, which it is not. The wikipedia article you quote puts it "on the cover of the first folio", where it is not. It is actually centred on the title page -- very unusual. The poem William mentions (more precisely: the poem the Editorial of The Globe and Mail mentions) is alongside it, on the left-hand page, signed B.I. But it does not first praise the engraver, and then "go on" to lament something else, it is all part of a single statement ....
.... but really it is best if Jonson speaks for himself:
This Figure, that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut;
Wherein the Graver had a strife
With Nature, to out-doo the life:
O, could he but have drawn his wit
As well in brasse, as he hath hit
His face; the Print would then surpass
All, that was ever writ in brass.
But, since he cannot, Reader, look
Not on his Picture, but his Book.
It's a bit of an advertiser's blurb is it not? "You've seen the picture, now read the book!"
Mod
There must be big business in the Shakespeare portrait business and I'm thinking of making one myself! Ha!
Really though, I'd love to read a great book on the ? dozens of paintings of W.S.
Candy, a great book (both in size and excellence) is Schoenbaum's "Shakespeare's Lives". Well worth a library reservation. There is a lot on Shakespeare portraits, the great forging business of Shakespeariana (often of portraits), and the wacko stuff of Delia Bacon, Mr Looney etc.
Not worth buying just for the section on the portraits, but as I say, well worth a library visit.
Mod
In an article titled A battle of Wills, this morning's edition of Canada's "national newspaper" reports a feud between "two bastions of the Bitish establishment" over whether the Cobbe or the Chandos portrait is the authentic likeness of the Bard. The ringer in this race is a third portrait, the Janssen, which resenbles the Cobbe--or does the Cobbe resemble the Janssen?To those of us who care, it is all very exciting. Read the article here.
http://www.utac.utoronto.ca/content/v...
http://www.ago.net/shakespeare
http://www.amazon.ca/Shakespeares-Fac...
Another painting has surfaced thought to be of Shakespeare painted during his lifetime...in U.K.
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/art...
http://thepeterboroughexaminer.com/Ar...
I really got into the story and analysis of the "Sanders Portrait" and have seen the painting a couple of times.
What do you think? Are these really our fellow?