Is This the Face of Shakespeare?
I’ve been mesmerized since I first saw this portrait on Monday.
The leading Shakespeare expert in the world (though how you get that title, I don’t know) thinks this portrait might be the real deal. He believes it was painted from life when Shakespeare was 46, just six years before his death.
Time has the story but I’ll summarize the pertinent details here. The portrait was first reported to have been owned by the third Earl of Southampton. In the early 18th century, a member of the Cobbe family—the family that’s owned the portrait for approximately 300 years—married into the Earl’s family and thus took possession of the portrait.
In 2006, Alec Cobbe, current owner and an art restorer, noticed a resemblance between the portrait held by his family and paintings he saw in an exhibition in London of likely images of the Great One. As a result of scientific testing conducted on the portrait, we know that it hasn’t been altered since it was first painted in the 1610. But does it show the face of Shakespeare?
I certainly hope so.
Since high school, I have been astounded by the gifts of Shakespeare. No other writer in the history of the world combines his phenomenal wit, his comprehensive understanding of human nature, and his awe-inspiring gift of making the English language sound like the most incredible music. A pilgrimage to his crypt in Stratford was just that to me: A pilgrimage.
Though it’s undeniably bleak, no play or novel reveals to me more of the essential truths of the human condition than Macbeth. I was stunned when I first “got it” in high school (thanks, Mrs. Gordon!) and am still just as stunned today. And for anyone who thinks Shakespeare is dull and scholarly, I submit A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
I am enthralled by the mysteries of his life, including the biggest question of all: How did a man from the provinces – well, but not spectacularly educated – do it? But, then again, how could anyone do it?
There is no answer. Just gratitude that somehow, someway he did it. And Planet Earth will always be the richer for it.
-Sandy AAR
Of study course like your world wide web website but you need to have to check the spelling on numerous of your posts. Numerous of them are rife with spelling issues and I uncover it genuinely bothersome to tell the truth however I’ll surely occur again when once again.
“”In most of the plays those few minutes aren’t important (okay, so Richard III is a big exception) so you don’t miss anything big.””
You’re not wrong. The theater-going experience back then was v. v. different from now, with lots and lots of chatter and movement amongst the crowd even while the play was in progress, so anything important will be repeated more than once. It’s one of the things my teacher impressed upon us, to help the Shakespeare-phobes to relax. If you don’t understand every line, that’s okay!
Well, I don’t think it’s him. It also does not look like a 46 year old whatsoever, but perhaps that was the artist’s ‘license’.
I, too, enjoy ‘shakespeare in love’ but not at all in a historic sense ( I cringe at the boyish looks and immaturity of it’s ‘shakespeare’). I have to suspend judgment (like with a lot of romance novels!) to enjoy it but, it is enjoyable if I realize it has nothing nor truly is trying to pretend it does have anything to do with history.
From what we know Shakespeare was a bit of a hermit or reclusive, he didn’t haunt the usual places – a quiet man not given to ‘partying’, etc. I’d say a ‘still waters run deep’ type of man with clearly a great deal of empathy, imagination and a philosophical, slightly subversive bent. And , of course, a great business mind. Oh – and good with words!!
Oh, Susan, how I love that movie. One of my favorites of all time.
One of the reasons I loved the movie “”Shakespeare in Love”” was that it gave me a sense of what it must have been like to see “”Romeo & Juliet”” at a time when one didn’t know the ending, a time before the protagonists became the watchword for doomed young lovers. It made the play fresh and exciting. Of course, one aspect of Shakespeare’s genius is that almost all of his plays, if well done, still are fresh and exciting even when we know how they turn out.
I like that theory, rigmarole. Still, the plays are entertaining but I think that in the mystery that was his mind he somehow knew he was writing for the ages. Those who put together the First Folio just seven years after his death certainly did, anyway.
Cockamamie theory of my own: You know how it takes five to ten minutes for your “”ear”” to kick in when you see the plays performed? In most of the plays those few minutes aren’t important (okay, so Richard III is a big exception) so you don’t miss anything big. Crazy ass, I know, but that somehow feels right to me.
I spent a fairly intense year studying Shakespeare’s plays, and I actually came out of it convinced that the plays could not have been written by anyone who did not come from modest beginnings. My thinking is that people who come from the upper class, people who study at the best universities, don’t tend to understand the lower classes all that well, and Shakespeare did INTIMATELY understand how to make the average person attending his plays laugh and cry, and, most importantly, to get them to shell out their hard-earned wages to see more of his plays in the future. They are pure entertainment, not an exercise in how to write perfectly.
Thanks for that link, Lusty Reader! I’ll have some fun browsing that.
And, Ellen, I too would so have loved to have braved the stench on the south bank of the river and seen a live production at the Globe. I’ve attended a performance at the rebuilt Globe (a project driven by the passion of the late American actor Sam Wannamaker) as a groundling. It was tiring! (But maybe that had to do with the fact that it wasn’t a great production.)
Lusty Reader, one of his Greatest Hits for me is Polonius’ advice to his son in Hamlet. Our crafty Bard gave some of the wisest words he ever wrote to a fool.
And these few precepts in thy memory
Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar:
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel,
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatched, unfledged courage. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear’t that th’ opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice,
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy, rich, not gaudy,
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulleth th’ edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell, my blessing season this in thee!
Gee, if we only all took that advice!
I can’t help but wish I could have been at a production of one of Shakespeare’s plays at the Globe. We tend to forget that he was an entertainer. His wrote his plays to please the paying public and to make money for the company.
If that is a portrait of him, he was a fine looking man.
The Bard, just so amazing! And I love the history of the painting itself, just imagining those long-standing families and where it must have hung and observed for such an extended period of time.
A true testment to Shakespeare’s greatness is how many commonly used phrases he originiated. Just one person 400 years ago left such an awesome and current legacy like: dead as a doornail, all’s well that ends well, one fell swoop, pound of flesh, and so many more. I found this site that gives some more insight into phrases that are attributed to him, and they even use Cobbe’s portrait on that webpage!
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/phrases-sayings-shakespeare.html
Can’t argue with any of that, Lynne, but he didn’t receive a gentleman’s Oxbridge education. And life in the provinces certainly didn’t expose him to the influences that one in London might have.
We’ll have to disagree about the language. It is utterly beautiful in its simplicity. And simple is w-a-a-a-a-a-y harder than high falutin’.
There is NO explanation for what he achieved. None. And IMO there doesn’t need to be.
“”I am enthralled by the mysteries of his life, including the biggest question of all: How did a man from the provinces – well, but not spectacularly educated – do it? But, then again, how could anyone do it? “”
What difference should coming from the provinces make? Why shouldn’t a Brummie be as well educated as anyone else?
And Shakespeare was very well educated, at the local Grammar School. There are also rumours that his family were secret Catholics, and he received extra education, perhaps to be enrolled in the priesthood, at Hoghton Tower in Lancashire. I live fairly close, and there has always been a local rumour to that effect.
Shakespeare understood the human condition – that’s what makes him stand out from the rest. The language is beautiful, but robust, and nowhere near as high falutin’ as someone like Spencer.
And the groundlings understood him fine – they were far worse educated than he was.