Like the hunt for Jack the Ripper, looking for Shakespeare is an English public pastime that surges up from time to time, and we are at present in the middle of an eruption. The tenacious belief that Warwickshire Will was a front man for the “real” author of the plays is still maintained by some, in cheerful defiance of logic, common sense and historical evidence. Books and articles continue to appear arguing the case for the Sixth Earl of Derby, the 17th Earl of Oxford, Francis Bacon, Kit Marlowe (unmurdered and writing from his exile abroad), the Second Countess of Pembroke, or a committee formed from any of the above.
Alternatively, Shakespeare’s authorship is accepted but he is shown conspiracy-wise to be not what he seems. Some treat the play texts as cryptic statements of the dramatist’s Catholicism, atheism or republicanism, while others riddle the sonnets in order to shake out the encoded identities of Mr W.H. and the Dark Lady.
Even within conventional bardology, there is plenty going on. Last year saw no fewer than three hefty biographies, distilled from the slim documentary record of Shakespeare’s existence and coloured up into portraits through socio-historical detail and complex deductions from the plays and poems. Soon the Royal Shakespeare Company will launch a multinational season of the “Complete Works” at Stratford-upon-Avon, with 41 full-scale productions. And now we have the National Portrait Gallery’s Searching for Shakespeare, an exhibition centring on eight pictures that have at one time or another been accepted as true images of the Bard.
This line-up is supported by a range of other portraits representing luminaries of Shakespeare’s world, from his Queen to his actor-manager, and a glass case display of documents and objects ranging from the type of hornbook that taught Will his infant letters, through various original documents, theatrical bric-a-brac and early editions, to the much-corrected second draft of Will’s will, the one in which his widow is summarily consigned to their second-best bed.
The representations of the man himself raise one immediate question. How much do we need his portrait? It can make no difference to the appreciation or understanding of the plays if their author’s nose was long or short, his head bald or his chin bearded. As Ben Jonson advised, in lines printed opposite the engraving that adorns the title-page of the First Folio of Shakespeare’s collected works, it is better to reflect “not on his Picture but his Booke”.
On the other hand, to know what has passed as Shakespeare’s image down the ages is to learn something of how we have conceived him over the centuries. These pictures also serve to remind anyone tempted to think otherwise that Shakespeare was not a demigod, an aberration of mortality come down to earth with Oberon and Titania “to dance our ringlets to the whistling wind”. It is important always to remember that the poems and plays were spun as much from flesh and blood and real experience as from imagination.
So where shall we find a true image of the bodily bard? The portrait that dominates the title page of the First Folio, published seven years after Shakespeare’s death, is by a Flemish engraver, Martin Droeshout. Based no doubt on a lost portrait from life – possibly a miniature – Droeshout’s print is nevertheless clumsy and falsely proportioned. Jonson’s verse admits that the print “hath hit his face” well, but complains that it fails to portray its subject’s intelligence. Jonson is right: in the Droeshout version Shakespeare’s expression is as vacant and twittish as a marionette’s, the head far too big and floating weirdly above the collar and shoulders.
Appropriately, the portly bust on Stratford’s marble monument – represented in the show by the National Portrait Gallery’s plaster cast – is a considerably more stolid affair. A few years before his death, the former “honey-tongued” dramaturge had converted himself back into a burgher of Stratford, having returned to his hometown after enriching himself in the Smoke. The town gave him a commensurate memorial.
During the great revival of drama after the Cromwellian interlude, Shakespeare’s fame as a creative spirit of national importance was increasingly established. In about 1667 Gerard Soest recognised this in his anachronistic, Van Dyckian memorial portrait, more or less imaginary, of a rather sly, handsome, faintly melancholic individual, whose carelessly receding hair has not yet yielded to the pattern baldness seen in Droeshout and on the tomb.
A hundred years later, when Shakespeare’s prestige had mushroomed, a new, apparently far more authentic image emerged – the “Janssen” portrait. In contrast to the Caroline appearance of the Soest, this is contemporary with its alleged sitter in painting-style, costume and inscription (“aged 46/1610”, Shakespeare’s own age at that date). It shows a prosperous, lavishly dressed, mild-eyed Jacobean gentleman, much as the record suggests Shakespeare had become in his mid-40s. But, by 1988, the deception was unmasked when conservers found passages of overpainting, clearly intended to create the characteristic high balding forehead of the playwright. With these additions removed, the image no longer looked like Shakespeare.
A yet more blatant fake was concocted in the 19th century, over a 16th-century religious panel. This “Flower” portrait was supposed by some to be the original from which Droeshout worked but, like most old forgeries, it now looks a feeble effort. In the early 20th century two other “Shakespeare” panels were being touted around, known as the “Sanders” and “Grafton” portraits. Both are genuinely Elizabethan and show unidentified young men of the period, though with no particular connection to their alleged sitter.
These pictures, with their obvious defects, hang alongside the one whose claims to be painted from life have so far survived refutation. This is the Portrait Gallery’s own “Chandos” portrait, which was its first acquisition in 1856 and enjoys the gallery number NPG1. The favoured central station that the gallery gives here to its own possession may seem tendentious, since the Chandos portrait has no more provable link back to Shakespeare than any of its rivals: it was reputed in the 18th century to have been owned by the poet William Davenant, who in later life (when staging his own Shakespearean adaptations and pastiches during the Restoration) put it about that he was Shakespeare’s illegitimate son. This is tenuous enough, and yet the Chandos portrait does stand apart from the other candidates, for it conveys real force of character and has unusual features – the unstrung collar and the earring – that are shared by none of its rivals but are seen in other writer-portraits of the time.
For all that it was Britain’s first National Portrait, the painting did not much please the Victorians, for it made Shakespeare look too much like a sinister and saturnine outsider: dark-skinned, plainly dressed, yet tricked out with that aberrant gypsy earring. To the 21st century, on the other hand, these elements look just the job. The man who peers out of the Chandos portrait is wary, reserved, contained – much more like the mysterious stranger, the Man with No Name who hides his past, that we may imagine awaits us at the end of our search for Shakespeare. NPG1 may not be a true image of the living Shakespeare, but he is true to the Shakespeare of our current imagination, and can be enjoyed for that.
‘Searching for Shakespeare’ is at the National Portrait Gallery until 29 May and is sponsored by Credit Suisse. Tel +44 020 7306 0055
