posted on 13 March 2009 08:42
by
Peter Stockwell
Is he? Is he Not?
We have a new painting of Shakespeare. The only one painted in his lifetime. This has been owned by an Irish family ever since they inherited it from the Earl of Southampton who was a friend of Shakespeare's. It portrays a young man, richly dressed, who looks nothing like the known portraits of Shakespeare. We have two which are likely to be accurate. The engraving on the First Folio, which Ben Jonson said was a good likeness, and a bust in Stratford upon Avon church. Both of these were made a few years after Shakespeare's death and accepted by those who new him. So what about the young man? His chin and nose are very different to the First Folio portrait. He is young and the First Folio engraving is of an older man. But tests on the painting show that he was painted when Shakespeare was forty six years old. There is no doubt the Earl of Southampton knew Shakespeare, but he probably knew a lot of people. So I am not convinced. The BBC is saying it is a definite early portrait. With the BBC's track record of reporting uncertainties as definite I think the jury is still out on the new Shakespeare portrait.
I have reached volume five of A Dance to the Music of Time. Not a dinner party to be seen at the moment. Amazing.