A new portrait of Shakespeare: the case of the Ely Palace painting as against that of the so-called Droeshout original

.CD

PR

2929

C7

A NEW PORTRAIT OF SHAKESPEARE

A NEW PORTRAIT OF
SHAKESPEARE

The Case of the Ely Palace Painting

as against that of the so-called

Droeshout Original.

BY

JOHN CORBIN

Author of "An American at Oxford"

' ' O sweet Mr. Shakspeare ! Pie hai'c his picture in my study "

The Retnrne from Parnassus, Circ. 1599

JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
LONDON & NEW YORK MDCCCCIII

Clowes & Sons, Limited, Printers, London,

J. T.

TO

P. C.

PREFATORY

MANY portraits of Shakespeare have been regarded
by their partisans as taken from life ; but none of
them has been accepted as unquestionably genuine.
Of late a painting, recently discovered — the so-called
Droeshout Original — has been looked upon by the
highest authorities as, in all probability, a life portrait,
and has been reproduced as of chief interest in
biographies of the great dramatist. As yet this
painting has not been described adequately, nor
indeed in any but the most superficial manner.
At the same time another painting — the Ely Palace
portrait — which, in certain points at least, is admitted
to be of even greater interest, has been even more
strangely neglected. The purpose of the present
essay is to relate the history of these paintings as
far as it is known, and to discuss their respective
claims to be regarded as genuine. The aim of
the discussion will be to show that the so-called
Droeshout Original is probably a fabrication, and
that the Ely Palace painting is probably a life
portrait of Shakespeare.

CONTENTS

SECTION PAGE

I. THE ELY PALACE PORTRAIT AND THE

DROESHOUT ORIGINAL i

II. CONCERNING MOCK ORIGINALS .... 4

III. THE LIKELIHOOD OF A LIFE PORTRAIT . 10

IV. THE DROESHOUT ENGRAVING AND THE

STRATFORD BUST 16

V. THE ELY PALACE PAINTING 32

VI. THE SO-CALLED DROESHOUT ORIGINAL . 57

VII. COMPARISONS 80

VIII. THE LIFE PORTRAIT OF SHAKESPEARE . . 92

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE ELY PALACE PORTRAIT. Photogravure Frontispiece.

THE DROESHOUT PRINT, PREFIXED TO

THE FOLIO OF 1623 .... To face page 22

MASK, TAKEN FROM THE STRATFORD

BUST „ 26

THE ELY PALACE PORTRAIT ... „ 40

THE COSTUME OF THE ELY PALACE

PORTRAIT „ 53

THE DROESHOUT ORIGINAL PORTRAIT „ 70

A NEW PORTRAIT OF
SHAKESPEARE

WHEN the Ely Palace portrait of Shakespeare I. — The
was discovered in 1 846 no notice was taken EIy p*lace

r • i i • Portrait

ot it, except to record some meagre and quite and the
unscientific details of the discovery in an Droeshout
architectural miscellany — or perhaps it would Original,
be more accurate to say, to bury them there —
and for half a century no further notice was
taken of it, beyond the announcement of its
transfer from hand to hand. During thirty-
two years out of the fifty years of its neglect,
it hung — of all places — in the house in which
Shakespeare was born. Until the thirty-
second of these years, I suppose, any one
of the hundreds of thousands of people who
saw it might have obtained permission to
reproduce and publish it. As it happened, it
was in the unpropitious year that I crossed
the Atlantic with this end in view.

One of the leading authorities at Stratford-
upon-Avon had lately negotiated the purchase
of a portrait of Shakespeare which was sup
posed to be the original of the famous

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

engraving by Martin Droeshout, prefixed to
the first folio of the collected works ; and
no sooner had this supposed original been
incorporated in the collection of the Memorial
Building at Stratford than its authenticity
was called in dispute by prominent critics.
This so-called Droeshout original became the
subject of an intricate and difficult controversy.
The evidence then at hand, while it seemed
far from sufficient to discredit the portrait,
seemed quite as far from sufficient to establish
it as genuine ; and to this day those of its
partisans who have written with most authority
have not been able to pronounce unreservedly
in its favour. How the Ely Palace portrait
was concerned in this controversy I shall not
attempt to explain. The fact of the matter is
that I gained permission to have it engraved
only on condition that I should have the
supposed Droeshout original likewise engraved.
Furthermore, while I was to abstain in my
article from a decision with regard to the
supposed original — as I felt bound to do,
because of the inconclusiveness of the evidence
then at hand — I was to permit the librarian in
whose custody it was to contribute an account
of it to the article. The consequence of all this
was very different from what might have been
expected. In spite of the diversity of existing

The Ely Palace Portrait.

opinion on the subject, the librarian's account*
contained an explicit verdict in favour of the
so-called Droeshout original : " There is now
no doubt that it is a life portrait of Shake
speare, painted in 1609." Any such positive
statement as to the Ely Palace portrait I felt
to be unwarranted. Thus an article that had
been undertaken as a plea for one portrait was
converted, by the ironic power of circumstance,
into a partisan assertion of the claim of its
rival.

Yet the main end in view was accomplished.
When the unmistakable merits of the Ely
Palace portrait became known, they secured it
a place among the few representations of
Shakespeare that deserve the serious con
sideration of the student. It would not be
necessary to revive so vexing a controversy,
except for the fact that evidence has developed
which throws new light on the difficult points
at issue. Unfortunately this new evidence can
only be made clear by reviewing the entire
discussion.

* Harper's Magazine, May, 1897..

New Portrait of Shakespeare.

II. — Con- THAT a portrait of Shakespeare should have
cenung been neglected for over half a century is not

Mock § r i T-

On inais necessarily a source ot wonder. ror many
decades the Director of the National Portrait
Gallery was asked, on an average of rather
more than once a year,* to buy a presentment
of the great dramatist — a counterfeit present
ment — usually at an exorbitant price ; and to
this day, the Director informs me, the supply
continues. The origin of these portraits is
easily accounted for. Toward the end of
the eighteenth century, as is well known,
the national interest in Shakespeare became
feverish, and broke out in forgeries, of which
those of the notorious Ireland are the most
memorable. One of the plague-sores of this
unwholesome time was the manufacture of
portraits of Shakespeare — " mock originals,"
as their fabricators called them — which bade
fair to become one of the permanent products
of England. Literally dozens of them are

* See a paper read by Lionel Cust, Esq., Director of the
National Portrait Gallery, reported in the Proceedings of the
Society of Antiquaries in December, 1895, page I.

Concerning Mock Originals.

known to have been circulated. In the case
of one Zincke and one Holder, the method of
manufacture was laid bare.* Any old paint
ing from a junk-shop — an antique dancing-
master, an elderly lady in cap and blue ribbons,
a Dutch admiral — was bought for a few
shillings, and deftly furnished forth with a set
of new features, ostensibly those of the great
poet. These were, of course, painted over the
original portrait in a manner more or less
archaic, and artifically blackened with smoke,
so as to seem a part of the original painting.
Wivellf has a curious passage with regard to
the smoking of a mock original. He had seen
it when it was fresh from Zincke's brush.
"It was then quite finished, as far as regards
the painting, and only wanted that which is
necessary for the curing of hams before it
would hit the taste of a customer ; according
to the account given of it by the dealer ....
it actually had been so done, it having [after
the smoking, and before Wivell's second view
of it] undergone a complete salivation in the
cleansing of it by himself. Whenever I think
of Mr. Zincke discolouring his portraits to

* See the works on Shakespeare's portraits by James
Boaden (1824) and by Abraham Wivell (1827).
t Page 26 of the supplement of his volume.

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

give them the appearance of age, it greatly
reminds me of Hogarth's print of Old Time
smoking of pictures, in which is represented
the sage gentleman with a bald head giving
vent to the suction of the smoke from a pipe
which he is puffing on a picture." Very often a
story was concocted connecting the "original"
with Shakespeare's family, and pasted on the
back in pseudo- Elizabethan script Life por
traits thus manufactured sold to -the delighted
connoisseur for prices ranging from three
to six pounds — the smallness of which, no
doubt, contributed to the purchaser's delight,
as well as to his belief in the keenness of his
connoisseurship.

The most amusing circumstance with regard
to these mock originals, and at the same time
the circumstance most pertinent to the present
discussion, is that as soon as a connoisseur
bought one of them he fell hopelessly beneath
its spell. Both Zincke and Holder, when
suffering from lapses into honesty, found the
utmost difficulty in convincing the purchaser
that there was a shadow of doubt as to the
authenticity of an " original " — such is the
magic of the worship of Shakespeare when
joined with the pride of connoisseurship. The
old lady became the property of the French
actor Talma, who enshrined it in a costly

Concerning Mock Originals.

frame and displayed it to his admiring friends.
Charles Lamb, it is said — and one scarcely
knows whether to laugh or to weep — fell down
on his knees and kissed it. The story of the
Dutch admiral, which is preserved in a written
confession of the forger, is pure farce. Having
picked the portrait up for five shillings, Holder
repainted it, and sold it to a print-seller named
Dunford for four pounds ten shillings. Dunford,
waxing enthusiastic over his find, induced
literally hundreds of "connoisseurs" to inspect
it, and they all seem to have acknowledged
its great value. Holder shrewdly counselled
Dunford " not to refuse a good offer for it if it
came." Dunford, as Holder relates, "answered
sharply, ' What, sir, do you mean to say it is
painted by yourself ? ' To which I made no
reply. He again made answer, ' I [Holder] did
not know more about it than Mr. West or Sir T.
Lawrence and four hundred competent judges ;'
but himself [Dunford] could not be deceived."
In one sense, certainly, Dunford was not
deceived, for he sold the admiral Shakespeare
for one hundred guineas. When the portrait
was exposed as a fraud, Sir Thomas Lawrence
is said to have denied that he had vouched for
its authenticity ; but it is evident that neither
he nor Benjamin West discovered the imposture
when they examined the portrait — a fact that

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

throws some little light on the value of the
critical opinion of celebrated painters, even
when they are presidents of the Royal Academy.
In his confession Holder laughs somewhat
more than in his sleeve, and remarks that the
crowd of connoisseurs were "blind altogether."*
This pair of forgers seem to have been
guileless knaves, with a powerful conviction
-that under certain circumstances it is not only
right but necessary to make mock originals.
Zincke bursts into gratitude to Shakespeare
for having provided him with "the morsel and
the crust which preserved him from houseless
exposure." Holder engagingly pleads : " My
object has always been to sell my pictures
cheap. I have a wife and nine children to
support, and had I the advantages which others
have made by my works, I should not now be
the poor man I am." Perhaps no other virtue
could so inspire a man to the enterprise of
making Shakespeares as a wife and nine
children. And in addition to these accomplish
ments, Holder had an admirable craftsman's
pride in his art. The Dutch admiral Shake
speare he seems to have regarded as a poor
thing, though his own ; but he records with

* Wivell, pp. 182-183. A briefer account is in J. Parker
Norris's " Portraits of Shakespeare," pp. 218 et seq.

8

Concerning Mock Originals.

pride : "I afterwards made another Shake
speare worth a score such as the above." The
fate of this worthy Shakespeare is, unhappily,
not recorded. The known dozens of mock
originals cast a gloom over the prospect of any
portrait subsequently brought to light ; but this
mock original has a separate claim upon the
imagination. The more one is convinced that
any particular portrait is an original, and no
mock, the greater the lurking terror of Holder's
"other Shakespeare"; and in view of it — or
in the lack of a view of it — we shall not be
justified in pursuing any but the most cautious
and scientific mode of investigation.

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

THE obvious test of a newly discovered portrait
is its history, or, in the cant term, its pedigree.
Without a pedigree the great collector of
Shakespearian relics, J. O. Halliwell-Phillips,
would not look at any article ; and one noted
living scholar, Dr. F. J. Furnivall, refuses to
consider any portrait that cannot be traced to
Shakespeare's family or intimate friends.
Admirable as is the spirit of this scepticism, it
is, perhaps, possible to push it to extremes.
Those who fabricate portraits find little to
trouble them in fabricating pedigrees : do we
not learn, and from none other than the worthy
Slender, of ancestors that come after us ?
Portentous documents have been adduced in
evidence as to this and that portrait, but up to
the present not one of them has shouldered the
burden of proof. In point of fact, with the
exception of the crude engraving prefixed to
the folios, and the cruder bust over Shake
speare's tomb at Stratford, only one portrait —
the Chandos — has a history that reaches back
into the early seventeenth century ; and the
origin of even this is lost in the shadowiest
kind of tradition. What is perhaps more to be

10

The Likelihood of a Life Portrait.

regretted, the portrait has suffered so severely
from decay and from injudicious restoration as
to have lost value as evidence. It is quite
clear that, if we hope to add to the evidence
of the engraving and the bust, we must abate
somewhat the requirement as to " pedigree."

Such an abatement is clearly warrantable,
for there is considerable evidence that portraits
of Shakespeare existed. The artist whose
name is attached to the folio engraving,
Martin Droeshout, could scarcely have worked
from the life. He appears to have been the
son of one Michael Droeshout by his first wife,
Susannaken van der Ersbek, and, according to
the register of the Dutch Church in London,
was baptised on April 26, 1601.* When
Shakespeare died, accordingly, in 1616, Martin
Droeshout was only about fifteen years old.
There is no reason to suppose, furthermore,
that the engraving was made until the folio was
projected, some six or seven years after Shake
speare's death. The conjecture that Droeshout
worked from mere verbal tradition is not sup
ported by any evidence ; it is antecedently very
improbable, and is directly opposed by Ben
Jonson's well-known versesf commending the

* Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, December, 1895
f For a fuller discussion of these points see beyond, p. 19.

II

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

engraving. It is thus permissible to assume
that Droeshout drew his engraving from some
extant portrait.

As to the extent to which Shakespeare's
portraits were circulated, there is interesting
evidence in the first part of The Returne from
Parnassus, a curious and very pointed drama
in literary criticism,* written and played at
St. John's College, Cambridge, at the close of
the sixteenth century. A certain Gullio, after
quoting from the opening stanza of Venus
and Adonis, exclaims,f " O sweet Mr. Shak-
speare ! I'le have his picture in my study at
the Courte." This passage Mr. John Malone,
the American actor and Shakespearian scholar,
kindly pointed out to me as evidence of the
currency of Shakespeare's portrait during his
lifetime ; and when I showed it to Mr. Sidney
Colvin, Keeper of the Prints in the British
Museum, he remarked that it would almost
indicate the currency of prints of Shakespeare.
It should, perhaps, be noticed, by way of
caution, that Gullio is a very good example of
the Anglicised Miles Gloriosus, and that his
pretence of being a courtier is mere vapouring.
But this fact scarcely affects the validity of the

* Edited by the Rev. W. D. Macray, Oxford, 1886.
f Act 3, scene i., p. 58.

12

The Likelihood of a Life Portrait.

allusion in question. The scene in which it
occurs — as, in fact, the entire play — is full of
point and pertinence ; it is bristling with allu
sions to known contemporary customs, and
with evidence of a close personal knowledge
of literary London. St. John's College was
perhaps the most famous of all the colleges of
the day for its connection with the world of
letters, and it numbered amongst its graduates
some of Shakespeare's intimate acquaintances,
notably the Earl of Southampton. Nor is it
strange that this is the only contemporary
allusion to Shakespeare's portrait. If the
circumstance we are seeking to establish were
a matter of wide popular interest, we might
reasonably require the evidence of more than a
solitary reference ; but it is not. It is a minor
personal detail with regard to a man of whom
amazingly few facts were thought worthy of
record. The only cause for surprise is that one
indubitable reference to Shakespeare's portrait
should have survived the wreckage of time.
The passage indicates that a gentleman of
Elizabeth's Court was likely to adorn his study
with a portrait of his favourite poet. The Earl
of Southampton, whose generosity founded
Shakespeare's fortunes, was much given* to

* See Lee's " Life of Shakespeare."
13

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

having his own portrait painted, and would
have been especially likely to appreciate the
portrait of the friend in whose verses he de
lighted. And if, as many suppose, the patron
to whom Shakespeare addressed the first series
of sonnets was another than Southampton, he
also might be expected to have preserved a
portrait. And there is no reason why we
should stop here ; for though our list of Shake
speare's friends is brief, we have abundant
evidence that he was not only one of the most
popular of the poets of his time, but that as a
man he was one of the best beloved. Three
or four contemporary portraits would not neces
sarily tax our credulity. A close scrutiny of
any supposedly contemporary portraits of Shake
speare is accordingly justified, even in the lack
of a pedigree that carries us beyond the terrible
shadow of Holder and Zincke. It is only
necessary to make sure that our inquiry never
neglects for a moment the rigid canons of
evidence.

In judging a portrait without history two
tests are indispensable. It must resemble one
or both of the two portraits of Shakespeare
which we know to have been approved by his
contemporaries — the Droeshout engraving and
the bust at Stratford — and it must be demon -
strably painted in the manner in vogue during

The Likelihood of a Life Portrait.

Shakespeare's life. Both these considerations
are fraught with difficulty. The two authentic
portraits obviously represent Shakespeare at
widely different periods ; they are both rude
in technique, and have been impaired by
accident or clumsy alteration. As for dating
a portrait from internal evidence, the opinions
of specialists are notoriously apt to increase
doubt rather than to remove it. Yet, intricate
and baffling as both considerations must prove,
they are the only possible means of forming an
opinion. As the engraving and the bust are
the only clearly authentic portraits of Shake
speare, it has been thought best, in the following
account of them, to err on the side of fulness
rather than on that of brevity. Several of the
details, moreover, that appear trivial, will be
found to be of considerable moment.

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

THE best authenticated portrait is the engrav
ing by Martin Droeshout, which was prefixed
to the first folio, published in 1623 — seven
years after Shakespeare's death. Droeshout
was a minor engraver, whose works are
valuable to the collector chiefly on account of
their rarity ; and unfortunately the engraving
of Shakespeare is below the average of even
Droeshout's performances. On the page oppo
site the engraving are the following lines by
Ben Jonson : —

This Figure, that them 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 drawne his wit
As well in brasse, as he hath hit
His face, 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.

B. I.

These lines have usually been taken as
high praise of the engraving ; and, in view of
its roughness and lack of all life-likeness, they
have been sometimes regarded as perfunctory

16

The Droeshout Engraving.

and insincere. One commentator remarks that
it is fortunate " these metrical commendations
are not required to be delivered upon oath."
To judge of them rightly, however, it is
necessary to consider closely the circumstances
under which they were written, and the precise
meaning of the phrases used. Commendatory
verses were one of the established conventions
of the time, and the very fact that they were a
matter of convention caused them to have a
conventional language. The phrasing of the
second couplet, which seems to us fulsome and
far-fetched in its compliment, was hackneyed
enough in the time of Elizabeth. In Venus
and Adonis, for instance (1593), we find —

Nature that made thee, with herself at strife,
Saith that the world hath ending with thy life.

And again —

Look when a painter would surpass the life . . .
His art with Nature's workmanship at strife.

Such examples could be multiplied. Far from
being fulsome of praise, the couplet is no more
than a conventional metrical statement of the
fact that the engraver did what he could in a
difficult undertaking. If Jonson had meant to
praise the engraving, he would have expressed
himself quite differently. When Sir Godfrey

17 c

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

Kneller made a copy of the Chandos portrait*
and presented it to Dryden, Dryden acknow
ledged the gift in a poem of praise which we
might, if we wished, call fulsome. It will suffice
to quote two lines —

Such are thy pieces, imitating life

So near they almost conquer in the strife.

The rest of Jonson's poem, reduced to simple
parlance, is similarly lacking in exaggeration.
It says that the graver has failed to express
Shakespeare's mind as well as he has drawn his
features, and advises the reader, if he wants to
find the real Shakespeare, to turn to the plays.
Surely this is not the least of Ben Jonson's
triumphs in commendatory epigram. While
glozing over the delicate question of the artistic
skill of the portrait, as he was bound to do in
deference to his friends and comrades, Heminge
and Condell, the publishers of the folio, he has
paid the highest tribute to his friend and
comrade the dead poet.

Evasive as is Jonson's eulogy, it makes
none the less evident the fact that the features
of the engraving must have possessed a funda
mental likeness to the features of Shakespeare.
The folio was addressed to those who had

* Somewhere between 1683 and 1692. — Boaden, pp. 32-40.

18

The Droeshout Engraving.

known the plays on the London stage, and who
remembered Shakespeare as an actor in them.
A portrait drawn from memory, or from the
description of Shakespeare's old associates,
could scarcely have failed to shock the pur
chasers of the folio, instead of pleasing them.
Whatever we may think of the success of
Martin Droeshout's " strife," it is clearly
necessary to assume that the print was drawn
from a portrait, and that it did not violently
misrepresent it. Defects it obviously has, both
as a drawing and as an interpretation of a
human face — to say nothing of the face of so
great a poet ; but it is probable that the defects
have been exaggerated. Anyone familiar with
prints of the period will open his mind to many
agreeable impressions. Boaden remarks : " To
me this portrait exhibits an aspect of calm
benevolence and tender thought ; great com
prehension, and a kind of mixt feeling, as when
melancholy yields to the suggestions of fancy.
Such, I well remember, it appeared also to Mr.
Kemble, when, some years since, we examined
this subject together." ^Esthetic appreciations
of this kind are of interest as helping to define
the character and value of the portrait, but they
are too much a matter of personal, and even of
momentary feeling, to build upon in argument.
Yet the definite and measurable form and

19 c 2

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

proportion of the features of the engraving
offer a very considerable basis of fact, and will
be of the utmost value in judging of the Ely
Palace portrait.

The costume of the Droeshout engraving
seems even less correctly rendered than the
features ; yet it also embodies facts, and in the
present discussion several of these facts will
prove to be of the most far-reaching impor
tance. The jerkin belongs in general to a type
common at the opening of the seventeenth
century. The distinguishing features of this
type are the row of small buttons down the
front, the straps of embroidery that mark the
main outlines, and the so-called wings that
surround the arms at their juncture with the
body, giving breadth and emphasis to the
shoulders. As regards one feature of the
jerkin, however, no parallel can be found in
the ample records of Elizabethan dress.* One
side appears to have a diagonal from the
shoulder to the waist, while the other side has
none. This lack of symmetry, it may be
conjectured, is a result of faulty perspective.
The conjecture is borne out by the presence of

* See the works on historic costume by Joseph Strutt,
Fairholt, Planche, Hill ; and also costumes of the period in
the National Portrait Gallery and other collections.

2O

The Droeshout Engraving.

defects in drawing that are obvious. Thus the
body seems too small for the head, giving the
impression of a preternaturally thin chest and
narrow shoulders. The right side of the body,
too, judging from the line of the top of the
shoulder, and from the diagonal, is apparently
drawn as in full front, while the left side, as
is seen in the circle about the arm, is in three-
quarter view. The right arm, moreover, is
preposterously thick, and the left arm joins
the shoulder most impossibly. Even in the
row of buttons the defective drawing is evident ;
for while its direction indicates that it is viewed
from the side, it lacks the slight outward curve
which is needed to indicate the normal model
ling, the result being that the chest appears
not only narrow, but flat. If it be found that
a painted portrait, from which the engraving
might have been copied, corrects these defects,
the fact will indicate that the painting was
drawn from life ; while, if it repeats them, the
inference is equally strong that it was copied
from the engraving.

The bust of Shakespeare is on his monu
ment in the chancel in Holy Trinity Church,
Stratford-upon-Avon. According to Dugdale's
diary (1653), " Shakespeare's and John Combe's
monuments at Stratford super Avon were made
by Gerard Johnson." This Johnson was a Dutch

21

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

sculptor, or " tombe-maker," who practised his
trade in London. The first extant reference
to the bust is in a commendatory poem by
L. Digges in the first folio—

.... thy Workes, by which, out-live
Thy Tombe, thy name must when that stone is rent,
And Time dissolves thy Stratford moniment.

It is thus certain that the monument was in
existence in 1623 ; and if, as has been con
jectured, Gerard Johnson did his monuments
to Shakespeare and John Combe at the same
time, a somewhat earlier date is certain. In
any case the bust was put up during the life of
Shakespeare's wife and daughters, and was
familiar to his Stratford friends. Its authority
is therefore less than that of the engraving
only in so far as the approval of Shakespeare's
family is tacit, whereas Jonson's approval is
express ; though it must be added that time
and circumstance seem to have treated it more
harshly than the engraving.

In its original state, the bust, like most
sculptures at that time, and indeed like the best
Greek sculptures, was coloured to the life. In
1749 the colours were renewed, "care being
taken to preserve the exact tints." In 1793
Edmund Malone, whose pseudo-classical tastes
were offended by the colours, succeeded in having

22

THE DROESHOUT PRINT, PREFIXED TO THE FOLIO OF 1623.

(Reproduced by photograph from a copy in the Lenox Library, New York.]

The Droeshont Engraving.

the bust painted white. In 1861 Simon Collins,
a restorer of pictures, was engaged to put the
colours on again. On removing the white paint,
"he found that enough of the ancient pigment
remained to enable him to restore the original
tints." According to the records of Collins's
restoration, the colour of the hair, moustache,
and lip-beard was auburn, and of the eyes light
hazel ;* and so Britton reports of them in i8i6.f
This evidence has usually been taken to be
conclusive as to the colour of Shakespeare's
features. As for the eyes, however, it would
not be at all strange it the exact tint failed to
survive the restoration of 1 749, Malone's white
washing of 1793, and — especially considering
the smallness of their surface — Collins's scrap
ing and repainting of 1861. It is well known,
moreover, that pigments may alter colour
radically with time and exposure to light. An
instance of this, some time since, came to my
knowledge. In a youthful miniature of an old
lady who had just died, the hair was altered
from red to auburn, and the eyes from light
blue to hazel. The claim of the colour of the
bust as a whole to stand as scientific evidence,
though considerable, is accordingly not absolute,

* Parker Norris, p. 25.
t Quoted by Friswell, p. 6.

23

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

and is least absolute in the case of the eyes.
I may add, in connection with this, that at
present, according to a careful observation
made for me by the Vicar of Holy Trinity, the
hair and moustache lack the reddish cast of
auburn, being dark brown, while the lip beard
is nearly black and is tinged with grey.

Johnson's model in making the bust is
generally supposed to have been a death-mask,
and there seems to be no antecedent improba
bility in the assumption.* Had he been a first-
rate artist, even for that archaic period of the
plastic arts in England, the bust would be of
supreme authority. Unfortunately, he seems
scarcely to have deserved his very modest title
of " tombe-maker." The face of the bust is
even cruder in modelling, if possible, than that
of the print is in draughtsmanship. The whole
left cheek is somewhat smaller than the right.
A slight difference in this respect is not unusual
in life, and has been utilised in sculpture to
give character to the face, as, for example, in
the Venus of Milo and the Phidian Theseus ;
but the difference in the bust is so considerable
as to suggest that the flying mould of wax from
which the death-mask must have been modelled
was distorted in cooling. The eyes, which in

* Friswell and Parker Norris.
24

The Droeshout Engraving.

the mask were of course closed, are small, and
are very stiffly rendered. The mouth, which
is open, is represented with about the same
skill, or lack of skill, as the eyes. The parted
lips reveal, on close scrutiny, an inner ridge
that was clearly intended to represent the tips
of the upper teeth. This is now painted flesh
colour, so that it vanishes from all but the
nearest and most attentive scrutiny — a fact
that explains why it has not yet been noted by
those who have written about the bust. Crude
as the bust is, it is to be regarded as the
presentment of the Shakespeare who in 1616
was familiar to Stratford-upon-Avon.

As to the expression of the bust, there has
been as wide a difference of opinion as to
that of the engraving. Friswell found it
" heavy, without any feeling ; a mere block."
Boaden is as fortunate here as in the case of
the engraving : he finds the bust jovial, even
convivial. This difference of interpretation is
in all probability to be largely attributed to
want of harmony in the artist's execution.
The eyes can scarcely be called intelligent,
and the unskilful modelling of the features
results in an undoubted heaviness ; but the
main cast of the countenance — the ample
cheeks and the broad, high forehead — is of the
kind one instinctively associates with a serene,

25

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

intelligent, and abundantly human spirit. As
to the engraving, Boaden's agreeable sensa
tions stand on their own legs ; but his in
terpretation of the bust is confirmed by the
sculptor, who has, luckily, told us quite
obviously what he could not tell us with
subtlety. One of the poet's hands holds a
pen and the other rests on a sheet of paper,
while the lips are parted, as if under the spell
of some strong sensation of delight. In the
original state of the bust the teeth in all
probability showed a flash of white. It is
clearly intended to represent Shakespeare in
the inspiration of composition and under the
spell of the comic muse.*

Comparing the engraving and the bust, we
find both marked resemblances and marked
points of difference. Minor discrepancies may
be disregarded as incident upon the very crude
workmanship in both ; but two points — the
greater fulness of the cheeks of the bust and
the comparative brevity of the nose — are so

* In James Boaden's book on the portraits, a drawing of the
bust by John Boaden faintly indicates the ridge within the
upper lip. It does not represent the teeth individually. The
general cast of the countenance is considerably more animated
and jovial than in the bust, especially as regards the curves of
the lips. It is possible that James Boaden's highly pleasant
impressions were derived from this drawing rather than from
the bust.

26

MASK, TAKEN FROM THE STRATFORD BUST.
(In the possession of Princeton University.}

The Droeshout Engraving.

serious as to impair the validity of the evidence
of both portraits as to Shakespeare's features,
unless they can be explained.

The fulness of the cheeks of the bust need
cause no difficulty, if we assume — what is most
probable — that the print was taken from a
portrait of a much earlier date. That such
portraits of the poet as remained in London
represented him in the height of his activity
and fame is altogether likely ; and the busy
playwright and manager of the Bankside would
naturally be less given to superfluous tissue
than the comfortable retired gentleman of
Stratford. Moreover, even in the print the
line above the band is suggestive of increasing
flesh. The fulness of the cheeks is thus
not only explainable, but may be regarded as
circumstantial evidence of the accuracy of the
bust.

The nose of the bust is not so easily dis
posed of, but a plausible explanation has been
found. It will be noticed that just as the nose
is shorter than that in the engraving, the
upper lip is longer. This has given rise to the
conjecture* that the difference is the result of
a grievous accident. Might not the tip of the
nose have been chipped in the carving, and

* See Parker Norris.
27

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

the present apology for a nose fashioned out
of what stone remained ? So violent an
hypothesis requires substantiation. It has been
observed that there was still a roughness on
the lip just below the nose ; and this, it is
conjectured, marks the place from which it
was intended that the cartilage (septum) should
spring. This cartilage, moreover, instead of
issuing perpendicular to the lip, or inclining
downward, as it does in the normal face, rises
slightly to the tip of the nose. If it issued per
pendicularly, the upper lip would be still longer
in proportion. Careful scrutiny has failed to
detect the roughness on the lip ; but it is not
impossible that repeated scrapings and paint
ings have obliterated it. The slight rise in the
direction of the cartilage is easily seen. The
nostrils (alae) are also drawn upward towards
the cheeks in a somewhat unusual manner.
The right nostril of the bust I found even
higher than the left, which possibly indicates
that the fracture was more extensive on the
right side. On each side of the tip of the nose
is a shallow cavity, perhaps resulting from a
deficiency of stone. A more convincing bit of
evidence is in the position of the moustache.
In the normal face the hair begins at the base
of the nose, often in the very nostrils, and this
is notably the case in the Droeshout engraving.

28

The Droeshout Engraving.

In the bust there is a wide and very ugly
interval. It is notable, also, that whereas the
two portraits differ as to the relative lengths
of nose and lip, they agree as to the combined
length of the two features. Any of these
particulars, in itself, would not be of great
importance, but cumulatively they amount to
a virtual demonstration. It seems strange,
no doubt, according to modern ideas, that
Shakespeare's family should have accepted so
imperfect a likeness ; but here, as elsewhere,
modern ideas are perhaps misleading. In
days when the stone for the monument had
probably to be carted the hundred and more
miles from London, a fraction of an inch might
not have been so grave a consideration even
on a poet's nose.

Further colour is lent to this ingenious con
jecture by the points of resemblance between the
other features of the engraving and the bust.
Owing to the crudeness of both, and the differ
ence in the periods of life they represent, the
resemblances are of necessity mainly confined
to the rougher masses of the face ; but they are
none the less striking. In both portraits the
general contour is, as has been pointed out,
full and sensuous ; the cheek-bones are in both
moderately prominent ; the eyebrows meet
the nose at an angle which, while far from

29

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

uncommon, is decidedly characteristic ; the
forehead in both is high and well domed ;
and the head is bald to the very top, the
baldness being quite naturally more extensive
in the bust than in the engraving ; while
over the ears the hair falls in abundance.
The moustache of both portraits is small and
upturned.

Rough and general as are these points of
resemblance, and unsatisfactory to all who wish
to judge precisely what spirit Shakespeare's
features expressed in life, for the purpose of
the present discussion they are of the utmost
value. Our perception of the finer shades of
character expressed in a portrait depends on
the infinitely elusive play of facial muscles, and
is, moreover, subject to the personal equations
both of the artist who represents and of the
critic who interprets. But the general distribu
tion of masses is a matter of scientific fact
evident to every seeing eye. During a certain
period of his London life, Shakespeare may or
may not have given evidence of grave thought
and a melancholy fancy, and in his later years,
at Stratford, he may or may not have been
benevolent and serene ; but at both periods the
bones underlying the face would have had the
same proportions to one another. The fact
that in these two portraits they do have the

30

The Droeshout Engraving.

same proportions is conclusive evidence as to
the general massing of Shakespeare's features.
Even in the matter of aesthetic interpretation
this has a striking significance ; for it constitutes
the bed-rock expression, and clearly fixes the
type to which the face belonged.

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

v.— The THE history of the Ely Palace portrait is brief.

Ely Palace jn ^g miscellaneous column of an architectural

Painting. weekly (The Builder]* occurred the following

brief notice, entitled " Portrait of Shakespeare" :

A picture, which is believed by some, well qualified to
judge, to be a contemporary portrait of the great bard, has
come into the possession of the excellent Bishop of Ely.
It was found in an obscure broker's shop, where nothing
could be learnt of its previous history. It has no name on
it, but cleaning has made apparent in one part, " Aet. 39,
1603," which agrees with the age of Shakespeare in that
year. We have not yet seen the picture, and cannot at
once, after so many disappointments, give implicit credence
to the statement; what we know, however, of those who
have examined the portrait, and of the judgment of the Rt.
Rev. Bishop himself, induces us to believe it will be found
correct, and that a great discovery has been made.

Five weeks later, on December 26, 1846,
this paragraph was added, entitled " The
Bishop of Ely's Shakespeare Portrait " : —

The paragraph which appeared in our pages relative to
a picture in the possession of the Bishop of Ely, supposed
to be a portrait of Shakespeare, excited considerable interest,
and was reprinted by the majority of our contemporaries.
We have since seen the picture, and are prepossessed in
favour of its genuineness. It is without the beard, closely

* November 21, 1846, vol. iv., p. 556.
32

The Ely Palace Painting.

resembling the engraving in the folio edition, to which were
appended Ben Jonson's well-known lines. The painting is
on a panel, i ft. 8 in. by i ft. 3| in., and when found was
in an old ebony frame, covered with dirt, and disregarded.
It was bought for a few shillings, solely on the ground of its
likeness to Shakespeare. The date and age (1603, aet. 39),
serving to confirm this impression, were not discovered till
afterwards : these are in the left-hand corner of the picture,
at the top, in the same position as they are in the portrait of
[by] Cornelius Jansen, dated 1610.

The Bishop of Ely referred to was the
Right Rev. Thomas Turton. After his death
his collection was sold in the auction rooms
of Messrs. Christie, Manson and Wood, of
London, April 14, 1864. Mr. Henry Graves,
the publisher and print-seller, bought the
portrait of Shakespeare, and immediately pre
sented it to the collection in Shakespeare's
birthplace, Stratford, of which he was a
trustee and guardian. For years the portrait
hung in a peak of one of the upper chambers,
and was, besides, so covered with dust as to be
almost invisible. In May, 1891, Mr. Richard
Savage, secretary and librarian to the trustees
and guardians, realising its rare interest and
value, dusted it, and hung it on the eye-line.
In 1897 ne Put on record such information with
regard to it as he had gathered : *

* Harper's Magazine ', May, 1897.

33

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

"Mr. Graves knew of the portrait while the
Bishop was living, and had such a high opinion
of it that on the prelate's demise he promptly
secured it.* The Bishop, it is said, valued the
portrait more than any other picture he had in
his possession, and once told Mr. Graves either
that he had refused a thousand guineas for it,
or that he would not take that sum if offered.
It is stated in The Builder that nothing of its
previous history could be learnt at the time of
its purchase by the Bishop, but subsequent
inquiries appear to have elicited the following,
which was orally communicated to the writer
more than once by the late Mr. Graves (the
last time being but a few months before his
death) : that the broker obtained it from the
sale of the effects of the last of a very old
London family, which had resided in Little
Britain from before Shakespeare's time ; that
Shakespeare knew and visited the family, and
gave them this portrait. Mr. Graves fully
believed that it was a life portrait of the poet,
and that, though bearing a somewhat younger
expression, it might possibly have been the
original of the Droeshout engraving. . . . The
portrait has been somewhat described by the

* The catalogue of pictures in the Shakespeare Memorial at
Stratford, p. 83, states that the price was 100 guineas.

34

The Ely Palace Painting.

foregoing extracts from The Builder, but it may
be further remarked that it is painted in oil
colours upon an oak panel, enclosed in the old
ebony frame before mentioned, and, as will be
seen from the above first engraving of it, has
' AL 39. x 1603.' in black letters at the top
left-hand corner, which would read (Anno)
yEtatis 39, Christi 1603. • • • The following
inscription is painted in black letters upon a
white paper on the back of the portrait panel :

" This portrait of William Shakespeare, called ' The Ely
Palace Portrait,' was presented to the Trustees of the
House in which the great poet was born, on April 23, 1864
(the Tercentenary Anniversary), by Mr. Henry Graves,
Publisher to Queen Victoria, 6, Pall Mall, London.

"It will therefore be seen that the picture
has been on exhibition at the birthplace for
over thirty-two years, during which time no
especial notice of it was published." *

The history of the portrait, it will have been
observed, is mainly hearsay, or reported at
second hand ; and as such it must, according
to the laws of evidence, be ruled out of court.
Even as hearsay it is markedly deficient.
We are not told, for example, whether the
Bishop of Ely bought the portrait "for a few

* In December, 1901, Mr. Savage revised his notes of 1897,
making a few immaterial changes.

35 D*

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

shillings " directly from the shop of the " obscure
broker," or whether he paid a larger price to an
intermediary. If he were the discoverer and
first purchaser, it would be a point distinctly in
its favour. In 1901 Mr. Savage told me that
he had always understood this to be the case,
and seemed surprised, in re-reading the foregoing
note, to discover that the circumstances are not
explicitly stated.

Though the portrait fortunately lacks the
usual label, with a confirmatory inscription in
pseudo- Elizabethan handwriting, the story of
its origin is decidedly suspicious. At first
"nothing could be learnt" from the "obscure
broker," a fact which accords well enough with
its being " covered with dirt, and disregarded."
The Little Britain ancestors clearly come after
ward. At what particular time they were
discovered we are not told, but we know that
their discovery was first recorded in print at third
or fourth hand, and in the vaguest possible terms,
fifty-one years after the discovery of the portrait.
For this reason, and because the story rests on
mere hearsay, the ancestry cannot be regarded
as evidence in favour of the portrait. If it tells
either way, it tells against it. Yet in either
case it has little or no value. Nothing is more
human than to call in falsehood to substantiate
truth.

36

The Ely Palace Painting.

A slight deficiency in our knowledge as to
the inscription is of vastly greater moment.
The account in The Builder would naturally
lead one to suppose that the inscription was
not known until the portrait passed into the
possession of the Bishop of Ely, or at least
that, to the Bishop's personal knowledge, it
emerged from obscurity after any conceivable
motive for forgery was impossible ; and this, as
Mr. Savage reports, was Mr. Graves's account
of the circumstances. If the fact were a matter
of indubitable record, it would be of the highest
importance. But unfortunately the circum
stances are nowhere stated at first hand ; and
without such a definite statement it is impossible
to draw any fixed conclusions. The full impor
tance of this question as to the discovery of the
inscription will presently appear.

One or two of the particulars of the history
are not at all to be regarded as hearsay, and
indeed might be regarded as important evidence.
Whatever the facts as to the discovery of the
portrait and of the inscription, they were of a
nature to convince the Bishop of its authenticity,
and what is even more to the purpose — though
still far from decisive — Mr. Graves's professional
acumen confirmed the Bishop's judgment. It
is clearly unfortunate that these gentlemen
have left us in ignorance as to the precise facts

37

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

on so many important points, yet, considering
the general neglect from which the portrait has
suffered, it does not seem strange ; and the fact
that neither of them sought to make profit out
of the picture throws the most favourable light
on their neglect. It is as if the whole affair
were above suspicion. Mr. Graves in par
ticular attested the sincerity of his belief by an
act of marked generosity to the great world of
those who love and honour Shakespeare. Yet
a similar belief and a similar generosity have
often been shown in the case of portraits
demonstrably spurious.

To complete the history of the portrait it is
necessary to record critically the opinions that
have been expressed with regard to it. In 1896
Dr. F. J. Furnivall very kindly went with me
to Stratford to examine it. He was impressed
with its likeness to the Droeshout engraving,
but he regarded it as one of the many frauds.
On January n, 1897, he wrote me: "The
more I think of the Ely Castle portrait the less
I esteem it genuine." It should be remembered
that Dr. Furnivall is one of those who refuse
to consider seriously * any relic that cannot
be traced to Shakespeare's family or intimate

* The Academy, December 21, 1895.

38

The Ely Palace Painting.

friends, and who regard all painted portraits as
frauds. In the case of the Ely Palace portrait
the only specific reason I was able to gather
was that it did not satisfy him as a likeness
of Shakespeare.

Of those who have expressed opinions as
to the portrait, only one, Mr. Frank Jewett
Mather, Jr., has recorded specific reasons ; and
though he has pursued his studies of painting
in the faithful scientific manner of Morelli, he
disclaims any thorough professional knowledge.
At the time when he made his notes we were
unable to get permission to remove the glass,
so that the finest details of the painting could
not be descried. In consequence of this, as
will appear later, his report as to the in
scription is incomplete. His notes are as
follows : " The shadows are loosely put in in
brown, and the lower part of the face is much
repainted. The portrait is virtually on the
lines of the Droeshout engraving. The
drawing, however, is inferior in that the right
side of the face is out of perspective, being
impossibly turned toward the spectator. This
explains the fact that the eyes appear to be
too close together. In the engraving all
accents are stronger. The inscription is in the
manner of the time, and is surely put in on
the original surface A smooth, provincial

39

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

technique of the period Apparently quite

genuine." *

The most authoritative judgment as to the
genuineness of the painting, as distinguished
from the question as to whom the portrait
represents, is in Mr. Sidney Lee's " Life of
William Shakespeare" (1898-1900). Mr. Lee
says : " Experts are of opinion that the picture
was painted early in the seventeenth century."
The most prominent of the experts to whom
Mr. Lee refers is, apparently, Mr. Lionel Cust,
Director of the National Portrait Gallery, who
went with Mr. Lee to Stratford to study the
portraits. If any minute examination of the
portrait was made, we have no record of it.

Mr. Lee's verdict as to the excellence of
the painting and its authenticity is puzzling.
He says : " This painting is of high artistic
value. The features are of a far more attractive
and intellectual cast than in either the Droe-
shout painting or engraving, and the many
differences in detail raise doubts whether the
person represented can have been intended for
Shakespeare." The fact that the portrait
is of " high artistic value " is certainly not,
a priori, a point against its authenticity.

* Harper's Magazine, May, 1897. The present wording is
slightly altered, with Mr. Mather's approval.

40

THE ELY PALACE PORTRAIT,

The Ely Palace Painting.

Shakespeare's object in having his likeness
painted must presumably have been either
personal vanity — of which any student of his
life and works will readily acquit him — or else
a desire to give the portrait to someone
whose remembrance he held dear — some friend,
perhaps the friend in the sonnets, or his wife
and children. As we know that his means
were ample, it seems likely that in either of the
cases he would have availed himself of a capable
painter. The artistic value of the painting,
accordingly, is rather a point in its favour.
Again, a priori, the fact that " the features are
of a far more attractive and intellectual cast
than in either the Droeshout painting or
engraving "—and how much more attractive
and intellectual they are can only be realised by
seeing the two portraits themselves — is even
more clearly in its favour. The burden of Mr.
Lee's doubt seems to be on the score of the
resemblance of the Ely Palace portrait to the
print and the bust. We are unfortunate in that
the scope of his " Life " did not permit him to
enumerate what seemed to him the insuperable
points of difference. But since it did not, we
can only balance his verdict against that of
others. Of those whose judgment is on record,
Turton, Bishop of Ely, the writer in The
Builder, Mr. Graves, Mr. Savage, Mr. Mather,

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

and even Dr. Furnivall, have felt that there is
a strong resemblance between the portrait and
the engraving, and all except Dr. Furnivall
have been inclined to think that the portrait
was the original of the engraving. Mr. Lee is
alone in finding serious points of difference.

In order to speak with authority on such
a question, it is necessary to have studied all
extant examples of Elizabethan portrait-paint
ing, and to have learned all that can be known
as to the technical details — what colours and
brushes were used, how the colours were put
on, and so forth. It is necessary, also, to have
made an equally thorough study of the methods
and results of the eighteenth-century forgers.
If anyone who has thus equipped himself exists
in England, or has ever existed, he has hidden
his light.* The lack of all explicit information
on the subject must be my excuse for present
ing such facts as I have been able to gather.

* Several of the reputed portraits of Shakespeare, if subjected
to a properly scientific study, might possibly turn out to have
considerable claim to be regarded as authentic. The so-called
Janssens portrait has been discredited by the fact that it could
not have been painted by Janssens ; and the Felton portrait
has been discredited by the fact that Steevens, who championed
it, characteristically laid himself open to grave suspicions of
fraud. Both portraits, however, bear no little resemblance to
the Droeshout engraving, and are admirably spirited and life
like. It is not improbable that both are worthier than those
who have championed them.

42

The Ely Palace Painting.

On December 21, 1901, Mr. Savage took
the portrait out of its frame to dust it, and
we subjected it to a careful scrutiny, that
resulted in the addition of several details to
our knowledge of the painting, a few of which
are of vital importance to the present dis
cussion. In the examination we were aided
by Mr. Edgar Mills, an American collector,
who was able by means of a magnifying-glass
to trace many lines that are not apparent to
the naked eye.

The features of this painting differ in a
few particulars from those of the Droeshout
engraving. The eyes are smaller (somewhat
resembling the eyes in the bust), and the high
lights are not in the same places. Both of
the eyes are slightly out of drawing, an error
not uncommon in the work of all but the most
skilled draughtsman. The cheek is full, but it
is scarcely, as in the engraving, in a way to be
fat. The bridge of the nose in the painting is
a trifle thinner, resembling the bridge of the
nose in the bust, and it is more delicately
modelled, which is to say that it is more like
a normal nose. The moustache is smaller in
that it is not spread wide upon the cheeks.

A distinct difference in the points from
which the face is viewed in the painting and
in the Droeshout engraving may be discovered

43

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

on a close scrutiny. In the painting, the face —
or at least the right cheek — is viewed from
a point slightly more to the front.* At the
same time the whole face is viewed from a
point a trifle higher. The shifting of the
view point to the front alters the line of
the cheek ; the sharp inward curve over the
cheek-bone and the sharp outward curve over
the bone above the eye are both avoided, so
that the line is more fluent and graceful.
The lower part of the line is curved outward
a little more, giving somewhat more breadth
of jaw and a slightly less pointed chin. The
greater elevation of the point of view results
in a slight foreshortening of the opening of
the nostril, and in projecting the tip of the
nose upon the lip, which has the effect of
shortening the lip. At the same time the
elevation of the view point accounts for the
smaller interval between the edge of the collar
or "band" and the lines of the shoulder.

A few further differences are revealed by
a comparison of the colours of the painting
with those of the bust. The hair in the bust
is said to have been originally auburn, though
it is now dark brown. The hair in the painting

* In the engraving, furthermore, the nose is incorrectly
turned so as to be more in profile.

44

The Ely Palace Painting.

is still auburn, and takes a richly brilliant colour
in the sun. The eyes in the Ely Palace painting,
according to Mr. Savage's notes of 1897, were
a "brownish-grey colour." According to my
notes, they were " dark grey or muddy blue."
In 1901 we put the question to the test,
and the result shows the need of the most
scrupulous care in such matters. At first sight,
the eyes appeared grey, but upon bringing
the portrait into the sunlight a brownish tint
became visible. The reason for this soon
appeared. The base of the painting is brown,
and as the outer coat is very thin and cracked,
the basal colour shows through in spots when
the painting is brought into a strong light,
both in the pupil and in the iris, giving the
eye a brownish cast. Yet the iris is clearly
painted in a thin wash of dull grey-green,
a colour quite different from any of which
we have record in the bust. It is of course
possible that the colours of the portrait have
altered with time ; but the supposition that
the eyes of the painting were originally grey-
green and the hair auburn is borne out in the
general colour-scheme of the portrait, which
is a very beautiful combination of green and
brown. The difference between the colour of
the eyes in the bust and in the painting is
interesting, and perhaps important ; but, as I

45

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

have pointed out, the colours on the bust are
not above suspicion, because of their age and
the fact that they have been repeatedly
tampered with — in point of fact, they appear
to have altered markedly in recent times ; and
the probability of alteration is especially great
with regard to the eyes. All these points of
difference between the Ely Palace portrait and
the two authentic portraits, it will be seen, are
matters of minor detail.

The points of similarity have mainly to do
with fundamental and highly significant traits
of portraiture. The general distribution of
masses is the same in the painting as in the
engraving, and, with the necessary exception
of the nose and the lips, it agrees very well
with the distribution of masses in the bust.
In all three portraits the hair falls in similar
abundance about the ears ; the forehead is
similarly high and bald, the arching of the
eyebrows and the angle at which they join the
nose are closely similar. In the painting and
the engraving the noses are of much the same
length, and the cheek-bones have much the
same prominence ; the slightly smaller promi
nence of the right cheek-bone of the painting
being amply explained by the shift in the
point of view already noted, which results in
a general softening of the line of the cheek.

46

The Ely Palace Painting.

The left cheek-bone of the painting, it will be
noticed, is prominently modelled. The nose,
lip-beard, and chin are almost identical ; the
very lips have the same curves.

As regards the moustache, there is equal
similarity. Here, however, and in one other
particular, Mr. Woodburn's engraving of the
Ely Palace portrait is at fault, and it is the more
necessary to record the fact because in general,
as compared with other engravings of Shake
speare's portraits, it is scrupulously accurate. It
was executed in the modern manner — that is, by
throwing a photograph of the portrait on the en
graver's block, a process that insures the utmost
precision of detail. After bringing the work
almost to completion, Mr. Woodburn made a
second journey to Stratford and corrected it by
a close comparison with the original. It will
be observed, now, that in the engraving the hair
seems to fall naturally upon the lips. In the
painting it is brushed upward and outward, as
in the Droeshout engraving. This error is
doubtless due to the fact that the true direction
of the hair did not appear in the reduced and
blurred photograph on Mr. Woodburn's block.
It will be noticed, however, that the moustache
is scored over with white lines in the proper
direction. These possibly indicate an effort to
correct the engraving in proof. All this explana-

47

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

tion is necessary in order to emphasize the fact
that the moustache of the Ely Palace painting
resembles, not indeed the moustache of the
Droeshout engraving as a whole, but the
blacker portion of it ; and this, as will appear
when we return to a discussion of the various
impressions of the Droeshout engraving, is a
point in favour of the painting.

The costume of the Ely Palace portrait has
a strong general resemblance to that of the
Droeshout engraving, but it has also a few very
striking points of difference. The collar or
band differs slightly in size and position, but it
is of precisely the same style. It is to be noted
that in Mr. Woodburn's engraving the parallel
ribs beneath the chin are incorrectly made to
extend to the edge of the band. In the painting
they terminate at the inner line of the hem, as
they do in the Droeshout engraving. There
appear to be no spikes arising from the neck ;
but their absence is amply accounted for in the
fact that the surface of the collar has obviously
been vigorously scrubbed and repainted.

As to the jerkin of the Ely Palace portrait,
certain details deserve to be recorded as matter
of fact, though they have no direct bearing on
our argument. The lower portion has been
cleaned. In parts the surface has apparently
been scrubbed away, and the remaining paint

48

The Ely Palace Painting.

covered with a thin coating of varnish, which is
not much cracked. The upper portion of the
jerkin is covered with a thick and somewhat
opaque varnish, which is much cracked. At
first sight it seemed that the outline of this
upper portion might be formed by a chain
hanging about the neck, but we were unable to
descry any details of such a chain. The lower
or cleaned portion of the jerkin seems to have
been embroidered or brocaded with a pattern
irregularly composed of large and small scrolls,
the largest being less than an inch long.
These are not everywhere discernible, a fact
which is perhaps due to the scrubbing of the
surface. There is a row of buttons down the
middle, which are not all clearly discernible,
but which number some twenty-three or twenty-
four. They are represented by a black dot
surrounded by a circle the size of the end of
an ordinary lead-pencil, and are less than half
an inch distant from centre to centre. On
certain parts of the jerkin, a patterned strap is
discernible which resembles a step-ladder, the
width of which is considerably less than the
diameter of a lead-pencil. One peculiarity of
doublets of this period is that they often had
embroidered straps running diagonally from the
shoulder to the waist, giving prominence to the
lines of the bust. Some indications of these

49 *

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

we found in the portrait, and a generally
accurate rendering of them may be descried
in Mr. Woodburn's engraving. In the region
of the black varnish we were unable to trace
the lines distinctly, and below it they came to
an end before reaching the bottom of the
picture. On going to the Memorial Building
we found a portrait of the Earl of Southampton,
by Van Somers (also the gift of Mr. Henry
Graves), in which diagonals of the kind we
were looking for terminated in a point just
below the breast. If the yoke of opaque
varnish could be properly cleaned away, it is
possible that Shakespeare's costume (if it is
Shakespeare's) would show a fashion similar to
that of his patron. In any case it would prob
ably be possible to make out further details
as to the embroidery on the garment. Some
treatment of the portrait is apparently neces
sary, for under the magnifying-glass the paint
gives evidence of separating beneath the
varnish.

What an artist would call the drawing of
the body, in the Ely Palace portrait, is very
different from that in the Droeshout engraving,
and here we have to deal with facts that are
important in our argument. The shoulders
appear broad in proportion to the head, and
even allowing for the effect of the wings, they

50

The Ely Palace Painting.

tally well with William Beeston's statement,
recorded by Aubrey, that Shakespeare was "a
handsome, well-shapt man." The lines that
surround both wings are for the most part
clearly discernible, and are reproduced from
a rough tracing on the next page. It will
be noticed that the jerkin, unlike that in the
Droeshout engraving, is obviously the same
on both sides, and, moreover, that it is clearly
represented in three-quarter view. The strap
about the portrait's left shoulder is circular,
while that about the right shoulder vanishes
in the profile of the right breast. The diagonal
straps — too indeterminate to be traced — are
in similar perspective, that on the portrait's
left breast curving toward the middle of the
body, that on the right away from it. The
turning of the body is also evident in the line
of buttons, which, as we took great pains to
demonstrate, curves slightly as it ascends to
ward the portrait's right, and then back again
as it approaches the collar, quite as the per
spective would require. Thus the costume
throughout is drawn with a vigorous and
workman-like feeling for the body beneath,
which in -a painting of no extraordinary general
skill is an indication that it was done from
life. One defect is discernible. In view of
the general scheme of foreshortening, the wing

51 E2

THE COSTUME OF THE ELY PALACE PORTRAIT.

A rough tracing oj the main /hies to indicate the perspective. The diagonals
from the shoulder toward the buttons were too indeterminate to be traced.

The Ely Palace Painting.

on the portrait's right shoulder does not
sufficiently vanish ; it is impossibly turned to
ward the spectator. It is precisely this fault,
abetted by the false diagonal, that has caused
the two sides of the costume in the Droeshout
engraving to appear different. This similarity,
perhaps even more than the similarity of
features, indicates that the two portraits,
different as they are in many details, are
somehow or other closely related. We shall
return to the point further on. For the
present it is necessary to complete our record
as to the technical details of the painting.

The inscription, at first sight, seems to be
quite genuine. The name of Shakespeare,
which usually appears in the demonstrably
spurious portraits, is absent. The lettering is
in the unostentatious block capitals anciently
in vogue for the purpose, and gives evidence
of age and decay. In all but one minute
particle of the inscription there is every
evidence that the paint was laid on the
original surface. But this minute particle
throws a doubt upon the whole. Mr. Edgar
Mills pointed out that a flake of the green
surface paint which has fallen off, exposing
the brown beneath, has carried with it the
top of the figure nine, and that the black
line of the numeral has been continued over

53

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

the flake spot. Clearly this minute part of
the inscription was put on after the painting
was old. Yet it does not follow that the
whole inscription is a late addition. In other
parts of the portrait there are evidences of
clumsy retouching, an incident of the so-called
restoration which has ruined so many an
invaluable legacy of the past ; and the hand
that laid impious paint on the face of Shake
speare would not have scrupled to restore a
crumbling inscription. Nothing is commoner
than portraits of undoubted authenticity on
which an inscription has been either added or
completely painted over, as may be seen on
the most casual stroll through the National
Portrait Gallery. I need only cite the portrait,
by Gheerardt, of Mary, Countess of Pembroke
— " Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother " — on
which the entire inscription, including the
motto, "No spring till now," is so brilliant
that it seems scarcely to have dried. In the
Ely Palace portrait the black paint over the
flake spot seems to be of a slightly different
and brighter shade, which tends to show that
it is a late addition, and that the rest of
the inscription is genuine. Moreover, if this
defect in the inscription is to be cited against
the portrait, it must also be cited in its
favour ; for any forger clever enough to abbre-

54

The Ely Palace Painting.

viate his inscription in the ancient manner,
to use block letters, and to omit the name of
Shakespeare, would also have been clever
enough to patch the surface over which he
painted. It is more than possible that the
good Bishop himself had the portrait restored
and the inscription touched up at the time
when he is supposed to have discovered it,
and neglected to inform us of this as of other
indispensable details. Yet possibilities, even
probabilities, are not facts ; and this inscription,
which might have been a most important —
almost a final — bit of evidence, must be ruled
out of court.

The lower part of the face and the collar
have been heavily repainted, probably to
offset the effect of a vigorous scrubbing.
The jaw lacks modelling, and the shadow on
the collar is confused. Fortunately the hair
and eyes and the entire body appear not to
have been seriously repainted, and the outward
brushed lines of the moustache are seemingly
intact. Wherever the portrait has not been
restored the paint is very thin. In several
places the brown of the foundation shows
through, as in the instance of the eyes already
noted ; and in a few of the places that have
been scrubbed, notably the lower portion of the
jerkin, the cracks reveal the oak of the panel.

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

In all this there is no evidence of an under
lying portrait, and, in fact, it is virtually
impossible that this should be even the " other
Shakespeare " which Holder thought so clever
a forgery.

The strongest evidence of the authenticity
of the Ely Palace portrait is to be derived
from the character of the moustache and of
the drawing of the costume ; but before this
can be properly presented it is necessary to
consider the portrait that claims to be the
original of the Droeshout engraving.

The So-called Droeshout Original.

THE discussions of the so-called Droeshout vi.— The
Original portrait have been as copious and as ~°~ca!|edt
heated as those of the Ely Palace portrait have original
been meagre and uncontroversial. The portrait
was loaned to the collection in the Shakespeare
Memorial Building at Stratford in 1892 by the
late Mr. H. C. Clements, of Sydenham. Of its
previous history we know little or nothing. It
was exhibited at the Alexandra Palace in the
early part of the nineteenth century, but for
some reason or other, perhaps because of its
dingy appearance, it attracted little attention.
Like the Ely Palace portrait, it has a pedigree —
at least, it is stated to have belonged originally
to a member of Shakespeare's family. The story
is, of course, mere hearsay, and such a story,
as I have pointed out in connection with the
Ely Palace portrait, is neither for a portrait's
authenticity nor against it. Mr. Clements
affixed on the back an inscription to the effect
that it had been exhibited in London in the
latter part of the eighteenth century, and that
it was the original of the Droeshout print.
The last statement contains no inherent im
probability, and, in fact, at first sight seems

57

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

highly probable, for the two portraits are
virtually identical.

Mr. Edgar Flower, of Stratford-upon-Avon,
we are told,* after carefully examining the
portrait, "felt perfectly convinced that it was a
life portrait, and none other than the original
of the famous engraving prefixed to the first
folio (1623) of Shakespeare's plays." His con
viction, we are assured, " was confirmed by
Mr. Sam. Timmins, F.S.A., and several anti
quaries to whom opportunity had been afforded
of studying the picture." These gentlemen,
it would appear, were amateurs, and mainly
personal friends of Mr. Flower's. Since then,
with an enthusiasm as rare in England as it is
admirable, Mr. Flower has been untiring on
behalf of the portrait. The first result of his
advocacy was that Mrs. Flower, of Avonbank,
Stratford-upon-Avon, widow of the Shake
spearean editor, Mr. Charles Flower, and
sister-in-law of Mr. Edgar Flower, bought the
portrait from the widow of Mr. Clements for a
considerable price, and generously presented it
to the Shakespeare Memorial. This brought it
to the notice of professional connoisseurs whose

* An account of the portrait by the librarian of the Memorial
Building, W. Salt Brassington, Esq., in Harper's Magazine for
May, 1897. I am indebted to this account for other details
recorded above.

58

The So-called Droeshout Original.

reputations were concerned in any judgment
they might pass upon it.

A controversy followed, during which the
chief partisan of the portrait felt that he had
been imputed with disingenuousness, and the
chief opponent was charged with ignoring a
fact "evident to any carpenter."* To sum
marise such a controversy with impartiality is
a task of no little difficulty, but it is lightened
by a belief, really amounting to knowledge,
that, in spite of the heat developed in the
friction of contrary opinions, the motives of
all parties have been sincere. One precaution,
however, must be insisted upon. In the case
of a discussion so deeply tinged with per
sonal feeling, it is doubly unscientific to cite
judgment at second hand. In several cases,
opinions that have been so cited in all honesty
of purpose, will appear very different from the
same opinions when written down dispassion
ately by those who formed them. When men
notably well qualified to judge are cited at
second hand, the citations are worth recording ;
but a due caution will prevent us from treating
them as weighty evidence. Fortunately the
loss of these hearsay opinions will not be

* A letter from Mr. Edgar Flower to The Times, December 9,
1898.

59

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

serious, for we have the opinions of almost all
the leading connoisseurs of England in their
own written statements.

After the portrait was bought for the
Shakespeare Memorial, it was submitted to
Mr. Dyer, of the National Portrait Gallery,
perhaps the most expert picture cleaner in
England. Mr. Dyer is said to have " reported
in favour of its authenticity."* This is, of
course, one of the hearsay opinions, and it is
characteristically vague. It may be noted
that, as will appear later, several of those
who permit themselves to be cited as "in
favour of its authenticity " have refused to
state, without important qualifications, that
they believe the portrait to have been the
original of the engraving. Shortly after this,
at Mr. Flower's invitation, Mr. Lionel Cust,
Director of the National Portrait Gallery, and
Mr. Sidney Colvin, Keeper of Prints in the
British Museum, visited Stratford. Seeing
that, "if genuine, the portrait might turn out
to be the only genuine painted portrait of
Shakespeare in existence," they "persuaded
Mr. Flower to bring it up to London, and
submit it to the inspection of the Society of

* Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, December 12
1895, p. i.

60

The So-called Droeshout Original.

Antiquaries." * Mr. Flower cordially invited
the most searching criticism.

Mr. Cust pointed out that the picture bears,
in " cursive characters," the name Willm
Shakespeare and the date 1609. He stated
his opinion that the portrait was a genuine
painting of the date assigned to it, and that
the matter resolved itself into the question
whether the engraving was copied from the
picture, or the picture from the engraving.
He himself was inclined to the former of the
alternatives.! As appears hereafter, Mr. Gust's
words are used with scrupulous accuracy.
Strong as has been his inclination to believe,
he has never been able to state that he does
believe.

As to the other opinions expressed the
report of the Society is silent, but I was able,
in 1896, to collect a few of them. They may
perhaps be repeated as a matter of history, but
here also we must remember that we are deal
ing with hearsay. Dr. F. J. Furnivall assailed
the picture with his customary vigour, J on the
ground that it has no pedigree, and declared
that it was a " make-up of the late seventeenth

* Report of the Society, December, 1895, p. i.
t Ibid., p. 2.

j A report of the meeting in The Academy, December 21,
1895, No. 1233.

61

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

century from the print and the bust, both of
which the artist had seen." When I brought
to his notice the reference quoted earlier to
contemporary portraits of Shakespeare, he
laughed it aside ; but, out of his great gene
rosity and kindness, he went with me to
Stratford, and was forced to admit that no
trace of the bust is discernible. He had
overlooked the fact that in the engraving the
cheek shows a marked fulness. But his judg
ment as to the portrait, and, in fact, as to
all painted portraits of Shakespeare, remains
unchanged.

In September, 1896, I had an interview
with Mr. Sidney Colvin at the British Museum.
My notes of this interview are to the effect
that, though he assigned the portrait to a very
early date, perhaps the first half of the seven
teenth century, he regarded it as a very careful
copy of the print. Since then he has pursued
Fabian tactics, and I have no means of stating,
on his written authority, whether this is the
opinion he expressed at the meeting, or
whether he still holds it.

Sir Charles Robinson, Her Majesty's Sur
veyor of Pictures, and Director of the Gallery
of the Kensington Museum, is reported * to

* Academy, December 21, 1895.
62

The So-called Droeshout Original.

have taken exception at the meeting to the
inscription, and to have pointed out that the
name and date would have to be abandoned.
The exact ground of his objection is not
stated, but it is probably the fact that he re
garded it as in cursive characters. Mr. Sidney
Colvin told me later (according to my notes)
that this " cursive " inscription was unique in
his experience. The custom at that period
was to use block letters, such as we find in the
Ely Palace portrait. Sir Charles seems, never
theless, to have still attributed the painting to
the early part of the seventeenth century On
the next day, however, he had quite changed
his mind.* His reasons,f which he explained
to Mr. Edgar Flower, were, first, that "he had
discovered the lines of a collar, and other indi
cations showing that there was an underlying
portrait ; and second, that the portrait was
painted on a panel of foreign white wood."
The existence of an underlying portrait has
never been denied, and at once calls up the
shades of Zincke and Holder. But Sir
Charles's statement as to the wood of the
panel was speedily disposed of. Whether or

* Letter of Mr. Edgar Flower to 77** Times, December 9,
1898.
t Ibid.

63

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

not any carpenter could have recognised the
fact, Mr. G. R. M. Murray, of the Botanical
Department of the British Museum, pronounced
the panel to be elm, one of the commonest of
English woods. This judgment was published,
and had the effect of discrediting Sir Charles's
conclusions in general. Nevertheless, in a
book entitled "The Connoisseur" (1897), Mr.
F. S. Robinson, in a chapter on " Frauds and
Forgeries," repeated Sir Charles Robinson's
statement as to the panel.

When Mr. Sidney Lee's " Life of Shake
speare " appeared, in the autumn of 1898, a
reproduction of the so-called Droeshout Original
had the place of honour as frontispiece, and the
text contained this statement : " In all proba
bility Martin Droeshout directly based his work
on [this] painting."

Sir Charles now put his views definitely
on record in his own words : *

Prima facie it might quite reasonably be expected that
sooner or later the original painting or drawing from which
Droeshout's print must have been taken would come to light,
and so apparently genuine a character was this particular
" claimant " that the members of the Society of Antiquaries
were at first strongly inclined to believe in him ; but this

* A letter to The Times, December 3, 1898. The ungram-
matical wording is no doubt due to the difficulties offered by Sir
Charles's handwriting.

64

The So-called Droeshout Original.

was in the evening, after dinner, when people are often
inclined to see things in the most favourable light. Usually,
however, the evening light was not sufficient to enable any
certain judgment to be formed as to the pros and cons of
this dark and dirty oil picture.

A reinspection, however, in the full light of day, threw
quite a different complexion on the matter. It was then
soon perceived that the picture was of precisely the same
class as the majority of the other soi-disant Shakespeare
portraits — that is to say, it was substantially an ancient
sixteenth or seventeenth century portrait, painted in oil on
panel, which had been fraudulently repainted and vamped
up in various ways — metamorphosed, in fact, into a portrait
of the great dramatist, probably towards the end of the last
or the beginning of the present century.

Apparently the original portrait was that of a lady, for
the leading forms and details of the work could still be
discerned in many places by a practised eye piercing through
the fraudulent envelope.

There was, moreover, one other damning circumstance.
The picture was painted on a substantial white-wood panel,
put together in the Italian manner — an almost certain indi
cation that the original work was that of an Italian master,
doubtless working in his own country. Had it been a
genuine contemporary portrait of Shakespeare, on the other
hand, painted in this country, the material on which it was
executed would just as certainly have been a thin oak panel,
simply glued up in the usual English manner of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries.*

With regard to the panel, Sir Charles's
judgment has at least this virtue — that it has

* This, it will be remembered, is the case with the Ely
Palace portrait.

65 F

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

been steadfast against all and everything ;
but the rights of the question at issue would
perhaps have been better served if he had more
carefully considered the facts opposed to him.
It is only just to remember that he is one of
the two deponents in the controversy who have
given the reasons for their opinions, and that
we owe to him the discovery of the strongest
fact thus far recorded in evidence against
the painting — the presence of an underlying
portrait. If he could be persuaded to give the
question a calm and searching examination,
and to record the results of it, students of
Shakespeare would be much in his debt. But,
as matters stand, the chief result of his letter
has been to discredit all of his contributions to
the discussion. Two days later, letters appeared
in The Times from Mr. Lee and Mr. Cust
roundly condemning his opinions, and these
had the effect of silencing his battery.

A letter from Mr. Flower appeared on
December Qth. Those who know the pains
Mr. Flower has taken to secure the portrait,
and to place it where all lovers of Shakespeare
may see it, will, I suppose, agree that it is due
to him, as well as to the portrait, to consider
carefully what he has to say, and especially as
he is the only person beside Sir Charles Robin
son who has given reasons as well as opinions.

66

The So-called Droeshout Original.

He says : " The lines of a collar, and other
indications showing that there is an underlying
portrait, really tell more in favour of the origi
nality of the portrait than [in favour] of the
possibility of its being a clever forgery. For it
would be a common occurrence for a painter,
making a portrait of no especial value at the
time, to take some discarded panel and paint
upon it ; while anyone painting an elaborate
and careful ' forgery ' would scarcely be so care
less as to leave the lines of a different shaped
collar underneath."

The plea that the artist who painted Shake
speare might have used a discarded panel is
ingenious, and not in itself improbable. Mr.
F. S. Robinson, in " The Connoisseur," relates
several instances in point. Thus Sir Joshua
Reynolds sent a painting to Russia, with the
remark that there "were eleven pictures, more
or less good, upon it." Again : " While a rapid
sketch-portrait of Rembrandt by himself was
being cleaned by its owner, a well-known con
noisseur, some strange evolution seemed to be
taking place upon the surface, and it was not
long before he realised that if he did not cease
his operation he would be the possessor, not of
a Rembrandt portrait in the painter's best
manner, but of a ' Joseph and His Brethren '
of an earlier period. Joseph was clad in bright

67 F 2

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

red breeches, which the great artist had adapted
to his own red waistcoat." It is clear that in
any ordinary case the presence of an underlying
portrait need not disquiet us. But this is not
an ordinary case. The great mass of Shake
speare portraits are known to be forgeries, and
the favourite method of the forgers is known to
have been to paint over an old portrait. The
underlying portrait, therefore, while in no way
conclusive against the Droeshout " Original,"
raises a very serious doubt.

The argument that a forger clever enough
to copy the Droeshout engraving on an old
panel in an archaic manner would have effaced
all traces of the portrait beneath is quite as
ingenious, and, I think, even less convincing.
In the first place, we are by no means sure
that the underlying paint was at first visible.
It is certain that any object which has
been painted over in oils becomes increasingly
evident as the oils dry out. On this point,
also, Mr. Robinson's " Connoisseur" is explicit :
" Underlying paint, especially dark paint, has a
habit of appearing through the paint which is
laid upon it. [The painter of the Droeshout
' Original '] endeavoured to obviate this con
tingency by painting his Shakespeare's face
very solidly ; but the inevitable has supervened
in spite of his precautions." Even at this late

68

The So-called Droeshout Original.

day, however, the underlying portrait cannot be
detected by ordinary observers. After a careful
search, I was unable to make it out, and Mr.
Mills was no more successful. If, moreover,
as Mr. Flower implies, it is sufficiently evident
to warn the purchasing connoisseur, surely Mr.
Flower himself, and the antiquaries to whom
opportunity had been offered of studying the
picture, should have seen it and reported it
when they were inducing Mrs. Flower to buy
the portrait. Yet they somehow failed to do
so. Let us suppose, however, that a careful
buyer could always have detected the under
lying portrait. It still remains a fact that
Holder and Zincke sold dozens of counterfeit
presentments beside which this is Hyperion to
a satyr. What Holder thought of the people
who insisted in believing in the frauds they
bought of him, he has told us in a manner which
is certainly frank, and might even be called
unseemly. But let us still suppose that Mr.
Flower's explanation as to the underlying
portrait is plausible. The fact remains that the
characters in which the inscription is written,
as has already been stated, are so suspicious
that they have been ruled out of the case.
When everything else is above question, an
ingenious argument is enough to dispose of
one suspicious circumstance, but two suspicious

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

circumstances vastly multiply the likelihood of
fraud, and to these two others will be added.
For the present it is necessary to complete the
record of opinions as to the portrait.

Mr. Flower goes on to say : " Every engraver
and authority I have consulted — and they have
been many — argue that the engraving must have
been taken from the oil painting, and' not vice
versa" As regards the engravers this state
ment is no doubt true enough ; at all events, Mr.
Woodburn, who made the accompanying repro
duction of the portrait, held this opinion. In-
contestably there are many points — I need only
instance the superior rendering of the hair, the
superior modelling of the forehead and the
bridge of the nose, and the very expressive
curves in the corners of the mouth, in which
the "Droeshout" painting is distinctly more
like a human being than the Droeshout
engraving.* The fact is interesting and perhaps
important ; but the final judge on the question
in hand is not the engraver, but the authority
on old paintings. And with regard to these
authorities Mr. Flower's statement apparently
requires qualification. I cannot find that all or

* On the other hand, it should be noted that, in that the nose
of the Droeshout " Original " is seen more in profile than the
rest of the face, it is inferior in drawing to that in the print.

/O

THE DROESHOVT ORIGINAL PORTRAIT.

The So-called Droeshout Original.

any of them have said that the engraving " must
have been taken " from the painting. Mr.
Samuel Timmins, F.S.A., is reported to have
written a letter to the meeting of the Society of
Antiquaries,* to say that, in his opinion, the
portrait is a likeness of Shakespeare " in his
habit as he lived." But here again we have an
admirable instance of the pitfalls that lurk in
second-hand evidence. On the face of the
statement it would seem that Mr. Timmins was
convinced that the portrait is the original of
the print ; but, strictly interpreted, the words
attributed to him are not incompatible with the
reverse opinion. To make the point clear I
have only to quote from a letter from Mr.
Lionel Cust, dated Nov. 6, 1896 : " To the best
of my belief [the Droeshout painting] is the
only painted likeness of Shakespeare which
exists." Apparently this is an even stronger
statement than that of Mr. Timmins, but Mr.
Cust subjoins : " Whether done during his
lifetime or not must remain a matter of un
certainty. ... I cannot pledge myself to its
having preceded the Droeshout engraving."
Are Mr. Timmins and Mr. Cust to be reckoned
among the authorities who "argue that the
engraving must have been taken from the oil

* Report of the Society, p. 7,
71

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

painting " ? Sir Theodore Martin has also
been cited as one of the favourable authorities.
Mr. Lee, in his letter to The Times, reports
of him : "He expressed to me, with much
enthusiasm, his satisfaction at my choice of
the Droeshout painting for the frontispiece of
the new * Life,' and declared himself con
vinced that that painting was the basis of
the far-famed engraving by Martin Droeshout"
Let us compare with this a statement made by
Sir Theodore to Mr. Flower, of which Mr.
Flower has kindly given me a copy. The
statement is in a letter written on November 12,
1896, shortly after a careful examination of the
portrait. " The question — and the only one to
my mind — is : Was this the picture from which
the first folio portrait was engraved, or was
the picture painted from the engraving? . . .
I feel confident that the portrait is an (sic]
original work." Perhaps I am wrong in
thinking this statement more guarded and
less absolute ; but it is evident that in neither
passage does Sir Theodore state that the
engraving must have been taken from the
oil painting. I can only conclude that Mr.
Flower's enthusiastic conviction, combined with
a most natural indignation at the reiteration
of a statement demonstrated to be false, has
led him into a substantial error.

72

The So-called Droeshout Original.

A similar error, though less pronounced,
appeared in Mr. Lee's " Shakespeare." The
edition of 1898 says : " Connoisseurs, including
Sir Edward Poynter, Mr. Sidney Colvin, and
Mr. Lionel Cust, have almost unreservedly pro
nounced the picture to be anterior in date to
the engraving, and they have reached the con
clusion that in all probability Martin Droeshout
directly based his work upon the painting."
Sir Edward Poynter is President of the Royal
Academy, and also Director of the National
Gallery ; Mr. Lional Cust is Director of the
National Portrait Gallery, and Mr. Sidney
Colvin is Keeper of Prints in the British
Museum. If these experts held the opinions
Mr. Lee attributed to them there would be
nothing for a layman to add. It so happened
that I had a letter from Sir E. J. Poynter
expressing the opinion directly opposite to that
Mr. Lee attributed to him, and also notes
of the conversation in which Mr. Colvin
animadverted on the " cursive" inscription, and
said that he was inclined to think the portrait
an early copy of the engraving. These I
brought to Mr. Lee's notice. In the library
edition of his " Life," published in 1899, the
so-called Droeshout Original was replaced as
frontispiece by a reproduction in colours of the
Stratford bust ; and Sir E. J. Poynter was

73

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

omitted from the list of connoisseurs in favour
of the portrait.

Mr. Sidney Colvin and Mr. Lionel Cust
he still, however, quoted as " almost unre
servedly" pronouncing the picture to be
"anterior in date to the engraving." With
regard to Mr. Colvin's opinions there are thus
two second-hand reports, which are as nearly
contradictory as possible. In 1898, and again
in 1901, I tried to secure his written state
ment of them ; but while he has made no
correction in the words my notes attribute to
him, he is apparently — and, considering the
personal turn the discussion has taken, not
unnaturally — unwilling to be drawn into it.
The opinion Mr. Lee attributes to him
accordingly, that the portrait is " anterior
in date to the engraving," is not, at least in
one very important meaning of the word,
"unreserved."

Mr. Cust has been, from the time of the
meeting of the Society of Antiquaries in 1895,
" inclined to think " that the engraving was
copied from the painting. In 1896 he had the
extreme kindness to give me a written state
ment of his opinion, and in 1901 he wrote me
that his opinion was unaltered. His statement
is as follows : "In spite of its being painted over
another portrait, I still regard [the Droeshout

74

The So-called Droeshout Original.

painting] as a picture of the early seventeenth
century. I cannot pledge myself to its having
preceded the Droeshout engraving, although
my inclination is to think so. I feel quite
convinced that it is not one of the countless
forgeries with which the world is perpetually
being dosed. The portrait agrees with the
engraving, and may therefore be accepted as a

portrait of Shakespeare Whether done

during his lifetime or not must remain a matter
of uncertainty. It is not the work of a good
painter." Few documents have ever come to
my notice which indicate more clearly the
tragic difference between the inclination to
believe and belief.

What, then, are the judgments on the
portrait given by the four great experts who
have appeared in evidence ? Sir E. J. Poynter
and Sir J. C. Robinson are flatly against it.
Mr. Colvin's opinion is so far from being un
reserved that we have it only at second hand,
and in two radically contradictory statements
at that. Only Mr. Cust expresses an inclina
tion to believe in it, and expressly draws the
line between his inclination and belief.

Thus far we have dealt mainly with
opinions. A question of authenticity can be
decided with finality only on the ground of
facts. Some day an expert will appear who

75

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

has the opportunity, the patience, and the
enthusiasm to learn all that can be known of
all the reputed paintings of Shakespeare ;
in the meantime I hope to be pardoned for
appending the few further observations I am
able to collect.

Mr. W. Salt Brassington, Librarian of the
Shakespeare Memorial at Stratford, has de
scribed the portrait as follows * : " The portrait
is painted in oil colours upon an elm panel
formed of two boards joined horizontally, and
secured across the back by a strip of wood, and
has for its groundwork a thin coating of white
composition, or gesso, primed red. . . . The . . .
body is drawn on a slightly smaller scale [than
the head]. . . . The relative measurements of
the portrait are precisely the same as those of
Droeshout's engraving. From certain lines
visible upon the picture, it is evident that a
collar or ruff of a different shape has been
painted over. The drawing of the head is
powerful, though the style is formal, after the
manner of the sixteenth rather than the seven
teenth century. The shadows appear to have
been painted green ; the warmer flesh-tones
have faded. The face is oval, the hair a rich
dark brown, the moustache of a lighter shade ;

* Harpers Magazine, May, 1897.
76

The So-called Droeshout Original.

the eyes neither hazel nor blue, but of a shade
between these colours. Upon the upper left-
hand corner of the picture is inscribed in cursive
characters, ' Willm. Shakespeare. 1609.' A
large plain collar with pleatings and a narrow
hem surrounds the neck. The doublet is black,
buttoned up the front, and trimmed with hand
some gold lace. The panel measures 23 inches
by 17^ inches full measure, 22^ inches by
17^ inches slight measurements. . . . There
is now no doubt that it is a life portrait of
Shakespeare, painted in 1609."

Mr. Mather's observations are as follows :
" Life size, painted on a thin coating of gesso.
The panel is English elm, worm-holed, and
of undoubted antiquity. Red appears in the
ground where the over-painting has cracked
off. Hair apparently painted in bitumen. All
the drawing precisely like that in the print,
including costume. Technique, an illogical
combination of broad, scratchy, and of smooth.
Clearly a late copy of the print."

A few further facts may be noted. Several
blisters and other like imperfections are due to
a fire which occurred at Alexandra Palace when
the portrait was there on exhibition. These
minor accidents it was impossible to reproduce
in Mr. Woodburn's engraving. Though the
coating of gesso is thin, the paint of the features

77

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

is thick and heavy. In colouring the portrait
resembles the bust, with a single exception — I
failed to find the least trace of hazel in the
eyes ; they are simply muddy blue. Some of
the worm-holes are clear-cut, others seem
painted round the edges. At least one (on the
line of the right cheek-bone) had, according to
my notes of 1 896, been painted over ; it was
then discernible only because the paint had
sagged into it. In 1901 the surface paint in
this worm-hole had apparently been picked
away. If these appearances are to be relied
on, the painter sought to give an appearance
of antiquity by using a worm-holed panel.

The inscription, as has already been pointed
out, is very suspicious. The statement, how
ever, that it is in cursive characters apparently
requires to be qualified. Strictly speaking, the
peculiarity of cursive characters is that they
run into one another, so that the pen or brush
need not be raised from the surface. Clearly
this is not the case with the inscription in
question. It would be more accurate to say
that the characters are what printers call lower
case italics. No strictly cursive inscription, in
all probability, is to be found in the authentic
portraits of the date ; but inscriptions in lower
case italics are not unknown. In the National
Portrait Gallery, the same suite of rooms that

The So-called Droeshout Original.

contains the Chandos portrait of Shakespeare
contains two portraits of the seventeenth century
with lower-case italic inscriptions — namely, that
of John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, and the
portrait by Gheerardt of Mary, Countess of
Pembroke. Yet the characters of the inscrip
tion on the Droeshout painting are none the
less suspicious. Other inscriptions of the
period are as carefully lettered as the inscrip
tion on a monument, even when not inscribed
in monumental capitals. This inscription is
loosely put on in freehand — so loosely as to
give the impression of cursive lettering.

79

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

VIL— Com- A VERY important bit of evidence with
parisons. regard to the authenticity of the Droeshout
painting and the Ely Palace painting will be
revealed by comparing them with extant copies
of the Droeshout engraving. In the process
of printing the folios of the seventeenth century,
the plate of this engraving went through
several clearly distinct stages, and there is,
besides, a unique copy of what is almost
certainly an original proof, which differs not
ably from all other impressions. If, now, the
Droeshout painting were the original of the
engraving, we should naturally expect it to
resemble most nearly this proof, or, at least,
the first and most perfect of the folio im
pressions. If, on the other hand, it appears
that the painting resembles more nearly the
latest and most debased stages of the engraving,
the fact will as clearly tend to show that the
painting was taken from the engraving.

The proof of the engraving is in the
Halliwell-Phillips collection of Shakespearian
rarities, now in the possession of Marsden J.
Perry, Esq., Providence, Rhode Island. Accord
ing to the calendar of the collection, it shows the
engraving in " its original proof state, before it

80

Comparisons.

was altered by an inferior hand." The late
F. W. Fairholt, F.S.A., has described the differ
ences due to this alteration : " The proof is
remarkable for clearness of tone, the shadows
being very delicately rendered. . . . This is par
ticularly visible in the arch under the eye, and
in the muscles of the mouth ; the expression of
the latter is much altered in the later states of
the plate by the enlargement of the upturned
mustache, which hides and destroys the true
character of this part of the face. The whole
of the shadows have been darkened by cross-
hatching and coarse dotting, particularly on the
chin ; this gives a coarse and undue prominence
to some parts of the portrait, the forehead
particularly. In this early state of the plate
the hair is darker than any of the shadows on
the head, and flows softly and naturally ; in
the retouched plate the shadow is much darker
than the roots of the hair, imparting a swelled
look to the head, and giving the hair the
appearance of a raised wig. . . . [In the proof]
no shadow falls across the collar." The phrase,
" the later states of the engraving," would
naturally refer to the first three folio impres
sions. Yet the differences noted are similar to
those between these three and the fourth folio
impressions. It thus seemed possible that Mr.
Fairholt meant only the fourth folio, in which

81

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

case one would not be justified in assuming
any great difference between the proof and
the first folio engraving. Mr. Edwin Collins
Frost, of Providence, R.I., has courteously sent
me these admirably explicit observations : —

" There can be no question that Fairholt
means that the proof differs in the respects
which he mentions from all other known copies
of the engraving, and not merely from prints in
the fourth folio. In the ordinary impressions
(in F, — F3) the moustache is much wider—
almost one-half wider, I should think — than in
the proof impression. The chin in the prooi
impression also lacks the unshaven appearance
so noticeable afterwards. I do not think it can
fairly be said that there is absolutely no shadow
on the collar, though Fairholt does, I suppose,
keep within the truth when he says that ' no
shadow falls across the collar.' There is a
suggestion of shadow, but it is near the neck,
and not clearly defined as in all later impressions.
If my opinion is of any interest to you, I may
say that the test of the Droeshout proof seems
to me a good one."

May not the "proof" have been a print-
seller's portrait, the plate of which was touched
up for use in the folio ?

Every one of these alterations in the plate
before printing the folios, with the single

82

Comparisons.

exception of the shadow on the collar, is an
injury to the print. The reason for their
existence is explained by the late Mr. William
Smith, Director of the National Portrait Gallery,
whose knowledge of early engraving was un
rivalled : "I fully believe that, on what is
technically termed proving the plate, it was
thought that much of the work was so delicate
as not to allow of a sufficient number of
impressions being printed."

Let us now consider the engraving as it
appears in the folios of the seventeenth century.
I quote from notes made from the copies in the
British Museum : —

" The print in the first folio is by far the
best of the four. The lines are all clear and
sharp, and give a generally consistent gradation
of values. In the second and third folios
the engraving has lost many of its values as
the result of wear. The print in the fourth
folio, at a superficial glance, seems more like
that in the first folio than that in either the
second or third folio. A closer view shows that
it is, in fact, the farthest removed from it. As
the plate is said to have been worked over by
the engraver before printing the first folio, so
it has been again re-engraved before printing
the fourth folio, a complete new system of lines
having been added. For example, in the three

83

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

first folios the shadow on the portrait's right
temple and cheek is made by a single set of
parallel lines, with sometimes a row of fine
dots in each interlinear space. In the fourth
folio a second set of lines crosses these original
lines, deepening the effect of shadow. Again,
in the first folio the shadows on the portrait's
left temple and cheek are made by two sets of
lines crossing each other, with sometimes a dot
in the rectangles thus formed. In the fourth
folio a third set of lines is added traversing the
other two. Now, the result of the deepening
the shadows on the face and forehead would
naturally be to necessitate a similar deepening
of the shade of the other features, and in point
of fact the hair of the head and of the lips has
been scored over by a system of heavy parallel
lines. In the first folio, according to Fairholt,
the moustache has been enlarged, so as to hide
and destroy the true character of the muscles
of the mouth. In the fourth folio the enlarge
ment has been reinforced by heavy cross-
hatching. As a result, there seems to be
much more hair on the lips than in the first
folio, and it seems to grow considerably further
upon the cheeks."

If, now, the Droeshout painting were the
original from which the Halliwell-Phillips en
graving was drawn, we should expect it to have

84

Comparisons.

a narrow moustache slightly upturned. In
point of fact, it has a moustache quite as dark
and quite as upturned as that in the fourth
folio print. This clearly tends to the con
clusion that the painting was a copy of the
print, and that it was, in all probability, copied
from the print of the fourth folio. In the
Ely Palace portrait, it will be noticed, the
moustache, though turned upward and outward,
is not spread so far nor so thin, being trained
in a simpler and more natural fashion ; but
in its general size and shape — qualities which
are quite independent of changing modes — it
resembles the moustache of the first folio
more strongly than that of the fourth, and the
moustache of the Halliwell-Phillips proof more
strongly than any of the others.

With regard to the body of the portrait,
a comparison of the engraving and the sup
posed original reveals equally striking evidence.
As has already been shown (page 20), there
are many indications in the engraving of very
bad drawing ; and it has been suggested that the
difference between the two sides of the costume
is the result of false perspective. Let us now
suppose that Shakespeare's jerkin was the
same on both sides — that is to say, that it was
of the well-known type of the time — and,
furthermore, that it was represented from much

85

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

the same angle as the face — that is to say,
that it was slightly foreshortened. The em
broidery around the portrait's left shoulder
would then show much the same curve as in
the engraving. That around the other shoulder
would be foreshortened into a line. This line
could not be so long and so slant as to converge
with the row of buttons in the front. To make
it so, as is evident in the engraving, is to cut
away the chest, and to leave the opening for
the arm monstrously large. Clearly, in order to
represent the Elizabethan jerkin in perspective,
this line in the engraving should have been
shorter, and its direction should have been
more nearly parallel to the side of the cut. If
it were so rendered the chest and right arm
would fall into drawing ; and the result of thus
correcting the perspective would be to make
the body seem amply large for the head.

Is it possible, supposing for the moment
that Droeshout copied the Ely Palace portrait,
or another similar to it, that he departed so far
from the drawing of the costume ? Even the
best engravers of the time are known to have
taken liberties in such respects,* and, as we

* Marshall's copy of the Droeshout engraving (1640) has a
jerkin of a very different and much more life-like model, with a
cloak thrown over the right shoulder. In later times Sherwin's
" copy " of the Droeshout engraving renders the jerkin in a

86

Comparisons.

have seen, Droeshout was a bungling crafts
man. It is altogether likely, moreover, that he
did his work under circumstances of unusual
difficulty. The loss of Shakespeare's manu
scripts is generally attributed to the burning
of the Globe Theatre in 1612, and if Shake
speare's fellow-actors possessed his painted
portrait, they must have lost it at the same time.
In the lack of a portrait of their own, Heminge
and Condell would have had recourse to the
library of some gentleman — for example, the
Earl of Southampton. Droeshout would then
no doubt have found it necessary to make a
sketch of a portrait in the library, perhaps
without taking the original from the wall,
and would possibly have been limited as to the
time in which he made his sketch. Judging
by the difficulties encountered in securing the
present engraving of the Ely Palace portrait,
this conjecture as to his difficulties is very
neutrally coloured. The greater part of his
time he would have spent in copying the point
of chief importance — namely, the features. As

different though not more life-like manner. One of the pretended
engravings of the bust (in an extra illustrated copy of Boaden
in the Lenox Library, New York) not only alters the costume,
but covers the head with curly hair and the face with a drooping
moustache and a beard, giving the whole something of the
appearance of the Chandos portrait.

87

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

to the body, it must have seemed enough
merely to indicate the general lines. In filling
out the details of the costume later, in his own
rooms, he might easily have erred with regard
to the foreshortening of the line of embroidery
around the right shoulder. Even the radically
false drawing we find in the costume would
have been regarded as 'a matter of minor
import, as is evident in the fact that, in spite
of all that has been written about Droeshout's
engraving, it has never hitherto been com
mented upon.

The case of a painter working from the life,
however, is radically different. So gross an
error would have been impossible. If the
Droeshout painting were the original of the
engraving, and painted from life, we should
expect it to show the correct drawing of the
costume. In point of fact, it exaggerates
the defects. As the authorities at Stratford
describe it, "the head appears to be life-
size, but the body is drawn on a slightly
smaller scale — a fact which, as was demon
strated by Mr. W. W. Ouless, R.A., gives
the face an appearance of heroic dimensions."
In plain words, all the faulty drawing of the
engraving is repeated, and is, in fact, ex
aggerated. The chest is even narrower, and
the right shoulder droops. The evidence of

88

Comparisons.

the body thus confirms that of the moustache.
That the man who painted the so-called
Droeshout original knew not a little about
drawing is evident in the fact that the
features show far more refinement of modelling
than in the engraving. If he had understood
Elizabethan costume, there is every reason to
suppose that he could have corrected the
drawing of the jerkin. His abominable mis
representation of the body is most easily
explained on the supposition that he worked
from the ill-drawn engraving of Droeshout, not
in the early seventeenth century, but at a time
when Elizabethan costume was obsolete.

The Ely Palace portrait tells a very different
tale. A close scrutiny, as has been pointed
out (page 85), shows that the costume is, in
general, so drawn as to represent the normal
modelling of the human body. The row of
buttons, instead of being rectilinear, as in the
Droeshout " Original " and engraving, shows
the necessary curve. On the left side there
are two salient lines instead of one, a semi-circle
about the arm, and a diagonal running in a
slightly upward curve from the shoulder toward
the point where the row of buttons meets the
waist. On the right side this diagonal, in
accordance with the laws of perspective, has a
slightly downward curve, while the embroidery

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

round the arm is indistinct, being merged, in
the foreshortening, with the diagonal, or hidden
behind the outward curve of the chest. The
shoulders accordingly appear amply large. The
jerkin as a whole belongs to a type recorded in
all the books of costume, and is so drawn as to
give evidence of a solid, well-knit body behind
it. If we suppose that Droeshout worked from
such an original as this, the defects of his
drawing are thoroughly explainable ; in hastily
sketching the costume it would have been very
easy to confuse the diagonal on the portrait's
right with the shorter line of the embroidery
around the right armhole. To correct the
mistake when transferring his sketch to the
copper was probably an achievement beyond
his power and beyond his ambition — indeed,
beyond the ambition of most of the engravers of
the time. If he repeated such an error of his
sketch, the result would be that the opening for
the arm would extend from the shoulder well
down toward the waist, and the arm would be
given abnormal dimensions, precisely as in the
engraving. Having made this initial mistake,
it would be necessary, if any show of symmetry
were to be preserved, to ignore altogether the
diagonal on the left side of the portrait.

The wing on the right shoulder of the
Ely Palace portrait, as has been pointed out

90

Comparisons.

(page 53), does not sufficiently vanish, being
impossibly turned toward the spectator. The
result of this is that, judging by the top line of
the shoulder alone, the left side of the body
would seem to be viewed from the front. It
was probably as a result of some such fault as
this in his original that the careless Droeshout
succeeded in turning the entire left side of the
body impossibly toward the spectator.

It seems necessary to conclude that in the
original of the engraving both the moustache
and the costume resembled those features in
the Ely Palace portrait more nearly than in the
Droeshout painting.

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

VIIL— The IT does not necessarily follow that the Ely
Life Portrait palace portrait is the original of the Droeshout

of Shake- • T>I_ i • i

engraving. 1 hough m most particulars superior
in drawing, it is in a few points — the eyes and
the perspective of the right cheek — notably
inferior. That Droeshout, while erring egre-
giously in the modelling of the features and in
the drawing of the costume, might have corrected
the faults in perspective, is, of course, possible,
but not altogether likely. The slight difference
in the point of view from which the faces of the
two portraits are drawn might be due to accident
or to carelessness on the part of the engraver ;
but here, again, we are not warranted in making
assumptions. This much, however, I do regard
as established. The Ely Palace portrait is not,
as Mr. Lee states, so different from the engraving
as "to raise doubts as to whether the person
represented could have been intended for
Shakespeare " ; but, quite the contrary, it has,
of all the painted portraits, except the spurious
Droeshout " Original," the strongest resem
blance to the Droeshout engraving. Granting
that the Droeshout engraving may not have
been taken from the Ely Palace portrait, it
must have been taken from a portrait that in
all essential points of features and costume was

92

The Life Portrait of Shakespeare.

identical with it. Of all the painted portraits,
accordingly, the Ely Palace portrait has the
strongest claim to be regarded as a life portrait.

As Mr. Lee admits, the Ely Palace portrait
is "of high artistic value ; the features are of a
far more attractive and intellectual cast than
in either the Droeshout painting or engraving."
This is not the least important fact in its favour.
It gives the impression of representing a real
person, a sentient human being. The general
effect of the countenance is simple, robust, and
wholesome. The eyes, in spite of the error in
drawing, have a very distinct and interesting
expression — a disquiet vacancy that often
denotes a deeply troubled mind. The mouth
is both sensuous and sensitive, and the serious
ness of the lower part of the face indicates
dignity, even elevation of character. What the
features of Shakespeare would have revealed to
the brush of Janssens, Mytens, or Van Dyck we
shall never know ; but our conjectures may not
prove altogether idle if we take Ben Jonson's
hint, and turn from the picture to the book.

Before the presumable date of the Ely
Palace portrait, according to conjectural but
generally accepted chronology, Shakespeare
had written his most buoyant and joyous
comedies — Much Ado (1598), As You Like
It (1599), and Twelfth Night (1600-1601),

93

A New Portrait of Shakespeare.

as well as the middle tragedies — Julius Ctzsar
(1601) and the first version of Hamlet (1602).
In 1603 ne wrote the dark, ironical comedy
Measure for Measure, and was engaged on
Hamlet. During the four succeeding years
he completed the great tragedies — Othello,
Lear, Macbeth, and Anthony and Cleopatra.
Thus the series of the deepest tragedies treads
upon the heels of the most buoyant comedies ;
and the year which divided the two is the
year of the Ely Palace portrait. This year
critics have generally taken as marking some
sudden change in the underlying mood of
Shakespeare's mind. Professor Barrett Wen
dell in his " William Shakspere : a Study in
Elizabethan Literature," analyses the mood of
the plays upon which Shakespeare was now
entering as follows : " A profound, fatalistic
sense of the impotence of man in the midst
of his environment ; . . . a sense of some
thing in the relations between men and women
. . . widely different from the ideal, romantic
fascination expressed by the comedies, . . .
the certainty that woman may be damningly
evil ; " and " finally, . . . traces of deep sym
pathy with such abnormal, overwrought states
of mind as ... might easily have lapsed into
madness." All this the historical critics ol
Shakespeare are accustomed to illustrate by the

94

The Life Portrait of Shakespeare.

sonnets. Upon these Shakespeare is usually
supposed to have been engaged between 1597
or 1598 and 1605 — that is, roughly speaking,
until after he had written Hamlet, Measure for
Measure, Othello, and Lear. In the later of
the two series of these sonnets the author
represents himself as fatally in the toils of an
unlovely, vicious woman, who not only seduces
him from his true self, but embitters his rela
tionship with his dearest friend. There is a
distinct reference also to madness (Sonnet
1 29). This sombre period gave way to a later
period of comedy — The Winters Tale and The
Tempest (1610-11). The various assumptions
that go to make up this account of Shake
speare's life have, it must be clearly stated, no
real scientific foundation. The chronology, for
instance, is far from certain ; it has been ques
tioned, moreover, whether the sonnets record
a personal experience. And the authenticity of
the portrait, as we have seen, is not beyond
question. Yet the theory as to Shakespeare's
spiritual development has exerted a profound
influence over the imaginations of most scholars.
If now the Ely Palace portrait may be taken
as authentic, it distinctly confirms the theory.
The expression of the disquiet, indwelling eyes,
and the dignified, serious face, is what one
would naturally expect at the period of Hamlet.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

THE ELIZABETHAN
HAMLET.

A Study of the Sources, and of Shakespeare's

Environment, to Show that the Mad Scenes

had a Comic Aspect now Ignored.

" Hamlet's brutality to Ophelia is perhaps the hardest
thing to understand in Shakespeare. The editors and
critics are baffled by it. The players have met the
difficulty variously, but only by dint of interpolated action.
Now comes a little book with an explanation which looks
paradoxical, but which is so logically and persuasively
presented, and with such appeals to evidence, that one
is inclined to accept it, and even to wonder if it has not

always been one's own opinion Mr. Corbin

proves [his point]. We think this not too strong a word."

The Evening Post, The Nation (New York).

" Mr. Corbin succeeds in fully driving home the fact —
not of course hitherto unknown, but certainly hitherto
underestimated— that Hamlet first became popular on the
stage as a madman ; that is, as a comic person according
to the ideas of that time."

Mr. George Bernard Shaw, in The Saturday Review.

" Interesting and scholarly We recommend Mr.

Corbin's little book to the attention of all Shakespearian

students."

The Times (London).

SHAKESPEARE AND
RIVAL POET.

THE

Displaying Shakespeare as a Satirist, and Proving the Identity
of the Patron and the Rival of the Sonnets.

With a Reprint of " The Shadow of Night," Ovid's " Banquet
of Sense," " A Coronet for His Mistress Philosophy," " The
Amorous Zodiac," and sundry other Poetical Pieces by George
Chapman, circa 1594-1609.

BY
ARTHUR ACHESON.

With Portraits of Shakespeare and George Chapman.
Price 5^. od. net. Crown 8vo. Price $1.50 net.

SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS.

With Fourteen Illustrations and Cover Design by
HENRY OSPOVAT.

Price 3J. 6d. net. Square i6mo.

Price $1.25.

PRESS OPINIONS.

' ' Mr. Ospovat has excelled himself in his illustrations for
Mr. John Lane's dainty edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets. They
are finely decorative, and well attuned to the measured, stately
sweep of the poems they embellish." — Art Journal.

" Mr. Ospovat's task has been by no means a light one, but he
has accomplished it with excellent judgment and right feeling. His
drawings are not merely technically good, they have been inspired
with true poetic sentiment." — Studio.

JOHN LANE, Publisher, London & New York.

SHAKESPEARE'S SONGS.

With Eleven Full -page Illustrations,

Ornaments, and Cover Design by

HENRY OSPOVAT.

Price 3J. 6d. net. Square i6mo. Price $1.25.

SOME PRESS OPINIONS.

" Those who know Mr. Ospovat's illustrations to
' Shakespeare's Sonnets ' will expect unusual excellence
in the latest volume, and will not be disappointed." —
Westminster Gazette.

" A very suitable gift-book." — Literary World.

" In his drawings to a seasonable volume of
' Shakespeare's Songs,' Mr. Henry Ospovat, who has
already earned considerable reputation as a poetical
illustrator, shows decorative talent of a very high order,
as well as keen appreciation of a pretty lyrical sentiment
or an Arcadian idea." — Speaker.

" A most attractive publication." — Daily News.
JOHN LANE, Publisher, London & New York.

RELIQUES OF
STRATFORD-ON-AVON .

A Souvenir of Shakespeare's Home. Compiled by

A. E. Way. With Eight Full- Page Lithographs by

Thomas R. Way.

Price is. od. net. Bound in Cloth. Price 50 cents net.
Price u. 6d. net. Bound in Leather. Price 75 cents net.

SOME PRESS OPINIONS.
" An attractive little souvenir of Shakespeare's home." — Outlook.

" A neat and handy little volume, with particulars of the poet's
life, pictures of the places amidst which he lived, and well-chosen
passages from his writings by way of illustration. " — Spectator.

' ' An elegant souvenir of the native town of the Swan of Avon. "—
Publishers' Circular.

" Should be highly popular as a souvenir of the interesting little
Warwickshire town to which, in the course of every year, so many
pilgrims betake themselves." — Globe.

THE SONNETS OF
SHAKESPEARE.

Volume XI. of "THE LOVER'S LIBRARY" Series.
Size 5j X 3 inches.

Price is. 6d. net. Bound in Cloth. Price 50 cents net.

Price 2s. od. net. Bound in Leather. Price 75 cents net.

Price 3*. od. net. Bound in Parchment Price $i .00 net.
and Boxed.

JOHN LANE, Publisher, London & New York.

PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY

PR Corbin, John

2929 A new portrait of

C7 Shakespeare