Is This Shakespeare I See Before Me?

The newest addition to the Shakespeare rumor factory is the so-called "Cobbe portrait." Recently unveiled to the world press as a "portrait painted from life," it is currently on display in Stratford.





Quite the handsome dude, yes? But--is he Shakespeare?

That is not a question that you ask in Stratford. In Stratford, it is OF COURSE Shakespeare. Why else would it be in Stratford? It's a meaningless question--it's like asking if something in an art museum is really art. Of course it's art, it's in a museum. Same thing here.

So, the official story, more or less goes as follows. In 2006, a gentleman named Alec Cobbe --the current possessor of a great deal of Tudor era possessions from the Earl of Southampton --visited the National Portrait Gallery in London a few years ago. The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C. was then exhibiting their portrait of Shakespeare.



"Stone the crows, Tolliver," says Mr. Cobbe. "I have one of those back at home in Dublin!"

Many experts are consulted, Carbon dating is performed on the panel. Family trees are researched. Vaguely related portraits are dragged out and hung next to one another. And hey presto! Shakespeare is authenticated!


Henry Wriothesley, the third Earl of Southampton, was known to be Shakespeare's literary patron. Shakespeare wrote his two epic poems "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucretia" for him. Several generations later, the last direct heir of Henry Wriothesley died childless, and all her possessions passed into her husband's family, including a portrait of Wriothesley himself. * So provenance is established.**

The "That's No Lady, That's the Earl of Southampton" portrait:



(Is this the Earl of Southampton, or a Tudor drag queen? When contacted, Robert Langdon authoritively states "It is a portrait of Mary Magdalene, and William Shakespeare was the Elder of the Priory of Sion in 1590.")

Scientific testing on the board indicates (a word which here means "proves") that wood came from a tree that was felled in the 1590s, dried for some years, and was ready to used when the portrait was painted in 1610.***

"What?" You cry. "Pull the other one; it has bells on! How could someone have a portrait of Shakespeare in his family's possession for nearly 400 years and no one has even mentioned it before?"

Stratford directs you to a cloudy photograph from 1900 of the room in which the portrait hung. (I can't find a copy of it online, but if I do, I'll post it in a separate entry.) It is low on the wall, maybe at waist height in a huge manor house room. A table sits a few feet in front of the portrait, with an enormous urn that conceivably was used to hold flower arrangements that would have further obscured the painting from view. The entrance door to the room swings toward the portrait, so you would enter facing the other way. In short, the argument goes, the portrait was hidden in plain sight. A "Purloined Portrait," if you will. ****

Is this really Shakespeare? I'm not convinced this is what the son of the Stratford glover John Shakespeare "really" looked like. On the other hand, it makes a much more attractive face for the brand than the ubiquitous Droeshout engraving.*****



(Perhaps the Cobbe portrait is the "Glamor Shots" of 1610. Or perhaps he was painted for the cover of "Elizabethan Vogue," and then Photoshopped to the demanding standards of Tudor fashion photography.)

And frankly, for me that is enough. If Betty Crocker can change her looks over time, why not take the red carpet glammed up Cobbe as the new logo for the Shakespeare brand.




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Footnotes


*This portrait of "Henry Wriothesley" was previously thought to be a portait of a woman, until 2002 when Alec Cobbe (yes, the same one) claimed it to be of Shakespeare's literary patron. There may be some controvery about THAT identification as well, relying (as it does) on the literal application of lines of Shakespeare's sonnets for support.

**Do we think this "chain of custody" would stand up in a criminal trial? True, if this WAS Shakespeare's portrait, and it WAS owned by Wriothesley, it COULD HAVE ended up in Alec Cobbe's possession. But unless you start with the premise that it is a picture of Shakespeare, you are kind of left with something less than "beyond reasonable doubt."

***Unless, of course, the wood just lay around until some time after 1610, or was used by somebody in 1610 to paint of portrait of--just to pick a name at random--Sir Thomas Overbury?

****This doesn't really go very far in explaining why nobody had any idea that a truly lovely portrait of the world's most famous playwright would go uninventoried and unnoticed for over 400 years--but I'm just skeptical like that.

****Go over to the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust's website here for a nifty Flash animation which superimposes the Cobbe portrait over the Droeshout engraving.