Shakespeare's Face

By Stephanie Nolen, Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2002, 366 pages, paperback, colour illustrations, $35.00. Reviewed by Sue Bond in the December 2002 issue.

Help more readers find out about this article
Slashdot   Digg   StumbleUpon   Del.icio.us

I began reading this book in an ambivalent mood. It is an intriguing story; that a possible portrait of William Shakespeare, painted from life, had been 'found'. But does it actually matter? What difference would it make to our understanding of his plays and sonnets?

The book is a mystery tale, and it did seduce me, at least partly. The cover features a portion of the portrait in question: a young man's face, with dark, intriguing eyes, a faint smile and a delicately embroidered white collar. Fragments of the portrait appear at the beginning of each new section, and there is a generous insert of illustrations, showing the examinations to which the portrait was subjected, as well as other confirmed likenesses of Shakespeare, and those now known to be fakes.

The author of the book, Stephanie Nolen, had drawn together several professors in English and Art History, as well as paleographers, to provide chapters discussing the import of the portrait, and whether or not they believe it could be of Shakespeare.

The news of the portrait was first 'broken' by Nolen in the Globe and Mail in Toronto on the 11th of May 2001, when Lloyd Sullivan, who lived 'up the street' from Nolen's mother in Ottawa, told her of his family heirloom. He had inherited it from his mother Kathleen Hale-Sanders when she died in 1972, but it had been kept in the family since it was first painted, supposedly by an ancestor, in 1603. The ancestor was called John Sanders, and he was an actor who somehow (and the details are not known, and entirely speculative) obtained the opportunity to paint a portrait of his fellow artist and playwright, Shakespeare. Endearingly, the family referred to their treasure as 'Willy Shake'.

The shape of the book then alternates between Nolen taking us through the events following her learning of Lloyd Sullivan's portrait and commentary by scholars. Stanley Wells writes about the enduring appeal of the plays, and how they make us aware of the mystery of human existence and the meaning of life, whilst also entertaining us. He regards the Sanders portrait as being a great relic if proven to be of the man. Andrew Gurr gives the reader a background of the writer in 1603, and why he may have felt the need for a display of his status by having a portrait done. Jonathan Bate spends his chapter proving that it was Shakespeare who wrote the plays, as there would be hardly any point in proving the portrait if the man was not the author. He makes an interesting point about Shakespeare's education: neither he nor Ben Jonson went to university, but they both attended grammar schools, which were very rigorous, and thus their writings show a higher learning than we might expect.

The most interesting essay is by Marjorie Garber, who states: 'The less clear we are about 'who wrote Shakespeare', the more 'Shakespeare' can be idealized and indeed idolized' (p 158). She adapts Michel Foucault's 'author-function' from his essay 'What Is An Author?' to ask 'what is a portrait?' using the term 'portrait-function'. The various alleged portraits of Shakespeare over the ages have all fulfilled a function for those viewing them: whether or not they felt this representation could be the man, or should be the man. For example, the Chandos portrait, with a dark-haired, dark-complexioned Shakespeare with an earring has been criticised for looking too 'Jewish' or too 'foreign'. Garber makes the whimsical point of how much the Sanders portrait fits in with the fashionable Shakespeare in Love version of the playwright, and resembles Joseph Fiennes' characterisation. We look for ourselves in the portrait, in whatever age, and if we see ourselves there, then we'll believe in the picture.The scientific analysis of the painting by members of the Canadian Conservation Institute in Ottawa is fascinating, and proves, in a breath-taking manner, that the portrait was executed in 1603. One of the methods used is called dendrochronology, or the science of dating works of art from counting the annual growth rings of the tree used to create the wooden panel. The scientist was able to identify the panel as coming from a Baltic oak tree that started as a sapling in 1323.

By the end of the book, it is not concluded with certainty that the portrait is of Shakespeare, but Alexander Leggatt, for example, reads as much into the painting as is psychologically possible to suggest that such a face holds secrets, looks inwards, is absorbed, sweet and gentle, generally very human, and thus could just as well be the playwright for these reasons.

So, does it matter if it's Shakespeare or not? Many people will be disappointed if it is not, because it's such an attractive image, and fits with how we may like Shakespeare to appear (rather than the portly, 'daggy' Janssen memorial bust or the stylised Droeshout, neither of which have a soul). But the plays will always be there, and the sonnets, and it is the characters, stories and insights within them that matter the most.

Citation

• Sue Bond. 'Review: Shakespeare's Face by Stephanie Nolen' [online]. Network Review of Books (Perth, Australian Public Intellectual Network), December 2002. Availability: <please cite the web address here> ISSN 1833-0932. [accessed 25 May 2013].

Back Cover Blurb

• In 2001 Stephanie Nolen broke a story that set the arts world alight. The astonishing discovery of a 'new' portrait of Shakespeare was sensational not just because of the great man's colossal presence in world literature. Only two other, posthumous, likenesses existed and a portrait of a younger, sexier Shakespeare—a Shakespeare vibrantly alive in his own time—would lend a whole new dimension to the global cult of the Bard.
  
  But how do you positively identify the subject of a four-hundred-year-old painting? Shakespeare's Face is a gripping, irresistible and gorgeously illustrated story of modern detective work and high-tech forensic analysis. Is it him? Read the book and find out for yourself.

Have You Also Read?

• The Man Who Lost Himself: The Unbelievable Story of the Tichborne Claimant
  
  Robyn Annear, Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2002, 429 Pages, Paperback, $32.00
  Reviewed by Strephyn Mappin in the December 2002 issue.
  
  Unbelievable but true, Robyn Annear's The Man Who Lost Himself is the fascinating retelling of the machinations surrounding what was, until recently, the longest and most puzzling trial in English history. Lost at sea in 1854, Roger Tichborne was the heir to extensive estates and an English baronetcy. Frail of stature and an odd and spoilt mummy's boy, Tichborne had been brought up mostly in France. After spending some time as a Carabineer with the 6th Dragoon Guards, he went adventuring in South America in order to escape both a frowned upon love affair with his cousin and the demands of his ghastly mother and ineffectual father. He left Rio de Janeiro to sail to New York on the ship ... read more.