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The Portraiture of Shakespeare





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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORfSI-^
SANTA BAKiJAAIA



CHAPTER V.




THE PORTRAITURE OF SHAKESPEARE.*

i|HE title of my paper may well provoke this question —
' Seeing that Shakespeare has been dead and buried
257 years, what can be known of his personal appear-
ance beyond what may be gathered from the few accredited
portraits, for which he is believed to have sat 1 and granting
that all those are unsatisfactory and imperfect representations
of the man, how is it possible to add to their verisimiUtude,
except by the discovery of another authentic portrait 1 ' Of
course I do not pretend that this is possible; nor am I able to
announce to you any discovery of the sort since 1849, when
the Becker Mask was deposited at the British Museum. Never-
theless I have somewhat to communicate, which may be both
new and interesting, touching certain recent attempts to recover
the lost lineaments of Shakespeare,

And steal dead seeming of his living hue. f



* Read at a Meeting of the Royal Society of Literature, Jan. 21, 1874,
and reported (in brief) in the Presidential Address of 1874, p. 50.
t From Shakespeare's sixty-seventh Sonnet.



S/iakcspcare : tlic Alan.



Doubtless the chances are against the success of such
attempts : but it is not difficult to see that in one respect at
least they may be helpful and instructive. If we only consider
what a bust or a portrait must be in order to express the ' form
and favour ' of a man at his best, we shall readily arrive at a
principle, which, while it serves to explain that diversity of
expression which is found in different copies from the same
]Mcture, to some extent justifies the attempt to recover a lost
likeness.

I have frequently observed that the ' portrait of a gentleman,'
painted by an indifferent artist, bears a certain resemblance to
the artist himself In the Epistle of St. James it is asserted
that a man ' beholding his natural face in a glass, goeth his
way and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.'
I am not sure that this is strictly true ; but, if it be so, I
am none the less convinced that every man has a latent im-
pression of his own countenance, which he is more apt to
delineate than any other. Moreover, I have observed that in
portraits, executed by the best artists and possessing all the
attributes of a faithful likeness, there is always an expression
which it is impossible to attribute to anything seen in the
face of the sitter. The truth seems to be, that the artist who
has studied his subject, so as to seize the expression of the face
at its best, is dependent upon his own powers of imagination
and memory: and on these he draws largely to supplement the
expression of the blank and wearied face which periodically
confronts him in his studio. It thus happens that in repre-
senting his subject he imparts something of himself, and the



Shakespeare : tJie Ulau.



most life-like portraits are those which represent the very heart
of the painter.

On this principle we can clearly understand how it comes
to pass that of all the known engravings of Jansen's portrait
of Shakespeare, in the collection of the Duke of Somerset,
there are not two that have the same expression. But the
Chandos portrait, which is the property of the nation, from
its damaged condition and obscurity offers a still better field
for experiment. It has been engraved and copied in oils
times without number, and so different are the expressions
of the resulting prints and paintings that it is difficult to believe
that they are all from the same exemplar. I can certify as
a fact that Cousins' engraving is a remarkably faithful copy
of the original. Now compare it with Scriven's print of
Ozias Humphry's drawing, and it is difficult to resist the con-
clusion that the fire and severity of this last are wholly due
to the temperament of the copyist. It is well known that
William Blake could conjure up before him the visible forms
of the dead, and retain them long enough to paint their
likenesses. From some of these we may conclude that the
latent memory of ancient portraits was at least a factor in
this singular phenomenon ; but the portraits of ' the Man who
built the Pyramids ' and ' the Ghost of a Flea ' do not so
readily yield to this explanation. You will perhaps call to
mind an incident related by the elder Varley respecting the
portraiture of ' the Ghost of a Flea.' The old man was
present during the ' sitting,' and he relates that, the Flea
having opened his mouth, Blake was unable at once to com-



Shakespeare: the Man.



plete tlie drawing, but drew on a separate piece of paper a
sketch of the open mouth. The apparition having once
more closed his mouth, Blake resumed the first sketch, and
finished the portrait. This seems a veritable case of portrait-
painting from the inmost consciousness: and what is most
curious about Blake's portrait of ' the Ghost of a Flea ' is that
it is a caricature of the well-known features of the late Lord
Lytton.

However ridiculous may appear the notion that Blake could
summon into his presence the forms and faces of persons no
longer existing, or those whose existence is impossible, and
could draw from them, as from real flesh and blood, I am
convinced from my own experience that Blake gave a truthful
account of the matter, and that he was wholly unconscious
of the process by which such appearances were, produced.
That process, which is a sort of concurrence of imagination
with certain states of the brain and the optic nerve, probably
affecting the retina in as perfect a manner as the light from
natural objects, is unconsciously performed by all persons who
have the experience of optical illusions.

Now that very constructive power, which in the case of
Blake was at times monopolised by the nerves of vision, may
just as well act through the hand, and, instead of presenting an
illusory object which the artist may delineate or depict may
guide him unconsciously in the production of an ideal portrait.
Such things are called ' spirit drawings,' which I regard as a
most misleading title. But without entering upon that allied,
if not strictly relevant, inquiry, I may state generally that every



Shakespeare : the Man.



genial portrait owes perhaps as much to the ideal of the artist
as to his faculty of faithful representation ; and that he works
from within as well as from without. Herein lies the justi-
fication of the attempts that are made from time to time to
produce a thoroughly satisfactory portrait of Shakespeare. In
this pursuit we have little to guide us beyond a few portraits of
somewhat doubtful authenticity and of very short pedigrees,
the bust in the Chancel of Stratford Church and Droeshout's
engraving prefixed to the First Folio Edition of Shakespeare.
Beyond the suggestion of these generally inadequate and
discrepant representations we have no guidance from without.
Unfortunately for our inquiry Shakespeare does not stand
on the same footing as other great men of his time. He is
siei gaieris, that is, of a class by himself in every respect.
There is scarcely a poet above mediocrity who has not written
commendatory verses on his fellows. We do not know of a
single copy of such verses by Shakespeare. Allusions to his
contemporaries are to be found in the writings of every other
poet and dramatist of that day; some poems and plays are
obtrusively crowded with such personal allusions. In the whole
thirty-seven dramas credited to Shakespeare there is one obscure
allusion to Spenser and one distinct allusion to Marlow. The
prose works published in the later part of the sixteenth, and
the earlier part of the seventeenth centuries contain abundant
notices of every poet of mark save Shakespeare, whose name
and works are rarely and only slightly mentioned : and when
he is named or alluded to he is praised as an amatory poet or
as an actor, rarely as a dramatist. The works of Lord Brooke,



Shakespeare : the Man.



Sir John Davies, Lord Bacon, Selden, Sir John Beaumont,
Henry Vaughan (Sikirist), Lord Clarendon, &c., &c., show
no consciousness of Shakespeare's existence. Can it be that
the poor player was evidently despised ; that he was too
humble to be selected as the subject of much eulogy in those
early times, or to be invited to become the eulogist of another ?
For the same reason, whatever it was, hardly anyone cared to
possess his portrait; and until John Aubrey records in 1680,
/. e., sixty-four years after Shakespeare's death, that he was
reputed to have been ' a handsome, well-shaped man,' no writer
ever said a word as to his personal appearance. It is but fair
to add, that as to portraits, Edmund Spenser stands in precisely
the same position as Shakespeare. The portraits claimed for
him are hopelessly discrepant ; and it is hard to say which
should be accepted and which rejected. If we reckon up all
the painted portraits (excluding known forgeries) said to re-
present Shakespeare, we shall find that their number is about
twenty-two. Some of these, at most two or three, may have
been taken from life ; and certainly one is of the requisite
antiquity. Not a few, however, are probably genuine portraits
of other gentlemen of the time ; and some are idealised
portraits of Shakespeare. To these must be added two busts,
one plaster cast and one engraving on brass ; and we have
reckoned up our whole capital. A very few words on some
of these relics.

Foremost in authenticity is the Bust in the Chancel of
Stratford Church. We know quite enough about this to make
it our most important possession. Apart from what we know,



Shakespeare : the Man.



it is a priori most improbable that the family and friends of
Shakespeare should soon after his death have placed in the most
conspicuous place in the church of his native town, where
almost every one was as familiar with his personal appearance
as with that of their most intimate friends, a life-sized bust of
the Bard which would not be recognised by his fellow-townsmen.
We might, in the absence of any relative knowledge, presume
that the bust is a likeness. But we know from Sir William
Dugdale that it was the work of a Dutch sculptor named Gerard
Johnson; and we know enough of this sculptor to believe that
he was not a common mason, though certainly quite a second-
rate artist. We all know wherein such an one fails, and wherein
he succeeds : he can usually make an obtrusively striking
likeness, though always an unpleasant one. Here is just such
a work. How awkward is the ensemble of the face ! What a
painful stare, with its goggle eyes and gaping mouth ! The
expression of this face has been credited with kin/ioi/r, bon-
hommie, hilarity and jollity. To me it is decidedly clownish ;
and is suggestive of a man crunching a sour apple, or struck with
amazement at some unpleasant spectacle. Yet there is force
in the lineaments of this muscular face. One can hardly doubt
that it is an unintentional caricature; but for that very reason
it should be an unmistakeable likeness. In the plaster casts
taken from Bullock's copy, and in those separately prepared
from the original by Warner and Michele, that peculiar ex-
pression is toned down to insipidity, and one catches some
touch of dignity and refinement with utter loss of force. But
the casts do not give a truthful representation of the bust.



S/iakcspcarc : the Man.



We obtain some important facts from this rude work. As
it is at present coloured the eyes are light-hazel, the hair and
beard auburn. Such were the colours put on in 1748 by
Mr. John Hall, the limner of Stratford, and which reappeared
on the removal, by Mr. Collins, of Malone's white paint. We
have no reason to doubt that when the bust was renovated in
1748, the very colours it had received by order of Dr. John
Hall, Shakespeare's son-in-law, were repeated by his namesake.

The extraordinary depth of the upper lip, which measures
an inch and a quarter, has been accounted for by the conjecture
that the sculptor may have had an accident with the nose. I
have remarked that it is very dangerous to frame hypotheses
respecting Shakespeare, for they are apt to get converted into
' obscure traditions,' and may come at last to be regarded as
historical facts, the evidence of Avhich has been lost. This
happened to the conjecture of Capell and Waldron that
Shakespeare was lame, in order to explain two lines in the
sonnets, the meaning of which he had wholly misapprehended.
In the next century Mr. Harness revised the conjecture, with-
out any mention of Capell ; Mr. Thorns accounted for the
supposed defect by making Shakespeare a soldier : and finally
the late ]\Ir. Richard Simpson published a note in which he
referred the circumstance of Shakespeare's lameness to ' an
obscure tradition,' and proceeded to employ it as a fact to
elucidate some expressions in Jonson's Poetaster. Just so, in
the matter of Shakespeare's nose; Mr. J. Hain Friswell remarks
{Life Portraits, '^. 8): 'the nose of the bust of Shakespeare,
like that of Tristram Shandy, it is said, has met with an



Shakespeare : the Man.



accident, the former from the instrument of Dr. Slop, the latter
from the chisel of the sculptor.' ' It is said/ is the magical
formula, which becomes the germ of the myth. I cannot
find that it ever was said, except as a hypothesis to explain
the disproportionate depth of the upper lip : and on measure-
ment, it was found that the depth of Sir Walter Scott's upper
lip exceeded that of Shakespeare's bust.

I am afraid we must take our stand on the fidelity of this
bust — at least with some allowable qualifications. When we
find a sculptor dismissing his work in this rough fashion, so
that, as Mr. Fairholt says, * the eyes are untrue to nature, &c.,
the ciliary cartilages are straight, hard and unmeaning, and
the glands at the corners next the nose entirely omitted,' we
may be sure the fidelity of the face must be received with
something more than the proverbial grain of salt.

Next in authenticity to the bust is Droeshout's engraving,
prefixed to the First Folio edition of Shakespeare's Works. It
must have been executed after Shakespeare's death; and
therefore we may be sure it was taken from some sketch or
painting, probably in the possession of Mrs. Shakespeare or
Dr. John Hall. No such exemplar has come down to us or is
known to have existed, unless the Felton Portrait be the one
that was so employed ; and this is, on the whole, unlikely, for
reasons to be stated when I come to speak of that portrait. But
allowing the probability that such an exemplar did exist (and
apart from it, no reliance could be placed on the engraving),
it may have perished along with Shakespeare's papers. It has
been surmised that these papers fell a victim to some pious



lo S/uikcspt'dir : the Man.

soul's puritanical ardour. Unhappily the suspicion, if it be to fall
anywhere, involves Shakespeare's wife or Shakespeare's daughter.
The sorry Latin elegiacs engraved in brass on Mrs. Shakespeare's
gravestone contain no allusion to her immortal husband, being
concerned only with the good lady's immortality. She must
not be held responsible for them; at least no further than
she justified their encomium. The English verses on Mrs.
Elizabeth Hall's tablet are enigmatical.

Witty above her sexe, but that's not all.
Wise to salvation was good Mistris Hall :
Something of Shakespeare was in that, but this
Wholy of him witli whom she's now in blisse.

The things compared are Mrs. Hall's supersexual wit, and
her wisdom to salvation. Which is 'that,' and which is 'thisl '
In strictness 'hie plerumque ad posterius, ilk ad prius refertur: '
so that the lines seem to say, she owed her wat partly to
Shakespeare; her piety wholly to him, with whom she is in
bliss. Meanwhile where is her mother ] It has been suggested
that the lines mean the reverse, 'this' and 'that' being trans-
posed for the sake of the rhyme : viz., that she owed her piety
in some degree to Shakespeare; her wit wholly to him: but
that would seem to make the wit her claim to salvation.
Another suggestion is, that him refers to the Saviour; and I
incline to that view myself: at the same time I am afraid we
are inquiring too curiously in putting these old epitaphs to the
question ; and I do not think they tell at all against Mrs.
Shakespeare. Probably both Mrs. Shakespeare and Mrs. Hall
were good religious souls, but one does not see why either of



SJiakcspcarc : the Man. 1 1

them should be ashamed of the Bard, so as to disown his
works and destroy his manuscripts. There is one curious fact,
however, which is quite enough to beget a myth, Uke those of
Shakespeare's lameness and his bust's broken nose. Heminge
and Condell had the plays printed from the quartos and play-
house copies ; they even had a title-page printed with the date
1622. They may have hoped to be able to correct the press
from manuscripts left by Shakespeare at New Place, in the
custody of his widow. Now the facts are, that Mrs. Shakespeare
died on August 8, 1623, and that the editors had a new title
printed, with the date 1623. Did they wait till she was dead
before venturing to issue the volume?

Be that as it may, the folio appeared with the Droeshout
engraving. Even in its best state it is such a monstrosity, that
I, for one, do not believe it had any trustworthy exemplar.
Those who have, as I have, examined the engraved portraits
prefixed to the various collective editions of the time, will not
be greatly astonished at the pretence of attaching such an
abomination as the Droeshout head to the folio editions of
Shakespeare.

Next in order we must place the splendid portrait, said to
be by Cornelius Jansen, which passes for Shakespeare in the
collection of the Duke of Somerset. Unfortunately its pedigree
does not extend farther back than 1761; but Woodburn, who
pubhshed in 181 1 the first print from it, stated that it had
belonged to Prince Rupert, who left it to his natural daughter,
Mrs. Emmanuel Scroopes Howes: whence it must have come
into the hands of Spackman the picture-dealer : and thence to



12 Shakespeare : the Man.

Mr. Jennens in 1761. The picture is of undoubted antiquity,
and bears in the right hand corner, ^t. 46, 1610; which corres-
ponds with Shakespeare's age in that year. As Jansen is
known to have painted the daughter of Henry Wriothesley,
Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare's friend and patron, it is not
improbable that he should have painted for the earl's collection
the bard himself. Then we take the Lumley, the Chandos, the
Felton, the Ashbourne and the Challis portraits.

Such was our stock of the more important representations
of the Bard up to about the middle of this century. Since
then it has received two acquisitions, both of which were at
different times in the possession of Professor Owen, at the
British Museum : viz., the Duke's Theatre Bust, now in the
vestibule of the Garrick Club, and the cast discovered by
Ludwig Becker, now belonging to Dr. Ernest Becker, of
Darmstadt. The latter professes to have been cast from a
wax-mould taken from Shakespeare's face very soon after
death; and I must candidly say I am not able to spot a
single suspicious fact in the brief history of this most curious
relic. Along with it is a miniature in oils, painted in 1637
from the cast, representing Shakespeare lying in state, his head
crowned with bays.

The comparison of these various works reveals the fact
that the Somerset Portrait, the Ashbourne Portrait, the Challis
Portrait, and the Becker Cast, despite numberless petty dis-
crepancies, present a substantial agreement. One can hardly
doubt that they all represent one man, and that man William
Shakespeare. But unfortunately for the trustworthiness of our



Shakespeare : the Man. 13

most authentic representations there is no resemblance between
any of these and either the Stratford Bust or the Uroeshout
engraving ! In fact the former is countenanced only by the
Chandos and Lumley Portraits ; while the latter may have had
the same original as the Felton Portrait, or the Felton may be
an idealised portrait from the Droeshout.

We thus see that we have three classes of portraits : the
first being led by the Stratford Bust and followed by the
Lumley and the Chandos Portraits ; the second led by the
Droeshout engraving and followed by the Felton Portrait ;
or vice versa; while the third and by far the most interesting
class is led by the Somerset Portrait and followed by the
Ashbourne and the Challis Portraits, and most remarkably
corroborated by the Becker Cast. How any two of these
classes are to be identified I must confess myself unable to
suggest. As far as I am aware no adequate experiments have
been made. For one thing, I would have a plaster bust
modelled after the Becker Cast ; 1 would restore this, then
vulgarise it, till I had got a poor insipid thing, such as is
the Stratford Bust ; I would then break off the end of the
nose, and elongate the upper-lip : and I should then see
whether the outcome was anything like that Bust. A great
many different experiments of the sort might be suggested;
but the fact that most of these relics are in private collections,
and some hardly accessible, renders the task of tentative
experiment both costly and dinicult.

I have now to mention the various attempts that have
been made in recent times to construct a trustworthy and



14 SJiakespcare : tJie Man.

satisfactory portrait or bust of Shakespeare. The more im-
portant of the earher idealised portraits are the Becker
Miniature, Sir Godfrey Kneller's Portrait after the Chandos,
presented by that artist to Dryden, Sir Joshua Reynolds"
Portrait after the same, painted for Bishop Newton, and the
Hunt Portrait, now in the ante-room of Shakespeare's birth-
room at Stratford. The last is believed to have been taken
from the Stratford Bust, probably for something connected
with the Stratford Jubilee. If so, it is singular that the nose
of the bust, which is fairly arched, is not reproduced in the
painting. It is, however, a very pleasing portrait ; and its
benignity and intelligence are very poorly represented in any
of the photographic prints taken from it that I have seen.
The one in Mr. J. Hain Friswell's Life Portrans has most
unfortunately curtailed the magnificent forehead of the original.
To these we must add Schemaker's Statue in Westminster
Abbey and Roubiliac's Statuette, modelled for Garrick. The
last furnishes the bust of our image-makers.

It is remarkable, but a fact, that the Tercentenary of
Shakespeare's birth produced no work of art, either portrait
or bust, which deserves mention here : nor since that time
has anything of the kind been attempted in England, save
Mr. Armistead's rcliei'o of Shakespeare on the east side of
the Albert Memorial.* America, however, is favourably con-
trasted with England in this particular. The Americans had
many years ago testified to their enthusiasm for Shakespeare

* Another statue has since been placed in Leicester Square. It appears
to be taken from Schemaker's.



Shakespeare : tJie Man.- 15

by producing a fine bust of him, modelled by Mr. Greenough
after the Caen Portrait, which had been discovered by one
Mr. Joy, and brought by him to Boston. Since that time their
appreciation of Shakespeare's genius, and their interest in all
that concerns him, have been continually on the increase.
In April, 1872, a bronze statue, executed by Mr. J. Q. A.
Ward, an eminent American sculptor, was placed in Central
Park, New York, and inaugurated with the usual ceremonies
of unveiling and speech-making. From that time to the
present this work has been a constant subject of controversy.
On receiving a photograph of it from a friend in Philadelphia
I was at once struck with its feebleness and untruth. It
suggested to me a stern philosophic student, and certainly
not a man of acute observation, ready wit and hilarious
temperament. Its faults are so admirably summed up by a
writer in Lippincotf s Magazine that I offer no apology for
making the following extract from his article. Mr. William
R. O'Donovan writes :

The ideal in art, simply stated, means the portrayal of certain things
in nature, giving due prominence to the characteristics in the order of
tlieir importance. Applying this proposition to Sculpture, a portrait-