Not likely, Mr Shakespeare

The international "news" of a "new Shakespeare portrait" was not received with enthusiasm when it first reached us here at the TLS.

Much as I love my former colleagues in the mainstream newspaper business, the mass publicity for a new 'Shakespeare Found' - in this case in the collection of picture-restorer Alec Cobbe - was not much endorsement here.

News stories from museums and galleries, a wonderful source of romantic illustrations, are not knocked off newsroom schedules merely because they are of dubious veracity.

And what could be more romantic than a new, youthful, prosperous and glowing image of our greatest writer?

'Ninety per cent certain', claims an expert.

Hold the front pages.

Once upon a time there used to be a cynical news-editor's adage: 'what is new in this story isn't true and what is true isn't new'.

But such scepticism is not applied so rigorously when a press release contains something so useful, so beautiful, such a pleasant change from financial gloom and doom as a new portrait of Shakespeare.

The Cobbe portrait duly adorned many a newspaper page.

"Too young", said the wise men and women of TLS towers to one another.

"Too well dressed" as well.

Looks nothing like the one, old and not so attractive, image which is attested and everyone knows.

Looks quite like other pictures which are probably not Shakespeare anyway.

'Load of nonsense', grumble grumble, and back to our desks.

And so, according to a highly persuasive piece in the TLS that goes to press tonight, it seems.

But news editors, never fear.

The real identity of the man in the Cobbe portrait is likely to have been a poet and courtier from the Jacobean age whose life, loves and mysterious death would have filled many more newspaper pages in his day than Shakespeare ever could.

His is a story well worth retelling any day.

We'll put it up online tomorrow.

Comments

[Randy Kadish]

I agree that this is not the portrait of Shakespeare.

To me it doesn't come close to matching the Droeshout portrait or the bust of Shakespeare.

Shakespeare's wife and the editors of the first folio obviously felt the Droeshout engraving was a true likeness or they would not have included it; and yet today so many don't want to accept that fact, simply because they want Shakepeare to look different - more idealized, more the way we want him to look.

Shakespeare was a great writer, not a leading man.

We should be grateful for the Droeshout engraving and for the Shakespeare bust. Without them we'd be in the dark about what the Bard really looked like.

Randy Kadish

Randy

[John Casson]

People keep mentioning the bust in Stratford, as if it was an authentic portrait. It is nothing of the sort. It has been altered from the original which showed a thinner man with his hands on a sack of grain. (Shakespeare hoarded grain during a famine in Stratford. He traded in grain.) The earliest drawing of the monument dates from 1653 and is by William Dugdale. It shows a man who looks quite different from the iconic images of Shakespeare. The bust was later "restored" to make it look more like the expected image and a book/quill added.

[Daniel]

Peter Stothard is feeling inferior because he knows everything he has ever written isnt fit to wipe ones arse with. Of course the picture is of William Shakespeare, he was a refined man and his gracious physiognomy perfectly reflects that. Again PS is feeling more insecure because he is a wretched looking individual and these things scar his meagre mind. People ultimately believe what they choose to believe thats why the moronic Americans invented the phrase that "Perception is reality" it is not, certain things ar just not for commoners to understand, beauty, truth, and compassion are all understood by a precious few and the disenfranchised losers like PS are always burning in the fire of their own regrets and mediocrity. The portrait is of William Shakespeare, anyone with a heart can tell, thats why he finds it such a challenge to see it. This picture will remain until the end of time, Shakespeare is loved and redefined a people, a nation, a language and God's word on Earth, the ignorant writer of this times column will be forgotten like his crass opinions in a darkness blacker than doom. Cheers!!!