The many faces of William Shakespeare

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/may/22/many-faces-of-william-shakespeare

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Mark Griffiths makes a very good case for his newly discovered portrait of Shakespeare in John Gerard’s 1598 The Herball (Is this the authentic face of Shakespeare?, 20 May). However, in his full Country Life article, Griffiths claims that there are only two other authentic likenesses of Shakespeare: the Janssen bust in Stratford Church and the Droeshout engraving in the 1623 First Folio.

In an essay in the Times Literary Supplement (25 April 2014), the eminent Shakespeare scholar Katherine Duncan-Jones shows, with convincing references to early 18th-century documents, that the Chandos portrait is also authentic. It was the work of Joseph Taylor, a brilliant young actor and skilled amateur painter, who was Shakespeare’s “intimate friend”. He probably produced it in 1610-11 just before he “was instructed by the Author Master Shakspear” in his acting of Hamlet for Taylor’s company, Lady Elizabeth’s Men. It appears that Taylor kept his painting as an affectionate keepsake before bequeathing it to Sir William Davenant. The National Portrait Gallery’s attribution of the picture to John Taylor seems to be based on a 17th-century confusion of the abbreviation Jo. Taylor. Joseph, Shakespeare’s contemporary, is an altogether more likely candidate than the later “master painter-stainer”, John.

Professor Duncan-Jones will no doubt give us more detail in her forthcoming book Portraits of Shakespeare.Christopher MartinCambridge

• The claimed discovery of a likeness of Shakespeare by the botanist Mark Griffiths is deeply flawed. The portrait appears on the title page of the 1598 edition of Gerard’s Herball alongside those of the author, a fellow botanist, and Lord Burghley, Queen Elizabeth’s chief minister. It is suggested that Burghley was an influential patron of Shakespeare and this connection enabled his rise to fame. However, there is no proven connection between the politician and the playwright. Indeed, there is an intriguing theory that the character Polonius in Hamlet is a satire on Burghley – hardly the way to impress a patron.

Griffiths also wildly overestimates Shakespeare’s personal reputation at the time of this book’s publication. None of the surviving printed versions of Shakespeare’s plays name him as the author before 1598, while his contemporary Christopher Marlowe was the acknowledged author of Edward II as early as 1594. There is no reasonable explanation why Shakespeare should be connected with a work on botany. The suggestion that he assisted Gerard with work on the classical names of plants is tenuous and sits ill with Ben Jonson’s claim that Shakespeare had “small Latin and less Greek”.

The coded references to Shakespeare’s coat of arms are bizarre. Heraldry is a means of identifying an individual, not concealing his identity. Given that arms were only granted to Shakespeare’s father in 1596, it would be peculiar that William would not want to celebrate this confirmation of gentlemanly status.Jeremy GoldsmithEast Goscote , Leicestershire

• Mark Griffiths has saved my bacon. In what could only be described as a conceit, my life-sized bronze Bard is not the old balding fellow depicted by painters after his death, but young, virile and handsome. I put him in his early 30s when he wrote Romeo and Juliet.

An earlier conceit was placing Churchill and Roosevelt (Allies on Bond Street, London) on a bench, although none of the hundreds of photos I worked from showed that; Roosevelt’s polio demanded he occupy a chair with arms. A few years later I happened to sit beside a charming grace and favour lady at a European-Atlantic Group dinner, and during our chat I mentioned my stretch, placing the two men on a bench when I knew perfectly well that… “Stop right there,” my elderly companion cried. “They did sit on a bench; I saw it! It’s in the gardens of the palace, now a hotel, in Yalta, as they were preparing to meet with Stalin.” I could only laugh with relief and vindication, and thanked her.

The Shakespeare project began in 2011 with a commission from a London group planning to erect a theatre in Shoreditch, modelled after the original Burbage Theatre. I was to place the bard seated on a bench (after Allies). However, I completed a maquette with Shakespeare not seated but with one foot on a bench, welcoming visitors to his theatre. Sadly, the theatre project never reached fruition, but I decided to proceed with the life-size portrait. I worked at Kendalls Gallery in Cowes in full view of the passing public. A casting was bought by the Chattanooga Theatre Centre and unveiled in March 2014 by the British Consul General to commemorate the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth.Lawrence HolofcenerSeaview, Isle of Wight

• Mark Griffiths has decoded only the top half of the symbol. The bottom half is a stylised WM for William. The W is obvious and the M is formed by the overlaid inverted V (which also serves as the back of the shaft of the spear) and parts of the W. The whole symbol decodes to “Shakespeare OR William”. I’m convinced!Colin RourkeProfessor emeritus, University of Warwick