Among the lesser-noted disposals was a dark oval portrait, twenty-two inches high by eighteen wide, purchased by the Earl of Ellesmere for 355 guineas and known ever since as the Chandos portrait. - P1
In 1856, shortly before his death, Lord Ellesmere gave the painting to the new National Portrait Gallery in London as its founding work. As the gallery’s first acquisition, it has a certain sentimental prestige, but almost at once its authenticity was doubted. Many critics at the time thought the subject was too dark-skinned and foreign-looking – too Italian or Jewish – to be an English poet, much less a very great one. Some, to quote the late Samuel Schoenbaum, were disturbed by his ‘wanton’ air and ‘lubricious’ lips. (One suggested, perhaps a touch hopefully, that he was portrayed in stage make-up, probably in the role of Shylock.) - P2
The first is the copperplate engraving that appeared as the frontispiece of the collected works of Shakespeare in 1623 – the famous First Folio. The Droeshout engraving, as it is known (after its artist, Martin Droeshout), is an arrestingly – we might almost say magnificently – mediocre piece of work. - P4
That leaves us with just one other possible likeness: the painted, life-size statue that forms the centrepiece of a wall monument to Shakespeare at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he is buried. - P5
It was executed by a mason named Gheerart Janssen, and installed in the chancel of the church by 1623 – the same year as Droeshout’s portrait. - P6
The paradoxical consequence is that we all recognize a likeness of Shakespeare the instant we see one, and yet we don’t really know what he looked like. It is like this with nearly every aspect of his life and character: he is at once the best known and least known of figures. - P6
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