The Play is the Thing...

I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay away from this. Here goes:

Is the so-called “Cobbe Portrait”—the painting that has surfaced in Ireland recently—an actual life portrait of William Shakespeare?

Yes.

No.

Maybe.

I don’t know.

Ummm…

Okay, Why not? It seems to have as many claims to authenticity as about any other of the Bard’s portraits—more, perhaps. Its points of similarity with the folio engraving (Droeshout’s) are many, but I’m not so expert in Elizabethan/Jacobean era portraiture to know whether or not those points aren’t common to thousands of portraits that have survived into our time. I do find it fascinating that the apparent copy of the Cobbe Portrait owned by the Folger Library was once doctored to make it look more like Shakesepeare—especially ironic if the portrait it was based on turns out to be one of Shakespeare (what an oroboros that would be!).

In any case, what fascinates me most about the whole affair is that the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust wants so desperately for the portrait to be him. And I understand it: the man in the picture is handsome, suave, dressed to the nines (seriously), and, dare I say (at the risk of emasculating myself) hot! What an ambassador for all things Bardish. Compare it to the Chandos portrait and decide for yourself. Chandos, with its dumpy face, buggy eyes, receding hairline, and prominent schnoz is Will Shaxper of Stratford as played by Paul Giamatti—a glover’s son, a country bumpkin of modest background and pedestrian interests who grubs for money, probably drinks too much, and leaves his wife his second best bed. Cobbe, however, is William Shakespeare as played by Joseph Fiennes--a dashing man about town, cosmopolitan, witty, perceptive, and sexy: women want him and men want to do him. What publisher would put Chandos on the cover over Cobbe:

But aye, there’s the rub…for me anyway.

I like my Bard mixed. I like the balding country bumpkin. I like the man with a common education. I like the loose collar and the ear-ring and the gloomy look. I like that Shakespeare grubbed after money (like me), and spent too much time in the tavern, chased wenches, and probably plagiarized. I like that he had a bad marriage (probably), that he was a capitalist, that he was probably a chubbo at the end of his life. I like my Bard to be a juxtaposing, conflicted genius who bedazzles, confounds, overwhelms, and reduces to tears his audiences performance after performance, season after season, century after century. And I especially like it that this shlub wrote these words:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on; and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

And these:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

And, of course, these:

This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.

He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,

Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,

And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

He that shall live this day, and see old age,

Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,

And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,

And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'

Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,

But he'll remember, with advantages,

What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,

Familiar in his mouth as household words-

Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,

Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-

Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.

This story shall the good man teach his son;

And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remembered-

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition;

And gentlemen in England now-a-bed

Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

And aren’t the words portrait enough? As Jonson said, "Reader, look Not on his portrait but his book."

CD