- Hardcover: 384 pages
- Publisher: Free Press (April 2004)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0743249321
- ISBN-13: 978-0743249324
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16.1 x 3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 608 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,219,945 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
Amazon.ca
“Is this the face of genius?” asks Shakespeare’s Face, the follow-up book to Globe and Mail reporter Stephanie Nolen’s startling front-page revelation on May 11, 2001, that a 1603 portrait believed to be of William Shakespeare--possibly the only existing image of the playwright painted from life--had turned up in the possession of a Canadian family that had owned it for 12 generations. Whether or not the portrait actually depicts the Bard--and the consensus of the impressive panel of experts assembled to back up Nolen’s investigation with supporting chapters is a resounding “maybe”--the real genius of Shakespeare’s Face lies in the book’s packaging.
Hard-core detective work lies at the heart of countless academic publications by English professors and art historians, but most lay readers--except possibly Antiques Roadshow buffs--don’t go trolling history sections looking for a sexy read. Yet when Nolen’s story broke, its pop appeal was immense, even ranking a spread in Vanity Fair. Never mind that Nolen didn’t exactly discover the painting (known as the Sanders portrait)--she was scooped by an article the New York Times ran in 1928, when the painting was exhibited in a Manhattan department store, not to mention scholarly articles published in 1909 and 1911. Still, the painting had been out of circulation for long enough that when Nolen’s mother tipped her that a retired engineer living in Ottawa was trying to authenticate the image, it was big news.
The assembled experts in Shakespeare's Face write with insight and integrity. Andrew Gurr (Staging in Shakespeare’s Theatres) offers a typical observation: “I have to confess to being almost seduced into wanting the Sanders portrait to be of Shakespeare, if only because the thought that he might have agreed to have his portrait painted in 1603 prompts so many colourful ideas about his state of mind in that remarkable year.” Detailed discussions reveal that the Sanders portrait is an authentic Elizabethan painting in excellent condition, and that it may even depict Shakespeare or someone he knew. Jonathan Bate (The Oxford Illustrated History of Shakespeare on Stage) suggests the playwright’s protégé, John Fletcher. Art historian Tarnya Cooper provides context for portraiture of the time but concludes that it might be "fitting for the painting to retain the secret of the sitter's identity."
Nolen’s lively introductory and interlinking chapters make for great reading, but when it comes to spinning the expert analysis to support the original Globe article’s hype (“the only existing portrait painted while the playwright was alive”), the lady doth protest too much. --Deirdre Hanna --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
Books in Canada
Shakespeare was a "pin-up" long before Joseph Fiennes in Shakespeare in Love made him one for movie fans. In his essay "The God Of Our Idolatry" (one of several that graces Stephanie Nolen's fascinating Shakespeare's Face), Stanley Wells refers to a play, by an unknown playwright from 1600, in which a character named Gullio (a nice play on the Elizabethan word for "fool") hero-worships Shakespeare to the extent of wooing his mistress with quotations from Venus and Adonis and Romeo and Juliet and then vowing: "O, sweet Master Shakespeare! I'll have his picture in my study at the court." The 18th century took hero-adoration much farther by turning Shakespeare into a divinity, especially when David Garrick's commemorative Shakespeare Jubilee of 1769 proclaimed him "the God of our Idolatry." Bardolatry continued feverishly into the 19th century, and Canada was infected by it. There were all manner of literary societies dedicated to him. Our Victorians continued to swoon over Shakespeare's love-poetry, his wise saws, and romantic or noble characters.
In his own time, Shakespeare never enjoyed such excessively privileged status. Jonathan Bate asserts in the Nolen book: "the consensus in the immediate aftermath of Shakespeare's death was that he had been a great dramatist but no freak of nature." In other words, he was first among equals but not a rare genius. After he died, he ascended to the heavens as the greatest literary star—an arguably correct promotion but one with a considerable "downside," for the apotheosis led to a backlash in the form of conspiracy-theories questioning his authorship of the great plays. Academia or perverse tendentiousness (which is often the same thing) is to blame, of course, for the great tumble of essays and books that claim that Francis Bacon (or his older brother Anthony) wrote the plays. And if not Bacon, then possibly Queen Elizabeth herself or King James himself, John Florio (an Anglo-Italian dictionary-maker), or Christopher Marlowe, or, most probably, the Earl of Oxford. Interestingly, neither brotherly strip of Bacon was rash enough to claim authorship of Shakespeare's plays. As for the leading claimant, Oxford, he had the good sense to know that he was too hopeless at Latin, had never attended grammar school, joined the leather-trade or worked backstage with a theatre company. Moreover, as Jonathan Bate quietly points out, Oxford was on his deathbed at the time of Jacobean high politics and court-intrigue, and was so deeply into rigor mortis as to be utterly incapable of collaborating eight years after his own demise with John Fletcher on any of the questionable plays in or outside the canon.
Nevertheless, Shakespearean anxiety persists, with (as Marjorie Garber points out in the Nolen) "every age get[ting] the Shakespeare it wants, and perhaps even the Shakespeare it deserves." The overwhelming anxiety concerns finding some visual representation of the real Shakespeare, some painting or portrait of his true face with which to silence the anti-Stratfordians. There are numerous paintings of his face that seemingly come to light from under the beds of many unsuspecting grannies. However, all these happy accidents have had unhappy endings. Only four artifacts have ever had some element of legitimacy: the Martin Droeshout engraving on the title-page of the First Folio of 1623, the Flower painting supposedly done in 1609, the memorial bust at Stratford-on-Avon by Geraert Janssen in 1620, and the Chandos portrait of approximately 1610 in the National Portrait Gallery in London. The doubts and objections continue: the Droeshout (approved of by Shakespeare's friends) is called dull and unskillful; the bust (commissioned and paid for by Shakespeare's family) is derided for making him look like a "self-satisfied pork butcher"; the Chandos can't be Shakespeare, it is said, because it looks either too Italianate or too Jewish; and the Flower is evidently either a glamourised model for or a version of the Droeshout!
The latest candidate in the controversy is in Canada—a small, unsigned oil on wood panel in the possession of a retired engineer from Ottawa, who claims that it has been passed down his family from Shakespeare's time. Now known as the Sanders portrait, it shows a young man with wispy moustache and goatee who wears a doublet with a peculiar collar. He looks bright-eyed and slyly flirtatious with his thin, enigmatic smile. A tattered label with almost indecipherable handwriting identifies the man as Shakespeare at the age of 39. The painting was brought to public attention in May 2001 by Globe and Mail reporter Stephanie Nolen, whose book about the mystery, aptly entitled Shakespeare's Face, is a wonderful mixture of detective work and literary/aesthetic scholarship. The painting (missing a strip of panel on the right) has been subjected to rigorous forensic examination (X-ray, dendrochronology, and carbon dating), and has been accepted as "a pure and good example" of portraiture from the early 17th century, but it is almost certainly not a portrait of Shakespeare.
Nolen's book is expertly edited and assembled. In addition to interesting essays by Shakespearean scholars (including Stanley Wells, Andrew Gurr, and Alexander Leggatt), art historians, and paleographers that alternate with Nolen's journalistic commentary, it contains a portrait gallery, notes on its 11 contributors, end-notes, sources, parting opinions by the experts who have tried to read and assess the portrait, and a list of Shakespearean editions recommended by Leggatt (who is always a pleasure to read). But after all the information on daily life in Shakespeare's time, portrait painting of that era, the development of Shakespeare's myth, and the forensic analysis, there is the final issue which Andrew Gurr articulates: "What Shakespeare looked like is not really very important. He has been dead for nearly four hundred years, so his face is not going to launch any new ships and we are hardly likely to meet him in the street. Getting a fresh idea of what his face looked like cannot alter much of what he has left us. It might shift a few perspectives about his life a little, but it can add nothing to the corpus of his writings, on which his reputation and our valuation stands."
Keith Garebian (Books in Canada) --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
In his own time, Shakespeare never enjoyed such excessively privileged status. Jonathan Bate asserts in the Nolen book: "the consensus in the immediate aftermath of Shakespeare's death was that he had been a great dramatist but no freak of nature." In other words, he was first among equals but not a rare genius. After he died, he ascended to the heavens as the greatest literary star—an arguably correct promotion but one with a considerable "downside," for the apotheosis led to a backlash in the form of conspiracy-theories questioning his authorship of the great plays. Academia or perverse tendentiousness (which is often the same thing) is to blame, of course, for the great tumble of essays and books that claim that Francis Bacon (or his older brother Anthony) wrote the plays. And if not Bacon, then possibly Queen Elizabeth herself or King James himself, John Florio (an Anglo-Italian dictionary-maker), or Christopher Marlowe, or, most probably, the Earl of Oxford. Interestingly, neither brotherly strip of Bacon was rash enough to claim authorship of Shakespeare's plays. As for the leading claimant, Oxford, he had the good sense to know that he was too hopeless at Latin, had never attended grammar school, joined the leather-trade or worked backstage with a theatre company. Moreover, as Jonathan Bate quietly points out, Oxford was on his deathbed at the time of Jacobean high politics and court-intrigue, and was so deeply into rigor mortis as to be utterly incapable of collaborating eight years after his own demise with John Fletcher on any of the questionable plays in or outside the canon.
Nevertheless, Shakespearean anxiety persists, with (as Marjorie Garber points out in the Nolen) "every age get[ting] the Shakespeare it wants, and perhaps even the Shakespeare it deserves." The overwhelming anxiety concerns finding some visual representation of the real Shakespeare, some painting or portrait of his true face with which to silence the anti-Stratfordians. There are numerous paintings of his face that seemingly come to light from under the beds of many unsuspecting grannies. However, all these happy accidents have had unhappy endings. Only four artifacts have ever had some element of legitimacy: the Martin Droeshout engraving on the title-page of the First Folio of 1623, the Flower painting supposedly done in 1609, the memorial bust at Stratford-on-Avon by Geraert Janssen in 1620, and the Chandos portrait of approximately 1610 in the National Portrait Gallery in London. The doubts and objections continue: the Droeshout (approved of by Shakespeare's friends) is called dull and unskillful; the bust (commissioned and paid for by Shakespeare's family) is derided for making him look like a "self-satisfied pork butcher"; the Chandos can't be Shakespeare, it is said, because it looks either too Italianate or too Jewish; and the Flower is evidently either a glamourised model for or a version of the Droeshout!
The latest candidate in the controversy is in Canada—a small, unsigned oil on wood panel in the possession of a retired engineer from Ottawa, who claims that it has been passed down his family from Shakespeare's time. Now known as the Sanders portrait, it shows a young man with wispy moustache and goatee who wears a doublet with a peculiar collar. He looks bright-eyed and slyly flirtatious with his thin, enigmatic smile. A tattered label with almost indecipherable handwriting identifies the man as Shakespeare at the age of 39. The painting was brought to public attention in May 2001 by Globe and Mail reporter Stephanie Nolen, whose book about the mystery, aptly entitled Shakespeare's Face, is a wonderful mixture of detective work and literary/aesthetic scholarship. The painting (missing a strip of panel on the right) has been subjected to rigorous forensic examination (X-ray, dendrochronology, and carbon dating), and has been accepted as "a pure and good example" of portraiture from the early 17th century, but it is almost certainly not a portrait of Shakespeare.
Nolen's book is expertly edited and assembled. In addition to interesting essays by Shakespearean scholars (including Stanley Wells, Andrew Gurr, and Alexander Leggatt), art historians, and paleographers that alternate with Nolen's journalistic commentary, it contains a portrait gallery, notes on its 11 contributors, end-notes, sources, parting opinions by the experts who have tried to read and assess the portrait, and a list of Shakespearean editions recommended by Leggatt (who is always a pleasure to read). But after all the information on daily life in Shakespeare's time, portrait painting of that era, the development of Shakespeare's myth, and the forensic analysis, there is the final issue which Andrew Gurr articulates: "What Shakespeare looked like is not really very important. He has been dead for nearly four hundred years, so his face is not going to launch any new ships and we are hardly likely to meet him in the street. Getting a fresh idea of what his face looked like cannot alter much of what he has left us. It might shift a few perspectives about his life a little, but it can add nothing to the corpus of his writings, on which his reputation and our valuation stands."
Keith Garebian (Books in Canada) --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Who cares what the experts think. I say it's him!,
By A Customer
This review is from: Shakespeare's Face (Hardcover)
I'm not an Elizabethan scholar, but I've been reading the Great Man's work since the age of 10 when I found my mother's copy of his Collected Plays. His other portraits do nothing for me. They don't convey the spirit, the fun, the tragedy and frivolity of life. I saw this picture and...it's him!!! Like the woman who saw the portrait in Canada..."This guy is fun!" I think Ms. Nolen makes quite a good case that this may be Shakespeare's portrait. Just because there is no provenance that certifies William Shakespeare sat for the portrait---this is the best we have to date.
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Caveat Emptor,
By A Customer
This review is from: Shakespeare's Face (Hardcover)
Dear Amazon friends:To my chagrin I realize that the review copy I previously submitted incorrectly identified Dr. Somerset as being from the University of Toronto, not the University of Western Ontario. That error and a couple of small usage mistakes have been corrected in this new copy. I appreciate you indulgence in making the necessary substitution. Thank you for the opportunity to write. Best regards, Roger Stritmatter +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Five of the distinguished contributors to this book conclude that the painting in question is not likely to be "Shakespeare's Face." But of course, a book called "John Fletcher's Face?" won't sell, so the title has not been altered to reflect the book's contents. But if the book's premise seems doubtful even to the major contributors, it is also is an impressive testament to the intersection of professorial pride (sometimes downright arrogance), nationalist striving (A "Canadian Shakespeare!"), and mercantile ambition which makes its subject such a hot topic. I just returned from the Trinity College Conference on the portrait held at the University of Toronto this past weekend. At the conference, University of Western Ontario Professor Alan Somerset, with considerable grace and devastating logic, dismembered the claim, featured prominently in Ms. Nolan's book, that the label identifying the portrait as a "likeness of Shakespeare" does not, as certain historical facts make almost inevitable, date to the late 18th or early 19th century. As the label goes, so goes the painting: alas, nothing except the label and "family tradition" offer the slightest pretense for believing that this is actually a portrait of Shakespeare -- except, of course, for the fact that the bard was presumably alive in 1603 when this portrait was painted. As a piece of investigative journalism, this book is flawed by the author's self-interested gullibility and provincial bias. As a work of scholarship it is flawed by an atmosphere of conspicuous disregard for the canons of skeptical inquiry (fortunately the conference, due to the influence of participants such as Professor Somerset, was far less prejudicial in its orientation). What is most astounding about the case for the Sanders portrait is that even in the gold rush atmosphere created by the *Toronto Globe and Mail,* almost no one of sober intellect is willing to concede the probability that it represents an authentic likeness of the bard. In her concluding remarks Symposium coordinator Alexandra Johnston agreed with the comment of Lynne Kositsky that the Sanders is probably not a painting of Shakespeare and in any case will never be established as one to the satisfaction of informed parties. There are just too many unanswered questions which cast serious doubt on the reliability of Lloyd Sullivan's claims. One thing the contributors to the book do seem to agree on is that they wish the Sanders *were* authentic, because it would save them a great deal of bother. Clearly these academicians don't like anyone who tinkers with their divine William, and having a painting of him would be a good thing. Indeed, reading some chapters, one gets the distinct impression that the primary purpose of contributors such as Jonathan Bate has very little to do with the Sanders portrait and everything to do with slaying the fire-breathing dragon of the "Oxfordian" heresy. Even Stephanie Nolan breathlessly assures us that the portrait's owner Lloyd Sullivan has made an extensive study of the Shakespearean authorship controversy. The view advanced in recent years in Harpers, Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker and the New York Times, identifying Edward de Vere 17th Earl of Oxford as the most likely man behind the mask of the bard, is --supposes Mr. Sullivan -- a "lunatic conspiracy theory." Indeed, Sullivan's "money was on the glover's son from Stratford." Methinks the enterprising Mr. Sullivan, and his enterprising public relations manager Ms. Nolan doth protest just a little too much. Caveat emptor: an entertaining, amusing, and unreliable book.
3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Caveat emptor,
By A Customer
This review is from: Shakespeare's Face (Hardcover)
Five of the distinguished contributors to this book conclude that the painting in question is not likely to be "Shakespeare's Face." But of course, a book called "John Fletcher's Face?" won't sell, so the title has not been altered to reflect the book's contents. But if the book's premise seems doubtful even to the major contributors, it is also is an impressive testament to the intersection of professorial pride (sometimes downright arrogance), nationalist striving (A "Canadian Shakespeare!"), and mercantile ambition which makes its subject such a hot topic. I just returned from the Trinity College Conference on the portrait held at the University of Toronto this past weekend. At the conference, UT Professor Alan Somerset, with considerable grace and devastating logic, dismembered the claim, featured prominently in Ms. Nolan's book, that the label identifying the portrait as a "likeness of Shakespeare" does not, as certain historical facts make almost inevitable, date to the late 18th or early 19th century. As label goes, so goes the painting: alas, nothing except the label and "family tradition" offer the slightest pretense for believing that this is actually a portrait of Shakespeare -- except, of course, for the fact that the bard was presumably alive in 1603 when this portrait was painted.As a piece of investigated journalism, this book is flawed by the author's self-interested gullibility and provincial bias. As a work of scholarship it is flawed by an atmosphere of conspicuous disregard for the canons of skeptical inquiry (fortunately the conference, due to the influence of participants such as Professor Somerset, was far less prejudicial in its orientation). What is most astounding about the case for the Sanders portrait is that even in the gold rush atmosphere created by the *Toronto Globe and Mail,* almost no one of sober intellect is willing to concede the probability that it represents an authentic likeness of the bard. In her concluding remarks Symposium coordinator Alexandra Johnston agreed with the comment of Lynne Kositsky that the Sanders is probably not a painting of Shakespeare and in any case will never be established as one to the satisfaction of informed parties. There are just too many unanswered questions which cast serious doubt on the reliability of Lloyd Sullivan's claims. One thing the contributors to the book do seem to agree on is that they wish the Sanders *were* authentic, because it would save them a great deal of bother. Clearly these academicians don't like anyone who tinkers with their divine William, and having a painting of him would be a good thing. Indeed, reading some chapters, one gets the distinct impression that the primary purpose of contributors such as Jonathan Bate has very little to do with the Sanders portrait and everything to do with slaying the fire-breathing dragon of the "Oxfordian" heresy. Even Stephanie Nolan breathlessly assures us that the portrait's owner Lloyd Sullivan has made an extensive study of the Shakespearean authorship controversy. The view advanced in recent years in Harpers, Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker and the New York Times, identifying Edward de Vere 17th Earl of Oxford as the most likely man behind the mask of the bard, is --supposes Mr. Sullivan -- a "lunatic conspiracy theory." Indeed, Sullivan's "money was on the glover's son from Stratford." Methinks the enterprising Mr. Sullivan, and his enterprising public relations manager Ms. Nolan doth protest just a little too much. Caveat emptor: an entertaining, amusing, and unreliable book.
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