* It is as curious as suggestive to find that the prologueand choruses of the "Henry V." and "Henry VIII." areapologies for the imperfections of the plots, and the follyof the multitude they catered to. As to the internaltestimony of the authorship of these compositions, anyreader can judge for himself. We have expressed our ownopinion as being that William Shakespeare might be creditedwith the characters of Nym and Bar-dolph; especially of theCorporal, whose part consists of the phrase, "There's thehumor of it," intruded at each convenient interval; and itis possible that Shakespeare, in fitting up the matter inhand, interpolated this as the reigning by-word of themoment. There seems to be reason for believing that thisexpression did happen to be a favorite at about that time;and that Shakespeare was not the only one who rang thechanges on it as a season to stage material. Witness thefollowing:Cob. Nay, I have my rheum, and I can be angry as well asanother, sir!Cash. Thy rheum, Cob? Thy humor, thy humor! Thou mistak'st.Cob. Humor? Mack, I think it be so indeed! What is thathumor? Some rare thing, I warrant.Cash. Marry, I tell thee, Cob, it is a gentlemanlikemonster, bred in the special gallantry of our time byaffectation, and fed by folly.Cob. How must it be fed?Cash. Oh, aye; humor is nothing if it be not fed. Didst thounever hear that? It's a common phrase, "Feed thy humor."Every Man in his Humor, iii. 4.Couldst thou not but arrive most acceptable Chiefly to suchas had the happiness Daily to see how the poor innocent wordWas racked and tortured.Every Man Out of his Humor."Humor" was, it would seem by this, the over-used and abusedword of these times; just as for example "awful" might besaid to be an over-used and abused word during our owntimes.
But he was searching, not for a butcher's son, but for a poet—for a courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword,
The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mold of form,
The observed of all observers"—
for "an amazing genius which could pervade all nature at a glance, and to whom nothing within the limits of the universe appeared to be unknown;" * and his instinct should have assured him that.—however the works which such a genius had left behind him might travel under the name of the butcher's boy—it was not the pen of the butcher-boy that had written them; that the composer of pages "from which, were all the arts and sciences lost, they might be recovered," ** wasno "jack-of-all-trades," and could not have lived and publicly presented his compositions nightly, year in and year out, in the glare of a metropolis crowded with courtiers, play-goers, and students—in the age and days of Bacon and Raleigh and Elizabeth—unknown save to a handful of his pot-fellows, and faded out of the world, unknown and unnoticed, fading from the memory of men, without the passing of an item in their mouths!
* Whalley.** Ibid. A curious instance of this familiarity—to befound in the Shakespearean dramas—with the least noticedfacts of science, and which, so far as we know, has escapedthe critics, we might allude to here: In one of JulesVerne's realistic stories wherein he springs his romanticcatastrophes upon scientific phenomena—"Michael Strogoff"—he makes Michael fall among enemies who sentence him to beblinded. The blinding is to be accomplished with a heatediron, but Michael sees his mother at his side, and, tearssuffusing his eyes, the heat of the iron is neutralized, andfails to destroy the sight. So, in "King John," Act IV.,Scene 1, Arthur says to Hubert:The iron of itself, though heat red-hot,Approaching near these eyes would drink my tears And quenchhis fiery indignation.This may be mere coincidence, but the dramas are crowdedwith such coincidences, and for that, if for that only, aremarvelous. In either case, according to the Shakespereans,we have only to go on, for the rest of time, in discoveringnew truths in nature and facts in science, only to find thatthe Stratford butcher's boy knew all about them threehundred years ago—was familiar with all that we have yet tolearn, and that to his unlettered genius our wisdom was tobe sheer foolishness.
Most wonderful of all, this utter ignoring of William Shakespeare among the poets, if unjust, provoked no remonstrance from the immediate family or any kin of the Stratford lad. Either the Shakespeares, Ardens, and Hathaways were wonderfully destitute of family pride, or else the obscurity accorded their connection was perfectly just and proper. No voice of kin or affinity of William Shakespeare (at least we may say this with confidence) ever claimed immortality for him; although it can not be said that they had no opportunity, had they wished to do so, for William Shakespeare's granddaughter, Lady Barnard, was alive until 1670; his sister, Joan Hart, till 1646; and his daughters, Susannah Hall and Judith Queeny, until 1662. So that Dugdale, at least, if not Wood and the rest of them, would not have had to go far to confirm any rumors they might have stumbled upon as to theacquirements and accomplishments of the man Shakespeare; but it seems that not even the partiality of his own kin, nor family fame, nor pride of ancestry, ever conceived the idea of palming off their progenitor upon futurity as a giant of any build. If there is any exception to this statement, it would appear to be as follows:
I. It is recorded by Oldys that, one of his (Shakespeare's) "younger brothers, who lived to a great age, when questioned, in his last days, about William, said he could remember nothing of his performance but seeing him 'act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein, being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping and unable to walk, that he was forced to be supported and carried to a table at which he was seated among some company, and one of them sang a song.'" Mr. Fullom has demonstrated from the Shakespeare family records, that Oldys must have been mistaken as to any brother of William Shakespeare's having furnished this reminiscence; but, admitting it as the statement of a surviving brother, it stands for what it is, and it certainly is not the record or tradition of one whose popular memory in men's minds was that of an immortal prodigy. *
* We take this quotation from Mr. Grant White's article onShakespeare in Appleton's "American Cyclopoedia." Mr.White's admirable contributions to our Shakespeareanliterature entitle his opinion to great weight in any mootedquestion as to William Shakespeare; and we must confessthat, in some portions, his paper we have just mentionedalmost suggests him as agreeing with us as to his subject.Mr. White says, in another place: "Young lawyers and poetsproduced plays rapidly. Each theatrical company not only'kept a poet,' but had three or four, in its pay. At thetime of his leaving Stratford the drama was rising rapidlyin favor with all classes in London, where actors were mademuch of in a certain way. And where there was a constantdemand for new plays, ill-provided younger sons of thegentry, and others who had been bred at the universities andthe inns-of-court, sought to mend their fortunes bysupplying this demand." And again: "We are tolerably wellinformed by contemporary writers as to the performances ofthe eminent actors of that time, but of Shakespeare's weread nothing." Mr. White admits, a few lines below thesentence just quoted, that Shakespeare's position in thestock at the Blackfriars was "general utility." We shouldrather call it, from the evidence, "first old man."
II. An epitaph was placed over the remains of Susannah Hall, presumably by one of the family, which read:
"Witty above her sex, but that's not all:
Wise to salvation was good Mistress Hall.
Something of Shakespeare was in that, but this
Wholly of him with whom she's now in bliss."
Whether the writer of this mortuary eulogy meant that either William Shakespeare or Mistress Hall, or both, were "witty above their sex" or "wise to salvation," cannot, at this date, be determined: but it would seem that this is all the immediate family of William Shakespeare have ever contributed to our knowledge of him, and that their estimate of him was not unlike that of his chroniclers and contemporaries.
But Mr. Malone—and, being the first investigator, he would, doubtless, have been followed, as he has been, whatever the result of his inquiries—Mr. Malone, in spite of the silence of the authorities to whosepages he had recourse, not only assumed all he could not find authority for, but undertook to tell us the precise dates at which his Stratford lad composed the plays themselves. Among other achievements he constructed an admirable "chronology" of the Shakespearean plays; which—with such fanciful variations as have been made to it from time to time since—is an authority with the Sliakespeareans even to this day. To be sure, Mr. Malone did not rely entirely upon external evidence for this apochrypha. He often appeals to the text, as when, for example, he settles the date at which the "Merchant of Venice" was composed—as 1594, because Portia says:
"Even as a flourish when true subjects bow
To a new crowned monarch,"
referring of course, says Mr. Malone, (and this guesswork he not only called "commentary," but has actually succeeded in making all his successor "commentators" accept him as final) to the coronation of Henry IV., of France! Again, in the "Merry Wives of Windsor" he finds the words, (Act I, scene iii) "Sail like my pinnace to these golden shores."
"This shows," says Mr. Malone, "that this comedy must have been written after Sir Walter Raleigh's return from Guinia, in 1696. And so on."
We will not rehearse the scope and burden of Mr. Malone's painstaking and wonderful labors, but, from one instance of the credulity which, once it has overmastered the ablest mind, can suppress and subordinate reason, judgment, and common sense to a zealous and silly search, we can judge of the calm historical value of his "discoveries." In 1808, Mr. Malone publisheda pamphlet—"An Account of the Incidents from which the Title and Part of the Story of 'The Tempest' were derived, and the Date ascertained." *
* By Edmond Malone. London: printed by C. & R. Baldwin,Newbridge street, 1808.The "Tempest" is the most purely fanciful and poetical ofthe Shakespearean plays, but the commentators determined toshow that there is nothing fanciful or poetical about it;that it is all real: the "Magic Island," a real island; themagician Prospero, a real portrait; the "monster," a real,living curiosity, which happened to be on exhibition inEngland in the days when the play either was written orabout to be written, (it makes no difference to thesegentlemen which) and the storm at sea—as if the brain whichconceived the play could not have conceived—what is not,now-a-days, at least, the most uncommon thing in the world—a storm at sea!—a real historical hurricane!In 1839, the Reverend Joseph Hunter, following in the Malonefootsteps, published "A Disquisition on the Scene, Origin.Date, etc., of Shakespeare's Tempest," in which the MagicIsland is the island of Lampedusa: first, because it isuninhabited; secondly, because it is small; thirdly, becauseit lies on the route between Naples and the coast of Africa,so that had a prince been traveling from one to the other,and wrecked on an island between, he could have beenconveniently wrecked on this one without going out of hiscourse; fourthly, because it bore the reputation (Mr. Hunterdoes not say with whom) of being haunted; fifthly, becausethere was a cell upon it, which Pros-pero might have foundmost opportune for his ghostly residence; and sixthly, thatthe island of Malta gets fire-wood from it. This last factbeing strongest in the way of proof, because we are toldthat Prospero impressed Ferdinand into his service and kepthim piling logs of wood.But it was reserved for Mr. Edward Dowden, in 1881, tolocate the island beyond the necessity of furtherconjecture, and to give us accurate sailing directions forreaching it. "Prospero's Island," he tells us, "was imaginedby Shakespeare as within two days' quick sail of Naples,"for "Ariel is promised his freedom after two days" (Act I,scene ii). "Why two days? The time of the entire action ofthe Tempest is only three hours. What was to be theemployment of Ariel during two days? To make the winds andseas favorable during the voyage." (Dowden's Shakespeare'sMind and Art. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1881. p. 373.)
It seems that Mr. Malone finds reference to a hurricane that once dispersed a certain fleet of a certain nobleman, one Sir George Somers, in July, 1609, on a passage, with provisions, for the Virginia Colony; the above nobleman, and a Sir Thomas Gates, having been wrecked on the island of Bermuda. This discovery is warranty enough for Mr. Malone, and he goes on gravely to argue that William Shakespeare not only wrote his "Tempest" to commemorate this particulartempest—and, as will be seen by an examination of the premises, the relation between the occurrence and the play is confined merely to the word "tempest" and goes no further—but that he (Shakespeare) did not place the scene of his shipwreck on the Bermudas, "because he could spread a greater glamour over the whole by not alluding to so well-known islands as the Bermudas." Mr. Malone further remarks naively that, "without having read Tacitus, he (Shakespeare) well knew that 'omne ignotum pro magnifico est'!" Without pausing to wonder how Mr. Malone knew that Shakespeare of Stratford had never read Tacitus—(a slander, by the way, on the omniscient Shakespeare, too—the man who studied Plautus in Greek manuscript, the author of "Julius Cæsar"—that he had not read a simple Latin historian!)—or to dwell on the most marvelous coincidence between the wreck of Sir George Somers and that of Prince Ferdinand(the coincidence, according to Malone, being, that one was wrecked on the Bermuda and the other wasn't); or ask if a storm at sea was so rare an occurrence as to be easily identified; or to note that "the tempest" in the play of that name is an episode which covers only about a dozen lines of text, and which has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the argument—without pausing for this, or to remark that Mil Malone might have taken to himself the 'omne ignotum pro magnifico est' of Tacitus more appositely than heap-plied it either to Sir George Somers or the Bermudas, had he reflected as generously as he took it for granted—it is as well to take our leave of Mr. Malone and his labors at this point, with a compliment to their zeal and impressment which must be withheld from their results. *
* DeQuincy accepts this "origin" "with great alacrity."
And the world would doubtless be as well off could we also here take leave of the rest of the Shakespeare-makers. But we are not allowed to do so. From the time of Malone onward, the Shakespeare-making, Shakespeare-mending, and Shakespeare-cobbling have gone on without relaxation. Each fresh rencontre with an emergency in the Shakespearean text has necessitated at least one and often several new Shakes-peares. And they have been prepared and forthcoming as fast as wanted. Was it found that the bard had, of all his worldly goods, left the wife of his bosom no recognition save the devise of a ramshackle old bedstead? A score of gentlemen hurried to the front to prove that, by law, history, logic, custom, and everything else, in those days a "second-best bed" was really the most priceless of possessions; of fabulous value, and a fortune in itself; and that in no other way could her immortal husband have so testified his tender regard and appreciation of Mrs. Shakespeare—the sweet Ann Hathaway of old, who had thrown herself away on a scapegrace butcher's son! The fact (as it appears, on inspection of the instrument itself, to be) that Mrs. Shakespeare was not even alluded to in the first draft of the testament—her name and the complimentary devise of the precious husband's precious "second-best bed" having been written in as "a poet's after-thought," and not appearing in the first draft at all—does not affect their statements in the least! They have even gone so far as to ascertain that William was no truant lord to willingly desert his lonesome lady. According to the very latest authority we are able to cite, the fault of the separation was wholly her own. We are assured by a very recent explorer that Mrs. Shakespeare "did not accompany her husband to London, objecting to the noise and turmoil of that city." *
* "Shakespeare and his Contemporaries." By William Tegg, F.R. H. S. London: William Tegg & Co., 1879. Chapter I.,"Sketch of the Life of Shakespeare," p. 4. As everycircumstance connected with William Shakespeare andStratford is of interest in the connection, we may as wellnote that, according to Mr. Grant White, when WilliamShakespeare first went to London, he went into the office ofa cousin of his, who was an attorney in that city. Like Mr.Tegg, Mr. White gives himself as an authority for this item.See his "Shakespeare" in Johnston's Encyclopaedia.
Unless it be assumed, therefore, that investigation is reliable in proportion to the distance from its subject at which it works, it would seem toappear that, even if the William Shakespeare we have portrayed were our own creation, the creation is actually a nearer resemblance to the William Shakespeare known to those nearest to him in residence and time; than the inspired genius of the Shakespeareans, who, from Malone downward, have rejected every shred of fact they found at hand, and weaved, instead, their warp and woof of fiction (and that it is charming and absorbing fiction, we are eager to admit) around a vision of their own.
Nor have the Shakespeareans rested their labors here. Having created a Shakespeare to fit the plays, it was necessary to proceed to create a face to fit the Shakespeare, and a cranial development wherein might lodge and whence might spring the magic of the works he ought to have written. This may, very fairly, be called "the young ladies' argument." * "Look on his portrait," say the Shakespeareans; "look at that magnificent head!"—and they point to the Chandos portrait—"is not that the head of a genius?"
* So the young ladies of New York were of opinion thatStokes should not be hanged for the murder of Fisk, "becausehe was so awfully good-looking."inspiration—the idealof the artist, who conceives, in every case, his own"Shakespeare;" and if we were called upon for proof that"Shakespeare" is quite as much of an ideal to the most of usas a "Hamlet," or a "Lear," we could cite, perhaps, nothingmore convincing than the latitude which is allowed toartists with any of the three—"Shakespeare,"
"Was there ever such a head?" We should say, yes, there might have been such another head created, even admitting the Chandos portrait to be the very counterfeit head of William Shakespeare. But it does not appear, on taking the trouble to look into the matter, either that the Chandos picture is a portrait, or that—with one exception—any other of the pictures, casts, masks, busts, or statues of William Shakespeare are any thing but works of art, embodying the individual "Hamlet," or "Lear," and the elaborate criticism to which a new "portrait" of either of them is subjected—criticism, which, in the case of a portrait of William Shakespeare, in no case pretends to be historical, but is always romantic, or sentimental, or picturesque: as to the proper pose of a poet, or the correct attitude for a man receiving efflatus directly from the gods; never as to the stage manager of the Blackfriars, or the husband of Anne Hathaway, or the son of John Shakespeare, of Stratford.
It appears that, as a matter of fact, there never was but one picture of the Elizabethan Manager which ever enjoyed any thing in the semblance of a certification to its authenticity; and that certification was in the very unsatisfactory form of rhyme, in the shape of a set of verses said to have been written by Ben Jonson (and, as we propose to show, are quite as likely to have been placed under the particular picture without Jonson's authority as with it); while, that they were written to fit the particular picture in question (for they are in the form of a sort of apostrophe to some picture or portrait, and will be hereafter quoted), there seems to be no information sufficient to form a belief either way. If they were written for that particular picture, and if that particular picture is a speaking likeness, then the phrenological, or at least the physiognomical,argument must droop away and die; for the person represented has as stupefied, stultified, and insignificant a human countenance as was ever put upon an engraver's surface; and, as a matter of fact, no Shakespearean has yet been found to admit it as the image of his dream. But, of course, this is mere matter of personal opinion, and entitled to no weight whatever in the discussion. The question is—Is there any authentic portrait of William Shakespeare, as there is of Elizabeth, Bacon, Raleigh, Southampton, and other more or less prominent characters of the age in which William Shakespeare is known to have lived and died? Let us do the best we can toward investigating this question.
We have before us a volume, "An Enquiry into the Authenticity of Various Pictures and Prints, which, from the Decease of the Poet to our own Times, have been offered to the Public as Portraits of Shakespeare. Containing a Careful Examination of the Evidence on which they claim to be received; by which the Pretended Portraits have been rejected, the Genuine confirmed and established," etc., etc. By James Boaden, Esq. * We must content ourselves with a simple review of Mr. Boaden's labors. He was a friend and disciple of Malone's, and a Shakespearean; a believer in the poet; and he writes under the shadow of the mighty name—the shadow out from under which we of this age have stepped, and so become able to inspect, not only the facts of history uncurtained by that shadow, but the shadow itself.
* London. Printed for Robert Triphook, 23 Old Bond Street,1824.
But we will take everyone of Mr. Boaden's statements for granted, nevertheless, and draw our opinions, when we venture on any, from the portraits which he has given in his book. At least Mr. Boaden is not a "Baconian," and not a "Raleigh man," and, whenever he finds it necessary to speak of Shakespeare's history, he follows Malone's own version. For convenience, we will change Mr. Boaden's numeration of the "portraits," preserving the designation, however, which he assigns them.
No. 1. William Shakespeare dies in Stratford in 1616. In 1623, appears, on the title-page of Heminges and Condell's first folio of the plays, the portrait by Martin Droeshout. It is an engraving, and, Mr. Boaden believes, a good engraving, of some original picture from which it must have been taken; "for," he says, "there were good engravers in those days; for Chapman's 'Homer' was published in that year, with a very tine engraving of Chapman."
Under this engraving is printed a copy of Jonson's lines, as follows:
This figure that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut;
Wherein the graver had a strife *
With nature to outdo the life:
O, could he but have drawn his wit
As well in brasse as he hath hit
His face: the print would then surpasse
All that was ever done in brasse.
But, since he can not, reader, look,
Not on his picture, but his booke.
* Look, when a painter would surpasse the life,His art's with nature's handiwork at strife.Venus and Adonis.
In this picture the head of the subject is represented as rising out of an horizontal plain of collar appalling to behold. The hair is straight, combed down the sides of the face and bunched over the ears; the forehead is disproportionately high; the top of the head bald; the face has the wooden expression familiar in the Scotchmen and Indians used as signs by tobacconists' shops, accompanied by an idiotic stare that would be but a sorry advertisement for the humblest establishment in that trade; and which we would be quite as unlikely to look for in the Stratford scapegrace as in the immortal bard of the Shakespeareans. It is of this picture that Boaden quotes somebody's remark that "it is lucky these metrical commendations are not required to be delivered on oath." And Steevens says, on the supposition that Ben Jonson, and not the engraver, put the copy of verses on the title-page beneath the effigy: "Ben Jonson might know little about art, care less about the resemblance, and, never having compared the engraving from the picture, have rested satisfied with the recollection that the original was a faithful resemblance; and that, no doubt, the engraver had achieved all that his art could perform." No. 2. The edition of the plays of 1690 is accompanied with what is known as "Marshall's picture;" which so closely follows, as to face, forehead, hair, beard, and collar, the engraving above described, as to suggest that it was a copy either of that engraving, or of the unknown picture from which that was taken. But, if a copy, it is certainly, from a pictorial point of view, an improvement. It looks much more like a man. The simpleton stare around the eyes is toned down, and the wooden aspect is modified into something like life. Marshall has taken liberties with the dress of No. 1, throwing in a sort of tunic over the left shoulder, hitching on an arm with a gauntleted hand grasping a sprig of laurel, etc., etc.
No. 3. The Felton Head.—"In the catalogue of the fourth exhibition and sale by private contract," says Boaden, (page 81),"at the European Museum, King Street, St. James Square, 1792." this picture was announced to the public in the following words:
"No. 359—a curious portrait of Shakespeare, painted in 1597."
On the 31st of May, 1792, a Mr. Felton bought it for five guineas, and, on requiring its credentials, received the following letter:
To Mr. S. Felton, Drayton, Shropshire—Sir: The head of Shakespeare was purchased out of an old house, known by the sign of "The Boar," in Eastcheap, London, where Shakespeare and his friends used to resort; and report says was painted by a player of that time, but whose name I have not been able to learn.
This letter was signed "J. Wilson," who was the conductor of the European Museum. This "J. Wilson" appears to have been the original Barnum. Although Prince Hal and Falstaff are said in the play to have affected "The Boar's head in Eastcheap," it does not appear, except from Mr. "J. Wilson," that "Shakespeare and his friends" ever resorted thither. There was an old inn in Eastcheap, but it was not called "The Boar's Head." Therewasan inn by that name, however, in Blackfriars, near the theater, from which the manager might have borrowed it. Then, again, Mr. "J. Wilson" seemed to have forgotten the great fire in London in 1666, which, "in a few hours,in a strong east wind, left the whole of Eastcheap a mass of smoking ruins, and the wretched inhabitants could think of saving nothing but their lives." Mr. Wilson subsequently amended his story so as to read that "it was found between four and five years ago at a broker's shop at the Minories by a man of fashion, whose name must be concealed," etc., etc. Mr. Steevens, who scouted the other pictures as spurious, accepted this picture, for a time, as the original of the engravings we have called No. 1 and No. 2; but finally, the whole thing exploded and was forgotten.
No. 4. The Bust in Stratford Church.—This was carved by nobody knows whom, from nobody knows what, nobody knows when; for the statement that it was cut by "Gerard Johnson," an Amsterdam "tomb-maker," is invariably accepted, but can be traced to no historical source. Says Boaden (page 81), "The performance is not too good for a native sculptor." In 1623 Leonard Digges alludes to it in a few verses well known. It seems to have been originally colored, but there is no testimony as to the original colors. In 1748, one hundred and twenty-five years after Digges, John Hall, a Stratford artist, "restored" it, painting the eyes a light hazel, and the hair and beard auburn. This was "a good enough" Shakespeare for all practical purposes for the next half-hundred years or so. But in 1793 came Mr. Malone. He caused the bust—in deference, probably, to a purer taste and a sense of churchly propriety—to be covered completely with a thick coat of white paint. *
* While these pages are going through the press (April,1879), however, we find a statement that within a year ortwo (and since the writer of these pages visited it) oneSimon Colling has applied a bath to the bust—removingMalone's whitewash, and revealing the identical auburn hairand hazel eyes which tradition had asserted to beunderneath.
From this bust, Mr. Boaden says, a Mr. Bullock once took a cast, which is sometimes engraved as frontispiece to an edition of the plays, in which case it is entitled "Cast of the head of William Shakespeare, taken after death," which may or may not—for Mr. Boaden can not tell us who this "Mr. Bullock" was—be the German "Death Mask" noticed further on, (at any rate the statement "taken after death"—"William Shakespeare being unquestionably dead at the time—is literally true.)
The bust represents its subject as possessing a magnificent head, admirably proportioned, with no protruding "bumps." The face is represented as breaking into a smile. According to this effigy, Shakespeare must have had an extraordinarily long upper lip, the distance between the base of the nose and the mouth being remarkably out of proportion with the other facial developments; there seems to be a little difficulty, too, about the chin, which is pulled out into what appears to be a sort of extra nose; but, nevertheless, the Stratford bust represents a fine, soldierly-looking man, with a fierce military mustache cocked up at the ends, and a goatee. If Ben Jonson—knowing his friend William Shakespeare to have been the martial and altogether elegant-looking gentleman the Stratford bust represents him—authorized the verses we have already quoted to be placed under the "Droe-shout engraving," it was a deliberate libel on his part, and as gross as it was deliberate, and only perhaps tobe explained by Jonson's alleged secret enmity to, or jealousy of, William Shakespeare, his rival playwright, which we shall be called to examine at length further on. *
* Post Part III. The Jonsonian testimony.
No. 5. "The Chandos Portrait." This picture, so termed because once the property of the Duke of Chandos, is the best known of all the so-called portraits—being, in fact, the one from which the popular idea of Shakespeare is derived; therefore, when a man is said to resemble Shakespeare, it is meant to be conveyed that he bears a likeness to the Chandos picture. Mr. Malone announced that it was painted in 1607, but never gave any other authority than his own ipse dixit for the statement, not even taking the trouble to refer, like Mr. J. Wilson, to "a man of fashion, whose name must be concealed." Mr. Boaden lays (page 42) that he once saw it, and compared it "with what had been termed a fine copy, I think by Piamberg, and found it utterly unlike."
"Indeed," he continues, "I never saw any thing that resembled it." He also says (pages 41-42) that "the copies by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Mr. Humphrey were not only unlike the original, but were unlike each other, one being smiling and the other grave." That is to say, that not only have the romancers constructed "biographies," but the artists have kept up with them; and we may, every one of us, select our own Shakespeare to-day—poet or potman, scholar or clown, tall or short, fair or dark; we may each suit our own tastes with a Shakespeare to our liking. Mr. Boaden continues (page 49): "It" (the Chandos) "was very probably painted by Burbage,"the great tragedian, who is known to have handled the pencil; it is said to have been the property of Joseph Taylor, our poet's Hamlet, who, dying about 1653, at the advanced age of seventy, left the picture by will to Davenant. At the death of Davenant in 1663, it was bought by Betterton, the actor, and when he died Mr. Robert Keck, of the Inner Temple, gave Mrs. Barry, the actress, forty guineas for it. From Mr. Keck it passed to Mr. Nichol, of Southgate, whose daughter married the Marquis of Caernarvon.
Steevens, whom Boaden quotes (page 43), declined to be convinced by this genealogy, and said, "Gossip rumor had given out that Davenant was more than Shakespeare's godson. * What folly, therefore, to suppose that he should possess a genuine portrait of the poet, when his lawful daughters had not one! Mrs. Barry was an actress of acknowledged gallantry; as she received forty guineas for the picture, something more animated might have been included though not specified in the bargain," etc., etc. Steevens was fond of calling this picture "the Davenantico Bettertono-Barryan-Keckian-Hicolsian-Chandosian portrait."
* There is a story that once, on the occasion of one ofShakespeare's visits to Stratford, a villager, meeting youngDavenant in the street, asked him where he was going. "Tothe inn, to see my godfather Shakespeare," said the lad."Beware how you take the name of God in vain, my lad," saidthe other. The allusions to William's gallantries arenumerous. On the Stratford parish records there is entry ofthe birth of one "Thomas Green,aliasShakespeare." Thetale of the interrupted amour, at the theater, of "Richardthe Third" and "William the Conqueror," as is apt to be thecase, is about the most widely familiar of the Shakespeareanstories, and unnecessary to be repeated here. But Davenantwas proud to claim the dishonor of his mother, andShakespeare for his father, to his dying day.
"There are," says Boaden (page 53), "a few circumstances relating to the picture of which some notice should be taken in this examination. There is, it seems, a tradition that, no original picture of Shakespeare existing, Sir Thomas Clarges caused a" (i. e., this) "portrait to be painted from a young man who had the good fortune to resemble him" (i. e., Shakespeare. Query: How did Sir Thomas know that the young man resembled Shakespeare?). Mr. Malone traced this story to "The Gentleman's Magazine" for August, 1759, and called on the writer for his authority; but the writer, whoever he was, never gave it, any more than Malone gave his authority for announcing its date to be 1607; but Malone himself says that "most reports of this kind are an adumbration of some fact, and indication of something in kind or degree similar or analogous."
No. 6. This is a portrait, so called, by Zuccharo, which need not detain us, since Mr. Boaden himself demonstrates very clearly that it was not in any event painted from life, and, not improbably, did not originally claim to have been intended for Shakespeare at all.
Mr. Boaden's No. 7 is the "Cornelius Jansen picture," and to this Mr. Boaden pins his earnest faith. He says this "is now in the collection of the Duke of Somerset;" but he appears to make no attempt to connect it with William Shakespeare except as follows: Cornelius Jansen is said to have painted the daughter of Southampton—ergo, he might have been Southampton's family painter, and Southampton might have been desirous to possess a portrait of his friend Shakespeare done by his own painter—ergo, Jansen mighthave had William Shakespeare for a sitter! This is all the authority for the authenticity. But that it is—judging from the engraving in Mr. Boaden's book—a magnificent picture, we think there can be no question.
On the supposition that the Chandos is an authentic likeness of Shakespeare, this Jansen certainly bears a strong Shakespearean resemblance. In it the hair is curling, as in the Chandos, not straight, as in the Droeshout and the Marshall engravings. The mustache, which is cut tight to the face without being shaved, as in the Droeshout, and strong and heavy, as in the bust, is lighter than the Chandos, while the beard is fuller. There is nothing of the tremendous upper lip represented in the bust.
Mr. Boaden (page 195) describes it as an eye-witness, he having had access to it for the purposes of the book before us. He says: "It is an early picture by Cornelius Jansen, tenderly and beautifully painted. Time seems to have treated it with infinite kindness, for it is quite pure, and exhibits its original surface.... The portrait is on panel, and attention will be required to prevent a splitting of the oak, in two places, if my eyes have not deceived me."
As for Earlom, who copied the picture, Boaden says: "He had lessened the amplitude of the forehead; he had altered the form of the skull; he had falsified the character of the mouth; and, though his engraving was still beautiful, and the most agreeable exhibition of the poet, I found it would be absolutely necessary to draw the head again, as if he had never exercised his talent upon it" (page 195). Mr. Boaden specifies further the picture laid to have once decorated the pair of bellows belonging to Queen Elizabeth'sown private apartments, besides still one other, both of which he rejects as spurious.
Thus, it has taken an army of novelists, painters, engravers, and essayists to erect simple William Shakespeare of Stratford into the god he ought to have been; and, on the best examination we are enabled to make, and according to the Shakespeareans themselves, there is only one picture of William Shakespeare extant which has the even assumed advantage of having been pronounced a likeness by any one who ever saw William Shakespeare himself in his (William Shakespeare's) lifetime. Even if—as Mr. Steevens surmises—this eye witness never saw the engraving, but only the original portrait from which it was copied, the Droeshout still enjoys an authentication possessed by no other so-called likeness, and, if rejected—as it infallibly is by all devout Shakespeareans—there remains nothing of certitude, nothing even of the certitude of conjecture, as to the features of the Stratford boy, whoever he was, and whatever his works. One further effort was, however, made, so lately as 1849, to clinch this "young lady's argument," by yet one more genuine discovery. This time it was a "Becker 'death mask!'" A plaster mask of an anonymous dead face is found in a rubbish-shop in Mayence, in 1849. Regarded as a mask of William Shakespeare, it bears a certain resemblance to the Stratford bust; and, regarded as a mask of Count Bismarck (for example), it would be found to bear a very strong resemblance to Count Bismarck. (We write from an inspection of photographs only, never having seen the mask.) Having always been annoyed that a creature so immortalas they had created their Shakespeare left no death-mask, the Shakespeareans at once adopt this anonymous mask as taken from the face of the two-days defunct William Shakespeare, who died in 1616.Credat Judams!Either William Shakespeare, at his death, was known to be an immortal bard or he was not. If he was, how could the sole likeness moulded of departed greatness be smuggled away from the land that was pious to claim him as its most distinguished son and nobody miss it, or raise the hue and cry? If he was not, to whose interest was it to steal the mask from the family who cared enough about the dead man's memory to go to the expense of it? But, at any rate, in 1849 it falls into the hands of jealous believers. They search upon it for hairs of auburn hue, and for the date of their hero's death, and they find both. Had they made up their minds to find a scrap of Shakespearean cuticle, we may be sure it would have been there. Professor Owen, of the British Museum, declared that, if the fact of the mask having originally come from England could be established, there was "hardly any sum of money which the Museum would not pay for the mask itself." But the missing testimony has not been supplied, though doubtless it is incubating. For now and then we see a newspaper paragraph to the effect that old paintings have turned up (in pawn-shops invariably) which "resemble the death-mask," thus accustoming us to the title, which, in time, we shall doubtless come to accept—as we have come to accept Shakespeare himself—from mere force of habit. The last of these discoveries is in Australia, farther off than even Mayence, "said to resemble theBecker death-mask." * The Stratford portrait of Shakespeare claims no authority further than a resemblance to the accepted ideal, and the terra-cotta bust in the possession of the Garrick club was "found to order," and represents a man who, it would seem, bore not even a resemblance to the accepted Shakespearean features.