This is not Shakespeare (ctd.)
April 1 2016
Picture: BBC History Magazine
It's the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, so we're seeing him featured in all sorts of magazines, books and TV programmes. We're also seeing repeated use of the Cobbe portrait, which regular readers will know that AHN (and many others, including the National Portrait Gallery) do not think is actually Shakespeare.
The latest offender is BBC History Magazine (above), which really ought to know better. A version of the Cobbe portrait is also shown as Shakespeare on the front cover of the Museums Association magazine, but then we expect the MA to be wrong about most things. Meanwhile, the Chandos portrait, which really does show Shakespeare, is off on loan to Russia, to the Tretyakov Gallery (till July 24th).
The suprassing of the Chandos portrait by the Cobbe portrait tells us more about us than Shakespeare - whatever he looked like - for we are determined to imagine him as more handsome and flamboyant than he really was. He was a celebrity, we say, therefore he must look like our conception of one. Of course, this is not a new process, for in the 19th Century the Chandos portrait was retouched to make Shakespeare look more like a romantic playwright, with the addition of longer hair. It's one thing to alter an existing image of the Bard, but quite another to invent a wholly new one.
