Portraits of Shakespeare

Description

Within Shakespeare's lifetime there was already some curiosity about what the writer of such brilliant poems, sonnets and plays looked like. Yet like so much else about him, Shakespeare's appearance is mysterious. This generously illustrated book offers a new perspective on Shakespeare likenesses, as well as exploring the afterlife of these images.

Katherine Duncan-Jones is an Emeritus Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford. She has written biographies of Sir Philip Sidney (1991) and Shakespeare (2001; revised edition, 2010); and has edited Shakespeare's Sonnets (1997) and (with H.R. Woudhuysen) the same writer's Poems (2007), both for the Arden Shakespeare series.

"Brilliant. . . . The portrait known as the Chandos was the first picture the National Portrait Gallery acquired at its foundation in 1856. . . . Although it had been obscure and in private hands since the seventeenth century, it came with a continuous provenance which further investigation has supported. Only the question of its authorship was troublesome. Duncan-Jones, threading her way carefully back through the marginalia of the historian George Vertue into the theatrical networks of Shakespeare's day has solved the mystery beyond reasonable doubt. . . . This is a major discovery." -- "London Review of Books" (12/28/2015 12:00:00 AM) "Every few years it seems, a newly discovered portrait of Shakespeare emerges, only to be discredited by scholars after the obligatory media maelstrom. Duncan-Jones offers her theories about why we don't have many images of the world's most famous playwright and tells us what's known about the images that we do have and how they came to be." -- "Folger Shakespeare Library, Shakespeare Unlimited podcast" (12/28/2015 12:00:00 AM)