b. Stellungnahmen / Comments

Extract from the Book Review by Professor Emeritus Michael Patterson (De Montfort University, Leicester) on The True Face of William Shakespeare by Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel. London: Chaucer Press, 2006. Pp. 208 + 116 illus. £25. Hb. ISBN 190449565

Theatre Research International 32 (2007), pp. 327-328.

Ours is a visual age, much of our information derived from images on a flickering screen. It is therefore appropriate that we should have a healthy curiosity about the appearance of our greatest playwright and also how his works have been depicted by artists in the past. Professor Hammerschmidt-Hummel’s elegantly produced volume will surely stand as the definitive work which solves many of the mysteries surrounding the few images of Shakespeare that we possess. With meticulous scholarship and using techniques of face recognition employed by the German Federal Bureau of Criminal Investigation, the author shows that the so-called Chandos and Flower portraits are almost certainly authentic and painted during the playwright’s lifetime. This establishes that the 1623 Droeshout engraving which precedes the First Folio was copied from the Flower portrait, not vice versa. Perhaps most controversially, the author is very persuasive about the authenticity of the Darmstadt death mask, demonstrating not only that its features exactly reproduce those of the other images of Shakespeare but also tracing its provenance with great care. It is thrilling to consider that an object that was in contact with Shakespeare’s face can be examined today.

Hammerschmidt-Hummel’s research, while leaving a question mark over the Janssen portrait, convincingly dismisses the claims of the Sanders and Grafton portraits (the latter embraced by Peter Ackroyd in Shakespeare: The Biography as probably authentic – see Ackroyd, pp. 159-60, 382). Two other interesting facts emerge from the author’s work: first, evidence that Shakespeare probably suffered from a cancerous condition, chronic skin sarcoidosis, which would help to explain his decision to give up the theatre and retire to Stratford. One might indeed fancifully speculate whether The Tempest is a reflection on his illness: a creative man, whose power is usurped by his own flesh (his brother) and cast out into frustrating isolation. The other insight is provided by the fact that the Flower portrait was painted over an image of the Madonna with child, suggesting that Shakespeare was, as often suspected, in sympathy with the ”old religion” and needed to hide his adherence to it.

The translation (by Alan Bance) is fluent and reads well ... . What would amplify this already intriguing volume would be a website which allowed one to morph the different images of Shakespeare.

 

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