A Noble Visage: The Famous Droeshout Portrait of William Shakespeare

A Noble Visage: The Famous Droeshout Portrait of William Shakespeare

Nov 29, 2023 | Literature, Recent Articles, Shakespeare

The engraving that graces the frontispiece of the first Four Folios is one of the most recognizable portraits in human history. It holds a profound relevance bordering on an almost religious quality. It is also one of the few depictions of Shakespeare that scholars have widely agreed legitimately shows what Shakespeare looked like, but the question remains, where does this image come from and what makes it such a reliable source for depicting Shakespeare’s appearance?

The Chandos Portrait: A Potential Inspiration for the Engraving

The Droeshout engraving holds many similarities with an earlier portrait of Shakespeare known as the Chandos Portrait. Painted during Shakespeare’s lifetime sometime between 1600 and 1610, the Chandos Portrait is one of the two most famous portraits that are believed to depict Shakespeare. It is named after the 3rd Duke of Chandos who was a former owner of the painting which now sits in the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Although it is not possible to determine with certainty who painted the portrait, the most likely candidate is an English painter, John Taylor, a respected member of the Painter-Stainers’ Company who was described in a note written in 1719 by George Vertue as Shakespeare’s “intimate friend’. Due to the similarities between the oil painting and engraving, it has been strongly suggested that the Chandos Portrait served as a reference for the later engraving which was created after Shakespeare’s death.

The Droeshout Portrait in all Four Folios

The Droeshout Portrait is depicted on the frontispiece of all Four Folios and is printed alongside a poem To The Reader by Shakespeare’s friend Ben Jonson in which he praises the accuracy of the engraving’s likeness stating that the engraver has managed to “outdo the life” and has “hit his face” accurately, failing only in managing to depict Shakespeare’s wit for which the reader will have to read the plays collected together in the folio.

In contrast to the Chandos Portrait which depicts Shakespeare as a distinctly bohemian figure with an earring dangling from his ear, much more the image of a Elizabethan playwright and poet, the Droeshout portrait squeezes him into formal court costume, which has the effect of making Shakespeare look somewhat stiff and unnatural. That has led some people to question the authenticity of the Droeshout Portrait however Jonson knew the playwright well and vouched for the portrait’s resemblance to his good friend. 

The Droeshout Portrait as it appears in all Four Folios.

There are distinct versions of the portrait, or what is known as “states”, printed from the same plate by Droeshout himself. There are only four examples of the first state making it exceptionally rare. It is very likely that the first state was used as a test printing by the engraver so that he could see whether any alterations needed to be made to the engraving. For most copies of the First Folio, and for all copies of the subsequent folios it was the second state which was used. This had some changes from the first state including heavier shadows and minor differences in the jawline and moustache.

As a whole, the portraits in each of the first Four Folios appear to be the same with the exception of the Fourth Folio where the portrait has been placed on the opposite side above Ben Jonson’s poem across from the frontispiece. While to some the portrait appears smaller than it looks in the other Folios, this is simply not true, as the same engraving plate was used for all four of the Folios. It is simply an optical illusion caused by the re-location of the portrait from where it was originally placed in the other Folios.

The Other Portraits of Shakespeare

There are many other portraits claiming to be depictions of Shakespeare that were created either during his life, or within living memory. Many of these are claimed to have been painted from life, The Chandos Portrait being the most legitimate. The two depictions that have been unambiguously stated to represent Shakespeare are both posthumous. One of these is the Droeshout Portrait and the other is the bust in Shakespeare’s funerary monument at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-Upon-Avon.

Of the other 15 or so portraits that claim to be of Shakespeare either the sitter is unidentified, or the depiction is debatable. For instance, the Soest Portrait, which was painted 20 years after Shakespeare’s death is said to have been painted from a man who looked like Shakespeare and not Shakespeare himself. The Chesterfield Portrait, another posthumous depiction of Shakespeare is generally assumed to be based on the Chandos Portrait, which indicates that the Chandos was accepted as being representative of Shakespeare within living memory of the Bard.

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The Birth, Death, and Rebirth of an English Genius: Shakespeare’s First & Second Folios

The Birth, Death, and Rebirth of an English Genius: Shakespeare’s First & Second Folios

Apr 23, 2012 | Early Modern Books, Literature, Shakespeare

Tradition holds that William Shakespeare was born on 23 April, in 1564, though it’s impossible to know the date for sure. What is known is that he was baptised at Holy Trinity, the parish church of Stratford-on-Avon, on the 26th of the month, so was probably born sometime between the 21st and 23rd. The 23rd of April is also recorded as Shakespeare’s date of death in 1616, and it is this untimely event that we have to thank for the preservation and promotion of his works in the First Folio, and ultimately his enshrinement as one of England’s great geniuses.

Shakespeare was only 52 when he, Ben Jonson, and the poet-playwright Michael Drayton “had a merry meeting, and itt seems drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a feavour there contracted”. As a memorial, his friends and fellow members of The King’s Men, John Heminges and Henry Condell, decided to produce a collected edition of his plays.

Eighteen of Shakespeare’s plays had been published during his lifetime, individually in cheap and probably unauthorised quarto editions, some of which became bestsellers. These often error-riddled editions are described in the First Folio as “stol’n and surreptitious copies”, and some seem to have been reproduced solely from the memories of actors trying to make a little cash on the side. This continued after his death, and in 1619 the publisher Thomas Pavier and printer William Jaggard produced ten quarto plays ostensibly by Shakespeare (though two were not actually his work), and this may have spurred Heminges and Condell to complete their own collected edition and reassert the King’s Men’s authority over the texts.

It wouldn’t be an easy process. Though the King’s Men held the copyrights to many of the plays, it took years to negotiate for others, which remained with the publishers of the quarto editions. Though these publishers did not have what we today would consider intellectual priority over the works, they had been the first to enter them in the Stationer’s Register, which gave them the copyrights. Some even had to be brought in as partners, earning shares of the proceeds of the First Folio based on how many plays they contributed. Willaim Jaggard himself served as the head printer on the project until his death in 1623.

The printing began in early 1622 and took around two years to complete, with the earliest known sale of a First Folio occurring in December 1623. The choice of the imposing folio format was vital to the book’s success, “giving the volume the instant status of a classic:  it is a weighty tome, a book for individuals’ libraries, a collection perhaps to be owned rather than read… It was also expensive, probably not less than 15s. a copy and often costing £1 or more”. Prior to this, theatre in England had been considered low-brow, and no collection of plays had been published in such a lavish manner. The First Folio elevated not only Shakespeare’s reputation but that of playwriting in general.

Most importantly, the First Folio included 36 of Shakespeare’s 38 known plays, 18 of which had never before been printed and would probably have been lost to history if not included. And the texts, edited by Shakespeare’s close friends and his fellow writers and actors, are considered the most authoritative of all early printings. Shakespeare’s reputation today rests largely on the publication of the First Folio.

Despite its expense, the book sold well enough that a second edition, the Second Folio, was required in 1632. Published by a syndicate of five firms, copies appear with one of five different imprints depending on which publisher sold them. Our copy, pictured above, has the scarcest imprint, that of the publisher John Smethwick, who owned the rights to four plays: Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and The Taming of the Shrew. Despite the importance of these titles, Smethwick’s small contribution of four plays meant that his share of finished copies was relatively low, and his imprint correspondingly scarce. Also of note–the second Folio contains the first appearance in print of John Milton, who contributed a poem to the Effigies leaf that did not appear in the first edition.

Two more folio editions of Shakespeare’s plays were published by the beginning of the eighteenth century, followed by a number of important editions edited by authors such as Samuel Johnson and Alexander Pope. Today, though, the most highly sought-after editions are still the early folios, with the First Folio becoming one of the most valuable books in the world. Around 750 copies were printed, but only 230 survive, and of those only 40 are complete. Most extant copies are held in libraries, and in the last decade, only three have been sold at auction, all achieving prices in the millions of dollars. As much as we hate to have second-best books here at Peter Harrington, the Second Folio is a second-best we’re glad to have, as it is the earliest edition of Shakespeare that is practicably obtainable on the market.

BROWSE SHAKESPEARE