Portraits of Shakespeare - Katherine Duncan-Jones

Portraits of Shakespeare

By: Katherine Duncan-Jones

Paperback | 25 September 2015

At a Glance

Paperback


RRP $29.99

$29.25

or 4 interest-free payments of $7.31 with

Aims to ship in 5 to 10 business days

When will this arrive by?
Enter delivery postcode to estimate

Most of us can recall with clarity a favorite scene from Shakespeare. But call to mind the playwright's appearance and there are many depictions to choose from with few widely accepted. Shakespeare himself left no description of his appearance nor can any evidence be found that he commissioned a portrait.

With Portraits of Shakespeare, Katherine Duncan-Jones poses a series of questions about the mysterious physical appearance of the brilliant writer of plays, poems, and sonnets: Why is it so difficult to find images of Shakespeare that were made during his lifetime? Which images are most likely to have been made by those close to the writer? And why do newly discovered images emerge with such startling regularity? With an eye toward answering these questions, the book begins with a broad analysis of the tradition of the ?author portrait" before, during, and after Shakespeare's lifetime. Duncan-Jones provides a detailed critique of three of the most widely accepted portraits: the engraving facing the First Folio's title page; the sculptured stone bust that adorns Shakespeare's funerary monument at Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon; and the ?Chandos portrait," an early seventeenth-century painting on canvas which is widely recognized as the best image. Through a painstaking historical analysis of the painting's early history and provenance, Duncan-Jones arrives at a plausible new identification of both the artist and the artist's personal connections with Shakespeare. Finally, taking the book into the present, she considers the afterlife of all three images in memorials, advertising, and in graphic art?all evidence of a continuing desire to put a face to one of literature's most famous names.
Industry Reviews
"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)

The Bodleian Library

How to be a Good Husband - Bodleian Library
How to be a Good Lover - Bodleian Library
Heath Robinson : How to be a Motorist - W. Heath Robinson
Wilfred Owen : An Illustrated Life - Jane Potter
New Bodleian - Making the Weston Library - the Bodleian Library

RRP $59.99

$43.25

28%
OFF
Qur'ans : Books of Divine Encounter - Keith E. Small

RRP $29.99

$29.25

Mapping Shakespeare's World - Peter Whitfield

RRP $49.99

$40.50

19%
OFF
Portraits of Shakespeare - Katherine Duncan-Jones

RRP $29.99

$29.25

Latin Inscriptions in Oxford
London in Quotations : In Quotations
112 Gripes About the French - Bodleian Library
How to be a Good Motorist - Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Treasures - David Vaisey

RRP $39.99

$37.25

Paris in Quotations : In Quotations
The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym : Illustrated Collector's Edition - Edward Fitzgerald
How to be a Good Wife - Bodleian Library

$28.89

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell - William Blake

RRP $29.99

$29.25