Shakespeare's Face

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Knopf Canada, 13 apr 2011 - 384 pagine
On May 11, 2001, Globe and Mail reporter Stephanie Nolen announced a stunning discovery to the world: an attractive portrait held by an Ontario family for twelve generations, which may well be the only known portrait of Shakespeare painted during his lifetime. Shakespeare’s Face is the biography of a portrait — a literary mystery story — and the furious debate that has ensued since its discovery.

A slip of paper affixed to the back proclaims “Shakespere. This likeness taken 1603, Age at that time 39 ys.” But is it really Shakespeare who peers at us from the small oil on wood painting? The twinkling eyes, reddish hair, and green jacket are not in keeping with the duller, traditional images of the bard. But they are more suggestive of the humorous and humane man who wrote the greatest plays in the English language.

Shakespeare’s Face tells the riveting story of how the painting came to reside in the home of a retired engineer in a mid-sized Ontario town. The painting is reputed to be by John Sanders of Worcester, England. As a retirement project, the engineer, whose grandmother kept the family treasure under her bed, embarked on authenticating the portrait: the forensic analyses that followed have proven it without doubt to the period.

In a remarkable publishing coup, Knopf Canada has gathered around Stephanie Nolen’s story a group of the world’s leading Shakespeare scholars and art and cultural historians to delve into one of the most fascinating literary mysteries of our times: “Is this the face of genius?”

Excerpt from Chapter 1 of Shakespeare’s Face by Stephanie Nolen
By the late afternoon I was beginning to go a little cross-eyed. I had examined countless documents and read the test results from the painting’s painstaking forensic analysis. I now had everything I needed to write my story — except for one crucial item. “Is he here?” I asked, almost in a whisper....

The owner laid the package carefully on the cluttered table. He gently pulled back the kraft paper wrapping, underneath which was a layer of bubble wrap. Then he peeled back this second layer to reveal his treasure.

I was caught off-guard by how small the portrait was — and how vivid. The colours in the paint seemed too rich to be 400 years old. Except for the hairline cracks in the varnish, the face could have been painted yesterday. And there was nothing austere or haughty about it, nothing of the great man being painted for posterity. It was a rogue’s face, a charmer’s face that looked back at me with a tolerant, mischievous slightly world-weary air....

It was painted on two pieces of solid board so expertly joined that the seam was barely visible. A date, “Ano 1603”, was painted in small red letters in the top right hand corner. The right side had been nibbled by woodworms.... I stood and gazed, quelling an instinctive urge to pick the portrait up and hold it in my hands. And as my professional skepticism crumpled for a moment, I found myself wanting desperately to believe that this was indeed Shakespeare’s face.
 

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Sommario

A Note to the Reader
 
Foreword
A Note on the Writers
The Mystery Uncovered
The God of our IdolatryStanley Wells
Prime Suspects
Picturing Shakespeare in 1603Andrew Gurr
An Actors Face?The Sanders Portrait in ContextRobert Tittler
A Painting with a PastLocating the Artist and the SitterTarnya Cooper
The Portrait Meets Its Public
The Conundrum of the LabelAlexandra F Johnston Arleane Ralph and Abigail Anne Young
The Man Who Will Not Meet Your EyesAlexander Leggatt
Is This the Face of Genius?
Choosing Your ShakespeareAlexander Leggatt
Notes

In Search of Master Shakespeare
Scenes from the Birth of a Myth and the Death of a DramatistJonathan Bate
Family Traces
Looking the PartMarjorie Garber
Forensic Revelations
Useful SourcesStephanie Nolen
Plate Credits
Acknowledgments
Copyright

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Informazioni sull'autore (2011)

Stephanie Nolen is a writer for The Globe and Mail, whose recent work includes coverage of Afghanistan and the Middle East. Her book Promised the Moon will be published in October 2002. She lives in Toronto.

Jonathan Bate, King Alfred Professor of English Literature and Leverhulme Research Professor at the University of Liverpool; his most recent book is The Oxford Illustrated History of Shakespeare on Stage. Tarnya Cooper is an authority in Elizabethan portraiture, and Assistant Curator of Art at University College, London. Marjorie Garber is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of English and Director of the Humanities Center, and Director of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University; her most recent book is Academic Instincts. Andrew Gurr, Professor of English at the University of Reading, has been a director of the Globe Theatre project since 1983, and is the editor of several Shakespeare plays; his most recent book is Staging in Shakespeare's Theatres. Alexandra F. Johnston is Professor of English at the University of Toronto and Director of the Records of Early English Drama project (REED). Arleane Ralph is Research Associate at REED; and Abigail Anne Young is also Research Associate at REED. Alexander Leggatt is Professor of English at the University of Toronto, the author of many books and editor, most recently, of The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare Comedy. Robert Tittler has taught British and European History at Loyola College in Montreal and its successor Concordia University since 1969, taking time out to serve as Visiting Professor of History at Yale University. His most recent book is Townspeople and Nation, English Urban Experiences, 1500-1640. Stanley Wells is Emeritus Professor of Literature at University College, London; an Honorary Fellow of the Shakespeare Institute and Chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon; and a Trustee of both the Rose and Globe Theatres. He served as General Editor of the multi-volume Oxford Shakespeare, and is most recently co-editor of the Oxford Companion to Shakespeare.

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