I'm always psyched to see something about Shakespeare and this is really cool: we might finally know what he looked like. I don't know why that matters, but it does. I always want to see pics of the people who write the literature I love because it makes them seem human. Writing sometimes seems like such a superhuman effort that it's good to know real people do it, even if they are geniuses.
Prior to this portrait, all we've had was an engraving from the First Folio, apparently based on another portrait, and a portrait (right, click to enlarge) now owned by the Folger Shakespeare Library, based on another unknown portrait, and a ghastly bust, both done after Shakespeare's death in 1616. But this new portrait, in the family of an Anglo-Irish clan for more than 300 years, looks like it might be the one everything else is based on. And it's a far more skillful portrait than the others as well, which are all a little stiff and clumsy.
If you freeze the frame where the two portraits are side by side
(that's the new Cobbe portrait at left; click to enlarge), you'll see
that the biggest difference in the two of them is the mouth. In the new
portrait, Will's a rather handsome looking guy, at 46 or so, not at all
the prissy, pinched-mouthed guy you see in the other portraits, balding
and with a goofy pageboy haircut. I like the new glam image, though it
may not be much more of a true likeness even if it is him, because
portraits in the Renaissance were more about making your guy look good
than capturing his likeness. Anyway, take a look at the news report.
Figuring out what Will looked liked is just a small part of the literary detective work surrounding his plays though. There's a fairly large contingent of people who maintain that Shakespeare didn't even write the plays and poems he's famous for, that he was, instead, a front for an aristocrat (possibly Francis Bacon) who would have been pilloried for writing something considered as vulgar, common, and often politically controversial as plays like "MacBeth" or what's known as the Hollow Crown cycle ("Richard II," the two "Henry IV"s, and "Henry V") had he done so openly. I'm not buying it; it's always smacked of class snobbery to me and I don't find the evidence compelling.
And on the heels of this news about Will's likeness is a great piece of news about the original theater where he first trod the boards as an actor. While digging a foundation for a new theater in Shoreditch, London, along the Thames, the construction team found remnants of a theater they think was the one which eventually became the original Globe.There is, of course, the new recreation of the orginal Globe in London, and a push for another on Governor's Island here in NYC, which I think would be a great use for that land.
Shakespeare is such an important part of the heritage of the English language that the more we know about him, the better. There's so much an author's life can tell you about their work (up to a point) that it can only give us more insight on his works to know more about him. Of course, the portraits don't tell us much about his life, except that he did well for himself. But it's nice to know he looked a bit more like Brad Pitt than Woody Allen. <sarcasm>Cuz, you know, looks matter. </sarcasm>