Searching for Shakespeare (review)

The exhibition Searching for Shakespeare was held at the National Portrait Gallery in London from 2 March to 29 May 2006 and at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven from 24 June to 27 September of the same year. This review addresses the lavishly illustrated catalogue that accompanied the exhibition. Given its genesis as an exhibition catalogue, it is not surprising that the search mentioned in the title is rooted in imagery and objects. Lines from the plays are used to illuminate the works selected, but the plays and poems are, in this undertaking, not the primary source material.

Three introductory essays establish a context for contemplating the 117 catalogue entries. The first is Stanley Wells's "'Sweet Master Shakespeare': 1564–1616," giving a thumbnail sketch of what we know (and don't know) about the bard's life and family, providing as many questions as answers about how to interpret the few tantalizing glimpses we have of both the public and private man. Contemporary references to Shakespeare's place within the artistic firmament run the gamut from the attack on him as an "'upstart crow'" (15) to the "'sweet Master Shakespeare'" (15) of the essay's title. As with all the essays, this one is accompanied by large color reproductions, including duplicate illustrations of some of the items that appear later with their entries.

Following on the heels of Wells's essay is James Shapiro's "Shakespeare's Professional World," which examines the variety of activities in which Shakespeare was engaged, activities that cut across narrow professional definitions and allowed a wide range of social access. This resulting fluidity means the modern interpreter should not rely upon such binary formats as playwright or poet, as Shakespeare moved easily between categories. As a popular London dramatist, Shakespeare encountered the most experienced and demanding playgoers in history, but he also would have traveled through the English countryside when the company toured; at other times, he would have been exposed to the court world at command performances for royalty. Shapiro makes clear that writing for the London theater was not an ivory-tower existence. When composing, Shakespeare would have taken into account the strengths and weaknesses of the company's cast at any one moment, and writing would have been only one of his roles: he was also an actor, intimately involved in rehearsals and performances; a businessman; one of the shareholders in the Chamberlain's/King's Men; and, with the construction of the Globe in Southwark, a member of the first group of actors to operate its own playhouse.

The last of the introductory essays, Tarnya Cooper's "Silent 'Oratory': Portrait Painting in England around 1600," sets the stage for the entries that immediately follow. Cooper's concern is to put in context the practice of portrait painting in England primarily from the client's point of view. She outlines which social classes patronized such works and how the portraits' roles varied within this stratified society. The "silent 'oratory'" of her title would seem to be a variant on Thomas Heywood's 1612 description of painting as "dumbe oratory" (34), Cooper presumably having been uncomfortable with some of the less fortunate connotations of "dumbe." But her point is well taken as to how much information is packed into Elizabethan and Jacobean portraiture beyond an effort to provide posterity with an individual's likeness.

In the exhibition's search for Shakespeare, the foremost concern is with portraits of the bard. What do we know about his appearance, and why does it matter so much more to us than it did to his contemporaries? The answer to the first question is that we know very little; the answer to the second concerns our reverence for individual genius and our passion to engage with the man in order to illuminate the work. The catalogue begins with the only two authenticated likenesses, both of which are...