OT: Odd Portrait Has Many Guessing Shakespeare Was Gay
Tiny Dancer
Odd Portrait Has Many Guessing Shakespeare Was Gay
By Mike Collett-White, Variety Celebrity/Gossip
LONDON (Reuters) - A 400-year-old painting previously believed to be
that of a woman has been found to portray the male patron and friend of
William Shakespeare, its owner said on Tuesday.
The picture of the Earl of Southampton, featuring a figure with long, black
curly hair, pursed red lips, an earring and a slender right hand, has prompted
speculation in British media that Shakespeare was gay.
"He is wearing perfectly fashionable male attire of the day, but the earring
and the hair are effeminate and unusual for the 1590s," the painting's owner
Alec Cobbe told Reuters.
He said that his family had assumed for centuries that the picture was of
a Lady Norton.
But after discovering links between his own family and the Southamptons
and a striking resemblance between the portrait and other representations
of the 3rd Earl of Southampton, Cobbe was convinced that it is Shakespeare's
friend and frequent host.
Scholars have long argued that Southampton was the handsome young man
in his late teens to whom an early sequence of Shakespeare's sonnets was
addressed.
The painting is dated to around 1590, when Shakespeare was writing early
sonnets including one to the "master-mistress of my passion."
"It certainly illustrates that sonnet (number 20) very vividly. We are looking
at the subject of the sonnet, I'm sure," said Cobbe.
SOME DOUBTS
Alastair Laing, the National Trust's adviser on art, first suggested to Cobbe
that the picture was of a male.
"I was cataloguing this collection and realized that this was a young man
with long hair, which one or two dandies of the time affected in this manner,"
he told Reuters.
He is also convinced that the picture is of Southampton, although he
argued that the man was not necessarily affecting a female appearance,
as a modern observer may assume.
"This is a man but he is not a cross-dresser," Laing said.
"He is not wearing lipstick -- some pigments just stand the passage of time
better than others, giving this appearance. It is dangerous to assume anything
about this man's character from this portrait."
British newspapers have played up the significance of the discovery, with
the mass circulation tabloid Sun headlining its story "Shakesqueer."
But even if the discovery of the portrait is much ado about nothing, it has
proved effective publicity for the painting, which is now on show at Cobbe's
stately home at Hatchlands Park in southern England.
Cheers,
TD
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