“New” portrait of Will S.
These two very different portraits are allegedly of one subject: William Shakespeare. The one on the left is owned by the Cobbes, an Anglo-Irish family related to Will’s patron, the third Earl of Southampton. Experts doubt whether that’s really Will.
It would be interesting to know what Shakespeare looked like, but do we really care whether he looked like Joseph Fiennes in Shakespeare In Love, Colin Firth in Blackadder, or Max Alvarado in Ang Panday? Of course he would look different in every portrait. Did Othello look like Viola? Does Shylock resemble Edmund? He invented human characters and they all had bits of Will in their DNA.
The New York Times reports. Adam Gopnik weighs in on the find.
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