SHAKESPEARE'S 
 PORTRAITS 
 
 WILLIAM PAGE
 
 * * % ^ * % 3^ ^' - 
 
 ^ ^ ^ y^ i: i, ^ ^ ^ ^ ic ^ ^ 
 
 >^ >|k ^^ * * ^ % ^ ^ ^ ?^ % * % '^ 
 % ^ 5^ ^ ^ % • 3(t ^ -^ ^ ^ x^ « 1 
 
 % >^ # > % % • ^ % ^- % • % % ^ 
 ^ % :«|t * • ^ • • ^ >^ % ^ ^ >jif ^ 
 
 ^ ^ k ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ i^ ^ ^ ^ ^ * ^ 
 
 % ^ :Jb :^ * 3^ 3^ ^ ^ 3|b * % % ' 
 * ♦ * )Jr **%:!►%% % *. 
 
 -^ % * * * ^ :* • ^ * ^ >^ ^1r :
 
 fe ^ * * ' 
 
 ^ ******** * 
 
 *********** ^ 
 
 r ********** = 
 
 ****** * ****** 
 
 * * * *.* * * * * * * * 
 * * * * * * * * * * * 
 
 t ******** 
 
 * * * * * * * * * y. 
 
 t * * * * * * * * * •? r< -A 
 
 ********** * * * 
 ' ********* * * * 
 
 * ***********=*; 
 '1, * * ********* 
 
 ■v. * * ********* ^ 
 ■ ************ 
 
 * A i ir ******** ^ 
 ******** 
 
 -=- * .1: *■ * % % ^
 
 (yiiAotx/ 
 
 y 
 
 y^i^L 
 
 1 
 
 cyt.^ 
 
 
 CS*^^vcJ
 
 CAST FROM THE FACE OF SHAKESPEARE 
 
 AFTELR DEATH (1616.) 
 ^eatst^red Zivuiijm Susrifosaepic Co-!'
 
 /; 
 
 1
 
 A STUDY OF 
 
 HAKESPEARE'S 
 
 PORTRAITS, 
 
 BY WILLIAM PAGE, Artist, 
 
 Ex-President of the Academy of Design, New York. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PRINTED AT THE CHISWICK PRESS. 
 
 MDCCCLXXVI.
 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 University of California 
 santa barbara 
 
 EXPLANATORY 
 
 To THE Indifferent Reader. 
 
 HIS LITTLE Book is a reprint 
 
 of an article in Scribner's Magazine 
 
 for May, 1876, by Mr. William 
 
 Page, Artist, of New York, to 
 
 illustrate his life-size bust, in bronze, of 
 
 Shakespeare, 
 which, after several years study, he has ac- 
 complished, as a model for his portrait of the 
 great Poet. The Portrait is now on the easel, 
 and the Bust has been sent to London for 
 inspection.
 
 In this paper the Artist sets forth his autho- 
 rities and his credentials, and respectfully in- 
 vites the Public to examine the Bust and to 
 favour him with their honest criticism.
 
 I. THE DEATH-.MAsK ; Fku.u i-mj iuijKAI'H TAKEN 
 BY WILLIAM PAGE.
 
 THE DEATH-MASK : FROM PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN 
 BY WILLIAM PAGE.
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S 
 PORT RAITS. 
 
 If to do were as easy as to know what 'twere good to do, chapels 
 had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces. 
 
 HE Art of Art is to bring con- 
 viction. The art of words is not my 
 art ; if it were, all I would say is, if 
 you look long enough at the portrait 
 I have made, you will see that this is Shake- 
 speare, because it is from the German Death- 
 Mask, which perfectly reconciles all the existing 
 records of his face . If you ask how I know this, 
 I b
 
 and how and why I sought to bring the mask 
 to life, and made the portrait thus and so, I 
 shall make the story longer, and enter into col- 
 loquial disquisitions on the basis of your why 
 and wherefore. 
 
 I would rather paint a portrait than write 
 one ; though I am quite willing to tell, rather 
 than write, anything that may be of use or in- 
 terest in the matter. The casting this essay in 
 an art mould must be left for another. 
 
 Eight years ago I received a commission for 
 two pictures — "The Head of Christ" and 
 "Shakespeare" — because I believed in them. 
 For Shakespeare I felt not allowed to take an 
 ideal type, because there are undoubted and 
 generally received authorities for his likeness, 
 and, in the public mind, a fixed impression in 
 regard to his looks which must not be shocked, 
 even in the matter of collar and baldness. 
 Yet, as portraits in the best sense, these autho- 
 rities are vague, and afford little help in set- 
 tling securely the individual characteristics that 
 
 2
 
 should constitute and fill up his face so that 
 the likeness should seem adequate to his works. 
 We must stand by these old authorities ; though 
 a portrait, to my mind, signifies the man trans- 
 lated into that which the scope of the imitative 
 arts allow — in my case, painting or sculpture. 
 
 Literally, it has come to be applied to him, 
 **In the beginning was the Word;" we read 
 his \vTitten words and call it "Shakespeare." 
 If we have a painted or sculptured image of 
 him, it must again be man, in his own image, 
 and the proof of its genuine likeness lies in its 
 power of compelling us to call this, too, Shake- 
 speare. 
 
 I could not, in Amio Domini 1868 or 1875, 
 have satisfied myself in a portrait of Shake- 
 speare from the generally received records, and 
 should have given it up, but that, at the mo- 
 ment the inadequacy of the existing records 
 was appreciated, I fell in with two photographs 
 from the German Mask, reputed to have been 
 taken from his face just after death. Then I 
 
 3
 
 gathered from various friends, to whom here I 
 record a few thanks, other views, till the im- 
 pression became fixed that I must model in 
 the round this mask, so as to be able to deter- 
 mine with deliberation if it has any claim to 
 authenticity by being in accord with the re- 
 ceived undoubted records ; for the fact of its 
 being a lovely and adequate dead face does not 
 make it Shakespeare, unless it is Shakespeare. 
 I finally had thirteen different photographic 
 views of the mask. After modelhng from these 
 twice a face of life-size (my first efforts in clay 
 being lost by accident), I resolved to model it 
 of colossal size in plaster, which I did, repair- 
 ing as well as I could the breaks. During this 
 time, the whole history of its tally with exist- 
 ing records unravelled itself to satisfy me that 
 it is Shakespeare. 
 
 The August of 1874 arrived. I had done all 
 I could to my colossal mask from photographs, 
 having completed also the restorations. I 
 made three casts from it, in one of which I 
 
 4
 
 indicated all the breaks, as in the German 
 Mask at present. One of the restored casts I 
 sent to Philadelphia for safe keeping during 
 my contemplated absence, for I had deter- 
 mined to go abroad to see the original. Re- 
 ports in regard to it from different individuals 
 who had seen it were conflicting. I could get 
 no measures from other hands which I knew 
 how to use with precision. I wished also to 
 know more of the surface and texture of the 
 skin, and the more delicate markings of the 
 face as taken from nature and indicating tem- 
 perament ; and feeling that further effort would 
 lack weight without personal observation of the 
 original, I set out to see the mask itself. 
 
 But before I give an account of this visit, it 
 will be well to go over the way I became con- 
 vinced that the mask tallies with everything we 
 know, or have any means of knowing, in regard 
 to the face of Shakespeare. It was not a pro- 
 blem for a moment's solution, nor was it a 
 matter in which mere opinion or feeling could 
 
 5
 
 have any weight. To be, or not to be Shake- 
 speare, must now be a matter of pure science 
 to my own mind. 
 
 I do not believe I could become so ena- 
 moured of the mere beauty of the face as wildly 
 to impose it on the majesty of Shakespeare as a 
 true presentment, without being rationally led 
 by its reconciling power among the elements of 
 likeness I find conflicting and harmonizing in 
 the Stratford bust, the Droeshout print, and the 
 Chandos portrait. 
 
 These last three, you observe, I select from 
 all the old portraits as the only ones whose 
 internal evidences bring conviction to my own 
 mind of their being originally and unmistak- 
 ably from the same model. There is a picture 
 in this country of which I have a photograph. 
 The original I have not seen ; but the photo- 
 graph has some points of great interest. If the 
 possessors are willing to submit it to my tests, I 
 should be very happy if I could confirm a 
 favourable impression in regard to it. I reject 
 
 6
 
 several portraits which others cling to with 
 affection. 
 
 If the literary Shakespearians are learning to 
 see that the new Stratford portrait is evidently 
 after the bust, they may, by-and-by, see that it is 
 much more palpably after Sir Joshua Reynolds's 
 time. If it goes back of that, it might as well 
 go back of Pharaoh to Nimrod or Adam, or 
 some more remote prehistoric period. 
 
 The Droeshout print is the portrait of Shake- 
 speare in the first folio edition of his works, 
 1623. Martin Droeshout, sculpsit, London. 
 
 The Chandos portrait is an oil-painting, 
 nearly a wreck, and now in the National Por- 
 trait Gallery, South Kensington, London. 
 
 The Stratford bust is on the monument to 
 Shakespeare, in the Church of the Holy 
 Trinity, at Stratford-on-Avon. 
 
 The German Death-Mask is in the possession 
 of Dr. Becker, of Hesse-Darmstadt. These 
 and many other facts I note for intelligent, 
 though un- Shakespearian, readers. A worthy 
 
 7
 
 ambassador of ours at the Court of St. James's 
 once said, in the shadow of the Nineveh bulls, 
 to their discoverer : " Mr. Layard, these are 
 very interesting ; has anything been written 
 about them?" A great deal about Shake- 
 speare is Nineveh to many people, who still 
 have rights we are bound to respect ; and I 
 think it well to be considerate in this respect, 
 as I have not yet met one who seemed to know 
 all about Shakespeare. 
 
 Let us consider these three pretty generally 
 accepted portraits of Shakespeare, and observe 
 their likenesses to each other, and then after- 
 wards observe the greater likeness of each of 
 these to the German Mask, and see if you also 
 will not come to the conclusion that the Death - 
 Mask is the true model, cast from his own face 
 after death, and the true original from which 
 the bust at Stratford was made, and from the 
 identical face from which the Droeshout in 
 early life, and the Chandos in mature age, were 
 drawn. And, furthermore, that these three 
 
 8
 
 portraits have certain coincidences of forms 
 and planes with the German Mask, and also 
 identities, characteristics, and individualities 
 vi^hich nature never allows in different indivi- 
 duals. 
 
 In my new portraits I have striven to repro- 
 duce, in the most conscientious manner, what- 
 ever I find in the mask. They are in no sense 
 ideal, except in putting to my own use the face 
 as I find it in death. In the bust I have opened 
 the eyes, and brushed up the ends of the mous- 
 tache away from the mouth, after the fashion of 
 the period. 
 
 The muscular action and actual measures of 
 the mask are modified only so far as the 
 changed conditions of life and erect posture 
 require ; and this, of course, very slightly, and 
 only in the fleshy parts of the cheeks. In join- 
 ing the face to the background of the cranium 
 I have not been guided by the Stratford bust, 
 except, perhaps, in the height of the top of the 
 head, as all the cerebellum of the Stratford 
 
 9
 
 bust lacks harmony with the measures of its 
 own face. This lack was not perhaps felt or 
 noticed at the time of its being placed on the 
 monument ; and neither the friends of Shake- 
 speare, nor the age even, were likely to be 
 very critical on that matter. The sight of 
 the back of the head and the profile are both 
 sacrificed to the depth of the niche, whose 
 height is such as to make it difficult for the 
 spectator to judge whether the shortness of the 
 nose is due to foreshortening or an actual loss 
 of length. 
 
 The natural history of the mask has already 
 been given in Professor Hart's article in ** Scrib- 
 ner's Magazine" of July, 1874. I do not lay 
 much stress on what is termed pedigree of either 
 the German Mask or the three previously 
 quoted, and more or less acknowledged, por- 
 traits. I know there is very respectable oppo- 
 sition to the pedigree of the Chandos portrait. 
 But since my convictions of its genuineness are 
 independent of its pedigree, I rank it with the
 
 Droeshout and the Stratford bust. Pedigree is 
 a powerful friend behind the throne ; it has 
 kept the Droeshout, the Chandos, and the bust 
 in the Pantheon, and the lack of it has kept 
 the mask or "true presentment" out. What 
 should a man give in exchange for his soul, 
 unless pedigree, if it is proved to be worth more 
 than the thing itself? 
 
 The cast of the Stratford bust which I have 
 used in my own studio is unique, and certainly 
 the best one I have ever seen, having been 
 taken, as I am told by the o^vner himself, at 
 the moment when Malone's white paint was re- 
 moved, when the original was already smooth 
 with solvents, and before the last colouring ; 
 since when, I believe, it has not been cast. 
 
 When I speak of the Droeshout print, I mean 
 an earlier, and, so far as I know, an unique 
 impression from the same plate as the print 
 known in the first folio of 1623, which earlier 
 and much more characteristic impression is in 
 the possession of J. O. Halliwell (Phillipps), 
 
 II
 
 Esq., of London, to whom I owe more thanks 
 than I can express for a photograph of it, 
 through the kindness of J. Parker Norris, Esq., 
 of Philadelphia. 
 
 To Dr. Ernst Becker, of Hesse-Darmstadt, 
 I am profoundly indebted for his very great 
 kindness and courtesy in affording me access to 
 his library, and liberty and opportunity to exa- 
 mine it for six consecutive days in the Sep- 
 tember of 1874, when I profited by his per- 
 mission to make many measures and several 
 impressions from parts of the mask, and also 
 obtained four new photographs of it to add to 
 my previous collection of thirteen different 
 views of the face. This time I chose a 
 natural and revealing light, conducive to the 
 interests of the face, so that the camera should 
 receive the impression at a proper angle. 
 Hitherto many of the photographs had been 
 made with the object either in a reclining pos- 
 ture or too high up for the lens, and some are 
 cut off by drapery. I treated the mask just as 
 
 12
 
 I should have done the head of Shakespeare 
 himself, and I wished to obtain the most truth- 
 ful likeness of him. 
 
 I shall give, later, a fuller account of the 
 mask. In this visit my former impressions 
 were all strengthened in beholding its gran- 
 deur of expression. I had no false theories to 
 imleam, or, rather, no new theories to learn. 
 Facts were sufficient. No surprises threw my 
 admiration off the track. I had been very ill 
 before leaving home, and for a month in 
 England ; and, on the last step of declining 
 life, I could easily fancy my pilgrimage was 
 fated to fail, and that an attempt to identify 
 his real face was part of the curse he left on 
 him who should dig the dust or move the 
 bones where they were already hallowed. 
 But before the mask itself I was healed, as I 
 felt virtue come out of it, and life begin 
 anew in joy and thankfulness that I had 
 reached the promised land. Now I was in 
 the presence of the Grand Khan himself. I 
 
 13
 
 could have shaken hands with Columbus in or 
 out of chains. I had found the golden fniit of 
 the Hesperides, the sweetness of far Cathay. 
 The madness of Kepler over the areas and five 
 regular solids was in the simple nature of the 
 situation ; and I was as blithe as though 
 I had met Shakespeare just the other side of 
 the ivory gate, and he had recited to me for 
 the first time : 
 
 "And winking Mary-buds begin 
 To ope their golden eyes. 
 With everything that pretty bin." 
 
 And then somewhere in the dream I saw him 
 asleep. 
 
 There was no mistake or misunderstanding 
 about it. It was much clearer to my own 
 mind than anything but conviction can make 
 it to yours. Death has left the simple truth 
 on his face. No trick or falsity of art has 
 profaned it. 
 
 The Grand Can of my future endeavour was 
 
 '4
 
 now reverently saluted, and promised that, 
 immediately on my return home, I should 
 complete my colossal mask, and then at once 
 utilize my measures, casts, and impressions, 
 and all the material I had gained by this visit, 
 to make a full portrait bust of the head, which 
 should try to tell all that truth which the 
 Stratford bust has left untold. 
 
 It is not without a solemn and somewhat op- 
 pressive sense of responsibility that I offer you 
 now the result of my last endeavour. It is 
 well that you ask, Has one the right to chal- 
 lenge the common-sense and sensibility of the 
 Shakespeare-knowing world by offering a new 
 portrait of him at this late day? His dramas 
 and his sonnets and three undoubted portraits 
 we had ; yet we agree there was no likeness 
 or true presentment that satisfied our desire to 
 see his face. In this affair it is only by dint of 
 reason, experience, and legitimate artistic force, 
 and by the Aristotelian " nullius in verba," and 
 by the experiment by nature as divine art, that 
 
 15
 
 one may hope to fight his way into the obdu- 
 rate citadel of common-sense, where we may 
 all feast and banquet on the fact that we have 
 Shakespeare with us, the master of those that 
 know, seated with his philosophic family. 
 Then I ask for myself only : 
 
 " Be patient till the last. * * * Country-men 
 and lovers, hear me for my cause ; * * * and 
 awake your senses, that you may the better judge." 
 
 In our very sincere effort to understand just 
 how Shakespeare did not look, let us renew 
 our observations of each of the previously ex- 
 isting portraits ; and, first of the Stratford 
 bust, though it was in point of time the last 
 executed. The most inexpert observer may 
 see, by placing a cast of it beside a fine 
 antique or an excellent modem portrait, what 
 I mean when I say that it shows very crude 
 and unskilled modelling. This does not mean 
 it may not have many individual character- 
 istics. Artists and others have always known 
 
 i6
 
 that the eyes were impossible, the nose worked 
 off too short, or the end of it never reached, as 
 the spot where it should join the upper lip is 
 still marked in the bust ; and had the nose 
 started out at right angles to the lip at that 
 place, instead of slanting up to its present 
 point, truth and beauty each would have been 
 subserved. Though carelessly, falsely, and 
 hence wickedly misinterpreted in many ways, 
 still there are fixed facts in this bust which 
 make it valuable in some points of likeness. 
 Yet when a portrait falsely represents a man's 
 eyes and nose grossly maimed, and his cheeks 
 hanging with formless redundancy, it is diffi- 
 cult for the unskilled imagination to see clearly 
 just how the man did look. So I suppose the 
 Stratford bust has come to be adopted by the 
 reverent imagination as shrined saints or the 
 Book of Common Prayer, with the heart left 
 out, as a hieroglyphic, or certain sign, stand- 
 ing for his looks, rather than as an actual 
 portrait of his face 
 17 c
 
 Together with its misleading fixtures, there 
 exist characteristics, happy results of the 
 calipers, which, like figures and the young 
 Father of our Country, "cannot tell a lie." 
 Among these let us notice the one-sidedness 
 uf the face, which any eyes may learn to ob- 
 serve and a blind man to feel. Gerard John- 
 son's compass took in this fact. The left side 
 is flattened away from the mouth back to- 
 ward the middle of the cheek. This was pro- 
 bably a true characteristic of his model. Then 
 the lower part of his cheek is fattened out and 
 made very full under the jaw. This charac- 
 teristic is probably exaggerated if it existed at 
 all, the sculptor supposing that the flesh of the 
 cheeks in the reclining posture fell back, and 
 should be replaced in this manner, since he 
 represented his subject upright. On the right 
 side of the mouth there is a contrasting fulness 
 of the cheek, and then a falling away diago- 
 nally to the jaw, from which, around to the 
 throat, you find the line less curved than on 
 
 i8
 
 the other side. The individual character of 
 this one-sidedness, which exists in some way 
 in every face, was doubtless founded on a mask 
 from nature, and is exactly gi'aded, recorded, 
 and interpreted in the German Mask. The 
 Greeks valued these natural inequalities. The 
 Venus of Milo's face is one-sided, and the 
 Theseus's eyebrows unlike. 
 
 I should have stated before that when I 
 speak of right and left side I mean Shake- 
 speare's, and not the observer's. 
 
 In the Stratford bust the lower lip is pecu- 
 liar, the right side being sensibly fuller and 
 hanging down lower than the left side. It is 
 crudely rendered, yet a fact safely lodged 
 there which can never be ousted. There is 
 also an indentation at the left comer of the 
 mouth, more accentuated than on the other 
 side, which is dragged down rather vertically 
 toward the chin. 
 
 The sculptor certainly had some guide for 
 these varieties of undulations. The luckiest 
 
 19
 
 guess does not hit in a portrait. These per- 
 sonal peculiarities exist in the mask, where 
 they are seen not to have been exaggerated by 
 death. The unlikeness in the arches of the 
 eyebrows, the great and unusual distance be- 
 tween the places where the hairs of the brow 
 may be supposed to commence, the vertical 
 dint in the middle of the forehead between the 
 eyebrows — all these accents may be found if 
 looked for in the bust. Yet the unprofessional 
 eye wanders unconsciously over them, as chil- 
 dren in science over glacial markings. Every 
 one of them is naturally expressed in the 
 mask. 
 
 If I am accused of too microscopic regard 
 of this face, I must reply. Nature is not less in 
 leasts. And the portrait-painter knows that 
 many littles make a mickle. And even up 
 towards the highest art nature submits to rule 
 and compass. Geometry is a never-failing 
 guide and friend, which Phidias and Titian 
 never forsook as long as it was able to lead 
 
 20
 
 them. Leonardo's excellent colour and chiaro- 
 scuro are somewhat fettered by his immense 
 scientific knowledge, and, beside Titian's, sug- 
 gest to a sensitive eye the gradations of stairs 
 rather than the infinite and immeasurable more 
 and less of the light from a lens, with the pulsa- 
 ting undulations which nature shows, and 
 which come and go — a mere suspect of which 
 must be set down in imitative art, and not a 
 permanent fixture. Titian's geometry is as 
 faithful and true as Leonardo's, but less obtru- 
 sive, and more honest and well to be trusted in 
 the dark. The art of hiding art here culmi- 
 nates, or, as I should say, the art of hiding 
 science. But if in a portrait or other work of 
 art geometry and all science are confounded, 
 and art itself, which we will now call imitation 
 of nature, shows feeble vitality, the result is 
 pitiful indeed. I would always urge the ob- 
 servance of the eleventh commandment, even 
 in art, to make friends with the mammon of un- 
 righteousness ; so, if the artist fail in all his 
 
 21
 
 higher aim, he may finally turn to the friendly 
 homes of geometry, and at last be received into 
 its houses. Between science and art there is 
 the relation of cook and roaster. The trade of 
 the first can be learned ; that of the other must 
 also be bom into. 
 
 There are many homely facts in the Strat- 
 ford bust, and homely truth is a much more 
 respectable lodging than elegant falsehood. 
 Nature has left some impress on its face. Not 
 even the greatest of sculptors could desire to 
 supply fictions where nature had been so lavish 
 of facts. And the poorest sculptor would cling 
 to his model and his points, and with the clutch 
 of his calipers hold on to the truth with all his 
 might, wherever he could catch a salient point, 
 and show his weakness when he lets go his 
 ]:)oints and fails to interpret or harmonize his 
 intermediates, or in those parts of his undula- 
 ting surface where his compass cannot be his 
 sole guide ; for we may say art begins where 
 geometry ends, f 
 
 22 / 
 
 / 
 
 Jw^r 6;
 
 We are to remember that the monument to 
 Shakespeare was erected by his own family 
 within six or seven years after his death ; that 
 the family in its pecuniary aspect was repre- 
 sented by himself, and after his death by his 
 heirs and executors, Mrs. Hall and her hus- 
 band, the Doctor. The bills for the bust and 
 monument were sent to them, so that Shake- 
 speare's own money paid for Shakespeare's 
 own monument. The man who wrote the four 
 lines which have thus far secured for his bones 
 that rest which his epitaph demands, omitted 
 nothing likely to carry the whole plan into 
 effect. 
 
 The authorship of the epitaph cannot be 
 doubted, unless another man in England had 
 the wit and wisdom to divine the loyal heart's 
 core of its people, and touch it in the single 
 appeal "for Jesus' sake." Nothing else has 
 kept him out of Westminster. The style of the 
 command and curse are Shakespearian, and 
 triumphant as any art of forethought in his 
 
 23
 
 plays. The manner in which the Stratford 
 bust is made up, evidently from a death-mask, 
 has been remarked, not only by Chantrey and 
 John Bell, but by others also of good autho- 
 rity ; and the writer, long before he had heard 
 these opinions of others, asserted like convic- 
 tions in consequence of the want of harmony 
 or congruity between the bony structure of the 
 frontal head and posterior, and the other parts, 
 such as the eyes and cheeks and nose, which 
 the ignorance of the sculptor interfered with. 
 The nose is not impossibly short in itself, but 
 impossibly short in a face with such surround- 
 ings. It is not Nature's fashion. Socrates' 
 face has its own harmonies. 
 
 The raising up of the lobes of the nostrils, 
 which some have thought an effect of death, 
 I think is a make-shift after the nose was found 
 short. The upper lip is just right by front 
 measure, from the parting of the lips to the 
 point where the nose joins the upper lip, but 
 its too great length exists in the distance from 
 
 24
 
 the parting of the lips to the bottom of the 
 lobes of the nostrils, where the nasal topography 
 has been changed by the upheaval of art. 
 
 The bones of the facial part of the bust alone 
 bear some congruity to Nature. The back part 
 has no family likeness to her or to Shake- 
 speare himself. 
 
 The family also, in desiring to carry out their 
 idea of "true presentment," ordered that 
 colouring which should stand for Shakespeare's 
 hair, eyes, complexion, and dress. The 
 painter's art was quite on a level with the 
 sculptor's. The literary critic might remark 
 upon the lettering on the monument, but we 
 must remember the state of the arts at that 
 time in a country town of England. Shake- 
 speare had galloped off with dramatic art, and 
 left nothing behind. 
 
 In summing up the Stratford bust, we find 
 after the collar no neck, fatness in the cheeks, 
 falsity in the eyes, accident in the nose, cali- 
 pers on the bones near the surface, and 
 
 25
 
 Echo answers, What ? for all the back of the 
 head? 
 
 The German Mask reconciles, intei-prets, 
 and supplies all requirements for the face, 
 and offers no counter testimony, so far as I 
 know. 
 
 The Stratford bust, unsatisfactory as it is, 
 has been the polar point in the matter of 
 Shakespeare's portraits. We can never steer 
 out of sight of it without offending the com- 
 mon-sense of mankind. And yet in the 
 simple fact that the Stratford bust is likely to 
 have been made some time after Shakespeare's 
 death, and not recollecting that it was made 
 from a death-mask, some minds feel weakness 
 in its authenticity, and hence more stable 
 equilibrium in the facts of the Droeshout print. 
 The original picture from which this print is 
 made, I think, must have been drawn or painted 
 from the living man. And there is for the 
 print in the first folio of 1623 of Shakespeare's 
 works Ben Jonson's word that, " It was for 
 
 26
 
 gentle Shakespeare cut." Yet unprofessional 
 eyes, if called upon to specify the likeness be- 
 tween the Droeshout print and the Stratford 
 bust, would find it difficult to do. No candid 
 believer in both can claim that the likeness 
 between them is striking. And if pressed to 
 substantiate it by detailed internal evidence, 
 he may, if inexpert, be staggered and silenced 
 and left to wonder, if he never asked himself 
 the question before, whether they really are 
 from the same face, and hence like each other. 
 Each is undisputed authority ; each, according 
 to the best evidence in the world, an intended 
 portrait of Shakespeare ; and what manner of 
 man he really was becomes more and more a 
 puzzle to this inquiring mind. 
 
 The portrait-painter sees that the long face, 
 the long nose of the Droeshout, the size of the 
 back of the head suggested are in contrast to 
 the bust. The eyes also should correct our 
 ideas of these features in the bust. Then the 
 Droeshout is twenty-five years younger than 
 
 27
 
 the bust, which was made after his death at 
 fifty-two years of age. The lines and forms, 
 and planes of youth, are in the Droeshout. 
 But the nose is set on the cheeks at precisely 
 the same angle as in the bust. The eyebrows 
 are far apart, the right eyebrows slightly more 
 raised, and at the same peculiar angle with the 
 curve from the nose, as in the bust. The thick 
 under lip is marked ; the relative force of the 
 undulations, and the different markings at the 
 corners of the mouth have been noted. All 
 these markings the portrait-painter knows go 
 to make up the likeness ; and the more of them 
 he can express the more the portrait will be 
 felt to be characteristic, if, at the same time, 
 the great outlines are generally preserved. The 
 temples are very peculiar in the Droeshout. 
 The dome of the head is overdone, though 
 not in mere height, and out of drawing, but 
 the artist was looking at the dome of the same 
 head as that which the bust-maker had in 
 view. When the Droeshout is turned upside 
 28
 
 down the oval character of the face is seen 
 to be clearly maintained, notwithstanding the 
 faults in the management of the too balloon- 
 shaped forehead. In the Stratford bust the 
 full-face view shows so much bulging in the 
 lower part of the cheeKj that the oval is almost 
 turned the other way, and the forehead seems 
 the smaller point of the egg-shaped face. But 
 go around to the right side, so as to see the 
 outline of the head without that bulging of the 
 left cheek, and even leaving out the pointed 
 beard, and the chin assumes the small part of 
 the oval, and our impression of the head is 
 again corrected. The forehead is the greater 
 dome. Then, in letting the eye run across the 
 planes of the forehead, from temple to temple, 
 the expert finds the lights catch and the 
 shadows fall in like planes to those of the 
 Stratford bust. So, even if he had not Ben 
 Jonson's word for it, the professional portrait - 
 painter would not find it very difficult to admit 
 that the Droeshout is from the same young 
 29
 
 man at twenty-five or thirty that the Stratford 
 bust is at the age of fifty-two. 
 
 This Droeshout portrait might have been 
 associated with the earlier plays, where the 
 publishers saw the young and promising face 
 of their own theatre-going days. John Hem- 
 inge and Henrie Condell had punctuated their 
 advertisement, "To the Great Variety of 
 Readers," with " Buy it first— that doth best 
 commend a Booke — Judge your sixe-pen-'orth 
 
 But whatever you do Buy — Censure 
 
 will not drive a trade," &c., &c. Here 
 again is " Simple Truth— miscalled sim- 
 plicity." 
 
 The world, strictly speaking, cannot be said 
 to move. The engraving was likely to serve 
 admirably their appeal to "Buy the Booke." 
 It stood for Shakespeare to them, as they had 
 seen him on the boards, and was likely to 
 appeal to the hearts and purses of other men 
 now growing old, who had also seen and heard 
 this same young Shakespeare in his first plays 
 
 30
 
 at the Globe ; and, as he tells us in his sonnets, 
 the player was not then one to be so solemnly 
 revered as is his own memory now, but to be 
 loved, as Heminge and Condell knew, for the 
 " pen'orth" of mirth and jollity he gave. The 
 Droeshout view, when rendered from the mask, 
 is brimming with the shy, sweet humour of his 
 age — eyes and lips dropping sweetness, and 
 " brows that all endearments haunt" — a face 
 when verily rendered in painting, in the actual 
 conditions of age and form to charm men and 
 women. I do not think it the most happily 
 chosen view of the face in an artistic sense ; 
 yet, with the charms of youth, and archness, 
 and sweetness, and its own power, it takes 
 ])erhaps greater hold on the imagination than 
 any other of the three likenesses. The actors, 
 and friends, and companions, and Ben Jonson, 
 may have known equally well the then more 
 mature, and still fine and more picturesque 
 Chandos ; but perhaps it was not then en- 
 graved, or rather, most of all, the charm of 
 31
 
 youth was not with it, and the sweet reminis- 
 cences of the dear old times when they were all 
 young together. So, of course, the Droeshoutwas 
 the portrait chosen to preface this first collected 
 edition of his plays. And though we may be 
 critical enough to say it never could have been 
 a very exact likeness, still it was accepted by 
 friends, publishers, and purchasers, after his 
 death, as it had been by companions, the artist, 
 and Shakespeare himself during his life. No 
 Shakespeare lover can turn from it with in- 
 difference, and an experienced artist, who has 
 spent more than fifty years in studying the 
 human face, finds many similitudes to it in the 
 solid forms of the Stratford bust. 
 
 As though Cuvier modelled a fossil, Agassiz, 
 with an aquarium full of the live ones, lights 
 on a drawing in his Pliny. "Just alike in 
 characteristics," exclaims Agassiz; "but the 
 pity is, Cuvier and Pliny were not better 
 artists, so that more lightly tripping scientists 
 might see at a glance the likeness." 
 
 32
 
 The Droeshout print and the Stratford bust 
 exist to-day, not from their superior artistic 
 vitality, but from their undoubted authenticity. 
 Such art would have sunken long ago into the 
 "dreamless ooze of oblivion" but for the label, 
 ** Shakespeare," while the mask, by the inhe- 
 rent right of might alone, survives, the fittest 
 revelation of his features. 
 
 I must record in this connection how the 
 Halliwell Droeshout differs from the usually 
 known print in the first folio of 1623. I 
 cannot do better than refer to Mr. Halliwell' s 
 views, as expressed in his "Catalogue of a 
 Small Portion of the Engravings and Drawings 
 Illustrative of the Life of Shakespeare, Pre- 
 served in the Collection Fomied by J. O. Hal- 
 liwell (Phillipps), Esq., F.R.S., etc. Printed 
 for Private Reference." My attention was 
 called to this unique Droeshout by an extract 
 from this "Catalogue" in an article on the 
 portraits of Shakespeare by J. Parker Norris, 
 Esq., of Philadelphia, who also finally pro- 
 
 33 d
 
 cured me a full-sized photograph of the same 
 from Mr. Halliwell. 
 
 I have carefully compared the photographs 
 of this Halliwell Droeshout with the two prints 
 from the same plate in the Astor Library, the 
 darker one from the collection of the Duke of 
 Buckingham. Mr. Halliwell's is evidently an 
 earlier impression from the same plate before it 
 was retouched and used for the other known 
 impressions in the first folio of 1623. The dif- 
 ferences which Mr. Halliwell points out are 
 veiy obvious. In the impressions from the re- 
 touched plate in the Astor Library, the lights 
 and darks are generally emphasized at the ex- 
 pense of characterization. Whoever retouched 
 the plate, in his mistaken efforts to improve the 
 general effect, lost markings, modellings, accents 
 all over the face. Yet this darker impression 
 in the Astor Library must have been an uncom- 
 monly good one after the retouchings mentioned. 
 But character is lost in the left temple, lost 
 utterly in the differences in the eyebrows, so 
 
 34
 
 evident in the Halliwell Droeshout, and identi- 
 fied in the Stratford bust and the Death-mask. 
 In the retouched plate the eyebrows are evened 
 over and brought to the prim precision which 
 the later workman aimed at. Quite a thorough- 
 going line is earned over both eyebrows, which, 
 in the earlier impression, was much more deli- 
 cate and individual. The new workman had 
 a praiseworthy intention also in adding the 
 shadow upon the collar, which did not exist at 
 all in the earlier state of the plate. That it 
 was the same plate may be known from the ac- 
 cidents in it, repeated in all the impressions by 
 a little black spot under the nose and at the 
 comer of the mouth. I say accidents, because 
 there is no evidence of lines being laid by the 
 graving tool to represent such markings in the 
 original from which the portrait was taken. 
 They are caused by bad places in the metal of 
 the plate. The peculiar marking or corruga- 
 tion on the left eyebrow, as indication of a 
 certain peculiar marking between the nose and 
 35
 
 the hairs of the brow of the actual person, is 
 all lost in the retouched plate. This personal 
 characteristic I was already prepared to claim 
 before I saw it defined in Mr. Halliwell's Droe- 
 shout. Having found it in the mask, and hinted 
 in the Stratford bust, I had modelled it in my 
 colossal restored mask, and painted it in various 
 pictures from it. When I come to specify in 
 detail the characteristics of the German Death- 
 mask, it will be more evident how much I felt 
 the value of this new link of evidence of the 
 likeness of the three generally received portraits 
 to the mask. 
 
 The meaning of the Halliwell Droeshout is 
 more evident, and the original lines laid with 
 more truth to nature in the original intention. 
 I have submitted my photograph of it to experts 
 in engraving and corrected my impressions, 
 when necessary, in regard to what was inten- 
 tional by the artist and rendered by the graving 
 tool, and what was accidental to the plate or to 
 the impression from it, 
 
 36
 
 I was also prepared for another marking I 
 found definitely laid dowTi, I think, by an in- 
 tentional laying of the lines ; which opinion 
 the distinguished engravers Mr. Linton and 
 Mr. John Cheney have confirmed, as well as, 
 later, Mr. Marshall. 
 
 This marking is in the form of little spots 
 one over the other, and a third one, dimmer, 
 at the right, just over the right eyebrow. Call 
 them by whatever name, the spots are here, 
 just where they should be, if the spot in the 
 mask were a personal marking capable of being 
 rendered in plaster and represented in painting 
 or engraving. In examining the two impres- 
 sions from the retouched plate, as in the Astor 
 Library, I find it is difficult to identify the spots, 
 as the recut lines of the forehead have been 
 carried, if my eyes do not deceive me, right 
 through them, as though they were blemishes 
 in the plate. Yet, a little irregularity of the 
 lines shows they were there, and would not 
 change their place. 
 
 37
 
 I shall further treat of sJ>ots when I describe 
 the Chandos of the Arundel Society photo- 
 graphs, and the mask at Dannstadt, where I 
 ultimately found, to my entire satisfaction, that 
 previous lucky guessing had happily hit the 
 mark ; or, rather, that the exact interpretation 
 of my thirteen first photographs needed no 
 correction from the original mask in this 
 respect. 
 
 The Stratford bust has a flattened plane over 
 the right eyebrow, M^here (on oath, I dare not 
 say I have anything more than suspicion) 
 Gerard Johnson concluded to fill up and 
 smooth over the slight indentation in his Death- 
 mask, which he considered a defect — or did all 
 the paints and solvents used on the bust fill up 
 any little indentation designed to follow or 
 copy from his mask ? There is a plane for it in 
 my polished cast — cast, as I have told you, at 
 the moment Malone's paint was removed (and 
 nobody knows how many more coats by John 
 Hall in 1748, and the other Halls of 1623). I 
 
 38
 
 scarcely dare put it in black and white, as a 
 thing to swear to by the uplifted hand, or on 
 the Holy Book ; yet, there is something raised 
 like a mole here in my cast from the Stratford 
 bust, but nothing, I assure you, like a whale, 
 or weasel even, which the scar grew to be last 
 summer. What is what, I leave you to 
 settle. 
 
 All these minutiae may seem of no account to 
 many readers ; but, in the words of the half- 
 cracked Kepler, as the more level heads 
 reckoned him, "These things will sei-ve the 
 rustics as hooks to hang the heavens by," when 
 we come to apply to them the Copernican 
 theory, that the mask is really the central sun 
 of this portrait system, and that the Droeshout 
 print, the Chandos portrait, and the Stratford 
 bust are its revolving satellites. 
 
 Of course, the *' Ink Horn" Shakespearians, 
 who own Shakespeare by right of possession, as 
 the Church did the Universe and its Maker in 
 the time of Galileo, cannot be expected to 
 
 39
 
 yield at once their Geocentric theory for the 
 Stratford or the Droeshout. 
 
 The Halliwell Droeshout, besides entirely 
 confirming my theory of the mask in respect to 
 the corrugated left eyebrow, the scar or spot 
 over the right eyebrow, the peculiar temples, 
 the lower lip, and the setting on of the nose, 
 gives me the means of knowing just exactly how 
 much of characterization, which is the very 
 essence of portraiture, is lost in the commonly 
 known Droeshout. Again, I feel bound to ex- 
 press my renewed obligation to those fair 
 women, the Fates (who at the final judgment 
 leave all that is good for us), who sat to Phidias 
 for the Parthenon and the British Museum ; 
 and thanks, renewed, to Friends, Fates, 
 Phidias, Phillipps, and philanthropic England 
 for sending me the physical confiiination of the 
 authenticity of the physiognomy in the Death- 
 mask. 
 
 Let us look next to the Chandos portrait, 
 painted probably twelve or fourteen years after 
 
 40
 
 the Droeshout. Whatever shortcomings the 
 picture contains, I think it was painted by a 
 man of the craft, and one who had committed 
 like artistic sins so many times as to fix a habit 
 or manner of not doing it. It was painted by 
 some John Taylor (I think it is agreed), who, 
 perhaps, was a brother or relative of Joseph 
 Taylor, the actor and companion of Shake- 
 speare. On account of the same initial to his 
 name, the actor had for a time the additional 
 credit of being the author of the portrait. Sir 
 William Davenant putting in some claim to the 
 picture, it was willed to him by the possessor, 
 J. Taylor, and since has kept in the straight 
 and narrow path of pedigree. It has seemed 
 to me that Sir William Davenant's knowledge 
 of the origin of the picture, and its authenticity 
 as an intended likeness of his godfather, might 
 be put at least upon a par with anything Ben Jon- 
 son says for the Droeshout, though the opinion 
 of neither need be considered of much value in 
 regard to the artistic merits of the works. Here, 
 41
 
 I repeat, we are indebted to the Arundel So- 
 ciety's photographs for all we can know of any 
 of its claims to any characteristic likeness to 
 nature or to Shakespeare. In the National 
 Portrait Gallery it is ahnost a complete nega- 
 tion, its cleanings and mendings leaving the 
 expert scarcely a foothold in his search for the 
 original picture. 
 
 A Nation's Portrait Gallery, like its Tree of 
 Life, should be guarded from unskilful garden- 
 ers, and a literal flaming sword should pierce 
 the conscience of those who permit to be effaced 
 the record of the world's real men. Por- 
 traiture is the cable that holds the argosies of 
 all the arts fast to the land of fact. Look into 
 the eyes of Shakespeare in his portraits ; look 
 into his heart in the sonnets ; feel the rhythm 
 of his head ; see his thought and life in his 
 plays — and the pious imagination feels little 
 lack of his real presence. Art has preserved 
 all we do know of Shakespeare except the 
 sparse little facts from history of his father's 
 
 42
 
 trade, his own birth and baptism, and editing 
 before majority three little variorum Shake- 
 speares — he and she, single and double, pre- 
 amble of the inexhaustible variety of his future 
 life. The sonnets, the plays, and poems, and 
 his face record all the rest, which it took God 
 and himself fifty-two years to accomplish ; 
 neither of whom was ever idle, neither of 
 whom could do it without the other ; in 
 whom, together, we see best the perfection of 
 Master, and the faithfulness of the response, 
 " Here am I." Art, as well as artist, is greatest 
 in its dutifulness to the Master of Art. 
 
 The best bee builds her cell by the rule of 
 her instinctive law, and it is more perfect than 
 we busybodies could devise. 
 
 The wreck of the Chandos and a slip in its 
 pedigree have raised opposition to its authen- 
 ticity. Sir William Davenant was twelve or 
 fourteen years of age at the death of his illus- 
 trious godfather, and, in all probability, asso- 
 ciated largely with persons able to judge cor- 
 
 43
 
 rectly of when, where, and by whom it was 
 painted ; and, therefore, setting a value on it 
 out of proportion to its artistic merits, even if 
 the fact of its production about the time of his 
 own birth may not have had a magnifying in- 
 fluence on it to his mind. 
 
 The same haunting spot over the right eye- 
 brow, which I have treated of in the Ilalliwell 
 Droeshout and the Death-mask, I find present 
 in the Arundel Society's photograph from the 
 Chandos. Also a correction the artist made 
 in drawing the eye and piecing on to the fore- 
 head (and consequent changing his spot), which 
 aggravates, if not causes the lower part of the 
 face to look the more retiring. All these /t'«/i- 
 inenti come up in the cleaning. 
 
 In comparing these three old portraits of 
 Shakespeare, we see that the comparatively re- 
 tiring character of the forehead and top of the 
 head in the Chandos and the Stratford bust cor- 
 rects our impression from the Droeshout, of the 
 bulging, overhanging upper part of the forehead; 
 
 44
 
 but they all agree in the extraordinary distance 
 between the eyebrows ; and the Chandos and 
 the Droeshout agree in the size, form, and 
 placing of the great orbs of the eyes. The nose 
 joins the face at the same angle in each. The 
 general planes agree in a large sense. 
 
 If you fix your eye on a point exactly over 
 the centre of the nose, between the eyebrows 
 of either of these portraits, then move it care- 
 fully in a horizontal line along the left eyebrow, 
 continuing it in the same plane over the left 
 temple until you reach the hair bordering it, 
 you will see that your eye makes the same or 
 like angles in each. 
 
 Then, again, fixing your eye at a point in 
 the centre of the forehead, a little less than 
 two inches above the eyebrow, pass it along 
 slowly in a parallel to and above the first line, 
 and you will see that its undulations agree in 
 all these portraits. Take, then, another hori- 
 zontal look half an inch below the left eye, 
 starting along over the cheek-bone, and again 
 
 45
 
 end where you have reached the hair ; this line 
 you will find alike in all three. Carefully fol- 
 low another line from the middle of the nose 
 parallel to the others, until it runs off to the 
 lower point of the opening of the ear, and ano- 
 ther line followed across from the bottom of the 
 nose will reveal to you a mechanical estimate 
 of the undulatory theoiy of the surface of the 
 face, and the similarities in all three as repre- 
 sented in the Droeshout, the Chandos, and the 
 Stratford. 
 
 The Death-mask is a model which interprets 
 the successes and failures in each of these por- 
 traits, and shows in a manner that to experts 
 in portraiture amounts to demonstration, that 
 here alone is the true nature from which all 
 came. 
 
 Neither figures, diagrams, analysis, areas, 
 solids, calculus, lines of force, vibrations, spec- 
 tra, perturbations, probabilities, dips, declina- 
 tions, ebb, flow, and dew-point, nor the outer 
 pair "quite contrarie, I read," of the Geor- 
 
 46
 
 gium Sidus and his farthest neighbour, nor all 
 the Babel tongues of science brought to one 
 accord in a new Principia, can more compel 
 thd^. scientific mind, than does the joint claim of 
 the three old portraits to a common origin in the 
 mask or its original convince the artistic sense. 
 
 The order of nature is fixed in portraits as in 
 planets ; while the Friar friends of science 
 worked the rack, the planets moved on, nei- 
 ther abashed by old doubters or new observers. 
 Truth is light as day ; it is we who are blind, 
 whom patient Mother Nature waits for to come 
 to maturity, to see us enjoy the pleasure of see- 
 ing what the Creator made to please Him- 
 self. 
 
 During my examination of the mask, I made 
 twenty-six measurements, which I set down 
 exactly on a sheet of Bristol board, by mark- 
 ing opposite the points of the calipers. I have 
 not yet translated them into any system of 
 numerical measure. They stand simply the 
 exact so much of the calipers. 
 
 47
 
 These measures were not made for the pur- 
 pose of comparison with the Stratford bust ; 
 such comparison was afterward thought of and 
 made. 
 
 Of these twenty-six measures, at least ten or 
 twelve fit exactly corresponding points in the 
 Stratford bust, which any one may verify, if he 
 will take the trouble to interpret the diagram 
 here annexed, and reduce all the measurements 
 to solid geometry. Few persons need be told 
 that this planet never did, at any one moment, 
 contain two adult heads, whose faces agreed in 
 any dozen like measures, and the law of proba- 
 bilities makes it remote when such an epoch 
 will arrive. To a working artist's mind, the 
 agreement of these measures is either a miracle, 
 or demonstration that they are from the same 
 face. 
 
 And, still further, the failure or misfit of 
 the other more than dozen measures is con- 
 fined to those parts of the face where there is 
 acknowledged error on the part of the sculptor 
 
 48
 
 of the Stratford bust. In the language of 
 science, "measures are the inflexible judges 
 placed above all opinions supported only by 
 imperfect observations." 
 
 It is, indeed, singular that such an agreement 
 in measure with the Stratford bust should not 
 have been noted or published by the distin- 
 guished scholars and scientists in whose care 
 the mask was during its sojourn in England ; 
 but, so far as I know, it has not hitherto been 
 done. 
 
 There was no inquest of experts, and hence 
 no verdict, except in the matter of the pedigree, 
 which all grant is defective. 
 
 If the great problems of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury had been left to Raphael, Titian, and 
 Tasso, instead of to the practical keels of 
 Columbus and Cortez, I think we should all 
 still concur in statu quo. 
 
 The mask, as we see it now, seems to 
 have been washed all over, either with oil 
 or brown shellac varnish, and this before the 
 
 49 e
 
 right side of the end of the nose was broken 
 off so badly, as the broken place seems to 
 have been coloured to match the rest by the 
 use of a water colour instead. 
 
 I had been told that the mask was not 
 much impaired by the injuries it had re- 
 ceived; but when I counted over those inju- 
 ries, both of accident and ignorant design, I 
 could not but feel thankful for the very much 
 that had been left us. 
 
 How should we have known positively that 
 the first plaster mask was cast in a waste mould, 
 over a wax face, but from the fact that while 
 the face existed in this substance a pressure 
 of sufficient weight had been made on the 
 bridge of the nose to flatten a portion of it, 
 and push a little to one side a small wave 
 of wax, leaving the impression of the hard 
 plane on the ^fax nose to be cast by the 
 next plaster mould, and transmitted to us in 
 this plaster cast which we have to-day ? And 
 when, with his plaster cast in my hand, I 
 
 50
 
 pointed out this fact to Dr. Becker, he at 
 once said, " Of course ;" for in the real face 
 the bone of the nose would have prevented 
 the depth of this impress, and it could only 
 have been done in a yielding substance like 
 wax, and not possibly in plaster. This wax 
 face was surely the first casting made in the 
 mould after that left the face of the dead 
 man, carrying away from that first mould 
 human hairs enough to transmit by the next 
 casting in plaster the twenty odd still sticking 
 on Dr. Becker's mask. 
 
 DIMENSIONS OF SHAKESPEARE'S 
 MASK. 
 
 Horizontal Measures. 
 
 I ; I 
 
 I. Distance between hairs of eyebrows. 
 
 I i 
 
 2. Between inner corners of eyes.
 
 I I 
 
 3. Between outer comers of eyes. — (Twice the 
 
 length of this measure. ) 
 
 I I 
 
 4. Across cheek-bones through centre of eyes. 
 — (Three times the length of this measure.) 
 
 I I 
 
 5. From centre of bridge of nose between the 
 
 eyes, right side, to cheek-bone. — (Twice 
 the length of this measure.) 
 
 1 ; I 
 
 6. From centre of bridge of nose, between the 
 
 eyes, left side, to cheek-bone. — (Three 
 times the length of this measure.) 
 
 I I 
 
 7. Outer comer of right eye to centre of bridge 
 of nose. — (Twice the length of this measure. ) 
 
 I I 
 
 8. Outer comer of left eye to centre of bridge 
 of nose. — (Twice the length of this measure.) 
 
 I I 
 
 9. Inner comer of both eyes to centre of bridge 
 52 of nose.
 
 I I 
 
 lo. Across the fulness, above the temples. — 
 (Three times the length of this measure.) 
 
 I ;•.. I 
 
 1 1 . Across the nostrils. 
 
 i I 
 
 12. Breadth from point to point of moustache. 
 — (Twice the length of this measure.) 
 
 I ; ; I 
 
 13. Tuft on chin so wide at broadest. 
 
 I ; ; i 
 
 14. Greatest width across lower jaws opposite 
 the mouth. — (Three times the length of 
 this measure.) 
 
 |.- I 
 
 15. Length of lower lip. 
 
 I I 
 
 16. Opening of mouth, between moustaches. 
 
 I i 
 
 17. Whole distance from beard on chin in 
 front to back of cast below. — (Twice the 
 length of this measure.) 
 53
 
 1 8. From throat to under part of beard. 
 
 Perpendicular Measures. 
 
 I I 
 
 19. Extreme length from peak of beard to top 
 of head. — (Five times the length of this 
 measure.) 
 
 I I 
 
 20. Between eyebrows to top of mask. — (Three 
 
 times the length of this measure.) 
 
 I I 
 
 21. Between eyebrows to point of nose. — 
 (Twice the length of this measure.) 
 
 I I 
 
 22. From point of nose to end of beard. — 
 (Twice the length of this measure.) 
 
 I ■ I 
 
 23. From inner comer of right eye to top of 
 head. — (Three times the length of this 
 measure.) 
 54
 
 24. Inner corner of right eye to bottom lobe 
 
 of nostril. 
 
 I ! 
 
 25. Inner comer of right eye to mouth. — (Twice 
 
 the length of this measure.) 
 
 I-; I 
 
 26. Opening of the mouth to the turn of chin. 
 
 Gerard Johnson, for whose use the first mould 
 was taken, certainly did not need a wax face, 
 on account of its too easy indentation by the 
 points of the calipers, but filled the flying mould 
 as soon as he received it from the friends of the 
 deceased, with plaster, to make a face to work 
 from, and then chipped off his mould, if of 
 plaster, as I now think it was, or removed it 
 whole, if of wax. 
 
 The wax face, cast in the flying mould perhaps 
 before it left Stratford, received the aforesaid 
 pressure on the nose, which is repeated in Dr. 
 Becker's plaster cast, and repeated in the photo- 
 
 55
 
 graphs which are taken in a proper view. In 
 some views, the wave of wax pushed aside by 
 pressure, and copied in the plaster, increases 
 the aquiline character of the nose, which to some 
 minds has been a hindrance to belief in its like- 
 ness to the Stratford bust. Other views of the 
 mask and the true theory of this accidental 
 pressure correct entirely the possible false im- 
 pression in regard to the aquiline nose. The 
 Chandos, the Droeshout, and the Stratford 
 bust, except as to length, represent tolerably 
 the true form of this feature as it appears in 
 the restored mask. Besides the conspicuous 
 break on the right side end of the nose, there is 
 sign of wilful picking on the other side. There 
 are also unmistakable signs of the same ignorant 
 meddlesomeness with the penknife in the beard 
 and moustache, as if marking stringy threads 
 were increasing the resemblance to hair. It 
 has even gone so far at the end of the left 
 moustache as to cut into the quick of the cheek 
 more than enough to take the skin off. Be- 
 56
 
 sides these there is an accidental chipping and 
 scooping out of the plaster an inch in length 
 and one-third in breadth, which carries away a 
 part of the left upper lip quite from the front 
 part of the left nostril, extending backward 
 along the lip to beyond that lobe of the nostril. 
 It is owing to this break that a certain peculiar 
 expression is imparted to the profile views of 
 this side of the mask, which restoring greatly 
 improves. 
 
 I shall refer to only one more accidental 
 break, and that of slight importance, except in 
 its misconstmction ; it is where a part of the 
 massing of the eyelashes in the left eye has been 
 broken off. It has been cited and repeated, 
 that here, as in the same eye in the mask of 
 Cromwell, decay had set in, and something 
 ran out. This is less ingenious than the theory 
 of another commentator, who also found a 
 place, or allowed his misquoted authority to 
 find a place, for an actual loss of brain, where 
 he mistook entirely the particular brain in quesi- 
 
 57
 
 tion. The eiTor in regard to the eye has arisen 
 probably from forgetting or not knowing that it 
 is usual to mass the hairs of the eyelashes, 
 brows, and beard with soap or paste, or some 
 such preparation, to prevent the substance of 
 the mould from pulling out or sticking to these 
 hairs. I have never seen a more healthy cast 
 from a dead face ; and if Shakespeare was 
 buried at Stratford, in April, two days after his 
 death, there certainly was no time for decay in 
 his eyes ; and the rest of his face shows the 
 most natural and perfect condition, as though 
 he might have fallen asleep in perfect health. 
 If this mask is from Shakespeare, his illness 
 must have been short, producing the least pos- 
 sible apparent change of his countenance ; and 
 the most fortunate moment afterwards was 
 chosen for casting the face. 
 
 In the place over the right eyebrow, where I 
 had expected to find a real but slight indenta- 
 tion, as I had interpreted it from photographs, 
 I did not find what Professor Hart had written 
 
 58
 
 me from Vienna in July, 1873, soon after his 
 departure from Hesse-Darmstadt, viz., "merely 
 a flake of the plaster fallen or nibbed off." 
 
 The peculiar discoloration which Mr. E. W. 
 Perry, at that time Secretary of the National 
 Academy of Design, had the same summer 
 \\Titten to me about, did not allow me at first to 
 perceive even **a flake of the plaster fallen or 
 rubbed off." Yet, from the photographs, I 
 knew there must be some indentation and a 
 loss of the texture of the skin in this discoloured 
 place, which, for some reason, had received 
 the coloured wash thus unequally. 
 
 My first attempt to take an impression of 
 this spot, together with a part of the forehead, 
 failed, having tried it in soft modelling wax, 
 which adhered somewhat, and was distorted 
 and lost in removing ; but the depression in 
 the spot was well shown in the relief of the 
 wax at that point. My next attempt was in 
 white, harder wax, with gauze intervening. 
 This mould, though less delicate in parts, was 
 
 59
 
 very successful, and gave me a good cast in 
 plaster ; where the indentation is plainly visible, 
 it may, perhaps, have been looked on as a 
 defect, and has certainly been partially filled up. 
 In the plain white of plaster the depression is 
 still to be seen, though in the discoloured spot 
 over the brow I could not at first detect it. 
 
 This little marking is of no more importance 
 in the general expression of the face than vari- 
 ous little moles upon it. As experts in this 
 kind of autopsy, we are guided by the texture 
 of the surface in deciding between these mark- 
 ings upon the actual subject and accidents and 
 chippings after the cast is made. 
 
 Still this mark stamped upon his brow was 
 sufficient to be noted in the Droeshout and the 
 Chandos, and, I think, intentionally omitted in 
 the Stratford bust. 
 
 Another scar can also be traced on the other 
 side of the forehead, but it was of such a nature 
 as not to be apparent at the distance for which 
 a portrait would be made. 
 
 60
 
 Massacchio's mouth, Cicero's wart, Crom- 
 well's and Shakespeare's moles, have their 
 claims as individuality, and the artist has no 
 more right to exaggerate or deny them in a 
 portrait than he has to curtail or remove other 
 features, treating them, of course, with that 
 artistic touch which avoids discord. The mask 
 also interprets perfectly the eyebrows, the under 
 lip, thicker on the right side than on the left, 
 as in the Stratford bust. The nose is so fortu- 
 nately broken as to allow of exact restoration. 
 There is no breath of distortion after death, nor 
 any sign of nostrils drawn up, or anything of 
 that kind ; and though the breaks, and many 
 scratches I have not mentioned, mar an ordi- 
 nary appreciation of it, they do not destroy the 
 grand, serene, lovely expression of the whole 
 face. It is a perpetual sleep, in which a whole 
 life is stereotyped. 
 
 I shall here misplace in importance another 
 very interesting marking on the forehead, which 
 is par excellence Shakespeare's mark. It is 
 
 6i
 
 aimed at in the Stratford bust, but only by 
 hieroglyphic. I refer to the V-shaped mark- 
 ing in the forehead, which the Stratford bust 
 accents only in the point of the V over the nose. 
 This V is the entering wedge of Shakespeare's 
 head. It is as though just about so much had 
 Ijeen well driven into him from above, just the 
 surplus of all other men. Cromwell's head, 
 which is just as wide between the outer corners 
 of the eyes, and quite as wide in the temples 
 and upper jaws, needs just this wedge in the 
 upper loft to expand it to the ideality of Shake- 
 speare's head. 
 
 ''Cromwell, our chief of men," could afford 
 to play second here. 
 
 " Yet much remains 
 To conquer still ; peace hath her victories 
 No less renown'd than war." 
 
 Such a peace may the new-found mask con- 
 quer. I must also refer to a miniature picture 
 about three inches long and less in width, dated 
 
 62
 
 i637> and which tradition calls the Death-bed 
 of Shakespeare, also in the possession of Dr. 
 Becker. Providence gave it sufficient import- 
 ance to set the brother of the present Dr. Becker 
 upon the track of the lost mask, which had 
 been known previously to exist in some private 
 collection. To this intuition of the genius of 
 the artist and naturalist, Mr. Ludwig Becker, 
 we owe the bringing again to light the Death- 
 mask. Peace to his soul, which slipped anchor 
 in a foreign land. Our gratitude is his monu- 
 ment. 
 
 It is the first step that costs. If St. Denis 
 carried his head under his arm for one step, it 
 is easy to accept the rest of the miracle. The 
 Cathedral grown from his shrine is a fixed fact, 
 the Pantheon and Westminster of France, the 
 florescence of a single brain, grown to shelter- 
 ing aisles, that shade the dust of empire, the 
 luck of immortality. 
 
 How the mask got to Germany I have no 
 fact or theory to offer. Whether picked up at 
 
 63
 
 Land's End, or fished up in the Enghsh Channel 
 or the German Ocean, were all one, if it is really 
 the centre of the Shakespeare portrait system, 
 and ours now by " iteration sweet," as his lineal 
 heirs and assignees, by an item not interlined in 
 the will, like his second best bed, but adminis- 
 tered by the quorum of Atropos and Clotho, 
 
 It is the unmatched greatness of vShakespeare 
 that makes his real presence a myth. His per- 
 sonality done away with. Bacon, already bur- 
 dened with philosophy, science, ethics, and 
 jurisprudence, shoulders his art as mere athletic 
 sport ; as though Leonardo the painter were 
 the cap and bells of Da Vinci, the reviver of 
 science ; as though Aristotle and Archimedes 
 were more fortunate in a successor than Michael 
 Angelo, Raphael, and Titian, in their illustri- 
 ous predecessor. 
 
 Art is not the pastime of great men, what- 
 ever science may pick up that falls from their 
 tables. 
 
 " To the great variety of readers " (see Her- 
 
 64
 
 minge and Condell), the first thing to say is, 
 in the beginning was Shakespeare, an actual 
 man, the great poet and player in London, and 
 at Stratford ** lending money on mortgage, and 
 leaning over his gate to chat and bandy quips 
 with neighbours." This certain amount of 
 avoirdupois it is a duty to consider, and leave 
 the word-people to satisfy his credit in the 
 matter of the plays, and sonnets, and poems ; 
 and, let us hope, that being quite busy with 
 their accounts, they may keep the peace, and 
 not too hastily suspect a neighbour artist of 
 trespass in browsing in their fields. There is 
 no malice aforethought in his familiar approach 
 —nothing but a single eye to 
 
 " A combination and a form, indeed, 
 Where every god did seem to set his seal. 
 To give the world assurance of a man." 
 
 This assurance is all the world asks for in 
 portraits. 
 
 If England believed Shakespeare's face, cast 
 from his just cooled and perfect features, lay in 
 
 65 f
 
 the little nook of Hesse-Darmstadt, do you 
 believe she would not pawn her islands rather 
 than not possess it ? 
 
 Her Majesty, in her book, speaks of trying to 
 think of England without Wellington. Would 
 Her Majesty try it without Shakespeare ? And 
 for what would England bargain with oblivion 
 for every true lineament of Wellington's face ? 
 
 Some do believe the Death-mask is Shake- 
 speare, and, like the blind man, say. Help my 
 unbelief. 
 
 Those who would like to fix in their minds 
 the doctrine of his real presence in either of 
 the arts of portraiture, and make assurance 
 doubly sure, must first dismiss the myth theory, 
 and, in this other new and true way of his 
 portraits, learn to know and love him as man, 
 poet, lover, friend — patron of England's fame 
 and ours. A thousand silhouettes of his face 
 flit through his own written works, where we 
 linger enamoured with his Narcissan image. 
 
 Where one art ends another begins. 
 
 66
 
 From the limitless region of poetry, where 
 all nature is held by fee simple of letters, art 
 comes with relentless demands upon the sculp- 
 tor's scope. Cold steel and marble are all her 
 mercy offers, and, for limit of scope, she trades 
 off tangibility by cubic measure. And then, 
 as the last crucial test of her devotee, she mates 
 him with the sole-eyed sister painting, sans 
 sense of touch or ear to hear ; he must sacrifice 
 to her one sense of sight, and she will take no 
 barter. The pound for pound is compounded 
 with a few lines and colour, and chiaroscuro, 
 and a scrap of canvas, where the painter is set 
 to catch and corner coy nature, if he can. The 
 strife is not unequal. In the imitative arts all 
 have won. In music and epic poetry the same 
 keynote has been struck, and in architecture 
 the keystone fixed. Dante, Shakespeare, and 
 Titian are at par with Phidias, the Parthenon, 
 and the Greek poets. 
 
 A wise man works with his own tools. 
 
 All the poets cannot give your physical eye 
 
 67
 
 one glimpse of a visible or tangible face. This 
 the painter and sculptor must do, and by their 
 inalienable right, whose satrapy not a single 
 poet's dictum dare invade, unless that one, 
 fealty. Nor may it be supposed that here is 
 imagination tethered or rampant. The lion 
 and lamb lie down together. 
 
 We can have here but few illustrations of 
 our subject. In some later form I hope to 
 show by photographs and drawings various 
 views of the original Death-mask as now ex- 
 tant, and also views of the amended and re- 
 stored mask, brought to life and welded to 
 head and shoulders, as I conceived it might 
 have been represented if done from the living 
 model. Written language cannot focus com- 
 pletely the apprehension of this subject. But 
 we must make it serve till photographs and 
 pictures and solid forms shall be able to make 
 experimental demonstration of written facts, 
 and by it try to establish familiar relations with 
 his person and his face. 
 68
 
 In a general way, Aubrey says of Shake- 
 speare, that he was a handsome, well-shaped 
 man ; and I think we see his head, as well as 
 whole figure, offer the highest type of English 
 manliness ; whose beauty, in an artistic sense, 
 is as great a gift to art as when, *' Soule of the 
 Age," he left his written image in his works. 
 His head is not Greek any more than his plays, 
 yet it is something England may as well be 
 proud of as a part of the world's repertory of 
 art. And if in some vista of futurity, one 
 should find this Sphinx of England, it would 
 be, as now, an epitome of her history, and, as 
 Carlyle says, the best thing she has done yet. 
 
 Portraiture of its heroes is the natural in- 
 stinct of national art, impressions of which re- 
 main fixed in proportion as the capacity and 
 means of art are capable of receiving and de- 
 veloping them. 
 
 Who is next of kin to England ? If she does 
 not claim the mask, whose is it next by right 
 of entail? 
 
 69
 
 Shakespeare, "dear to both Englands," is 
 ours. We are his colony, and he the unsevered 
 link that binds us to the mother country. Who 
 are underlings, that the mask remains unre- 
 puted? and, while royal sons and daughters 
 are dowered, and jewels remain in the Tower, 
 Shakespeare's face lies in a foreign land, un- 
 redeemed ! 
 
 " Oh, the pity of it !" 
 
 There is no doubt that the maker of the bust 
 had a death-mask, and used it to the best of 
 his ability. Less than half a century later, the 
 death-mask of Cromwell was made, and nearer 
 our own time the mask of Napoleon, also the 
 cast from the Prince Consort. It is the usual 
 method for securing posthumous sculptured 
 portraits. If this mask is from Shakespeare, 
 his death must have succeeded a very short 
 illness, as the forms show the least possible 
 removal from actual vitality. It is likely that 
 it was no new thing in England to make a cast 
 
 70
 
 of the human features after decease. The then 
 fashion for Italian literature would naturally 
 revert to the cast of the face of the great poet 
 Dante. And Shakespeare himself, who, in his 
 dramas, had the habit of fixing every detail, 
 contingency, and item of fact, using them as the 
 daily pabulum of his brain, never meant to leave 
 Dr. Hall to say, "The pity of it," when, in 
 ordering the bust, he should recall that he had 
 no authority to put into the hands of Gerard 
 Johnson for the likeness. Though artists may 
 claim to be a little lower than the angels, they 
 like to have one foot at least resting on terra 
 fir77ia. With this well -assured touching spot 
 they the more easily spread their wings to soar 
 into the ideal. 
 
 In rendering this portrait in the solid forms 
 of statuary, I have been guided by the uni- 
 versal laws of portraiture : 1st, Character; 2nd, 
 Characteristics ; 3rd, Characterization. 
 
 The more I studied and restored and 
 modelled the mask, the more I saw the con- 
 
 71
 
 curring testimony that this is Shakespeare, if 
 the Droeshout print is Shakespeare. 
 
 If the Chandos portrait is Shakespeare, this 
 is more so. 
 
 If the Stratford bust is Shakespeare, this is 
 most Shakespeare. 
 
 I have found these previously acknowledged 
 records correcting each other and confirming 
 one general result. 
 
 In all that pertains to the mask and to the 
 memory of Shakespeare, I have had but this 
 sign manual : 
 
 " Your most obedient, humble servant," 
 
 which I hope to transfer to Lethe if I have 
 failed in making a true record of his face. 
 
 The firm belief, fact, fiction, or phantasm, 
 that here is Shakespeare face to face, is a 
 greater reward for my labours than the glory of 
 having created so noble an ideal head could 
 have been to my sunset days. If the present 
 age, as well as the future, can learn from this 
 
 72
 
 to believe in his true image, it will know, also, 
 that real happiness comes from adhering to 
 "simple truth, miscalled simplicity." 
 
 In rendering the mask I have aimed in no 
 sense at technical or conventional skill, or 
 dexterity, or trick in portraying its forms. I 
 have adhered with self-negation to it, and in 
 the restorations tried to maintain the simplest 
 truthfulness. If it can be done better here- 
 after, so much the better. This much is done, 
 and must be judged and appreciated from the 
 work itself, and not from any words I can 
 give. 
 
 A true likeness shows one inside out; the 
 leopard does not change the spot of the heart. 
 Its colour is set on the palette, and is the least 
 refrangible one in our spectrum. The soul is 
 photographed upon the face. If one has the 
 gift to develop it by the processes of imitative 
 art the world is so much the richer for the 
 result. The great portraits of Raphael and 
 Titian are soul talebearers, no less than the 
 
 73
 
 *'terza rima" of Dante or the "Sonnets" of 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 A great philosopher has said : "If the animus 
 be well connected with the organs of the senses, 
 or, in other words, if a man be truly rational, 
 he is perpetually aspiring after wisdom." 
 
 That there was this due connection between 
 the senses and the soul, the rationality and 
 wisdom of Shakespeare in his works assure us ; 
 and his face, together with his writings, gives 
 us that complete revelation of finite selfhood 
 which man is not often permitted to transmit 
 to future time. The life and works of Dante 
 tally with his face. In the face of Cromwell 
 the great frontal base of his brain, as left in 
 his mask, and the power of his lower jaw are 
 the upper and nether millstones of his history. 
 In modern portraits. Garrison's lamb-like face 
 has abolition ; Grant's the grip, fighting it out 
 on this line if it takes all summer, and leaving 
 not a crow's ration in the valley, letting us 
 have peace in unconditional surrender. 
 
 74
 
 A true portrait is that incorrigible page of 
 history which neither justice nor mercy in- 
 validates. It is the dead level of man 'mid 
 fluctuating fashion and fickle opinion. Our 
 national portraiture, though likely to be hung 
 for a while in the Rogues' Gallery, is incor- 
 ruptible history, every truly rendered face pro- 
 claiming, "Know all men by these presents,*' 
 as unlying as light itself. A good likeness is 
 a rogue's worst enemy. It will surely betray 
 him, and anon retort on his alter ego, "I told 
 you so." God made man in His own human 
 image. So the soul creates its outer shell in 
 likeness to itself. If the man is hid in his 
 stature it is the duty of the artist to pick him 
 out. 
 
 The Death-mask is not a fiction or work of 
 art. Experts know it was cast from a dead 
 face. It has 1616 marked on the back of it, 
 with the mortuary cross, while the plaster was 
 soft. Its agreement with the Stratford bust in 
 measures, and likeness in so many charac- 
 
 75
 
 teristics to each of the three well-known old 
 portraits of Shakespeare, add more force in 
 summing up than I can command in words, 
 and leave nothing to add by way of apology 
 for his own and our country's neglect of it 
 hitherto, but the pathos of truth itself: "He 
 came unto his own, and his own received him 
 not." To those who believe is the promise of 
 power. 
 
 END
 
 ^ 5^ ^ THE LIBRARY 
 
 '<l<>i7 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 r3 Santa Barbara 
 
 STACK COLLECTION 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DA 
 STAMPED BELOW.
 
 ciMy)=> 
 
 F S. t 
 
 I>ar)!