The Late Mr Shakespeare

Chapter Sixty-Five A look at William Shakespeare

Imagine William Shakespeare in his prime. It is the April of 1594, say, and he is thirty years old today. He might be at his lodgings in London, though if he is there will be little enough for him to do here, the theatres having been shut down for over a year on account of the worst outbreak of the plague in living memory. (Fifteen thousand persons died of it in the last twelve months.) More likely, then, that he is in the provinces with his Company; or perhaps staying at Titchfield, the country house of his patron the Earl of Southampton; or he might even be at home with his wife and their three children ...

The place is not important. Where he is does not matter.

It is the face of William Shakespeare that I want you to look at.

It is a frank face, though it keeps many secrets. Fair-skinned, fresh-cheeked, it is a face that blushes easily to reveal its owner's heart. It is a good-looking face, with firm, delicate features, and a gaze both calm and observant under brows set low.

It is a worldly face: sensual, sceptical, alert. The eyes are blue, and they dance with bright amusement most of the time. When they do not, the look they give you is straight and unwavering. He has a somewhat drooping lower lip.

That foolish hanging of his nether lip - I think he said he got it from his mother. His forehead, though, is splendid. Like the dome of an observatory.

The most singular feature, no doubt, is the poet's nose. It is broader at the nostrils than down the straight, solid bridge. It is tip-tilted (slightly), and those nostrils arch quickly at the least unpleasant smell. All Mr Shakespeare's senses are acute, but you can see his sense of smell at work, thanks to that singular nose. He is most sensitive to dirt and evil odours. Put him in a room with a spaniel and a tainted bone and watch the way his eyes water and his nose twitches. His senses revolt from the way dogs are fed at table. But if he is your guest, he will say nothing. He is very polite. He is very 'After you'.

There is a small mole high on his left cheek.

I said his brow was splendid, and so it is. His hair, though, soft and brown, is receding from the forehead. Cheeks and chin are firmly moulded. He has downy moustaches and a small brown tuft of beard. Although the lower lip is more prominent than the upper, both are finely shaped. Their most characteristic expression is a faint ironic smile.

I only ever saw two portraits that came near doing this face justice. The first, the frontispiece of the Folio, that immortal piece of inferior engraving by Martin Droeshout. It is inferior, but it catches the man I knew. The other's that Stratford bust created by Gerard Jannsen, which (again) is no great work of art, but a pretty good likeness to how Mr Shakespeare looked in his later years. Note that both the Droeshout engraving and the Jannsen bust won the approval of those who knew him best - in the first instance, his fellow players; in the second, his widow and his daughters, and his sister. Two images of the Shakespeare I knew and loved.

In the bust, of course, the face has grown somewhat thicker, been a little bit coarsened. But the brow is still large and lofty, and the eyes do not leave you. He was always a well-built man, tall and lithe, his body nimble even when he put on weight.

I remember once we stood together by a haystack to shun a shower, and the rain ran down his face, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Mr Shakespeare's tongue slipping out slyly, this way and that, just the merest quick flicker, like an adder's, to get a taste of the raindrops on their way. I did not let him know I had seen him do it. But ever afterwards I have thought that the act was essential Shakespeare. He was a man who wanted to taste the sweetness and the bitterness of everything. He would eat each day to the core, and the dark night too. He smiled to himself as he feasted on those raindrops.