Posted on 04/23/2002 7:23:36 AM PDT by Dallas
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.
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"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.
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 (news - web sites), 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.
I love it when the Gay Fruitcake Brigade stops taking its anti-psychotic meds...
But, wait...he did write "AS YOU LIKE IT," and "TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA."
Hmmmm...
And rumor has it that the Scottish Play was originally entitled, "MacBESS." That was before he decided to write it with a lisp.
I heard he also wrote "Deliverance", too.
You are correct. I read the book, and everything Sobran says makes sense. I have no doubt the 17th Earl of Oxford authored Shakespear's works.
The 17th Earl of Oxford didn't sound as if he was too straight, but who knows. In an article here on FR a few weeks ago, it said the British don't ask if so and so is gay, but rather, how gay is he.
The sonnets are dedicated to the unknown Master W. H. by the printer, not by Shakespeare.Things of that sort must be known to the specialists. Why are they so conveniently omitted? This is a rhetorical question, of course.
Thanks, orator.
There's another theory which claims that rival playwright openly gay Christopher Marlowe wrote plays as "Shakespeare" after faking his own death at the hands of a jealous lover.
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