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Articles
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Searching for Shakespeare - and Finding so Much MoreA Trip to the National Portrait GalleryDateline: 12th March, 2006 The National Portrait Gallery is 150 this year. Since the first portrait in the gallery was a painting of a man presumed to be Shakespeare (the famous and much-used Chandos portrait featuring a glistering gold earring), one celebration of this auspicious anniversary is a new exhibition about the Bard. The title says it all. As readers of Peter Ackroyd's recent biography will know, William Shakespeare was an elusive man and there is no absolute guarantee that any likeness in the exhibition represents the playwright rather than one of his contemporaries. In this context, the curators have put together an exhibition about his life and times, containing as many portraits of Shakespeare (if they are) as they could reasonably manage. It seems highly unlikely that all of the pictures are of the playwright, since they fall into different groupings so that those showing him towards the end of his life seem to be somebody quite different from some of the more youthful portrayals. It is generally presumed that the later paintings are realistic, since they appeared during his lifetime or soon after his death and someone would surely have cried foul had they not represented the right man. The exhibition is divided into seven sections starting with documentary evidence regarding Shakespeare's early life and an overview of London playhouses in the latter years of the 16th century. The third and fourth parts zero in on the man himself, the former putting him into the company of the Earl of Southampton and the Lord Chamberlain's Men while the latter contains a bust and all of the portraits. This is where the fun starts, as visitors can try to spot which of them looks like the kind of person who might have been a great playwright and more to the point whether all are of the same person. This collection contains most of the known portraits of the writer and amusingly, a garish piece that purported to be Shakespeare but was subsequently proved to be a copy painted 200 or 300 years too late. We then move through portraits of Shakespeare's contemporaries such as a pair of Johns, Donne and Fletcher, before reaching a fascinating set of exhibits drawn from early editions of his works including a First Folio. Fittingly, the final document is the last will and testament of William Shakespeare and one imagines that given a supreme effort with the faint manuscript, one could locate the disposition of the famous second-best bed. Having spent £8 to enjoy a trip back into the time of Queen Elizabeth and King James, it is wasteful to leave the gallery without having a look around. Many of the exhibits have theatrical resonance at the moment, there are three other exhibitions that every theatre lover should also visit (plus one on Harley Granville-Barker and Lillah McCarthy not reviewed) and, even better, these are free. Icons and Idols contains a collection of images commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery over the last 25 years. These include everybody from Lady Thatcher to David Beckham but include a fair share of theatre legends starting with Alan Bennett and including Sir Alan Ayckbourn, Sir John Mortimer and Lord Lloyd Webber. The Royal Court is 100 years younger than the National Portrait Gallery but it well deserves an exhibition of 41 photographs covering the first fifty years of its existence. Starting with George Devine, all of the great luminaries of the theatre are there, with the exception of a series of recent directors (Stephen Daldry, Ian Rickson and Katie Mitchell) who are in any event, featured in a triple portrait nearby. The inclusions cover all aspects of the theatrical profession with administrators (Sir John Mortimer again), writers, directors, the odd backstage contributor such as designer Jocelyn Herbert as well as actors. This is a wonderful trip down memory lane. The names build up a golden jubilee history of the Court. The theatre would not have been the same without Max Stafford-Clark, Caryl Churchill, Harold Pinter, Mark Ravenhill or Lord Olivier and Joan Plowright. Sadly, so many of the Court's greats are no longer with us. That may be understandable in the cases of Lord Olivier and John Osborne (seen at his finest moment glorying in the success of Look Back in Anger) who lived full lives but so many of the good and not-so-good died young, as is apparent from photographs of Joe Orton, Sarah Kane and Katrin Cartlidge. Finally, there is a fine, small exhibition of drawings of actors by Stuart Pearson Wright. He has a very distinctive style that is on the way to caricature but doesn't quite get there. He reduces and narrows heads at the expense of bodies but even so, Pearson Wright perfectly catches the personalities of those that he portrays. He helps himself by selecting actors with telling, interesting faces. There is something to appeal to most tastes with portraits spanning the new (Nonso Anozie and Indira Varma), the established (Saskia Reeves and Tom Hollander) and the experienced (Ian McDiarmid, Alan Rickman and Jeremy Irons). Any visitor to London should spare half a day for a trip to the National Portrait Gallery. 2006 is a good time for theatre lovers to visit with a major anniversary to share in and the added bonus of these exhibitions.
Philip Fisher
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