Letters published in the national press

The Cobbe portrait (left), the Janssen portrait (centre) and the Droeshout (right)

In the Spring of 2009, a great controversy arose as a result of a newly discovered portrait purporting to be of Shakespeare being unveiled. The principal cheerleader for this painting, known as the Cobbe portrait, was the famous English Shakespeare expert, Stanley Wells. Although the press reported this discovery with little criticism, the response in the various letters pages of the press in the UK and in America has been very dismissive. I'm pleased that I have had two letters published on the topic – in The Times and The Independent. I was particularly pleased that the letter to the Independent introduced Edward de Vere and the Authorship Question into the debate.

From The Times, March 14, 2009

Objections to Shakespeare being the sitter of the Cobbe portrait

Sir, There are two principal objections to Shakespeare being the sitter of the Cobbe portrait (report, Mar 10). First, in 1610 Shakespeare was 46 years old, whereas the man in the painting is clearly a much younger man. And the idea that the painter would flatter Shakespeare with youth is absurd at the time of his great maturity as an author. The Sonnets were first published in 1609 and in Sonnet 138 he ruminates on the disparity in age between himself and his muse, the Dark Lady:

“When my love swears that she is made of truth/ I do believe her, though I know she lies” and “Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young/ Although she knows my days are past the best/ Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue.”

Second, if Stanley Wells is “90 per cent” confident that this is a 46-year- old Shakespeare, I’m afraid he’s going to have to let go of the Droeshout engraving in the First Folio — one simply can’t have a 46-year-old with a full head of hair one day and, the next, a great bald domed head.

Jeremy Crick
Wolstanton, Staffs

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article5903856.ece

From The Independent, Monday, 30 March 2009

A ruff guide to brushing up your Shakespeare

Shakespeare "expert" Stanley Wells needs to brush up on his scholarship if he wishes to retain that sobriquet (report, 28 March). By continuing to claim the Cobbe portrait as a genuine portrait of Shakespeare, it is understandable that his arguments must also accommodate the Folger portrait (otherwise known as the Janssen), because one of the paintings is clearly a copy of the other.

I can only assume that, as a scholar, Mr Wells has read the results of the X-ray analysis of the Janssen by Charles Wisner Barrell in the 1940s which proved that the age of the sitter - "A.E. 46" - had been overpainted on the original figure of 40, and that the date underneath of 1610 had been overpainted on the original date of 1590. These alterations, it is clear, were made by someone keen to fit them to the known dates of Shakespeare, as was the overpainting of the bald head, to increase the value of the painting.

Furthermore, Mr Wells should be able to recognise that the pattern of the ruff on the Janssen carries the Tudor rose design, common in 1590, and not the Scottish thistle which became the vogue on the succession of James I in 1603.

Barrell also performed a similar analysis upon another painting purporting to be of Shakespeare in the Folger's collection, the "Ashbourne" portrait. Discovering a similar overpainted bald head and altered dates to fit Shakespeare, he also found the monogram of the painter, CK, and, together with a wealth of other information, concluded that the painting was actually the lost portrait of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, by Cornelius Ketel.

What an irony that someone hoping to make a fast buck (in this instance, the Reverend Clement Kingston, who was later sacked by Ashbourne Grammar School) out of a new portrait of Shakespeare should have used a genuine portrait of the leading candidate in the Shakespeare authorship question.

Jeremy Crick
Newcastle-under-Lyme, STAFFORDSHIRE

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/letters/letters-face-of-shakespeare-1657149.html

From The Times, September 12, 2007

Much ado about Shakespeare

Sir, Benedict Nightingale, in his review of Mark Rylance’s play exploring the Shakespeare authorship question (Sept 4), asks: “Why would Oxford, who died in 1604, have left Macbeth, Lear and his best work in some bottom drawer?” Mr Nightingale might well have put the same question about William Shakespeare who, at his death in 1616, left 17 of the plays currently attributed to him unpublished. It was not until the First Folio was published in 1623 that the full canon of 37 plays emerged.

Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, was a courtier poet. He had no need to publish his works – his career as a dramatist was bent primarily on satisfying Queen Elizabeth’s passion for dramatic interludes and masques – unlike Shakespeare. Orthodox scholars must answer the question of why many of the early quarto editions of the plays were published anonymously. If Shakespeare was the author of these plays (and not a single scrap of archive evidence proves that he was an author) then asking the printers not to reveal his name on these early, promising plays seems an odd way of going about finding a patron or making a name for himself.

Mr Nightingale suggests that Shakespeare sceptics are conspiracy theorists. It doesn’t take a conspiracy for an author to write under a pen-name. It was common practice then as it is now. Mark Rylance is doing a sterling job in bringing these reasonable doubts to a popular audience.

JEREMY CRICK,
Wolstanton, Staffs

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article2434300.ece

Sir Peter Lely's portrait of Elizabeth Trentham, Lady Cullen

In my search for the Sir Peter Lely portrait of Elizabeth Trentham, Viscountess Cullen, I responded to an article in The Times which offered a potential new indentification of the sitter in a Lely painting known as the Chiddingstone Venus, a painting which had always been assumed to be of Nell Gwynn. It was as a result of this correspondence that I was contacted by the owner of the Lely portrait of Elizabeth Trentham whom I was to visit.

From The Times, May 16, 2007

Was heiress the Lely ‘Venus’?

Sir, Nicholas Reeves (letter, May 10 ) writes that in the absence of any alternative candidate for the Chiddingstone Venus we should continue to accept Nell Gwyn as the sitter.

How about the wealthy heiress Elizabeth Trentham who married Bryan Cokayne, 2nd Viscount Cullen? During my research into the Trentham family of Rocester Abbey, Staffordshire, I have come across two references to this Elizabeth Trentham being painted by Lely and, in spite of a detailed search, I have not been able to locate the painting. Could the Chiddingstone Venus be this missing work?

In Strange Pages from Family Papers (1895), T. F. Thiselton Dyer says Elizabeth Trentham “became a prominent beauty of the court of Charles II, and was painted with less than his usual amount of drapery by Sir Peter Lely”.

Elizabeth Trentham was baptised on October 24, 1640, and was the last in the line of the Trentham family. The family wealth which she inherited as sole heiress derived from the time of the dissolution of the monasteries when Richard Trentham, cupbearer to Edward VI and described as a “favourite” of Henry VIII, was granted the lease of Rocester Abbey. She inherited the estate of her great-grandfather, Francis Trentham, of sizeable Staffordshire landholdings and the manorship of Castle Hedingham, the family seat of the earls of Oxford since the time of William the Conqueror.

To give some idea of its value, her uncle and guardian John Bowyer negotiated a prenuptial settlement of £20,000 for his ward’s hand (when she was just 13) with her future father-in-law Charles Cokayne, of Rushton Hall, Northampton. This is equivalent to more than £3 million today.

By the earliest date of the Chiddingstone Venus (1665) Elizabeth Trentham (Lady Cullen) would have been 25 and the mother of three children. Coming into such wealth so young, it is perhaps not surprising that in establishing herself as a Restoration beauty, she developed a reputation for high living and extravagent spending. By the time of her death, in 1713, her wealth had been dissipated and she was living very modestly.

JEREMY CRICK
Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffs

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article1795587.ece

From The Times, May 21, 2007

Venus rising

Sir, I’ve discovered a wonderful new resource for historical researchers – your very own letters page.
Having raised the possibility (letter, May 16) that the sitter for Lely’s Chiddingstone Venus may have been the heiress Elizabeth Trentham, I’m delighted to inform you that the owner of Lely’s portrait of this Restoration beauty contacted me and that I have now arranged a visit, thus bringing my two-year search for this elusive painting to a successful conclusion.

I suspect that the directors of Christie’s, who will shortly be auctioning the Venus, will be relieved that Nell Gwynn is once again the prime candidate for this portrait.

JEREMY CRICK
Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffs

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article1816615.ece

In a classic Times letters debate, on this occasion about the reputation of the plant ivy, I saw the chance to get a delightful quote into the public domain from the exquisite pen of Elizabeth (née Trentham), Countess of Oxford.

From The Times, February 28, 2007

Ivy the terrible

Sir, The thoroughly negative reputation of ivy is, I fear, too well rooted in English history in spite of Mr Butterfield’s valiant attempt to rescue it (letter, Feb 26 ).

In 1611 the Countess of Oxford, widow of Edward de Vere and a former maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth, was having a trying time with her son, Henry, the 18th Earl of Oxford. At the age of 17 he had fallen into the wayward company of his first cousin, John Hunt, who was not only running up huge debts in the young Earl’s name but was also encouraging him to negelect his duties as an esquire to King James.

In exasperation, Countess Elizabeth wrote to her late husband’s brother-in-law by his first marriage, Sir Robert Cecil, beseeching the Secretary of State to discipline Hunt. The letter reads, in part: “[I] am therefore absolutely resolved, unless I shall presently obtain the absolute banishment of him and his confederates from my son . . . for the world will never believe (except I make it known by a public renouncing of his further government) but I might with suit unto his great and powerful allies and friends have easily procured this ivy to be plucked away from this young oak whose growth is so much hindered by it.”

JEREMY CRICK
Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffs

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article1449260.ece