The FACE that LAUNCHED a THOUSAND PROFESSORSHIPS

The facial image of Shakespeare has been a matter of intense conjecture since his very lifetime, when of course there was no television and no press daily to convey his presence to a curious populace. The latest claimant to the role of authentic, definitive likeness of the great man is the shining morning face of the portrait known as The Cobbe. Until now it has been in private hands, those of the Cobbe family (hence its identification). Now, after extensive further research, it emerges to offer itself to the public gaze. It’s a lovely image, almost as seductive as the fabulous portrait of John Donne by an equally unknown hand, to the saving-for-the-nation of which I contributed rather recklessly three years ago when we had more money to throw around.


But is it the real thing? Professor Stanley Wells believes so but he does have a vested interest in the portrait being a major draw for he chairs the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, which august body will, from Shakespeare’s next birthday onwards, host an exhibition of which the Cobbe will be the centrepiece. Other experts are less sanguine, not least those based at the National Portrait Gallery where a really beguiling show entitled 'Searching for Shakespeare' was mounted some seven years ago.

Naturally enough, the playwright anticipated all this. “I have heard of your paintings too, well enough” Hamlet tells Ophelia. “God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another” (III.i.150). The prince was of course speaking of women’s makeup but the remark will, with only gentle distortion, serve to suggest its author’s abiding prescience.

The simultaneous unveiling of the foundations of the first playhouse to have staged Shakespeare’s work is less controversial and more objectively significant if lacking the romantic appeal of the portrait issue. Known simply as The Theatre, the site is in Shoreditch. The playhouse that stood on the site was constructed by James Burbage, father of Shakespeare’s close associate Richard. Perhaps the major dig that will start twelve months hence and close Blackfriars station (which is to be rebuilt and its Thameslink connection upgraded) will yield some trace of the long sought theatre built over the grounds of the Dominican monastery that gave the area its name. This was another construction of Burbage Sr. Shakespeare was a founding shareholder in that project but its repertoire was largely devoted to the younger Jacobean playwrights.

All this is bracing stuff but what we really need is the supreme playwright here among us now, plying his trade. What a subject he would find in Zimbabwe. The power struggle between ZANU-PF and the MDC-T yields nothing in drama and blood to the ancient British history that Shakespeare found in Holinshed’s Chronicles. In Macbeth, Duncan says of the original Thane of Cawdor, discovered at the play’s outset to be traitorous: “There’s no art/To find the mind’s construction in the face./He was a gentleman on whom I built/An absolute trust” (I.iv.12). The next stage direction is the favourite in the canon of my old English master James Hasler: “Enter Macbeth”. He’s right: it should be a wonderful moment of theatrical irony and premonition but I have never seen a production – and I have seen tens if not dozens – that made anything much of it.

Those who supported Robert Mugabe’s assumption of the premiership of what was then still Southern Rhodesia in 1980 might well feel that they failed to find his mind’s construction. The last ten years of Mugabe’s presidency have provided a textbook demonstration of absolute power corrupting absolutely. But the last twelve months have seen a change, though it is still too early to be sure whether it presages an unravelling of Mugabe’s power. And how far is Mugabe engaged in a deep game of quadruple bluff? He is, after all, one of the great Machiavels on the modern world stage.

This week has provided fantastic material. What playwright wouldn’t surrender a limb to write that scene when the Mugabes visited Morgan Tsvangirai in hospital after the apparent accident that killed Susan Tsvangirai. The president uttered various pious sentiments – he is, of course, a devout Catholic as could be guessed from his taste for conspicuous consumption and his hobby of having people killed – and Grace Mugabe wept gracious tears of a crocodile nature. The first lady, though not the intellectual equal of Lady Macbeth, makes a terrific study in hypocritical harpiedom. Then yesterday there was Mrs Tsvangirai’s funeral at which the president spoke, striking a note that the innocent might hear as conciliatory, even fraternal. For his part, the bereaved prime minister has stamped on speculation that the supposed accident was suspicious, despite the number of road collisions that have conveniently eliminated enemies of ZANU-PF over the years. What’s he up to? The MDC-T has nonetheless commissioned an independent enquiry into the incident.

There is terrific scope for Shakespearean drama in these events. One is bound to imagine that the end of Mugabe’s rule will be occasioned by his death of natural causes rather than by some Zimbabwean equivalent of Birnan Wood being come to Dunsinane (and I have not heard any suggestion that Mr Tsvangirai was from his mother's womb untimely ripped). Even so, the monologues, duologues, crowd scenes and set pieces would flow thick and fast. The Tragicall Historie of Mugabeth: who’s going to write it if not Shakespeare?