The First Folio, printed in 1623, has on its titlepage an engraved portrait by Martin Droeshout.  On the opposite page are lines saying:

The Droeshout Engraving, 1623

This figure that thou here seest put,
   It was for gentle Shakespeare cut;
Wherein the graver had a strife
   With Nature to out-do the life:
O, could he but have drawn his wit
   As well in brass as he hath hit
His face, the print would then surpass
   All that was ever writ in brass.
But since he cannot, reader, look
   Not on his picture but his book .

                                           B. I.

‘B. I.’ pretty certainly stands for Ben Jonson (the letter j was represented by i), whose great poem in praise of Shakespeare is printed among the early leaves of the book. Moreover the volume was apparently seen through the press by Shakespeare’s friends and lifelong colleagues, John Heminges and Henry Condell. All of this suggests that the engraving was a good enough likeness of Shakespeare to pass muster with them. It must have been made from a drawing or painting which presumably has not survived.

Secondly, there is the bust which forms part of Shakespeare’s monument in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon.

This was in place by 1623, at which time many people who had known Shakespeare well, including his two daughters and his son-in-law, and possibly his widow (who died in that year) were still alive. The bust was restored in the eighteenth century, but there is good evidence that its appearance was not substantially altered, so again we may suppose that it is at least an adequate likeness. .

The Chandos Portrait - attributed to John Taylor, c1610

Apart from this, a number of paintings have been supposed to offer authentic likenesses of Shakespeare; the only one that is now seriously considered as having possibly been painted from life is that known as the Chandos portrait, now in the National Portrait Gallery, which at one time belonged to William Davenant, a playwright who liked to suggest that he was Shakespeare's illegitimate son.

Professor Stanley Wells, CBE
January 2009