Monday, August 31, 2009

Cobbe Portrait Debate Continues

I missed it in yesterday's Washington Post, but there was a long piece there by Sally Jenkins on the Cobbe Portrait controversy - is it, or isn't it, Shakespeare? The story is more than a bit overwrought ("The styled courtier who gazes out of the portrait is undeniably a seducer, and that much was true of William Shakespeare: He was an arch-persuader with language. But we didn't reckon he was such a looker. Frankly, we always thought he was a bald pudge. Whereas this man is bouffant and handsome, complicatedly so, with his doily of a collar and come-hither expression" are two lines from the first paragraph), and there doesn't seem to be much new in it, but the debate is interesting enough to make the eye-rolling worth it.