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England’s most famous literary figure has come face to face with the
most modern computer-aided techniques. The Bard himself – William Shakespeare
– has been placed under digitised scrutiny by American researcher Lillian
Schwartz, a consultant at AT&T Bell Laboratories and a pioneer in computer
graphics analysis.

It was the Bard’s visage rather than his words that intrigued Schwartz.
Specifically, she asked whose likeness formed the model for the most famous
of Shakespeare’s images, the one that graced the first Folio edition, published
in 1623.

The answer: Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth I, patron of the Shakespearean
theatre.

Literary scholars continue to debate who wrote the words that go under
Shakespeare’s name. From a long list of potential authors, including Francis
Bacon, Ben Jonson, William Stanley, the 6th Earl of Derby, Edward de Vere,
the 17th Earl of Oxford, and Elizabeth I, two names have emerged as the
strongest contenders: the Earl of Oxford and Stratford-on-Avon’s William
Shakespeare himself. But just as the authorship of Shakespeare’s works is
a matter of uncertainty, so too is the model (or models) for the many and
varied images of the man that survive today. There is always the intriguing
possibility that the two mysteries – of words and images – are somehow linked.

Schwartz has for some years been matching up images and digitised analysis.
After tackling the enigmas of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and The Last
Supper, she has turned her attention to the identity of the Folio image.

Schwartz developed her own computer-aided image analysis, which involves
scaling and aligning the pictures in question. Direct comparisons through
digitised overlays can then be made of various parts of – in this case –
the face, using interactive graphics editors. Even if direct identity of
two images is incomplete, it is sometimes possible to detect tricks an artist
might have used in manipulating images. Schwartz suspects that the creator
of the Folio image used such trickery.

The Folio image of Shakespeare was engraved by a young artist called
Martin Droeshout. His work received mixed reviews. Some felt that the image
stood between us ‘. . . and the true Shakespeare’, while others admired
‘the searching look of the eyes understanding everything, what a forehead,
what a brain!’

The Folio image is significantly different from the monument to the
Bard that stands in Stratford-on-Avon, and which was executed in the same
year as the Folio’s publication. If the Stratford monument – commissioned
by Shakespeare’s family – is a true likeness, then the Folio image must
be someone else.

Because some scholars are convinced that the Earl of Oxford, Edward
de Vere, is either the author of Shakespeare’s works, or at least collaborated
on them, Schwartz expected that he might be the model for the Folio image.
Not so. No amount of creative comparison could elicit a convincing match
between Droeshout’s engraving and any pictures of de Vere. Schwartz then
began a search through the gallery of others who have in various ways been
linked with Shakespeare’s works.

‘Of all the examinations, this one face (that of Elizabeth I) compared
with the Folio image, proved to contain such astonishing feature matches
that the resemblance pops out at the viewer even on cursory examination,’
says Schwartz.

Scanning, digitising and scaling the two images allowed a much more
detailed scrutiny. ‘Again, the Queen’s features and the Folio image proved
to be an excep tional match.’ Schwartz’s detailed analysis will appear in
next month’s issue of the journal Pixel.

There were problems with the mouth and with the eyes. Take a vertical
slice out of the centre of the eye, however, reform the pupil, and the mismatch
vanishes. ‘Once Droeshout narrowed the eye and adjusted the contour of the
face accordingly, by ‘pulling’ the outline of the face of the Folio image
in, he caused the forehead to bulge,’ says Schwartz. This, and other extensive
analysis and close matches convinced Schwartz that ‘Elizabeth I, patron
of the theatre, provides most of the image we have come to know as Shakespeare’.

If true, what does it imply? Does it simply acknowledge the Queen as
patron of Shakespeare’s theatre? Or does it hint at Elizabeth as collaborator
or even author of the greatest works in the English language? As the eminent
historian A. L. Rowse has observed of the Folio image: ‘The eyes . . . the
upper part of the head . . . is all intelligence . . . retaining what secrets?’