About a dozen are reinforced, as corroborative evidence, with verses supposed to have issued from the pen of Ben Jonson. These are all to be attributed to one ready pseudo-Elizabethan writer whose identity is known. With these pictures, apparently, should be ranged the composition, now in America, purporting to represent Shakespeare and Ben Jonson playing chess.
The "fancy-portraits" are also numerous. The 18th-century small full-length "Willett portrait" is at the Shakespeare Memo rial—a charmingly touched-in little figure. There are many repre sentations of the poet in his study in the act of composition— they include those by Benjamin Wilson (Stratford Town Hall), John Boaden, John Faed, R.A., Sir George Harvey, R.S.A., C.
Bestland, B. J. N. Geiger, and the painter of the Warwick Castle picture, etc.; others have for subject Shakespeare reading, either to the Court or to his family, by John Wood, E. Ender, R. Westall, R.A., etc.; or the infancy and childhood of Shakespeare, by George Romney (three pictures), T. Stothard, R.A., John Wood, James Sant, R.A.; and Shakespeare before Sir Thomas Lucy, by Sir G. Harvey, R.S.A., Thomas Brooks, A. Chisholme, etc. These, and kindred subjects such as "Shakespeare's Courtship," have provided infinite material for Shakespeare-loving painters.
The engraved portraits on copper, steel, and wood number many hundreds. Vertue and Walpole speak of an engraved portrait by John Payne (fl. 162o, the pupil of Simon Pass and one of the first English engravers who achieved distinction) ; but no such print has been identified and its existence is doubted. Walpole perhaps confounded it with that by W. Marshall, a reversed and reduced version of the Droeshout, which was published as frontispiece to the spurious edition of Shakespeare's poems (164o). An en graving, to all but expert eyes unrecognizable as a copy, was made from it in 1815, and another later, by Swaine. William Faithorne (d. 1691) is credited with the frontispiece to Quarles's edition of "The Rape of Lucrece, by William Shakespeare, gent." (1655). It was copied for Rodd by R. Sawyer and republished in 1819. It represents the tragic scene between Tarquin and Lucrece, and above is inset an oval medallion, being a rendering of the Droes hout portrait reversed. Of the earliest engravings from the Chandos portrait, the first is by L. du Guernier (Arland type) and that by M. (father of G.) van der Gucht ; they are intro duced into a pleasing composition. These, like Vertue's earlier prints, look to the left ; subsequent versions are reversed. Per haps the most popular and important up to that time is the line engraving (to the right) by Houbraken, a Dutchman, done for Birch's "Heads of Illustrious Persons of Great Britain" 1752). This free rendering of the Chandos portrait is the parent
of the numerous engravings of "the Houbraken type." Since that date many plates of a high order, from many of the principal portraits, have been issued, in the majority of cases being ex tremely inaccurate.
A number of portraits in stained glass have been inserted in the windows of public institutions. Typical of them are the German Chandos windows by Franz Mayer (Mayer & Co.) at Stationers' Hall, and in St. Helens, Bishopsgate (Professor Blaim) ; that of the Droeshout type in the great hall of the City of London school, and another by John R. Clayton in St. James's, Shoreditch. The Droeshout window by Savill, in the Empire theatre, London, has been removed to be placed, it is said, in the Drury Lane theatre. Ford Madox Brown's design is one of the best.
We now come to the sculptured memorials. After Gerrard Johnson's bust no statuary portrait seems to have been executed until 1740, when the statue in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, was set up by public subscription, mainly through the activity of the earl of Burlington, Dr. R. Mead, and the poet Pope. It was "invented" by William Kent and carried out by Peter Schee makers. It is technically good, and is interesting as being the first sculptured portrait of the poet based upon the Chandos picture. A free repetition, reversed and with many changes. of detail, is erected in a niche on the exterior wall of the town-hall of Strat ford-on-Avon. The marble copy, much simplified, in Leicester Square, is by Fontana, a gift to London by Baron Albert Grant. By L. F. Roubiliac is the statue which in 1758 David Garrick commissioned him to carve and which he bequeathed to the British Museum. Three terra-cotta models for the statue are in the Victoria and Albert Museum and in private hands ; a marble reproduction of it also exists. To Roubiliac also must be credited the celebrated "Davenant Bust" of blackened terra-cotta in the possession of the Garrick Club. This fine work of art derives its name from having been found bricked up in the old Duke's theatre in Portugal Row, Lincoln's Inn Fields, which 180 years before was d'Avenant's. The fine alto-relievo representation of Shakespeare, by T. Banks, R.A., between the Geniuses of Paint ing and the Drama, is now in the garden of New Place, Stratford on-Avon. It is remarkable that Banks's was the first British hand to model a portrait of the poet.