Shakespeare's 'droopy eyebrow'
February 15 2016
Picture: The Times/The Australian
Regular readers will know that AHN's nonsense detector goes off when people start seeing medical 'symptoms' in historical portraits. The latest claim, in today's Times, involves Shakespeare. A new biography of William Davenant, the poet, by Simon Andrew Stirling, claims that Davenant was Shakespeare's natural son - and part of the proof is that in both their portraits we can apparently see a 'droopy eyebrow'. Both sitters, therefore, must have been related. Reports Dominic Kenney in The Times:
Two carvings and an engraving of the Bard and two pictures of Davenant indicate they shared the same inherited deformity of a droopy left eyebrow, Stirling observes.
One of the carvings must be the Stratford monument, and the engraving must be the Droeshout engraving. The image above shows a portrait of Davenant and the 'Flower Portrait' of Shakespeare which is based on the Droeshout engraving. Of course, in neither the Stratford monument nor the Droeshout engraving can we actually see a droopy eyebrow, and to infer that either portrait is good or accurate enough to allow us to deduce medical symptoms is simpyl incorrect. Nor does Davenant iconography (an engraving after a lost Greenhill here - hardly prime source material - and a supposed Robert Walker portrait here) show any signs of a droopy eyebrow.
Davenant was supposed to have been Shakespeare's godson. He is best known in AHN parts as the first recorded owner of the Chandos portrait (and that doesn't show a droopy eyebrow either).
Update - a reader writes:
Simon Andrew Stirling's previous book 'Who Killed Shakespeare?' adduced the droopy eyebrow as a post-mortem murder wound. This time round it's congenital, hereditary and - as you say - invisible.
Update II - Simon Andrew Stirling writes:
I'm indebted to you for posting about my new book, Shakespeare's Bastard, and what Dominic Kennedy wrote about it in The Times.
However, I feel I must correct what another reader added to your post. At no point in my previous book, Who Killed William Shakespeare?, did I suggest that the ptosis of Shakespeare's left eyebrow was a post-mortem injury. The damage to the outer edge of the left eye socket was, I believe, the result of a fatal assault, but the drooping eyebrow is a different matter and was not actually referred to in Who Killed William Shakespeare?
The Lincoln College portrait, supposedly of Davenant, has to be studied very closely to see the odd angle of the left eyebrow. The "droop" is more clearly visible in the Faithorne engraving of Davenant. The comparable "droop" of Shakespeare's left eyebrow can be seen in most of the acknowledged portraits of the Bard, including the Chandos. Given that eyebrow ptosis can be an autosomal dominant inheritance, I consider the comparable eyebrows to be worthy of consideration alongside a host of other reasons to suspect that Davenant was indeed Shakespeare's son.
I fear it is possible to see neither a 'droop' nor any damage to the eye socket in Shakespeare's iconography. Likewise, any droop in the Faithorne engraving of Davenant is either a matter of conjecture, or down to Faithorne's abilities as an engraver.
