ABSTRACT
In The Object Stares Back, the art historian James Elkins argues that 'A face, in the end, is the place where the coherent mind becomes an image'. As the essays in this collection demonstrate, the power of the face is ubiquitous in Shakespeare's plays, the playwright continually inviting readers and audience members to explore the connection between faces and the characters beneath or behind them. Shakespearean scholars and admirers of his art have long been fascinated with the dramatist's likeness, apparently hoping that the man's face might reveal the secret to his genius. For centuries scholars have been unsatisfied with the two unquestioned likenesses of the bard: the Droeshout portrait in the First Folio and the Janssen bust that adorns Shakespeare's funerary monument in Stratford-on-Avon. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust offered the following, notably unscientific, description of the image: His face is open and alive, with a rosy, rather sweet expression, perhaps suggestive of modesty.
