ipps
(now with his collection in America) the tone is clearer than in the
ordinary copies, and the shadows are less darkened by cross-hatching and
coarse dotting. The engraver, Martin Droeshout, belonged to a Flemish
family of painters and engravers long settled in London, where he was
born in 1601. He was thus fifteen years old at the time of Shakespeare's
death in 1616, and it is consequently improbable that he had any personal
knowledge of the dramatist. The engraving was doubtless produced by
Droeshout very shortly before the publication of the First Folio in 1623,
when he had completed his twenty-second year. It thus belongs to the
outset of the engraver's professional career, in which he never achieved
extended practice or reputation. A copy of the Droeshout engraving, by
William Marshall, was prefixed to Shakespeare's 'Poems' in 1640, and
William Faithorne made another copy for the frontispiece of the edition
of 'The Rape of Lucrece' published in 1655.

The 'Droeshout' painting.

There is little doubt that young Droeshout in fashioning his engraving
worked from a painting, and there is a likelihood that the original
picture from which the youthful engraver worked has lately come to light.
As recently as 1892 Mr. Edgar Flower, of Stratford-on-Avon, discovered in
the possession of Mr. H. C. Clements, a private gentleman with artistic
tastes residing at Peckham Rye, a portrait alleged to represent
Shakespeare. The picture, which was faded and somewhat worm-eaten, dated
beyond all doubt from the early years of the seventeenth century. It was
painted on a panel formed of two planks of old elm, and in the upper
left-hand corner was the inscription 'Willm Shakespeare, 1609.' Mr.
Clements purchased the portrait of an obscure dealer about 1840, and knew
nothing of its history, beyond what he set down on a slip of paper when
he acquired it. The note that he then wrote and pasted on the box in
which he preserved the picture, ran as follows: 'The original portrait of
Shakespeare, from which the now famous Droeshout engraving was taken and
inserted in the first collected edition of his works, published in 1623,
being seven years after his death. The picture was painted nine [_vere_
seven] years before his death, and consequently sixteen [_vere_ fourteen]
years before it was published. . . . The picture was publicly exhibited
in London seventy years ago, and many thousands went to see it.' In all
its details