Introduction

Summary

THE FIRST FOLIO opens with a portrait of Shakespeare, somewhat aristocratically dressed, staring at the reader with a slightly sideways glance. Across from this portrait is a poem, “To the Reader” which is worth quoting in full:

This Figure, that thou here seest put,

It was for gentle Shakespeare cut

Wherein the Graver had a strife

With Nature, to out-doo the life:

O could he but have drawne his wit

As well in brasse, as he hath hit

His face, the print would then surpasse

All that was ever writ in brasse.

But, since he cannot, Reader,

lookeNot on his Picture, but his Booke.

This poem accomplishes several things. It off-handedly assures the reader that the like-ness is very like and at the same time declares that what matters is not the portrait, but the words—readers are directed to look on the “book,” not the picture, if they wish to understand who Shakespeare really was. If the engraver could have “drawne his wit” as well as his “face” then the print would be a true representation (beyond what any other print has managed) of Shakespeare; since that is impossible, the reader should look to Shakespeare's words to find the truth of “his wit.” While the movement of the poem may seem to be away from the person and character of Shakespeare the man, and towards the words of Shakespeare the writer, the poem's very existence, and the full-page portrait of the man, undermines the apparent message. We are, in fact, directed to look at both the portrait and the book. The slippage between portrait and words appears more strongly when the poem claims that if the engraver could draw wit, the portrait would “surpasse / all that was ever writ in brasse” (emphasis added), conflating writing and engraving, words and pictures, work and author. The suggestion, therefore, is that the wit is contained in both the plays Shakespeare authored and in his physical body. This conflation of Shakespeare with his works continues in the dedication, where Heminge and Condell state, “But it is not our province, who only gather his works, and give them you, to praise him. It is you that reade him” (emphasis added).