Shakespeare Plays Chess

The authenticated portrait of Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare playing chess was first owned by Colonel Ezra Miller, from Bergen County, New Jersey. In 1878 Colonel Miller had bought the painting with documents proving its authenticity. These documents were destroyed in a fire at the family home in Mahwah, New Jersey.1

The painting was then purchased by Frank de Heyman in 1903. Heyman’s father, Edward de Heyman, was a patron and collector of art, and an intimate friend of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha who was the brother-in-law of Queen Victoria.2 Frank de Heyman Jr., went through a long process of authenticating the painting by various individuals.3

Dr Paul Wislicenus, art critic and Shakespeare scholar, decided that the two sitters in the portrait were most definitely Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare.4 He made his decision of known likenesses of these individuals. The portrait of Christopher Marlowe in the fireplace at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge had yet to be discovered. This portrait is generally accepted of being that of Christopher Marlowe and is evidently painted by an artist of the Spanish school, which made use of dramatic chiaroscuro or heavy shadowing.5

Wislicenus was confident that the artist of the chess players was Karel Van Mander, who was a well known, poet, playwright and artist of the Netherlands.6

Dr Maximillian Toch, a chemist with a private laboratory who obtained evidence for many legal disputes,7determined that a great deal of the original master’s work had been obliterated or covered through restorations.8 The original work was painted between 1600-1610.9

Toch also determined though x-ray analysis that the side of a head, some hair, and the crook of an elbow of someone standing next to Shakespeare is apparent in the painting. And that this individual had a “brilliant red shawl” over his knee. According to Toch this person was either cut off at the time of the painting or later.10

The cut off person and the “brilliant red shawl” is of significance. The color red was an extremely expensive color to produce back in the period of the Renaissance.11 Who wore red besides the nobility? Cardinals of the Catholic Church.

There was a covert civil war in play between Protestants and Catholics involving a clandestine world of plots and counterplots, double identities and ulterior motives.12 And in the middle of this world was Christopher Marlowe.

There was an English seminary at Rheims which was a prime destination of students in exile, and it contained many of Queen Elizabeth’s enemies. And the Queen’s privy council begain to hear accusations that Christopher Marlowe wanted to go to this seminary. The Councillors realized they must quash these rumors. So they informed the authorities at Cambridge, the university that Marlowe attended, that Christopher Marlowe, “had done her Majesty good service…in matters touching the benefit of his country.” They let it stay at that, and never let on if he had actually gone or not.13

Then in 1592, Sir Robert Sidney, Governor of Flushing, informed Lord Burgley that Christopher Marlowe had been arrested there counterfeiting a Dutch shilling. Being brought to the authorities by one Richard Baines, his chamber-fellow.14 Baines also claimed that Marlowe planned to go over “to the enemy or to Rome.”15

Perhaps Karel Van Mander had immortalized these tasks undertaken by Christopher Marlowe. His undercover work. As a playwright, poet and painter he may even have met Marlowe — they would have had much in common. Maybe the painting was a special order. It certainly is filled with symbolism. And like most artists of his day, he loved symbolism. He in fact wrote about the subject.16

The “brilliant red shaw” could have in fact been the arm of a cardinal. At the end of the arm you can clearly see a hand that is well rendered. This hand looks like it could at once be the hand of a “cardinal,” and the hand of Marlowe. The other hand, the right, is poorly developed. It looks amateurish, and painted almost as if an afterthought. Ben Jonson is surprised, and lifts his hand in supplication, in piety, as you would observe in a religious painting. He has been checkmated by Marlowe’s black knight.17

Marlowe’s hand and the covering of the “cardinal” could have been done during a restoration of the painting. Why a restorer would want to cut off the individual standing next to Marlowe is problematic. Perhaps the addition of this individual, perhaps a cardinal, would have raised too many questions.

Notes