Cracking the Shakespeare Code

By Robert Mackey
Latin WordsOli Scarff/Getty Images A 17th-century painting some people now believe to be a portrait of William Shakespeare was unveiled on March 9, 2009 in London. But what do the Latin words on it mean?

Updated | 5:28 p.m. Anyone out there care to help solve a two-word riddle that has the planet stumped? We will explain what the riddle is in a moment, but let’s be clear about one thing from the start — the prize is nothing more nor less than this: everlasting fame.

So here’s the mystery of the two words, and what we think we know so far.

Since Monday, when the Shakespeare scholar Stanley Wells unveiled a 17th-century painting and asserted that he is “99 percent” certain that it is a portrait of William Shakespeare, the Web has filled with hundreds of articles, video reports, blog posts and, of course, blog comments wondering whether this painting really is a portrait of the artist.

While Mr. Wells is convinced, one doubting blogger noted that he is an expert on literature, not painting, and that he is also the chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, which is already selling tickets to see the portrait in Stratford.

The evidence Mr. Wells cited this week, based on a three-year investigation, proves more that the painting could be a portrait of Shakespeare than that it is one:

· The painting’s provenance suggests that the current owners first got it from “the great granddaughter of Shakespeare’s only literary patron, Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd Earl of Southampton.”

· A battery of scientific tests — x-rays, tree-ring dating and infra-red reflectography — dates the painting to about 1610, when Shakespeare was still living.

· There is a good argument to be made that a number of copies of this painting exist, and two of those copies were at various times marketed as portraits of Shakespeare.

· Then there is also the fact that when the engraving that most people accept to be a genuine likeness of Shakespeare is superimposed on the painting — as it is in this excellent video report by Nicholas Glass of Britian’s Channel 4 News — the general shapes of the two faces do seem to match.

Even Mr. Wells admits that all of this evidence “is circumstantial” at best, which is why it is strange that relatively few people have paid much attention to a rather obvious clue inscribed on the painting: the two Latin words painted across the top in golden letters, followed by an exclamation point: “Principum amicitias!”

Latin InscriptionThe two-word Latin riddle on the painting, yet to be solved.

If this kind of clue were dropped in a mystery novel or a Tom Hanks movie, you’d have to think it would be getting more attention. But then we know that even Shakespeare had “small Latin and less Greek,” and the study of those languages, and of the classics written in them, has fallen off sharply in the 400 years since.

That didn’t stop several readers of The Lede from trying to wring an answer out of the Web. As Emily Sanford noted in a comment she posted near the end of the long comments thread below our first post on this painting, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust does offer a possible explanation of the inscription on its Web site. According to the trust:

The conclusion that the sitter is Shakespeare is strengthened by the fact that the original picture, the Cobbe portrait, was inscribed with a quotation from the Classical writer, Horace, taken from an ode addressed to a playwright.

As Ms. Sanford noted, the trust also suggested that the words should be translated as a somewhat inscrutable warning to “Beware the alliances of princes!”

But a blogger writing under the name rogueclassicist pointed out on his blog that this is really “more a translation of the whole passage” from the Horatian ode than of just “those two words.”

Another reader of The Lede, writing under the name Karin, scoured the Web and came across some notes on the ode in the book “Horace: Behind the Public Poetry,” by R.O.A.M. Lyne. Mr. Lyne’s notes suggest that the phrase in the ode, “grauisque principum amicitias,” which the words of the inscription may be referring to, “brings back to mind the bad old days of the alliances (amicitiae) of the unscrupulous, revolutionary principes, in particular the deal to which we refer as the ‘first triumvirate’ (60 B.C.).”

Got that? I certainly did not. So, feeling well out of my depth three decades after I studied rudimentary Latin, and not having the slightest idea of what the “first triumvirate” was, or what that might have to do with the fellow gazing out at us from this 17th-century painting, I looked around for a Latin scholar to provide some clues.

I was lucky enough to find, at a reputable university, an expert willing to help us on one condition — that he remain nameless. Understanding his fear of being drawn away from his research if he were to be identified as an expert willing to help solve centuries-old mysteries, The Lede agreed.

The full text of his e-mail message on the subject follows. Anyone who wants to get to work on solving the riddle should read it and let us know when you’ve figured the whole thing out. Here’s what our Latin scholar says:

The phrase “principum amicitias” does look like a quotation of the Horatian ode. The idea of translating it “beware the friendships of of princes” is certainly not explicit in Horace, who addressed this poem to Asinius Pollio, a writer but himself an important political man who had written or was writing a history of Rome from the time of the so-called first triumvirate to the death of Cicero, 60-43 BC. That was a very dangerous time, and the end of it was not more than 20 years in the past when Horace wrote the ode, so he characterizes writing about it as dangerous as well. There were plenty of people around who did things during that period that they would just as soon forget, including Augustus, who was complicit in the murder of Cicero.

Anyway, the “first triumvirate” was just an agreement among Caesar, Pompeius, and Crassus to cooperate with one another for mutual advantage (rather than, say, for the good of the state). Cicero was invited to work with them, but refused to do so. When the agreement became public, people were rightly alarmed. But the agreement — the “friendships of princes” in Horace’s phrase — kept the three men from one another’s throats, until Crassus was destroyed when he decided to make war on the Parthian Empire (roughly, Persia). After he was out of the way, Caesar and Pompeius found it impossible to cooperate, and between 49 and 45 B.C. they fought a civil war that left Caesar as dictator for life. When he was assassinated in 44, an actual triumvirate consisting of Octavian (the future Augustus), Marcus Antonius, and C. Lepidus was appointed by the senate. These triumviri had many of their enemies murdered, including Cicero, and this is where Pollio’s history stopped.

Whether in Horace the plural “friendships” refers to the various one-to-one relationships among Caesar, Pompeius, and Crassus, or to that three-way friendship and other friendships as well, is hard to say. The “second triumvirate” could be considered a form of amicitia, since that was the word that the Romans used to denote political alliance; and Pollio may have structured his history by beginning and ending it with these two instances of friendship among princes. Note that for Horace the apparent meaning is just that — “friendships among princes,” not “friendships of princes with other, lesser people.” So if the meaning is in any sense “beware the friendships of princes,” it should mean (in Horatian terms) not beware of friendships with princes, but beware for the state when princes form friendships with one another. It’s certainly a cynical comment on Machiavellian political friendships, though.

How does all of this relate to Shakespeare?

It could just be that the phrase is not meant to interact in any direct way with the Horatian context. “The friendships of princes” might then refer to Shakespeare’s friendships with noble patrons, as a kind of compliment and an acknowledgment that their patronage was a factor in his success. In this case, the classical reference would also be a compliment to his culture, but not a specific reference to whatever Horace was talking about.

There could on the other hand be a more pointed reference to the history plays that deal with how the current dynasty came to power, although I’m not sure that I can think of any close parallel in that process to the “first triumvirate.” But maybe the phrase “friendships of princes” had some currency as a way of acknowledging the cynical behavior of the powerful towards one another and towards everybody else.

Update | Reader Response 1: A second Latin professor, one of our readers, John L, writes in the comments thread below that he sees the inscription differently:

I’d just add this: while the Horace lines have negative implications (poetry/art/wisdom always being ambiguous towards power politics, even when tied to them), still, the two words in the painting seem positive to me: (i) the Horatian context and the adj. “gravis” are omitted, (ii) there is a cheery exclamation-point; (iii) it was noted that the portrait is of a wealthy man; (iv) there is talk of Shakespeare’s patron in connection w/ this very painting. (Yes, a lot of people say that the 2 quoted words imply the whole context, and by implication carry with them the rest of what Horace says there, but I disagree. It’s equally significant that it leaves them out and puts them in a _new_ context, as I argued. But this is always a dilemma with selective quotations.)

This view is supported by the blogger at Rogue Classicism, who said in his blog post on the inscription: “It probably has a positive spin in the painting.”

Update | Reader Response 2: Another reader, Ken C, draws our attention to an interesting part of the Channel 4 News report on the painting that we were not aware of: a gallery showing the various paintings that look like copies of this one, and an image of this painting before it was restored in 2002.

Ken has also been good enough to watch the complete Channel 4 News interview with the painting’s owner, an art restorer named Alec Cobbe, and notes that in that interview Mr. Cobbe discusses an aspect of the restoration that has gotten little or no attention. Mr. Cobbe told Channel 4 News that this recent restoration removed what he took to be “extra” hair that had been added to this painting at some stage after it was first painted. Since a 17th-century engraving that was said by Shakespeare’s contemporaries to be a good likeness of him showed that he was going bald in his later years, this recent alteration to the Cobbe portrait did make it look more plausibly like that accepted image of Shakespeare than it did before the restoration. Here is the Cobbe painting before and after the restoration hair removal, and here is the engraving by Martin Droeshout, published in 1623 in the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays next to a poem by his friend Ben Jonson declaring it a good likeness.

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Jean Giordano March 13, 2009 · 4:07 pm

I don’t know Latin, but just by looking at the close-up graphic of the words shown in this article, it’s obvious that there are one or more words missing inbetween the two that are still visible in the painting. The word(s) has been painted over! So any translation or interpretation will be incomplete, or wrong.

Tom in Raleigh March 13, 2009 · 4:17 pm

Shakespeare’s Latin and Greek may well have been as good as mine–my Latin gleaned from studying for the GRE and SAT years ago, to find common word roots, and my Greek extending to knowing most of the letters of the Greek alphabet. But that wouldn’t present someone from presenting me with an item with a Latin inscription and a verbal explanation, much as Shakespeare could have been painted with a Latin inscription which could have been explained.to whomever was the intended recipient. The meaning of the Latin is, of course, the curious feature.

Mark March 13, 2009 · 4:27 pm

I do not think the portraiture is Shakespeare. I think the word would have been frame or somehow incorporated in the background to really be related to the quote. There is a need for some independent study of the portrait by individuals associate with a strong independent institution. An x-ray may well reveal for more contrary evidence of the subject than these advocates would care to have revealed.

Mike in Atlanta March 13, 2009 · 4:31 pm

I think I will apply Occam’s Razor and say it’s the obvious – whoever wrote it had a rudimentary knowledge of Latin (not uncommon at the time) and meant “Friend of Princes!” by the phrase It was a common method of the period to make your work appear more learned to throw some Latin phrase in if possible and the practice of leaving some spacing between the words in a painting was also frequently used because it was thought to be symetrical.

John Harrington March 13, 2009 · 4:37 pm

It does appear something has been painted over just above the subject’s head. As for the translation of what can be read, here I thought it meant: “Principal Friendly Guy!” – as in, funny man, or writer of comic plays, due to the possibility the portrait may have been done just after one of Will’s comedies had been staged to rave reviews.

As you can see, he’s sporting that wry little look with the arched eyebrows that does have a hint, one must admit, of Jay Leno in there (even the hair).

Perhaps my liberal messing with Latin words to fit modern meanings is precisely why my high school Latin teacher used to refer to me as “sapiens summitto” in class…

shaman March 13, 2009 · 4:40 pm

maybe we need to know a bit more about the painter who placed this suggestive few words at the top of the painting – perhaps his ideas were disposed toward one or another of these explanations. but, if we seem to know so little about shakespear, how can we expect to know much about the painter. alas, so historically close to our times and yet so far away so as not to know or understand the author of the most important english language works to date!

WK March 13, 2009 · 4:49 pm

Speaking of clues, “principium” is misspelled in the painting. The “i” at the end is left out, and the word is spelled “principum.” And what of the space between the words? what might be elided?

It may be that “princeps” is intended, which would make principium genitive plural, as in the Horatian ode — “of princes.” But what if it’s the nominative of principium, i — the origin or principle of a thing? Could “principium ad amicitias” mean something like “a pattern to his friends?”

[WK, “Principum” is the correct spelling — in the ode and on the painting. One of the Internet sources for the poem I linked to had misspelled it and I then added that extra “i” by mistake in one reference in the blog post above. My apologies; that typo has now been fixed. — RM, NYT Ed.]

mike March 13, 2009 · 4:49 pm

Might be a reference to the big shots Shakespeare knew in Stratford, London, and Lancashire, or it might be simply a sucking up to Wriothesley. If the inscription was Shakespeare’s idea– and there is probably no way to show it was or wasn’t– little time need be expended in an exegesis of Horace. Shakespeare is well known for snatching up ringing phrases and using them in senses their writers did not have in mind.

Brenda Tubby March 13, 2009 · 4:50 pm

Could it be that the painting was commissioned and paid for by a wealthy patron, hence acknowledges the debt of “friendship of princes.” (Or the phrase could have been commissioned as well, in a nod from patron to Shakespere.)

Lonely Pedant March 13, 2009 · 4:55 pm

I am reminded of a line of Woody Allen’s piece “The Scrolls” (in the book Without Feathers) that still cracks me up:

“The authenticity of the scrolls is currently in great doubt, particularly since the word ‘Oldsmobile’ appears several times in the text . . .”

Russell Potter, Ph.D. March 13, 2009 · 4:57 pm

We should be wary of translating “principium” as “Princes” or assuming this even refers to royalty. It could as well be translated as “great men” or “first men” or even
important things.” No less a light than Samuel Johnson translated this line from Horace as “the fatal friendships of the guilty great.” Still more suggestively, it could be translated as “leading men,” in the sense of the principal actors in a play, or (less likely but possible) the principal members of a company (in which case Shakespeare himself would certainly have been one). It’s often been suggested that Henry Wriothesley was the man to whom Shakespeare addressed his early sonnets; imagine then that Wriothesley, scorned by Shakespeare, added this inscription to the portrait in his possession as a kind of riposte to Shakespeare’s fickleness — thus: beware the friendship of famous playwrights!

Stuart Lichtman March 13, 2009 · 4:58 pm

Having created a 200 page pschohistory on Sir Francis Bacon (as a component of a larger project) that pretty conclusively demonstrates that he wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare, the phrase pretty clearly seems to related Bacon’s own position.

He was the reputed son of Elizabeth but wasn’t recognized as such by her (at least publicly, althoug there is a fair amout of documentation that she did so privately),

Francis Bacon was very well-connected through his familial relations. His foster father, Nicholas Bacon, was Lord Chancellor and Keeper of the Seal; his foster mother, Lady Anne, was the head Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Elizabeth; his uncles, William Cecil (Lord Burghley) and Sir Francis Walsingham, and his cousin, Robert Cecil, were successive Secretaries of State. Sir Francis, himself, became Lord Chancellor.

I won’t get into the persuasive and well-documented argument that Bacon wrote what was attributed to Shakespeare but will note that, having been a member of Elizabeth’s very extensive and extremely effecitvie secret service (under Siar Francis Walsingham) and having been the inventor of the binary code, Bacon was given to the use of hidden clues and codes.

Assuming that Bacon was the writer of the works attributed to the almost illiterate William Shakespeare (a small theater operator and some-time real estate operator) whose signature is only evidence by 12 scrawled examples ever found, Bacon wrote in secret for his own enjoyment.

(As many have previously stated, the stigma placed on actors and playwrights would have totally unacceptable for someone of Bacon’s political stature.)

So, as your expert pointed out, “…Horace, addressed this poem to Asinius Pollio, a writer but himself an important political man…,” an allusion that would have particularly appealed to Bacon.

I suspect that, as in many other coded references to himself, this was his statement for the in-group that he had writen the Shakespeare plays.

Certainly, a number of well documented portraits of Sir Francis Bacon show a nearly identical face.

Thus, my suggestion is that this is a portrait of Sir Francis Bacon in which he, in fairly typical fashion, states that fact in a cryptic fashion.

dude March 13, 2009 · 5:10 pm

I think it is not likely that a word is missing. Those two words represent a complete idea and grammatic structure in latin. One could put words in between them, i suppose, but it seems to me that would require words before or after them as well.

I think there is much ado about nothing with regard to this phrase. Latin was used then in much the same way as “bling” is nowadays.

John March 13, 2009 · 5:16 pm

Of course, it could be the phrase was written by the painter and not Shakespeare at all. If so the warning could be veiled insult at the bard who was perhaps a stingy patron or simply rude. The problem is that without more context, it is an ink blot test.

Richard P. March 13, 2009 · 5:22 pm

Lo, this is much ado about nothing, a tempest in a teapot. Take the words at face value, it’s just a chamber portrait, by Jove.

John L. March 13, 2009 · 5:23 pm

I’m actually a Latin & Greek Professor. I don’t see the evidence for the previous comment about more words in the painting. I’d just add this: while the Horace lines have negative implications (poetry/art/wisdom always being ambiguous towards power politics, even when tied to them), still, the two words in the painting seem positive to me: (i) the Horatian context and the adj. “gravis” are omitted, (ii) there is a cheery exclamation-point; (iii) it was noted that the portrait is of a wealthy man; (iv) there is talk of Shakespeare’s patron in connection w/ this very painting. (Yes, a lot of people say that the 2 quoted words imply the whole context, and by implication carry with them the rest of what Horace says there, but I disagree. It’s equally significant that it leaves them out and puts them in a _new_ context, as I argued. But this is always a dilemma with selective quotations.)

Mark Collette March 13, 2009 · 5:26 pm

The portrait is clearly of the guy to the left of the painting in the photo. Give him a little facial hair, some foppish duds and a coy, blushing gaze, and he’s the spitting image. The work of an egomaniac who thinks himself a prince!

Interluke March 13, 2009 · 5:26 pm

“That was a very dangerous time, and the end of it was not more than 20 years in the past when Horace wrote the ode, so he characterizes writing about it as dangerous as well. There were plenty of people around who did things during that period that they would just as soon forget, including Augustus, who was complicit in the murder of Cicero.”

I am by no means, a Shakespeare scholar, a classicist or an English historian but what struck me about the masked scholar’s words were the parallels to the time around the reign of Mary, Elizabeth and James. The War of the Roses had ended in 1487 but in Henry VIII’s reign there was strong concern about legitimacy and about Protestant versus Catholic succession. Shakespeare wrote plays about the Tudors, including Henry VIII who died in 1547, about 50 years before Shakespeare’s Henry VIII. It was also a dangerous time and there were still people around who remembered it.

No evidence for this theory – just speculation about parallels.

Monvir March 13, 2009 · 5:35 pm

Much ado about nothing…it’s obviously a portrait of Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd Earl of Southampton.”

Just google “Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd Earl of Southampton.” and compare that portrait to the portrait in this article.

More interesting is if one accepts that that the portrait is of Wriothesley, perhaps the deceit implicit in the Horatian interpetation and the evidence that the portrait matches known likenesses of the bard gives us Wriothesely teasing us reagarding his true identity as the playwright himself.

blert March 13, 2009 · 5:36 pm

More so than checking with a Latin scholar, who knows Horace but who knows little about Renaissance uses of classical phrases as mottoes, the Lede needs to begin with a Renaissance literary scholar who does work in mottoes.

People in 16th and 17th century England often adopted mottoes for themselves, and many people had numerous mottoes that they adopted on various occasions. Sometimes these mottoes were tied to a particular image or crest; other times they stood alone or only with the person’s name or portrait. The meanings of these mottoes are often cryptic and witty. Cynical double meanings are the norm. “Principum amicitias!” could point to the person’s friendship with princes, even as it also cynically warns of the dangers of such friendships.

If this is Shakespeare, of which I am much less than 99% certain, perhaps this alludes to the hot water that Shakespeare found himself in following the performance of his play, Richard II, before a group of conspirators the night before the Essex rebellion. Shakespeare enjoyed considerable privilege as a member of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, later to become the Queen’s Men and King’s Men. This accounts for the friendship, and Shakespeare’s plays also portray many kings and help define kingship for the period. IF this is Shakespeare, perhaps something can be made of this.

However, this is a big “if,” and even if the portrait is Shakespeare, mottoes often also had obscure, private meanings. Without knowing for certain who this is in the portrait, and without knowing more details that illustrate clearly why Shakespeare might choose this motto, anyone hazarding a guess is building a speculative house of cards.

Catherine Iino March 13, 2009 · 5:42 pm

Given the way, for example, the phrase “the best and the brightest” is bandied around without regard for the irony in the original context, it’s certainly conceivable that the words in the painting came from Horace but did not carry the meaning they had in the ode.

see more clearly March 13, 2009 · 5:54 pm

Because the frame is dated as 1610 doesn’t necessarily means it is the original frame–does it? If Shakespeare was born in 1564 that would put the painting 6 years before his death–the person in the painting doesn’t look to be 46 but younger–in my view. Since practically nothing is known of him except for his works(sic) and an idiotic last will, it seems again more likely that the portrait is of de Vere –if it is “Shakespeare–because he was surrounded by the “princes” of Elizabeth’s court, was a scholar who know latin and greek and it may have been a phrase used by the painter as it was often the case in the Renaissance to have a little didication when you presented someone with your work–in this case a painting. If it is “beware of alliances with princes” it could be a court intrigue of earlier times. At this point, (1610) James 1 is on the throne (not that throne) and both Will and de Vere are too old to form alliances and WIll is back in S-o-A, and de Vere is already dead.

Is there no underpainting? any chemical dating of the pigments? Canvas? Missing words?

Robert Lyon March 13, 2009 · 6:12 pm

I see it as a winking comment about the subject of the painting.
Shakespeare scholars can debate about what the wink refers to. Possibilities:
– That Shakespeare, the man, is in and of himself a triumvirate of princes: consummate playwright, actor, and director/producer
– That Shakespeare, the image, is in actuality an alliance of two or more individuals sharing a common moniker: the actor, and the person who actually wrote the plays. (and another?)
– Or a contemporary reference to some coup or success of his company or circle of friends, for which Shakespeare received sole public credit.
And I’m sure scholars and conspiracy theorists could (if they haven’t already) come up with even more possibilities…

Michael March 13, 2009 · 6:21 pm

Before considering the meaning of this phrase, I think it needs to be absolutely confirmed that the painting is authentic. The story behind the discovery of this portrait strikes me as suspect.

How is it conceivable that the family only discovered it as a painting of Shakespeare three years ago? They seem to be quite aware that they are the descendants of Shakespeare’s patron, which would lead me to believe they would at least be familiar with Shakespeare’s likeness. It seems absurd to me that this portrait wasn’t discovered over 300 years ago. I would’ve recognized it immediately, and I have no family connection to Shakespeare whatsoever.

This reminds me of Gaddis, The Recognitions. I would bet this portrait looks like other portraits because it is a copy of them. Copied by a master, no doubt. But a copy, no less.

Theodore A. Martin March 13, 2009 · 6:23 pm

Scholars are always commenting on the quality and cost of the clothes worn in various portraits of, or not of, WS. Since he was an actor, playwright and member of several player companies and part owner of two theaters, isn’t it logical that he had access to hundreds of expensive/ elegant costumes, any of which he might have “borrowed for a formal portrait seating???