Two mysteries surrounding the life of William Shakespeare.
Among Shakespeare’s work listed in the encyclopedic text Palladis Tramia, by the writer Francis Meres, there is a comedy entitled Love Labour’s Won, composed in 1583 and, probably, published in 1603. It is one of the very few works of the playwright which have not survived.
Some scholars believe it may be a sequel to Love Labour’s Lost. Others suppose it’s an alternate title for a well-known Shakespeare’s play. In 2014, the Royal Shakespeare Company of Stratford-upon-Avon staged Much ado about nothing under the title Love Labour’s Won. However, according to Elizabethan literature expert Leslie Hotson, the play may be what we know as The Tragedy of Troilus and Cressida.
This is just one of the many mysteries surrounding the life of the English playwright. We know almost nothing of what Shakespeare did between the day of his baptism and the moment he appears on the literary scene. Did he ever leave his country? Was he a poacher? A sailor? Did he work as a country schoolteacher? And what was his real appearance?
The painting below is known as Chandos Portrait. It depicts a man with a gold earring, a sly smile and the look of who knows what’s what. Today, it is considered one of the poet’s best-known portraits. The subject is very similar to the man represented in the engraving on the front page of one of the first editions of Shakespeare’s works. Yet, art historians have not been able to determine with certainty whether the subject depicted in the Chandos Portrait is actually William Shakespeare.
