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In one of her final public activities as provost, June Schlueter, Charles A. Dana Professor of English, will give the campus a preview of the research she will be pursuing after stepping down June 30 with a fare-thee-well lecture at noon Thursday, May 18, in Gagnon Lecture Hall(Hugel 100).
Lunch will be provided.
The discussion, entitled “Facing Shakespeare,” will focus on six portraits, an engraving, a funeral bust, and a death mask done during Shakespeare’s lifetime or shortly after. The images are currently in the exhibit “Searching for Shakespeare” at London’s National Portrait Gallery and all claim to be of Shakespeare.
“We all think we know what Shakespeare looks like,” says Schlueter. “But there are so many likenesses. Do we really know?”
Schlueter, who has served as provost since 1993, announced to the faculty January 2004 that she would step down one year after Daniel Weiss assumed the presidency on July 1, 2005, in order to assist him in an orderly transition. Anthony M. Cummings will succeed Schlueter July 1.
“The [lecture] is an opportunity for me to wish my colleagues well and for them to extend best wishes to me as I end my 13 years as the college’s provost and begin a two-year sabbatical,” says Schlueter. “During which I’ll be ‘Facing Shakespeare’ in another sense, since he and his time are the subjects of my research.”
Schlueter, whose area of expertise is in Renaissance and modern drama, first became involved in the mystery of Shakespeare’s appearance while researching 16th and 17th century autograph albums.
Autograph albums are the precursor to the modern yearbook and originated around 1540 in Germany universities. The cover of these books would have a motto, or a code of arms if the person was a member of the nobility, and the inside would contain poems and drawings wishing the owner well.
One book in particular sparked her interest. It was owned by a German who had spent 1614-15 in England, the final few years of Shakespeare’s life. Inside was a page with a water color painting of goddesses and the signature of Martin Droeshout.
A Martin Droeshout is the engraver attributed with producing the portrait of Shakespeare which adorns the “First Folio,” the first published collection of his plays in 1623. This is one of the portraits currently on display in the National Portrait Gallery exhibit.
There is a controversy, however, over whether Martin Droeshout, born around 1560, or his nephew, born in 1601, was the actual engraver. Schlueter spent a number of years checking birth records and analyzing signatures trying to recreate the Droeshouts’ lives.
Schlueter’s discovery is significant because, if her conclusions are correct, the work represents the elder Droeshout’s only surviving painting. Her research has been cited in the National Portrait Gallery’s exhibit book Searching for Shakespeare.
Although she will be on sabbatical, Schlueter will still be spending a day a week on campus researching more connections between autograph albums and Shakespeare. She will also be making a few short trips to England and Germany.
“It is a time to face new opportunities and experiences,” she says. “I will be happy to squirrel away in a corner of the library for a while.”