Secrets of the Dead

-A man with quite a high forehead.

-The bald head.

-Well, I'm afraid he is a bald man.

-Bald.

-By the end of his life, he was bald.

-With a beard.

-The little black beard.

-Pointy beard.

-With an earring.

-Flashing gold earring.

-Kind of really open, quite large almond eyes.

-But that is really the only thing we know.

I don't think we know the -- the color of his eyes, even.

-Most people have seen portraits of William Shakespeare.

But are they really the same man?

-We cannot be 100% sure of what William Shakespeare looked like.

-It's interesting, isn't it, that so many people want to know what Shakespeare looked like.

-The beauty of his portraits doesn't seem to match the beauty of his plays and his poetry.

-We really cannot come to grips with, cannot understand, cannot account for that level of genius.

We want some window into where it came from.

-You not only want to know what he looked like, just out of curiosity, you want to form some kind of bridge to that man.

-The earliest images of the Bard have been described as a disembodied head on a plate, or a self-satisfied pork butcher.

-People have been searching for a portrait of Shakespeare to be able to engage with that extraordinary intellect.

It's hard to do so because the authorized images don't really give you that extraordinary sense of creativity.

-Now a new portrait has come to light, and it challenges everything known about Shakespeare's appearance.

-I was surprised how young he looked.

-This is a 13-year quest that puts an act of faith to the test.

-He is a man of the stage and the theater.

You can see it in his eyes.

-Window cleaner Steven Wadlow is thrown into the confusing world of art history.

-Could have been done in the same art studio at a later time.

-That's interesting.

Not what I thought you was gonna say.

Very interesting.

-Follow the low points... -I'm always like this.

I think I'll take anything just to not have to be out in the morning scraping vans and being in the cold.

-...and the highlights of a journey.

-Just can't get better than that.

Fabulous.

Fabulous day.

Yes!

[ Laughs ] -...which could reveal an image of William Shakespeare not seen before.

-So here we are in Chapel Street, where my parents live... -This is Steven Wadlow.

-...on this corner house here.

-And he's a window cleaner.

He grew up with his mom and dad in the town of Tring, about 40 miles from London.

-Through this way.

-His dad was a picture frame restorer, and one day he brought home a painting that was believed to have hung in a fine mansion near Banbury.

-My mum.

Say hello.

And Peter, my dad.

-The painting was given pride of place above the television.

-...Chapel Street.

Here's the portrait.

-What the family didn't know is that the portrait, which hung in the same spot for more than 50 years, might be one of the most important paintings in the world.

And the identity of the sitter could change their lives forever.

-Ever since I can remember, I remember that painting being there because I didn't particularly like it.

Because it used to scare me.

Because wherever you are in the house, it's, um... it's looking at you.

It always used to remind me of those portraits on "Scooby-Doo."

-The painting would one day be a central part of Steven's life.

Occasionally, the family wondered who the subject might be.

Then one day, Steven got a phone call from his father.

-My parents had been watching "Time Team."

It was about Shakespeare's home, New Place up in Stratford, and the image of the Cobbe portrait of Shakespeare kept appearing on the screen, and they saw the similarity and thought, "Well, that looks like the painting on the wall above the television."

-The Cobbe portrait had recently been announced to the world as a genuine portrait of Shakespeare, painted during his lifetime.

However, these claims were later disputed by experts.

-So my dad phoned me the next day and said, "Oh, I think the -- I think the painting on the wall, um, in the corner might be Shakespeare."

-Not long after, they got a visit from a friend who was an English and art lecturer.

She took a special interest in the painting.

-She turned round and she said, "Oh, you've got a picture of Shakespeare."

It was at that stage she took an eyeglass out of her handbag.

And she did say it looked more like Shakespeare than Shakespeare.

-Quite shaken up, she sat down and asked for a strong drink.

-And she said, "Oh, I'm sorry, I must go."

-She was astonished.

There aren't any surviving portraits of Shakespeare known to have been painted during his life.

People have been searching for one for the last 400 years, and any claim of a new discovery is met with skepticism.

-What you start from is not does this represent Shakespeare?

But from what does this look like and what is the evidence telling us?

And that's, I think, a really critical thing.

So in looking at this portrait and encountering it for the first time, it looks like a portrait of an aspiring gentleman, both in terms of the costume, but also, I think in terms of the hairdressing, as it were.

This is a very fashionable thing to be wearing.

A, like, quiff to the top here that you see in the period about 1600, 1610.

Someone is presenting themselves in a rather fashionable way as a elegant gentleman.

-When we look at paintings that we don't know from the early period, we tend to think of people we know.

There were an awful lot of people from this period who had their paintings painted, whom we don't know, whose names we will never recover.

So I have a general, uh, sphere of doubt about anything that comes forward with Shakespeare's name.

-The experts may have doubted Steven at the start of his journey, but he had one very good reason to take his investigation further.

-One expert has suggested that if it were to be proven to be Shakespeare, it could be worth anything from �100 to �200 million, which is obviously worth investigating further.

-Steven needed to prove the portrait's authenticity, and he started at the Hamilton Kerr Institute in Cambridge.

He asked them to x-ray the painting in hopes of revealing any underpainting, and to use stylistic analysis to tell him more about its age.

They dated it to roughly 1595, meaning it was created during Shakespeare's lifetime.

-1595 would be very convenient because in 1595, Shakespeare was 31.

On the portrait is a 31.

-The Hamilton Kerr's analysis of the portrait also showed several areas of overpainting, revealing clues that might help identify the sitter.

-So the overpaint, as the x-rays and other images show, is up here, across here, down there.

Very deliberate.

And here we have sort of a shield shape.

So under there I think it's very likely there is a coat of arms.

And then here we have coat of arms that's been added later by somebody, which again is over the top of some sort of writing, some sort of inscription or maybe another motto.

-In order to learn more about the tantalizing clues the x-rays revealed, the painting was sent to the heralds at the College of Arms in London, which regulates the granting of coats of arms.

The heralds are appointed by the ruling monarch and date back to the 12th century, when they served as royal diplomats.

But by the Elizabethan era, they were responsible for issuing these unique heraldic emblems.

-So this is a system that has to communicate identity quickly and efficiently in a military environment.

You don't want to be trying to puzzle out minute details as somebody comes charging towards you waving an ax.

So this is a system which is clear and basic, like road signs.

The nature of these coats of arms is they're the arms of the elite.

They're the arms of the powerful landowners, noblemen, knights.

-What does Peter O'Donoghue make of the coat of arms on Steven's painting?

-It's one of those designs which is quite difficult to interpret, but it looks as though it's a red background with a black creature of some kind.

And then what we in heraldry would call a bend sinister, diagonal stripes, bottom left to top right.

But then when we look more closely, there's all kinds of problems, and it's really difficult to know what's happening.

The animal.

The head looks like that of a fox, I think.

But it could be some other kind of animal.

It's really unclear what's happening to the hindquarters of that animal.

And the other thing is, if it is a black animal on a red background, that breaks one of the most basic laws of heraldic design.

In heraldry, you always have to alternate between bright and dark colors.

So if it is black on red, then that makes it feel like a made-up coat of arms.

-A fake coat of arms is not going to help identify the subject of the portrait.

Steven next turns his attention to comparing his portrait with images proven to depict the writer.

-The poet may have been thinking of his own beloved River Avon when he wrote, "Here will we sit and let the sounds of music creep in our ears."

Here in Stratford Church, Shakespeare is buried in the heart of the England he loved.

-Holy Trinity Church is home to the earliest known representation of William Shakespeare.

Created soon after his death, the funerary bust had the blessing of his family, but it too has been the subject of artistic criticism.

It has been described as having the look of a self-satisfied pork butcher.

-This isn't a particularly romantic representation of him.

I think he thought of himself as having achieved a great deal as an author, and also tremendous success, having made himself a gentleman.

And I think that's what we see, you know, the references to his kind of self-satisfaction.

I do think he looks like somebody who has satisfactorily accomplished what he might have set out to do in life.

-Made of marble and alabaster, it hangs over Shakespeare's grave.

But in the 400 years it has stood there, it has suffered damage.

Overeager devotees of the Elizabethan writer have chipped pieces off the monument.

It's been removed by treasure hunters looking for lost manuscripts, and it's also been repainted on several occasions.

Are the colors seen today original?

-It was first renewed in 1749, and then 40 years later, a man named Edmond Malone came along, very famous editor, and he thought that the polychromatic scheme that the face was shown in flesh colors was an abomination.

He believed that the monument was, or should have been all white, neoclassical.

-The white paint was scraped away and the bust was repainted in 1861.

Give or take a few repairs, that is the version seen today, but it is difficult to compare painted portraits with a 3-D image.

The Droeshout engraving, made for the First Folio of his plays, published in 1623, is one of a few two-dimensional images accepted as Shakespeare.

But Martin Droeshout, the engraver responsible, probably never met Shakespeare.

-The engraving was probably done shortly before the publication of the First Folio in 1623, thus posthumously for Shakespeare.

Yet it is almost certainly, as engravings invariably were, a copy of an earlier artwork.

An earlier portrayal.

This means that basically what we're looking at here is a not terribly competent copy of an earlier painting.

-This portrait tells you a lot more about the engraver than it does about the sitter.

The artist is really struggling with proportion.

They're struggling with understanding the facial construction.

You've got a half turn of the face and then you've got the eyes looking in a different direction.

-But for all its problems, it must have been a good likeness.

It was commissioned and authorized by people who knew what Shakespeare looked like.

-The engraving must have been seen and authorized by those that knew Shakespeare well.

So we know that the portrait has to be based on something taken from the life.

-If Steven's painting really is Shakespeare, then it should share similarities with the only two authenticated representations of him -- the funerary bust and the Droeshout engraving.

-One of the first things I did in starting this process was doing comparisons with the Droeshout engraving on the First Folio, -As the Droeshout was based on an earlier portrait of a younger Shakespeare, the engraver might have been told to make the sitter look older for the final image.

-Now, whatever portrait that engraver used, that discussion must have happened.

Another thing is that if you take the fancy lace collar away here and just leave the inner part, that becomes quite similar to the collar on the Droeshout.

I accept there is a degree of wishful thinking, but the more I look at it, the more I believe it's Shakespeare.

I just have this gut feeling.

But gut feeling isn't enough.

We need to find more.

-Authenticating a painting is not an easy task and relies on many different areas of study.

Steven will need to understand the latest scientific developments and gain a comprehensive knowledge of art history.

As he has been researching his painting, he has tried to educate himself in these disciplines, all while earning a living by cleaning windows.

-This is my day job.

Because the bills have to be paid.

And it's a good job to be doing, really, because it gives me time while I'm out and about to have thoughts and think.

And, um, often my thoughts are about what next with the portrait.

-What would it take for Steven's painting to be authenticated as a portrait of Shakespeare?

-So there are lots of things that you that need to be true, I suppose, for a portrait to be authenticated both of the period and of the sitter.

You're looking at really critical things like, um, what does the provenance tell you?

Where has it been over time?

How can you understand what this portrait has been considered to be over a long period of time?

And does it link back to the family in any way or to people close to the individual it's supposed to represent?

So provenance and documentation is absolutely key.

-When Steven started his quest, all he had to go on were his father's memories of buying the portrait from a father and son company of painting restorers.

-They explained that they got 200 or 300 pictures, which came from the attic of a large house in Banbury or near Banbury.

I did various work on them and they ended up bringing this particular picture to me and they said, "Well, we've got to get rid of it.

We know it's not a Rembrandt."

I said, "Well, it doesn't look like a Rembrandt," but I said, "It does look like Tudor to me."

They said, "You are right, it is Tudor.

It's 1595."

There was a date on it on a paper, and the date was 1595.

But in the end, they did owe me quite a little bit of money.

And we ended up doing a deal that I acquired this picture.

-Steven began searching for the location where the painting came from, using the clues that his father had given him.

All he knew was that it was a manor house in the Banbury area, and that the owner was in need of money for repairs.

-But he did mention, which was a little bit odd, that it was a manor house that looked more like a sort of row of houses than a traditional mansion or manor house.

So the only place that seemed to fit the bill was the Great Tew manor on the Great Tew estate, just a few miles from Banbury, so certainly within the Banbury area.

This place had been inherited by a Major Eustace Robb in the early 1960s, and it had been sort of mothballed, uh, for a good 50 plus years prior to that.

-Desperate for money to maintain the manor and the estate, Major Robb was selling the family jewels and perhaps more importantly, the family art collection.

Someone who lives nearby and has studied the history of Great Tew is author and publisher John Mitchinson.

-Would you be able to tell me anything about, um, Major Robb?

-Yes.

He sort of ran it like a very old school, kind of, um, lord of the manor.

-Yes.

-He just wasn't -- He just didn't have very much money.

-Do you think it's at all a possibility that a painting such as ours could have been in an outhouse, not really known about?

I don't mean one painting, but, like, a batch of stuff in a corner, left and forgotten for many, many years.

-I think if you talk to people about the house, certainly I remember when it was, you know, you could go in there and wander -- wander in.

There were rooms full of stuff.

So it's entirely possible that stuff could have been piled into one room and left.

There were a lot of paintings in the house, and the one that everybody talks about, which nobody knew was there was the Michelangelo cartoon, which I think raised over 4 million quid.

-Yes.

-Yeah.

I mean, I think there was a lot of art in the house.

-Steven's discovery that the portrait may have come from Great Tew is the first step in establishing the painting's crucial provenance.

But there's still a long way to go.

And Steven also has competition.

Other paintings have already staked their claim as being portraits of Shakespeare.

-There are very pretty portraits of Shakespeare, but the one that is more likely to reflect at least what he looked like is the Chandos portrait.

The Chandos portrait was probably painted by an actor in Shakespeare's company, so he knew what he looked like.

I like the eyes of Shakespeare in it because they really seem to show a presence.

You feel that, "Okay, this could be the man who wrote all those wonderful things."

-A very atmospheric and stylish portrait.

The provenance is very good.

It's been accepted right from really Shakespeare's lifetime as a portrait of him, or anyway, very shortly after his death.

But there's no actual documentation that says it is him.

It just speaks to you.

And so the fact that there's no silver bullet of authentication, in a way it is dwarfed by the charisma of the painting.

-Well, the Chandos portraits got a lot to recommend it.

It is known in living memory of Shakespeare to be a portrait of Shakespeare.

It also includes the same facial recognition.

If we compare that to this portrait, you've got a very high forehead.

You've got large almond open eyes, you've got a beard.

I feel very confident that this represents Shakespeare.

-Based on scientific and stylistic analysis, experts think the Chandos portrait was painted between 1600 and 1610, when Shakespeare was between 36 and 46 years old.

Unlike the Chandos, which was painted on canvas, Steven's portrait is painted on a wood panel.

Using dendrochronology, scientists can determine whether the panel would have existed in Shakespeare's lifetime.

-In this case, you've got a wooden panel with three separate panels, and you can date the wood, and you can use dendrochronology to do that, which is looking at the tree rings and seeing how the pattern matches a known set of data.

And we know from this that it's coming up as very late 16th century when the tree was felled.

So dendrochronology is a really useful technique to give you a last date by which the painting must be after.

-The dendrochronology report on Steven's panel gave the last ring a date of 1592.

More proof the portrait is definitely from Shakespeare's lifetime.

By the 1590s, Shakespeare had moved to London, home to some of Elizabethan England's earliest theaters, like the Globe.

But it could be a dangerous place where common criminals and government spies drank in taverns alongside actors and painters.

Traditionally, portraiture had been limited to royalty or the very wealthy.

During the Elizabethan era, for the first time, merchants, lawyers, and even actors could commission their own portraits.

-There was a booming market for portraits as far as the middling sort was concerned.

What they want to do is to show off -- to show off the social status.

They want to show how rich, how wealthy they are.

-So in the 16th and early 17th century, you don't have a sense of artistic identity where an artist is choosing his models and his subjects.

It's very much a transactional approach where artists will be commissioned for a particular piece of work, and the patron will decide what size they want it, how, um, what inscriptions they might have, um, what clothes they might wear, how they might be positioned.

-William Shakespeare's life in London was now that of his theater, his fellow actors, his plays.

His theater, the great Globe, concerned daily with props and rehearsals.

-Shakespeare was living a double life, inhabiting the disreputable world of the theater, while also representing himself as a respectable gentleman after receiving his own coat of arms in 1596.

-The theater was a louche place, very dodgy and down market, dangerous as well as volatile sort of area to be working in.

Shakespeare is presenting himself as a man of substance in the face of the image of someone involved in the playhouses, a mere actor on a par in many posh people's minds, with jugglers and acrobats and tumblers.

One step up, as it were, from those sort of circus performers.

-After finding the links to Major Robb and the manor, Steven thought he was finished with Great Tew.

But the village wasn't finished with him.

-After I'd established that I really did think that Great Tew was probably the place that the portrait came from, I then found, to much surprise and excitement, to be quite honest, that it had -- this place here has connections with portraits of Shakespeare.

The Chandos in the National Portrait Gallery was actually once here.

-The Chandos once belonged to a Shakespeare memorabilia collector named Robert Keck, a lawyer who died on a journey to France in 1719.

-He left his collection to a relative of his, Francis Keck, and Francis Keck was the lord of the manor, as it were, here behind me.

-Before Robert's death, art historian George Vertue visited Great Tew.

He was collecting all of the Shakespeare-related material he could find.

This work became an invaluable resource.

-In his notes, which historians still use today, he had the -- the Chandos was very clearly mentioned, along with a second portrait of Shakespeare, and this was dated 1595, oil on panels by Marcus Gheeraerts.

-Historian Mary Edmond discovered this mention of a second portrait while researching the Droeshout engraving in the 1990s.

And then she drew an even more startling conclusion while reading Vertue's notes.

-Mary Edmond was a splendidly incisive and intelligent researcher.

She claimed that 1595 painting as the original, that Droeshout was working from.

Her acumen and her historical knowledge and her ability to ferret out, uh, uh, difficult and, um, uh, unknown bits of the archive, um, outdid many of the professionals.

So anything she says has to be listened to with some interest.

-Steven has learned that his oil on panel portrait, believed to have been painted in 1595, might have been kept at the same place as the second portrait mentioned in Vertue's notes.

This missing painting, possibly used as the model for the Droeshout, was also oil on panel and painted in 1595.

Could they be the same painting?

-Who the painter is, of course, is a vital part of the jigsaw, because it would be lovely to ascertain who the painter is or was, so that we can then see what connection they may have had to William Shakespeare.

-When we think of Renaissance painters, we often think that they were worshiped as geniuses.

This was not usually the case in England.

More often than not, they were considered craftsmen.

They were considered artisans.

Very often they had to paint very -- really everyday objects rather than big masterpieces.

-Sir Roy Strong, who's the top person you could wish to speak to regarding portraits of period, suggested it was very much like William Segar.

-It looks like William Segar's style, with very kind of lidded eyes, but it's very, very difficult to be absolutely certain with, um, 16th- and 17th-century artists.

The difference between Gheeraerts and Segar... Pretty difficult to tell.

-Segar and Gheeraerts were both active in 1595, the assumed date the portrait was painted.

Could the clothing in the portrait reveal any clues about the period during which it was painted?

-Is it a 1595 portrait, question mark?

The hair is quite fashionable in the late 1590s.

A lot of the costume is later.

The collar is quite interesting in this, because I wouldn't be expecting -- I'd be expecting to see a different sort of collar.

This collar is a -- what's called a supportasse.

It's keeping up the lace collar and it doesn't quite make sense as a collar that would sit underneath a doublet like this.

You'd be expecting it to come down here rather than sit -- sit high up.

So you'd really need to work out what's original to the portrait and what is not.

And you'll probably only do that by doing conservation work on it and unpicking some of the overpaint.

-Conservation work would mean removing paint, changing the portrait, which Steven promised his father he wouldn't do.

Instead, Steven contacted University College London, which offered to put the portrait under their hyperspectral imaging scanner, which allows them to determine whether the pigments are genuine to the period.

-Hello?

-Hello.

Steven.

-Yes.

-Welcome.

Adam.

-Hello, Adam.

Nice to meet you.

Great to meet you.

Thank you very much.

-Let me see what you've got.

[ Both talking over each other ] Go on.

-I'll show you mine.

-Go on then.

-It's all very highly technical.

-It's a treat to see anything coming out of a box like this, isn't it?

Yeah.

Oh.

Can I?

-Yes, of course you can.

-Gosh.

Thank you.

-Okay.

-I'm not -- I'm not an artist.

But that looks to be an incredibly good condition to me.

I mean, I probably shouldn't say this, but it looks like it was painted yesterday.

-Yes.

Yeah.

That's it.

Yeah.

I promise you it wasn't, though.

-You're particularly interested in underneath the shield at the top, you say?

-Yes.

So up here.

-Oh, yes.

You can see a shadow of a shield just here, can't you?

It looks like it's matching the one at the other side.

-Yep.

-A normal photograph has got three color components.

Our camera gives us about 600 color components.

So that allows us to tell us whether one red is different from another red, which your eye might not be able to tell because your eye only looks at one red.

Has anybody asked whether the lace might have been added later?

Because it's to a different -- very different style compared to the rest of the painting.

-If it was, as you were just saying, just that, and this was added later, that would be really interesting because that -- that is more like going back to the Droeshout engraving.

And I've always assumed that if this was the painting used, that the engraver had just left this off because it was too complicated... -Oh, I see.

-...to engrave.

-They're currently fitting, um, a new camera with a longer wavelength.

And the hope is that that will see beneath, um, the overpaint.

So I don't know if it's my imagination, but I am sure our man is delighted to be out of the box.

He's sitting there smiling at everybody, watching all this work going on and all this fuss he's having, and you can tell he's lapping it up.

He is a man of the stage and the theater.

You can just - It's just -- It's oozing out of him.

You can see it.

You can see it in his eyes.

-They're starting to see preliminary images, but it could be months before Steven knows what secrets have been revealed.

But he is not afraid of what science might have to say about his portrait.

-I certainly think it's a very real possibility that our portrait was the model for the Droeshout.

But how do we prove that?

I thought, "Let's have a look and do some comparisons."

So I went about making my own photoshops with a photocopier.

We were comparing the Wadlow and the Droeshout and straightaway, I mean, the nose isn't quite right there, I accept that, but the mouth was -- was, uh, was cause for celebration at the time.

-Today, Steven's cutting and pasting has been replaced by cutting-edge technology.

He used the online Betaface facial recognition software.

It analyzes 101 advanced facial points and uses biometric measurement functions.

-As you can imagine, I was -- I was quite excited when I saw this.

We've got the Droeshout here, the Wadlow here, which this software is showing at 91.2% a match, which is quite remarkable.

We have then the world-famous Chandos at 88% matched with the Droeshout.

Wadlow is leading the pack there.

I mean, I was quite staggered.

I was actually quite pleased that it meant my, um, my cutting and pasting, uh, all those years back wasn't too, uh, harebrained after all.

-It's an exciting day.

Steven has returned to UCL to get the results of the scans they carried out on his portrait.

-Hello, everybody.

How are we all?

So my hopes for the day are that they come up with some wonderful piece of information that, um, move us forward and prove our theory.

But being realistic, I doubt that that will happen.

-If you put him on there, I can lower this.

-The good news is that all the paints are genuine to the period, but they also raise other questions.

-More of the questions are about the red pigments used... -Yeah.

So the red... -...within the... -Comparing these.

-Yes.

It's suggestive that they are of a relatively similar recipe or mixture.

So it could be -- it could have been done at the same time, could have been done in the same art studio at a later time.

-That's interesting.

That's not what I thought you was going to say.

Very interesting.

-Very, very closely to or someone's very good at... -Very good at... -...matching by art.

-Yes.

-The results are showing the red paint used in the slashes on the doublet is the same as the red in the fake shield.

But what about the idea that the shield was painted much later than the original portrait?

-The tentative results here suggest that they were painted at the same time.

-Or relatively close to each other.

-Which makes it real more of a mystery then, because we've got somebody painting this, somebody painting that with that, the detail of the eye, and then somebody basically making a mess of that.

-In terms of stylistically, you would assume that they were done by different levels of skill.

-Yes.

So does that mean that this and these were added later?

-Yeah.

-Maybe these -- But then what would the reason be for that?

You know, it doesn't make a lot of sense.

-One thing that might give us traction on here is if it's been added later, it's going to sit on top of the older layers... -Of whatever was there before.

-...of whatever was there before.

-Yes.

-And we know that our longer wavelength infrared imaging is better at looking at deeper layers.

-Yes.

-So, John, do you think that the long wave infrared scan might give us some clues as to what's going on underneath the red?

-Longer wavelengths of light penetrate surface layers more effectively, revealing the pigments used in deeper layers and the order they were added.

-We start to see where things have changed.

So this part of the rough is different from this part.

And you see here at this wavelength, we don't have any of the lace, but we have the lace here and the lace looks -- It's very proud on the painting, but it's almost invisible in the infrared.

I mean, it seems to me that the lace has been painted over everything else.

-If you look at the general outside, the outermost of this collar, you can see through that collar to what you would assume to be a more modest and a smaller collar, and that would be suggested more originally intended.

-One possible explanation for the addition of a coat of arms and the fancy collar is that the portrait was being updated as the subject's status improved.

This was not uncommon in the mid 1590s.

It was a prosperous time for Shakespeare and when he was granted a coat of arms.

-In October of 1597, a deed recorded the purchase of New Place, largest and finest house in Stratford.

-However, there is one thing none of these portraits that claim to be of William Shakespeare have -- a family coat of arms.

Granted arms in 1596, he experienced a tragic event that may have affected how he felt about this kind of emblem.

-How is he, Anne?

-He died, Will.

-Shakespeare's only son, Hamnet, died in August 1596 at the age of 11, while his father was in London.

A tragedy reflected in a number of his plays, including "Hamlet," "Julius Caesar" and "Twelfth Night."

-But he was never to have another son to whom he could pass on the name Shakespeare.

-It could be that his son died shortly before these arms were granted, and so he had no male heir to take these arms on.

Perhaps they lost their flavor for him, lost their significance.

-Over the years, Steven's theories have had to change when new evidence has been found, but he's still looking for the breakthrough that will bring his quest to an end.

And sometimes it gets difficult.

-Been 10 years this month since I started doing this.

People often ask how much I'd take for the painting if I was offered money for traveling in the past, but if I was offered.

On mornings like this, I think I'd take anything just to know -- just to not have to be out in the morning scraping vans and being in the cold.

I suppose if I'm being totally honest, it has become a bit of an obsession.

And the fact that my dad bought it got told that he was -- he'd paid too much for it, I think it adds quite a bit to the, um, desire to find out about it.

As I say, would have been nice to find out for my -- for my dad.

He's 92, bless him, so I haven't put a time limit on it myself.

Um, I'd just be happy if I can maybe get some answers in my lifetime, really, which sounds a bit morbid, but that's sort of how it is.

-One important virtue Steven has learned during his long search is patience.

If you wait long enough, something will come along.

Steven approached Lumiere Technology of Paris to have his paintings scanned with their layer amplification method.

In contrast to the UCL scans, which looked at pigments, these scans will reveal underdrawings and the artist's original intentions.

Now Steven is learning the results with Jean Penicaut.

-It was Lumiere technology that the Louvre trusted with the "Mona Lisa."

So you've got to have some credibility for that alone.

And, um, it made quite big news because they discovered underdrawings under the "Mona Lisa" that hadn't been seen before.

So the first time I come to see Jean and dropped the portrait off for him to look at, it was very sort of, "So what?"

He thought it was a pastiche of, um, different images of Shakespeare all put together, which in itself is encouraging because he was thinking it was images of Shakespeare put together.

-Days like this are always nerve-wracking for Steven.

He knows this could be the day when one of the world's leading experts gives him proof that his painting is not William Shakespeare.

-Oh, how are you?

-Hello, Jean.

Great to see you again.

It's been a bit too long.

-Jean has discovered that the underdrawing shows corrections, revealing that the artist changed their mind.

Experts generally take this as a sign a portrait was done from life.

So does Jean still think the portrait is a pastiche, or is it something much more significant and that Steven's portrait was actually painted from life?

-I was wondering if you thought it was painted from life.

-I think so it is.

Yes.

If you -- if you -- if you just consider the face, yes.

-Yes, yes, yes.

The original face -- we don't know about these -- was painted from life.

-Yes, yes.

-Steven is shocked, but Jean goes even further.

Like UCL, Jean thinks the collar and coat of arms were added later.

He has merged an image of Steven's portrait with the Droeshout, so that he can compare the two images and explain his surprising new theory.

-Yes.

or a part he was playing.

-Yes.

-Sort of thing.

-So imagine... -Shakespeare as a character.

-Yes.

-Hamlet.

I'm no expert on the works of Shakespeare.

But of course, the more I get drawn into it, the more I look at those as well.

Um...and... I try not to get drawn down a path where I'm making it -- making it convenient to -- to work.

But the experts all seem to agree that Shakespeare played the part of the ghost of King Hamlet, Hamlet's father, that appeared on stage three times, and very probable as well, that there was a portrait of the king, as in Shakespeare on the stage.

-That was an amazing day.

After all these years and all the -- Is it Shakespeare?

Isn't it Shakespeare?

People agreeing, people disagreeing.

But when people are agreeing, they don't really matter because they're just like me.

Um, and then today we have Jean, who discovered the underdrawings on the "Mona Lisa," um, has done lots and lots of quality research for top-quality paintings and art around the world, says that our painting, he believes, is Shakespeare.

You just can't get better than that.

I really, really -- I'm almost speechless, which is unusual.

Um, but, uh, fabulous.

Fabulous day.

Yes!

[ Laughing ] -When the conclusions of the visit to Paris were released, the story quickly traveled all around the world.

-First of all, just explain how you came to have this painting in your possession.

-In the '60s... Wow.

What a few days this has been.

The Internet's gone mad with our story going around the world, in New York, America, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, everywhere.

Quite amazingly, really, most of them have been very kind.

Uh, people supporting, backing me up.

Many people saying, "Yes, that is definitely Shakespeare."

Things are moving, things -- You know, this is -- this is absolutely brilliant.

-The idea of a young Shakespeare without a beard but with hair had the world buzzing.

But how does the idea that the portrait was used as a prop on stage fit with the traditional view that plays at this time were performed without props?

The imagery and the words being enough to conjure up the required scenery.

-Soft.

What light through yonder window breaks.

It is the east and Juliet is the sun.

-There used to be a myth that it was a theater, a drama based on words, words, words.

But what has come to the fore is that actually theaters, playhouses -- the playhouses of the period -- were painted worlds.

They -- People went there to be amazed at these shows.

[ Laughter ] -Theater companies would re-create thunder and lightning.

Pyrotechnics and secret trapdoors were employed to amaze the audience, and props were also used.

Emanuel Stelzer has been researching playwrights of the era and has discovered that there were a large number of portraits used on stage as props.

-There are 76 extant plays in which a portrait is used as a prop.

Shakespeare uses portraits in some of his plays.

-Shakespeare's astounding insight into human nature is nowhere better illustrated than in his character of Hamlet.

As he faces the dread decision of whether or not to kill his father's murderer, Hamlet's mental struggle is a study in psychology.

-To be or not to be.

That is the question.

-There are the two pictures in Hamlet in the closet scene, and that's a very interesting scene.

-The closet scene has been described as the greatest scene in Shakespeare's greatest play.

In it, Hamlet confronts his mother, Gertrude, with portraits of both his father and of his murderous uncle, saying, "Look here upon this picture and on this."

-The portrait of his father is said to be beautiful.

So you have him saying that this portrait shows a man with Hyperion's curls, the front of Jove himself, and eye like Mars to threaten and command a station like the herald Mercury, new-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill.

So he's mobilizing the entire Olympus to say how beautiful, how handsome, how heroic this man was.

-At the emotional climax of the scene, as Hamlet's rage is becoming too much for his mother to bear, the ghost of Hamlet's father appears to urge him on.

-We have these old theatrical traditions, some of them belonging to not long after Shakespeare's death, that he played old man parts, the ghost in "Hamlet," which is certainly an old man part, in fact a dead man part.

-Shakespeare himself was a working actor.

Adam in "As You Like It," the ghost in "Hamlet."

-If a portrait was used on stage, a fascinating new theory takes shape.

-This would mean that people in the audience would be looking at a portrait of Shakespeare.

It is a possibility, although there is a lot of conjecture behind it.

-Could Jean Penicaut's idea that the painting was used as a prop explain some of the puzzles associated with it?

-This would work wonders because it can be transported very easily if a character on stage should exchange it or give it to another character.

It would be a great size for it.

-Was it used one year for one play and then the next year was it brought out as a prop again?

But this time the play called for the slashes on the doublet, for the lace collar, for a kind of elevation of status for whoever it was was being represented in that play?

-It's an attractive theory that solves several of the mysteries that have come to light during Steven's quest.

It's attractive, but is it believable?

Shakespeare himself wrote that a pretty face can sometimes be a disguise.

In "Macbeth," King Duncan says there's no art to find the mind's construction in the face.

-When we look in the National Portrait Gallery archives, there are boxes and boxes of portraits that, over time, have been considered to represent Shakespeare.

This is one example of a portrait which is being considered to represent Shakespeare, which shows a man of the right sort of period.

They're often quite elegantly dressed and quite elegantly presented.

They're pleasing figures to look at, and they're men with lovely kind of fair faces who you want to engage with.

And I think it's quite easy to project onto those images that could this be the extraordinary image of this literary mastermind?

Because they're probably more pleasing than the monument and the engraving image.

-Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon was the Shakespeare family's local church.

It is one of the few places that William Shakespeare is known to have visited during his lifetime.

He was baptized here in 1564.

It's also the site of his grave and the monument placed here to commemorate him shortly after his death in 1616.

-So here I am in Stratford-upon-Avon.

I'm up here doing some research on the painting, and I've taken this opportunity to come to Holy Trinity Church to come and see Shakespeare's grave and the funerary monument.

And even better, I've brought Shakespeare home.

So here we are.

Here's our Shakespeare.

And he's now met the funerary monument.

-You know, there were pilgrims who went to Stratford.

17th century.

And they were thrilled just to walk on ground that they knew Shakespeare had walked on.

So an awful lot about it is a desire for making contact, reaching some kind of level of authenticity.

-So before all this started, over 12 years now, I didn't really know anything at all about Shakespeare and certainly didn't know anything about his life.

And then, of course, this whole process has changed all that.

People are approaching us from around the world, backing us up.

The vast majority of people seeing the painting, seeing the portraits, whether through media or whatever channels, are in agreement that our portrait is Shakespeare.

-If we knew that this is Shakespeare, uh, this would mean that we have -- we have found a new way to visualize him, to try and enter, uh, more...Yes.

In presence, in communication with him.

-Hopefully, Shakespeare can be remembered for a vibrant man with some hair and a knowledgeable, intriguing look, rather than maybe the chap we see up there that everybody sees him as.

But of course, one day somebody's going to want to buy it.

And if they are, and if it goes to the right home and is displayed to the public, then, yeah, I'm looking forward to a day where I can retire with a few pounds, a good amount of money, knowing that we've done good for history and for the family.

-The bar is set very high for any portrait that claims to be of Shakespeare.

It needs to pass rigorous scientific tests to prove its authenticity and convince the experts who are able to spot an impostor.

Will an authentic portrait of William Shakespeare painted from life ever be found?

-Where would we be if we didn't believe in the possibility of future discoveries?

And certainly the idea that there might be in some attic a picture of Shakespeare that shows him not as a slightly beleaguered, middle-aged man of substance, but as a young, energetic kind of man who wrote Romeo.

-But I think for a portrait of Shakespeare to be found still absolutely possible.

There are lots of portraits that ones have come across that are sort of totally unidentified.

I suspect we won't ever get that evidence to be really clear, exactly, and nail it.

-Steven still has his window-cleaning business, but the portrait is now kept in safe storage.

He feels there is enough evidence for his painting to be recognized as a possible lifetime portrait of William Shakespeare.

-Have you had doubts that it's not?

-Not really.

No.

-You haven't?

-No.

I will -- I will reserve a small percentage that I could be wrong because it would be foolish to do that.

But like I'm saying, the more it goes on, the more it's just, you know... And if it's not Shakespeare, it's somebody that didn't half look like him.

[ Laughs ] [ Laughs ]