Mysterious portrait contains clues to Shakespeare’s political leanings in support of one of the most controversial political figures in Elizabeth I’s court.
Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, Portrait of an Unknown Woman, c.1590–1600. Credit: © Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2026 | Royal Collection Trust.
A portrait of an enigmatic woman holds the key to unlocking Shakespeare’s dangerous hidden political allegiances, according to newly published research from the University of Birmingham and University College London (UCL).
The painting, known historically as the ‘Persian Lady’, now as Portrait of an Unknown Woman, by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, has captivated and perplexed centuries of art historians trying to decode its cryptic sonnet, strange mottos, and bizarre emblems. It shows a woman, standing in a posture traditionally associated with men, as she crowns a weeping stag with a garland of pansies.
The initial findings about the portrait from Dr Chris Laoutaris of the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham and Dr Yasmin Arshad, formerly Honorary Research Fellow at UCL, have been published by Bloomsbury: Arden Shakespeare Publishers in Women and Cultures of Portraiture in the British Literary Renaissance.
Previous scholarship has tended either to resist engaging with Shakespeare’s personal politics or to present him as too cautious to publicly take sides in the fierce political factionalism and partisanship of his age.
Now the new research has opened a rare and surprising window into Shakespeare’s political mind.
The stag in As You Like It could only have been regarded with suspicion by the Elizabethan censors, as it appeared during the very period which saw an avalanche of libels from Essex’s supporters, as well as from Essex and Lady Rich themselves, using encrypted allegorical imagery to praise the Earl and condemn his foes.
Using painstaking research, Laoutaris and Arshad have uncovered the identity of the portrait’s subject, arguing that she is Lady Penelope Rich, sister to Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex.
Admired as a court beauty, Lady Rich was the inspiration for many poets, musicians, and artists, and the famed ‘Stella’ from Sir Philip Sidney’s celebrated sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella; but she was also one of the most notorious women in England. She had an open affair with Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, while married to Robert, Lord Rich, engaged in acts of espionage and treasonous secret missions, and took a leading role in a spectacular rebellion against Elizabeth I’s court mounted by her brother, which would result in his execution in February 1601.
Laoutaris and Arshad argue that the portrait contains coded references to the seismic court factionalism that sparked the Essex Rebellion and represents Lady Rich’s plea to the queen to justify her own participation in her brother’s seditious activities.
The portrait’s weeping stag has long been regarded as a potential reference to the Earl of Essex himself, whose armorial crest features this animal. Laoutaris and Arshad have uncovered new evidence that ties the portrait’s emblems to a specific culture of libellous language and imagery (which included the stag/deer emblem) used by Essex, Lady Rich, and their supporters to attack Essex’s enemies, who are presented as corrupt courtiers and councillors in these scandalous libels.
At precisely the period of the composition of the portrait and the Essex libels, William Shakespeare was writing his comedy, As You Like It. The play is known to have been ‘staied’ – stopped from being published – but no one is sure why.
Outlined in a new article for the Times Literary Supplement (9 July 2026), Laoutaris and Arshad present the case that Shakespeare’s representation of a wounded, weeping and ‘sequestered’ stag in the play is a bold reference to the Earl of Essex, an allusion that would have made the play too seditious to print.
Dr Laoutaris said: “The stag in As You Like It could only have been regarded with suspicion by the Elizabethan censors, as it appeared during the very period which saw an avalanche of libels from Essex’s supporters, as well as from Essex and Lady Rich themselves, using encrypted allegorical imagery to praise the Earl and condemn his foes.
“At the time the play was written, Essex was under arrest. Shakespeare refers to the stag as ‘sequestered,’ which could not only mean to be isolated, or imprisoned, but could also refer to the process of having one’s land and estates forcibly confiscated after engaging in illegal or subversive activity.”
The stag is described as ‘innocent’, contrasted to the corrupt ‘greasy citizens’ who refuse to help the suffering animal. Along with the play’s allusion to dishonest ‘counsellors’ of the court who engage in misleading ‘flattery’, which sets the scene, the language is suggestive of the libels which condemned Essex’s enemies as poisonous courtiers and royal advisors, who unjustly persecute the Earl.
Shakespeare’s stag is also a ‘poor and broken bankrupt’, reflecting Essex’s precarious financial position, with crippling debts and the Crown’s confiscation of a vital income stream fuelling his discontent.
Shakespeare uses language and imagery that is provocative, tipping humour over into satire, and that would have been deemed potentially libellous by the authorities. As You Like It was one of four plays that were temporarily banned from being printed, including two others by Shakespeare.
The researchers argue that this suggests Shakespeare was far more willing to take a side in the factional warfare that was shaking the royal court than has previously been believed. That he wanted to plant an emotive image in his audience’s minds of an abused and victimised Earl, deserving of the public’s support and sympathy, despite Essex’s arrest and the queen’s displeasure. As such, Shakespeare could implicitly be viewed as one of the pro-Essex libellers who were threatened with imprisonment by Elizabeth I’s ministers.
Dr Arshad added: “Shakespeare uses language and imagery that is provocative, tipping humour over into satire, and that would have been deemed potentially libellous by the authorities. As You Like It was one of four plays that were temporarily banned from being printed, including two others by Shakespeare. One of these was Henry V, which includes a chorus praising Essex to the skies. Its reference to him as the ‘General of our gracious Empress (Elizabeth I)’ is one of the only direct references to a living political figure in Shakespeare’s works.
“All the plays that were ‘staied’ were published shortly afterwards, except As You Like It, which wasn’t issued until after Shakespeare’s death, in the First Folio of 1623. Henry V was published initially without the chorus that championed the Earl of Essex.”
It has generally been thought that when the Essex faction commissioned a performance of Shakespeare’s Richard II – a play staging the deposition of a monarch – at the Globe on the eve of Essex’s disastrous coup, the players were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, with a play in their repertory that the rebels could exploit to galvanise the populace in support of Essex.
Laoutaris and Arshad’s findings open up a shocking possibility: that Essex’s men went to the players because they knew Shakespeare was sympathetic to the Earl’s cause.
The similar symbols found in the painting, in the pro-Essex libels, and in As You Like It - coupled with references to Essex in Shakespeare’s plays, and their subsequent censoring - show that Shakespeare may have been a much more audacious political actor than previously thought, harbouring the kind of dangerous loyalties that had seen others in that era lose their heads.
For more information and media inquiries, please contact Ellie Hail (e.hail@bham.ac.uk), Communications Officer, University of Birmingham, on +44 (0)7966 311 409. Out-of-hours, please call +44 (0) 121 414 2772.
Associate Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama
Shakespeare's theatres; Renaissance anatomy, dissection and medicine; witchcraft and superstition; the literature and material culture of wonder, curiosity and 'monstrosity'; death, burial and commemoration.
