Shakespeare's Male Muse: A Mystery Solved?

Not Just the Tudors

History Hit

History

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 11 September 2025

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Could a long-hidden miniature painting unlock the mystery of Shakespeare’s most intimate poetry? Unearthed after 400 years in a private collection, a portrait depicts a strikingly androgynous youth—jewelled and enigmatic. But this is no ordinary likeness. Concealed within its layers lies a coded message of love, betrayal, and secrecy. Could it depict Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare’s patron and perhaps the true “Mr. W.H.” of his most homo-erotic sonnets? In this thrilling episode, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is joined by Dr. Elizabeth Goldring and Emma Rutherford to reveal a breathtaking find that could rewrite literary history.

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Elizabeth I's Favourite Painter: Hilliard

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0Ozixx69Vx10DncZhgGYXt

Presented by Professor Suzannah Lipscomb. The researcher is Max Wintle, audio editor is Amy Haddow and the producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.

All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb.
0:02.6	If you'd like not just the Tudors ad-free to get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit.
0:10.5	With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries,
0:16.0	including my own recent two-part series, A World Torn Apart, The Dissolution of the Monastries, and enjoy a new release every week.
0:25.2	Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com forward slash subscribe.
0:32.0	Hello, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and welcome to not just the Tudors from History Hit, the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to Samarise.
0:46.8	Relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors.
1:01.1	Today, I'm thrilled to share with you a new discovery that could revolutionize our understanding
1:08.6	of Shakespeare's most intimate poetry and the dangerous liaisons of the Elizabethan court.
1:15.7	Hidden away in a private collection, a small oval portrait has been keeping its secrets for more than four centuries.
1:23.6	A beautiful, androgynous youth stares out with piercing blue eyes, orb and ringlets
1:30.4	cascading over delicate shoulders, hands caressing their own hair in a gesture so intimate
1:37.1	it takes your breath away. The figure wears jeweled bracelets and a single pearl earring,
1:44.0	deliberately blurring the line between
1:45.7	masculine and feminine in a way that would have set caught tongues wagging. This is no ordinary
1:52.7	portrait. It is not only likely the work of the greatest portrait painter of the Elizabethan
1:58.1	age, but this stunning young person depicted with such
2:01.6	tender intimacy, maybe none other than the beautiful courtier who just may have been the
2:09.8	mysterious Mr. W.H. to whom Shakespeare's sonnets were dedicated. Indeed, could this be the very
2:16.3	master-mistress of Shakespeare's 20th sonnet, his most homoerotic poem?
2:22.6	The miniature also cryptically reveals in the symbols of playing cards a story of broken hearts and betrayed intimacy.
2:29.6	Why has someone deliberately painted over a red heart with a black spade? Was the portrait a gift to a
	...

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