A she or not a she... that is the question for Shakespeare

Fresh light has been thrown on William Shakespeare's sexual orientation by the discovery of a previously unknown portrait of the playwright's patron, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton - apparently dressed as a woman.

Believed to be the 'fair youth' to whom Shakespeare's early sonnets are addressed, Southampton is wearing lipstick, rouge and an elaborate double earring. His long hair hangs down in voguish feminine tresses and his hand lies on his heart in a rather camp gesture.

The picture goes on display today - two days before the 438th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth - at Hatchlands Park, a National Trust property in East Clandon, Surrey, where it was found. It has been authenticated by experts and dated to 1590-93, when Shakespeare was living in the Southampton household and writing sonnets to the 'master-mistress of my passion'.

For 300 years the painting has belonged to the aristocratic Cobbe family, the present occupants of Hatchlands, whose connections with the Southamptons have been traced back to the Elizabethan era and beyond.

'My family always believed it to be a dull portrait of a female ancestor called Lady Norton,' says Alec Cobbe, who inherited the picture among his family's collection now displayed at Hatchlands, For centuries the picture occupied obscure corners of the family home in Ireland. In Cobbe's lifetime it has been back and forth between his homes in Ireland and England.

The National Trust's adviser on art and sculpture, Alastair Laing, who first suggested to Cobbe that the portrait was of a young man, declares himself 'entirely convinced' of the painting's authenticity and provenance. 'It is a very exciting discovery,' he said. Literary scholar Sir Frank Kermode also believes it to be a 'remarkable' and 'historic' discovery.