One such portrait, identified by a faded sticker as"Lady Norton, daughter of the Bishop of Winton," showsthe face of someone in her late teens with smoothskin, an eye-catching earring, long hair, rosy cheeksand a cherry of a mouth. The work of an anonymous painter, it served as a space filler at Newbridge,even after an art expert concluded 10 years ago that"Lady Norton" was in fact a young man. And it did not merit a place in a recent exhibition of the Cobbe collection.But now, after an intense two months of research, Mr.Cobbe says he believes he has found the earliest extant portrait of Henry Wriothesley, Third Earl ofSouthampton, Shakespeare's patron from the early1590's. Not only did Shakespeare dedicate his narrative poems "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucrece" to Southampton, but he is also widely presumed to have made this young noble the "fairyouth" of his sonnets, perhaps even "themaster-mistress of my passion" of Sonnet 20.The debate over Shakespeare's sexuality is 150 years old and will hardly be resolved by this girlish-looking portrait of Southampton. But the identification of the subject of this painting,described by some British newspapers as "Southamptonin drag," has reawakened speculation over the possible bisexuality of Shakespeare, who left his wife, AnneHathaway, in Stratford-Upon-Avon when he moved toLondon...