Is this Shakespeare's granddaughter?

In March 2007 this painting came up for sale at Sotheby's Olympia. It was catalogued as Circle of Willem Wissing: Portrait of Alice Countess of Drogheda (1625-c.1696). I put in an absentee bid but it sold for much more than my limit. It is now in a private collection in Ireland.

My interest in the picture was a family historical one. Alice was one of the daughters of the second Baron Spencer and his wife Penelope Wriothesley, daughter of Shakespeare's patron the 3rd Earl of Sounthampton. Alice's sister Anne married Sir Robert Townshend whose descendants settled in Denbighshire and Cheshire. It is the history of this branch which I have been studying.

Penelope Wriothesley - was Shakespeare her real father?

I sent a copy of the image of Alice to Professor Hildergard Hammerschmitt-Hummel, an expert on the known images of Shakespeare, who published a theory in 1999 that Penelope's mother Elizabeth Vernon had an affair with Shakespeare and that Penelope was his daughter, not Southampton's. The book unfortuantely has never been translated into English. http://www.hammerschmidt-hummel.de/translation/5dseptember2000.htm . The professor had not seen Alice's image before. We both agreed that she bears an uncanny resemblance to the bard and she very kindly sent me a copy of her most recent book.

Elizabeth Vernon, Countess of Southampton

If the professor's theories are correct then the number people who can claim descent from Shakespeare must number many thousands, including Winston Churchill and Prince William.

So little seems to be known for certain about Shakespeare's life but Bill Bryson's slim volume on the subject is well worth reading.