That's gotta hurt

Many of Shakespeare's greatest works are infused with violence: Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, Romeo & Juliet, King Lear, to name but a handful. The playwright knew that a corollary of violence is a life being lived at the edge of hereafter. One enters a world of startling clarity and directness that so often gets lost in the tranquilizing fog of more temperate times.

Illustrators of Shakespeare's works often make effective use of the visceral nature of violence as an attention grabber, as arresting in our twenty-first century as it was in Shakespeare's late sixteenth. Or in Homer's Bronze Age, for that matter.

Pictured above are two superlative book cover illustrations, for Shakespearean plays that are steeped in violence. At top is the work of the late great British artist Paul Hogarth, whose illustration for The Penguin Shakespeare Henry V is, remarkably, as humorous as it is memorable. Many an arrow flew at Agincourt; one can almost imagine a bemused Shakespeare laughing over Hogarth's whimsy, which might have seemed out of place if Henry V had a darker mood, like Macbeth. In this case, it works very well.

The illustration for the cover of the Signet Classic Julius Caesar is by the renowned, New York City-born Milton Glaser, a 2009 recipient of the National Medal of Arts and an exhibitor of one-person shows at the Museum of Modern Art, Lincoln Center, and in Europe. In Glaser's depiction of Caesar, the bloody deed has been initiated; some of the co-conspirators can be imagined waiting but for a moment to sink their blades into Caesar's body and share in the guilt of so epic a deed.

Artists and photographers alike refer to images such as these as having a "clean" background, devoid of anything peripheral, clear of any distractions that might cause the eye to wander. Sometimes less is more, and these are two compelling cases in point.

Along with the many posts below, most dealing primarily with Shakespearean book illustration, the reader might also like to visit the Agecroft Hall blog  shakespearetheage.blogspot.com   , and in addition get both a visual and audio feel for the fascinating world of Agecroft by clicking on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xxp-NVugSdQ  .

Remorse, regret, revulsion

Agecroft Hall is presently hosting the annual Richmond Shakespeare Festival; the play of the moment is Richard III, one of the premier tales of villainy in all of English literature. In it, we've got plenty to be dismayed about, not the least of which is the volte face of Lady Anne Neville, who does the unthinkable: she marries the nefarious Richard of Gloucester, the very man who killed her husband and his father: Edward, Prince of Wales and the devout but hapless King Henry VI.

Pictured above, from The Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare; Illustrated (Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co., 1850) is a D.L. Glover stipple engraving of Lady Anne in an appropriately nauseated posture, obviously disconcerted at the very idea of becoming Richard's bride. But to the altar with the up-and-coming Boar she did indeed go, regretting it for the rest of her short, sad life.

As mentioned in an earlier posting, the volumes of this particular set of Shakespeare's works were evidently published with a woman's sensibilities foremost in mind: each play is accompanied by an engraving of a prominent female character. Of all the engravings, none depicts a more emotionally divided, restless soul than Lady Anne.

Grinding friendship to powder

Artists must find it a bit heartrending to depict the one scene in Shakespeare that virtually no one ever wanted to contemplate: the rejection of Falstaff by his erstwhile friend, Prince Hal, now raised to the English throne as King Henry V and in no mood for nonsense.

The two had enlivened Shakespeare's King Henry IV, Part 1 with their delightful wit. Readers and playgoers can be easily forgiven for harboring hopes that Fat Jack Falstaff would prosper and shine under the protective wing of the new monarch.

But such was not to be: Prince Hal had long since seen the need to

                                           "....imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wond'red at
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapors that did seem to strangle him...."

                                                           (Act I, Scene 2)

All this required a renunciation of his misspent, benignly feral youth: it was suddenly time to act like a king and act like a king he would. Prince Hal could no longer let the besotted Falstaff besmirch his kingly dignity, as he made clear during his coronation procession in Henry IV, Part 2: 

"I know thee not, old man. Fall to thy prayers.
How ill white hairs become a fool and a jester!"

                                                          (Act V, Scene 5)

Shown above is one of the delightfully whimsical illustrations of the artist Jack Wolfgang Beck (1923-1988), "whose curious figures recall the childhood dreamlife" (Village Voice, Oct. 31, 1956).
The Chicago-born Beck, one of the founding exhibitors of The Loft Gallery in Manhattan, depicted the rotund Falstaff as open-armed in anticipation of the royal affection that was about to be heaped upon him, only to have the newly-crowned Hal suddenly turn cold, disdainfully waving away his former boon companion.

Time and fortune can grind everything, including friendship, to powder.   

Fuseli and the Boydell enterprise

Henry Fuseli (1741-1825), Swiss-born and with a somewhat iconoclastic temperament, had this feather in his cap: he helped raise the stature of Shakespearean illustration with a prolific outpouring of paintings that reflected his own tumultuous inner nature. Fuseli's work unquestionably furthered the genre of theatrical painting as distinct from the type of historical painting that had characterized much of the previous century.

And evidently nothing inspired him to reach for the brush more than Shakespeare: Fuseli was to become a prominent contributor to John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery in London's Pall Mall. The gallery enjoyed a high-profile yet short-lived run, from May 1789 until 1803, by which time the Napoleonic menace had wreaked havoc on a great many British commercial enterprises. At least Fuseli's works were in good company: Sir Joshua Reynolds and Benjamin West, among others, also had contributed paintings on Shakespearean themes to the gallery.

Boydell's overall plan had involved using the gallery not only as a profitable venture in itself, but as a publicity vehicle for the subscription sale of sets of Shakespeare's works featuring fine engravings done from the Gallery paintings. Evidently, some of the engravings turned out to be somewhat less than fine, and the production of the entire set of works slowed to a crawl, creating a great deal of unfavorable publicity for Boydell. Ultimately, the works of Fuseli, Reynolds, and the others were auctioned off in 1805.

Despite the gallery's demise, Fuseli continued to create paintings of Shakespearean scenes; they clearly appealed to his sense of the dramatic. Pictured above is his Lady Macbeth Seizing the Daggers (1812, oil on canvas, now at the Tate in London). In his younger days, Fuseli had done a watercolor of the famous actor David Garrick in this same scene; the version above shows the interest he developed in the starkly rendered human form. In Shakespeare's Macbeth, he could hardly have chosen a darker moment.

Delacroix and Shakespeare

Our posting of June 10th makes passing reference to one of the giants of Romanticism in art: Eugene Delacroix. His painting Liberty Leading the People (1830; oil on canvas, now in the Louvre) has long been regarded as an iconic masterpiece that is as relevant in our own time as it was when the Frenchman laid hand to brush in the 19th century.

Delacroix did not wish to submit to the restrictions of classicism. His varied interests extended to both French and English literature, with Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott among the writers who most appealed to his imagination. Moved by the depth of feeling in Shakespeare, the painter tried to translate that human dimension onto canvas, working and re-working scenes, gasping for a breath of the poet's rarefied air.

Delacroix saw no reason not to paint such non-classical subject matter, and the rebelliousness in his nature ultimately led him to join a relatively small number of other Romantic artists in smashing through the walls of convention and focusing attention on themes and subjects that had previously been all but disregarded.

He seems to have been particularly affected by Shakespeare's Hamlet, painting several different versions of the graveyard scene, of the drowning of Ophelia, and of Hamlet seeing the ghost of his father. Pictured above is his Hamlet and Horatio in the Graveyard (1859; oil on canvas, Louvre). Delacroix had a predilection for the use of strong color in many of his works, and he often chose not to set those colors aside, even while painting a cemetery scene, abundant with allusions to life and death. Such was the palette with which Eugene Delacroix painted the soul of Romanticism.

Rogue's gallery

With the creation of chronically thirsty characters like Sir John Falstaff, Sir Toby Belch, and Christopher Sly, Shakespeare undoubtedly knew he was tapping into one of comedy's undeniable truths: a mug of ale can lend itself to laughter.

Peering through the fog of inebriation only seemed to sharpen the wit of Sir John in Henry IV, Part 1 and Sir Toby in Twelfth Night. The same can hardly be said for Sly, a tinker who passes out drunk in the Induction of The Taming of the Shrew. He awakens, only to be tricked into believing that he is a wealthy gentleman of the leisured class, encouraged to enjoy a play.

All three characters provide can't-miss material for book illustrators and engravers; during the last decades of the nineteenth century in particular, a great deal of ink was spilled in their image.

The upper illustration features Sly in a stupor, scolded by a hostess whose tolerance is clearly being put to the test. In the case of both characters, posture says it all: the days of stiff 18th-century formality in illustration are long past. In the second scene, Falstaff, whose fondness for food and drink is matched only by his carefully considered cowardice, plays dead under a shield on the battlefield at Shrewsbury. Honor? Falstaff will have none of it. Not the typical battlefield scene, by a long shot.

The engraving at bottom displays a rare moment of feigned martial effrontery on the part of Sir Toby Belch, who has to be restrained by Olivia before he and the disguised Viola go at it with swords. Sir Toby's girth, inflated by years of overindulgence, makes him instantly recognizable as the comic centerpiece of Twelfth Night. He can be overshadowed only by Falstaff in Shakespeare's comic pantheon.
 

It's pronounced "Zzhay-queez." Go figure that one.

Any artist or engraver seeking inspiration from Shakespeare's plays need not fear a dry well; it is one filled with iconic moments of beauty and of pain. From the balcony scene of Romeo and Juliet to the three witches huddling in Macbeth (like those in the masthead at the top of this page), the illustrator faces an embarrassment of riches.

One poignant moment from this medley of human experience, perhaps too often overlooked in our own century, is that of Shakespeare's melancholy philosopher Jaques in As You Like It, ruminating at the side of a stream on the lonely fate of a wounded stag that has appeared at

"the extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears....
....giving thy sum of more 
To that which had too much..."                            (Act II, Scene 1)

 

The stag's abandonment by a herd that does not share its misfortune is equated by Jaques with the heartlessness, cruelty and indifference of human behavior. Jaques sees, in the halting movements of the wounded forest animal "left and abandon'd of his velvet friends" the vicissitudes of life.

Pictured above is William Ridley's engraving of the scene, as it appears in an octavo copy of  As You Like It, with a notation at the bottom of the page, "Published by Vernor & Hood, 31 Poultry, Jan. 1, 1799." Also included in the volume are Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Love's Labours Lost.

Seen from the sublime heights of early-nineteenth century Romanticism, the ruminations of Jaques provided ample nourishment for the gods. The scene has been painted by the likes of Eugene Delacroix and William Blake, among many others. For the Romantics, life was meant to be a rush downstream, with occasional brief pauses in pools of stillness apt for reflection.

Extra-Illustration: just don't make a mess of it

Back in 2010, the Folger Shakespeare Library put on an excellent exhibition entitled "Extending the Book: The Art of Extra-Illustration." This dealt primarily with the way readers of Shakespeare over the centuries have personalized their copies of the poet's works by adding prints and other pictorial material, maps, letters, and ephemera that relates to the texts in some way. Some went to the trouble and expense of having these materials bound into the pertinent volumes; others just stuffed 'em in.

The basic idea: "My copy is my copy, and these things I've added are ultimately meant to add to my personal enjoyment of the work as a whole. Whether their suitability passes anyone else's litmus test is not my concern." A healthy attitude for any reader, to be sure.

One slightly esoteric subcategory of extra- or "extended" illustration, all but overlooked in the otherwise extensive Folger exhibition, is the fabrication of hand-made slip cases to hold favorite copies of Shakespeare's works. These can not only add a touch of beauty and personalization to what might otherwise be a fairly generic-looking book, but they also frequently minimize the humidity-induced warping that can ruin the appearance of a book.

Pictured above are two handmade, homemade slip cases for Shakespearean plays that both include small copies of paintings of Venice: on the left is J.M.W. Turner's Juliet and her Nurse (oil on canvas, exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1836). One might ask, "Isn't Romeo and Juliet set in 'fair Verona,' not Venice?"

Turner's watercolors and oils of Venice, his "tinted steam" to use the words of Constable, are a magnificent and undeniable precursor to the works of the French Impressionists. Of course, the French have always tried to deny it. Who could be surprised by that?

Turner was evidently confident that he would be excused for a bit of whimsy. Why not place Juliet above the Piazza San Marco, perhaps the most picturesque man-made spot in the world?

The slipcase on the right might appear to feature one of Canaletto's detailed Venetian vistas, but actually displays a small copy of Bernardo Bellotto's View of the Grand Canal: Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana from Campo Santa Maria Zobenigo, an oil painting on canvas created around 1747 and now in the Getty Museum. Belotto actually was in Canaletto's studio at the time he painted the scene, so the resemblance to works of that painter are not merely coincidental.

Both slip covers hold copies of The Merchant of Venice, J.M.W. Turner's whimsy notwithstanding.

With a jackass' head, you could do stand-up in Vegas

Taking a very brief departure from this blog's usual focus on Shakespearean book illustration, it's worth mentioning that Agecroft Hall's annual summer Richmond Shakespeare Festival is gearing up for productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream (June 12th - July 6th) and Richard III (July 10th - August 3rd). As usual, considerable effort will be made to promote the two plays with posters, ads and other "visuals" designed with the hope of attracting attention, at least for a moment or two.

Midsummer and Richard III could hardly be more dissimilar in mood, the former crafted by Shakespeare at the height of his comic sensibilities, the latter presenting the playgoer (or reader) with as iniquitous a character as ever stalked across the Elizabethan stage.

The recent discovery and identification of the bones of Richard III, killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 and unceremoniously buried under what would eventually become a modern-day parking lot, gives Shakespearean troupes all over the world a great incentive to put on the play that immortalized Richard's villainy.

Agecroft Hall's conjectural poster for the play takes advantage of the fact that Agecroft has an excellent copy of Richard III's wax seal, which was affixed to virtually all royal correspondence, treaties, and settlements during his reign. The skull is an accurate resin facsimile of the type used in medical study.

Regarding Midsummer, Shakespeare was well aware of one of life's fundamental truths: a man looks hysterically funny if he's wearing the head of a jackass.

This being the case, the enchanted Nick Bottom's beastly but lovable countenance has long since become iconic, and can never be too far off the mark when illustrations for A Midsummer Night's Dream are called for. The image of blissful contentment above is from a late nineteenth-century set of Shakespeare's plays.

Be sure all trays are in their upright and locked position

The human imagination can take flight with Shakespeare's The Tempest for any number of reasons, not the least of which is the physical ambiguity of two whimsical characters: Ariel and Caliban. On stage, and surely in the mind's eye as well, the bodily forms of these two have been imagined and re-imagined ad infinitum.

How exactly might this spirit Ariel look, flying on errands at the behest of Prospero? Or this fish-like Caliban, so odoriferous to the finely-tuned nose of Trinculo? An artist can slam into a wall here: ambiguity has to be set aside and a specific look assigned to a given character. It's a book illustrator's job and it is often not an easy one.

When illustrating Shakespeare's scenes, artists have frequently latched onto a play's most whimsical moments as a source of inspiration; The Tempest has those in great abundance.

"On the bat's back I do fly" Shakespeare has Ariel sing (Act V, Scene 1). That flight of fancy is captured in this late nineteenth-century illustration (above) by an artist identified in the lower left corner as "Chadon" or "C. Hadon." It is frustrating that the Cassell, Petter & Gilpin edition (London, New York) in which it appears includes no more specific information about this particular artist/engraver.

Depicting the earth-bound Caliban inevitably seems to be more problematic with a great many artists. Since Shakespeare has the character described as "fish-like," that raises the question of how such a creature can be so depicted yet nevertheless be able to converse with humans.

Pictured below is one solution frequently resorted to: Caliban (seen to have thrown himself on the ground to the right of the dog-fleeing Trinculo and Stephano) is given webbed, frog-like hands and outlandish ears but for the most part seems recognizably human. Prospero and Ariel have an ethereal presence in the upper background, in keeping with the magical atmosphere of the entire play.

Perhaps this chaotic scene (from Act 4, Scene 1) with snarling mongrels hot on the heels of the comic trio, was almost as much fun to illustrate as it was for Shakespeare to write.

The initials "HSC" appear in the lower left corner and "JQ" in the lower right, evidently indicating the artist and the engraver, respectively. No further information about them was published in any of the three volumes of the set. They will sadly have to remain anonymous, at least for the time being.

Do we not bleed?

There is probably no other character in all of Shakespeare's dramatic works who, despite making relatively few appearances in a play, calls the reader to conscience with more force than Shylock in The Merchant of Venice:

                                      "..........I am a Jew. Hath not
a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions,
senses, affections, passions?  Fed with the same food,
hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases,  
healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the
same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick
us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us,
shall we not revenge?.........."
                                                          Act III, Scene 1

Shylock all but steals the show; only Portia can compete with him at such heights of characterization. Book illustrators of Shakespeare's works couldn't help but take notice. Shylock is invariably depicted graphically as a greedy, grumpy, and grasping Semitic curmudgeon. The creation of this iconic literary character came to pass despite the limited contact and experience that Shakespeare could possibly have had with Jewish people: they had been kicked out of England when King Edward I promulgated the Edict of Expulsion in 1290, and weren't officially allowed to return until 1656.

During Shakespeare's lifetime, there were believed to be any number of Jews who stayed in the country by affecting a conversion to Christianity while still practicing the Hebrew faith in privacy. There were also Jewish figures in the upper reaches of the English court, including one Roderigo Lopez, a Jewish physician to Queen Elizabeth who was implicated in a Spanish plot to have her assassinated and was hanged, quite possibly an innocent man, in 1594. Some Shakespearean scholars believe that Lopez may have been the playwright's model for Shylock; The Merchant of Venice is believed to have been written within several years after the Lopez episode.

Shown above are two depictions of Shylock, published nearly a century apart, that vilify the moneylender: the top is from a 1798 copy of Merchant (London, printed by T. Bensley, Fleet St.) that relies to a great extent on Shylock's dark "Jewish gabardine" and dour expression to create a sense of menace. The upright postures of the two figures are typical of Shakespearean illustrations during the 1700's: artists then seemed to put a great deal of stock in hand gestures to convey the essence of any relationship between people. Most stage acting at that time was similarly restrained.

In the second depiction, first published in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the knife-wielding Shylock expresses both surprise and suspicion as he examines the bond in the hands of a disguised Portia, whose lawyerly demeanor is bettered only by the timeliness of her arrival on the scene. Or so would have thought Antonio, who was about to lose a pound of flesh and his life in the bargain. Readers mesmerized by Shylock should be forgiven for forgetting that it is Antonio who is referred to in the title of the play.



                                                                       

Kiss me, you fool

Pictured above is one of the remarkably elegant watercolors of the Edwardian artist Charles Robinson (1870 - 1937), used in this instance in a page illustration of a volume of The Sonnets of William Shakespeare (Gramercy Books, New York, 1991). The distinct influences of the Art Nouveau movement, tinged with the delicacy of Japanese prints (a look that had appealed enormously to Vincent Van Gogh, among other artists) can clearly be seen here. The Pre-Raphaelites' outlook, short-lived but glorious, also had attractions for Robinson.

It would take the cataclysmic events of World War I to all but obliterate the sensibilities that held these styles in the highest regard.

Robinson's work often tended toward the whimsical, making it ideal for the numerous children's books that he illustrated. In the case of Shakespeare's sonnets, Robinson's abilities were well suited to accompany some of the most elevated poetry in the English language.

Perhaps the Enlightenment was less than enlightened

The art of engraving illustrations for books gained momentum during the 18th century. It isn't surprising that a number of artists realized the illustrative potential of many of the most dramatic scenes in the works of William Shakespeare: Hamlet being confronted by his father's ghost; the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet; Lady Macbeth walking in her sleep; Richard III shouting out his willingness to trade his kingdom for a horse.

What is a bit surprising is that in spite of these rich deposits of pictorial ore, the book-reading public during this Age of Enlightenment, time and again, showed a decided preference for depictions of (who could've guessed?) the celebrities of the day: the Leonardo DiCaprios, the Gwyneth Paltrows, the Robert De Niros of the eighteenth century.

The sales numbers didn't lie. London publishers and booksellers noticed that volumes with engravings of currently popular Shakespearean stage actors and actresses all but leaped off the shelves when compared to editions with more generically illustrated scenes.

The celebrity worship that we've grown familiar with in our own day did not start in our own day.

 
Pictured above, from a 1788 copy of Shakespeare's King John  (published by J. Bell, Strand, London) is an engraving of one of those theatrical celebrities: the actor Joseph George Holman in the role of Philip Faulconbridge, a role blessed with the most memorable lines in the play, particularly his reflections on "Commodity" (Act II, Scene 1).

Holman has the dubious distinction of appearing in a number of "adaptations" of Shakespeare's plays, usually cobbled together in ill-conceived efforts to "improve" the poet's works to meet the tastes of the hour. In Holman's defense, it should be added that plenty of actors jumped onto the adaptation bandwagon when there was money to be made.

The London engraver of Holman's portrait was J. Thornthwaite, whose work for publisher Bell's edition of Shakespeare is among the highlights of Thornthwaite's career in book illustration. His depiction of Holman as Faulconbridge lends the stage character a jaunty air that might even be described as slightly "swashbuckling." Move over, Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom.

Endless efforts to grab the eye

Eighteenth and 19th-century leather-bound volumes of Shakespeare, including ones that appear in several of the previous postings below, wed beauty with a durability that's seldom matched in our own century. Early publishers, in the days when actors like David Garrick, Sarah Siddons, and her brother John Philip Kemble graced the stages of London, at least didn't have to worry about one thing: choosing graphically appealing cover illustrations for their books. There were none.

That is certainly no longer the case, particularly in the realm of modestly-priced paperbacks. Publishers in that market are well aware that an ill-conceived cover can seriously undermine sales of a particular book, so they often look for the fresh, the imaginative, the bold in cover art. Quite simply, they're after something that will stand out when viewed along a row of books. Film makers, in promoting their works, look for the same type of graphic singularity.

Pictured above are three powerfully graphic promotional efforts associated with Shakespeare's works: the top two are Penguin paperbacks, the third is a promotional poster for Ralph Fiennes' excellent 2011 film of Coriolanus, set amidst the kind of violent civil war we all learned of watching Balkan states unravel during the 1990's.

In interviews regarding the film, his directorial debut, Fiennes repeatedly stressed his conviction that Shakespeare's works can be as relevant to us today as they have ever been........ perhaps even more so. The poster makes this clear: the film is modern, the film is violent, and yes, the film's ultimate creator is William Shakespeare.

The illustration for the cover of Hamlet at top is by the late great British artist and illustrator Paul Hogarth. The cover for the New Penguin Shakespeare's Othello uses a 17th century woodcut that illustrates Othello's recalling in his adventurous travels of  ".....the Cannibals that each other eat / the Anthropophagi and men whose heads / do grow beneath their shoulders...."  (Act I, Scene 3).

That remark does have a surprising appeal to the imagination, even today, and it's little wonder that some artist decided such a thing was well worth drawing. It makes for one of the more unusual book covers for a play by Shakespeare.

Walk past the brothels and turn right

Of considerable interest on the frontispiece of the first volume (Comedies) in the Cassell, Petter & Galpin set of Shakespeare's works (pictured in the previous posting) is an engraving of the Globe Theatre in Southwark, just across the Thames from the city jurisdiction of London. Since the engraving was made in the latter half of the nineteenth century, its appearance and its relation to other buildings in the immediate vicinity is conjectural.

However, the view certainly provides grist for the imagination, and it is not without certain merits. Not the least of these is a depiction of the streets and ground around the Globe as muddy and unpaved, in keeping with contemporary accounts attesting to the damp conditions in what was little more than a flood plain. Southwark was a shadowy, brothel-infested neighborhood, its saving grace being its location just outside the reach of the city's increasingly puritanical magistrates.

Such a setting may hardly seem commensurate with the brilliance of Shakespeare's works, so many of which were performed here. Perhaps the view, though imaginary, can serve as an additional reminder that greatness often springs from humble origins, the poet himself being Exhibit A.

Engraving emotion

Pictured above are the three volumes of a late-nineteenth century set of Shakespeare's comedies, histories, and tragedies published by Cassell, Petter & Galpin (London, New York). The late nineteenth century should be seen as a high water mark for the publication of many well-made and beautifully illustrated books with aesthetically pleasing bindings, and these volumes hold to that standard.

Among the many steel and wood engravings featured in this edition are numerous works of the British engraver and illustrator Frederick Wentworth, whose active artistic career extended from about 1865 - 1894. Wentworth was among a number of illustrators at the time who took advantage of the opportunity to use the flowing lines that the clothing of the Shakespearean period frequently produced, and he coupled that enthusiasm with his consistent efforts to portray moments of the highest tension in Shakespeare's plays.

Below are his scenes of a horrified Macbeth cringing at the sight of the ghost of Banquo at his feast, and of Emilia defiantly challenging Othello's charges of faithlessness in the innocent but now lifeless Desdemona.

Clearly, Shakespeare's plays were a feast for the artist who liked to combine the curved line reminiscent of the Baroque with emotional drama of the highest order.

A Shakespeare for the Victorian Lady

Pictured above is the cover of Volume IV of The Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare; Illustrated: Embracing the Life of the Poet, and Notes, Original and Selected. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1850.

This set of Shakespeare's works was clearly designed to appeal to women: the cover of each volume features two actresses mourning the passing of the great poet. Engravings that accompany each play are exclusively devoted to portraits of the most prominent and strong-willed women who appear in the various works. The stipple engraving technique allowed for delicate shading in the skin tones of the women's faces, and each portrait is remarkably detailed.

It's hardly surprising that there are a number of Shakespeare's lines that were excised from the plays in the name of Victorian decorum, or bowdlerized to conform to the stiff-necked standards of the day.

Above is an engraving of Joan of Arc from The First Part of Henry VI, with her image delightfully ghosted onto the semi-transparent protective sheet that covers the image when the book is closed. More than 160 years after the book's publication, the ghosting effect created a work of art in itself, given the ethereal circumstances of Joan of Arc's life and death.

The image of the since-canonized Joan was engraved by D.L. Glover, from a painting by J.M. Wright.

The demure Princess Katherine of France, soon to become the bride of a king in Shakespeare's Henry V, is shown in the stipple engraving above. Even a brief perusal of the volumes of this set brings out one point that's difficult not to notice: virtually all of the portraits feature women who are quite young and attractive. The publishers were actually accused, in some literary quarters, of pandering to prurient interests. Vigilant were the morality police of the Victorian Age.

The impulsive need for visuals

As a genre of artistic expression, the illustration of Shakespeare's works has as its benchmark Nicholas Rowe's 1709 six-volume edition in octavo format, which includes engravings of scenes at the beginning of each play. The literary reputation of the Stratford poet, dead for nearly a century, was growing by leaps and bounds, and Rowe believed that publishing a critical, illustrated edition of Shakespeare's works made reasonably good business sense.

Too bad he used the corrupt Fourth Folio for his text. In Rowe's defense, it should be remembered that the First Folio and the various quartos of Shakespeare's plays had not yet been recognized as the all-but-sacrosanct textual goldmines that they were to become in later years.

The Bodleian Library at Oxford even made the horrifying, epic mistake of getting rid of their First Folio, which they figured they should do in light of their acquisition of a Third Folio in 1664. A bit like discarding an old phone book, evidently.

The Bodleian later saw the wisdom of buying that First Folio back when the opportunity presented itself in 1905. The whole episode is probably not on their highlight reel.

It was during the early 1700s that Shakespeare's literary reputation was beginning to take on the monumental status it would achieve by the end of the century. The enormous success of his plays and of particular players (none more so than David Garrick) in London's theaters during the 1730's and thereafter would put Shakespeare's name on the lips of the statesmen of the age as well as the man on the street. And before the century was done, the phenomenal Shakespearean actress Sarah Siddons would rule the stage and the hearts of the London theatrical set.

Yet despite Shakespeare's undeniable mastery of scene-painting through language, many book buyers still seemed to enjoy the pictorial assistance that illustrations provided for the mind's eye.

A case in point is the engraving above, from an 18th-century octavo copy of The Merchant of Venice (T. Bensley, Fleet Street, London, 1798). It shows the Prince of Morocco in astonished disappointment as he realizes he has picked the wrong casket and failed in his pursuit of the desirable but elusive Portia, standing behind him with her lady-in-waiting, Nerissa. 

Despite Shakespeare's vivid word-picture of this gregarious, exotic character, the scene itself offered a memorable opportunity for graphic recreation, in this case with a William Ridley engraving. Without doubt, the engravings also added to both the aesthetic and monetary value of the books, making them worth more but also more expensive to produce. By this time Shakespeare was becoming the colossus of the English literature: his works were among the safest of safe bets.

The whirlwind of Romanticism

In the earliest years of the nineteenth century, Europe's epicenter wasn't in London. Nor could it be found in Rome, pinpointed among the baroque splendors of Vienna, or sought after as far east as Moscow.

Europe's epicenter could best be found in the mind of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Not since Julius Caesar had the world seen a man with such a will to glory guided by such an expansive intellect, and with enough physical courage to make his dreams his life. At least until Waterloo.

This human whirlwind, coming in the turbulent wake of the French Revolution, made neo-classical restraint seem old-fashioned, like yesterday's news for yesterday's people. In music, in poetry, in art, in literature, the new sensibilities of Romanticism were sweeping Europe and the message seemed clear: either dive into the maelstrom or trudge along in a life less lived.   

Early traces of Romanticism can be found in a number of illustrations of  Shakespeare's plays, as human figures in these artworks began to assume more vigorous postures in an evident attempt to mirror the tumult in their souls. This marked a departure from so much of the artwork that had been created prior to the Revolutionary years. These earlier Shakespearean illustrations tended to look more formal and restrained, accentuating the 18th-century belief that nothing is more dangerous to social order than an untethered emotion.

Pictured above are engravings from A Midsummer Night's Dream (upper) and Hamlet that show traces of this transition to a more expressive, aggressively vigorous depiction of human emotion. The Midsummer engraving, from a 1799 octavo copy (London, Printed by T. Bensley, Bolt Court, Fleet Street) shows Shakespeare's Helena, in Act II, suddenly coming upon a sleeping Lysander in the woods, and expressing her astonishment in a very reserved, stylized fashion, in keeping with the acting standards of the day.

In contrast, Johann Henry Fuseli's c1789 painting of Hamlet, and its subsequent engraving, shows the Prince of Denmark struggling to follow the ghost of his father on the battlements of Elsinore. The work shows traces of a transition in artistic expression in favor of a more emotive, unrestrained physicality. To live meant to strive, and the painter Fuseli seemed to embrace that ethic with a passion fit for a revolutionary age.

He became a prolific painter of scenes from Shakespeare's plays, and created works for John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery in London that were also engraved for a folio and an illustrated set of the great poet's works.

This less restrained artistic sensibility would continue, despite taking on a more subdued profile during the Victorian years, through much of the nineteenth century. The stiffness and formality of most 18th-century Shakespearean illustration created prior to the French Revolution no longer passed muster in this new whirlwind of Romanticism.

The gratifying habit of survival

An intriguing thing about books: it's remarkable that many of them avoid destruction as long as they do.

So many other cultural accoutrements meet with an earlier demise: active abuse or passive neglect usually does the trick. Chairs, tables, bedsteads fall apart. Tableware gets smashed, or perhaps stolen for silver content. Paintings that fall out of fashion are often consigned to oblivion, mildew-covered in the back of a closet, rotting at the bottom of a trash dump.

It's painful to remember that Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, painted on a wall in the refectory of Sta. Maria delle Grazie in Milan, was in a state of deterioration within a few years of its creation, and was damaged by bored French troops during their occupation of the city right around the turn of the sixteenth century. One ruffian, one thief, one fanatic, one war can obliterate a sublime act of creation.

Books rarely top the shopping list of the barbarian at the gate. It sometimes takes the iniquity and thoroughness of a Hitler or a Stalin to imperil the printed volume.

Pictured above is the opening page of the aforementioned Shakespeare octavo (see posting immediately below). It shows pride of ownership in a bit of marginalia at the top of the page, courtesy of one Elizabeth Philips, who added the date of May, 1788. The small woodcut illustration includes a king's crown along with shackles and a chain, evidently touching on the burdensome nature of kingship that frequently emerges and reemerges throughout Shakespeare's works. Or perhaps it's a symbolic depiction of Macbeth's tyrannical rule.

The slightest bit of doodling in the pages of a centuries-old book is one of an antiquarian volume's great delights.  Who exactly was Elizabeth Philips? Was she English? Or was she a young American in a new nation trying to gets its footing? Did she recoil in horror at Macbeth's murder of Duncan, or at Lady Macbeth's unladylike complicity? Sustenance for the imagination.

The Katharine Hepburn of the 18th century

This 1788 octavo copy of Shakespeare's Macbeth (the volume also includes King John) was "Printed for, and under the direction of, John Bell, British Library, Strand. Bookseller to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales."

It includes an engraving of the stage immortal Sarah Siddons in the role of Lady Macbeth. That role, among so many others, brought her enormous fame and adulation. Her brilliance and beauty dominated the late-18th century London stage. In a farewell performance as Lady Macbeth at Covent Garden in 1812, once her sleepwalking scene (engraved above) was concluded, the uproarious ovation from the audience was such that the evening's play was not even continued to its conclusion.

By the time that lengthy demonstration of affection finally subsided, the curtain was reportedly raised to find that Mrs. Siddons had changed into her own clothes (no quick matter in that era) and was ready to thank the audience for their many years of enthusiastic support. Having endured a disappointing start in her earliest stage efforts at Drury Lane, she had sharpened her acting skills on provincial  stages around the country and had returned to London with a vengeance that proved Shakespearean in its grandeur.

The engraving is by Jean Marie Delattre from a painting by J. Rhamberg. Sarah Siddons had her portrait painted by two of the finest British portrait painters of the day, Thomas Gainsborough (whose work is shown immediately below) and Sir Joshua Reynolds (whose portrait of Sarah Siddons as "The Tragic Muse" is at bottom).

She still gave occasional stage performances after her formal retirement from the stage, hardly surprising for a person who came from a family of theatrical performers (her younger brother John Philip Kemble and niece Fanny Kemble, among others, achieved considerable acclaim as well).

Sarah Kemble Siddons died in London in 1831, and was honored with a statue on Paddington Green.