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.