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.
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