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.