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 .
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