The Illustrated Shakespeare, 1709–1875 9780521878371, 0521878373

Table of contents :
Cover
The Illustrated Shakespeare, 1709–1875
Title
Copyright
Dedication
CONTENTS
COLOUR PLATES
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CHAPTER 1 PLAY, PAGE AND IMAGE
I
II
III
CHAPTER 2 SPATIAL NARRATIVES AND ROWE'S SHAKESPEARE
I
II
III
IV
V
CHAPTER 3 ROCOCO AND REFLECTION: GRAVELOT, HAYMAN AND WALKER
I
II
III
IV
V
CHAPTER 4 BELL, PERFORMANCE AND READING
I
II
III
IV
CHAPTER 5 ‘ORNAMENTS, DERIVED FROM FANCY’:1 ILLUSTRATING THE PLAYS, 1780-1840
I
II
III
IV
CHAPTER 6 THE GROWTH OF FEELING: BOYDELL, TAYLOR AND THE PICTURESQUE
I
II
III
IV
CHAPTER 7 THE EXTRA-ILLUSTRATED EDITION
I
II
III
IV
V
CHAPTER 8 EARLY VICTORIAN POPULISM: CHARLES KNIGHT AND KENNY MEADOWS
III
CHAPTER 9 SELOUS, GILBERT AND READER INVOLVEMENT
I
II
III
CHAPTER 10 DECLINE AND RENEWAL
I
II
III
IV
NOTES
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

Citation preview

The Illustrated Shakespeare, 1709–1875 Illustrations have been an important element of many of the most extensively read editions of Shakespeare’s plays, from the frontispieces to Nicholas Rowe’s 1709 edition to the multiple images placed within the text of Victorian editions. Through symbols the illustrations have explored language and character; by allusion to earlier paintings they have offered critical readings; and by gesture, setting and costume they have redesigned the plays within the visual vocabulary of their own times. In all these ways they offer important exchanges with contemporary social, aesthetic and critical concerns, and, despite being largely ignored by scholars, are central to the plays’ reception. Highly illustrated, including many images not previously reproduced, the book allows the reader to share the experience of early readers of the plays. Building on the author’s earlier work in Painting Shakespeare it offers a fresh address to the tradition of visual criticism and assimilation of Shakespeare’s plays. stuart sillars is Professor of English at the University of Bergen, having previously been a member of the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge. He has written extensively on the relationship between literature and the visual arts, his most recent book being Painting Shakespeare: The Artist as Critic, 1720–1820 (Cambridge, 2006). Earlier writings include Visualisation in Popular Fiction, British Romantic Art and the Second World War, Art and Survival in First World War Britain and articles and reviews in major journals in the UK, Europe and the USA.

Frontispiece: Title-page to The Taming of the Shrew by William Harvey, engraved by W.T. Green, from Charles Knight’s Pictorial Shakspere, 1838–43. Page size 22.2 × 14.3 (83/4 × 51/2 ). See Chapter 1 pp. 15–16.

THE ILLUSTRATED SHAKESPEARE, 1709–1875

STUART SILLARS

cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, S˜ao Paulo, Delhi Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 8ru, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521878371
c Stuart Sillars 2008

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2008 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Sillars, Stuart, 1951– The illustrated Shakespeare, 1709–1875 / Stuart Sillars. p. cm. This work is built on the author’s earlier work, Painting Shakespeare. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616 – Illustrations. 2. Art and literature – Great Britain – History – 18th century. 3. Art and literature – Great Britain – History – 19th century. 4. Art in literature. 5. Visual perception in literature. 6. English drama – Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500–1600 – Illustrations. 7. English drama – 17th century – Illustrations. I. Title. pr2883.s44 2008 822.3 3 – dc22 2008025988 isbn 978-0-521-87837-1 hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

For Laurence and Laura, with love, and gratitude for something of great constancy

CONTENTS

Colour plates List of illustrations Acknowledgments

page viii x xxi

1

Play, page and image

2

Spatial narratives and Rowe’s Shakespeare

31

3

Rococo and Reflection: Gravelot, Hayman and Walker

73

4

Bell, performance and reading

111

5

‘Ornaments, derived from fancy’: Illustrating the plays, 1780–1840

148

6

The growth of feeling: Boydell, Taylor and the Picturesque

181

7

The extra-illustrated edition

214

8

Early Victorian populism: Charles Knight and Kenny Meadows

252

9

Selous, Gilbert and reader involvement

289

Decline and renewal

324

10

Notes Select bibliography Index

1

346 364 375

vii

COLOUR PLATES

The colour plates are to be found between pages 138 and 139. 1 Noli me tangere. Historiated initial from a Latin Gradual or Antiphonal, Franconia, c.1514. MS Add. 4165 (7). By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. 2 William Gilpin: Plate from Remarks on Forest Scenery, 1791. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 3 W. Jeayes: ‘It was the Owl that shriek’d’, from an extra-illustrated copy of Heath’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1807. Watercolour. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 4 W. Jeayes: ‘Ere to black Hecate’s summons’, from an extra-illustrated copy of Heath’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1807. Watercolour. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 5 W. Jeayes: ‘If thou wert the fox’, from an extra-illustrated copy of Heath’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1807. Watercolour. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 6 W. Jeayes: ‘Had he his hurts before?’ from an extra-illustrated copy of Heath’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1807. Watercolour. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 7 Samuel Hieronymus Grimm: ‘Ariel giving Caliban the lie’, from an extraillustrated copy of Boydell’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1802. Watercolour. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 8 Samuel Hieronymus Grimm: ‘Ariel as harpy’, from an extra-illustrated copy of Boydell’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1802. Watercolour. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. viii

colour plates

9 Samuel Hieronymus Grimm: ‘Every man shift’, from an extra-illustrated copy of Boydell’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1802. Watercolour. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 10 Samuel Hieronymus Grimm: ‘Titania and Bottom’, from an extra-illustrated copy of Boydell’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1802. Watercolour. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 11 Samuel Hieronymus Grimm: ‘Isabella intreating Angelo’, from an extraillustrated copy of Boydell’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1802. Watercolour. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 12 Samuel Hieronymus Grimm: ‘The Duke discovered’, from an extra-illustrated copy of Boydell’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1802. Watercolour. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 13 Samuel Hieronymus Grimm: ‘Ghosts appearing before Richard’, from an extra-illustrated copy of Boydell’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1802. Watercolour. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 14 Lieut. Rob. Cowan: So. Devon Militia: ‘I have sent Cloten’s clotpoll down the stream’, from an extra-illustrated copy of Boydell’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1802. Watercolour. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 15 John Gilbert: ‘Come away death’: Frontispiece to Twelfth Night, The Library Shakespeare, 1873–5. Author’s collection. 16 Pinckney Marcius-Simons: Final page from Le songe d’une nuit d’´et´e; f´eerie d’apr`es W. Shakespeare, translated by Paul Meurice, 1886. Gouache and watercolour, 1908. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

ix

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Many of the images reproduced in this book show the marks of wear. Foxing, small pale brown coloration caused by exposure to damp, is sometimes evident. So, too, is the ‘show-through’ of printing on the reverse of the original printed page. Some show variation in background colour, caused by the slight rippling evident in volumes printed on thin paper. Those images that show complete page-openings sometimes have dark areas in the ‘gutter,’ the area around the binding. All have been retained, to help convey the actual state of the book in a manner that an electronically sanitised image would not. Except where otherwise stated, images are from the author’s collection.

1 2 3 4 5 6

x

Frontispiece: The Taming of the Shrew title-page by William Harvey engraved by W.T. Green, from Charles Knight’s Pictorial Shakspere, 1838–43. Frontispiece to The Spanish Tragedy, 1615. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. page 5 Frontispiece to Doctor Faustus, 1610. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 5 Frontispiece to If you know not me, 1605. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 6 Crispijn van der Passe, after Isaac Oliver: Elizabeth I, 1603. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 7 Charles Knight, reproduction of frontispiece to Rowe’s Hamlet, 1709, Pictorial Shakspere, 1838–43. 9 John Smith: Scene from Henry Fielding’s Pasquin, c.1736. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 12

illustrations

7 William Dolle: Illustration before Act II of The Empress of Morocco, 1673. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 8 Richard Corbould, engraved by William Walker: Cymbeline, Bellamy and Robarts, 1788–91. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 9 Final page-opening from The Two Gentlemen of Verona with engravings by Kenny Meadows, 1838–43. 10 Michael van der Gucht: Frontispiece to volume I, The works of Mr. William Shakespear; in six volumes. Adorn’d with Cuts, Jacob Tonson, 1709. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 11 Guillaume Vollet, engraved by Antoine Paillet: Frontispiece to Oeuvres de Pierre Corneille, 1655. Reproduced by courtesy of the University Librarian and Director, The John Rylands University Library, The University of Manchester. 12 Franc¸ois Boitard, engraved by Elisha Kirkall: Frontispiece to Book I, The History of Joseph, by William Rose, 1712. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 13 Jean, J´erˆome and Antoine Wierix, Adrien and Jean Collaert and Charles de Mallery: Adoratio Magorum, from Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia by Jerome Nadal (also known as Hieronymus Natalis), 1595. Reproduced by courtesy of the University Librarian and Director, The John Rylands University Library, The University of Manchester. 14 Franc¸ois Boitard, engraved by Elisha Kirkall: Frontispiece to The Merchant of Venice, 1709. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 15 Franc¸ois Boitard, engraved by Elisha Kirkall: Frontispiece to Measure for Measure, 1709. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 16 Franc¸ois Boitard, engraved by Elisha Kirkall: Frontispiece to The Comedy of Errors, 1709. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 17 Sebastiano Serlio, ‘Tragedy’, from The Second Booke of Architecture, made by Sebastian Serly, 1611. 18 Franc¸ois Boitard, engraved by Elisha Kirkall: Frontispiece to The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 1709. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

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48 49

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19 Sir John Medina, engraved by Michael van der Gucht: ‘The Expulsion’, frontispiece to Book IX, Paradise Lost, 1688. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 20 Franc¸ois Boitard, engraved by Elisha Kirkall: Frontispiece to Cymbeline, Rowe, 1709. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 21 Franc¸ois Boitard, engraved by Elisha Kirkall: Frontispiece to The Taming of the Shrew, Rowe, 1709. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 22 Franc¸ois Boitard, engraved by Elisha Kirkall: Frontispiece to Much Ado about Nothing, Rowe, 1709. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 23 Franc¸ois Boitard, engraved by Elisha Kirkall: Frontispiece to The Tempest, Rowe, 1709. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 24 Sir John Medina, engraved by Michael van der Gucht: ‘Satan, Sin and Death’, frontispiece to Book II, Paradise Lost, 1688. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 25 Franc¸ois Boitard, engraved by Elisha Kirkall: Frontispiece to Romeo and Juliet, Rowe, 1709. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 26 Franc¸ois Boitard, engraved by Elisha Kirkall. Frontispiece to Hamlet, Rowe, 1709. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 27 Louis du Guernier: Frontispiece to Hamlet, Rowe, 1714. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 28 Louis du Guernier: Frontispiece to Measure for Measure, Rowe, 1714. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 29 Hubert Gravelot, engraved by Gerard Vander Gucht: Frontispiece to Much Ado about Nothing, Theobald, 1740. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 30 Hubert Gravelot, engraved by Gerard Vander Gucht: Frontispiece to The Tempest, Theobald, 1740. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 31 Hubert Gravelot, engraved by Gerard Vander Gucht: Frontispiece to Richard III, Theobald, 1740.

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68 69 70

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illustrations

32 Hubert Gravelot, engraved by Gerard Vander Gucht: Frontispiece to Othello, Theobald, 1740. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 33 Francis Hayman: Watercolour design for frontispiece to Macbeth, Hanmer 1743–4. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 34 Francis Hayman, engraved by Hubert Gravelot: Frontispiece to Macbeth, Hanmer 1743–4. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 35 Francis Hayman, engraved by Hubert Gravelot: Frontispiece to The Tempest, Hanmer 1743–4. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 36 Francis Hayman: Watercolour design for frontispiece to The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Hanmer 1743–4. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 37 Francis Hayman, engraved by Hubert Gravelot: Frontispiece to The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Hanmer 1743–4. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 38 Francis Hayman, engraved by Hubert Gravelot: Frontispiece to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hanmer 1743–4. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 39 Francis Hayman, engraved by Hubert Gravelot: Frontispiece to Richard II, Hanmer 1743–4. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 40 Plate from William Dugdale’s The Antiquities of Warwickshire, 1730. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 41 Anthony Walker: Romeo and Juliet, Plate 1, 1753. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 42 Anthony Walker: Romeo and Juliet, Plate 2, 1753. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 43 William Elliott: Spranger Barry and Miss Nossiter as Romeo and Juliet, 1753, after a painting by R. Pyle. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 44 Anthony Walker: Romeo and Juliet, Plate 3, 1753. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 45 Anthony Walker: Romeo and Juliet, Plate 4, 1753. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

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98 99 101 103

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46 Anthony Walker: Romeo and Juliet, Plate 5, 1753. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 47 Richard Bentley, engraved by J. S. M¨uller: Frontispiece to ‘Ode on a distant prospect of Eton College’, from Designs by Mr. Bentley, for Six Poems by Mr. T. Gray, 1753. Reproduced from the Collections of the Library of Congress. 48 Edward Edwards: Frontispiece to The Winter’s Tale; engraving of Elizabeth Hartley by Charles Grignion after James Roberts. Bell’s Edition of Shakespeare’s Plays 1773–4. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 49 Edward Edwards: Frontispiece to The Tempest, Bell 1773–4. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 50 Isaac Taylor: Frontispiece to Othello, Bell 1773–4. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 51 Edward Edwards (?): Frontispiece to Richard III, Bell 1773–4. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 52 J. K. Sherwin: Frontispiece to The Taming of the Shrew, Bell 1773–4. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 53 Edward Edwards: Frontispiece to Hamlet; engraving of Jane Lessingham by Charles Grignion after James Roberts. Bell 1773–4. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 54 William Hamilton: Richard III, Bell’s Dramatick writings of Will. Shakespeare, 1788. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 55 Philip James de Loutherbourg: As You Like It, Bell, 1788. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 56 Edward Burney: Frontispiece to All’s Well that Ends Well, Bell, 1788. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 57 Philip James de Loutherbourg: Macbeth, Bell, 1788. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 58 Edward Burney: Second illustration to King Lear, Bell, 1788. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 59 Engraving of Anna Phillips by Charles Sherwin and Charles Grignion after J. H. Ramberg; J.K. Sherwin: Frontispiece to The Tempest, Bell, 1788. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

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117 118 119 120 121

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131 134 136 137 138

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illustrations

60 Engraving of Elizabeth Inchbald by Charles Sherwin after J. H. Ramberg; William Hamilton: Frontispiece to The Comedy of Errors, Bell, 1788. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 61 Henry [?] Richter, engraved by William Walker: Twelfth Night, 1, Bellamy and Robarts, 1788–91. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 62 Henry [?] Richter, engraved by William Walker: Twelfth Night, 2, Bellamy and Robarts, 1788–91. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 63 W. N. Gardiner: Gravediggers’ scene, Hamlet, Harding, 1798–1800. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 64 W. N. Gardiner: Closet scene, Hamlet, Harding, 1798–1800. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 65 John Thurston engraved by Richard Rhodes: Frontispiece to The Tempest, Tegg, 1812–15. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 66 John Thurston engraved by Richard Rhodes: Frontispiece and title-page to The Winter’s Tale, Tegg, 1812–15. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 67 John Thurston engraved by Richard Rhodes: Frontispiece and title-page to Henry V, Tegg, 1812–15. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 68 Henry Fuseli, engraved by William Bromley: Frontispiece to The Tempest, Chalmers, 1805. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 69 Henry Fuseli, engraved by C. Warren: Frontispiece to The Taming of the Shrew, Chalmers, 1805. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 70 [?]Thompson: Frontispiece to 1 Henry IV, Tilt, 1838. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 71 [?]Thompson: Frontispiece to Antony and Cleopatra, Tilt, 1838. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 72 Thomas Stothard, engraved by James Heath: The Tempest, Heath, 1807. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 73 James Northcote, engraved by J. Stowe: The Death of John of Gaunt from James Woodmason’s Irish Shakespeare Gallery, 1794. Reproduced by kind permission of Brimingham Public Library.

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illustrations

74 John Thurston, engraved by John Thompson: Twelfth Night, from Illustrations of Shakespeare, 1825. 75 John Thurston, engraved by John Thompson: King Lear, from Illustrations of Shakespeare, 1825. 76 Frank Howard: The Tempest, Plate VII from The Spirit of the Plays of Shakespeare, 1827–33. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 77 Frank Howard: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Plate II from The Spirit of the Plays of Shakespeare, 1827–33. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 78 Frank Howard: King Lear, Plate XVIII from The Spirit of the Plays of Shakespeare, 1827–33. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 79 William Hamilton: The Tempest, Plate 1, Boydell, 1802. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 80 Robert Smirke: The Tempest, Plate 2, Boydell, 1802. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 81 Thomas Stothard: The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Boydell, 1802. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 82 William Hamilton: Richard II, Boydell, 1802. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 83 Robert Ker Porter: King John, Boydell, 1802. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 84 Robert Smirke: King Lear, Boydell, 1802. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 85 Robert Smirke: ‘Slender and Ann Page’, Boydell, 1802. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 86 Robert Smirke: ‘Slender and Ann Page’, Picturesque Beauties of Shakespeare, 1783–7. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 87 Thomas Stothard: ‘Hermione embracing Perdita’, Picturesque Beauties of Shakespeare, 1783–7. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 88 Robert Smirke: ‘Iachimo Disarmed’, Picturesque Beauties of Shakespeare, 1783–7. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 89 Samuel Shelley: ‘Rosalind and Celia’, The Cabinet of Genius, 1787–90. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. xvi

172 173

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177 191 192 193 195 196 198 202

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illustrations

90 Henry Singleton, engraved by Charles Taylor: ‘Countess and Helena’, The Shakespeare Gallery, 1792. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 91 Henry Singleton, engraved by Charles Taylor: ‘Othello and Desdemona,’ The Shakespeare Gallery, 1792. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 92 Samuel Shelley, engraved by Caroline Watson: ‘Viola’, from the Miniature in the Collection of Nathaniel Chauncy, Esq. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 93 Henry Fuseli, engraved by J. G. Walker: Frontispiece to All’s Well that Ends Well, Chalmers 1805. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 94 Francis Wheatley, engraved by Francis Legat: ‘Helena and the Countess’, Boydell, 1802. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 95 Unsigned engraving: ‘Queen Catherine addressing Henry before the Two Legates’, John Baxter: A New and Impartial History of England, 1796. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 96 Henry Singleton, engraved by Charles Taylor: ‘Queen Katherine’, The Shakespeare Gallery, 1792. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 97 Henry Fuseli, engraved by William Blake: Vision of Queen Katherine, Chalmers, 1805. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 98 Angelica Kauffman, engraved by G. Scorodoomoff [Gavriil Skorodumov]: ‘Cleopatra’, 1776, from an extra-illustrated copy of Heath’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1807. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 99 Unidentified engraving to Richard II, from an extra-illustrated copy of Heath’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1807. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 100 Miss J. Ireland: Richard III, etching after Samuel Hieronymus Grimm, from an extra-illustrated copy of Boydell’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1802. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. 101 George C. George: ‘The Three Loggerheads’, Romeo and Juliet, from an extra-illustrated copy of Boydell’s Dramatic Works of

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Shakespeare, 1802. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. George C. George: Genealogical table, Henry V, from an extra-illustrated copy of Boydell’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1802. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. S. Hall: Richard III, from an extra-illustrated copy of Boydell’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1802. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. Caroline Metz, engraved by C. M.Warren: Richard III, from an extra-illustrated copy of Boydell’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1802. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. Initial page of The Merchant of Venice 1.1, Knight 1838–43. ‘Venice’, The Penny Magazine, p. 1, 10 August 1839. Anonymous engraving: ‘York House’, London, edited by Charles Knight, 1841. Anonymous headpiece engraving to Act 1 of Henry VIII, Knight 1838–43. William Harvey: Illustration to Kenilworth, Abbotsford Edition, 1842. Ebenezer Landells: Title-page to Richard II, Knight 1838–43. Gray and Jackson: Page-opening from The Winter’s Tale, Act 3 scene 3 to Act 4 scene 1, Knight 1838–43. William Dickes: Title-page to Macbeth, Knight 1838–43. Kenny Meadows, engraved by Orrin Smith: Page-opening from The Merry Wives of Windsor 2.2, Cornwall, 1838–43. Kenny Meadows, engraved by Orrin Smith: Headpiece to Act 1 of 3 Henry VI, Cornwall, 1838–43. Kenny Meadows, engraved by Orrin Smith: Othello Persons Represented, Cornwall, 1838–43. Kenny Meadows, engraved by Orrin Smith: Othello headpiece to Act 1, Cornwall, 1838–43. Kenny Meadows, engraved by Orrin Smith: Macbeth headpiece to Act 3, Cornwall, 1838–43. Kenny Meadows, engraved by Orrin Smith: Prologue to Romeo and Juliet, Cornwall, 1838–43. Kenny Meadows, engraved by Orrin Smith: Antony and Cleopatra headpiece to Act 1, Cornwall, 1838–43.

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120 Kenny Meadows, engraved by Orrin Smith: Othello 5.2, Cornwall, 1838–43. 121 Kenny Meadows, engraved by J. Brown: ‘Cleopatra’, from Characteristics of Women, 1832. 122 John Hayter, engraved by W. H. Mote: ‘Miranda’, from Characteristics of Women, 1832. 123 Kenny Meadows, engraved by J. Yeager: ‘The Family Governess’, from Heads of the People, reproduced from the first American edition (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1841). 124 H. C. Selous: Title-page to Hamlet, Cassell’s Illustrated Shakespeare, 1864. 125 H. C. Selous: Title-page to Macbeth, Cassell, 1864. 126 H. C. Selous: Title-page to Othello, Cassell, 1864. 127 H. C. Selous: Othello Act 3 scene 4, Cassell, 1864. 128 H. C. Selous: The Tempest Act 2 scene 2, Cassell, 1864. 129 H. C. Selous: The Tempest Act 5 scene 1, Cassell, 1864. 130 H. C. Selous: Hamlet Act 3 scene 1, Cassell, 1864. 131 Sir John Gilbert, engraved by the Dalziel brothers: 1 Henry VI Act 1 scene 1, Staunton, 1856–60. 132 Anonymous sketch showing the surrender of Sedan, from The Pictorial Press by Mason Jackson, 1885. 133 Engraving of the surrender of Sedan, The Illustrated London News, 17 September 1870, reproduced from The Pictorial Press by Mason Jackson, 1885. 134 Sir John Gilbert, engraved by the Dalziel brothers: Headpiece to Act I, Antony and Cleopatra, The Library Shakespeare, 1873–5. 135 Sir John Gilbert, engraved by the Dalziel brothers: Headpiece to Act 4, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Staunton, 1858–60. 136 Sir John Gilbert, engraved by the Dalziel brothers: A Midsummer Night’s Dream Act 3 scene 2, Staunton, 1858–60. 137 Sir John Gilbert, engraved by the Dalziel brothers: Page-opening from Hamlet, Act 3 scene 3, The Library Shakespeare, 1873–5. 138 Sir John Gilbert, engraved by the Dalziel brothers: Page-opening from Act 5 scene 1, All’s Well that Ends Well, The Library Shakespeare, 1873–5. 139 Sir John Gilbert, engraved by the Dalziel brothers: Othello 1.3, The Library Shakespeare, 1873–5.

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140 John Everett Millais: ‘The Good Samaritan’, from The Parables of Our Lord, 1863. By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. 141 John Everett Millais: Wood engraving to ‘Mariana’, from The Poems of Tennyson, Moxon, 1857. By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. 142 Anonymous engraving, Antony and Cleopatra, Shakspere’s Works, ed. John Dicks 1864. 143 Anonymous engraving, Coriolanus, Shakspere’s Works, ed. John Dicks 1864. 144 L. J. Pott, engraved by D. I. Desvachez: Prince Arthur and Hubert, Knight’s ‘Imperial Shakespeare’, 1873–5. 145 William Quiller Orchardson, engraved by C. W. Sharpe: Prince Henry, Poins and Falstaff, Knight’s ‘Imperial Shakespeare’, 1873–5. 146 Gordon Browne: Page from Richard II, The Henry Irving Shakespeare, 1888. 147 Y. D. Almond: Illustrated page from ‘The King’s Justice’, by Ellis Pearson, The Strand Magazine, August 1907. 148 J. Finnemore and F. L. Emanuel: The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act 2 scene 3 and Act 3 scene 1, Vredenburg, 1897. 149 Agnes Miller Parker: Richard II, Limited Editions Club, 1940. 150 Edward Gordon Craig: Page opening from Hamlet, Act 3 scene 2, Cranach Press, 1930. By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The list of those who have helped with this book, by reading, commenting or assisting with production, is long and impressive, and I am deeply grateful to them all for their kindness, their knowledge and insight, and in many cases for their seemingly inexhaustible patience: Julie Ainsworth, Catherine Alexander, Charles Armstrong, Erin Blake, Kent Cartwright, John Cox, Johanna Drucker, Charles Edelman, Lila Linzer, Ivan Lupic, Charles Moseley, Andrew Murphy, Svenn-Arve Myklebost, Shormishtha Panja, Jem Poster, William H. Sherman, Bettina Smith, Goran Stanivukovic, Stanley Wells, Gary Jay Williams, Clive Wilmer, Georgianna Ziegler. Parts of the book grew out of seminars or lectures, and I am grateful to all those who attended and contributed to such meetings at the University of Maryland, the University of Warwick, the Shakespeare Summer School at the University of Cambridge, the Shakespeare Association of America, and the Shakespeare Institute. Some passages began life in articles appearing in Interfaces and Performance Research, and I am grateful to their editors for permission to use the material in heavily revised form here. The Historisk-Filosofisk Fakultet of the University of Bergen made a generous grant towards the cost of illustrations, and also granted two sabbatical semesters during which much of the research was completed. The Folger Institute provided a fellowship during which the work for the book was begun. To them both I offer my sincere thanks. The staffs of a number of libraries were unfailingly helpful: at Cambridge University Library, Stella Clarke and Claire Welford in the Rare Books Room and Tim Nicholas and Lynda Unchern in the Photography Department; at the Shakespeare Centre, Stratford-upon-Avon, Madeline Cox, Rebecca Roberts and Jo Wilding; and at the Shakespeare Institute, Karin Brown. My thanks go also to xxi

acknowledgments

those at the British Library; the Universitetsbiblioteket at Bergen; and the Library of Congress. The bulk of the research was carried out in the Folger Shakespeare Library, and I owe a special debt to the Reading Room staff whose professionalism, skill and patience were a continuing source of encouragement: Harold Batie, LuEllen DeHaven, Karen Kettnich, Rosalind Larry, Camille Seerattan and Betsy Walsh. At Cambridge, Sarah Stanton was, as always, generously supportive and efficient, and Rebecca Jones was endlessly helpful with queries about production; and Jodie Barnes dealt with details of layout with great patience and kindness. The book has also benefited greatly from the copy-editing skill and tact of Laurence Marsh and the proofreading of Henry Maas. While all of the above have given generously of their time and expertise, I of course remain solely, and stubbornly, responsible for the eccentricities and simple inaccuracies that remain. SJS Bergen, October 2007

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CHAPTER 1

PLAY, PAGE AND IMAGE

I There is something innately paradoxical in the fact that generations of editors of Shakespeare’s plays have sought to provide, in print, a representation of the plays as they were acted. The very process of authenticating a performative entity in a finite material form is a logical contradiction: if the live drama is to be verified, it must surely only achieve this through live presentation. Yet the fact remains that, for the great majority of us, as much at the beginning of the twenty-first century as at the start of the eighteenth, the first experience of Shakespeare has come through the printed page. Arguments about the relative importance of these two identities defy immediate resolution. A clearer way is to see performance and print as separate embodiments of a shared fable, the play in performance existing alongside its presence as printed paper, in paths that, while parallel, engage each other through a reflection that may create conflict or mutual clarification, but in which neither depends upon the other. All of these relationships, and the questions they raise, are extended, complicated and enriched by the presence of illustrations within the printed volume. The business of reading, in any medium, is complex enough, a combination of neural impulse, linguistic interpretation, and cerebral processing; but when it is directed towards material that is, from the evidence of its form, shaped for the stage, it gathers to itself a series of special difficulties. Do we read to present a performance of our own, or do we instantly transmediate the text into a novel? The temptation to see the particular reading process as collapsing naturally into the dominant convention of the period – novel in the mid-nineteenth century, film and television in the twentieth and twenty-first – is hard to avoid. In the 1960s

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it was fashionable to talk of the play-text as a musical score that only achieved realisation in performance. This was valuable in stressing the immediacy of the play, but neglected one essential factor. Very few can read a symphonic score and mentally construct a performance; and, leaving aside the not inconsiderable aesthetic qualities of, say, a Bach holograph, the essential materiality of a printed play differs in demanding attention as an object in its own right, as the developing field of book studies has emphasised. A better way to conceptualise the duality of text and performance, and the place of visual imaging within it, is through the earlier concept of Theatrum, as an arena for the statement or examination of ideas that may be literal, performative or printed. The best-known example demonstrates a relationship between forms essentially disparate but in conceptual terms inseparable, the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum of Abraham Ortelius (1570) – a book of maps that offers a way of making sense of a world as both a statement of deduced actuality and a record of its discoverers’ performances. There are many others. The Theatrum Anatomicum completed at Leiden University in 1596 dedicates its space to the performance of anatomy; Jacques Besson’s Theatrum Instrumentorum et Machinarum of 1578 uses print to record actual, not stage, machinery of all kinds. In 1640 John Parkinson published a Theatrum Botanicum, showing herbs and the performative (and, to the optimistic reader, curative) functions in which they were participants.1 It is through the filter of such works that the relation between performed and printed versions of dramatic works may perhaps best be conceptualised. To them all, visual depiction is fundamental. Regarded at its simplest, the visual element may be said to represent. Yet, seen within the growing culture of the book, and the situation of the reader, who in most cases has no original with which to compare each image, it is more accurately described as presenting its object, initiating the reader into the coastline of Illyria, the variety of mechanical invention, or the identity and potential of plants. To their readers, these images were the primary, and in many cases the only, versions of the actualities they presented, word and image acting together on the reader in the construction of concept, grasp of the world, idea of healing: and, within a parallel arena of aesthetic and moral awareness, the same is true of the illustrated edition of the works of Shakespeare. Aided in no small part by the more recent jettisoning of hierarchies between ‘bad’ quartos and unreliable texts in the Folio, the printed texts of Shakespeare’s plays emerge as a form of great vigour from the earliest years. As Lukas Erne has pointed out, thirteen of the plays were printed as Quartos between 1594 and 1600, a total of twenty-four editions in seven years, ‘that is more than three per year’,2 a remarkably high number. An edict issued by the Stationers’ Company in 2

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1587 decreed ‘that no booke be printed excede the number of 1250 or 1500 at one ympression’,3 and there is little reason to suspect that these volumes would have had substantially smaller print runs. This number assumes far greater proportion in the light of two factors: first, that the population of England at the time was probably around six million, and that of London around 225,000; second, that the average print run of an academic book at the beginning of the twenty-first century, with a sale on both sides of the Atlantic, is somewhere between 400 and 800 copies. In the editorial pursuit of Shakespeare’s imagined authentic versions, the first printings have been the subject of study as much because of their assumed inaccuracies as despite them. More recently, however, the controversy about authorial revision has brought them renewed attention. In this light, it becomes very difficult to reject Erne’s point that the printed forms of Shakespeare’s plays should be seen not as irrelevant acts of piracy or second-best assemblages, but as valid parallel forms of the aesthetic objects earlier constructed on the stage. The importance of Shakespeare the dramatist on the page, then, would seem considerable from the outset: and, in the development of the tradition that the Quartos began, the illustrated edition has had a central place from the edition of Nicholas Rowe in 1709. Perhaps because they fall between academic disciplines, illustrated books are rarely the subject of scholarly consideration. There are, however, significant exceptions. Michael Camille’s explorations of the links between sacred and secular in the compound verbal-visual discourse of the Luttrell Psalter, and David Erdman’s meticulous analyses of the interlinear designs, as well as the larger images, of Blake’s illuminated books, are models of close reading, the former relating images to larger cultural currents, the latter offering clarifications of the dual texts’ inner significances. At a broader level, the work of Mary Carruthers has made visible techniques of reading, meditation and memory fundamental to medieval thought. All three offer models of approaching dual texts, addressing them respectively through their social frames, their compound significations, and the methods of decryption they demand of the reader. While the works these writers explore are genuinely compound in that their verbal and visual components were designed simultaneously, texts in which visual elements are added to earlier verbal formations demand treatment resting on similarly imaginative, similarly rigorous principles. Such works have a different, though equally valuable, significance, in the critical understanding they generate, or the questions they ask, through the exchange they offer between their two elements. Within this latter group, illustrated editions of Shakespeare’s plays have another importance. In part for the very reason that they came to be seen as 3

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separate from the scholarly edition, they were read by a different, and considerably larger, section of the population, and thus represent a major strand in the developing skein of Shakespeare reception. Beginning with Rowe, and moving on through the eighteenth century to Howard Staunton’s serial parts of the 1860s, illustrated editions constitute a tradition that repeatedly reinvents both itself and the Shakespeare that it offers its readers. This it does in relation to contemporary tastes, fashions, and techniques in visual art, social formations and the cultural forms that the two produce through their interactions, revealing ways in which the plays, increasingly seen as the vital embodiment of cultural maturity, are absorbed into changing ways of seeing, and of organising and aestheticising knowledge. Within this process, the plays may be related by the reader to actual performances remembered or possible performances imagined; but the controlling visual dynamic is the printed book and the interrelation of word and image it produces. Increasingly through this period in quantitative terms, and diversely across it in style and ideology, the printed illustration acts as a determinant in experiencing individual scenes and in controlling the reader’s progress through the dramatic continuum. These functions imply that, when dealing with illustrated editions of the plays, the usual metaphoric meaning of the word ‘reading’ to mean a synthesised critical interpretation must be paired with its most immediate usage, of the eye tracing across the page and the neurological impulses and responses, conscious and subconscious, that result. Where illustrated editions have attracted critical attention, they have most often been seen in relation to the theatre. Yet, despite some levels of reference to stage practice, this is rarely their full source or value. The title-pages of plays published in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries already demonstrate this in a range of complex exchanges between theatre and print. Some refer to stage action, but in a form compressed to allow simultaneous figuration of several events. That to Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy (Fig. 1) presents events that unfold in a temporal sequence on stage; that to Doctor Faustus (Fig. 2) combines a suggestion of action with emblems relating to the secret arts the play discusses. Others reject stage action completely, instead making allusion to images well known within a more public forum. If you know not me, You know no bodie (Fig. 3) presents its subtitle, The Troubles of Queen Elizabeth, through reference to probably the best known image of the queen, the engraving by Crispijn van der Passe after a portrait by Isaac Oliver (Fig. 4). A small number of frontispieces from the period, most notably those to The Wits and Messalina, seem at one level directly to record staged performances, and 4

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1 Frontispiece to The Spanish Tragedy, 1615. Page size (in this copy) 17.6 × 12.8 (67/8 × 5).

2 Frontispiece to Doctor Faustus, 1610. Page size (in this copy) 18.0 × 13.2 (71/8 × 51/4).

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3 Frontispiece to If you know not me, 1605. Page size (in this copy) 19.0 × 14.8 (71/4 × 57/8 ).

have been seized upon as evidence by an earlier generation of theatre historians. Yet even these cannot be adduced simply as historical records, and they are far fewer in number than those that, like those cited above, present the plays’ events through the different material, aesthetic and perceptual forms of the book.4 The point is clear: from the very earliest printed versions of theatrical texts, illustrations have sought not to represent stage action but instead to re-create the plays in a form suited for the medium of print, defining the essential difference at the outset of the reading experience. Striking, too, is the fact that the three techniques demonstrated in these images, the simultaneous presentation of temporally separate aspects of action, the use of emblems and allusion to images outside the play, are all forms of visualisation that will recur, within different stylistic frames, throughout the subsequent course of the illustrated edition. The frontispiece to Ben Jonson’s Works, for example, is well known for its rich emblematic suggestiveness, but the emblem will again be of major importance in the nineteenth 6

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4 Crispijn van der Passe, after Isaac Oliver: Elizabeth I, 1603. Engraving, image size 31.75 × 22.5 (121/4 × 87/8 ).

century, and is exploited to suggestive, if idiosyncratic, interpretive purposes in the Shakespeare designs of Kenny Meadows.5 The word ‘frontispiece’, used in Jonson’s time to mean what would now be termed an illustrative title-page, itself reveals a larger function. Borrowed from architecture, where it designates the principal elevation of a building, it reveals the initial page as a declamatory concentration of the text’s style, content and purpose that offers an invitational point of entry to its pages. In this it also discloses something of the intertwining of stage, print and other aesthetic forms. Early accounts of what would now be called a proscenium also employ the word, as Chapter 2 will discuss with reference to the Dryden–Davenant Tempest. That books were shown with this page-opening on display on stationers’ stalls emphasises the invitational aspect and reveals a further principle underlying any disussion of the printed book: considerations of commerce are always insistent, forcing 7

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reconciliation with the more general aesthetic and moral concerns of text and reader. In later editions, where frontispieces are separate images bound alongside a printed title, a similar balance obtains, despite the difference of its components. In all these cases, in different ways, the image draws in the reader, offering a suggestion of what is to come, operating as much through unfulfilment as unfolding of the experiential sequence offered in the book itself. Common to all such forms is the existence of a deep, close relationship between word and image in print, of a kind too easily and too frequently overlooked in present-day readings. Despite the clear differences between the identities of a play on the page and in performance, the desire to see images as straightforward evidence of stage practice has been, and remains, strong. Perhaps the clearest instance of this is provided by the frontispiece to Nicholas Rowe’s edition of Hamlet, which shows the appearance of the ghost of Old Hamlet in the closet scene (3.4).6 In his Pictorial Shakspere, which appeared in the first of its many forms in the 1830s, Charles Knight reproduces a rather poor copy of the image (Fig. 5) as a gloss to the line ‘Look here, upon this picture, and on this’ (3.4.53). He continues with what is probably the earliest printed discussion of the image and its origin: In a print prefixed to Rowe’s Shakspere, 1709, of which the following is a copy, we see Hamlet pointing to the large pictures on the arras. Our readers will smile at the costume, and will observe that the stage trick of kicking down the chair upon the entrance of the ghost is more than a century old.7

Hamlet has started up so rapidly that he has knocked over his chair, a piece of stage business inherited by Betterton from Burbage via Joseph Taylor and Davenant and, according to legend, suggested by Shakespeare himself. Certainly there is an allusion to stage action here; but to see it only as such is to ignore significances derived from its visual identity. What is presented is the consequence of an action, not the action itself. In the theatre, what is presumably most effective in the falling chair is that, in its immediacy, it reveals the violence of Hamlet’s reaction. What is seen in the image is the result of that movement. It can function as a memorial of the event; but it can recapture neither the movement itself nor the essentially dynamic response, a combination of mind and body, that the movement reveals, and which made it such an effective theatrical event. For the reader who witnessed the performance, the engraving may function as a memorial trigger; for one who has not, it may suggest a response of great immediacy. But in itself it remains essentially distanced from these events, because of the change in medium the moment has undergone. 8

5 Charles Knight: Page from Pictorial Shakspere, 1838, reproducing Franc¸ois Boitard’s frontispiece to Hamlet for Nicholas Rowe’s Works of William Shakspere, 1709. Page size 22.2 × 14.3 (83/4 × 55/8 ).

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This change is evident in other ways. One of the most important, yet least noted, was established by Jonathan Bate.8 The upturned chair assumes a compositional, not a dynamic meaning, when moved from stage to page, since now it points upward to the portrait of Old Hamlet hanging directly above Gertrude. The effect is to convey meaning through a device specific to a static visual design, the geometric arrangement of forms to convey a relationship central to the play. Bate does not, however, complete the point by making clear its significance when the print is considered as the frontispiece, the first element of the play encountered by the reader. For someone who knows the play, the direction immediately reveals the difference between Old Hamlet and Claudius; for one approaching it afresh, it hints at some relation between the ghost and the portrait. Focus on the composition reveals another important level of implication, contained in the placing of Gertrude. Located in the centre of the design, framed between the three male figures – live, spectral and painted – she is visually enmeshed in their relationship. A reader familiar with the text will recognise her complicity, and one encountering it afresh will be offered a suggestion as yet imprecise, and perhaps not consciously assimilated, but giving impetus to the play’s larger movement. To this difference from stage action must be added another, that is related to the image’s mode of production, as a copper engraving. The ghost appears as an ethereal figure through the very sparing use of engraved lines, giving a translucent effect quite impossible in the contemporary theatre. As well as being achievable only in this medium, the approach is essential to the image’s referential meaning, since without it there would be no direct indication of the ghost’s identity as a spirit. The quality is enhanced by the use of lighting, the sconces directly above the ghost adding to its spectral translucency in comparison to the solid flesh of Hamlet and Gertrude. Yet the lighting also extends the distance between image and performance, the placing of the candle running counter to all the surviving evidence of stage lighting at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Such sconces existed only in the auditoria of contemporary theatres. Since the stage setting had no side walls at right angles to the proscenium until the far later introduction of the ‘box set’, lighting was provided from the wings by ‘wallers’ or ‘ladders’, vertical battens carrying multiple candles with reflectors to direct the light towards the stage.9 A less insistent difference is implied in the presence of the portrait on stage. The only possibility would be for it to have been painted on a backdrop and, though not clearly visible, attaining meaning through Hamlet’s speech and gesture. In the constrained economy of the theatre, however, such a specialised drop, which could be used only in this scene, would be unlikely, and 10

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the resemblance was more often conveyed by Hamlet showing a miniature to his mother. By contrast, the use of an image-within-image had been an important element of narrative art since the middle ages, and one shortly to be fully exploited for satirical purposes by Hogarth. The change is thus both effective as a means of clarifying moment and a relocation of event from theatrical to painterly convention – and one that, as Chapter 2 will make clear, was exploted in other images from Rowe’s edition. The Hamlet image is also important for what it does not do: present in visual terms the experience of witnessing a performance within a theatre. Given the social importance of the theatre in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it is striking how few images record it, one outstanding exception being Hogarth’s Scene from ‘The Beggar’s Opera’,10 repainted in several versions to show different audience members seated on the stage. A comparison with the Rowe Hamlet and an image by John Smith, which would seem to show a performance of Henry Fielding’s Pasquin (Fig. 6), reveals key differences. The viewpoint is the socially privileged but visually restricted one of a stage box; the lighting is shown in fairly naturalistic terms, coming from stage chandeliers. As much space is taken up by the audience as the actors: and the composition reflects stage disposition, avoiding the geometric suggestion of relationship that is possible in the Rowe. But a major caution should precede any claim that images directly present stage conditions. In 1673 an edition of Elkanah Settle’s The Empress of Morocco11 appeared with illustrations to each act by William Dolle (Fig. 7). That they show the scene and action surrounded by a theatrical proscenium has led some to assume that they are failed attempts to reproduce both the action and the design of the theatre’s interior. A moment’s reflection will make clear that, in simple terms, they are neither. The images are printed from two separate plates, in the given example both signed by the designer, the outer presenting a version of the theatre, the inner offering a version of the set. But again, the latter is redefined as an image, not a copy of the staging. The images show box sets and, in some cases, a roof, going way beyond the capabilities of the contemporary stage. The framing presentation of the theatre is similarly modified, its dimensions being altered to fit the aspect ratio of a quarto page. The desire to find evidence of staging has led some critics to see this as a material error,12 and the separate formal qualities of the printed image have been overlooked. That the two need to be seen as independent realisations was stated with admirable directness by W. J. Lawrence in 1935: ‘It is pretty well time that theatre historians should be bluntly told that no inferences can be safely drawn concerning the methods of staging pursued in restoration days from the illustrations in the original quarto of Settle’s The Empress of Morocco.’13 11

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6 John Smith: Scene from Henry Fielding’s Pasquin, c. 1736. Image size 13.5 × 8.5 (53/8 × 33/8 ).

The allusion to Betterton traditionally found in the Rowe Hamlet raises another issue central to the illustrated edition: to what degree do its images record performances by particular actors? The answer to this question is once more dependent on the material circumstances directing the production of the images and the books in which they appear. While a tradition of paintings of actors had begun to develop at the time of Rowe, and was in full flood by Garrick’s heyday, it was largely separate from the tradition of imaging the plays. Thus, Benjamin Wilson’s paintings of Garrick as Hamlet or Lear, Zoffany’s images of Garrick and Mrs Pritchard in Macbeth, or similar treatments of Charles Macklin, Spranger Barry and other 12

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7 William Dolle: Illustration before Act II of The Empress of Morocco, 1673. Image size 11 × 15 (43/8 × 6).

actors of the period, are far more concerned with presenting the dual identity of the actor, as character and as performer at celebrated moments of famous roles, than with reflecting the conditions of performance or the larger nature of the play.14 Some images do present characters from recognisable productions; but these are almost always relocated in a setting that goes far beyond the limitations of stage scenery and instead follows the conventions of contemporary landscape painting.15 The convention is even more limited when considered in relation to the illustrated edition, and is almost entirely restricted to the two editions produced by John Bell. Both include plates of actors in character, but in neither case do they show stage performances. The earlier series, appearing in the second version of his edition of 1774, show the figures with no scenery, and an absence of other characters that denies the possibility of dramatic interaction. For Bell’s 1788 edition, some of the actors’ images have settings; but they are loosely sketched and 13

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give little impression of individual performances. Since both series were also issued separately, and form part of a much larger range of images produced by Bell for his other publications such as Bell’s British Theatre, the conclusion must be that they are part of what, even at that time, was a cult of celebrity rather than a record of performance. That these images were produced over quotations raises the further question of whether they are chosen to depict actors’ ‘points’, the moments for which they were celebrated in the theatre. Again, the evidence argues against this, as the portraits have little or no relation to these moments of theatrical climax. The selection of event for the scenes from the play in both the Bell editions reflects something larger, the choice made either according to developing traditions of imaging or through the illustrator’s own preference. The parallel suggestion, that the moments reflect those selected by early critics and editors, has as little support. A comparison between the engravings of all the principal editions of the eighteenth century and the moments selected by Alexander Pope in his edition of 1728 is revealing. Of a total of 110 speeches listed in Pope’s index as the ‘most considerable’, a mere seven are depicted in the editions that followed, including the second edition of Pope’s own. There is no clear cause for this, but a reasonable inference would be one that, again, applies also to the larger neglect of individual actors in the images. The illustrators had neither read the list of outstanding moments nor, in most cases, seen the actors famed for specific performances. Franc¸ois Boitard, producing the designs for Rowe’s frontispieces, had little opportunity to see most of the plays in performance. Edward Edwards, producing images for Bell’s edition of 1773, heads his designs with both act and scene designations (see, for example, Fig. 51), showing that he followed an edition earlier than that which he was illustrating, which had only act headings. Like others discussed in the following chapters, both artists instead followed their own visual training and instinct when selecting scenes. The few scenes from Pope’s list that are presented in engraved form are those innately suitable for visual treatment, most obviously so Romeo and Juliet in the tomb. Others reflect, in addition to their visual potential, a concern for moments of emotional intensity shared between stage and easel: Iachimo in Imogen’s chamber, Richard II renouncing the crown, Lear in the storm, Henry IV addressing Hal when the latter has taken the crown, Timon cursing humankind, and Anne cursing Richard III. Frequent description of such paintings as ‘theatrical conversation pieces’ reveals their identity as a sub-order of a genre common in the eighteenth century. Pope’s selection of Tyrrel’s account of the murder of the princes offers a special kind of transmediation: whereas Pope lists it under the 14

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category of ‘Soliloquies’, it is the events that it chronicles that are presented, not the acted monologue. In this it reveals a quite different and more widespread relation that mingles source and influence, the overlap between the construction of English history and the printing of Shakespeare’s plays in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. David Hume’s history, in its continuation by Tobias Smollett, included images of the same events, often by the same artists, as contemporary editions of Shakespeare, blurring categories in a manner recalling the fusion of history, geography and myth in the sixteenth century. All this evidence points towards a clear conclusion. While a static image may draw on theatrical material, it will be generically different in its detail, method and effect. Attempting to employ such images simply as records of performance is not only dangerously speculative; it overlooks the separate natures of the two media, and essentially reverses the direction of the movement from stage to print, reading backwards instead of forwards. The transmediation occurs, in all but a tiny number of images, from the printed text to the printed image. It is in this dialogue that the creative aporia arises within which the interpretive stroke of the illustration is performed. One example of how this process works, and the degree to which the illustration is wholly dependent on its identity and location as part of a printed book, is offered by the frontispiece by William Harvey, engraved by W. T. Green, to Charles Knight’s edition of The Taming of the Shrew (see Frontispiece). It shows the discovery of Sly at the end of the hunt and, above him, a tilted mirror in which is reflected the altercation between Petruchio and the Tailor. Still higher are two other characters, who may be identified as another version of Sly, watching the action, holding the ‘page, dressed as a lady’ (Ind.2.94 s.d.), in depiction of the final words of the second Induction scene: ‘Come, madam wife, sit by my side/ And let the world slip. We shall ne’er be younger’ (Ind.2.137–8). The image frames an event that, in demonstrating Petruchio’s cruelty, constitutes perhaps the major, and repeated, trope of the action, bracketed between the extremes of the Induction’s events. In showing the play’s central trope in a mirror, it presents graphically the metaphor familiar from Hamlet’s definition of ‘the purpose of playing’: ‘to hold, as ’twere the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure’ (3.2.17–20). Theatre itself, as well as the layers of actuality offered in the particular play, is thus held up for interrogation. The visualisation here is astute. It presents the play’s double terms of performance; comments on the nature of theatre; and offers not a synopsis but a recurrent figure of the play, enfolding it in a statement of the relation between the 15

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play’s two performances, in support of Knight’s contention in the ‘Introductory Notice’ that the play’s original performances would have included improvised comments from Sly throughout the main action. The motif is used again in Knight’s 1 Henry IV, with the king and queen above an ornate mirror that reflects not a recurrent figure but a pivotal moment of the play’s action. The result is a mediation between historicism and the idea of theatre as narration, an intimation rare at this period of the possibility that the two forms might overlap, and that Shakespeare’s history (or, by implicaton, anyone else’s) might not consist of purely factual record. These images, each a frontispiece in a markedly different sense of the term, reveal something of the complexities that the single engraved image of a play may contain, as well as the self-reflexive qualities that it can display. The Rowe Hamlet negotiates skilfully between a presentation of a single scene and a schematic showing of the characters and forces driving the play’s action. The Knight titlepage enfolds within its frame action a theatregram central to the key relationship and movement of the play, in a manner itself a commentary on the identity of theatrical action. These are not the only functions that images may provide in the illustrated Shakespeare. They do not, for example, reflect the visual treatment of strands of language within a text, or employ iconographical reference to underline or extend meaning. And all are initial images, presented at the outset of the text rather than occuring within it, as part of the play’s temporal unfolding. But between them they offer an indication of the range, depth and the generic identity of the imaginative and interpretive force that images add to the parallel statement in printed form of the developing aesthetic structure of a play, and the modification of the reading experience that they provide.

II Stepping back a pace or two from the preceding paragraphs reveals that what is taking place in the act of illustration is not so much a transmediation, but an alternative form of presentation, reconfiguring the play into its own generic syntax. This extends laterally into the location of the image within the volume. The single frontispiece offers a range of initial experiences to the reader, suggesting surprise, recognition, critical address and the desire to read further in various proportions according to the individual’s knowledge of the play and her or his response to its treatment in the image. Its choice of moment for treatment will have major implications. As the first element of the text encountered by the reader, the image will inevitably colour the reader’s view of the play, privileging its events 16

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within the sequence of action, and establishing concepts or questions regarding character and idea. It may show a turning point in the plot, or a situation implying something of the play’s mood or tone. In prefiguring either to the new reader, it will suggest a trajectory or a modality; in recalling it to the returning reader, it will refresh or challenge an earlier impression. For both, it will significantly modify the reading that ensues; in both, this will occur before a word of the play’s text has been read. As the tradition of imaging developed, the single engraved illustration was gradually moved into the text itself, appearing opposite the page containing the action it visualised. This relocation radically modifies the reader’s experience. No longer is the text’s trajectory sketched in advance; instead, a far closer relationship is established between image and textual moment. Something of the physical effect of this may be recaptured by comparing the image of Hamlet as reproduced by Knight (see Fig. 5) with the frontispiece as presented in Chapter 2 (see Fig. 26), and by seeing both in comparison with the placing of the Knight Taming of the Shrew engraving as the frontispiece to the present volume. The identity of each, and its relation to the points made in the accompanying prose, is subtly changed by its material placement. Once the move to illustration within the text has been made, another factor acts to determine its relation to the text: its placing on a left- or right-hand page. Images at the right will move the reader forward, suggesting continuity of action; those on the left will suspend the reading progress. In consequence the former are perhaps more suited to scenes of action, the latter to those of reflection. The placing can significantly change the nature of the reading, as Figure 5 demonstrates. The image of Iachimo in Imogen’s chamber (Fig. 8)16 is taken from the edition of Bellamy and Robarts published serially between 1788 and 1791, the first to include two engravings placed opposite the action they depict. The effect is subtle. Appearing on the left, it forces the reader to halt the reading process and look backward, concretising the events and imagery from the whole scene. But in taking this action the reader is made to anticipate and then follow the line of sight from Iachimo to the sleeping Imogen, an action which inescapably, though for most readers quite unconsciously, draws the reader into the same intrusive act of voyeurism. It is enhanced by being given an air of enclosure through the elaborate frame that the image shares with all of those in the edition. Effects of this subtlety are wholly dependent on material aspects of placing and design, and generate responses innate to the printed play different in kind from those of the stage. In manipulating aspects of visual perception deeply embedded in Western culture, the images demonstrate an awareness of its workings that, 17

8 Richard Corbould, engraved by William Walker: Cymbeline, Bellamy and Robarts, 1788–91. Page size 20.3 × 12.7 (8 × 5).

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while largely unnoticed by most readers, is manipulated in present-day culture with great, and to some minds sinister, effectiveness by advertising and marketing designs. The later practice of interspersing images within the text raises further issues. Victorian editions in which this is made possible by changes in production methods present additional concerns for the visual continuity of the text through the range and control of viewpoint they employ. The manipulation of mise-en-page, a term in itself realising the complex relation between page design and stage setting, is most obviously apparent where a page-opening may be used to pair images and thus raise critical or plot-related issues through comparison or contrast. A very simple, but uniqely effective, example of this is provided by the pairing at the close of The Two Gentlemen of Verona by Kenny Meadows, which offsets an image of Valentine saving Silvia with a tailpiece that gives a very direct, but wholly visual, reading of the character of Proteus (Fig. 9). The design employs the page-opening to visualise both the event and a frequent response to one of its central characters that is not dispelled by the play’s ending, in a visual statement of a proverbial description, at once symbolically and literally a snake in the grass. The image also exemplifies Meadows’s early reliance on emblematic depiction, a facet of later Victorian visual intelligence most familiar today in moral painting and religious observance, but prominent also in popular culture. R. L. Stevenson’s study Moral Emblems, 17 the exploration of the language of flowers by Kate Greenaway, and the performative exploitation of the language of the fan demonstrate its broad currency. The reproduction here of the page as tilted sideways reveals another aspect of the force of materiality in the reading process: such presentation inevitably breaks the continuity of reading, giving increased, and redefined, emphasis to the image within the longer process of which it is part. Such issues, of course, are co-dependent with the changing material priorities of book production and circulation. The move from the hand-bound volume of the early eighteenth century to the machine-printed, machine-cased volumes of the mid-nineteenth greatly expanded the quantities of books produced, but it also had immediate consequences on the quantity and placing of illustrations. The earliest images discussed here, those of the eighteenth century, were produced as engravings on copper. In this method, a thin plate of copper is incised with the design by the burin, a tool resembling a small chisel with a V-shaped blade. Ink is then applied, in earliest forms with a cloth pad, later with a roller; the surface is then wiped clean so that ink remains only in the incised areas, and dampened paper placed over the plate before being inserted in a hand-operated press. This produces a clear image that, through the use of various kinds of ‘hatching’ or 19

9 Final page-opening from The Two Gentlemen of Verona with engravings by Kenny Meadows, from Barry Cornwall’s Works of Shakspere, 1838–43. Page size 27.9 × 20.3 (11 × 8).

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repeated strokes, can produce many variations of line and texture. In the second half of the eighteenth century, the use of a roulette became common, in which a metal wheel with spikes spaced at random was rolled over the surface of a plate to create textural effects. Later, this was replaced by a mattoir, a metal punch with a pattern of dots or small curves. Both these instruments were used to produce what became known as stipple engravings, adding to the range of effects possible in a copper engraving, and also increasing their speed of execution. Yet while, with the addition of such devices, the copper engraving can produce a variety of effects of line and texture, the metal’s softness prevents the production of more than a few hundred impressions. Steel engraving, a similar process using the harder metal, became possible in the mid-nineteenth century, allowing larger print runs. In the 1780s, Thomas Bewick developed the technique of wood engraving that was to be the major form for the next century. This differed from the much older wood cut, familiar at its finest from the work of D¨urer and his contemporaries, which was a relief print, in which the image was transferred from raised areas left on the face of a block of wood once the remaining areas, showing as white in the print, had been cut away. Initially also a relief method, the wood engraving differed by being cut into the end-grain of a very hard wood, generally box. The greater density allowed the use of an engraving burin, and produced images of increased precision, as well as allowing far greater print runs. Later artistengravers developed white-line or intaglio wood engraving in which, as in a copper or steel engraving, the print is made from the grooves, not from the raised surface. As the practice developed, artists would draw directly, in reverse, onto the block; later, it became possible to reproduce photographs directly onto wood, facilitating the reproduction of more complex designs. Their greater density also meant that wood engraving blocks could be inserted into a single ‘forme’ or ‘chase’ of set type at more or less any point within the text, allowing greater integration between word and image, and facilitating much faster printing. This advance was matched by other technical changes. The Fourdrinier brothers developed a paper-making machine at the end of the eighteenth century, and at about the same time the cast-iron press was developed. Operated by lever rather than screw, it allowed far more rapid production. From the 1820s, mechanical casebinding became possible, the stitched fascicles or groups of pages being placed by machine into a ready-made binding of card covered with cloth or coloured paper. This replaced the time-consuming process of binding by hand that had hiterto been usual, with books being issued in plain boards, for binding in leather according to the individual’s wishes. The culminating advance was 21

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perhaps the development of the stereotype which, although invented in the eighteenth century, became widespread from the 1830s, one of its earliest products being Knight’s Pictorial Shakspere. The printer’s forme would be set as usual, and a soft material, at first plaster of Paris but later fine papier mˆach´e, was pressed against it, forming a reverse image in relief. This was used as a mould from which multiple copies were cast in metal. Each could then be used for printing, enabling many copies to be produced simultaneously, the resulting images being indistinguishable from those taken from the original wood-blocks. When this process was used to produce semi-circular plates, in a steam-driven rotary press, with rolls of paper – by then made from wood-pulp, far cheaper than rag – the increase in output was prodigious. It remained the main form of production well into the twentieth century, when other techniques such as offset lithography became widespread.18 The results of these changes were far-reaching, progressively affecting the nature of the illustrations, their relation to the text, and the resultant reading experience. The simple listing of such developments makes clear that, despite its own complexities and rewards, reading the illustration is not the same as reading the illustrated edition. Relating image to word is one of the challenges, but as the larger process develops, other factors are revealed, of which two are essential. The first is the nature of the personal experience the reader brings, or fails to bring, to the text. The second is formed from the elements of contemporary visual, social, political and material culture, which together might be termed the related components of the compound ‘thereness’ of the particular reading context. The two are as co-dependent as the words and the images of the volume towards which they are directed. Sorting out what actually happens when a reader addresses a compound text of this kind is a task of no little complexity. The physiological processes of reading are in themselves resistant enough to explication, as the debate about whether dyslexia has its roots in visual or aural perception testifies at a physiological level. The nature of a play text defines the process of reading more specifically, building on while also departing from other traditions of reading, first of the Renaissance romance, later of the novel. The printed form of a performance work already has many elements that distinguish it from continuous prose, although they may be similar in effect. They function as determinants to extend, rather than nullify, the signposting devices of prose fictions with a single narrator that are familiar to a later reader. Act and scene divisions assume and modify the functions of chapter divisions; stage directions adapt chapter titles; and speech prefixes assume the presence of some authoritative, if not necessarily authorial, voice. This voice is, of course, mediated through that of the individual reader, or the spoken voices 22

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of those reading in a group, a popular leisure acitivity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Those modern editions that regularly insert ‘Enter’ and ‘Exit’ before and after speeches simplify the process of visualising performance while reading, but they also imply much more directly a single narrative presence, as well as imposing the hierarchy of print over stage by diminishing the autonomy of the actor and director, or in the present context the reader, in making such decisions. The addition of illustrations to these narratorial presences is, then, an extension into a new aesthetic category rather than a wholly new addition – but an extension in parallel, as the discussion of the Hamlet image has suggested. The word ‘narratorial’ in the above paragraph raises another concern in the discussion of the illustrated play: its relation to the illustrated novel. Because of similarities of style and format, it is is tempting to see the plays as undergoing a process of ‘novelisation’, most particularly after the rapid growth of illustration in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Yet it remains clear that reading a play, even when interleaved with the most apparently naturalistic illustrations, is essentially different from reading a novel, since the single dominant narratorial voice is absent. Multiple viewpoints, multiple settings, multiple events, multiple time schemes – all are possible in the visualisation of a theatre text to a degree not feasible in a novel.19 Ironically, the visual focus removes the focaliser. The control and variation of viewpoint, as subsequent chapters will make clear, is an important device in the visual control of the development of plot, idea and feeling in the illustrated edition. It is also a measure of the involvement of the reader within the action, a dimension that, again wholly related to the print medium, is one which, as Chapter 9 will explore further, shows some important parallels with the growth of the novel. While all these issues confront every reader, each reader will approach them, and the text in which they are posed and resolved, in a different way. The control of the reading process in terms of time, place and larger psychological resonances will remain individual. A division can, however, be made between two groups of reader. Some will address the book having seen the play, read related books or seen pictures that constitute a tradition to which the book itself contributes. Their experience will be markedly different from that of the other kind of reader, who addresses the play for the first time, with no knowledge of the conventions that it follows or rejects. There are no suitable terms for these two kinds of readers: ‘implied’, ‘ideal’, ‘countersignatory’, ‘informed’, ‘average’, ‘model’, ‘super’ or ‘mature’ have all been adopted with specific meanings for readers of various species, but all wear their ideological allegiances too clearly on their conceptual 23

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sleeves to be of use here. In their stead, I suggest ‘qualified’ for the reader who approaches the text with some degree of prior knowledge, not because it limits a full reading to those with proper credentials, but through its suggestion of an approach defined and necessarily limited by earlier experience. By contrast, the ‘new’ reader comes to the text without earlier knowledge or practice, and is as much liberated from what Auden calls ‘the rehearsed response’ as hampered by the inability to recognise allusion or resonance. In both these imaginary extremes there are enriching as well as corrosive forces. In one sense, however, all readers are qualified by the traces of knowledge – social, political, economic and, most intangible of all, the habits and stances of seeing – that each will have assumed through the cultural ether at any given time and place, and which will, quite without the readers’ knowledge, modify the reading process and its result. How to gain access to these elements, and enter into the reading consciousness of an earlier age, without imposing many kinds of reduction or distortion, yet retaining an awareness of both the nature and the value of the later interpretive intelligence, has been a preoccupation of art historians and others since critical disciplines have been subject to theoretical explication. Underlying the whole of Erwin Panofsky’s art-historical writing is a concern to balance a sharing of the ways of seeing shaped by the historical moment with the originality of the art historian’s act of intuitive interpretation.20 The imperative of recovering at least the assumptions on which the state of ‘thereness’ is grounded is one essential, clouded though it be by all kinds of stigmatisms. Yet these limitations of vision are in themselves a balancing essential in generating an act of interpretation which, with imagination and and good fortune, may result in the Heideggerian idea of the Gewalt with which a proposition must be addressed – not so much violence but an ‘illuminative idea’21 resultant from the interaction between disparate world views. In this, the debate between present-day reader and earlier text mirrors that between illustrator and play text – a model that is valuable in preserving the idea of the nature, and the value, of both acts of interpretive re-creation. Those who argue, with Karin Littau,22 that concerns of production define the approach of the book historian, while the reception of the image belongs with the historian of culture, are erecting a false distinction, ignoring the circularity of the forms that both discuss. The dialogic model arising from Panofsky’s thinking also facilitates an address to the question that, to most Shakespeareans, is central: what do illustrated editions reveal about the plays, as they were performed then, as they were interpreted then, as they are read now, and the fiction that they have a meaning that is constant, regardless of when they are read? The creative violence of Gewalt makes 24

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this act not merely possible but inevitable, in offering readings that, at their best, combine the vigour of critical readings with the dynamism of performance, and the hint, within the latter, that whatever their attraction they are, in the longer course of interpretive history, merely individual contributions to a larger dialogue. The production of such layered readings – interpretations of interpretations, perhaps – is the aim of this book, alongside the work of scholarly recovery achieved through discussion of individual editions, images and approaches. Implicit within all this discussion, of course, is an insistent irony – that images convey ideas visually, and that all we can do to explore them takes place through words. If this is true of the decoding of visual symbolism and style, it is far more applicable to the discussion of the processes of reading the illustrated editions in which they occur. The questions posed earlier in this section are, at bottom, unanswerable: but the act of posing them is equally important, since it reveals simultaneously the sheer complexity of the process, and the ineffability of the act of perception, itself matched by the wordless communicative power of the images themselves, and their larger significations in combination with the verbal play-text.

III All of these patterns of influence, and the caveats they impose, are exerted in different directions by every change in the production and design of illustrated editions through their publishing history. The shift from an emblematic frontispiece that bears the book’s title, of the kind demonstrated in Jonson’s Works, to a separate pictorial one bound facing a typographic title-page, was firmly established by the time of Rowe’s edition, and remains a current, if not frequent, approach. It was a procedure that simplified printing, allowing for the engraved image to be added during binding, and also offered the commercial opportunity of selling the plates separately, for collection in an album, framing, or display on screens. It coincided with a move away fom the emblematic towards something that, with considerable qualifications of the term that will emerge subsequently, may be called more representational. The images for Rowe’s edition employed many of the devices more frequently encountered in much earlier narrative and religious painting, but by the mid-century a move towards various orders of stylised representationalism had occurred. The major figure here was Hubert Gravelot, the French painter and illustrator who in his images for the second Theobald edition of 1740 moved the plays into a visual world that, within its own stylistic terms, may be described 25

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as naturalistic. With his slightly later collaboration with Francis Hayman for the edition of Sir Thomas Hanmer, this marked a shift towards a different kind of reader involvement, based not on perspectival and symbolic decoding but on shared experience of a moment that in some specific and delimited ways resembles that produced by illustrations in a contemporary novel. The works of this decade reveal a practice in Shakespeare imaging that reinforces the truth revealed by both Gombrich and Auerbach: that mimesis is never an act of simple record, but always performed through the stylistic filters of the artist and observer. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the production of books in greater numbers, and the greater popularity of illustration in books of all kinds, led some publishers to include images within the text of the plays themselves – a move anticipated by some purchasers of earlier editions, who instructed their binders to place the frontispiece images opposite the action in the text. John Bell’s edition of 1773–4 is innovatory here, but it also sets up complex tensions between the stage, illustration and the scholarly editions of the period, all of which need to be considered for a full view of Shakespeare in print in the 1770s. Later editions, notably Bell’s 1788 edition and the serial parts published by Bellamy and Robarts, expand the tradition by placing images within the text. The choice of moment for presentation remained crucial: it is not necessarily dismissive to say that in some cases the act of selection is of greater resonance than the image itself in revealing a conceptual reading of the play’s concerns. From the 1780s to the 1830s, illustration adopts a variety of forms, with an equivalent diversity of approaches to the texts. In part, this expansion is a response to the rapidly expanding range of readers eager to explore the plays. The best known of these editions, issued alongside Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery, is matched by the editions of Chalmers, Heath, Tegg and several others, and also by the more fully visual collections of engravings designed by Frank Howard and John Thompson. It is at this time that the habit of grangerising or extra-illustrating begins to become fashionable among collectors of Shakespeare images, offering new insights into contemporary approaches to the plays by the addition of images and other documents as visual, literary or performative annotations and extensions of a printed text. Nineteenth-century imaging adopts a larger number of forms, physical, stylistic and conceptual, which are partly facilitated, partly instigated by major developments in book manufacture. The changes in production methods detailed earlier, and the greater integration of verbal and visual elements they assumed, determined the reader’s movement through the play by establishing and varying a rhythm and speed of illustration. Regularity and frequency can increase at 26

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moments of climax, or slow at moments of contemplation: if used in conjunction with alternation between left- and right-hand placement, they can exert subtle control of feeling as well as pace. If, as sometimes occurs, the images are bound slightly before the scene they depict, the reading process is doubly accelerated, once by the physical impulse forward and once by the imposed desire to read the scene depicted. The careful balance of images on a page-opening can suggest pairings and oppositions between characters and settings, almost as a parallel to double-casting on stage. In all cases, because of the large number of images it employs, such production has greater freedom than the earlier single-image editions, both to concentrate on individual moments and to suggest later developments. At the same time as offering a more integrated text, the reduced costs of the new production methods made books available to increasingly large readerships, driven by the growth in popular education as part of the high-Victorian drive for self-improvement. That the popular editions of the mid-nineteenth century were produced by publishers who issued texts of many other kinds, from popular novels to magazines and part-works on a great range of instructional subjects, inevitably set up a series of relationships between Shakespeare imaging and other printed forms. Further, since the images were aimed at a wide public at a time when cultural and social reforms were a major concern, they inevitably reflect the concerns of the age, through the lenses of its own visual and behavioural styles. The four major editions, of Charles Knight, Barry Cornwall, the Cowden Clarkes and Howard Staunton, consequently become important laboratories of contemporary social structures, beliefs and choreographies in their visual dialogues with the plays. As the production of editions of Shakespeare became an increasingly important instrument in the design of national identity, and their ownership a mark of cultural maturity, the images acquired another resonance. They became a touchstone of visual culture by which other visual forms would be judged, and to whose qualities editors of other illustrated books would aspire. Reading the images became part of the acquisition of skills essential within a modern, educated industrial society that was almost obsessive in its annexation of cultural forms as a means of imposing hierarchy. At some stage in the 1860s, the illustrated edition changed in nature and importance. Perhaps in echo of the decline of illustration in the novel, perhaps because of shifts in publishing towards cheap, mass-market editions in which the presence of images was intrusive and impractical, editions moved away from earlier practices. John Dicks’s edition of the mid-1860s appeared almost 27

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simultaneously with the Globe Shakespeare, based on the more scholarly Cambridge edition. The synchrony offers itself as a tempting symbol, suggesting the decline of illustration to its simplest level in the face of scholarship made accessible. Though this is misleading, as will later emerge, it marks the end of the accesible, popular edition with specially commissioned images. Illustrated editions would be produced thereafter, as they are still: but they are directed towards the more specialised readership of the bibliophile and collector. Subsequent editions that contained illustrations often anthologised images reproduced from paintings, or already familiar in other forms, so that the continuity of style that directs the text along a particular interpretive path in earlier editions is absent. Although a great deal of attention has been given to the growth of the tradition of scholarly editing from the eighteenth century onwards, it is important to see such growth alongside the expansion of popular editions of the plays, the majority of which contained illustrations. Theobald’s two editions sold 2,860 copies, Johnson’s 1765 edition sold 1,000 copies, the second a further 750, and its revision by Steevens in 1773 approximately 1,200.23 By contrast, John Bell claimed of the serial publication of his 1775 edition that ‘above 3,000 copies of the first number, The Tempest, had been taken up’,24 and another authority gives a total of 4,500 for all three versions of this Bell edition25 – and this excludes sales of volumes reissued by James Barker after Bell’s bankruptcy in 1793.26 Nearly a century later, John Dicks claimed sales of 700,000 copies over the two-year sale of his edition begun in 1865.27 All these figures should be treated with caution, but their origin in several sources, and the logical inference drawn from their lower prices, both argue strongly for the greater dispersal of these editions than those of the foremost Shakespeare scholars. If the sales of the editions of Knight, Meadows, Gilbert and Cassell are factored into the equation, the illustrated edition emerges as a major thread in the process of Shakespeare reception and cultural assimilation. In different ways and for different reasons, they were also powerfully influential in earlier periods. Bell’s first edition was cheap, and frequently reprinted; Pope’s second edition was significantly less expensive than the first; and Rowe’s was, for many years, the only edition available apart from the Folios, which even when purchased secondhand were way beyond the means of most readers.28 The images from his edition of 1714 were frequently reproduced in the flood of pirated editions of single plays that came close to dominating the popular market in the 1720s and 30s. From this it is, at the most modest claim, strongly arguable that the illustrated edition was the broadest channel by which the greatest proportion of the reading public gained an acquaintance, whatever its nature or intensity, with the plays of Shakespeare – a 28

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readership much larger than those for the editions that form the scholarly tradition that, until very recently, was the exclusive concern of the professional Shakespearean. The practice of reading Shakespeare needs in turn to be seen within larger movements, of which the construction of national identity through ideas of literature, history and morality is the strongest. Along with illustrated Shakespeares, the pictorial histories and illustrated editions of the Bible, The Pilgrim’s Progress and Paradise Lost are central not only to these processes but to the growing visual understanding of the nation, acting as unofficial but insistent determinants and reflections of aesthetic taste. The elision of such volumes also ensures that the Shakespeare myth, of the embodiment of national character and moral purpose, attained its full currency. Given these significances, it is remarkable that the illustrated editions have received so little critical attention. Claudia Corti’s Shakespeare illustrato is a useful summary and contains interesting material on images in the Westminster Magazine, but extends only to 68 pages and is available only in Italian. W. Moelwyn Merchant’s Shakespeare and the Artist is the only study that gives anything like a full account, although it privileges the eighteenth-century images over later ones.29 Like all other work, it rests on the earlier researches of T. S. R. Boase and Montague Summers. H. A. Hammelmann’s research into the identities of eighteenth-century engravers is likewise essential, while the work of Colin Franklin offers a brief but valuable introduction to the tradition of illustration. Recent scholarship, notably the work of Jonathan Bate, John Harvey, Peter Holland and Adrian Poole, has done something to recover the value of Victorian images, the last named being especially helpful in offering a brief but incisive analytical survey of the intersections between illustration, painting and theatre within Victorian cultural concerns. A number of studies have appeared that explore particular aspects of the illustrated text. Alan Young’s comprehensive study catalogues treatments of Hamlet; Grant F. Scott explores The Tempest as treated by the artists of the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery. Shorter studies by Barbara Arnett Melchiori, Georgeanna Ziegler and, in a wider aesthetic frame, Magda Romanska, explore themes of sexuality and the representation of women in later nineteenthcentury imaging. To these should be added the work of Kalman Burnim and Laurie Osborne in disentangling the complexities of the editions of John Bell, and Andrew Murphy’s indispensable Shakespeare in Print. My own earlier Painting Shakespeare discusses the traditions of easel-painting in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, quite different in rhetoric and reading situation from illustration in print, and also chronicles the growth of the theory of narrative painting in the writings of Shaftesbury and Richardson. 29

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The word ‘illustration’ is in itself far from neutral. Until the early nineteenth century, its primary significance was with reference to the clarification of a concept by means of example – the sense in which it is used by Samuel Johnson in the title of his edition of the plays in 1765. The OED gives its first recorded use in what is now the most frequent sense, ‘The pictorial elucidation of any subject’, in 1813. This is sense 4: only as sense 4(b), with its first use in 1816, is it given the meaning ‘An illustrative picture’. While the OED cannot be regarded as indisputably authoritative, it can at the very least be seen as indicative that, throughout the eighteenth century, the practice was elucidatory, and so the use of the term has an implicit weight not always given it when used of images. Its usage in the following pages should be understood as freighted in this manner, suggestive of explanation rather than anything simpler or poorer. It is also worth pointing out one of the OED definitions of ‘illustrated’, in the hope that the discussions that follow may both reveal such qualities in the images discussed and, on occasion, aspire to such a condition: ‘Illuminated, made lustrous or bright’.

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CHAPTER 2

SPATIAL NARRATIVES AND ROWE’S SHAKESPEARE

I ‘There were embellishments to various editions from the time of Rowe, chiefly of a theatrical character, and, for the most part, thoroughly unnatural’; ‘Of course they are comically bad’; ‘Imagination was subordinated to a realistic portrayal of the modes of the contemporary theatre’; ‘a hodgepodge in conception, rising occasionally to mediocrity’.1 It is hard to argue that the draughtsmanship of the frontispiece engravings to Rowe’s edition of 17092 is not severely limited. Their wooden figures, cast in stereotypical poses, placed within settings drawn with rigidly symmetrical perspective, fail to convince present-day readers, seeming to lack either specific theatrical reference or naturalistic presentation. But the critical judgments quoted above, and the many others of which they are representative, reveal a mindset nurtured on ideas of simple visual record that ignores the tradition through which the engravings operate – a tradition that should be regarded not as a weak stumbling towards naturalistic representation but as a powerful alternative to it, in which design and emblem convey narrative and concept through composition and allusion. At a time when criticism is embryonic and performance limited to a handful of plays, and as much concerned with adaptation as interpretation, they offer readings that have much to disclose about the plays and contemporary stances towards them. Recent efforts at the rehabilitation of Rowe’s edition within its historical frame argue for a rather different approach to the engravings if their significance is to be fully grasped.3 The very fact that the volumes have come to be known as ‘Rowe’s edition’ equates them with the work of Pope, Theobald, Johnson and

31

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their successors, making clear by implication the new role that the publication assumed. But seeing them in this way obscures the intellectual terrain in which the volumes were conceived and the material circumstances that directed their production. The style and technique of the illustrations are integral components of the identity thus constructed. As elements of the material texts of the volumes they contribute significantly to the reader’s experience of the plays and, in a larger frame, to the historical growth of the frontispiece. They also accomplish the rare feat of locating the plays and their author within a European setting, an achievement often cast into shadow by the drive to establish Shakespeare as the essential icon of Englishness that began a little after their appearance. Seen in this way, the images demand a serious reappraisal. As Robert D. Hume points out even in the title of his essay ‘Before the Bard’,4 in 1709 Shakespeare was one of many figures representative of the old drama, not the object of reverence as the fount of national imaginative identity. Robert Hamm has extended this, arguing that the Shakespeare volumes were part of Tonson’s publishing effort to produce what was in essence a uniform edition of English classics.5 While an element of this developing canon, the plays were not privileged within it. Tonson’s choice of editor supports this. Selecting a dramatist rather than a scholar put the plays firmly within contemporary theatrical tastes, rather than making them the focus of the sustained textual scholarship then directed at classical writers. Shakespeare would gain credibility by the association with Rowe, a well-established dramatist popular with serious audiences, whose works had been published by Tonson since 1702. That Tonson was aware of scholarly editing practice is evident from editions of the classics that he published in quarto from 1696 to 1702, in association with Cambridge University Press. All included variant readings and scholarly annotations. That he saw English writers, of whom Shakespeare was one of many, in a quite different light is shown from his publishing their works in what Hamm calls the ‘Tonson house style,’ without critical apparatus and in smaller, octavo volumes. Shakespeare’s minority is also evident by comparison with Tonson’s folio editions of Paradise Lost (1688) and Dryden’s Virgil (1697). The difference is also apparent in the volumes’ visual components. The Milton had plates in the main engraved by Michael van der Gucht, a leading Flemish artist working in England, after drawings by Sir John Medina; the Virgil used plates engraved after Franz Cleyn by Wenceslas Hollar and Pierre Lambert for John Ogilby’s edition of 1654, with heraldic embellishments to acknowledge each of the 100 subscribers who paid five guineas for the privilege.6 By contrast, The Works of Abraham Cowley (1707) was produced as two octavo volumes, with a portrait of 32

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the author by the celebrated engraver William Faithorne and a life by Thomas Sprat. The Shakespeare volumes are printed in the same format, with a prefatory life of the dramatist and an engraving before each play. Tonson’s description of the images as ‘cuts’ reveals their difference in nature and provenance from those of the Milton and Dryden, more reverently described as ‘sculptures’. Instead of being taken from a larger folio, or commissioned from artists of the stature of Faithorne or Hollar, the Shakespeare images were produced by the largely unknown team of Franc¸ois Boitard and the engraver Elisha Kirkall.7 In employing artists at the beginning of their careers, Tonson revealed the limited importance he attached to Shakespeare’s plays; but at the same time his choice invited techniques of imaging resting on continental European practice, facilitating sophisticated conceptual responses to the plays. Before approaching the exact nature of these devices it is helpful to consider the circumstances of the volumes’ production. Fundamental is the time scheme. Tonson secured the rights to Shakespeare’s plays from Henry Herringman and Henry Byne in May 1707. In March 1709, The Daily Courant and The London Gazette carried advertisements requesting ‘any gentleman who may have materials by them’ that might be of help in producing ‘an account of the life and writings’ to contact ‘Jacob Tonson at Gray’s Inn Gate’. The edition was described as ‘in six volumes in octavo, adorned with cuts’; it was also ‘now so far finished as to be published in a month’. By this time, Rowe had probably received the information that he had commissioned Betterton to discover by visiting Stratford to talk to local inhabitants; but the timing gives some idea of the general haste with which the venture was completed. The mention of ‘cuts’ suggests that these were far enough advanced to be a feature of the production, which appeared on 2 June. This gives a period of at the very most two years for the commissioning, design and engraving of the frontispieces. As they numbered forty-three (Rowe included many other plays then thought to be by Shakespeare), this must have been done very quickly. Even assuming their commission right at the start of this period, the straightforward mathematics indicate a little more than two weeks for each image. This may in part explain the awkwardness of the engravings, but not the repeated suggestions that they record productions. Those prefacing The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew, Pericles, Henry V and Hamlet have been seen as direct performance records, a claim that needs careful qualification.8 Boitard may have seen these plays in the theatre, but for the great majority of the others this was simply impossible. In the two years in question there were London performances of Hamlet, 1 Henry IV, Othello, Julius Caesar and Henry VIII in a form resembling what might be called Shakespeare’s text. There were also adaptations: the Dryden–Davenant 33

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Tempest, Nahum Tate’s King Lear, Lacy’s Sauny the Scot (The Taming of the Shrew), Otway’s Caius Marius (Romeo and Juliet) and Shadwell’s Timon of Athens. Boitard had come to London in or around 1700. Had he been a dedicated, not to say obsessive, theatre-goer, in the first nine years of the century he could also have seen Cibber’s Richard III, George Granville’s The Jew of Venice, Betterton’s 2 Henry IV, the single performance of Gildon’s Measure for Measure, Durfey’s Love Betrayed (Cymbeline) and Ravenscroft’s Titus Andronicus. The total for the whole period is five plays and eleven adaptations, making direct theatrical acquaintance impossible in the majority of cases, and in various degrees unlikely for the remainder.9 If not from the theatre, how did Boitard acquire a knowledge of the plays that, as the succeeding pages will show, was considerable? Since many of his images depict scenes and characters then absent from the stage, it could only have been from the plays in print. Given the short production time it is highly unlikely that he saw Rowe’s text.10 What seems most likely is that he used the most easily available published edition, at that time the Fourth Folio – the edition that Rowe himself had adopted as his copy text after earlier experimentation with the Second Folio. This is supported by the fact that in many instances the images do not show the locations for the scenes introduced for the first time by Rowe. The statue scene in The Winter’s Tale takes place in a grand chapel or hall, not Rowe’s ‘room in Paulina’s house’, and the recovery of Marina from the chest in Pericles occurs on the sea shore, not a room in the palace. In some cases, there are suggestions that a contemporary adaptation might have been used. The Richard III engraving shows the ghosts appearing before Richard, but without the presence of a similar group before Richmond, suggesting the use of Cibber’s 1700 text, which deletes these antiphonal elements. Yet the presence of all eleven ghosts, rather than the four of Cibber’s re-working, confirms an acquaintance with some variant of Shakespeare’s text as well as any other version, theatrical or printed, that Boitard may have encountered. Montague Summers implies that many of the images reflect current stage costume, without recording individual performances.11 In some of the engravings, most particularly Hamlet, there are allusions to contemporary performance practice but, as Chapter 1 has shown, there are other reasons why they cannot be regarded solely as performance records. Perhaps Boitard discussed the play with Thomas Betterton, the actor whose performance the image most closely resembles. Rowe acknowledges that Betterton was of major assistance in the preparation of the edition and, given the latter’s interest in print-collecting, it seems not unlikely that he advised the artist on the content and composition of some of the frontispieces. One other possible source remains: the engravings for 34

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Tonson’s Milton folio, which in some cases the Shakespear images resemble. Peter Holland suggests12 that Tonson may have lent a copy of the Second Folio to Rowe for the preparation of the text: it is not perhaps too speculative to suggest that he also offered Boitard his folio Milton. What emerges as a conjectural basis is that Boitard made his designs from a reading of the Fourth or conceivably an earlier Folio, modified by direct or anecdotal experience of the performance of Shakespeare’s plays and some general stage practices regarding costumes or gestures, transmuting these elements into the visual structures of print narrative by following earlier images and applying his own techniques and interpretations. The results of these processes will be discussed later; but it is important to stress as a basic principle that the images are largely the product of a reading of the plays in a text without the detailed stage directions and scene locations added by Rowe. These circumstances imposed limitations, but they also gave new freedom. They defined the images as components of an edition designed for reading and based on a reading experience, not – save in the most limited or indirect degree – a theatrical record. The immediate result was that Boitard was thrown back on his own resources in producing designs based on his own readings of the plays, perhaps inevitably producing images that lean heavily on European baroque style and method. The irony of the first illustrated Shakespeare being produced with images in a style manifestly un-English is enhanced by the frontispiece engraving, commissioned by Tonson from another European emigr´e, Michael van der Gucht (Fig. 10). Instead of producing a wholly new image, the artist adapted an engraving by Guillaume Vollet after Antoine Paillet that forms the frontispiece of several early collections of the works of Pierre Corneille (Fig. 11). The original shows Fame with a trumpet hovering above the figures of Trag´edie and Com´edie who are crowning a bust of the dramatist with laurels. On the plinth beneath is engraved ‘Ament serique nepotes’. Van der Gucht retains all of these features except the bust and its caption, which are replaced by a replica of the Droeshout portrait above Shakespeare’s name. The image itself is less remarkable than its implications. Here is the dramatist, already censured by Dennis and Dryden for his failure to follow the classical rules of drama, being presented to the largest potential readership yet achieved, in terms that draw a parallel between his work and that of arguably the most complete adherent to the Aristotelian principles reinvented by French academic critics. Such an alignment would soon become unthinkable, and even at this date it might well contain an element of self-conscious irony, the reference perhaps hinting at English equality to French drama and illustration. These thoughts 35

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10 Michael van der Gucht: Frontispiece to volume I, The works of Mr. William Shakespear; in six volumes. Adorn’d with Cuts, ed. Rowe, 1709. 19.4 × 11.75 (75/8 × 45/8 ).

11 Guillaume Vollet, engr. Antoine Paillet: Frontispiece to Oeuvres de Pierre Corneille. 19 × 11.5 (71/2 × 41/2 ).

aside, the most direct result is an implicit location of Shakespeare within the continental neo-classical Pantheon, a view of the works quite different from that taken even at this time by most critics, and wholly rejected by those of the next generation. Echoed in many of the continental European approaches adopted in Boitard’s designs, it is an appropriate beginning to the complexities of reading that are offered in the frontispieces that preface each of the plays.

II Little is known of Franc¸ois Boitard. Born in France in c.1670, he was active in London at the start of the new century, but according to legend died in poverty, perhaps in the Low Countries, in 1715 or 1717. His work, largely in watercolour or wash-drawing, included mythological and biblical subjects and allegories such as 36

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The Wheel of Fortune (1692)13 and The Triumph of Galatea (c.1700–10).14 As well as the images for Rowe he produced frontispieces for Tonson’s Beaumont and Fletcher Works and six plates for The History of Joseph, a poem by William Rose. The designs for these books were all engraved, like the Shakespeare frontispieces, by Elisha Kirkall (c.1682–1742), who later achieved considerable commercial success for his white-line engravings and monochrome colour prints, generally of marine paintings and botanical illustrations. At their most accomplished, the partners produced images of considerable literary insight; but there are aspects of the Shakespeare images that impede modern readers from grasping their interpretive achievements. The major obstacle is their dual stylistic identity. In presenting a single moment from the plays, they seem to employ a kind of modified naturalism, with figures using postures and gestures mirroring the matrices of Le Brun and Bulwer in representing states of emotion, reflecting an aspect of current performance practice, history painting and portraiture. Yet this particular order of mimeticism is placed within compositional elements founded on earlier techniques of visualising space and narrative. Reconciling the perceptual dissonance thus presented needs care and imagination, but when an appropriate stance is achieved the images disclose critical mediations of a sophistication far greater than their limited draughtsmanship might suggest. To see these images through an undistorted lens, the reader must track back a long way and clear the mind of a series of assumptions. Avowedly accurate representation of external actuality must be regarded as only partially relevant; stage scenery with elaborate perspectival recession should be registered as something new, and hence used with caution, but also with inventiveness, by the illustrator. The simultaneous presentation of events separated by time should be accepted and decoded here as in any medieval or renaissance biblical painting. Finally, emblems and allusive details, seen as discrete elements, and the associative meanings they carry, must be given as much importance as any larger, descriptive whole. In short, the modern equipment for visualising a narrative must be reconceptualised as one approach among many, and located within a larger, more eclectic and essentially pragmatic stance. This does not mean that the images do not present a single moment with striking directness or carefully judged suspense: many do. Yet often, even within such presentation, simultaneous staging is used to show earlier or later scenes, and references are conveyed through emblematic details seemingly independent of the main composition. Because they show events from a single viewpoint, the images may easily be assumed by a present-day reader to follow the conventions 37

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of a realistic novel in which the onlooker becomes imaginatively and emotionally involved through sharing the narrator’s omniscience. Not so. In their principal action, subsidiary events and emblematic devices they embrace techniques demanding a degree of decryption that immediately separates the reader from the empathic experience produced in the novel. A similar restraint should be applied to the assumption that they relate to the theatre. While some allude to individual performance, the larger current of reference is to the theories of staging established by Serlio, Sabbatini and others in the sixteenth century and made popular in England by Inigo Jones.15 In their negotiation between staged and engraved events they reveal a fine awareness of the separate identities of the two media and the opportunities for critical statement that this divergence facilitates. As Chapter 1 suggested, imaging of events in the theatre is in any case a complex matter, and simple visual records are rare. But key elements of Boitard’s designs suggest that they take what they need from manuals of stage design, along with practices of costume and acting gesture, and ally them with painterly traditions of narrative and presentation. This combination of what in reductive terms are medieval and early modern armatures for conveying sequence and idea gives the Rowe frontispieces their remarkable suggestive power. In their presentations of narrative and concept, the engravings belong to an aesthetic category that, in the terms of Raymond Williams, is residual rather than emergent. But when they are approached not as individual art objects but as part of the larger, polyvalent text constituted by the printed plays, the stylistic confrontations and conjunctions that they embody offer insights that greatly enrich the reading experience. That their techniques owe so much to European religious art, using devices common in Catholic painting, but rigorously suppressed by Protestant reformers in England, adds a further irony to the visual identity of the Rowe edition, mirroring the allusion to Corneille in the portrait engraving. Boitard’s approach is exemplified in the first plate from The History of Joseph (Fig. 12). In the foreground stand the sheep and goats Joseph has been engaged in herding, and a little above them his ‘Broidered coat’16 lies on the grass. In the centre, Joseph is being lowered into the ‘chasm, with hideous Yawn’ (18) by his brothers, while two figures flanking the main group seem to voice dissent through their distance and gestures of restraint. At the rear, another figure walks away; in the recession of the image can be seen a group of figures with camels, another group of animals, and a distant city. Understanding this image is aided by comparison with a representative of the tradition that it continues, one of the 153 plates designed by Bernardino Passeri and Martin de Vos from the Adnotationes et meditationes of Jerome Nadal 38

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(Fig. 13).17 The volume first appeared in 1594, but its plates were reprinted throughout the seventeenth century, the latest version appearing in 1693, a mere sixteen years before Rowe’s Shakespeare. Popular as meditative aids for the Jesuit community, they were also common artistic models: ‘elles furent utilis´ees par les artistes, comme mod`eles et sources d’inspiration’.18 While this particular plate has as its main subject the adoration of the Magi, it includes a sequence of scenes, linked in perspectival progression, to show the stages of the journey to Bethlehem, from ‘Stella ostendit ubi IESUS erat’ through ‘Magi Bethlehem ingressi’ to ‘Nuptiae in Cana Galilaeae’, each keyed to a caption beneath the image. The engraving invites engagement with its progression at imaginative, intellectual and moral levels. Whether or not Boitard saw this particular image – as a young Catholic in France it is quite possible that he did – the plate from The History of Joseph makes clear that he knew of the approach that it employs, and used it in his own work. The techniques are not unique: comparison might as easily have been made with continental images of Orlando Furioso or other romances, but the reference to a work of religious meditation is important because it reveals the element of meditative reading involved, that is exploited in a different direction in Boitard’s Shakespeare designs. That these practices often resulted in written responses is shown in surviving books of hours that have marginal inscriptions of this kind, as the work of Eamonn Duffy has shown.19 Although Boitard’s Joseph image is presented in a recessive composition that appears quite naturalistic, it generates its narrative through elements quite separate in time. The technique is often referred to by art historians as ‘continuous’ or ‘polyscenic narrative’, but neither term is effective here, the first suggesting a single progress, the second implying scenic design from the theatre.20 The process is perhaps more accurately described as multitemporal, a term that captures the essence of the process but lacks the associations and limitations of the others. While the lowering of Joseph is the main event, reference is also made to the efforts of his brother, ‘the pious Reuben’ (31) to save him, in two separate representations. That on the right gestures restraint, while the pair on the left establish, through the hand pointing towards a purse, the temptation of selling Joseph into slavery. This links with two other elements, the figures with camels – the ‘Caravan . . . laden with rich Spicery’ (33) to whom Joseph will be sold – and the retreating figure, who in the convention of multiple depiction is most probably another version of Reuben, leaving after he has achieved this commutation of his brother’s fate. Together, these figures present separate stages in the story, all embraced into a single geographic and narrative space, in the manner of a late medieval or Renaissance biblical painting. The reference system is extended in 39

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12 Franc¸ois Boitard, engraved by Elisha Kirkall: Frontispiece to Book I, The History of Joseph, by William Rose, 1712. 18.4 × 10.8 (71/4 × 41/4 ).

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13 Jean, J´erˆome and Antoine Wierix, Adrien and Jean Collaert and Charles de Mallery: Adoratio Magorum, from Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia, by Jerome Nadal, 1595. Page size including text 23.2 × 15.8 (91/8 × 61/4 ).

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the group of animals shown just above the camels. Within the limited representational machinery of the time, these are clearly tigers, denoted by the stripes shown in the engraving. They refer not to any single episode of the text, but to its repeated metaphorical reference to wild beasts, and the degree to which their brutality is far exceeded by that of Joseph’s brothers who are governed by ‘th’impetuous Reign / Of Lawless Rage, gentler in Beasts than Men’ (3). In recalling textual elements, these details function in the manner of a medieval ‘ars memorativa’, in that they represent ‘memory prompts, not mimesis’.21 As with the Nadal plate, the reader is invited to become an involved rather than a passive onlooker in the activity of working through the stages and allusions. Boitard’s adaptation of methods from religious painting and illustration for use in a dramatic fable immediately allows the element of moral meditation to be translated into an act of critical interpretation. The involvement of the reader in decryption and meditation becomes, in its new guise, a form of critical interpretation, enshrining the image as an intellectual point of entry into the play’s verbal text. The readerly engagement has a further parallel in earlier theory of visual experience, where the act of decoding generates a quality of enargeia or intellectual vigour and immediacy: when the engraving is seen as an act of criticism, the quality translates into an active, analytical response to the literary text. None of the Rowe frontispieces has the full complexity of this multitemporal and emblematic treatment, but the Joseph image is useful in introducing the techniques that Boitard uses to produce critical readings of the plays. The crude execution of the Shakespeare frontispieces produces for most onlookers an impression of confusion and inadequacy: yet from their other work it is clear that, within the styles and limitations of their period, Boitard and Kirkall were accomplished professional artists. Comparison with the Beaumont and Fletcher of a few years later makes this instantly apparent. The frontispieces to each of the forty-three plays immediately evidence far greater care and detail of execution, suggesting not so much the greater maturity of the artists as the greater importance the production was given by the publisher in allowing more time for their production. Another constraint therefore needs to be applied when approaching the engravings: rather than judging the execution, the onlooker needs to concentrate on the disegno or original design concept, to allow its meanings to emerge. The techniques of emblem and multitemporal depiction that Boitard borrowed from continental painting and illustration must be seen in dialogue with the source that has attracted the greatest critical attention, the theatre itself. Performance is 42

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an element in the images, but in a manner that has little to say of critical value about theatre or text. The Henry V engraving depicts some of the bodies of dead soldiers in an incomplete state, seemingly because the theatre cloth on which they are painted comes to an end. That for Pericles, in its depiction of a distant city, may suggest a similar generic backdrop: but it might just as easily be taken from the representations of cities in emblem-books or topographical volumes. Moelwyn Merchant suggests that the Antony and Cleopatra design owes more to Dryden than to Shakespeare, revealing its origin in contemporary or recent production.22 These claims may or may not be true, but they certainly offer little as readings of the plays. Of potentially greater value, for a number of reasons, is the frontispiece to Othello. Desdemona lies in a large bed, one breast exposed. Delimiting the degree to which this records a performance is very difficult. While Othello’s costume and the presentation of the bed parallel to the picture plane suggests a performance, it is hard to agree with Marvin Rosenberg’s claim that the partial nudity follows theatrical practice,23 given the absence of any explicit mention of this in other records. Desdemona’s costume might just as easily refer to the Renaissance tradition in which such representation is an emblem of virgin purity. The most forceful aspect of this image is the most direct. In showing Othello in contemporary court dress, the image reveals him as the Moor of London as much as the Moor of Venice, stressing the displacement of identity that is a major concern of the play. A rather different problem attaches itself to Merchant’s assertion of theatrical origin for the Twelfth Night image,24 that shows the ‘dark house’ scene (4.2). The division of the stage into two by a wall at right angles to an imagined proscenium is certainly striking but, as David Carnegie makes clear, such an arrangement would have represented ‘a radical development in wing-and-shutter staging,’25 blocking off much of the action from the audience on each side of the division. That theatrical precedent is unlikely is confirmed, as Carnegie also stresses, by the absence of the play from the London stage between 1669 and 1741 and the excision of the ‘dark house’ scene from William Burnaby’s Love Betray’d, an adaptation staged in 1703 that Merchant cites. In the engraving, the antithesis between airy, geometric spaces on the right and dark confinement on the left is a powerful way of conveying the scene’s forces, made immediate by being stylistically located in a contemporary interior; but the effect is visual in a manner quite distinct from that possible in the theatre. One feature of the Hamlet engraving suggests an awareness of this key difference in media, and offers a metatheatrical, self-reflexive comment on it. This is the looped or draped curtain at the top of the image. Hamlet is one of fourteen of the 43

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thirty-seven canonical plays – well over a third of the total – in which the figure occurs. It is also used with similar frequency in the 1714 edition, and not only in those images that largely repeated the 1709 designs. Shown at the very top, often swagged across a corner, it is clearly not an accurate representation of a stage curtain. It is shown before the characters, whereas in the early eighteenth century much of the action would have taken place on the apron stage in front of the curtain. John Smith’s image of Fielding’s Pasquin (see Fig. 6) suggests a certain degree of referential realism in the Boitard images, but their departure from stage practice hints that the element has a larger function. Instead of an accurate record, the drape makes a simple but direct statement of the difference between the two media seen in several other devices in the engravings. Curtains or drapes are not uncommon in earlier portraits, to which they give classical authority and an emphasis on rarity, but the use of the device in engravings – other than strictly reproductive ones – is not common. In the Rowe images, the figure functions by presenting a metaphor of the theatre; it undermines the theatrical form to remind the spectator that she or he is looking at an engraving, not a performance. More significant are the wider references in the frontispieces to the practices of staging defined in the work of major Renaissance writers. By the end of the sixteenth century the theoretical works of Serlio, Scamozzi and Alberti were freely available in translation throughout Europe, and their influence is clear in Boitard’s designs. It is most evident in their depiction of street scenes and interiors. Stephen Orgel26 finds the origin of many of the images in the three key settings, for Comedy, Tragedy and Satire or Pastoral, that are defined by Serlio,27 and in some cases the effect is simple and direct. The As You Like It engraving, for example, shows a pastoral setting complete with the hills and streams depicted by Serlio and described in his accompanying text, in addition to the rustic buildings that, drawing on Vitruvius, he also recommends. The result, as a setting for Orlando showing his poem to Rosalind, is a visual fusion of Italian pastoral and indigenous romance, a striking visual analogue of the compound origins of the play’s own written sources. The major uses to which scenographic design is put are both more general and more subtle, however. One of the most frequent is the adoption of a perspectival scheme with a vanishing point in the centre of the horizontal axis, locating the onlooker at right angles to the action. Many Italian stage designs, from the Teatro Olimpico (1584) onwards, used a series of corridors receding radially from a centre directly before the stage. Even the simplest used a homologous construction of two rows of buildings withdrawing towards a central point. That

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this recessional path was known as the via regia reveals its political import: only the ruler, seated centrally opposite the stage, would have a perfect view of all that occurred. Both the perspectival scheme and the royal conspectus had been imported to the English court by Inigo Jones, who as a young man had visited the Teatro Olimpico, and annotated the works of Serlio and Scamozzi.28 Boitard’s designs show that he, too, knew this tradition, perhaps from the French versions of Serlio’s treatise, or perhaps from the English translation of 1611, both of which contained the illustrations from the original Antwerp and Basel editions. Within the changed format and redefined viewing situations of the page, several of the frontispieces for Rowe’s edition employ a compositional geometry similar to that of Serlio’s designs, the main action presented at the very centre with flanking elements channelling the beholder’s eye towards it. Those for Measure for Measure, Much Ado and The Comedy of Errors – the last in a special sense that will be discussed shortly – use the device by focusing the onlooker’s attention through a series of characters and events towards one key element or exchange. In doing so they both repeat and dissolve the privilege conferred on the ruler, since in making such a viewpoint available to all they simultaneously show their roots in aristocratic theatre and present its devices to all readers. In making the privileged view freely available, the images synecdochically replicate the status of the volume in which they appear, as the first edition of the plays available to an audience that, while still restricted to the comparatively wealthy, was certainly far wider than that reached by the Folios. In a larger sense, too, they again infuse in the reader an awareness of the difference between stage and page as visual and experiential media, revealing a metatheatric sensitivity that is evident repeatedly in the way in which the images manipulate space, meaning and the conventions of spectator participation. There is one more sense in which these images use architectural structures as a means of commenting on the plays. The central figures appear in niches at the rear of the compositions, a position occupied by statues, often of abstract qualities such as peace and justice, in the interiors of public buildings, and by saints and major allegorical figures in religious art and sculpture. In The Merchant of Venice (Fig. 14), the scheme is used in a depiction of the trial scene (4.1) to direct attention at the Duke, who sits enthroned upstage at the centre in visual incorporation of the concept of justice as the end towards which the scene is driven. The reference here is to a very specific focal point, the figure of Solomon in paintings of the Judgment, an allusion that immediately directs the reader to this aspect of the play. It is as a statement about justice that it is presented, not an

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14 Franc¸ois Boitard, engraved by Elisha Kirkall: Frontispiece to The Merchant of Venice. 19.4 × 11.75 (75/8 × 45/8 ).

exploration of the character of Portia (a Victorian fixation) or the ethnic identity of Shylock (a more recent concern). In Measure for Measure (Fig. 15), the effect is manipulated to even greater effect, with disarming simplicity. The empty niche behind Angelo and Isabella reveals the complete absence of moral judgment, posing the play’s underlying question in immediate visual terms. In places, this structuring can produce radical and suggestive critical readings, working through the equation between subject, composition and allusion, and in this the plate for The Comedy of Errors is especially significant (Fig. 16). The image presents a street scene in which linear perspective draws the spectator’s eye straight back between two tall buildings, towards a third at the rear that is parallel to the picture plane. What is striking is the design of the buildings. Instead of the variegated vernacular architecture of Serlio’s design for Comedy, 46

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15 Franc¸ois Boitard, engraved by Elisha Kirkall: Frontispiece to Measure for Measure. 19.4 × 11.75 (75/8 × 45/8 ).

they correspond to the more formal structures prescribed for Tragedy (Fig. 17):

Houses for Tragedies, must bee made for great personages, for that actions of love, strange adventures, and cruell murthers (as you reade in ancient and moderne Tragedies) happen alwayes in the houses of great Lords, Dukes, Princes, and Kings, Therefore in such cases you must make none but stately houses, as you see it here in this Figure.29

The sombre tone of the play’s opening, in Egeon’s story, and the seriousness of its ending, are thus privileged over the comic misdirections of the play. More striking is the use made of this recessive structure as a visual presentation of the play’s movement. Within the recession, a series of characters and events from the final Act of the play are depicted. At the front left Dromio of Ephesus and Antipholus of Syracuse appear to be in confused debate; opposite, the Second Merchant draws his sword, but is restrained by a man and a woman, in visualisation of Adriana’s adjuration ‘Some get within him, take his sword away’ 47

16 Franc¸ois Boitard, engraved by Elisha Kirkall: Frontispiece to The Comedy of Errors. 19.4 × 11.75 (75/8 × 45/8 ).

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17 Sebastiano Serlio: ‘Tragedy’, from The Second Booke of Architecture, made by Sebastian Serly, 1611. Image size 16.5 × 20 (61/2 × 73/4 ).

(5.1.34). In the middle left stands Egeon, bound, awaiting execution. His depiction perhaps reflects the Folio’s stage direction that he is ‘bare head’ (5.1.129). The appearance of his discarded wig in the centre front of the image endorses this, and also reveals his loss of dignity and stature in a simple, but immediately contemporary, manner.30 The magnificently attired figure next to him is the Duke; and a little to his side kneels the Abbess. Her supplicant posture, and the fact that Egeon remains bound, suggests this moment as showing her powerful entry line ‘Most mighty Duke, behold a man much wronged’ (5.1.330). Between the two, the staff of one of the rank of soldiers standing behind them leads straight up to the door of the building shown in frontal composition at the very rear, which is the Abbey. In its design, the engraving offers a diagram of the play’s concluding movement. The confusion between the Dromios and the Antipholi; the aggression of 49

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the second merchant; the impending execution of Egeon; the moment just before his recognition and the play’s resolution – all these are located within the steep, triangular recession of the image in a geometric analogue to the play’s unfolding. That the perspectival lines all lead to the door of the Abbey is the final term in this calculus: this is the portal through which they will pass at the end of the play for the ‘gossips’ feast’(5.1.405) in which all shall be made well through telling. That the lines move towards this is an echo of a common earlier device in which perspective is used to convey an emblematic or narrative climax, for example in the Annunciation by Domenico Veneziano (1442–8)31 in which the vanishing point is a locked and barred door emblematically portraying the miracle of the virgin birth. Here, the presentation of the Abbey as the ‘compositional climax’32 of the design makes clear both the stages towards the resolution of the play and its inevitability. In presenting the key events of the last act, Boitard’s multitemporal design also visualises the basic modalities of the play in the confusions of identity and their consequences; and in emphasising through their placing the Second Merchant and the Abbess it reveals the tension between religion and mercantilism that forms one of its key relations. A final visual element unites image and play. The strong shadows suggest late afternoon, in direct echo of the second Merchant’s ‘By this, I think, the dial points at five’ (5.1.118). Niccolo Sabbattini33 recommends the use of shadows suggesting a single, raking light source to enhance the realism of a stage setting, but the engraving takes this much further. It provides another level of temporality, to mirror the geometric recession and suggest that the events are nearing conclusion. In this it hints that, despite the tragedic grandeur of the houses, a comedic resolution is shortly to be achieved. In all these ways, the earlier methods of conveying meaning reveal the engraving as a subtle and powerful visual translation of the play’s later movement. Like the designs for The History of Joseph, it involves multitemporal narrative, emblematic or memorialising detail, and the conscription of the onlooker as participant, not spectator, to complete the work by decrypting its visual form in specific relation to the play’s movement and concerns. Spatial arrangement and narrative commentary work together in a slightly different way in the frontispiece to The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Fig. 18). The two outlaws are shown being marched forward under guard, in two groups of figures that occupy the space that in earlier images would enclose previous episodes in a sequential narrative – stages in the fall of man in a medieval chronicle, for example, or the same sequence shown in the engraving by Medina in Book IX of Tonson’s folio Paradise Lost (Fig. 19). If Tonson did indeed lend the volume to Boitard during the composition of the designs, this would be a direct example 50

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18 Franc¸ois Boitard, engraved by Elisha Kirkall: Frontispiece to The Two Gentlemen of Verona. 19.4 × 11.75 (75/8 × 45/8 ).

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19 Sir John Medina, engraved by Michael van der Gucht: ‘The Expulsion’, frontispiece to Book IX, Paradise Lost, 1688. 27.9 × 19.7 (11 × 73/4 ).

of its influence. The reference endows the events of the play with the specific elevation of biblical narrative, suggesting that these strange, disturbing events are a second Fall and Expulsion. But the composition offers no solution to the troublesome questions raised by this scene; the Outlaws are arrested, but the larger act of attempted violation, and the subsequent act of male forgiveness, remain unresolved. These effects are matched in other engravings by those generated by emblematic detail or mnemonic reference. The Cymbeline frontispiece (Fig. 20), showing Iachimo in Imogen’s chamber (2.2), replaces the use of single elements with a collective force to reveal its reading of the play. Rejecting the detailed account of the room’s furnishings given in 2.4, except for a carving above the bed that might show ‘Chaste Dian, bathing’ (2.4.82), it presents a room furnished in elaborate 52

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20 Franc¸ois Boitard, engraved by Elisha Kirkall: Frontispiece to Cymbeline. 19.4 × 11.75 (75/8 × 45/8 ).

contemporary fashion. In this it combines the appearance of allegorical diversity of earlier title-pages with a scene immediately accessible to its first readers. The details of Imogen’s chamber are redefined in contemporary terms, in the manner of an updated stage production, a subtle but striking interpretive act that invigorates both image and event. It is not that each object has its own emblematic valency: rather, the items together make visible the commodification of Imogen in her description through material possessions that is implicit in Shakespeare’s text and its source in Boccaccio. Towards the end of his account of the scenery for Tragedy, Serlio suggests that ‘some istorie or myths could be painted on a wall’.34 Perhaps developing an older tradition of the use of emblematic landscapes seen through windows, this technique becomes a means of commentary through visual allegory in several of Boitard’s engravings, anticipating Hogarth’s use of paintings and other 53

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21 Franc¸ois Boitard, engraved by Elisha Kirkall: Frontispiece to The Taming of the Shrew. 19.4 × 11.75 (75/8 × 45/8 ).

images-within-images as instruments of ironic commentary and narrative suggestion. It is particularly effective in the frontispiece to The Taming of The Shrew (Fig. 21). This shows Petruchio sweeping away the food placed before him and Katherina (4.1) while behind them, in semi-darkness, hangs a large painting showing a naked man and woman in a landscape, clearly a representation of the Expulsion from Paradise. Its presence extends the moment’s significance, showing the fallen nature of the relationship in a manner both theologically serious and absurdly comic. In a larger view, it also has interesting things to say about the identities of theatre and print. As a picture-within-a-picture it parallels the action’s form as a play within a play, a subtly comic metatheatric commentary. A function almost the reverse of this in theological terms is performed by a painting in the image of the wedding scene from Much Ado about Nothing (Fig. 22). 54

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22 Franc¸ois Boitard, engraved by Elisha Kirkall: Frontispiece to Much Ado about Nothing. 19.4 × 11.75 (75/8 × 45/8 ).

Its close reading of the play-text is revealed in the depiction of Hero, who wears a dress that follows Margaret’s description as being: cloth o’gold and cuts, and laced with silver, set with pearls, down sleeves, side sleeves, and skirts, round underborne with a bluish tinsel (3.4.14–16)

This detail is combined with a larger comment on the action. Behind the figures stands an altar with a reredos showing the Entombment of Christ, flanked by trompe l’oeil angels in the manner of an altarpiece by Bernini. This is more than set-dressing: it anticipates the assumed death of Hero, suggests that it will be followed by some kind of resurrection, and intensifies and dignifies these events by a comparison to Christ. In so doing it both conveys a sense of the future narrative of the play and reveals Hero as one of the earliest examples of idealised passive endurance in Shakespeare’s female characters. A present-day reader may choose 55

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to see this as further evidence of Hero’s imprisonment within a male construction of femaleness; but however the image is read it represents a significant move beyond the confines of the scene towards a reading of the play’s larger direction. As the Errors engraving uses perspective to make a comment on the nature of visualisation, the frontispiece to Much Ado presents it to reveal the difference between the temporal unfolding of theatre and the synchronic depiction of the engraving. In their different ways, all of the images display a use of visual narrative and emblem to comment on character and action of no little sophistication, building on devices from a variety of sources to turn a moment of powerful individual effect into a statement of moral import in the play’s denouement, the whole located within a teasing awareness of a key aesthetic distinction between stage and print. In this way, Boitard’s engravings constitute the earliest visual mediations of the plays, genuinely capable of stating ideas and progressions implicit within them, and providing critical and interpretive insights of major significance.

III While some of Boitard’s images employ earlier compositional methods as interpretive tools, others adopt stances that will become fundamental to the narrative frontispiece. They are best demonstrated in the first image, for The Tempest (Fig. 23). Exploring it reveals its workings as a textual visualisation, at the same time suggesting the larger place of the illustrated frontispiece within the experience of reading the play as a whole. Rowe’s was not the first frontispiece to this play. The stage directions that open the printed text of Shadwell’s operatic version (1670) twice use the term to describe an elaborate structure with Corinthian columns, cupids and a lion and unicorn supporting the Royal Arms. This was erected behind the proscenium curtain as an emblematic frame through which the action should be seen. Boitard’s engraving is a frontispiece in the more modern use of the word, presenting action in a stylised form of naturalism rather than through emblematic synopsis – a difference that also shows its difference from theatrical performance. Moelwyn Merchant links the flying devils with Shadwell’s directions for ‘several Spirits in horrid shapes flying down amongst the sailors, then rising and crossing in the Air’,35 but also sees the image’s origins in seventeenth-century Dutch shipwreck paintings.36 This unacknowledged mingling of the theatrical with the painterly tacitly accepts what is immediately evident in the image itself: it cannot represent theatrical action because of the violence of the storm and the absence of Shadwell’s emblematic 56

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frame. While it may draw some of its elements from the theatre, and others from earlier painting, like the rest of the engravings it develops them to produce an image that derives meaning from its integrity as a print and its placement within a book. The experience that results is consequently derived not from the theatre but from the sequential exchange between reader and printed page. Merchant’s suggestion that the devils are taken from Shadwell’s performance shows again how far a yearning for stage precedent has drawn attention away from sources freighted with information about the image as textual product and critical reading. All that remains of Shadwell’s figures is the stage direction, but Medina’s frontispiece to Book II of the Milton Folio (Fig. 24) contains diabolic shapes flying above the figures of Satan, Sin and Death at the gates of Hell that are remarkably similar in their protean forms, suggesting again the possibility that Boitard saw the volumes. Whether through the influence of these shapes or that of a more general tradition of diabolic forms in earlier religious painting, the resemblance forcefully redefines these figures at this moment in the play:37 instead of Ariel acting to fulfil the ultimately benevolent purposes of Prospero, they are the demons as perceived by Ferdinand who cries out ‘Hell is empty,/ And all the devils are here’ (1.2.213–14). They also foreshadow Ariel’s later identity as a harpy. The power of Prospero’s magic is by no means morally unqualified, and the onlooker is placed in a position more closely analogous to that of the mariners than to that of a knowing reader secure in the play’s redemptive processes. Visually, of course, the position is not that of the mariners, or of any other characters, but that of a single viewer in an all-seeing, but in practical terms quite unfeasible, position before the play’s action. Evident in all the frontispieces, and indeed in the great majority of book illustrations as a genre, the distancing is unusual in this image by being matched by a temporal rearrangement, since in the play there is no mention of the devils while the tempest itself is taking place. This is one of several ways in which the image combines elements from the first two scenes: the inclusion of Ferdinand in the act of leaping off the ship and the figure of Prospero on shore at the left make clear that what is being seen is not presented directly but from Ariel’s retrospective description. This argues for a sophistication in the image’s construction that few have been prepared to concede. There is an incidental appropriateness to this: appearing as the initial image in the first volume of an illustrated edition, the engraving stakes out the territory of visual narrative as something quite different from its verbal and theatrical equivalents, and in the process opens a space for critical and interpretive comments. It also represents the beginning of a tradition of such 57

23 Franc¸ois Boitard, engraved by Elisha Kirkall: Frontispiece to The Tempest. 19.4 × 11.75 (75/8 × 45/8 ).

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24 Sir John Medina, engraved by Michael van der Gucht: ‘Satan, Sin and Death’, frontispiece to Book II, Paradise Lost, 1688. 27.9 × 19.7 (11 × 73/4 ).

telescoping that will later produce complex critical visualisation in the work of Fuseli, Romney and many other artists. This reconstruction of the action produces a chronological, linear narrative presented from a single viewpoint. Such rearrangement will later become the source of much contention, Ludwig Tieck in particular objecting to such alterations as denying the dialogic identity of the drama.38 Effectively, the play is being absorbed into the techniques of the realist, experiential novel, unfolded by a single omniscient and ultimately (but only just) reliable narrator. And this in a visual medium, several decades before the plays are translated more fully into this mode in the work of Lamb, Howard and others, before Lennox has hinted that the plays are less effective because they lack such novelistic sequence, and before the novel itself has adopted the stance as its most common narrative instrument. This gives a new power to the engraving: instead of being a deeply unreliable 59

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stage record, it releases within the act of narrative realignment the possibility of far wider critical statement. Only the demand imposed by the print medium for a single viewpoint, and the existence of what is seen from that viewpoint within a notional frozen moment of time, can make this possible: the critical opportunities opened up in the frontispiece are revealed as fundamental to its form and structure, its meanings facilitated and defined by its identity as a printed image. In part as a result of this, the frontispiece to The Tempest becomes not only the first but one of the most compelling contributions to the experience of reading the play. For the fresh reader, it acts as a tease, propelling her or him forward in the effort to relate image and text to resolve the many issues it raises, most urgently the moral stature of the figure standing on the shore at the left. The qualified reader will recognise this as Prospero, but as Prospero redefined, with greater emphasis on the dark forces he may unleash than the benevolent intent from which, as he assures Miranda, he has acted. Miranda’s absence is another, and more extreme, recasting of the play-text: the only workable reading of the image is that Prospero has called up the storm alone, and that Miranda will join him after her compassion is aroused by seeing the suffering it causes. The omission further demonstrates the desire for sequential narrative, while also by implication presenting Miranda in the compassionate light through which she is depicted well into the nineteenth century. If we assume that the reader, working through the book from the engraving and reaching the end of Act 1, either pauses to draw together the events or, in an act of Konkretisierung, continually relates moment to totality, an experience of the opening scenes drawn from both engraving and text emerges in which the mariners’ fear of the diabolic shapes, Prospero’s ambiguous powers, an idea of the character of Miranda and an implication of Prospero’s larger ‘project’ are all brought together in a single image that constitutes its own reading of the play. Through both its explicitness and its imprecision, the image functions as textual summary, critical reading and narrative propellant, moulding the reader’s experience of the play by focusing through the events it depicts towards the larger action they initiate. Boitard’s image for The Tempest also reveals a balance that must be achieved not only in the images of Rowe’s edition but in all frontispiece engravings: that between the presentation of a single moment of action and the suggestion of further events to follow. While the storm is immediately evident, it is not the ultimate significance of the engraving. By contrast, other frontispieces take as their primary function the depiction of individual moments of powerful action, to generate in the mind of the onlooker sensations of the sort analysed and tabulated 60

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25 Franc¸ois Boitard, engraved by Elisha Kirkall: Frontispiece to Romeo and Juliet. 19.4 × 11.75 (45/8 × 75/8 ).

by seventeenth-century writers as ‘passions’, strong feelings which move through the brain in response to external stimuli.39 Such an emphasis is apparent in the Romeo and Juliet (Fig. 25) engraving, which shows the instant when Juliet awakens to find Romeo dead at her feet. For most readers this would qualify as a climax well suited to visual treatment, marking as it does an essentially static instant of intense feeling and a moment of suspense, holding back the moment of Juliet’s suicide. That such moments were often drawn out in performances does not give the frontispiece the nature of a stage record, since at that time the Garrick version, in which Romeo lives to exchange some words with Juliet, controlled the London stage. The manipulation of such sensations is, of course, a common feature in the theatre, each actor from the Restoration onwards being known for her or his ‘points’; the frontispiece engravings may be seen to operate in an analogous way, the two standing as exemplars of different implementations of a similar theory of 61

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the emotions, enacted by different methods within different cultural forms and frames. This primary focus is matched by a subsidiary effect in the engraving’s control over the subsequent development of the reading experience. It enhances the suspense of the moment by showing Friar Laurence and the two families entering the vault, a compression of the text that, though slight, considerably enriches the effect. A new reader will be drawn into the action by the emotional extremity of the death scene, and made eager to know what precedes and follows it; one qualified by earlier reading will seize on the compassion and urgency conveyed. The Romeo and Juliet engraving discloses another way in which every frontispiece image assists the reader’s construction of the play. By offering a moment of emotional intensity at the outset, before the printed text has been encountered, it immediately privileges that scene. This is true of each of the Rowe frontispiece engravings, whether it presents an emotional complex or offers deeper critical implications. None of them bears a caption, and none identifies the scene depicted, either by act and scene or page number.40 The result of this absence is simultaneously to mystify and familiarise the reader with the text, through suggesting an element of the action without identifying character or delineating previous action. In one sense each engraving operates on the new reader as a narrative provocation, leading her or him into the action through suspense and uncertainty, to be rewarded when reaching the scene with recognition and completion.41 This combines with another aspect of the frontispiece, its innate visual power, the ‘authoritarian silence’42 of which Derrida speaks, with the result that all such images give the events depicted an importance denied to other scenes, an emphasis amplified by the reader’s repeated encounters with them when opening the volume. The chosen scene becomes both a parergon to the play and its narrative apex, in both identities significantly directing its perception and construction by the reader. This reveals a simple but much overlooked truth about the engravings. In the experience of the plays to which they contribute, they generate a structural awareness of a kind quite different from that offered in performance or criticism. As with other aspects of the process of reading, there is hardly any evidence to show the impact of this structural force; but one area that may be significant is the degree to which the scenes treated in the Rowe images received similar treatment in subsequent illustrated editions, since this may suggest the impact they had on a generation of readers in terms of defining the plays’ turning points. Lines can be traced from some of the engravings to conventions of depiction lasting until the beginning of the next century, passing through what is essentially 62

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the most important period of Shakespeare painting and illustration. The engraving for Timon of Athens perhaps had the greatest influence, its composition being followed closely by Francis Hayman for his frontispiece to Hanmer’s edition in the 1740s, and Edward Burney for a print produced in 1789. Nathaniel Dance used the composition again in a painting of 1767,43 and John Opie made only slight alterations in his canvas for the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery at the end of the century.44 A similar path is seen in the image from The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Valentine’s intervention being depicted by Edward Edwards for the Bell Shakespeare of 1774 and Angelica Kauffman for Boydell.45 The frontispiece to 2 Henry VI shows the death of Cardinal Beaufort (3.3), a scene praised by Rowe in the ‘Life’ prefacing the edition as ‘admirable in its Kind’. Of Beaufort and the King he continues: ‘There is so much terror in one, so much Tenderness and moving Piety in the other, as must touch any one who is capable either of fear or pity.’46 This seems to reflect a common feeling throughout the century. The scene was praised by Capell (Vickers 6, 221), was illustrated in both of Bell’s editions and that of Bellamy and Robarts, was the subject of one of Fuseli’s earliest Shakespeare wash-drawings, and was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds for the Boydell Gallery at the century’s close. This perhaps provides an answer to the question of whether the scenes in the frontispieces reflect contemporary tastes or drive them: the strength of Rowe’s opinion suggests the former, although there is no written or anecdotal evidence of his influencing Boitard towards depicting any particular scene. Seemingly the most significant in terms of founding a convention was the treatment of King Lear.47 The image of Lear on the heath recurs throughout the century. Yet the composition and iconography of the image are by no means stable: the scene is repeatedly depicted, but the approach taken varies considerably, suggesting that Boitard rather reflected a more widespread judgment of the moment’s importance, and did not exert any major influence upon its treatment. Certainly, Garrick was renowned for his performance, and the later painting by Benjamin Wilson, engraved in mezzotint by James McArdell,48 did much to further its currency. Whether the Rowe images are responsible, or whether, as John Harvey asserts, it has intrinsic appeal as ‘a scene of emotional and psychic upheaval’,49 is impossible to determine. Theatre, contemporary sensibility and visual practice elide in the recurrent selection of this moment, suggesting the rhizomic and ultimately undefinable nature of the relations between performance, painting, textual illustration and tides of feeling. But the recurrence of these and other scenes within subsequent editions suggests that, at least in part, and through its unique aesthetic identity, the frontispiece image has contributed to 63

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establishing the shape of the plays in the imagination of a new generation of Shakespeare readers.

IV In 1714 Rowe issued the second edition of his Works of Shakespear, with frontispieces designed and engraved by Louis du Guernier.50 The son of a celebrated artistengraver, du Guernier came to England in 1708. In the same year as the images for the second Rowe Shakespeare he published four plates and two headpieces for The Rape of the Lock and seven for John Gay’s The Shepherd’s Week. They successfully combine narrative and satiric detail, matching the poems’ modes and showing a skill at disentangling their essential features for representation within a common conceptual frame – the kind of transmediation that enables him to deal well with Shakespeare. That he went on to produce eleven engravings for plays by Jonson, and individual images for Rowe, Addison and Etherege suggests a specialism in dramatic illustration. Despite this, most of the 1714 engravings reveal Tonson’s economy with time and costs by simply reproducing Boitard’s designs of 1709. Many have been reversed in the copying, and some have simplified or wholly new settings, but the single largest change is that the figures are far more naturalistic. The woodenness of the earlier designs has been displaced by a greater anatomical accuracy that heightens the intensity of the exchanges depicted and allows far more identification by the reader. Perhaps because of their rather smaller size, some of the foreground detail of Rowe’s designs is omitted, making the figures seem larger and streamlining the narrative and critical design. The 1714 Macbeth reworks the 1709 cauldron scene and, like it, omits some of the figures in the show of kings. They are shown marching across the plate and moving outside its borders, in simple yet forceful illustration of Macbeth’s agonised ‘What, will the line stretch out to th’crack of doom?’ (4.1.116). The later version is made more effective by its greater control of space to generate an integrated narrative movement. In the 1709 plate the witches and Macbeth occupy the same foreground plane while the kings move across in parallel at the rear. Banquo’s ghost faces across towards Macbeth, but the only link between the groups is the slight inclination of Macbeth’s head. In the later image the witches are turned inwards to face diagonally towards Macbeth, who stands in a complementary diagonal, right arm outstretched towards the kings. The more extreme chiaroscuro, the larger cauldron and the bones scattered in the 64

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foreground, complete the move towards a more sensational naturalism, making immediate the apparition scene in a manner not achieved earlier. In many of the engravings the shift towards naturalism enhances the emotional involvement of the reader, often through an increased tension in composition or detail. The placing of Shylock alone and in deep shadow emphasises his isolation; the obscurity of Malvolio’s ‘dark house’ is enhanced by contrast against the open light in which Feste, Maria and Sir Toby stand. In some of the engravings, the changes have deeper implications. The addition of a wall sconce to the plate for Antony and Cleopatra produces extremes that intensify the moment’s events, and the replacement of the earlier version’s receding arches by a wall and classical hanging generates a sense of finality by enclosing the scene, making literal Cleopatra’s earlier ‘O Charmian, I will never go from hence’ (4.15.1). But the first version’s archways suggest a more positive movement, translating Cleopatra’s ‘royal attire’ (5.2.273 s.d.) and her ‘immortal longings’ (5.1.275) into the architectural language of a triumphal entry. The difference is not of degree but of kind: the two engravings operate in quite different modes, one allusive and archetypal, the other naturalistic and emotive. The move towards naturalism is most abrupt in the settings. Before often rudimentary and disparate, now they are directly representational – yet while this furthers the sense of tension within the moment, it does not of itself produce deeper critical readings. Some of the images are totally new, that for The Tempest being among the most striking. It replaces the opening seascape with a treatment of the final act, with Prospero revealing Ferdinand and Miranda playing chess to Gonzalo, Sebastian, Antonio and Alonso. It is a carefully chosen moment, combining the joyous disbelief of Alonso with the more troublesome implications of Miranda’s ‘you play me false’ (5.1.172), revealing the growth of Prospero’s project to its head while suggesting the reversals suffered along the way. The scene has been moved out of the cave into the open air, with a Palladian villa in the background, a relocation into Rococo pastoral that further demonstrates the change to managed, stylised naturalism. Another effect of this shift is the more complete inscription of textual detail, obtained by slight changes in some of the designs. In the engraving for 2 Henry VI, the king is more clearly differentiated from the other characters by costume and location, and his raised hand moved slightly away from his body to assume greater prominence. This is an important clue to the scene’s location and moral drive: the raised hand offers itself as an example when he adjures the dying Beaufort ‘Hold up thy hand, make signal of thy hope’ (3.3.28). The plate for Titus Andronicus is similarly refined. A slight movement of Titus’ left arm makes the absence of 65

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his hand more apparent, while the arms of Lavinia beneath the basin are moved slightly so that her amputations are concealed. Both treatments present the action between the murders of Chiron and Demetrius, one lying dead and the other about to be stabbed by Titus, but the second plate adjusts the timing to show the instant just before the second killing. The absence in the later version of the awkward spurt of blood makes the image less lurid, and moves it fractionally back in time to just before the stabbing. The effect of the adjustments is to intensify reader engagement through added suspense. These clarifications of detail tighten the relation between text and image and can only have been beneficial to new readers of the plays. Yet this attention to naturalistic detail is achieved at the cost of an absence of emblematic meaning, most evident in the treatments of Much Ado and The Taming of the Shrew. In the former the Entombment is replaced by the two stone tablets of Mosaic law, drawing attention to Don John’s bearing false witness in his accusation against Hero but dispelling the proleptic energy of the earlier image. The Shrew engraving replaces the Expulsion painting with a window through which trees and a building are visible. The changes mark a shift from a modality in which image-within-image provides allegorical comment to one in which it is independently simulacral. A parallel movement is apparent in the treatment of Cymbeline. While the 1709 engraving shows Iachimo about to emerge from the trunk into a chamber furnished with contemporary embellishments, the later one shows him removing the bracelet, with nothing of the chamber except a book resting on a night-table. The translation of emblems of ownership into an immediate, contemporary frame has been wholly rejected. The change of mode has a more positive effect in the treatment of Hamlet (Figs. 26 and 27). The 1714 image extends the earlier closet scene by including a second portrait, inviting the spectator to compare Old Hamlet and Claudius and mirroring Hamlet’s discussion of the two images (3.4.53–65). A major change is the addition of a large, curtained bed, recalling Hamlet’s outcry against his mother’s willingness ‘to post / With such dexterity to incestuous sheets’ (1.2.156–7). Hamlet’s appearance, with ‘stockings foule’d, / Ungarter’d and down-gyved to his ankle’ (2.1.79–80), reflects common contemporary stage practice, but its presentation in an engraving reinforces its suggestion that Hamlet appears in the same melancholic guise as in his visit to Ophelia, and thus places the two closet scenes in a close, uncomfortable, relationship for the attentive reader in a way impossible within the temporal continuity of stage performance.51 Some of the shifts in the later edition are powerfully effective, others less so, but the realist and emblematic stances adopted in the two editions share one 66

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underlying concept. Both forthrightly reject direct representation of stage action, the first by working through a development of an earlier tradition of allusion, the later by moving towards narrative realism. In both, too, the presence of a heavy drape across the top of many of the images makes allegorical acknowledgment that they derive from plays, but present them in an alternative form, parallel to that of the stage. The engravings reveal themselves as an integral part of a presentation of the plays as textual objects, to be read and not seen, marking an important change in the cultural mediation and individual perception of Shakespeare’s plays. Perhaps the most significant result of the shift towards naturalism is the way in which it changes the narrative techniques of the engravings and the reading experience they offer. The 1714 plate for Measure for Measure (Fig. 28) is radically different from the 1709 version. Where the earlier shows Isabella kneeling before Angelo, the later shows a convincingly medieval walled city complete with portcullis: here it is clearly the Duke’s return that is being depicted. In the foreground Friar Peter, Isabella, the Duke and Angelo are shown in a single, left-to-right sequence. The figures appear within the same plane, rather than being spread through the depth of the image to show stages in a narrative. In consequence the engraving functions very much as one of the individual plates in a Hogarth progress, with a reading structure moving from left to right across the page to allow the onlooker to puzzle over the moral stance that each character adopts towards the play’s events. It thereby functions as a visual statement of the complex, and ultimately unsolvable, moral equation constituted by the play. The change is from a sensibility that presents the problem of the absent ruler, emblematised in the vacant throne, to one that, in its stress on event, valorises the search for a solution in a manner that harmonises with the image’s greater naturalism. The gain in reader involvement offered by the 1714 images is considerable; yet the losses in terms of visual embodiment of concepts should not be underestimated. But the new image is not quite so simple as this suggests. As the Cambridge medievalist Charles Moseley has pointed out,52 the posture of Isabella is that of Mary Magdalene greeting the risen Christ in the Noli me tangere trope. Its closeness may be seen by comparison to the much earlier image shown in Plate 1, an illumination from an early sixteenth-century manuscript. How this redefines the nature of the relationship between the two engravings’ central characters is far from clear; the ambiguous position of Mary Magdalene is certainly, by extension, transferred to the kneeling woman, greatly enriching her complex, undefined social and amatory place at the play’s ending. Even in its uncertainty, 67

26 Franc¸ois Boitard, engraved by Elisha Kirkall: Frontispiece to Hamlet. 19.4 × 11.75 (75/8 × 45/8 ).

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27 Louis du Guernier: Frontispiece to Hamlet, from Rowe’s Works of Mr. William Shakespeare, 1714. 16.2 × 9.5 (63/8 × 33/4 ).

the allusion brings new visual and contextual richness to the mystery of the problem play. There is another significance to this particular resemblance. Just as the eighteenth-century images use much earlier, emblematic and perspectival methods of conveying meaning, so the illumination incorporates elements of 69

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28 Louis du Guernier: Frontispiece to Measure for Measure, from Rowe’s Works of Mr. William Shakespeare, 1714. 16.2 × 9.5 (63/8 × 33/4 ).

representational depiction – and it is, of course, significant that such images are known as historiated initials, letters that enfold stories. The pairing of the images is itself a visual emblem of the exchange of techniques between periods and styles too often held rigorously apart, and a reminder of the more complex 70

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techniques of imaginative reading that the frontispieces for both Rowe’s editions demand of the reader in revealing their explorations and extensions of the plays.

V Three years after the appearance of Rowe’s first collected edition, the First Earl of Shaftesbury published his Historical Draught,53 the theoretical work that laid out the basis on which a narrative painting should rest, effectively establishing the rules and practice for the next century of history painting and book illustration. It established the primacy of verisimilitude in both narrative and representation. Not only should characters and events resemble, within stylistic constraints, those of actual life; they should be placed within a sequential current resembling ordered, experienced actuality. The simultaneous staging of an earlier age was displaced by a technique quite different in its management of temporal sequence. Instead of showing events from other parts of the fable, this new approach allowed only the foreshadowing of later action through emblematic presentation: it functioned to suggest, rather than depict, what was to come. In one fundamental sense, too, the presentation of time was completely redefined in its relationship to composition and space. Narrative progress was concentrated into a moment of decision that in potential contained all subsequent action. This moved sharply away from multitemporal depiction and the use of independent emblems. Amplified in the theoretical writings of Jonathan Richardson, the dominant critical voice for both artists and connoisseurs until at least mid-century, it became a major force in moral and narrative painting, not least in the works produced for the Boydell Gallery (see Chapter 6). Another circumstance moved towards change: the growth of the novel as the dominant literary form, and the assumptions of a certain kind of naturalistic involvement that became part of the reading experience that it generated. From the 1720s onwards, the tradition of illustrating the novel with narrative frontispieces took hold, and the practice increasingly spread to the published playtext. There were key differences, which later chapters explore, but the influence of these images’ assumed verisimilitude rapidly displaced Boitard’s techniques of suggestion. Future illustrated editions would offer critical readings and visual mediations just as suggestive, but they would function in a markedly different manner, and satisfy different expectations, to generate a wholly new experience of the plays. 71

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In their use of both emblematic and representational stances the frontispieces of both Rowe’s editions are remarkable and innovatory, setting a standard of critical reading that subsequent visual treatments, of all forms, and through various techniques, will follow. Unsophisticated they may be in their execution, but the forms they adopt and the reading practices they foster will cast a long shadow over the history of Shakespeare visualisation.

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CHAPTER 3

ROCOCO AND REFLECTION: GRAVELOT, HAYMAN AND WALKER

I In 1728, the second edition of Pope’s Shakespeare appeared, using the frontispiece plates designed by Louis du Guernier for the Rowe edition of 1714. In the 1730s, Jacob Tonson began to issue the plays individually, commissioning the French artist Pierre or Peter Fourdrinier to produce new plates of the same Rowe images, presumably because they were now worn out. These editions, little more than fascicles each containing a single play, are now largely disregarded, since they are essentially reprints of Rowe’s edition, and also because few survive. They appeared in the face of strong competition from the editions of Robert Walker, each issued in three or four paper parts costing one penny each. They had no illustrations, but the fact that they were the main competitor in ‘the TonsonWalker battle’1 is significant in defining the place of the illustrated edition in the growth of Shakespeare publishing, linking them with the cheapest editions that were available to all, and thus giving them a lowly rank in the hierarchy of Shakespeare publishing. But the commercial skirmish did have a positive outcome, in that the images of Boitard and du Guernier remained current for many years, raising them to considerable prominence in offering the first visual encounter with the plays for the great majority of new readers. For the second edition of Theobald’s Shakespeare in 1740,2 completely new images were commissioned. Designed by Hubert Gravelot, some were engraved by the artist and some by Gerard Vander Gucht,3 son of Michael. Breaking with established techniques of presentation, they moved Shakespeare illustration into a wholly new conceptual and stylistic field. In itself, the move to new images, most presenting events not before shown, introduced the practice of each generation of

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readers being offered a fresh graphic treatment of the plays. Important in setting a precedent for change, they were far more significant in the new conceptual and stylistic approaches that they adopted. Perhaps because of the way Shakespeare study has evolved, and perhaps because the Rowe images have been discarded as representationally ineffective, this has received little attention. Editorially, Theobald’s second edition has nothing new to say about the plays, and in fact omits several of his notes and shortens the preface, so that while it extended the readership of the first, it offered little to textual scholars. That the second editions of Theobald and Pope rather than their initial printings contained engravings is itself a key material statement, revealing that images were not considered a major component of a Shakespeare text. The implicit assumption was that intellectual and aesthetic engagement between present and past was carried out through annotation and commentary, not visual reinvention: only in versions intended for a wider market, by inference one lacking the cultural drive to acquire the most avowedly authentic text, were images included. Rowe alone combined textual scholarship with original visual material. Tonson’s individual volumes and Pope’s second edition had established a link between engravings and reprinted texts, and Theobald’s second edition extended it. Once forged, it would not be broken. Hubert Bourgignon was born in France in 1699. After study with Franc¸ois Boucher and Jean Restout le jeune, he came to London some time in 1732, probably by this time having assumed the name Gravelot, the French term for a bird resembling the English ringed plover. In 1738 he designed illustrations to the second volume of John Gay’s Fables.4 This was a fortunate commission. The book was immediately popular through its blending of proverbial wisdom and political morals, written in easy verse, with which Gravelot’s designs accorded well in their contemporary settings and vivid narrative. At a stroke, the edition placed Gravelot’s work within a literary milieu both respectable and accessible, ensuring abundant further engagements. H. A. Hammerton5 has estimated that Gravelot illustrated around a hundred volumes during his thirteen years in London. While he also painted a small number of portraits, it was for illustration that he was best known, although he also made a very good living by designing embellishments for the rapidly expanding trade in ornamental ceramics. This range itself induces the scepticism with which Rococo art is so often regarded, through its rather too intimate liaison with the world of fashion. Gravelot’s teacher, Franc¸ois Boucher, implied this by advising him to work on a miniature scale, perhaps referring to conceptual breadth as well as physical size.6 Gravelot’s filigree line, shown in the hang of draperies in costume and furnishing, 74

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and his restrained gesture and emotion, all convey a sense of diminution. This textural patterning reinforces a focus on a single moment to suggest an avoidance of any temporal extension. In these images there is no place for Boitard’s multitemporalism or the ‘judgment’ motif and proleptic emblems suggested by Shaftesbury. Instead, invention concretises the moment through sensuality of texture, frequently heightened by an erotic charge beneath the finely rendered surfaces of fashionable costume and discourse within which Gravelot reconfigures the plays. Yet this should not be dismissed as superficial. Gravelot’s designs frequently convey a serious interpretation, resting on his skill as a textual reader evident in the Fables images. Gravelot’s Shakespeare illustrations have been the subject of attack from two opposing flanks. In the mid-nineteenth century the Goncourt brothers dismissed them with heavy patronage: Shakspeare et Gravelot! Rien que le rapprochement des noms et l’´ecrasement de l’un par l’autre fait comprendre `a quel degr´e de ridicule l’interpr´etation de l’aimable Franc¸ais devait descendre.7

Other critics reverse the idea of the images’ inequality with their subjects, and make of it rather dubious advantage: their facile Rococo idiom could be turned to the illustration of any writer, grave or gay. But they introduced a new figure style and a new elegance into the London art world.8

Statements of each extreme resort to the double-edged compliments often paid to Rococo art – charming, elegant, decorative and their cognates are frequent – that are heavily freighted with implications of intellectual and spiritual vacancy. Both views rest on a quality at the root of the engravings, but quite new to Shakespeare imaging. They invite readers, without their awareness, and within the qualifications imposed by the dominant style, to become experientially involved in the situations they depict, and the emotions and moral inflections they embody, through the use of recognisably contemporary figures and settings. The verdicts on Rococo just cited, implying the images’ failure seriously to engage with the plays, itself rests on the assumption that they present character and action as real human events: in adopting this mode the engravings reveal their genuine newness. The relation between the illustration of Shakespeare and those of the novel is particularly significant in the work of Gravelot, since he holds a strong claim to have been the instigator of the whole tradition of novel illustration with his work for Pamela and Tom Jones. But there are major differences between his work for the 75

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two genres. The Shakespeare engravings are frontispieces, those for Fielding and Richardson interspersed with the text. Those for Tom Jones were produced against Fielding’s wishes, those for Pamela in response to Richardson’s instructions to assert beyond ambiguity the events and their moral significance.9 That both were produced after the Shakespeare images suggests that, if there is any influence, it originates in the work for the plays. The key difference is that, whereas the novel images depict people and events in the directly contemporary settings of the text, those for the plays translate character and action into settings contemporary with their reader, not with their writer. The result is the implementation of an aesthetic difference which, like the use of contemporary costume on stage, paradoxically stresses both the immediacy and the artifice of the form. This equation between artifice and naturalism is at the essence of Gravelot’s work, and a major cause of its critical and human success. Resting on the use of dolls he had made while in London, fully articulated even down to the finger joints, and with complete miniature wardrobes of contemporary and classical clothes, Gravelot’s technique is here exploited to the full.10 Surviving drawings for his later images to the collected Corneille show that he drew the figures first as classical nudes, to ensure postures that were anatomically convincing.11 The images offer a combination that, at first strange, on reflection reveals the essence of Gravelot’s success. The conjunction of life-class nudes and elegant rococo interiors, executed with sinuous line and feathered texture, exaggerates the unity of nature and artifice that Gravelot achieves. While it is not known whether he used the same technique for the Shakespeare images, a similar combination of apparent opposites is evident in their translation of the plays into contemporary aesthetics. It is the location of natural human gestures and postures within the styles and settings of Rococo that allows this combination of empathy and form, an equivalent of Pope’s decasyllabic couplet in its presentation of ‘nature to advantage dressed’. Baron Portalis praised Gravelot’s ability to present, ‘avec la nature facile de son dessin, ce je ne sais quoi d’´el´egance anglaise’ (p. 273). Here, ‘facile’ is only positive, and the allusion to English behaviour, stated in an untranslatably French idiom, reveals much about the intellectual, aesthetic and linguistic commerce between Britain and France at this time. Gravelot’s relocation of the plays into the materiality of print is so complete that any relation with performance seems unachievable. But in one sense it can be accomplished. Both forms hold in sinuous and dynamic poise the elements of human engagement and aesthetic appreciation, of a kind that existed with the most remarkable sense of the new in Shakespeare’s own theatre, where a dawning awareness of characters as reflecting actual human feeling is matched with an 76

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apprehension of the aesthetic course of performance. The wholly new depictions of Gravelot, needing no act of decoding, similarly allow the beholder instantly to enter into the performative current of imaginative reading, at both human and aesthetic levels. In stylistic terms, their identity is directly continued in the work of Francis Hayman, with whom Gravelot collaborated, for the edition of Sir Thomas Hanmer; but their influence is far more pervasive. Literal depiction as a criterion of value will remain an implicit assumption of readers until the end of the nineteenth century, if not beyond. It will be the first recourse in assessing images of Shakespeare’s plays, present at such a deep level in the onlooker that it will not be consciously acknowledged. Its balance with the larger, abstract notions of aesthetic identity in the work of Gravelot, however, was rarely to be equalled.

II What precisely does this mean in practice? The most immediate effect is that Gravelot’s images present scenes with far greater lightness than their predecessors. The supple articulation of the human body, along with a concern for the flow of costumes, aids in this. So, too, does the use of gesture and expression to reveal a genuine emotional or moral exchange. Robert Halsband perhaps sums up these qualities when he praises the Tempest frontispiece for its ‘silken suavity and rhythmic vibration.’12 Himself an experienced engraver, Gravelot was sympathetic to the needs and effects of the medium; that he knew Gerard Vander Gucht, one of the most experienced professional engravers of the period, may suggest a willingness to design to his particular strengths. The most simply effective engravings show characters in the lush landscapes familiar from Boucher or early Fragonard, realised through the deft lightness of Vander Gucht’s engraving. They establish a textural link between human and natural forms to suggest a pastoralism in modal parallel to that of the text, related to it but never touching, like a stage setting that uses a set of cultural assumptions different from those of the script. In the image for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a treatment of 3.3, the unity of figure and landscape is so strong that at first it is hard to tell them apart. Puck is shown squeezing the love-philtre into the eyes of Lysander, while Helena lies ‘farther off’ and the second pair of lovers are shown behind. To the left is another sleeping figure: as it holds a staff, this must be Oberon. A similar effect is achieved in the Love’s Labour’s Lost frontispiece, where the feathering of line in the foliage and the rich fabrics worn by Armado, Costard, Moth and Berowne seems to anticipate in a different medium the textures achieved 77

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by Gainsborough, who may have been Gravelot’s pupil. These engravings may attract the usual stereotypes of Rococo criticism, but seen within the plays they take on a distance, an air almost of irony or satire, about the follies of the characters presented, rendering inappropriate any accusations of superficiality. Gravelot’s approach to the plays is in no small measure revealed by his selection of moments for depiction, in which there are slight but telling differences from those of the two Rowe editions. Whereas the second Rowe shows Juliet about to stab herself as the watch enters to the rear, Gravelot has her talking with the Friar over the body of Romeo. The shift to a slightly earlier moment removes the element of suspense, instead concentrating on emotional identification. Gravelot’s encompassing miniaturism is apparent: the selection pares down the play, removing the complexity of implied future action and stressing a single mood, in accord with Rococo constructions of feeling. Other plays reach further, but with the same result. Lear is shown seated on a throne just before Cordelia’s death and his own. Instead of the tumult on the heath, what is suggested is peace before ending, a simplification that may owe something to Tate’s adaptation. Much Ado (Fig. 29) moves from the multiple implications of Hero swooning in church to the memorial erected for her, surrounded by mourners reading the epitaph (5.3). Like the other images, this halts the play’s current and instead presents a single emotion, here of aestheticised grieving. Its heavily stylised manner removes the sting of grief – the Rococo miniaturisation again – so that, for the reader who knows the play, the very gentleness conveys the knowledge that Hero is not dead. It also provides a showcase for Vander Gucht’s engraving skills, in the use of hatching of various densities to model the figures within a fine chiaroscuro. At times, Gravelot’s effects are more complex, using visual metaphors or exploiting the contrast between elegance of style and violence of event. Richard II is illustrated by a depiction of the garden scene (3.4). What is apparently an outdoor setting not far distant from the fˆetes champˆetres of fashionable painting is for the knowing reader automatically overlaid with symbolism and the need for action, to ‘root away / The noisome weeds’ (3.4.37–8). The engraving’s subtle treatment of the surroundings makes the symbolism clear for a qualified reader. This quality is apparent in the majority of the images, revealing that they are directed largely at readers acquainted with the plays. The interchange between verbal and visual texts is tacitly assumed even in those frontispieces that are apparently the simplest. In some, however, the effect is less fully achieved. The ghost of Old Hamlet leads his son and followers across a drawbridge which, as Alan Young implies,13 is a 78

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29 Hubert Gravelot, engraved by Gerard Vander Gucht: Frontispiece to Much Ado about Nothing, from Theobald’s Works of Shakespeare, 1740. 16 × 9 (61/4 × 31/2 ).

metaphoric crossing of the Rubicon towards the action and tormented inaction of the rest of the play. The elegant figures, the detail of the castle, and the presentation of Hamlet’s altercation with Horatio about whether or not to follow the ghost all act against this as a moment of generative power, and the whole is further diluted 79

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30 Hubert Gravelot, engraved by Gerard Vander Gucht. Frontispiece to The Tempest. 16 × 9 (61/4 × 31/2 ).

by what appears to be the events’ occurrence in daylight, despite the presence of a crescent moon. Symbolism is here undermined, not tautened, by Rococo style, the contrast between surface fluency and darker undercurrent less evident. For some, the same is true of other images, most notably the Titus Andronicus design, which has been seen as an extreme of stylistic dysfunction, the removal of the hands presented against a scene of classical formality. Yet read at greater distance the image becomes an enquiring comment on the simultaneous existence of brutality and sophistication, perhaps approaching a question fundamental to the play. The scene’s horror is enhanced, not diminished, by the calm of the Roman triumphal arch, with its surmounting statue, and the ordered recession of the perspective that, unlike Boitard’s Comedy of Errors frontispiece, does not lead towards resolution. Other images share this unity of composition and mood. Gravelot’s frontispiece for The Tempest (Fig. 30) breaks with precedent, showing neither the opening 80

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shipwreck of 1709 nor the chess game of 1714. Instead, it presents the logbearing scene (3.1), with Miranda in a pose of supplication, her appeal to share in the work demonstrated in gestures countered by Ferdinand’s open gaze and continued hold on the massive log. As Grant Scott remarks in his study of the depiction of Prospero as a figure concerned with the maintenance of power,14 he lurks in the background as if anxious to control the lovers – as, of course, the text reveals him as being. This reading is reinforced by Prospero’s unbending posture and the presence of the staff, the traditional emblem of power. Held parallel to Ferdinand’s log, the folds of Miranda’s dress and the trunk of the tree beneath which Prospero stands, it structures the composition and counters, in its rigid linearity, the flowing energies of the lovers and the natural world. What seems at first an elegant act of visual retelling is enriched by a compositional device that unites figures and setting, yet reveals a fissure between them. More generally, it reveals a toughness within the grace of the composition – a quality that will recur in enough other images to make clear that the Rococo elegance of momentary depiction at times contains iron in the soul. A similar fusion is evident in the design for Richard III (Fig. 31). Both Rowe engravings show Richard’s dream before Bosworth, stressing the supernatural as an instrument of retribution. Gravelot instead shows Richard offering his sword to Lady Anne, emphasising the personal drives of the central characters in a way that may quite legitimately be called psychological exploration. In his study of French book illustration of the period, Philip Stewart declares the smallscale engraving medium inadequate for the depiction of facial expressions,15 but the engraving contests this. Richard’s eyes, turned towards Anne in a motion of appeal just this side of a sneer, reveal the knowing calculation behind his action in a manner that is apparent to the onlooker but not to Anne. The rigid stare of Anne herself is similarly eloquent, this time of horrified fascination. Expression is complemented by gesture, Richard’s open sweep of the hand conveying something of the swagger, Anne’s weak grasp on the sword – she could not effectively stab him with the weapon held in this way – completing the exchange. These elements place the action precisely within the pause just before Richard’s ‘Take up the sword again, or take up me’ (1.2.188). Character depiction is facilitated by this moment of hesitancy, and is carefully reinforced by the composition. The surrounding figures draw the reader to the central action by their lines of sight, a focus tightened by the figure above looking out of the building: all use visual means to reinforce the main element of the action, intensifying it through their radial direction. The location in a street familiar to any city-dweller in 1740 adds directness, and the overall effect is to draw the reader 81

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31 Hubert Gravelot, engraved by Michael van der Gucht: Frontispiece to Richard III. 16 × 9 (61/4 × 31/2 ).

in to share a moment of tense dramatic action between two innately credible characters. The immediacy of this image shares another foundation with all the other frontispieces. Their gestures and expressions come not from Le Brun or any other theorist of emotional depiction but from personal observation. Of particular power is Richard’s spread left hand: this has no equivalent in any of the manuals for acting, painting or rhetoric but, when seen with his pose and expression, conveys quite clearly his false submission. That this is evident to the reader but not, through the different viewpoint, to Anne, shows again the skill of bodily arrangement and confrontation within a convincingly actual composition. Strangely, although they precede the images to Richardson’s Pamela by roughly two years, the Shakespeare designs are far more effective, both in the presentation of the characters’ postures and in their relative placing. In a study of the later 82

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images, Louise Miller suggests that many employ emblematic devices, borrowed from the 1709 edition of Ripa’s Iconologia,16 or from well-known tropes such as the Judgment of Hercules or the figure of Melancholy.17 This certainly applies to some – though not many – of the Richardson engravings, but it has no relevance at all to the Shakespeare designs. Neither do the rather wooden postures, or the use of what Miller terms ‘stereoscopic composition’ (p. 128), in essence the multitemporality, of the Richardson plates. Perhaps the different approach results from Richardson’s concern that the engravings precisely reflect the novel’s moral truths rather than encourage reader involvement. All this suggests that Gravelot’s feeling for situation and character was more reliable than the directions of earlier theorists or contemporary writers. The result, with Richard III as elsewhere in the Shakespeare designs, is to create an effect of the kind generally termed naturalistic: the reader sees through the drawing’s stylistic filter to share the anxieties and imperatives the characters experience within the narrative moment. That, in this particular image, such viewer involvement is directed towards convincingly contemporary urban spaces, and not the stylised stage designs of Serlio, makes the empathetic sharing all the more immediate. The most forceful of Gravelot’s images is that to Othello (Fig. 32). Here the departure is not from Rowe, but from Shakespeare: Desdemona is strangled, not smothered. The design combines immediate gestural action, symbolic statement and controlled composition, in which the Rococo element, although restrained, provides an undertow of ironic incongruity. The chamber’s elegant furnishing, like the classical background to the violence of Titus, ruthlessly increases the brutality of the foreground and, like the court dress of Boitard’s version, hints at Othello’s own cultural displacement. The torch`ere in the foreground, in darkness save for the flames of the candles, is in part a visualisation of Othello’s ‘Put out the light’ (5.2.7), but this transmediation is supplemented by another kind of referentiality, the figure of a serpent twined around its base. The conjunction of elegant contemporary form with biblical symbol of fallen humanity reaches beyond the darkness of Othello’s act and the entanglements of sexual jealousy and misdirection in which it is bound. It suggests a corruption implicit within the grace of the apartment and, by extension, the surface sophistication of the whole image and, by implication, the discrepancy between appearance and actuality of Iago’s machinations. Gravelot’s quality of distance, almost of self-mocking irony and deflation, is here at its most insistent, most disturbing. The alteration to the play’s action is in complete accord with this: the strangling contrasts horribly with Othello’s rich, flowing robes – those of Venice, not an imagined distant country, showing Gravelot’s close reading of the text in avoiding a caricature 83

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32 Hubert Gravelot, engraved by Gerard Vander Gucht: Frontispiece to Othello. 16 × 9 (61/4 × 31/2 ).

‘Moorish’ depiction, as well as visualising Othello’s own dislocation. The most shocking element is Desdemona’s hand placed on Othello’s wrist, a gesture almost of tenderness. It suggests her earlier refusal to think or speak ill of her husband: more immediately, it recalls Othello’s later ‘I kissed thee ere I 84

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killed thee’ (5.2.354). In both, it is a deeply disturbing statement, a parallel, perhaps, to the return of the ‘kiss’ motif at the moment of death in Verdi’s Otello. Gravelot’s designs introduce into the realm of Shakespeare imaging a force of elegance in line, setting, and the plausibly lifelike stances and exchanges of their figures. No matter that the graphic constructions of idea and issue found in earlier engravings are absent. These later images bring life to the engagements the plays present and, as the texts were increasingly read and not seen, the qualities lift them off the page into the reader’s sensibility, at the same time redefining that sensibility through the lens of French galanterie. Writing about Gravelot’s rather later work, for an emblem book titled Almanach iconologique, Charles Blanc described it as a work in which ‘l’on voit prendre une forme aux id´ees les plus abstraites’.18 In the Shakespeare images at their finest, this quality results in an intellectual and emotional involvement of a high order, stimulating further discussion and so completing the circle of debate. Appearing in the second edition of Theobald’s edition, five further impressions of which were subsequently made, the engravings inevitably bore the stigma of appearing in a more popular edition, lagging behind the advance of editorial innovation. When Thomas Hanmer’s edition of 1740–4 appeared, using the text of Pope’s 1725 edition with no critical apparatus, the name of Gravelot was associated with another kind of Shakespeare, the lavish edition de luxe that offered largely sensual pleasure. Unwittingly, Gravelot had fired the bracketing shots that defined the illustrated edition as beyond and beneath serious consideration, confined either to cheap reprints or expensive coffee-table books. This was a location that, as will become clear, was to remain in effect until the middle of the next century, and whose vestiges are only now beginning to fade. When they are approached not from the viewpoint of English Shakespeare editing, but that of French art criticism, Gravelot’s designs become much more significant. In this, the theories of the Abb´e du Bos, as developed by Roger de Piles and Denis Diderot, are fundamental. In his study of French art in the 1750s,19 Michael Fried sees as basic to the reaction against Rococo several elements that grow from these theorists. Reduced to their essentials, they are a concern with action and the reflection of the passions in what he describes as ‘an essentially dramatic conception of painting’ (p. 75), within a composition that unifies structure and meaning. Both are reflected in a new conception of the relation between image and onlooker. While Fried is concerned with these principles in easel painting, and that of the decade following Gravelot’s images, I would argue that the new relationships are already present in Gravelot’s engravings. 85

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Drawing back still further reveals Gravelot’s images within another, deeper focus, paired with the work of Jean-Honor´e Fragonard. While Les Hasards heureux de l’escarpolette (The Swing, 1767)20 is a virtuosic, though conceptually shallow, exploration of voyeurism, the later L’Escarpolette (The Swing, 1775)21 is more complex. With its companion piece, Le Colin-maillard (Blind-Man’s Buff, 1775),22 it is ostensibly a simple narrative of amorous pursuit and fulfilment; but the compositions of both, especially their presentation of events under tall, gently lowering skies, suggest them as subtle meditations on time and place that go beyond a surface concern with the fashionable world to see it within the larger rhythms of nature and mortality. The momentary stillness of the swing itself suggests the immediacy of the instant, time outside time yet imminently under its control. This in turn becomes a metaphor of the presentation of moment in the Shakespeare designs, that are all contained within the larger operations of the text. At its finest, in the frontispieces to Richard III and Othello, Gravelot’s work belongs to this order of Rococo.

III The edition of Shakespeare produced by Sir Thomas Hanmer,23 with frontispiece images by Francis Hayman and Hubert Gravelot, made only minor changes to the text of Pope’s second edition. As it contributed little to the quest for the author’s imagined original, and because of its large format and illustrations, it was greeted with mistrust by many early reviewers, yet it is important for two reasons. It continues the stylised naturalism and concentrated approach to character and event established by Gravelot, drawing its imagery closer to that of other contemporary illustration. Secondly, in an archival sense it is uniquely important as the only edition for which the instructions from editor to illustrator survive. That Hanmer was not a professional scholar in some ways makes these directions more rather than less interesting. While it would be absurd to suggest that they reflect the assumptions of the average reader, Hanmer’s earlier writing on Hamlet24 certainly implies that he shared many of these – most explicitly that Shakespeare was a natural genius, in whose work irregularities abound, in this reflecting the essential English temper. One of his comments on the aims of the critic from the same work seems appropriate also to his instructions to the artist: it is ‘to settle, if possible, a right Taste among those of the Age in which he lives’ (p. 1). Hanmer’s instructions were copied by the collector Charles Rogers, and are now in the Cottonian Collection in Plymouth. When they are read alongside the images 86

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themselves, helpfully reproduced in an article by Marcia Allentuck,25 it is clear that Hayman and Gravelot only rarely departed from them. What is remarkable about them for a present-day reader is precisely the element which makes them most unremarkable: their emphasis on the naturalism of the setting and the presentation of characters as human individuals within it. Notional historical accuracy is a criterion only in the Roman plays, following contemporary stage practice, and in most cases the scene is described quickly, before advice is given on character. This can include explorations of mood or passion, but is more commonly concerned with age, rank, costume and bearing – the major concerns of contemporary social and personal judgment. All specify the moment to be depicted; none makes reference to larger currents of action or language. Overall the suggestion is of instantaneous, material accuracy rather than linguistic or theatrical interpretation, all within the dictates of ‘right Taste’. The stance is first exposed in a letter dated 8 August 1741 in which Hanmer comments on three designs Hayman had sent him, perhaps as a sample of his work before his formal engagement. The Julius Caesar is attacked on several material grounds. Brutus is ‘too old a man’: he should be middle-aged and have ‘as much manly beauty as you can give him’ (290). He should not lean on a pile of books, since that ‘gives him too great an affectation of wisdom’ – and in any case, having ‘just come off their march’ they would have no books in their tent (291). Titus Andronicus is judged more effective, although ‘the Moor must be richly dress’d’, and should have appropriate Moorish headgear ‘as nothing adds so much dignity as a Turban’ (291). The original design for the sleepwalking scene in Macbeth (Fig. 33) has other faults: ‘You seem to aim at representing the Lady Macbeth with her eyes shut whereas the contrary is expressly declared’ (292). Hanmer supports this by quoting the lines Doct. You see her eyes are open. Gent. Ay but their sence is shut. (5.1.21–2)

All these comments are striking in their concern with the material accuracy of the moment and the appropriate delineation of character, but the last is the most revealing. In stressing the importance of following every textual detail it rejects any possibility of critical interpretation – that the depiction of the eyes closed might function at a metaphorical level in visualising the text – and suggests Hanmer’s limited grasp of the workings of the print medium, since closed eyes would immediately establish that Lady Macbeth is sleepwalking. The power of Hanmer’s direction is made clear in the final version (Fig. 34). Here, though, 87

33 Francis Hayman: Watercolour design for frontispiece to Macbeth from Thomas Hanmer’s Works of Shakespeare, 1743–4. 21 × 14.6 (81/4 × 53/4 ).

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34 Francis Hayman, engraved by Hubert Gravelot: Frontispiece to Macbeth. Page size 29 × 20 (111/2 × 8).

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35 Francis Hayman, engraved by Hubert Gravelot: Frontispiece to The Tempest. Page size 29 × 20 (111/2 × 8).

Gravelot makes one of his few modifications to Hayman’s designs, softening facial expressions to remove much of the scene’s anguish, shown particularly in the design of the eyes of Lady Macbeth and the doctor. Hanmer’s later instructions do not always share the letter’s narrow literalism, but have much to suggest about how contemporary readers might have approached text and image, through the design of setting, delineation of character through age and rank, and the representation of emotions through the use of what should be assumed to be naturalistic gestures. Like its predecessors, Hanmer’s edition follows the order of the First Folio, beginning with The Tempest (Fig. 35). Perhaps because it is the first image, Hanmer’s directions are longer and more explicit, and are worth quoting in full because of what they reveal of the general nature of the written instructions. 90

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A Landskip the most pleasing that can be design’d, varied with woods and plains and Rocks and vallies, and falls of water and all the wild beauties of nature. Into one of the rocks the Entrance of a Cave must appear, not far from which Prospero and Miranda are to stand as in conference together: He is an elderly man but not decrepid or broken with Age, clothed in a long garment and his head cover’d with a cap lined with Ermyn, holding a wand in his right hand. The daughter in the bloom of youth and beauty, and habited after the Italian or Spanish manner. At some distance from them Ferdinand must appear as coming out of the woods with folded arms looking with curiosity round him: His Air and Mien to be that of a fine gracefull youthfull Prince and his dress after the Italian ma˜ner with a sword by his side and his hat button’d up with a diamond. Prospero pointing towards him with his wand shews him to Miranda who discovers wonder and surprize at the sight. The spirit Ariel to be sitting in the clouds with a pipe or flute in his hand. The Grotesque figure of Caliban to be coming from behind the Cave towards the mouth of it with a burthen of wood upon his Shoulders. Towards the back ground there must be a distant prospect of the Sea with a Ship lying upon her side as wreck’d upon the coast. (204–5)

Hanmer’s concerns are clear. First comes the setting, described as a ‘Landskip,’ spelled in imitation of the Dutch word and used of painting rather than an actual scene, which came later, popularised by Pope and other writers.26 Hanmer is here referring to a painting, not a stage design, a significant indication of the kind of mimesis he envisages. Next come accounts of the figures in terms of age, appearance and dress. All are contemporary character types – the magus, the beautiful young woman and the gracious prince – and each is defined by details of costume, much as contemporary society revealed its stratifications. That Ariel is a ‘spirit’ and Caliban a ‘Grotesque’ – the capital an important sign of classification within an accepted order – offers an opposition of these figures and one between them and the mortals, balancing social layering at a metaphysical level. Only at the end is the play’s action specified, in the reference to the shipwreck. The detail is unusual in Hanmer’s instructions in referring to something outside the engraving; but, because it relates to an occurrence before rather than after the action to be shown, it is subsumed into the momentary action as an explanatory cause. At the core of the description is a sentence that reveals the engraving’s essential purpose, to present a single moment: Miranda ‘discovers wonder and surprise at the sight’. It is this that gives the designer the key to his subject. The assumed aim is to present a single, actual feeling within a single, actual setting, with no suggestion of the theatre, the play’s linguistic tropes, its later action, or its major concerns at anything deeper than an instantaneous declamatory level. 91

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Hayman’s design closely follows Hanmer’s instructions. The hint within the word ‘Landskip’ has been acknowledged, and each detail incorporated within a style suggestive of fashionable images of the land. Clothing, gesture and interaction are exactly as prescribed, the diagrammatic directions of Hanmer translated into a network of eye lines linking the three principal characters. These allow the moods of Miranda and Ferdinand to be read easily, not through any predetermined scheme but by careful observation of their gesture and expression. In these elements, the engraving typifies the frontispieces in its concentration on a moment of sensory, emotional and situational experience taken from the play and given easily assimilated graphic form that continues the accessible, stylised naturalism begun by Gravelot in 1740, allowing the reader to enter the image and empathise with the characters as people, not as elements of a printed or performed text. Age, rank and dress are fundamental, in reflection of contemporary social structures; the engravings execute the directions precisely, offering the reader the armatures on which contemporary social relationships and character judgments are erected. The original drawings for the volume, most by Hayman but a few by Gravelot, are preserved in a copy of the edition held in the Folger Shakespeare Library.27 Bound facing each other, with a thin protective interleaving, the drawings and engravings form an invaluable comparative study. While almost all the engravings meticulously follow the original designs, most of which Hayman executed in reverse to speed the process, The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Vol. 1, facing p. 143) departs from the drawing in a way that suggests more than technical change. Hayman’s drawing (Fig. 36) shows Valentine advancing with the sword held low in his right hand. When engraved, this would show him holding it quite awkwardly in his left. In the engraving (Fig. 37), Gravelot changes this so that it is held at an upward angle in the right hand, a more dynamic portrayal that balances the vigorous lines of Silvia’s struggle to free herself from Proteus. To make this change, Gravelot has omitted one element of the scene prescribed by Hanmer: ‘some of the Outlaws with Arms in their hands’ (296). One reason for this is clearly compositional. The figures would conflict with the energy of Valentine’s raised sword, and destroy the suggestion of suspense generated by the open space that now exists between the two groups of figures. Yet the alteration has much to suggest about Gravelot’s larger approach. In omitting the figures, who do not appear until after Julia’s self-disclosure and the reconciliation between Valentine and Proteus, the engraving rejects the implication of later action and throws the attention wholly onto the moment of Valentine’s intervention. Gravelot’s concern for dramatic immediacy, already 92

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clear in his 1740 designs, is made quite explicit in this change. It becomes clearer still when the image is compared to the treatment of the same moment by Boitard (see Fig. 18). There, the sequence is implicit; here, the moment is all, revealing two quite different approaches to presenting narrative and feeling. The change also emblematises something visible in all of the engravings, the fracture of the line of tradition from Rowe. Direct response to the plays, rather than the continuation of any established iconography, is the editorial aim, and earlier visual practice is discarded when it does not accord with it. This is an important principle. Given that a major theoretical foundation of eighteenth-century history painting was the use of significant precedent, the act of breaking away emphasises still further the importance of immediate response. This in turn defines the frontispiece as an element of initial reading and reaction, not bound by rules of painterly theory and habit. The form thus moves outside the conventions of history painting, and in this it is revealed as the product of a more immediate readerly reaction to the text than the large paintings of the plays by Fuseli, Reynolds and others, that make subtle use of iconographical reference to voice critical statements. Hanmer was, after all, a reader and amateur critic, not an art theorist, and plainly this influenced his directions. His choice of Gravelot as engraver presumably rested on knowledge of his work for the Theobald edition, and it is hardly surprising that his instructions absorb the stress on the moment that all of these earlier designs reveal. Immediacy is a key principle for all the images in Hanmer’s first volume. Falstaff looks ‘in a great fright’ (297) at Mistress Ford while she looks out of the picture plane to the right, suggesting her present fear of discovery rather than foreshadowing its future actuality. The removal of the monk’s cowl to reveal the Duke in Measure for Measure is matched by shocked reactions from the other characters in the very moment of revelation; Much Ado shows the reactions of the wedding guests to Hero fainting in church, again without the proleptic implication of Boitard; and in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Fig. 38) Bottom’s return when ‘translated’ is given similar single treatment, this time offset against a background of classical buildings that make the transformation oddly sinister. All reveal the moment, and in this are quite typical: that to Two Gentlemen reveals, in Gravelot’s alteration, an unconscious return to his own preferred approach. The same pattern is followed in succeeding volumes. Character and setting are wholly contemporary, style refined and restrained. In the tragedies this can have startling results. Lear is revealed on the heath as a dispossessed contemporary elder-statesman; Romeo enters the tomb with the dead Paris lying to one side in a composition dominated by architectural forms. The effects of ironic contrast and 93

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36 Francis Hayman: Watercolour design for frontispiece to The Two Gentlemen of Verona. 21 × 14.6 (81/4 × 53/4 ).

incongruity, so effective in, for example, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, are absent from the designs for the tragedies, and the most successful engravings are those in the comedies that exploit the style to convey subtle emotional gradations. Two major exceptions are Hamlet and Macbeth. The former is held together by a tense web of eye lines as the characters observe the reactions of Claudius to the death of the player king, offset at different extremes by the flowing robes and drapes and the continued concentration of the musicians in the gallery. For the original onlookers of Hayman’s Macbeth (see Fig. 34), the very familiarity of the setting and costumes would surely have emphasised the mental dislocation of the sleepwalking Lady Macbeth. 94

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37 Francis Hayman, engraved by Hubert Gravelot: Frontispiece to The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Page size 29 × 20 (111/2 × 8).

In the Roman plays there is some concern for what would later become a major preoccupation, the need for designs to present authentically the visual identities of the period of the plays’ events. Coriolanus places such assumed accuracy within a single-emotion tableau, the women kneeling before the warrior in one of a series of tents that add a contrasting note of military roughness. While Caesar is less effective, the Antony and Cleopatra engraving presents the key characters in a plausibly Egyptian interior. The mood here is unique in depending on a subsequent event that receives suggestion only in the expressions of the three women and the more extreme gesture of the messenger, a suitable register of difference in rank. Hayman follows Hanmer’s instruction here, ‘that the Aspicks are not to appear in the basket, they are supposed to lye under the fig leaves’ (314), so as not to darken or vulgarise the mood. 95

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38 Francis Hayman, engraved by Hubert Gravelot: Frontispiece to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Page size 29 × 20 (111/2 × 8).

Many of the histories depict lighter scenes, with Falstaff featuring in both the Henry IV plays. Here the suggestion that the spirit of Rococo is undermining the idea of historical forces is not altogether inappropriate. That the Henry V engraving shows the dismissal of the French envoy is mildly ironic, given the French-inspired style of execution. Gravelot himself took over the designs after 1 Henry VI, perhaps because of Hayman’s involvement with the decorations of Vauxhall Gardens. The first result is a version of that play’s garden scene that reads more as an exchange between courtiers within an elegant parterre than an allegory of the beginning of the Wars of the Roses. Subsequent images betray more fully an incongruity between style and subject. The death of Cardinal Beaufort from the second play reveals a tougher side, its placing of forceful gesture within an elegant architectural setting producing a powerful and quietly disturbing effect, and the dismissal of Wolsey in Henry VIII working similarly. By contrast, 96

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the 3 Henry VI image of the father who has killed his son, and the son who has killed his father, lacks power to move: its fluent lines and rural setting give it the air of a digressive story from a pastoral romance, and the detailed engraving of lances in the background fighting has an effect more rhythmic than military. In one of the history plays, Richard II (Fig. 39), the desire for accuracy takes a particularly striking turn. Hanmer prescribes ‘the Lists at Coventry’ (307) with the king ‘seated in state surrounded with his nobles’ (309). The advice then becomes uniquely specific: the image ‘may be taken from one done with great exactness in Dugdale’s Antiquities of Warwickshire publish’d 1730. Vol. 1. p. 110’ (Fig. 40). Hayman followed the advice, and produced an image based directly on Dugdale, though adapting and moving some of the figures to assimilate the change from longitudinal to upright composition. He also adjusted the king’s posture so that now he looks downward towards one of the combatants instead of straight ahead, shifting the image from one of ceremonial to one of dramatic engagement. The two images seen together offer valuable evidence of changing methods of presenting narrative action. The Dugdale offers several episodes in panels surrounding the main action while retaining the dynamism of the joust through careful exploitation of its format, but still presenting a ceremonial mode because of the king’s gaze directly out of the image towards the onlooker, a modality that engages with the onlooker above the action and turns the image into an icon of rule rather than a visual chronicle. Meyer Schapiro explores this orientation in medieval illuminations.28 Figures in profile are dramatically involved in the action narrated by the text, those presented frontally are ‘confronting the reader . . . in a theme of state’ (29) as priests, law-givers or others in ceremonial occasions demanding such interaction. That this tradition included depictions of Richard II is shown by many images, notably the panel painting Richard II Enthroned in the chapter house of Westminster Abbey.29 By contrast Hayman’s image, with the king looking diagonally across and down at one of the combatants, instantly changes the mode to dramatic action so that, for all its putative authenticity, it moves the events into the visual narrative of its own age, away from that in which the play is set. Beneath this shift lies an important assumption: that the event should be presented in terms of an actual historical event, not its dramatic treatment. In this it is probably the earliest example of such an extreme concern with historical accuracy, and certainly the first image that expresses it by imitating an engraving from the period it intends to establish. The plays are seen as historical chronicles, with all the implications for narrative and visualisation this embodies. Later, in 97

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39 Francis Hayman, engraved by Hubert Gravelot: Frontispiece to Richard II. Page size 29 × 20 (111/2 × 8).

the theatre and on the page, this stance will assume almost complete dominance. But, for Hayman, the approach is not yet pervasive, and instead the concern is with providing an image with which the reader can imaginatively sympathise. The same is true for those images that are both designed and engraved by Gravelot: finely modelled figures against carefully suggested architectural forms or natural features, they offer the same approach, inviting the reader to sympathise with their contemporaries caught in a moment of emotional reaction. In this lies their strength for the reader, but also their limitation as critical instruments. In the early 1770s, Hayman contributed designs to an edition of the plays edited by Charles Jennens.30 Only five of the plays were published – King Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello and Julius Caesar – and none shows the energy or interpretive vigour of Hayman’s earlier work. Othello is more a caricature than a delineation of the death scene; Hamlet falls awkwardly between theatrical record and imaginative 98

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40 Plate from William Dugdale’s The Antiquities of Warwickshire, 1730. Image size 42 × 52.5 (161/2 × 201/2 ).

figuration. Their weakness is very different from the earliest Hamlet, or the As You Like It that, in its painted form, may have been produced for Vauxhall Gardens and which exploits chiaroscuro and eye line to convey a sinister hint beneath the apparent playfulness of the wrestling scene.31 The Rococo style, always fragile, is revealed as inadequate in these engravings, its moment passed: naturalistic depiction needed a new vigour if it was to prove effective, and other artists were already adopting new ways to convey the plays through both instant and longer movement.

IV While the work of Gravelot and Hayman has been much reproduced, the engravings of Anthony Walker are far less familiar. This is a serious loss, since they have a technical sophistication equal to any contemporary work, and a visual 99

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understanding of Shakespearean narrative that is probably unparalleled. The reason for their neglect is the incomplete nature of the work and its absence from a published edition. Although Walker exhibited designs in 1760, claiming them to be for ‘a Quarto edition of Shakespeare, published by Lowndes’,32 there is no record of its appearance. The images remain in various individual copies and drawings, mainly in two collections at the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Huntington Library, California. The former includes five images for Romeo and Juliet, some of which are dated January 1753, making them probably the first sequence of images produced for a Shakespeare play. Their control over the unfolding of the play’s events reveals them as outstanding in both their transmediation of narrative and their presentation of the play’s mood and imagery. The sequence is held together by a carefully modulated balance of tone, achieved largely through a control of chiaroscuro and composition that unites the individual images and conveys the mingling of closeness and separation, security and foreboding, that defines the play’s central relationship. The use of strong diagonal chiaroscuro is by no means rare in work of this period, but its combination with genuine recessive depth and great dexterity in cross-hatching, contour-hatching, and dot-and-lozenge figurations provides a density of execution lacking in contemporary English burin work. Walker’s figures are as fully articulated as those of Gravelot, but their location within the more fully drawn settings and the greater density of the engraving enhance their seriousness. In conception, they differ from the images of the 1740s by their implication of future action, at both narrative and critical levels. In this they mark a development that is perhaps as great as the shift to naturalism achieved by Gravelot. Reading an edition containing Walker’s engravings would have conveyed a taut foreshadowing of event and affect unequalled in earlier illustration, and rarely accomplished in that to follow. The close collaboration between thematic insight and technical sophistication is clear from the first engraving, which shows the ball scene (Fig. 41). Romeo carries a staff in allusion to his disguise as a ‘palmer’ or pilgrim, making visible the play’s pun on Petrarchan allusions to love as a pilgrimage. At the rear, the masked ball is a vigorous, circular composition, carefully balanced against the foreground figures of Romeo and Juliet and adding credibility and risk to their public declarations. The relation is enhanced by the controlled use of light. This is clearly not theatrical in origin, since the three large chandeliers are of a size and location impossible on contemporary stages. Neither is the effect wholly naturalistic. Instead, it harnesses engraving techniques to suggest a setting in which actuality and abstract design, character and idea are finely matched. Tybalt appears to the right foreground, his shadow extending across the foreground 100

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41 Anthony Walker: Engraving to Romeo and Juliet, Plate 1, 1753. Paper size 25.4 × 16.3 (10 × 61/2 ).

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to just beneath the feet of Romeo in a visual prediction of subsequent conflict. The chiaroscuro also visualises the play’s language. Twice in the scene Capulet calls for ‘More light’ (1.5.26, 86): the brightness of much of the scene reflects this and, with the energy and stylish costumes of the dancers, generates a mood appropriate to the ball and to Romeo’s heady emotions. With the dark figure and long shadow of Tybalt, the image presents in abstract visual terms the conflicted imagery that runs throughout the play. It is this quality that gives the engravings their power, building through the series by the recurrent structures of chiaroscuro to draw the reader into the play’s narrative and affective world. Just how different Walker’s engravings are from contemporary views of the theatre is shown by comparison between his treatment of the balcony scene (Fig. 42) and William Elliott’s engraving of Spranger Barry and Miss Nossiter as Romeo and Juliet, completed in the same year as Walker’s engravings, after a painting by R. Pyle (Fig. 43). Its dominant central chandelier clearly comes from the theatre, and the two characters are depicted with little detail or attempt at characterisation, ciphers for completion by the onlooker’s memory. By contrast, Walker’s treatment has an immediately accessible naturalistic setting. The balcony is at first floor level, not at the rather lower height assumed in the Elliott. The whole is set in a moonlit landscape suggesting the later paintings of Joseph Wright and initially perhaps more fitted to the opening of the final act of The Merchant of Venice, but the textual relationship is strong, with Romeo standing in shadow, ‘bescreened in night’ (2.2.52) The engraving’s direct presentation of the moment’s richness is qualified by the lines beneath it: Romeo: Lady, by yonder blessed moon I vow Juliet: O, swear not by the moon, th’inconstant moon, That monthly changes in her circled orb, Lest that thy love prove likewise variable. (2.2.107, 109–11)

Recalling the play’s mingling of romance richness and implicit threat, the lines complement the engraving’s chiaroscuro, word and image working genuinely together to intensify the reader’s experience. The visual-verbal elision achieves a subtler statement in the visual treatment of the line omitted from the passage quoted: Romeo’s account of the moon is completed with the clause ‘That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops’ (108). This is precisely the effect created in the engraving, with the distant full moon shining diagonally across the trees. The omission of the line shows the degree of unity between word and image: translated into visual form, its quotation would be superfluous. The engraving’s 102

42 Anthony Walker: Engraving to Romeo and Juliet, Plate 2. Paper size 25.4 × 16.3 (10 × 61/2 ).

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43 William Elliott: Spranger Barry and Miss Nossiter as Romeo and Juliet, 1753, after a painting by R. Pyle. Image size 32.6 × 22.1 (127/8 × 83/4 ).

use of light also suggests Juliet’s foreboding, uniting the moment and later events in referring to the rashness of their declaration of love as ‘Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be / Ere one can say “It lightens”’ (2.2.119–20). This visual foreboding continues in the next image (Fig. 44). It depicts the very end of 2.6, a scene in which the ecstatic statements of the lovers are poised against the Friar’s misgivings. The diagonal chiaroscuro is again strong, the central figures shown against a heavy, dark pillar while light streams in from a window at the right. The joy is limited by the Friar’s firm hand on Romeo’s wrist to lead him away, a constraint given textual sanction and narrative extension by the lines beneath: Friar: Come, come with me and we will make short work, For, by your leaves, you shall not stay alone ’Till holy church incorp’rate two in one. (2.6.34–6)

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44 Anthony Walker: Engraving to Romeo and Juliet, Plate 3. Paper size 25.4 × 16.3 (10 × 61/2 ).

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Again, words and image combine to convey present mood and suggest future events. The fourth image, dated ‘Jan 15 1754’ (Fig. 45), shows Romeo and the apothecary. It is a remarkably detailed scene, the stuffed animals, plants and pots of the shop in forms borrowed from Hogarth matched against the attenuated figure of the apothecary. It is also a skilful combination of moments. The passage quoted (5.1.80–6) pivots from the act of payment to a reflection on the poisonous effects of gold, and ends with an indication of future action. Romeo holds a phial and the apothecary the gold: the transaction has already been effected and two parts of the speech shown. This inevitably provides an impetus towards the third element, Romeo’s death in the tomb. The setting is a convincing Italian street, but the addition of an ecclesiastical procession seen through an arch at the rear makes ironic allusion to the role of Friar Laurence. There is also a nod towards Hogarth’s O the Roast Beef of Old England (1748)33 in which a procession with the Host is seen under an inn sign bearing a bird, a satiric jibe at the reservation of the sacraments. Perhaps this foreshadows the failure of the Friar’s plans through its disparaging reference to the impotence of Catholic ritual. The suggestion of failure is also implanted by the pile of fallen bricks at the right foreground, again prefiguring the collapse of the Friar’s scheme. The immediate effect, though, is again provided by the chiaroscuro, the dark interior of the apothecary’s shop in marked contrast to the bright street giving abstract form to the play’s antithetical dynamic. The final image (Fig. 46) brings this formal device to its culmination. The central placing of the Friar’s lantern turns the image almost into a parody of a baroque nativity in which the light source is the centrally placed Christ child. Here, the meaning is transformed; the light shining directly on Romeo’s face makes of it a death’s head. The light is taken up by the displaced slab of a tomb, perhaps Tybalt’s, offering integration with earlier action. It also illuminates an array of monuments, from cupids at the front left to military and armorial bearings at the rear, revealing the play’s opposition of dynastic power and individual love. At the extreme left, the Watch is approaching, led by a page with a lantern that enriches the play of light, suggesting the scene’s denouement with the appearance of the two families. These figures have another narrative function. Juliet is shown on the point of stabbing herself, a moment chosen for its emotional power by several later painters, but the advance of the Watch makes clear that here there is no concern with delaying events for maximal emotional effect. Instead, the Watch moves events forward, making Juliet’s death inevitable. This avoidance of pause is further evidence of the absence of theatrical origin: the frequent use of the words 106

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45 Anthony Walker. Engraving to Romeo and Juliet, Plate 4. Paper size 25.4 × 16.3 (10 × 61/2 ).

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46 Anthony Walker: Engraving to Romeo and Juliet, Plate 5. Paper size 25.4 × 16.3 (10 × 61/2 ).

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before death as a ‘point’ has no place in this version, which is instead concerned purely with the visual statement of event and feeling. Again the use of light develops the play’s language. Romeo asserts that Juliet’s beauty ‘makes / This vault a feasting presence full of light’ (5.3.85–6), and twice makes punning reference to ‘lightning before death’ (90, 91). When Friar Laurence meets Balthasar at the tomb he asks ‘What torch is yond that vainly lends his light / To grubs and eyeless skulls?’ (125–6). Walker’s chiaroscuro effectively generalises such references, acting on the reader in a subtly persuasive manner both in itself and through the kinetic energy gained from its use in the earlier engravings. Through its careful development, culminating in the last engraving, the progression of images offers a powerful visual parallel to the play’s dramatic unfolding. To reinforce this, one element ties together the images with striking force: the presence of the moon outside the tomb, now waning, not full as in the second image. The visual link recalls the earlier vow ‘by th’inconstant moon’, showing the play’s ending as implicit within its beginning. Since the edition of the plays with these illustrations was never produced, and their location relative to the printed page remains undefined, it is pointless to speculate about the resultant reading experience. But in their present form the suite of engravings constitutes a new kind of trajectory, in which major events of the play are reconfigured in visual form, assisted by the brief and carefully chosen quotations. For the qualified reader they provide a path through the play’s events that reveals a new privileging of scenes, omitting the death of Tybalt, the nurse’s bawdy humour, the discovery of Juliet’s body, and the reconciliation of the families. In this paring down of the play to the minimal path of the ‘star-crossed lovers’ they offer a new concentration of energies, articulating through the use of chiaroscuro the play’s extremes of delight and dread. The onlooker may not be consciously aware of the recurrent pattern, but this does not diminish its power, the cumulative effect of which places the engravings among the century’s most significant critical insights into the play’s movement.

V The varieties of technique and stance presented by the work of Gravelot, Hayman and Walker offer themselves temptingly as a model of the extremes of illustration and its relation with the plays, both as reinventions of scene and idea and within the larger growth of the illustrated edition. Yet their differences in style conceal a deeper similarity, in the common use of apparently naturalistic forms, so that 109

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Walker’s work paradoxically represents a development of the innovative drive begun by Gravelot. The 1740s were in many ways the beginning of the English illustrative tradition, which reached its first and most powerful flowering in the work of Hogarth. But it is important to locate this rapid growth within a larger European frame, with the work of Gravelot and others at its centre. The next phase of Shakespeare illustration would begin with the work of Edward Edwards and his associates for the editions produced by John Bell, and it is perhaps with these that it becomes more wholly indigenous in nature. Walker’s engravings, outstanding though they are in technique and textual insight, never achieved the breadth of exposure to make them truly influential, and it is hard not to see the influence of Gravelot and Vander Gucht in their blend of naturalism and intense exploitation of the technical potential of the medium. When these factors are seen in the shadow of Boitard’s designs, with their manipulation of older European techniques of temporal plurality, a conclusion emerges that, while ignored by critical discussions of the growth of the national dramatist, is pleasingly paradoxical. At a time when Shakespeare was coming to be regarded as the embodiment of all things English, the visual forms in which his plays were being presented were the product of the imagination and dexterity of artists from France. The frontispiece borrowed by Vander Gucht from the early editions of Corneille stands as a revealing emblem of this act of appropriation, and the work of Gravelot continues it into the realm of the visual embodiment of the plays themselves. Walker builds on this in his powerfully individual manner; but it was not until the next generation that an indigenous style would emerge, in the images produced for the editions of John Bell.

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CHAPTER 4

BELL, PERFORMANCE AND READING

I Between 1773 and 1791 three editions of Shakespeare’s plays appeared, two published by John Bell and one by the less familiar partnership of Bellamy and Robarts. Bell’s editions have become known as the ‘Acting’ and ‘Literary’ editions, the first using the prompt-books from Drury Lane or Covent Garden as their texts, the latter placing itself firmly in the tradition of textual scholarship. The Bellamy and Robarts edition is largely unknown, receiving little comment in historical studies of textual editing. All were sold both as serial parts and as complete volumes, Bell’s in several forms, variously containing scenes from the plays and portraits of actors in character, the Bellamy and Robarts with two scenes for each play. All contribute to a progressive and highly significant change in the placing of engravings, and consequently in the reader’s experience of the plays. The first Bell edition, unusual in being available in the publisher’s own binding, placed the engravings as frontispieces. Increasingly, however, those copies bound by their purchasers placed the images within the texts of the plays, a practice aided by the sale of the images independent of the volumes. The result is that the ‘Acting’ edition exists in several different forms. Scenes and portraits are bound as frontispieces, within the body of the text, or as dual frontispieces, resulting in different meanings when considered as part of the larger reading experience. This change of location was soon taken up by the publishers: Bell’s ‘Literary’ edition included a sheet giving the page numbers within the text where the engravings should appear, and Bellamy and Robarts followed suit. Thereafter, the inclusion of images opposite the action they depict became commonplace, and the relation between word and image was accordingly redefined.

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The most immediate result of the change is that, for the first time, the reader’s progress through the plays is determined visually as much as verbally, with the scenes depicted absorbed simultaneously as both image and word. A consequence more directly related to the Bell editions was that the use of both scenes and portraits radically reconfigured the already complex relations between reading and performance. Along with the whole notion of publishing an ‘Acting’ edition, for the purpose of being read, this suggests that the simple antithesis between the two forms conceals what was actually a far more fluid exchange. In a longer perspective, the work of Bell and his purchaser-readers has much to suggest about the practice and experience of reading an illustrated edition. By the time he produced his Shakespeare editions, Bell was a successful publisher of multi-volume literary collections, so it is safe to assume that he was sensitive to changes in the tastes of the reading and book-buying public. That his earlier volumes all include pictorial frontispieces indicates the popularity of this form of visualisation. By the time of Bell’s first Shakespeare volumes, the practice had moved towards considerable sophistication. In the first half of the century a number of French designers, building on the work of Gravelot, were important in providing images for books published in England. Louis du Guernier was a key figure, designing images for John Gay’s The Shepherd’s Week and Pope’s The Rape of the Lock as well as the frontispieces for Rowe’s second Shakespeare edition. In the years that followed Charles-Nicholas Cochin, Moreau le jeune and Charles-Dominique Eisen continued the practice. Gravelot’s own work exemplifies the expansion of interest in illustration. In 1742 he illustrated Richardson’s Pamela, in 1756 a London edition of the Decameron, and in 1761 a translation of Rousseau’s La Nouvelle H´elo¨ıse. This presentation as illustrated texts of an epistolary novel, a collection of tales and a fashionable novel of feeling reveals the extent of the practice. The inclusion of images in Swift’s Battle of the Books (1710), Thomson’s Seasons (1730), the Odes of Horace (1733), as well as earlier works such as Orlando Furioso that had from the first been illustrated, further evidences its spread across genres. When to these are added illustrated editions of Corneille, Moli`ere and other French dramatists it becomes clear that the imaging of plays is part of a larger movement, while retaining its own very specific relationship to the theatre as one dimension of the printed identity of works performed on stage. The seriousness with which engraved illustration engaged with its host text is shown in a volume produced in 1753 by Bell’s rival, Robert Dodsley: Designs by Mr. R. Bentley, for Six Poems by Mr. T. Gray.1 Each poem has a frontispiece and head- and tailpieces, the former encased in elaborate frames, the latter either 112

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naturalistic or emblematic. Their value as critical commentaries is shown in a four-page ‘Explanation of the Prints’ at the end of the volume. Attributed to Horace Walpole, these notes make clear that, in the elaborate frames surrounding the engravings, ‘the ornaments allude to the chief subjects of the poems’ (37), and continue to explain them in detail. The frontispiece to the ‘Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat’ includes ‘Two cariatides of a river god stopping his ears to her cries’ (38); that to the ‘Ode on a distant prospect of Eton College’ (Fig. 47) has ‘terms representing Jealousy and Madness’, ‘a head of Folly’ and ‘play-things intermixed with thorns, a sword, a serpent and a scorpion’ (38). Classical deities are presented in the Frontispiece for the ‘Hymn to Adversity’, and that to the ‘Elegy Written in a Country Church-yard’ balances ‘the emblems of the nobility’ against ‘the implements and employments of the Poor’. The main image between them shows ‘a church-yard and village church built out of the remains of an abbey’ (40). The balance between allusion and presentation is especially significant, suggesting that both designers and readers could move easily between emblematic and illusionistic modes within the same image, just as they could in the time of Boitard and before. That Bentley’s Illustrations went through seven editions by 17892 shows its popularity, implying that the habit of reading a dual text was well established, and also confirming the habit of reading dual texts on which later editions could build. That it was not published by subscription denies the possibility of comparing the names of its purchasers with those of Bell’s two Shakespeare editions, but it is probably not unreasonable to assume at least some degree of overlap in readership. At the end of the century, performance, illustration and criticism were approaching a new closeness, with the Shakespeare editions of John Bell at the forefront of the movement.

II The publication history of Bell’s two editions of Shakespeare is an intricate pattern of commercial, intellectual and cultural intersections.3 Possibly at the suggestion of Francis Gentleman, and certainly with his collaboration in notes and commentary, Bell produced an edition based not on previous scholarship but on the prompt-books used by Garrick at Drury Lane and George Colman at Covent Garden. This was Bell’s Edition of Shakespeare, generally known as the ‘Acting’ edition.4 Published by subscription in 1774, the first edition contained only the 24 plays in the current repertoire, and in 1775 a ‘continuance’ was published with the remaining plays and the poems in a further four volumes, making a total 113

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47 Richard Bentley. Frontispiece to ‘Ode on a distant prospect of Eton College’, engraved by J. S. M¨uller, from Designs by Mr. Bentley, for Six Poems by Mr. T. Gray, 1753. 18.4 × 13.3 (71/4 × 51/4 ).

of nine. In 1775 Bell also issued a second edition of the original five volumes, with corrections to typographical errors and some changes to the notes and commentaries. That October, Bell began to release the complete edition in weekly paper parts, priced 6d each. The first and second editions contained illustrative 114

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frontispieces designed by Edward Edwards, but in the serial numbers these were replaced by portraits of actors in character. All three forms were available either in small duodecimo or ‘large royal’ format (in practice very little larger) with the aim of attracting a wide range of buyers. Assessing the readership of any edition is notoriously difficult, even when accurate figures regarding print-runs and sales are available. Even so, the available data suggest that Bell’s Shakespeare achieved a much wider dispersal than contemporary scholarly versions. The figures cited in Chapter 1 may be amplified by Bell’s own account of the ‘Acting’ edition, in the list of ‘Modern Editions’ of the plays in the first volume of his ‘Literary’ edition: ‘printed for j. bell, the publisher of the present Edition, 1773, 9 vols, of which Edition, in 1773, 8000 copies were printed, and have been sold’. This is clearly untrue: the edition dated 1773 had five volumes and was probably not published until 1774. But even if the actual figure is half Bell’s claim, it is still much larger than those for the scholarly editions. Bell issued the ‘Acting’ edition at least once again before he was declared bankrupt in 1793. At this point James Baker bought the remaining copies, sheets and plates and issued the plays individually and as complete sets, unchanged except for new title-pages, further extending their life and readership.5 In consequence, even at the most conservative estimate, the reading experiences offered by Bell’s Edition of Shakespeare were available to a very significant proportion of the Shakespearereading public of the last quarter of the century, giving them a central place in the cultural assimilation of the plays. To this process the illustrations contributed in no small measure, but defining what and how, in terms of their placing within the volumes, is far from straightforward. Both scenes and portraits were sold separately and in ‘sets’ from their first issue, and could therefore be bound or tipped-in to the editions in various locations. The list of subscribers which occupies the first twenty-one pages of the first volume includes the names of six people who, in addition to the volumes, bought ‘one set of cuts’ (v) or ‘one set of prints, complete’ (xiv), and also lists ‘Nelson G. Esq. Colchester, only the cuts, fine’ (xv). The list does not, of course, include purchasers of individual prints, available several months before their inclusion with the plays, as the publication dates on each confirm. A volume containing only the plates of the actors was also issued by Bell in 1776, suggesting that these images were more commercially attractive than the scenes from the plays.6 Barker continued the sale of all the engravings, both separately and as collections. Many were presumably displayed as individual images or pasted on screens, but the ease of their availability is one reason why surviving copies of the ‘Acting’ edition have scenes or portraits, or in some cases both, appearing 115

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as frontispieces, or either or both appearing within the text at points decided by purchaser or binder. All but three of the images in the ‘Acting’ edition were designed by Edward Edwards, then at a relatively early stage in a career that took him to being Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy, and now best known for his Anecdotes of Painters. Even when considered apart from their location in the texts, they reveal a clear critical intelligence. Most show two or three characters in a naturalistic setting at a single moment in the play. Since they neither make reference to any prior events nor emblematically suggest those to come, each is ostensibly fixed within this frame of action. Despite this, many redefine the larger currents and moods of the plays, focusing them in ways that are particularly significant for readers approaching them for the first time. The selection of Hamlet’s meditation on Yorick’s skull, placed before a naturalistic Romanesque cathedral (see Fig. 53), makes visible the infection of death and questioning of afterlife that suffuses the play; the Timon of Athens image, showing Timon’s banishment of Apemantus, crystallises the play’s discussion of charity and fiscal exchange. Some engravings adopt a more complex approach. That for The Winter’s Tale (Fig. 48) is a curious parody of an Old Master nativity. The infant Perdita reflects Renaissance convention for the depiction of Christ in having an adult head, while the younger Clown suggests an adoration of the shepherds trope, and his father, kneeling over the purse of gold coins, is a materialist reinvention of Joseph or one of the Magi. This mingling of sacred and secular echoes the play’s identity as a worldly myth, in which the miraculous discovery must be tempered by gold, just as Hermione’s rebirth is qualified by the lost sixteen years. At first glance apparently limited to a single moment of the play’s growth, the engraving thus emblematises the whole play through its exploration of myth. Other engravings are of more interest for their historical reinvention of the plays. Edwards’s Caliban (Fig. 49) is a near-naked savage, webbed fingers extended around the leather bottle from which he drinks, while Stefano and Trinculo look on with superior tolerance and the ship is beaten against the rocks behind. The multiple levels of colonial impact that this records would have had direct contemporary power in the 1770s, but the Europeans’ expressions suggest the spurious moral ascendancy against which Montaigne argues in ‘On Cannibals’. The transfer of alcohol foreshadows the ‘blankets embroidered with smallpox’ of Paul Muldoon’s ‘Meeting the British’, revealing the first confrontation as perpetual in consequence and estrangement. While none of the engravings seeks to record an actual production, some explore the concept of performance in different ways. The plate to Othello 116

48 Edward Edwards, engraved by William Byrne: Frontispiece to The Winter’s Tale; engraving of Elizabeth Hartley by Charles Grignion after James Roberts. From Bell’s Edition of Shakespeare’s Plays, 1773–4. 19× 11 (71/2 × 41/4 ).

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49 Edward Edwards, engraved by William Byrne: Frontispiece to The Tempest. 19 × 11 (71/2 × 41/4 ).

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50 Isaac Taylor: Frontispiece to Othello. 19 × 11 (71/2 × 41/4 ).

(Fig. 50), unique in the volume as designed and engraved by Isaac Taylor, is one of a small number in both editions that include in their captions words spoken by two characters. It also edits the passage to concentrate the exchange, moving from Iago’s ‘With her, on her, what you will’ (4.1.33) to Othello’s ‘Oh devil’ (4.1.41). The image shows Othello clutching at his chair and Iago’s arm before falling in his epileptic fit, while the latter’s hands move towards an obscene gesture to underline his meaning. The exchange between the characters gives something of a performative continuity, and is balanced against a sunlit landscape seen through an archway to the rear that has a more suggestive function. Comparison with the original drawing7 shows that this area has been considerably enlarged in the engraving. The result is ironically effective, the light intensifying the remainder of the composition by its contrast of density and tone, generating almost a visual extension of ‘Othello’s occupation’s gone.’ 119

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51 Edward Edwards (?): Frontispiece to Richard III. 19 × 11 (71/2 × 41/4 ).

Performance of a different kind is demonstrated in the plate for Richard III (Fig. 51). Unsigned, but probably by Edwards, it shows the courtship of Queen Anne, with a kneeling Richard offering the injunction ‘Take up thy sword again, or take up me.’ To a reader approaching the text for the first time it presents Richard almost in a suppliant role, counteracting the diabolic figure of popular legend; for those familiar with the play, it stresses the dark potency of his character and its wider effects. To the rear, a single figure looks down from an upper window, mutely attesting to the theatrical nature of the moment that is ignored by the monks in the funeral procession, placing Richard’s performance within a larger, and different, order of personation and display. The abutment of these elements, themselves becoming actors and audience within the play’s larger performance, adds strength and reflective power to the image, especially when encountered as a frontispiece before the text is read. Gravelot’s treatment of 120

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52 John Keyes Sherwin: Frontispiece to The Taming of the Shrew. 19 × 11 (71/2 × 41/4 ).

the play (see Fig. 31) is here extended, offering a rare example of iconographic continuity within the engraved depiction of a play. Concern with performance is raised to a different level in one of the two images designed and engraved by John Keyes Sherwin, later to become a major engraver of historical and biblical subjects. His treatment of The Taming of the Shrew (Fig. 52) is one of the most interesting, seemingly continuing the exploration of the difference between theatre and print seen in the 1709 Rowe images. Appearing over the lines ‘I am Lucentia [sic] / disguised thus to get your love’ (3.1.31–2) it offers a compendium of artistic accomplishments, all undermined by the construction of the image itself and its identity as a visual medium. Lucentio points to a line in an open book, maintaining the fiction of teaching while making his declaration; above the book is a globe, suggesting the traditional antithesis between book and world, artistic and experiential actuality. To the rear a musician is tuning a lute or theorbo, suggesting the Boethian notion of music as harmony: 121

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but the music is of course unheard, since this is a picture, another form of deceit. The final reference is to the theatre itself in the form of a large curtain at the top left of the image that partially reveals and partially conceals the scene, recalling the swagged curtains that function as performance references in Boitard’s designs. None of these symbolic elements undermines the directly depicted action; yet to a skilled reader they all imply the questioning of actuality that is a major concern of the play after it is raised in the action, language and mere presence of the Induction. All these instances show different functions of the image in offering critical approaches to the plays. But they need to be seen as part of the larger structure to which they contribute, the complete printed text of the play. This will differ according to their placement within the volumes, which will produce different texts and reading experiences. Surviving copies of the plays suggest four arrangements. The most straightforward has the scenes bound opposite the printed title-page of each play, as issued in the first edition. The placing of the actors’ portraits as frontispieces, as in the serial issue of the plays, is much less common, presumably because the paper-bound individual plays were aimed at less wealthy readers unable to afford bindings, so that the paper copies have not survived. The most common form for the volumes places the portraits opposite the scenes, effectively producing a double frontispiece page-opening immediately before the title-page. One of the several copies in the Folger Shakespeare Library shows signs of originally being bound in this way but of having had the portraits later cut out. The rather clumsy excision reveals that they have been hand-coloured while still in the volume, suggesting a greater interest in these images than in the scenes. That this privileges the actors’ portraits supports the idea that they were collected as part of the cult of celebrity these figures attracted, and which Bell astutely exploited, not only in the Shakespeare editions but also in his British Theatre collection. The two other variants show a more integrated relation between image and play-text. In the first, the scenes are bound opposite the title-page and the portraits placed opposite the event they depict. In the second, perhaps more suggestive, configuration, the arrangement is reversed with the portraits as frontispieces and the scenes placed within the play. What, then, is the effect of these arrangements on the meanings of the images and the experiences of reading the plays that they produce? The presentation of scenes and portraits as paired images before the texts has an immediate effect on the reader’s perception, almost by suggesting a comparison between an ideal of the play as a series of actual events and its representation in the theatre. In a way this anticipates the concern for illustrating the ‘authentic’ settings of the plays, in parallel to the search for the authentic text, that will achieve explicit 122

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statement in the edition of Charles Knight. Certainly, the pairing of the images with those of actors suggests performance as an exchange with the concept of actual places and events, within the directives of contemporary taste. Yet the exchange is not between equal partners, since the portraits clearly privilege performer over performance. With few exceptions, they present an individual actor in character without any suggestion of staging. Postures and gestures are those of contemporary acting at its most demonstrative, designed to be visible from the furthest limits of theatres seating over 2,000. Thus, while the scene from Macbeth moves towards a kind of historicised naturalism in the central character’s plaid around his legs and over his shoulder, Garrick in the portrait wears his usual contemporary court dress and adopts his familiar posture of exaggerated recoil. At times the two images are more complementary. The naturalism of the mechanicals and Bottom, with Titania asleep to the rear, is offset against a Helena wearing a costume that, particularly in the headdress, approaches the elaboration of court masque. The relationship of masque and anti-masque that this produces is suggestive as a reading of the play but, since the scene shows Titania in very simple costume, it does not offer a consistent view of performance. The pairing for The Winter’s Tale (see Fig. 48) matches the curious secular nativity against a figure of Hermione grieving, perhaps reflecting the play’s pattern of loss and restitution. One of the most striking juxtapositions is that for Hamlet (Fig. 53). The abutment of Hamlet holding the skull of Yorick and Ophelia holding the flowers gives – quite arbitrarily, because of the juxtaposition – a sense of the two reaching out towards each other on different material, textual and psychological planes, but at the same time revealing the death-infection that underlies both characters and the play itself. The effects are fortuitous; but their force is not necessarily diminished. Few pairings produce anything like this interpretive depth; but the presentation of images in pairs in so many surviving editions suggests that many readers encountered the plays for the first time through such visual parerga, which must surely have determined their response to the plays. No records survive to suggest why this approach was adopted. The simplest explanation is that, since both images were presented as frontispieces in separate editions, the obvious solution was to place them together. It may not be inappropriate to relate the practice to the organisational methods of extra-illustrated editions (see Chapter 7) where several treatments of the same scene are often included, to offer a variety of sources to satisfy a concern with antiquarianism, or provide a range of readings as the basis of debate when the volumes were viewed by a group of readers – although the small size of the Bell volumes would make this less likely. 123

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53 Edward Edwards, engraved by John Hall: Frontispiece to Hamlet; engraving of Jane Lessingham by Charles Grignion after James Roberts. 19 × 11 (71/2 × 41/4 ).

The major innovation of many editions is the placing of the scenes opposite the action they present, a move facilitated by their use of a single-line quotation from the play as a caption. The result of the new location is that, instead of an advance awareness of one scene, the reading experience becomes one of nearsimultaneous engagement with the play through word and image. The disappearance of the frontispiece is more than the removal of a sense of reinforcement or surprise. It is a larger shift from an imposed concern for the structure as a whole to a greatly enhanced involvement with one local incident, aided by the precise focus on a single moment through which most of the engravings operate. This deeper and more direct engagement has in a powerful sense redefined the genre of the combined text. Because the engravings focus on the momentary, and do not relate to performance, the parallel with the induction into the world of character 124

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and event offered in the novel displaces that of the always partially distanced awareness of the theatre. In the frontispiece image, the relation of moment to whole is present purely by implication: the action becomes synecdochic of the whole, offering an inclusiveness, almost a detachment, not available in the unified illustrated moment. But when placed within the text, the engraving invites the reader into an engagement far more direct, enriched by the knowledge of preceding events acquired in the earlier reading. This engagement takes many forms. The initial encounter between Caliban and Stephano and Trinculo becomes the basis for meditation, suspending the action so that its full moral significance may be assimilated. Richard’s wooing of Anne becomes a moment of tension, its human and political significances both enriched by the pause generated by the image. The move out of the theatre is made more complete, since the reader may now imagine events in environs resembling a notional external reality rather than in the different kind of artifice of the stage. In all these ways, the reading experience grows to resemble that produced by an illustrated novel of the same period, although with significant limitations that will later emerge. By contrast, where the portrait of an actor is presented opposite the textual moment, the reader will either recall a performance or imaginatively produce one. The sparseness of the images suggests no action, let alone stimulating moral reflection. The individual actor in a stylised, histrionic, posture reconfigures the play’s language through a declamatory mode, rather than one of dynamic exchange between characters, in a form that is highly selective at almost every level of representation. The decision to bind scenes or portraits opposite moments of action, then, becomes one of major consequence about the way in which the play-texts as a composite whole are recognised, either as some kind of proto-novel to generate an imaginative empathy or as a recollection or construction of a performance, albeit one tilted heavily towards recitative. The purchaser-reader, in exercising this choice, has considerable control over the material identity of the plays as they are produced in the volumes – and the word is an appropriate one, as it suggests a procedure parallel to that of a stage interpretation in its effect on the reader. The implications of this in redefining scholarly awareness of the plays in print are considerable. Just as we have become accustomed to the absence of any definitive version of the First Folio, so we should be aware that, in Bell’s illustrated editions, no single copy is authoritative. The difference is that, while in the Folio the changes are the result of rolling revisions by compositors, in the Bell edition they are produced by the owners’ preferences. Though hardly an assertion of 125

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reader democracy, this shift of power from printer to purchaser reveals the greater contribution made by the owner at this phase of book production. Depending on the practice of issuing books in parts or in boards, it is a decision available only to those readers affluent enough to commission their own bindings. In a larger sense, the dual identities of the visual material in the majority of the surviving copies of the editions, and the alternation between extra-theatrical depictions of events from the plays and portraits of actors performing within them, suggests an underlying uncertainty about the edition’s identity. Are the plays published to be read as self-contained literary objects, or in direct engagement with the events on stage? Are they assimilated by following live performance in their pages, or as an act of recollecting a production seen or vicariously encountered through oral or printed accounts?8 The possibilities are enhanced, or perhaps obscured, by another factor: Bell’s portraits are a response to contemporary interest in the collection of images of actors,9 a phenomenon ranging from critical address to performance styles to simple adulation of popular figures. However they were read, in their oppositions of styles and meanings the copies of Bell’s ‘Acting’ edition which bind the engravings in these ways contribute to the growing redefinition of the plays as aesthetic objects in print and on stage. Yet the two extremes also constitute alternative forms of performance: the printed plays have by this time assumed a position between the stage and the narrative form of the novel or reflective poem. A key component of this new state is the performativity of the construction of the text by the location of illustrations in a variety of possible placings, a performance that paradoxically remains part of the physical form of the book. From this materiality a more elusive performance results, the reading experience itself, which is directed by the images working with the text, privileging some scenes over others, suggesting a larger trajectory when bound as frontispieces, and offering moments of emotional concentration when bound within the text. Whatever their positioning, the images guide the reader’s movement through the text in conjoined temporal, thematic and emotional currents. This aside, the dual identity of the text itself raises troublesome questions about reading and theatre-going experiences, and the relationship between them. They may, though, shed new light on the dual identities of the plays during this period, and the opposition often discerned between them by later critics. Gentleman’s prefatory material to the ‘Acting’ edition explains its rationale in deceptively simple terms. Since the theatres have ‘been generally right in their omissions’10 of passages included ‘to gratify a vitiated age’ (I. 5), the editors have adopted the principle of using the text according to the ‘regulations’ of the two prompt-books: 126

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from this part of our design, an evident use will arise; that those who take books to the theatre will not be so puzzled themselves to accompany the speaker; nor so apt to condemn performers of being imperfect, when they pass over what is designedly omitted. (I. 7)

Gentleman’s claim is no doubt motivated in part by the desire to sell copies; but the same motivation would suggest that the practice of reading in the theatre was either widespread, or likely to become so at his suggestion. This is important not so much in revealing a distinction between the two identities of the plays, but rather in questioning it by showing the surprise and disquiet caused when theatregoers encounter differences in the plays on stage. Further, the very practice of taking a text to a performance suggests a relation between performers and audience quite different from that given in most accounts. In effect, it suggests that any performative version can only be validated by reference to a printed text. The identity of the text – scholarly edition or prompt copy – is important to performance; but in a major sense it is also irrelevant, since performance is surely of its essence self-defining and self-sustaining. The act of taking a copy of the play into the theatre inevitably privileges reading over performance, marking a major shift in aesthetic and critical reception. The reading process is further defined by Gentleman’s claim that the editors have sought to include the most complete text then available, erasing the distinction between acting and scholarship: As an author, replete with spirited ideas, and a full flow of language, especially one possessing a muse of fire, cannot stop exactly where stage utterance and public attention require; some passages, of great merit for the closet, are never spoken; such, though omitted in the text, we have carefully preserved in the notes. (I. 7–8)

That the audiences could both follow the performance and supplement it with deleted passages suggests that they were involved in an active negotiation of textual differences, a kind of improvised collation of the two ‘editions’ they are witnessing. Those who read in the theatre could essentially construct their own text; those who read elsewhere could use the text to invigorate memories of performance and extend them by considering additional material. The degree to which people took editions to the theatre is hard to establish, the evidence being minimal. A rare engraving, identified only as coming ‘From an Old Print’ reproduced in The Annals of Covent Garden Theatre shows a woman with a book, but is hardly reliable, since she is paying little attention either to volume or performance.11 Gentleman’s ‘Advertisement’ goes on to suggest a qualitative difference between those reading in the theatre and the study: ‘this is not an 127

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edition meant for the profoundly learned, nor for the deeply studious,’ although it continues ‘yet we flatter ourselves that both parties may perceive fresh ideas started for speculation and reflection’ (I. 10). All of this suggests that the division between the two kinds of reading is not absolute, arguing instead for a series of looser textual identities, constructed by readers in a range of situations. Gentleman warns the reader that it would be a mistake ‘to expect any thing more of this work, than a companion to the theatre’ (8), and clearly the annotations are no match for Johnson’s. But the term ‘companion’ suggests that, as well as being a physical addition to a visit to the playhouse, the edition is a way of supplementing the experience by subsequent study, a component of which might well have been an exploration of passages moved to the notes with the aim of comparing the effects of their inclusion or omission. When to this are added the varieties of visual reading provided by Edwards’s engravings and the views of actors in character, variously located in the volumes, it becomes clear that the processes of reading Bell’s ‘Acting’ edition and the experiences that result are made multiple by many factors. The essential conclusion is that each purchaser of the edition constructs its identity by deciding where frontispieces, portraits or both should be placed, and that each reader effectively produces a version of the play by choosing between passages performed or omitted. Given the variety of physical forms and the range of personal responses to the text, it would seem that almost every reader is effectively constructing her or his own text, and that the difference between reading and seeing is far from a simple and secure boundary.

III The reason most often given for the publication of Bell’s ‘Literary’ edition of 178812 is his desire to remove the stigma attached to the early edition, perhaps as result of the vicious attacks launched on it by Steevens himself, as reflecting passing theatrical practice rather than textual accuracy. Certainly, it follows scholarly tradition, reprinting the prefaces of Pope, Theobald, Johnson and Steevens and the bulk of their critical apparatus, but it contributes little in terms of new readings. At the same time it reveals again Bell’s sensitivity to the emerging markets founded on the growing habits of recreational reading. Bell was the first to react to this readership and produce a Shakespeare that offered the social prestige of an edition of fine intellectual provenance at an affordable price. This determined the initial form of publication, beginning in 1785, as a series of individual parts in paper 128

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wrappers, each containing one play and priced at one shilling. At its completion, the run was issued, as the Dramatick Works – the spelling, already obsolete, a further assertion of antiquarian authenticity – in twenty duodecimo volumes. Some sets were produced on larger wove paper instead of the cheaper but more usual laid, and were bound in Bell’s workshop in full red calf, with all edges deeply gilded. Others, more conventionally, were sold in plain boards to be bound following the purchaser’s own specification; but even the large-format copies were the same size as the editions of 1773, and the trade copies were significantly smaller. Each play contained two images, one a ‘Vignette’ or scene from the play’s action (King Lear and Timon of Athens had two), the other a ‘Character’, like those issued in 1774.13 Whereas in the ‘Acting’ edition the plates had been bound as frontispieces or sold separately, here they were to be bound within the text. Some copies of the 1788 edition have the characters and vignettes bound together as double frontispieces, but this was not intended: part 59 of the serial issue contained a sheet instructing the binder where to place the images of both kinds.14 Clearly, not only was Bell determined to attract purchasers by offering a range of formats and bindings: he was quick to respond to the changing tastes of readers in terms of illustration. Already by the 1780s the location of images within the text was common practice in the novel and volumes of poetry, as the practice of binding Edwards’s engravings to the ‘Acting’ edition within the text suggests. Bell’s sensitivity to changing tastes was also shown in the style and content of the images, which worked most fully to create emotional involvement when they were encountered simultaneously with the textual passages they presented. The inclusion in an annotated edition of images of any kind, let alone both extratheatrical scenes and character portraits, is a notable departure in Shakespeare publishing. Whatever its commercial motivation, it further erases the boundaries between scholarship, performance and illustration. More significantly, it marks the recognition of private, imaginative reading and the implication that scholarly exploration can run alongside the sensory involvement offered by printed illustrations. Perhaps the balance tilted towards the performative in the use of endnotes rather than the scholarly edition’s footnotes, but this is by no means certain: Johnson himself was against the overloading of text with annotations, and advised readers to make their initial reading without them. Bell’s ‘Literary’ edition is an early point of contact between these traditions, the intersection of which is far from continuous or straightforward, as later chapters will suggest. Scholarship is, however, the concern of the first two volumes of the ‘Literary’ edition, which contain an extensive ‘Prolegomena’ section, the first use of the term in connection with Shakespeare’s writings. As well as the biographical and 129

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critical introductions of earlier scholars, they include engravings of Shakespeare, his editors, episodes from his life and places associated with him. This develops the practice begun by Rowe of including multiple images of the dramatist, a function of bardolatry as much as scholarship, that will subsequently assume greater prominence. Each succeeding volume contains two plays. Bell selected his illustrators on the advice of the leading engraver Francesco Bartolozzi.15 In one or two cases, he chose Johann Heinrich Ramberg or Edward Burney, then young and consequently inexpensive artists, but for the majority he selected Philip James de Loutherbourg. The engravings had brief quotations as captions, but differed from the earlier images in format. Small circular engravings, they are encased in elaborate frames, with the title of the play and a brief quotation beneath. Plays and engravings were produced and sold both individually and as collections by John Barker after Bell’s death, up until 1801. The designer of the scenes from the plays gives them a special significance. When he produced them, de Loutherbourg was already an established, and versatile, artist. In 1771 – some claim 1766 – Garrick engaged him as stage designer at Drury Lane, where he worked closely on plays by Shakespeare and others to produce radically new effects of scenery, lighting and sound.16 He painted fashionable landscapes presenting scenes in England and Europe, and battle paintings to satisfy the patriotic fervour generated by the war with France. His paintings were on occasion not without acerbic humour: in A Midsummer Afternoon with a Methodist Preacher (1777)17 children play in the foreground while wandering crowds ignore the preacher with lazy nonchalance. Later he would produce View of Coalbrookdale by Night (1801),18 an image reflecting contemporary ambivalence towards the new industrial processes. Landscape, caricature, and extremes of mood demonstrate de Loutherbourg’s range and, with his experience of theatre design, suggest him as an ideal figure to produce images for Shakespeare’s plays. While his paintings influenced his stage designs, however, there was no complementary exchange. Rather than reflecting stage practice, his engravings suggest mood and action within economical but naturalistic landscapes or interiors.19 None of the Bell designs resembles the few surviving examples of de Loutherbourg’s scenic designs, but instead use the naturalistic devices and compositional rhetoric of contemporary painting. In some cases the engravings’ minimal landscapes might seem to resemble his stage sets, constructed from cut-out flats and backdrops skilfully lit; but always these are fully realised as in a painting, with no suggestion of the terraced recession or material limitation of the stage. They present the scenes in the naturalistic form to which stage illusion aspires, rather than recording the aspiration itself. The artist’s style is thus ‘dramatic’ only in 130

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54 William Hamilton, engraved John Hall: Frontispiece to Richard III, from Bell’s Dramatick Writings of Will. Shakespeare, 1788. 13.7 × 8.5 (53/8 × 33/8 ).

the colloquial sense of the term, showing the artist’s use of the knowledge of the plays he acquired in the theatre to produce naturalistic, painterly images. The same is true in the work of other artists. William Hamilton’s frontispiece for Richard III (Fig. 54) bears no resemblance to de Loutherbourg’s designs for Garrick’s production of 1772, preserved in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.20 That de Loutherbourg did not himself illustrate the play suggests again his clear separation of work for the theatre and for the page. That Hamilton similarly rejects theatrical practice reveals a more widespread approach to illustration as a form quite distinct from stage design. 131

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Although the 1788 images perform many of the functions of their earlier equivalents, their greater representational strength and sophistication of execution produce a far greater involvement for the reader, which is controlled by the elaborate frames which contain them. A trompe l’oeil engraving of a brick wall is surmounted by a masonry slab bearing the word ‘shakspere’ with, at the foot, a panel bearing a short quotation. Partially obscuring the upper plaque are musical instruments, plants and flowers, masks of comedy or tragedy, or other elements related to character or event. Bell had already used the framing device in earlier editions of English writers, so in a sense they mark the inclusion of Shakespeare into his own canon-building house style – although by this time the greater importance of the dramatist is evident by the scholarly scope of the edition. Bell had borrowed the frame motif from French painting and illustration earlier in the century, where it is the basis of a sophisticated extension and undermining of the image surrounded, and plays with the idea of the cadre as an actual and conceptual device.21 A little of this is echoed in the Bell engravings, but their immediate effect is of a memorial tablet in the wall of a church, the central bust or profile replaced by a circular panel showing a scene from the play. The effect is twofold. It introduces a new visual rhetoric of the illustrated entry to the text, almost in equivalence to the triumphal arch motif used by many sixteenth-century title-pages, but in a manner at once familiar from memorial sculpture and accessible through its use of titles and attributes instead of arcane emblems. Secondly, it places the events of the plays at the centre of the concept of a memorialised Shakespeare, making visible Jonson’s assertion that the plays themselves are the dramatist’s memorial. Paradoxically, this is subtly qualified by the frame’s function as a barrier between reader and action, denying the kind of imaginative engagement possible in other contemporary illustrations and emphasising the scene’s identity as artifice, not event. This critical distance facilitates the engravings’ potential for interpretive readings. As will emerge later, its effect in opposition to the stylistic formulae of the actor portraits contributes in a new way to the negotiations between the play as read and the play as performed. The frames’ robustness departs from the Rococo elegance of their French models, matching the firmer line of the images they contain: just as de Loutherbourg rejects the Francophile lines of illustrations by Hayman and Gravelot, so the frames themselves become representations of greater architectural massiveness. This is, of course, quite in keeping with the by now firmly established Englishness of Shakespeare and all his works. Once the significance of the frames is assimilated, the images within reveal a number of approaches to the plays. The relation between word and image 132

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they present takes several forms, but common to all is the suspension of the reading progress to impose concentration on the event or element shown. The most immediate effects result from the simple location of the image so that its caption line occurs in the very centre of the facing page, fusing together the two modalities to give the event a particular force in the play’s progress. This is especially apparent in the engraving of Twelfth Night, where Olivia is shown throwing off her veil before Viola/Cesario. The moment of disclosure is given added weight by the frozen time of the image to emphasise the change in character and action. To the astute reader this will reach beyond the single moment to reveal the play’s recurrent concern with concealment and revelation of identity. The single largest difference between the 1788 images and those of 1773 is the later designs’ concern for feeling, both in itself and as a mediation of landscape and setting, a reflection of the growing fashion of sensibilit´e. This was aided by the popularity of Rousseau’s La Nouvelle H´elo¨ıse in an English translation by William Kendrick in 176122 but greatly accelerated by Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling, that had appeared in 1774 and gone through several editions before the appearance of Bell’s ‘Literary’ Shakespeare. Fashionable sensibilit´e in selection of moment and depiction of gesture, to allow the reader to focus on an emotional state, is matched by settings appropriate to the fashion. Indoor scenes are fashionable Gothic castles or churches that, through the filter of contemporary ideas of the past, make some attempt at historical awareness. Outdoor settings have outcrops of rock and shaggy, irregularly placed trees, often with cloud effects that in a different medium and larger size would be conveyed through extreme chiaroscuro – settings of a kind calculated to provoke responses of emotion often anachronistically described as ‘pre-Romantic’ in their use of external forms to project an inner state. The plate for 3 Henry VI, for example, shows the dying Warwick against just such a landscape, which acts as an emotional intensification of the caption: ‘of all my lands / Is nothing left me but my body’s length?’ (5.2.25–6). The next chapter will explore more fully the subsequent development of this strand of Shakespeare imaging, and the transference of the Picturesque ideal from landscape to larger emotional depiction. But its earliest form may be seen in many of the 1788 Bell images. Often the landscape is used assertively to reconfigure the text through the lens of sensibilit´e, moulding the play’s contours to the fashionable taste just as the Claude glass was used by painters to adjust views to the gentler tones and symmetrical compositions demanded by fashion. These effects are evident in the engraving to As You Like It (Fig. 55), which appears over the line ‘For my sake be comfortable’ (2.5.8–9) spoken by Orlando to Adam, whose posture 133

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55 Philip James de Loutherbourg, engraved by John Hall: Frontispiece to As You Like It. 13.7 × 8.5 (53/8 × 33/8 ).

reflects his own earlier line ‘Here lie I down, and measure out my grave’ (2.5.2). The setting is a wood, the tonality suggesting early twilight; the sentiment of the moment is enhanced by the joined hands and close gaze of the two. Such an image not only allows the reader to dwell to the full on this moment of intensity: it also more largely defines the play as a comedy concerned with noble compassion transcending barriers of rank that, while not elements that most readers would find the major drive of the play, effectively translate it into the affective vocabulary of the time. This is precisely the kind of emotional moment popularised by Mackenzie and, in its use of a fashionably irregular landscape setting, it adds another turn to the circularity of natural world, landscape gardening and visual reconfiguration of scenes then at its most pervasive. The placement of the engraving, stipulated in the binding instructions, is a new right-hand page opposite the text. Instead of leading the reader on, however, the placing slows the reading by engaging empathy with the old man’s exhaustion. Presented as a frontispiece, the same image would both privilege the event and define the play’s mode, offering at best an idiosyncratic reading of both. Located opposite the action, it presents the event as part of a mental landscape made 134

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familiar through contemporary taste, allowing the reader to savour it before moving on to later action. The importance of this in defining the play’s mood is considerable, but in ceding control over the play’s temporal movement to the reader its importance is greater still. Such control is shared by each of the images that exploit a moment of intense feeling in this way. In some of the plays, emotional exchanges are given a structural role by images that act to restrain the progression before moments of rapid change, to dwell on extremes of pathos, perhaps in a visual equivalent of the popular actor’s ‘point’ or ‘clap-trap’, although not directly related to them. Emotion is heightened by the concentration of the images. Their small size precludes the use of detailed symbolism or attributes or the depiction of large numbers of characters to suggest larger change, their form inevitably focusing their content on a single moment. Hence the treatment of King John, where Hubert is shown with Arthur just before his emotions spill over into ‘foolish rheum’ (4.1.34), or 2 Henry VI, where the Queen weeps at the banishment of Salisbury. In both cases, the moment is one of grief over imminent separation and loss. In combination with the play’s text, they direct and define the reader’s responsive emotional experience. Here as elsewhere, perhaps again because of the images’ size, the emotion has little depth or relation to the play’s larger direction. Instead of mapping the paths of feeling through the developing terrain of the plot, the engravings visualise the mood of a moment, defined by the short quotation over which they appear. Other engravings present rather different crises. In Edward Burney’s plate for The Two Gentlemen of Verona, for example, the emotional stimulation is darkened by an appeal to the taste for distressed innocence apparent in Peter van Bleeck’s earlier painting of the assault on Cordelia in Tate’s King Lear.23 Silvia is shown being motioned away by one of the outlaws in armour: that the caption is his line ‘Come, I must bring you to our captain’s cave’ (5.3.12) and not her ‘O Valentine, this I endure for thee!’ (5.3.15) stresses threat rather than endurance, appealing to a particular shade of popular emotion, and sharpened by the rejection of the moment by now conventional in illustrations, Silvia’s rescue by Valentine. Darker still is the depiction, in Edward Burney’s design for All’s Well (Fig. 56), of Parolles held from behind by the First Lord. Appearing over the line ‘Oh! ransom, ransom – do not hide mine eyes’ (4.1.54), the image intensifies the event while offering a revealing textual criticism. The stage direction still in use today, ‘They blindfold him’ (4.1.54 s.d.), was added by Rowe: it changes completely the sense of the line if it precedes the action rather than following it. The engraving makes the two textual events more or less simultaneous, greatly deepening Parolles’ fear. It should, of course, be remembered that England was at war during the 135

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56 Edward Burney, engraved by Jean Marie Delattre: Frontispiece to All’s Well that Ends Well. 13.7 × 8.5 (53/8 × 33/8 ).

preparation of the volume, giving the image an urgency hard for later readers to share. Such emotional saturation is matched in other plays by the use of images as textual propellants. The figure of Timon driving away the poet and painter (5.1.114) achieves this well, pushing the reader forward to the next page as Timon drives the other characters out of its frame. The movement echoes the redirection of Timon’s anger, encouraging the reader to consider the play’s antithetical rhythm of stasis and action, especially when paired with the play’s earlier image, showing Timon pausing to look back on the city walls. This pairing reflects another function of the engravings: the presentation of synoptic views of the plays, not through allegories of event or collocations of linguistic devices but by suggesting a prevailing emotional state. The image for Macbeth (Fig. 57) is de Loutherbourg at his most dynamic, suggesting as the play’s major motif the struggle for dominance between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. The firm grip in which she holds his wrist implies her mocking ‘Infirm of purpose!’ (2.2.55) that comes just after the caption lines, themselves carefully abbreviated to stress his reluctance. The two elements doubly extend the image’s reference, 136

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57 Philip James de Loutherbourg, engraved Francesco Bartolozzi: Frontispiece to Macbeth. 13.7 × 8.5 (53/8 × 33/8 ).

endowing it with peculiar force at its appearance early in the play. The conflict of power revealed in this single moment spreads across the whole play, defining itself as a major moral and pragmatic propellant. The elements above this image, including a crown, sword and highland stick, through which weaves a serpent – a symbol prominent in many later images – deepen the mood of struggle and corruption. Similar emblematic detail is used to a more complex effect in the second of the two images issued with King Lear (Fig. 58) in which the slab bearing the playwright’s name is completely obscured by a pelican feeding its young with its own blood, echoing Lear’s bitter claim ‘this flesh begot / Those pelican daughters’ (3.4.69–70). It is simultaneously an ironic comment on the king’s relinquishing his realm and an emblem of his compassion towards the Fool on the heath. The caption, Gloucester’s question ‘Is’t not the king?’ and Lear’s reply ‘Ay, every inch a king’ (4.5.103), reinforces both readings. Both engravings display an awareness of the larger action of the play that is, however, rare in the collection as a whole. Elsewhere, elements of the frame convey political significances. Sherwin’s image for The Tempest (Fig. 59) is the most pronounced. Showing Ferdinand and 137

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58 Edward Burney, engr. John Hall: Second illustration to King Lear. 13.7 × 8.5 (53/8 × 33/8 ).

Miranda seated on logs, the roundel is framed by a simple structure topped by the Prince of Wales’s feathers, from which rays of light shine down over the image itself. Ferdinand looks up with arms spread, hinting at loyalty to the heir to the throne, but a more incisive reading would emphasise the parallel between Ferdinand and the Prince himself, both young rulers who will reinvigorate their kingdoms. The adulatory tone is made explicit in the signature around the lower arc of the circle: ‘J. K. Sherwin fecit, Engraver to his Majesty, & His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.’ While this image presents an equation between the play and the current political situation, the portrait of ‘Miss Phillips as Miranda’ suggests the play’s ambivalence. Standing on a fashionably picturesque rocky shore, Miranda reaches out towards the stormy sea over the caption ‘O! The cry did knock / against my very heart. – Poor souls, they perish’d.’ Appearing early in the text, this generates an appropriate degree of uncertainty about the uses of Prospero’s magic and the play’s outcome, while immediately conveying a sense of Miranda as deeply compassionate – a reading of the character in part responsible for all eighteenth-century editors giving to Prospero her speech in riposte to Caliban in 1.2. 138

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59 Engraving of Anna Phillips by Charles Sherwin and Charles Grignion after J. H. Ramberg; John Keyes Sherwin: Frontispiece to The Tempest. 13.7 × 8.5 (53/8 × 33/8 ).

The placing of the illustrative scenes and the actors’ portraits, in relation to each other as well as to the verbal text, sometimes produces effective new readings. Occasionally, as with William Hamilton’s The Comedy of Errors (Fig. 60), the same character appears in both – and here the link is tautened by the vignette presenting the line after those captioning the portrait, showing the recognition of the Abbess and Egeon. Again, though, the concern is more with reflecting the moment’s affective force than its pivotal function in the play’s move towards resolution, the omission of the other characters denying its larger force. Comparison with Boitard’s version (Fig. 16) makes clear de Loutherbourg’s more directly focused emotional concern. Conversely, some of the portraits extend the interpretive drive seen in the engraving of Miranda, an effect increased by their placement opposite the text they illustrate. ‘Miss Farren as the Queen’ in Richard 139

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60 Engraving of Elizabeth Inchbald by Charles Sherwin after J. H. Ramberg; William Hamilton, engraved by Francesco Bartolozzi: Frontispiece to The Comedy of Errors. 13.7 × 8.5 (53/8 × 33/8 ).

II is particularly effective in revealing the symbolic value of the garden scene. The caesura imposed in the verbal reading enhances the effect, and the visualisation of a verbal metaphor adds to its immediacy. More often it is the cumulative effect of portrait and scene that achieves a greater force. Their close placing in The Merchant of Venice constructs a movement from the near-caricature of Macklin as Shylock, his eagerness to exact justice shown in his holding the knife erect contrasting with the knife slack and energy lost in the portrait showing him with Portia. The visual enactment of the shift of control and mood is remarkably effective in conveying a contemporary reading of the play’s dynamics, enhanced by the transfer of sexual power implied in the 140

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altered position of the knife and the dominance of Portia in the second image. Although one of the more powerful delineations of dramatic movement, this is not the only instance where the closeness of the two images modifies the reader’s progress through the play. In Romeo and Juliet, both vignette and portrait record instants just before Juliet’s death, their closeness resulting in the two images being bound as a sequential right- and left-hand page, producing an opening of two blank pages, a visual aporia of curious material power at this moment in the play. It is the reverse of the pairing seen in The Comedy of Errors. Since the edition of 1788 is the first to include, alongside the text and annotations of Johnson and Steevens, engravings of contemporary actors and free visualisations of significant scenes, it might appear that here the balance between editing, criticism, performance and visual interpretation is achieved. Yet the prevalence of contemporary taste in feeling and the limitations of format work against this, as do the constrictions of the small roundel. But the model of simultaneous reading and seeing constructed by Gentleman as a justification for publishing the ‘Acting’ edition provides a valuable response to what might seem an irreconcilable conflict within both Bell’s editions, that of the dual reading experience suggested by the inclusion of naturalistic scenes and portraits of actors in character. Perhaps, rather than a conflict, this suggests a way of reconciling the plays’ dual existence, implying the sophistication of contemporary readers in adopting a kind of code-switching in reading two different kinds of visual treatment. One further element of contemporary practice underlies the presentation of the actors in both editions. The concern in many actors with ‘points’ delivered in a highly personal, even idiosyncratic manner is one aspect of a performance practice that does not value highly the interaction between characters, later to become an essential element of staging. A theatre system that lionised individual performers who frequently acted with a company little concerned with the harmonisation of placing, movement or delivery, and with minimal rehearsal time, inevitably produced performances heterogeneous in style. This is especially true of theatres outside London, where the great figures would make short appearances on tour. To judge from the degree to which Bell’s editions were advertised in provincial newspapers, and the fact that the 1774 edition was published in York as well as in London, the audiences for such performances constituted a major proportion of the readership of the new editions. Even in London, the presence of individual star figures was the accepted draw for many theatregoers. While, as Chapter 1 made clear, the engravings do not present the delivery of these ‘points’, the images of the ‘Characters’ clearly show the circumstances that made them possible. Their presentation of a single actor reflects the nature of 141

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most performances, with major figures separated from the rest of the action in productions that often seemed unified only by taking place in one place and time. The vignettes set against them action that, within contemporary stylistic concerns, is immediate and naturalistic – the antithesis, in short, of the older actors’ isolated and declamatory stance. The presence of both orders of imaging in Bell’s two editions is a metaphor of two different performative identities, the one recording a particular kind of theatre, the other suggesting the imagined actuality of the play’s events and locations constructed by the responsive reader. This reveals the dual identity of the two editions, at a time when the plays were increasingly absorbed into the practices of independent silent reading. The opposition also reflects a shift in printed mediation of narrative, holding a primarily performative visualisation against one determined largely by the new form of the experiential novel, the illustrations within which are a visual statement of the unified directorial viewpoint of the narrator, whose function the reader inevitably adopts in the process of reading. This dual state, in which the published edition is both a record of performance and an imagined, readerly involvement, is reflected in the variety of physical forms in which both editions are found. While Bell had skilfully manipulated the demand for this through offering the 1773–4 edition in several forms, his move towards a much clearer sense of the location of each kind of image in the 1788 edition reveals that, while a souvenir of performance was still required by some, the very placing of the images within the text presupposes a primarily read experience of the play. That some purchasers of the later edition chose to ignore the binding instructions and had the characters and vignettes bound as a dual frontispiece reveals the range of approaches still taken by purchaser-readers. These must also be seen within the simple existence of an ‘Acting’ and a ‘Literary’ edition, the identities and readerships of which were by no means mutually exclusive but rather, in many elements, not least their illustrations, enjoyed a fluid relationship. Just as the ‘Acting’ edition moves towards a scholarly one, in the presence of Gentleman’s notes, so the ‘Literary’ one leans back towards the theatrical in its use of actors’ portraits. The implication of these multiple forms, and the equally multiple readings they facilitate, is that in the decade and a half spanned by Bell’s editions the experience of the plays underwent a radical change, that alert publishers were quick to exploit. The purchaser could not only obtain an edition suited to her or his preference, but could have it bound to reflect a preferred visual construction of the plays. In succeeding decades, such a freedom would be possible only for those who could afford to produce extra-illustrated editions. But for most readers, changes in production techniques would impose a single location of illustrations 142

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within the play’s verbal text, to produce a more integrated reading experience, lacking the multiple readings offered by both of Bell’s Shakespeares.

IV Towards the end of the eighteenth century William Walker, the younger brother of Anthony, produced with his son John a series of engravings after a variety of artists to illustrate an edition of the plays published by Bellamy and Robarts,24 as well as being issued separately by the publishers. Similar in some respects to Bell’s ‘Literary’ edition, they also depart from it in important ways. Originally issued in serial parts, the edition lacked annotation or commentary and was instead offered as a reading edition for the non-specialist. Like the Bell, its engravings were placed opposite the passage depicted,25 but there were now two scenes and no character portraits, severing one direct link with the theatre. The images embody sensibilit´e more firmly, and their frames are more determinedly Gothic in style than those of Bell, which by comparison appear almost classical. This reflection of popular taste in itself makes them objects of interest, but what is particularly striking is their greater play on the effect of the scene, to increase the reader’s emotional involvement through visual awareness of both moment and movement to a degree not achieved by de Loutherbourg’s engravings. The frames again resemble a memorial tablet, but are quite different in style. Twin pillars extend at the top in a broken Gothic arch above the inscription ‘Shakespeare’; on the ledge at the foot rest a lute, pipe and other emblems of theatre, with a cloud of smoke rising from one of the corners, perhaps in deference to the contemporary liking for the supernatural. The face of the ledge is engraved with the name of the play, and the intervening space is filled with rustic masonry. Beneath the name plaque are a crown, a face modelled on an Old Testament prophet, and a long-handled mirror, representing respectively history, tragedy and comedy. The whole structure is overgrown with plants and shrubs, visualising the link between Shakespeare and English nature within the larger taste for Picturesque ruin and wild nature evident elsewhere in the design. With detailed changes, the frame is used for all the engravings. The move from a circular to an oval shape for the images is partly the result of the move to a fashionable arch form, and in part the influence of the Claude glass (see Chapter 6); but it also makes possible more foreground detail. Coupled with the greater trompe l’oeil three-dimensionality of the frames and their embellishments, this gives an increased perspectival recession, both in the images themselves and in the sense of seeing them through more naturalistic frames. This rhetoric of 143

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presentation exerts a careful control over the reader’s involvement: while there is no reference to actual, as opposed to emblematic, theatre, the frame nonetheless acts as a new order of proscenium, imposing distance between onlooker and image. At the same time, a quality of improvisation in the frames’ design, particularly in the natural forms growing up and around them, the broken masonry and the embellishments added to the ledge at the foot, gives them an immediacy that parallels the continuity of performance, countering the frozen time of the engraving. This self-reflexivity provides a metaphor of the theatre that recalls the draped curtains of Boitard’s frontispieces, while almost providing, through the extradiegetic commentary that the framing elements provide, an ironic comment on the complexities and contradictions of contemporary bardolatry and of the act of reading they constitute. What makes the edition remarkable is the measured control that, through the placing of the engravings, it exercises over the reader’s progress through each play. Printed separately from the text, they can of course be inserted in any place in the volume, but examination of a number of sets shows far less variation than that of Bell’s editions. Generally the engravings appear either directly opposite or a little before the action they present. They are also inserted either as recto or verso images, so that the image appears in some cases as a left-hand and in some as a right-hand page, with significant results in terms of the reading experience. The images are almost without exception rather pedestrian, lacking the delineation of character or direction of narrative so apparent in the earlier Walker’s plates, but they compensate for this in their broader awareness of the plays’ movement. The second plate for The Comedy of Errors, designed by the painter Edward Dayes, places the duel between Antipholus and the Merchant outside the Abbey, with Luciana waving a staff at the Merchant and Dromio pointing through the gates. The moment is well constructed to show the action just before the fighting begins, with something of the suspense of the earlier engravings. At the same time, the location before the Abbey, and the contained movement towards it, hints at the play’s resolution, making the arch of the Abbey a frontier of experience for the reader as much as a place of refuge for the characters. Unlike Bell’s pared-down image, which excludes scenery and every character except Egeon and the Abbess, the engraving offers a broader and more naturalistic statement of the events, in a wholly readerly presentation of moment and implied consequence. Other plates manipulate setting and event to pause the movement through the play, concentrating the emotion of the moment. The balance of stasis and dynamism is shown well in the two plates designed by Richter for Twelfth Night.26 The first (Fig. 61) comes opposite Viola’s account of the corrosiveness of 144

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61 Henry [?] Richter, engraved by William Walker: Twelfth Night, 1, from Bellamy and Robarts Plays, 1787–91. Page size 20.3 × 12.7 (8 × 5).

undeclared love. A classically dressed woman sits on a stone plinth before two columns, the light falling directly on her face to reveal the ‘damask cheek’ (2.4.108) of the text, while a cloister with Gothic blind arcading recedes into darkness at the rear. Her poised, statuesque attitude before the architectural form reveals her as both spiritually and physically cloistered; that she is looking down at a large funerary urn directly presents her as ‘Smiling at grief’ (2.4.111) . All these elements show a concern for detailed visualisation, but the image is greatly enhanced by its placing in the text. Orsino’s question ‘And what’s her history?’ (2.4.105) comes right at the foot of a recto page but, rather than being located opposite this line and so forestalling Viola’s answer, the engraving is bound opposite her lines on the next page. Its resultant placement on a verso rather than a recto page slows the action – the very act of looking at the image makes the reader move backwards. This furthers what is a major event of the reading structure of this edition, the break in 145

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62 Henry [?] Richter, engraved by William Walker: Twelfth Night, 2. Page size 20.3 × 12.7 (8 × 5).

the act of reading to focus on a moment of emotional intensity or contemplation, presented through careful visual presentation of the metaphoric movement of the passage. It is this act of transmediation that raises the image above mere sentiment: the engraving achieves a fine balance between feeling and language, maintaining the reader’s grasp of emotion and the artifice through which it is conveyed. In this it forms a revealing comparison with the treatment of the scene by Samuel Shelley that is discussed in Chapter 6. The same sensitivity towards the placement of the images is shown again in the play’s second plate (Fig. 62). Viola and Aguecheek are shown about to begin their duel, but the image appears opposite a recto page on which the first line is the stage direction ‘Enter Antonio’ (3.4.263 s.d.). The location here, rather than earlier, allows the resolution of the scene to become implicit within its visual 146

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statement: the threat is dissolved visually and verbally at the same instant. The effect of relief is magnified by the tone of the image, which comically exaggerates Aguecheek’s reluctance and Viola’s grace. Earlier placement would stress only the event’s comic absurdity, muting its threatening overtones and slackening the dramatic tension. Presenting the event in retrospect reveals its comedy and allows the reader to dwell on it while safe in the knowledge of Antonio’s presence as resolution. The current of the play has been slowed to allow concentration on a moment of restrained, safe emotion within contemporary emotional boundaries. The engraving’s location before the arrival of the officers to arrest Antonio is also important: its comic tone lessens the threat of the incident, and implies that its danger will pass. Image and location subtly combine comedy with threat, locating the latter within the former and presenting both moment and movement. Together with the control of the reader’s eye movement in the image for Cymbeline (see Fig. 8), these instances reveal the subtlety and care with which the Bellamy and Robarts edition guides the reader through the plays. That it was published so soon after the second Bell edition, and made such advances in the presentation of a dual text to a popular readership, testifies to the publishers’ sensitivity to the rapid changes in popular taste and the means by which it could be satisfied. Produced by artists by now familiar with the operations of a dual text, and aimed at readers with greater experience of them, it prefigures the more continuous dual reading experience offered in the editions of the midnineteenth century. This material change was matched by a major innovation in the production of images. In 1790, just as Bellamy and Robarts’ serial edition was nearing its completion, Thomas Bewick published his General History of Quadrupeds, with 199 images produced by the new technique of wood-engraving, which would rapidly become the primary method of reproducing images in printed books. In a quarter of a century, the illustrated edition had changed from the twin forms of the vignettes and characters of Bell’s ‘Acting’ edition, with its identity held between a stage memory and an individual reading experience, to a presentation of the plays that offered a wholly readerly progression through their dynamics of character, mood and event. In this, the three editions are significant not just in themselves, but in the pivotal positions they occupy within the evolving material and affective structures of Shakespeare engraving and reading of the later eighteenth century.

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CHAPTER 5

‘ORNAMENTS, DERIVED FROM FANCY’: 1 ILLUSTRATING THE PLAYS, 1780–1840

I Between Bell’s ‘Literary’ edition of 1788 and the Victorian illustrated editions, the illustration of the plays developed rapidly, and in several new directions. The largest single enterprise was the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery which, as well as its two elephant folio volumes of 100 prints, offered an edition of the plays with engravings after paintings specially commissioned for the purpose. This venture, and some other treatments of the plays with which it is conceptually and commercially related, will be discussed in the following chapter. Contemporary with it were a number of other editions that approached the plays through different visual techniques and various degrees of success. All have much to reveal about the changing stature of the plays and their place in national and personal cultural life. The circumstances of this expansion are suggested by a passage from John Stockdale’s 1784 edition of the plays, the first to appear in a single volume since the First Folio: Much as Shakespeare has been read of late years, and largely as the admiration and study of him have been extended, there is still a numerous class of men to whom he is very imperfectly known. Many of the middling and lower ranks of the inhabitants of this country are either not acquainted with him at all, excepting by name, or have only seen a few of his plays, which have accidentally fallen in their way.2

The growing readership was aided by several factors. The idea of Shakespeare as part of the national heritage, vigorous among an intellectual and social elite in the 1740s, had by now spread through different social echelons, a knowledge of the 148

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plays being seen as a duty as well as a cultural accomplishment. Further, with the appearance of the Johnson–Steevens text, it seemed that the search for an authentic text was complete. Its availability outside copyright meant that publishers – rapidly increasing in number, and establishing themselves as independent of booksellers – were offered a way simultaneously to present their cultural credentials and attract a share of this expanding market. At the same time, the growing demand for reproductive engravings was being recognised and exploited. Writing of the effects of the foundation of the Royal Academy, the publisher and printseller Thomas Macklin claimed: No sooner were the effects of this establishment perceived, in the superior excellence of the labours of the British School, than it appeared that talents were not wanting to gratify an admiring public with the acquisition of those productions which would otherwise perhaps have been confined to the apartments of Nobles, or the palaces of Kings.3

One result of these new circumstances was the production of new Shakespeare editions which, for reasons connected with ease of production and attractiveness to the new readers, built on the features established by Bell: publication in serial parts, and the inclusion of illustrations. Among such editions, the most straightforward are those that continue earlier structural practices, in offering frontispieces or engravings in the text, but within new stylistic formulae adapted to new readers and new formats. The larger readership, composed largely of those not familiar with the plays, and the restrictions of cost and space imposed by production in a smaller format and at a reduced market price, exerted new pressures on designers and engravers. For some, they were near-insuperable obstacles; for others, generative restrictions producing innovative and imaginative treatments. One attempt to overcome these difficulties was made by Edward Harding. His edition first appeared in thirty-eight parts, ‘at 2s each, with elegant engravings’,4 from 1798 to 1800, and afterwards in twelve duodecimo volumes. Each play is separately paginated, with a title-page that declares ‘Ornamented with Plates’ in black-letter Gothic – a verbal and typographic elevation from the ‘Adorn’d with Cuts’ of Rowe’s first edition. There follow a frontispiece and three or four small stipple engravings interleaved with the text. While suggesting larger visual statements about the plays, these never quite succeed in conveying them because of their limitations in design and execution. Hamlet, the first play in the serial issue, exemplifies this contradiction. The frontispiece, designed like most of the edition’s plates by W. N. Gardiner (Fig. 63), shows the gravediggers as a pair of grotesques reminiscent of figures 149

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63 W. N. Gardiner: Frontispiece to Hamlet, Harding’s Plays of William Shakespeare, 1798–1800. Page size 16 × 11 (63/8 × 31/2 ).

from Rowlandson or Gillray. Were this quality peculiar to this plate, it might offer a skilful visualisation of the dark comedy of the scene by moving it into the territory of late eighteenth-century urban satire. In this form it would hover above the whole play, to offer a reading of the play’s main mood radically different 150

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from the concern with mortality suggested by, say, Edward Edwards’s portrayal of Hamlet with the skull of Yorick (see Fig. 53). When the play is read in isolation – and, most particularly, by someone who has not read it before – this is a feasible outcome. But for anyone who has read any of the other plays in the series this would be far from likely, since so many of the images have the same half-humorous, half-na¨ıve quality that any possibility of its being more forceful here is largely cancelled. An early image in the text shows Hamlet in pursuit of a ghost suggested only by clouds of smoke, an inventive conceit unfortunately undermined by the very light tonality and the somewhat childlike appearance of the figure – a difficulty that militates against many of the images. Throughout the edition, the figures are awkwardly drawn and lack the seriousness necessary to make them credible textual visualisations; yet in places this may work to curiously effective ends. Ophelia is shown telling Polonius about Hamlet’s antic disposition, holding him by the wrist to act out her description of Hamlet’s earlier action: ‘He took me by the wrist, and held me hard’ (2.1.85) – a depiction not lacking in subtlety, since through its act of mimicry it simultaneously presents two characters and the interaction between them. In addition, Polonius is a figure from a Cruikshank satire, revealing an absurdity of speech and moral purpose not often made visible until the twentieth century. The closet scene (Fig. 64) is presented with Hamlet and Gertrude seated uncomfortably close on a Rococo sofa, while he forces her to look at a miniature portrait of his father. Bound as a left-hand page, opposite Hamlet’s command ‘Look here, upon this picture’ (3.4.53), it forces the reader to move back and consider the image and thus the moment and its implications, making more forceful its function in the play. The invention is correspondingly strong; but the execution lacks clarity and force. Although the background of drapes gives a sense of enclosure, hinting at the scene’s tensions, the image fails to go beyond the moment, as the second Rowe engraving does, by including the bed and portraits of both Hamlet and Claudius (see Fig. 27). The result is that the image remains no more than a suggestion, unable fully to realise the force of Hamlet’s speech. The image of Ophelia in Act 4 is similarly flawed. Risking all on the power of the staring eyes, it is otherwise a sentimental depiction of a young woman with a basket of flowers. Close study is needed to read in this the distraction evidenced in the text. The overall impression is of images not in themselves unsubtle, but hampered by weak design and poor reproductive technique. Nor do they align themselves with the Picturesque school of images, discussed in the next chapter, that present moments of feeling with light but sure delineation. In some of the 151

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64 W. N. Gardiner: Hamlet: Closet scene. Page size 16 × 11 (63/8 × 31/2 ).

plays, the style is more effective, those for The Merry Wives of Windsor revealing a species of comedy possibly matching the approach taken in contemporary performance. In others, the presence of images by Stothard or Thurston strengthens the effect, the latter especially in Romeo and Juliet. In all cases, though, the weakness of the engraving is apparent. Perhaps the venture was undertaken with a speed that rendered critical reading impossible; perhaps the simple forms were thought appropriately comprehensible for a new, wider audience. If the latter, the result was an irony encountered in several later popular editions. While their simple visual vocabulary and immediate presentation of the moment make the engravings instantly accessible, the same qualities undermine the edition’s success as a dual text of word and image, thinning the possible critical engagement between book and reader. If indeed the illustrations were conceived in an attempt at popularisation, the evidence they themselves provide, and the resounding silence accorded to the edition in contemporary or subsequent 152

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criticism, both endorse their failure. Whatever the reason, the Harding Shakespeare contributes little to the continuing development of a dual discourse of the verbal and visual as the essence of the read experience of the plays, except a sense of regret that the genuine potential of the designs was not more fully achieved. The twelve volumes of Thomas Tegg’s edition were published between 1812 and 1815. The first includes Rowe’s remarks on the Life, Johnson’s Preface, and Richard Farmer’s Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare, an eclectic selection, but one perhaps understandable given the sheer bulk of Prolegomena in Bell’s 1788 edition. The inclusion of this material is as much a declaratory gesture as any serious statement: it proclaims the edition’s scholarly leanings, despite its lack of annotation and inclusion of illustrations. Attaining a balance between the apparent contradictions of illustration and annotation is already becoming a difficulty for the popular editor, to be resolved in various ways, with various degrees of success, in later years. Perhaps, too, the quality of the images of some editions, notably Harding’s, widened the gulf between serious and popular editions. Each play in Tegg’s edition has a frontispiece designed by John Thurston and engraved by Richard Rhodes, measuring only 8.7 × 6.2 cm (37/16 in × 27/16 in). A short quotation from the play locates it within the action. As always, the selection of moment is crucial, often transforming the effect of the image. That for The Tempest (Fig. 65), the first play in the edition, which follows the order of the First Folio, benefits considerably from this. It shows Prospero turning to address Ariel, a putto with not completely convincing gossamer wings, while Miranda sleeps beneath and behind him. The caption is ‘Hast thou, Spirit, / perform’d to point the tempest that I bad thee’ (1.2.193–4), which immediately acts on the unknowing reader to suggest the play’s direction through magic, along with its balance between dark power suggested in the clouds to the right and vulnerability in the sleeping Miranda. It is a simplification, of course; but given the scale of the image, little more could be expected and, as has been apparent, a lot less achieved. The same is true of 2 Henry VI, which shows the death of Cardinal Beaufort not with the complexity of Reynolds’s version, but simplified to make a more immediate effect within the imitations of scale, yet still conveying a juxtaposition of horror and piety. Something similar is accomplished in the next image in the same volume, introducing The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Instead of the conventional appearance of Valentine to save Silvia, there is an engraving of Sir Eglamour and Silvia leaving the city, above the lines ‘Fear not; the forest is not three leagues off; / If we recover 153

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65 John Thurston engraved by Richard Rhodes: Frontispiece to The Tempest, from Tegg’s Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare, 1812–15. Page size 8.7 × 6.2 (31/2 × 21/2 ).

that we are sure enough.’ (5.1.11–12). As an initial image, this has about it all the force of the beginning of a benighted journey that is the essence of folk-tale, and also the opening of the Divina Commedia: at the same time, it has a suggestion of threat and mistrust that will culminate in the pivotal, and always disturbing, moment of the attempted rape. To both qualified and new readers, it acts as an implication and a directive, and offers a suggestive, if limited, induction to the play. Others are similarly effective. The barely suppressed eroticism of Titania embracing Bottom is darkened by the figures’ disparity of texture, light and – above all – size, but also made sombre by the citation of her line ‘So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle / Gently entwist’ (4.1.39–40).Measure for Measure presents Claudio on one knee pleading for his life and clinging to Isabella’s arm as she turns away, above his lines on the horror of death. Hamlet offers the players’ scene without the players, instead showing Hamlet and Ophelia watching Claudius over their exchange ‘The King rises – What, frighted with false fire’ (3.2.240–1). The image for Othello avoids the obvious, and again manages both to involve the unknowing reader and offer an insight to the experienced. 154

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66 John Thurston engraved by Richard Rhodes: Frontispiece and title-page to The Winter’s Tale. Page size 8.7 × 6.2 (31/2 × 21/2 ).

Presenting Desdemona on her knees and Othello turning away above the line ‘Am I the occasion of these tears, my lord?’ (4.2.42), it conveys both a key moment of action and, through their physical separation, a comment on the unbridgeable gulf between the characters. All, in different ways, show a concentration that turns to advantage the limitations of the reduced format. In some of the volumes, frontispieces are sharpened by vignettes appearing opposite them on the title-page. The Winter’s Tale (Fig. 66) shows Perdita on her knees before the statue of Hermione, above Leontes’ words ‘For she was as tender / As infancy and grace’ (5.3.26–7), that establish the innocence that is one of the play’s poles. Yet Paulina is shown with outstretched arms gesturing Perdita away from the statue, suggesting suspense or incompleteness to the new reader. Opposite this, in the title-page vignette, is the discovery of Perdita by the shepherds, that both places the story within a romance frame and suggests a redemptive conclusion. For Henry V (Fig. 67) an engraving of the dying Falstaff, presenting the moment spoken of by Doll Tearsheet where she feels his feet ‘cold 155

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67 John Thurston engraved by Richard Rhodes: Frontispiece and title page to Henry V. Page size 8.7 × 6.2 (31/2 × 21/2 ).

as any stone’ (2.3.23), extends the tenderness by showing eye contact between the two. The vignette shows Henry in prayer before battle. Together, the two images draw together major strands of the play’s action, and present both in moments of calm, establishing a parity of rhythm between them that is rare in treatments of a play often seen as vigorously patriotic. Not all the images are as successful. The histories, in particular, lack the complexity of suggestion and suspense evident in the examples above; some of the comedies, such as The Merry Wives, fall back on simple depictions of comic or emotional moments; and the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet is thinly conventional. Yet enough of the images employ the subtler devices described above to reveal a genuine involvement within the experience of reading the play, resting on full awareness of the possibilities and limitations of scale and location, to expand the power of the pictorial frontispiece to draw in new readers without compromising either its effect or their involvement. 156

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In 1805 A. C. Chalmers published his edition with frontispiece engravings by Henry Fuseli.5 That Chalmers’s edition was prepared with great care is suggested by the Prospectus. It explained its choice of the text prepared by Steevens, but pointed out that the inclusion of all previous notes would be to create ‘obstructions in the way of the general reader’ and that instead a selection would be made with the aim of separating ‘the conjectural from the decisive’. It concluded by praising ‘the superior embellishments of a series of engravings from original drawings made by Mr. fuseli, an artist who, with a critical knowledge of the text, has been justly celebrated for that originality of conception, and those bold and wild graces which seem best calculated to illustrate the various imagery and magic combinations of shakspeare’.6 This was both a coded reference to Fuseli’s controversial reputation and an effort to forestall criticism, by stressing the praise received in other quarters and, through the paired use of small capitals, to imply an equality between artist and dramatist. A constant innovator in style, allusion and narrative, Fuseli turned to advantage the unusually elongated format of the edition by adapting the mannerist emphases of his figure painting and exploiting the space to produce a series of situations of conflict, enclosure or concentration. Perhaps in this he drew on his experience in producing designs for earlier book-illustration projects, such as Bell’s British Theatre7 and Charles Allen’s History of England,8 that imposed strict dimensional limits on the presentation of diverse events – the latter offering another example of the overlap between the illustration of Shakespeare’s plays and English history that is a recurrent feature of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century visual narratives. Matched to this spatial economy is something quite new in Fuseli’s work, a lightness of tone verging on caricature at first disconcerting and incongruous. Once familiar, the style reveals itself as another aspect of the form, and works with it to suggest a detached, nonchalant tone that conceals more serious implications. It is as if the limitations of the whole placing and relatively minor role of the frontispiece are being stated in a stylistic manner that parallels the exploitation of the constricted spaces so that, as well as critically addressing the individual plays, the images reflect on their own identity and place within the editions. Coming to this commission after the large scale and great detail of the work for the Boydell Gallery, Fuseli must have been powerfully aware of the great shift in approach that was needed: his solution is both a wry comment on the changed circumstances and a powerfully innovative turning of their limitations to his own, and the reader’s, advantage. Often this concentration significantly redirects the plays’ main concerns. For The Tempest (Fig. 68) Fuseli shows Prospero flanked by Miranda and Caliban, 157

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68 Henry Fuseli, engraved by William Bromley: Frontispiece to The Tempest, from The Plays of William Shakespeare, ed. A. C. Chalmers, 1805. 16.2 × 9.2 (63/8 × 35/8 ).

with Ariel flying above. The omission of Ferdinand, familiar from any number of images of the first act, is at first startling, but then reveals itself as a logical dissection of the play’s structure. The figures shown are the play’s parallelogram of forces, Ferdinand an intruder upon whom they act. As if to make this visible, there 158

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69 Henry Fuseli, engraved by C. Warren: Frontispiece to The Taming of the Shrew. 16.2 × 9.2 (63/8 × 35/8 ).

are clear lines of sight between Prospero and Ariel, and Caliban and Miranda. The new detachedness of style approaches the mock-heroic in the depiction of Prospero, exaggerating and undermining his posturing. Much the same is evident in Caliban’s leering across at Miranda and her demure downward glance, countered to a degree by the elaborate coiffure and diaphanous costume used for almost all of the artist’s female characters. This is a thoughtful, unresolved reading, displacing the geometry of power through which the play is usually presented. Elsewhere, Fuseli employs figures from his own vocabulary to hint at elements of a play’s concerns not seen by other readers. His choice of moment sometimes enhances this, as in the Taming of the Shrew (Fig. 69). This takes an event from the very beginning of the play, the discovery of Sly, and appears over the line ‘O, Monstrous beast! How like a swine he lies’ (Ind.1.30). The problem of showing a supine figure in an exaggeratedly vertical space is brilliantly and economically 159

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solved by the use of shortened frontal perspective – a device used earlier by Fuseli to show male vulnerability to female predation. Again, the wry style enhances this; is there, within this combination of style, format and allusion a comic reversal of the major concern of the play itself, with man the captive victim? Some images rework Fuseli’s earlier treatments of their themes. The Macbeth engraving develops Lady Macbeth Sleepwalking, a painting from 1783,9 intensifying the distraught appearance of the main character and the reactions of the doctor and waiting woman to maximise its effect when constrained in such a small frame. Other images use format and style to reflect the plays more directly. The Troilus and Cressida plate shows Diomedes taking the glove from a Cressida presented in a single swirling movement, part classical statue, part erotic display, with a hinted recollection of a very early Fuseli engraving of Salome holding Saul’s head on a platter. For Henry VIII (see Fig. 97) the vision of Queen Katherine is presented largely by implication, the focus instead being on the Queen’s gaze upward into a broad beam of light. Patience, shown from behind, looks at her, and Griffith sleeps in the foreground. The disappearing feet of the visionary company inevitably recall the convention of paintings of the ascending Christ. The engraving, executed by William Blake, who had himself produced three watercolours of the same scene, is exemplary in technique, facilitating the combination of concentration and allusion as a mode of conceptual enrichment. For Titus Andronicus, the spatial restiriction is used almost punningly, to show Martius finding Bassanius dead in the cave. The engraving reveals the moment’s importance as a turning point, but also suggests containment and introversion as one of the play’s major modes. The frontispiece for Hamlet uses yet another ploy. That the ghost of Old Hamlet strides across to the left of the plate, rather than to the right as in Fuseli’s large Boydell painting, provokes a response of restraint and inactivity at a preconscious level in the beholder. By moving in a direction the reverse of the usual pattern of reading, it suggests the inactivity that infects so much of the play, and is continued in the static recoil of Hamlet himself. A stress on a mode of action is again evident in The Comedy of Errors. Antipholus of Syracuse is shown rejecting Adriana, with the line ‘Plead you to me, fair Dame? I know you not’ (2.2.138). The trope of mistaken identity is here isolated and revealed as the essential theatregram of the play, strengthened by the antithesis of clear sky and silhouetted figure. All the frontispieces are remarkable designs, the light style matching their virtuosic variations of form, and concealing the deeper readings of the plays they offer, a late flowering of sprezzatura too easily overlooked. That visual treatments extended into every form of printed text is demonstrated by one of the last editions to appear before the major changes in print technology 160

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made possible the fully illustrated editions of the middle and later nineteenth century. This was Charles Tilt’s edition of 1838,10 one of the miniature editions that became increasingly popular with the growth of literacy and the desire for reading as an intimate personal experience. These editions in particular were assisted by a stress on marketing towards women readers, for whom the small size was thought to be particularly attractive because of its portability. Tilt’s volumes included a life of Shakespeare and a glossary, but no notes or critical introductions, suggesting a non-specialist readership, but the illustrations rest on careful and complete readings of the plays. Rather than adopting the solution of earlier editions that allowed the small, vertical format to dominate by presenting two or three characters against a minimal setting, they instead show a fully realised scene turned lengthwise opposite the title page. As well as potentially increasing the seriousness and depth of treatment, this also enhances the act of reading: the volume must be turned through 90 degrees before the image can be assimilated, so that reading it becomes both a conscious act and a clear separation from the verbal text at the outset of the reading process. While the images, signed only at the right with the single word ‘Thompson’, do not offer complex visualisations of the play’s movement, rejecting the presentation of dramatic growth through emblems or synchronic figuration, they make thoughtful use of the selection of the moment in a highly unusual way. This reveals a concern for consistency that, unassuming rather than insistent, is quietly effective in proposing an approach to the plays’structures more complex than the concern for character or setting shown in many contemporary frontispieces. This quality is most evident in the comedies. The image for A Midsummer Night’s Dream shows Egeus bringing Hermia, Lysander and Demetrius before Theseus and Hippolyta; that to As you Like It, Rosalind being banished by the Duke; that to All’s Well that Ends Well, Lafew ushering Helena into the king’s presence. In all three the moment is the initial propellant of the play, the framing threat or dynamic grievance from which the action will follow. Such acts of selection demonstrate the illustrator’s keen sense of dramatic movement and direction, acting on the reader to produce an awareness of trajectory that goes beyond simple privileging to suggest moments of instigation or the beginning of resolution. But implicit within this is a force that has an opposite effect in the reading process. In their permanence and visual force, the images remind the reader constantly of the opening dissonance from which the plays grow, negating the apparent resolution with which they end. They thus combine a keen grasp of the narrative drives of the comedies with an implication of the artifice and unlikelihood of their conclusions – central to which, of course, is an understanding of the innate 161

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70 [?]Thompson: Frontispiece to 1 Henry IV, from Charles Tilt’s Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare, 1838. Page size 10.8 × 6.4 (41/4 × 21/2 ).

formal difference between play and image. It is perhaps on this last concept that the engraving to The Taming of the Shrew plays. It shows the very opening of the Induction with the Lord discovering Christopher Sly, a moment suspended between the actualities of Sly being acted upon and Sly being acted for in the play’s later unfolding, and whose identity further plays with the discussion of the nature of visual images in the later passages of the Induction. Not all of the designs show initial, driving dissonances, but those that show later episodes base their selection on similar criteria of direction and change. The Winter’s Tale image shows Paulina presenting the new-born Perdita to Leontes, again a moment of turning in the play’s larger structure. Similarly, the image for The Comedy of Errors has the encounter between the Syracusan Antipholus and Dromio with drawn swords at the end of the fourth act, a moment easily read as the beginning of the play’s resolution. Images for the histories work differently, selecting moments from near the end of each play. This reveals a trajectory of moral retribution, cumulatively generating a providentialism according neatly with the prevailing view of the plays as justifications of the Tudor dynasty. But not too neatly: in places the moments are selected for other reasons, such as the close of 2 Henry IV which shows Pistol and the French soldier, and 1 Henry IV (Fig. 70) which shows not Henry with the body of Hal but Falstaff peeping round his shield as Hal is about to kill Hotspur. The image thus presents Hal’s victory and unites the play’s two levels of action, Eastcheap and the battlefield. 162

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71 [?]Thompson: Frontispiece to Antony and Cleopatra. Page size 10.8 × 6.4 (41/4 × 21/2 ).

The tragedies have no such uniformity of approach, but a similar principle of selecting moments for their importance to the future direction of the plays is plainly their main force. Romeo is shown killing Paris on the way into the tomb, the urgency dispelling the sentimental stillness of earlier images of Juliet’s awakening. A more restrained depiction introduces Coriolanus, the central character facing away from the appeals of Virgilia and Volumnia, while a group of soldiers stand guard at the right of the tent. The image thus disposes the main forces of the argument that the play articulates, but presents the moment in which the decision has been taken, not the more usual stress on the emotional appeal of wife and mother. A similar balance is offered for Antony and Cleopatra (Fig. 71). Instead of the death scene, the frontispiece shows Scarus kneeling before Cleopatra, depicting the moment where Cleopatra promises to give her servant ‘an armour all of gold’. This can be read as the play’s military turning point, marking the success before the naval defeat at Actium, but also the apogee of its absurdity, emblematised in the visual oxymoron of gold armour that in itself draws together the opposition of Rome and Egypt then often seen as the play’s driving polarity. While presenting the dynamic force of the plays in different ways, all three images work by careful selection of a moment that drives the play’s action forward, offering a construal quite different from earlier and contemporary designs that suspend the action for emotional glossing, offer a study of a character or group or, more rarely, suggest a larger movement through presenting dynamic elements such as linguistic tropes or recurrent actions. 163

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All these images contribute to the experience generated by the volumes as a whole, by forcing an act of examination through their location at right angles to the printed text. They suggest an act of visual reading based on a thoughtful and progressive awareness of the play’s growth through moments of theatric crux towards a conclusion in which, especially with the comedies, the initial grievance remains to qualify any sense of resolution. Subtlety of this kind is unusual in early Victorian images, radically different from the formal rhetoric of the large illustrated editions that are roughly contemporary. Like Fuseli’s Chalmers frontispieces, these anonymous engravings approach the practical issues of the publication in which they appear and work with them to provide new stances that successfully integrate form and meaning in their search for a valid exchange with the plays’ printed texts.

II The editions of Chalmers and Tilt were perhaps the last to rely solely on the genuine critical potential of the engraved frontispiece. Increasingly, as printing technologies and developing audiences expanded through mutual nurture and exploitation, publishers moved towards editions that had images placed in the text, or issued groups of images independent of any printed version. The first group is represented by the illustrated edition of James Heath, issued in 1807;11 the second, by the work of Thomas Macklin and James Woodmason. Like the great majority of illustrated editions from the half-century after Bell, Heath’s Shakespeare did not claim any textual revision, instead using the Johnson–Steevens text. Its main appeal was its format – six large quarto volumes, clearly designed to appeal not to the lower economic groups but to those who might justifiably be called the upper middling sort, who had the money to purchase these expensive volumes, space to display them and leisure to read them. The title-page of each volume claimed ‘Embellished with Plates’ in black-letter Gothic, although this was true only of some of the plays. The first volume has a frontispiece showing Puck, at Oberon’s instruction, squeezing the love-philtre over Titania’s eyes, while she sleeps with her arms wound around Bottom’s neck. The crowd of male fairies behind Oberon enhance the mood of spiteful anticipation at her response when she wakes, so that a sense of genuine, if redirected, suspense is generated. The second image, presented in an elaborate frame, shows the lovers awaking at Theseus’ command. As a depiction it is unremarkable and, like most of the images, it occupies less than half the page, so large is its frame; but it does show skill in combining the moment of 164

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Theseus’ instruction with the blowing of the horn and the first waking movements of the lovers, and in this it forms a narrative pairing with the sleeping Titania of the opening image, a structural balance rare in illustrated editions of this kind. The somewhat slender promise of the first volume is, however, not fulfilled throughout the series. Just eleven of the plays have any engravings, the only tragedy being Macbeth and the only history King John. Those with illustrations are The Taming of the Shrew, Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors, Twelfth Night, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale. Some are remarkable as much for the moment shown as for their visual or interpretive quality. The second plate for The Tempest (Fig. 72), engraved by Heath after a design by Stothard, depicts the shipwreck over the line ‘Hell is empty, / And all the devils are here’ (1.2.213–14), with a composition of some originality, defined by the mariners, Ferdinand and Antonio leaving the boat in all directions. The reduced size imposed by the very extensive frame limits rather than intensifies its force, but it also facilitates a remarkable effect where the body of Ferdinand is shown breaking through its confines, an engagement of image with setting that appropriates the trompe l’oeil effects of the earlier French cadre to reveal the energy of the scene with no little originality. For The Merchant of Venice, the choice of Bassanio’s reaction to the loss of Antonio’s fleet, rather than his delight at choosing the right casket, seems to exploit the play’s repeated equation of love and money, but is undermined by the weak gestures of the main characters. This reveals one of the major difficulties of these engravings. Rejecting earlier conventions of stereotyped gesture, they attempt spontaneous graphic statement of feeling, but often suggest instead a rather graceless confusion. The only images that offer a more convincing engagement with the texts are those of Fuseli. Of the two, the more striking is the encounter between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth after the murder of Duncan – an image which exists in several versions, most powerfully the oil painting known as Lady Macbeth Seizing the Daggers exhibited in 1812.12 The effect of this version derives from its loose, spontaneous brushwork and severely limited range of colour and tone, dark grey-brown registers relieved only by the red on the daggers and Macbeth’s hands, elements impossible to convey in line engraving, even one by such a skilled artist as James Heath. What still comes through in the print is the confrontation between horror and energy, the diagonal sweep of Lady Macbeth set against the static terror of Macbeth as he realises the implications of his action. Seen beside this, the remaining images of the collection reveal their thinness of idea and execution, and their surface relation to a single event of the plays. 165

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72 Thomas Stothard, engraved by James Heath: The Tempest, from Heath’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1807. Page size 35 × 31.7 (133/4 × 121/2 ).

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It is Fuseli, again, who provides the outstanding image in Thomas Macklin’s British Poets series, but for the simple reason that his was the only depiction of a scene from Shakespeare.13 It showed the vision of Queen Katherine from Henry VIII, and was based on Queen Katherine’s Dream, the large painting he had produced in 1781, soon after his return from Italy.14 The artist himself judged the engraving a failure because its reorganised composition reconfigured and confused the relation between Katherine, Patience and Griffith. Fuseli was also angry that the print included a large quotation from the play, revealing a widening split between those who knew the plays so well that they needed no such tethering of the image, and those for whom it was an essential guide to its situation and meaning. The change reflects the larger gulf between the artist and the popular readership, and also the decision of a publisher, driven by economic pressures, to favour the latter.15 The third venture, James Woodmason’s Irish Shakespeare Gallery, was also one of limited success, in both material and aesthetic terms.16 Clearly hoping to profit from the delays in printing that Boydell had encountered, and the complaints about the quality of the prints when they were finally available, Woodmason stressed that only ‘stroke engraving’ would be employed, and not the ‘stipling [sic], or chalk, or some other illegitimate branch of the art’, which had been ‘unblushingly produced as a substitute’17 by other publishers. He went on to assure potential subscribers that only 500 proofs and 2,000 prints would be made, after which the plates would be destroyed. One of the few ways in which the venture differed from the Boydell project was that from the start the intention was to produce an edition of the plays, with the paintings intended as the basis of engravings with which it would be illustrated. There would be thirty-six plays, each with two plates, and the whole would be published in Ireland, with the aim of invigorating Irish painting – and, at the same time, perhaps delivering to ideas of Irish independence the same spur as that given to nationalism in other countries in Europe, a curious by-product of the international Shakespeare cult. Like Boydell’s scheme, Woodmason’s suffered complete financial collapse. Of the projected seventy-two paintings, only twenty-three were finished, and the edition was never published. Seventeen of the paintings were engraved, suggesting something of the readings that the edition might have provided. Four are by Opie, three each by Fuseli and Northcote, and two each by Hamilton, Peters and Wheatley. All were well known as Shakespeare painters, and in many cases they contributed scenes they had already tackled for Boydell or for engraving by another publisher. In consequence they do not contribute with great originality to the tradition of illustration, repeating familiar scenes in familiar styles. Peters’s depiction of Prospero dismissing Caliban is remarkable in presenting Caliban as a 167

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73 James Northcote, engraved by J. Stowe: The Death of John of Gaunt, from James Woodmason’s Irish Shakespeare Gallery, 1794. 24.8 × 20.3 (93/4 × 8).

figure as recognisably human as are Prospero and Miranda, suggesting a reading rare at the time in its implications of equality. Such subtlety is absent from others in the series. Peters’s image of the death of Juliet, and Opie’s representations of Antigonus and the bear and Arthur begging Hubert for mercy, use the mixture of conventional exaggeration of gesture and limitation of intellectual depth familiar in many contemporary prints. Only Northcote’s treatment of the death of John of Gaunt (Fig. 73) stands out as a textual insight, in the rare reading of the scene 168

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that it offers. The opposition between the frail, slumped Gaunt and the king poised threateningly above him with finger accusingly outstretched is a powerful corrective for a part of the play seen even then only through a sentimentalised reading of Gaunt’s ‘this England’ speech. But the engraving, by John Stowe, fails to convey any power that the original might have had, and it remains another unfulfilled possibility. Together, the Woodmason, Heath and Macklin collections suggest a lack of direction in the engraving of the plays, either for an illustrated edition or as independent images. Among them only the work of Fuseli stands out, although even this is curtailed by the compositional dilution of the Queen Katherine painting when engraved for Macklin, and the absence of his Woodmason Macbeth canvas from the list of those engraved – although even here the regret must be tempered by an awareness that its dark coloration would have translated poorly into an engraving. As I am writing these lines, in the Folger Shakespeare Library, the canvas is in front of me: magnificent as it is in its use of composition and line, I cannot imagine it functioning effectively when reduced to the scale even of the generous quarto envisaged by Woodmason. They need to be seen alongside the engravings for Boydell’s edition, and a group of other print collections, discussed in Chapter 6, with which they shared a particular aesthetic stance. The public, declarative rhetoric of large oil paintings does not translate well to the intimate medium of the book illustration. The conclusion, inevitably, is that the illustrated edition must find new directions, and move away from the essentially public formations of these grandiose schemes towards an idiom more directly suited to the exchange between image and reader. In the Chalmers edition, Fuseli had shown one solution: in the following two decades, radical changes in methods of printing and production would make possible many others.

III Many of the editions so far discussed contribute to the tradition of illustration, extending the possibilities available in images of different formats and sizes, and those aimed at readers encountering the plays for the first time. None, however, seeks radically to redefine the nature of the image or its relation to the play-text. During the first three decade of the new century, several editions were published that attempted such aims. One of the earliest was a series of wood engravings by John Thompson after designs by John Thurston. Their first appearance was unremarkable, in an edition produced by Charles Whittingham in 1814, under the title Shakespeare, in seven 169

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volumes, with Two Hundred and Thirty Embellishments.18 This was one of the first miniature or duodecimo editions, and the wood engravings were suitably tiny, matching the works of Bewick in size, if not in invention or technique. Each play had six images, one appearing as a title page vignette and the others as headpieces to each act. In 1825 Sherwood, Gilpin and Piper reissued the images as Illustrations of Shakespeare,19 a volume of 38 pages containing all 230 small engravings, six for each of the plays on a single page, with the addition of the seven ages of man. A short passage of text – up to five lines – is included beneath each one as caption, and each is located by act and scene. The first engraving in every set acts as a prelude, summing up the mood of the play or its moral significance, or suggesting a moment of the action as pivotal or representative. The others are the act headpieces from the earlier edition. That the edition was simultaneously published in Germany attests both to the enthusiasm for the plays in that country and to an English eagerness to exploit it: while printsellers had for many decades been anxious to export their wares, the volume is one of the earliest international co-publication ventures. It is also important in the use, in many of the initial images, of emblematic devices to stress ideas or seminal moments, anticipating a technique that will be used by later illustrators, including Kenny Meadows – and, of course, the larger drives of the Victorian emblematic revival. The title-page claims that the images are ‘Adapted to all Editions’, suggesting a concern to avoid passages not present in some of the commercial and scholarly texts of the day, but how the images were actually employed is hard to determine. Perhaps the reader was intended simply to refer to the volume while reading the play; the idea of using the images to extra-illustrate an edition has little to support it because of the very small size of the individual images – although this would perhaps make it possible to add the engravings in the margins of any edition save the very smallest. To my knowledge, no extra-illustrated editions exist that contain the wood-engravings, whereas copies of the collection are frequent in major libraries. The initial temptation to regard these six-image presentations of the plays as a prototypical comic-strip Shakespeare would be quite wrong, since they are not concerned with narrative, and do not present the main contours of the plays’ action. Instead, they project the plays through the lens of a single visual intelligence, offering an interpretive stance that moulds and directs themes and ideas into a single critical reading through its selection of moments and their cumulative effect. Measure for Measure and Hamlet present the plays’ competing forces through symbols: As You Like It emphasises the identities and complexities of 170

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the pastoral life of the court, largely overlooking the Orlando–Rosalind courtship; The Comedy of Errors repeats the trope of mistaken identity and its violent consequences. This adds a wholly new dimension to the visual recreation of the plays, quite different from the earlier single-image volumes or the later fully illustrated editions. In effect, it becomes a visual equivalent of the final state of Konkretisierung with which, in the theory of Wolfgang Iser, the reader is left at the end of the reading process. The qualities of Thurston’s work are evident most clearly in two plays, Twelfth Night and King Lear. The first of these (Fig. 74) reveals, through the five headpiece images, the confusions of identity that are fundamental to the play. These refer to Viola, Malvolio, Sir Toby and Feste (as Sir Topas), all in situations where they are adopting false identities of some kind, the similarity reinforced by the common gesture of an outstretched arm. The final image continues this, and denies any conclusion to the play, implying the uncertainty that more recent readings and productions have emphasised, as the Duke leads Viola off and is interrupted by Olivia’s ‘Caesario, husband, stay’ (5.1.132). The caption ends with the Duke’s puzzled ‘Husband? –’ (5.1.133), the image showing him looking across, out of the image, to an Olivia who is not shown. The incompleteness of the image mirrors the incompleteness of the action, and the sequence offers no hint of how it will be resolved. The first image, the vignette preceding the complete text, shows the fool’s cap perched on a decanter, before three glasses, over the caption ‘Foolery, sir, does walk above the orb, like the Sun; it shines every where’ (3.1.32). This is comic, of course; but it also raises questions about the levels of folly that form the weave of the play, and taken with the unresolved ending leaves the reader with a sense of uncertainty that re-creates the play’s darker uncertainties of character and meaning that is unique in a visual treatment of this period and rare in any other. Thurston’s treatment of King Lear (Fig. 75) works rather differently, offering a careful visual distillation of the play’s issues and nodal points. Unusually, Gloucester asking Edmund ‘What paper were you reading?’ (1.2.30) is the first headpiece image, displacing the rejection of Cordelia that is a far more frequent choice. Similar originality is shown in the other images. Rather than the ‘Rage, blow’ of the heath scene (3.2.1), the image of Lear and the Fool is presented over the lines ‘I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness’ (3.2.15); instead of Lear ushering the Fool into the hovel, Edgar is shown leading Lear by the arm. The remaining images are more striking still. The third image shows Gloucester in the stocks, above the line ‘What’s he, that hath so much thy place mistook, / To set thee here’ (2.4.11). But the gestures of the two main characters are such that 171

74 John Thurston, engraved by John Thompson: Twelfth Night, from Illustrations of Shakespeare, 1825. 22.86 × 14.6 (9 × 53/4 ).

75 James Thurston, engraved by John Thompson: King Lear. 22.86 × 14.6 (9 × 53/4 ).

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the line might be spoken by either, the predicament of each mirroring that of the other to visualise the displacement shared by the levels of action that the image unites. The last engraving shows Lear with the dead Cordelia, his final ‘O, she is gone for ever’ (5.3.233) enhanced by the responses of the other figures, leaving the mysteries of death unanswered, unresolved. The most powerful image is the emblematic vignette originally placed at the start of the play, captioned with Lear’s words: Ingratitude! Thou marble-hearted fiend, More hideous, when thou shewest thee in a child, Than the sea-monster. (1.4.214–16)

The elements of the image – two serpents, a crown and a map unrolled on a grassy mound – bring together the play’s concerns with rule, sibling hostility and exposure in the natural world, a remarkable act of concentration. The serpents directly visualise an element of Lear’s condemnation of his daughters; in a longer perspective, they suggest the beginning of an emblematic approach to the plays that will be of increasing importance in the coming decades, most immediately in Kenny Meadows’s dark fascination with serpents. Thurston’s rearrangement of the plays’ progressions and ideas is taken further by Frank Howard. Between 1827 and 1833, the twenty-four parts of his Spirit of Shakespeare were issued by Thomas Cadell.20 They present each of the plays in series of about twenty ‘Outline Plates’, using a technique of simple line engraving that gives only the outer contours of the forms, with minimal suggestion of texture in, say, the hang of draperies or formations of rocks, and avoiding all but essential linear strokes to convey scene and action. In addition, the plates rearrange the events of each play into a strict chronology, so that action that is reported or discussed, and events that took place before the start of the dialogue, are presented in exactly the same manner as scenes presented on stage. The volumes have been described as offering an ‘outline’ of the action as well as in their engraving style, but this is not quite right.21 Their rearrangement of events offers not an outline of the play but a flattened trajectory which denies their movement as patterns of dramatic and linguistic interaction. In this, paradoxically, they are far closer to the idea of ‘novelistic’ presentation than contemporary or later editions that interpose avowedly naturalistic images within the play-text, since they follow a continuous, linear chronology, presented from a single narratorial viewpoint, rather than allowing the events to emerge dialogically, outside the chronology in which they took place. 174

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76 Frank Howard: The Tempest, Plate VII from The Spirit of the Plays of Shakespeare, 1827–33. 21.2 × 13 (83/8 × 51/8 ).

The effects of this reconfiguration differ considerably between individual plays. In The Tempest, the first to be presented, there are seven plates before the play’s action begins with the storm in Act 1. They show every stage of the story, from the imprisonment of Ariel in the tree through Prospero’s dismissal by Antonio and his banishment in the boat with Miranda, the release of Ariel, to Prospero’s teaching of Caliban and the latter’s attempt to rape Miranda (Fig. 76). Not only are the events shown in exactly the same manner as the acted events of the play: more importantly, Prospero’s own highly qualified viewpoint is lost, and the therapy of telling, that is such an essential part of the play’s growth, is completely denied. So, too, is the establishment of Miranda’s character through her response to the storm and Prospero’s story. The result is wholly reductive, denying the life of the play. But Howard’s rearrangements are not always so negative. For some of the plays it becomes an act of interpretive adaptation parallel to a directorial insight in the theatre. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Titania’s theft of the Indian Boy and the quarrel with Oberon are both depicted (Fig. 77), before the appearance of Theseus and Hippolyta. This reordering certainly diffuses the energy and threat of the encounter in the play, but it also frames the whole of the 175

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77 Frank Howard: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Plate II. 21.2 × 13 (83/8 × 51/8 ).

action between fairy scenes, changing the reader’s response in the manner achieved in the operatic adaptation by Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten. And the fairies, on closer examination, are not the harmless confections that they might seem. The consequences are somewhat different in other plays. In The Comedy of Errors, not only the shipwreck but ‘The Marriage of Antipholus of Ephesus with Adriana’ and ‘Aegeon arriving at Ephesus’ are among the scenes shown, but it is what is omitted that is more striking. The play’s opening scene, with the appeal of the bound Egeon that casts into question the play’s generic identity as a comedy, is not shown, because the events he describes have already been visually presented. In making the events themselves take prominence over their verbal narration, Howard disables this key scene, damaging the play’s structural syntax and means of unfolding. In this play the act of telling functions almost at a spiritual level: from outset to conclusion the deep relation between action, recollection and dialogue that is inseparable from the generic nature of drama is used to explore larger human issues of loss, reconciliation and, ultimately, of joy. The play’s tension is slackened and its pace relaxed, and any suggestion of the dynamic identity of farce, at one extreme, or tragedy, at the other, is simply absent. 176

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78 Frank Howard: King Lear, Plate XVIII. 21.2 × 13 (83/8 × 51/8 ).

Yet, while the simple outline technique of the engravings denies the presentation of nuance in character or setting, in this play it can be seen as offering a positive critical reading. The simple draughtsmanship depicts the action within a style of sparse, diluted classicism, defining the play’s comedy as something quite different from the bawdy vigour of Plautus. Perhaps the redefinition makes the onlooker reflect on the play’s more serious concerns, while revealing an outlook consistent with late-Romantic constructions of an idealised classical aesthetic in using the simple line engraving technique that Winckelmann and others had seen as a key classical form. Perhaps, too, the stress on the united family before the action of the play begins emphasises the sense of recapture at the end of the play of relationships long thought lost, making the romance movement stronger to compensate for the loss of a more truly theatrical progression, that includes much of the comedy of misinterpreted identities. Individual images can also be powerful in the tragedies. The penultimate plate of King Lear (V, Plate XVIII; Fig. 78) presents the events described in a single line on stage – ‘I killed the slave that was a-hanging thee’ (5.3.248). The image is not only shocking through the way the hanging is depicted, but also because of the youthful energy it unleashes within Lear. His posture implies a single movement from the abandoned scabbard at the left to the sword thrust into the hangman, 177

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balanced by his rough grasp on his daughter to ease the noose around her neck. Implicit in this movement is its failure: as he is stabbed, the hangman falls backwards and pulls the rope tighter. This translates the inevitability of the play’s tragic pattern into a powerful, and wholly graphic, statement of catastrophe: in this it is a remarkable, and possibly unique, act of visualisation. In addition, Howard offers his own literal reading of ‘And my poor fool is hanged’ (5.3.279). As most commentators have pointed out, the line refers to Cordelia, but the use of the word inevitably recalls the character and his close, filial relationship with king, and the visual impact is strong. In other plays, the realignment betrays a desire to reduce all to a factual accuracy that balances the geometric linearity of the narrative. The presentation of the images begins with a half title that briskly announces them – ‘Two Gentlemen of Verona. Twelve Plates’ – as if dispensing imagery from some sort of conceptual ration book. The approach continues in a note at the head of the ‘References Descriptive of the Plates’ in the same play: It has been thought right to follow Shakspeare, in making Valentine and Proteus travel from Verona to Milan by water, though no modern discoveries have shown where the river was that ‘if it were dry,’ Launce felt ‘able to fill it with his tears’.22

The references continue in this vein, in which it is hard to tell whether the reader or the text is being approached with greater condescension. The Winter’s Tale engages with ‘difficulties’ including ‘the sudden growth of Perdita’ and the circumstance that ‘The oracle of Apollo and Julio Romano are not easily to be reconciled in point of date.’ To explain Hermione’s return to life, ‘A scene has been introduced between Paulina and Hermione’ (Vol. 2, p. 3). There is a final assertion, that ‘The costume is that of the date of Julio Romano’(Vol. 2 p. 4). We should perhaps be grateful that Howard never learned that Romano was not a sculptor. Literalism of this extreme could be at either its most effective or most intrusive in the histories. It is worth recalling here that many productions, even some of the most recent, have made extensive realignments and additions to the play texts.23 Curiously, rearrangement is almost wholly absent in these plays, and their plots are followed with near-complete directness. This reveals another of the volume’s conceptual weaknesses, in that there seems little sense of the suitability of particular episodes for visual treatment, because a simply sequential reading of narrative and event has been adopted. Henry V is given only eight plates, Richard III twelve and King John, the most extensively depicted, has thirteen. Is it possible, 178

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perhaps, that by this time the plays had become so completely canonised as the actuality of the past that no alteration could be contemplated? There is also a na¨ıvet´e about the identity of the text that is being presented, and the issues underlying the manner of its presentation, as the prefatory note to Much Ado reveals: The spirit of this admirable comedy is so closely interwoven with the play of words and pedantic absurdity, that it is feared nothing short of the text can fully do justice to it. (I.3)

What at first seems a ludicrous illogicality in this statement is in part dispelled by one element of the illustrated sequences. Preceding each series of images is a collection of quotations, each about half a page in length, their location before the images departing from the usual practice of giving a line or two opposite or below each plate. This separation declares the independence of the images, suggesting their nature as a version of the plays that exists only in their own terms. From this it is a short step to seeing them as a kind of production, a version of the plays seen not only through the imagination of a particularly materialist director, but as a fable cast free from language. While it is easy to cavil about their approach, and the shortcomings and absences that result, the volumes offer something rare in visual treatments: a vigour, continuity and integrity of style and stance, however reductive, that is in some ways parallel to a theatrical performance, yet which exists wholly in the form of the printed book.

IV The images discussed in this chapter together constitute a spectrum of the aesthetic categories, production techniques and target readerships of the half-century they span, each of them trying differently to address the issues raised by these elements with a combination of commercial and artistic inventiveness. Each adopts its own stance to the multiple textualities of the plays in print, negotiating between a series of forms to arrive at its own emphases in the relations between play-text, image, annotation, commentary and the larger framing materials of history and contemporary aesthetics. It is probably not too reductive to say that, by 1800, most scholars felt that the really insistent problems of editing and textual authentication – and for most scholars, the two were synonymous – had been resolved. In consequence, the major ways of providing new approaches to the plays in print were through format and illustration. At the same time, as evidenced in the words from Stockdale and Macklin with which this chapter began, new readerships were emerging rapidly, simultaneously encouraged and satisfied by publishers 179

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and printmakers. At no other time are so many editions of Shakespeare available that present the works in genuinely different ways. Those that follow, most particularly the four major Victorian illustrated versions, came nowhere near this variety. But the range of the period is incomplete without a discussion of Boydell and the practices that surround it, and of the growing practice of extra-illustration that did much to focus and record the diverse visual treatment of the plays. It is to these that the next chapters will turn.

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CHAPTER 6

THE GROWTH OF FEELING: BOYDELL, TAYLOR AND THE PICTURESQUE

I The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery, the most lavish eighteenth-century imperial expedition into the territory of literary painting, had a long preparatory period. Its Prospectus, issued on 1 December 1786, promised a ‘Series of Large and Capital Prints’ and ‘A Most Magnificent and Accurate Edition’ of the plays,1 but it was not until 1789 that the Gallery opened, with 34 paintings out of the eventual 167. The edition took even longer. Its serial parts began to appear in 1791, but the first engravings came three years later, the whole being completed in 1802. Partly in response to the Boydell venture, partly through other forces driving aesthetic change, the decade and a half that the enterprise took to reach fulfilment saw a number of other approaches to Shakespeare imaging, in illustrated editions, collections of prints, and writings discussing the nature of visual representation. Because of its sheer scale, the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery has overshadowed many of these projects and totally eclipsed others. Their recovery is important, since they reveal the growth of new ways of seeing the plays and their relations to wider aesthetic concerns. Despite their apparent diversity, these works share a fundamental concern: the presentation of the emotions, within fictional or historical narratives, through the conceptual filter of the Picturesque. By implication as much as explicit statement, this exerts a major influence on the invention, style and function of Shakespeare imaging at this period. While the main impact of the Boydell Gallery was through its large paintings, and their reproduction in two elephant folio volumes known as the Collection of Prints, the edition was intended to be a statement of national identity through the authority of its text and the power of its images. In these aims it failed, just as the Gallery failed to establish a

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national school of history painting. But in departing from these goals it reflected many stances that had developed during the previous decades, responding to new tastes and reading practices, not least concerned with engaging the reader’s states of feeling. Locating Boydell’s edition, and the prints and writings that surround it, within this aesthetic, social and frequently literal landscape, is essential to an understanding of their larger place in the history of Shakespeare imaging, and the change of direction that they mark. Boydell himself wrote nothing about the plan of the venture aside from a Prospectus, and the absence of records about how the paintings were commissioned is almost total.2 The Gallery and the edition are in consequence their own apologists. A number of other writings survive, though, from the period of the Gallery’s instigation, evidencing the debate that it aroused concerning Shakespeare illustration. Since the 1760s, volumes had been appearing that variously stressed the importance of emotion. William Gilpin produced a series of books that would redefine the theory and practice of visual representation; Henry Mackenzie published his novel The Man of Feeling; and Tobias Smollett extended and revised Robert Hume’s History of England. These are essential components of the emergent aesthetic stance of the period, marking a change in the production, reading and assimilation of images, whether historical, fictional or topographical, and the prints published by Boydell and his contemporaries must be seen in their shadow if their identity, achievements and inadequacies are to be understood. They did not, however, go unchallenged. Two publications make clear many views against which the new order reacted, and share with Hanmer’s directions the rarity of giving instructions on the visual presentation of the plays. As summaries of attitudes and conventions already moving out of currency, and as evidence of the debate surrounding the Gallery, they deserve attention before a discussion of the works, and the attitudes, that would shortly displace them.

II Edward Jerningham’s The Shakespeare Gallery (1791),3 a poem written in decasyllabic couplets after the style of Pope, begins with an explanatory ‘Advertisement’. After stating its intent ‘to point out new subjects for future exhibitions’, it claims to follow the ideals of ‘our great Painter’, Sir Joshua Reynolds,4 asserting that ‘palpable situation is preferable to curious sentiment, as the Painter speaks to the eye’ (p. 3). These claims are revealing. The first may suggest that the scenes 182

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selected for visual treatment were becoming repetitive, a claim that has a certain truth for some of the plays, especially Macbeth and King Lear. More striking is its implicit assumption that the graphic presentation of the plays should be subject to constant renewal, in dialogue with artists and viewers of each new generation. The second posits a distinction harder to realise, although the allusion to Reynolds suggests the direction in which it is moving. In this context, ‘palpable situations’ suggests moments selected for their importance in a play’s progression, perhaps as a turning point or climax, perhaps by implication of subsequent events or ideas. Reynolds’s practice in his paintings, and his advice in the Discourses, was to ensure this by employing Old Master narrative techniques or, in some cases, conveying meaning through iconographical allusion to such paintings. The rejection of ‘curious sentiment’ is more transparent, suggesting the newer practice of painting scenes that stress emotional involvement. Idea and implication, received in purely visual terms, are thus elevated above sensory involvement and affective gratification. In aiming to suggest ‘new subjects for future exhibitions’ he is, at least in part, seeking to continue this convention. No matter that, of the twenty moments suggested by Jerningham, only four are those actually depicted in Boydell paintings: the approach to the plays is what is important, in its stress on continuing the inferential complexity of an earlier school of historical and narrative illustration. The second discussion of Shakespeare illustration was Imperfect Hints towards a New Edition of Shakespeare.5 Published anonymously in 1787, with a second volume the following year, it was written by Samuel Felton, a collector, antiquarian and garden historian who also wrote on Hogarth and Reynolds. Despite declaring its own dilettantism in Felton’s claim to have written the book ‘merely for the amusement of my leisure hours’ (ii), it proposes what is in effect a variorum of both textual and visual commentaries, coupled with detailed analyses of textual passages suitable for illustration, with suggestions for their design. The edition would include all prefaces and annotations from Rowe onwards, in the manner by then habitual, but would supplement them with plates that, if not reproduced, would be listed at the end of each play. A passage in the ‘Advertisement’ defends its inclusiveness: Many objections may be raised against the plan that I have formed for an edition; particularly on account of the multiplicity of the prints: but I was willing to recommend the introduction of more of them than may be necessary, rather than too few – from an unwillingness to reject such of those already published. Which might possibly possess even a small share of merit – leaving it to superior men to select from my crowded variety. (iii)

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Coming after a claim that many earlier engravings of the plays ‘are merely trash’ (iii), this must be read with caution, revealing a qualitative principle that would certainly never be applied to earlier prefaces or annotations of the plays. But the images listed usually include all those produced from Rowe onwards, as well as images of actors in character, so that the volume goes some way towards offering a catalogue, if not a catalogue raisonn´e, of images associated with each play discussed. Felton supplements his list with suggestions for images to be included within the text. Listing passages most suited to visual treatment, he selects engravings from earlier editions and images unconnected with the plays, often from Old Master paintings, that appropriately capture the plays’ underlying force. In some cases he then instructs potential illustrators how to treat the scene. Since the passages are ‘marked from the edition by Johnson and Steevens’ (iii) the link between visual criticism and textual scholarship is implicit.6 In consequence, Felton’s writings form the most compendious visual catalogue of the plays then assembled, as well as offering the most complete suggestions for the treatment of individual scenes since Hanmer. The influence of this writing is hard to gauge. Jaggard asserts that ‘possibly this led to Boydell’s issue’,7 although this seems unlikely, since Felton acknowledges that ‘Messrs. Boydells [sic] edition . . . will exhibit many of the scenes, in a much superior manner to what my reduced size can’ (iii). That the copy in the Folger Shakespeare Library was the property of Isaac Reed who, with Steevens, was responsible for the Boydell edition, does not necessarily reveal its influence. There is no record of Reed or Steevens being consulted in the selection of scenes for painting, nor any for Boydell’s own work in this direction: instead, artists were seemingly free to make their own choices. Felton’s first volume discussed Titus Andronicus, Coriolanus, The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice, Love’s Labour’s Lost, All’s Well that Ends Well, The Comedy of Errors, Troilus and Cressida and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The second volume added King John, Henry V, Romeo and Juliet and Cymbeline. For each play, scenes are selected and advice given on their visual treatment, after which earlier illustrations and paintings are listed. The advice given can be suggestive, but the general approach of Felton’s preliminary discussion is more revealing. It is, of course, an individual and not necessarily a representative view, but its sheer rarity gives it considerable value. After outlining the edition’s textual prolegomena, Felton suggests topics for ‘vignettes’ to each of the plays, using the term to suggest title-page or frontispiece illustrations. His suggestions are eclectic, perhaps showing the influence of 184

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Reynolds’s technique of borrowing. The Tempest, the first play to be discussed, might be prefaced by ‘the same Vignette as is in vol. 2, of the first edition of Grose’s Antiquities . . . Or it might be expressive of, or alluding to a Tempest.’ Images of the latter sort include engravings from ‘Hooper’s translation of Gesner’s Idylls’ and ‘some prints by N. Parr titled “Success and triumph to Britannia’s arms”’ (xv). Elsewhere, Felton suggests borrowing from theatrical records. Discussing 1 Henry IV, for example, he asks ‘Would it be too ludicrous to recommend . . . the figure of the man only, in Mr. Bunbury’s ticket for Wynstay Theatre, in the winter of 1781?’ The influence of Reynolds is also evident in the suggestions of images incorporating compositional elements from earlier works. For Othello, ‘among the tragic emblems’ might be ‘the same turban, which is in a portrait of Racine, engraved by Colyer’; the discussion concludes by asking ‘Would it be proper to introduce among these ornaments the handkerchief ?’ (xv). For King Lear, Felton suggests ‘a picturesque view of Dover Cliff ’ woven round with ‘some of the flowers with which old Lear was crowned’ (xix). Richard III is given an image recalling an earlier synoptic frontispiece, with an angel looking down at a copy of George Vertue’s Edward V, a ‘small dead lamb’ bearing the words ‘Jocky of Norfolk’, ‘a battle-horse,’ and in the background ‘the Tower, or Chertsey Monastery’ so that, finally, ‘we may unite the white rose and the red’. Nothing approaching such compressed visual narrative will be seen in print until the mid-nineteenth century, and even then it will rarely assume such breadth of textual realisation. Almost without exception, these exact prescriptions exerted no influence on the selection or treatment of scenes in the Boydell illustrations. They do, however, reveal the workings of an imagination sensitive to the visual statement of dramatic ideas and events. In turn, this suggests that at least some of those reading illustrated editions were skilled in the decryption of images as a commentary on the verbal texts of the plays just as sophisticated as any offered by scholarly annotation. Other aspects of Felton’s critical activity reveal his own preferences as more clearly those of a particular kind of contemporary reader. His skill in interpreting visual emblems is displayed in his book on Hogarth,8 possibly written at about the same time as Imperfect Hints. The same is true of the memorial volume to Reynolds he produced shortly after the artist’s death.9 As well as Reynolds and Hogarth, the Imperfect Hints praises a select few other artists. The most frequently mentioned is de Loutherbourg, but also mentioned are Gravelot (not only the Shakespeare images, but those to Voltaire); Robert Edge Pine (a lost Henry V exhibited in his London show of 1782, as well as the well-known Tempest image); 185

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and John Hamilton Mortimer (the Shakespeare Head engravings of the mid-1770s). The references endorse Felton’s preference for the analytical and referential, in various modes, over the narrowly affective, mirroring Jerningham’s rejection of ‘curious sentiment’. More important, they show, perhaps for the first time, an acceptance of the close relation between the plays of Shakespeare and the general growth of painting in England. The approaches taken, and the images listed, reveal the fusion of the two forms in the development of a national aesthetic identity, and form a theoretical companion to the practical work of the Boydell Gallery that would soon follow. Felton’s discussions of individual plays show sensitivity and breadth. For The Merchant of Venice he recommends de Loutherbourg’s ‘Vignette scene print’ (33) from the Bell edition of 1788 as the opening image, and Mortimer’s head of Shylock for a later passage. He refers repeatedly to Macklin’s Shylock as a model, and concludes by listing for possible inclusion fifteen images from previous editions. The second volume displays a larger critical engagement with the process of inventing images of the plays. The account of Iachimo in Imogen’s chamber, for instance, is clarified by advice that the furnishings are described in a later scene ‘where Jachimo awakens the jealousy of Posthumus’, unremarkable in itself but significant in bringing together two disparate scenes to portray the moment, with a stress on the importance of including ‘a bass relief of Dian bathing’ (II.154). Such awareness of the artist’s use of imagery from more than one moment is complemented by a larger understanding of the construction of meaning and effect through reference to earlier paintings, shown first in a discussion of the portrait of Arthur in King John: ‘A most beautiful idea . . . is introduced in a picture of Cain and Abel, in the collection of Lord Scarsdale’ (II.3). Mere mention of the title reveals the power of the allusion: Hubert’s attempt to blind Arthur after acting as his protector is enriched by reference to biblical fratricide, giving increased moral resonance to the projected image. The referential approach continues: How would Albano, or Titian, have painted Arthur – and how might Sir Joshua Reynolds paint him! – the portrait of Edwin, from Beattie’s Minstrell, and the entreating look and attitude of one of the children in Ugolino, will convince us what fine expression he would give to Arthur – and the very soul of the dark relenting Hubert, would be conveyed to us, through his pencil. (II.30).

Felton acknowledges his debt to Reynolds on the following page by citing Discourse XIII (1784), quoting its stress on ‘the habit of contemplating and brooding over the ideas of great geniuses’ (II.31) and stressing its result as the elevation of the painting to the stature of an Old Master. That this is both advocated as a general approach 186

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and illustrated by specific examples shows the power of Felton’s writing in both theoretical and pragmatic terms. Similar suggestions are frequent. Precise selection of a key line and iconographic allusion combine in the suggestion that ‘Expectation in the air’ (Henry V: Chorus, 2.0.8) ‘should be engraved in as rich metzotinto, as the Angel contemplating the mystery of the cross, from the painted window of the chapel of New College, Oxford’ (II.55). This enshrines the departure for France as a holy quest, an imitative allusion of a high imaginative level. The Friar in Romeo and Juliet should have ‘the natural and unaffected air of the portraits of Titian, where dignity seeming to be natural and inherent, draws spontaneous reverence’ (II.99) – an idea supported by a footnote reference to Reynolds’s 1778 Discourse. Similarly, Juliet’s ‘Romeo, I come’ would be ‘wonderfully drawn’ by Domenichino (II.120). Much of the remainder is concerned with discussions of the exact line in a passage that should form the essence of a painting or engraving. There is also an extended discussion of the acting of Mrs Cibber in King John and, with Spranger Barry, in Romeo and Juliet, the former with extensive quotation from contemporary reviews. Here the strength of Felton’s work again emerges: the implication that a painting and a performance exist as parallel forms, rather than the image merely recording the staging, shows a rare perception of the natures and values of each. Despite their limited influence – and, one suspects, circulation – the writings of Felton and Jerningham’s poem are evidence that the theory and practice of Shakespeare imaging was the subject of debate among, at the very least, a limited circle of readers. In consequence they need to be seen alongside the earlier work of Shaftesbury and Jonathan Richardson, and the slightly later writings of Fuseli. But the images for the Boydell edition of the plays depart from their ethos quite sharply, and suggest that they are designed according to a radically different set of principles, to produce a radically different experience for the reader.

III Writing of de Loutherbourg’s engraving for Bell’s 1788 edition of Henry V, Felton makes a rare direct reference to the Boydell Shakespeare, which weighs heavy over any discussion of the images that it eventually contained: Were the other scenes from our great author, to be drawn with the same masterly fidelity, as this of M. de Loutherbourg’s: an edition might be projected, which would demand, and receive the approbation, of the most critical amateurs of Europe. Mr Boydell’s expected edition, from the names of many of the artists, bids fair to stand the test of severest opinion. (II.53)

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Felton’s assumptions and expectations make clear his allegiance to the school of contemporary painters concerned with generating effect through subtle literary and iconographic allusion, and several of the Boydell images take the same route. In an earlier study of the Boydell paintings, I explored some of the ways in which such images function.10 Reynolds’s Death of Cardinal Beaufort, through the ironic use of compositional allusion, reveals the treachery of the central figure and, through the controversial image of the devil, later removed from both painting and engraving, suggests the imagery of diabolism that runs throughout 2 Henry VI. Fuseli’s two paintings of A Midsummer Night’s Dream exploit a vast range of iconographical references to reveal the dark ambivalence of the fairies. Less well-known artists, especially William Hodges, use earlier traditions of landscape painting to explore the moral significances of The Merchant of Venice and As You Like It. Others, including Johann Heinrich Ramberg and James Northcote, generate historical dialogues between the plays’ periods and their own. All engage with ideas of action, character and issue extending far beyond the presentation of one moment of the play’s events, and employ many of the referential or implicatory techniques discussed by Felton. Many of the paintings use complex devices to ensure continuity of narrative from a single event towards the larger movement of the play. Prominent is the approach that Shaftesbury suggested in the Historical Draught, his influential early essay on the visual production of narrative, with its supporting image by Paolo de Matteis.11 Showing the choice of Hercules between pleasure and virtue, it selects the moment at which the judgment has been made, as containing within it the seeds of all future action. The device was widely adopted in English history paintings, including many on literary or Shakespearean subjects. Its lasting effect is shown in the very first image presented to those visiting the Shakespeare Gallery, the bas-relief by Thomas Banks on the building’s front wall, which modifies the choice trope to show Shakespeare turning away from drama towards painting.12 Many of the Gallery’s paintings adopted the composition. Angelica Kauffman shows Silvia between Proteus and Valentine; Northcote places Hubert between an attendant with a blinding iron and the innocent Arthur; William Hamilton shows Sebastian between Olivia and the priest and the restraining arm of Orsino. Such critical devices do not by any means occur in all of the paintings, but where used, they generate supple and suggestive critical statements about the plays and their ideas. That they reflect Felton’s concerns is perhaps more the result of likeness than of influence, in that both show the persistence of Shaftesbury’s concerns; but the continuity is clear. 188

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This was not the only approach taken by Boydell’s artists. Many read the plays very differently, reflecting their assimilation into a wide range of cultural perspectives. It is the engravings to Boydell’s edition of the plays that depart most sharply from compositional and narrative practices of such complexity. Instead, they are in the main concerned with conveying emotional effects by the direct presentation of a single scene, with which the onlooker can experience instant empathy. Important here is Boydell’s rejection of his original plan to reproduce the same paintings in both the Collection of Plates and the edition of the plays. At some time after the opening of the Gallery, he decided that this would be impracticable, and commissioned a series of canvases for what became known as the ‘small plates’ or ‘quarto plates’ to be placed in the edition opposite the scenes they showed. No details survive of Boydell’s actions or motives, but there were strong practical arguments against engraving the same paintings for both purposes. The engraving process demanded the absence of the paintings from the gallery for long periods, which would have been much extended by their reproduction as both large and small plates. This would endanger attendances and lessen the revenue from the one shilling admission charge. There was also an aesthetic reason: many of the paintings showed several characters and used a horizontal format, making them unsuitable as book illustrations. Although the quarto size would be large enough for all but the most complex images to be read clearly, it would demand that the volume be turned, a difficult manoeuvre with a large volume likely to be read on a library easel. Whatever the reason, in 1794 Boydell set about commissioning a new set of images for the edition of the plays. The resultant images share two major features. Most show three characters or fewer, stressing a single element of the play’s action and concerns, within rather loosely sketched naturalistic settings. Almost all were painted by artists with extensive experience of book illustration, a choice aided by the circumstance that nearly all the artists renowned for full-scale history painting were already at work on canvases for the Gallery and could not take on further commissions. Gavin Hamilton, William Hodges, John Hoppner, Angelica Kauffman, Benjamin West, Raphael West and Joseph Wright all contributed paintings to the Gallery: none had an image reproduced in the edition. Neither, for unexplained reasons, did Felton’s favourite de Loutherbourg who, like William Blake, was excluded from the whole scheme. The artists for the quarto plates were all known for anecdotal, humorous or atmospheric images. Of the 97 engravings, Robert Smirke provided nineteen, William Hamilton and Richard Westall eighteen each, and Francis Wheatley 189

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seven. Fuseli and Reynolds contributed one image, in both cases a depiction of Puck; fortuitously they were an appropriate size and format for the quarto volumes. Both are complex paintings rather than designs for engraving, the latter employing playful iconographic allusion, the former emphasising the moral ambivalence of the spirit, with the sinister eroticism of all Fuseli’s fairy paintings.13 Both are strikingly at odds with the idiom of the remaining images and, with the four by James Northcote, gave a degree of aesthetic gravitas to the volumes. The Boydell edition appeared in simple paper-bound numbers, two of which were needed for each play. Such practice was common for more expensive books, allowing the purchasers to have them bound according to their tastes. The Boydell process differed slightly by not including the plates, which were issued separately as they became available. Bound copies consequently exist in different forms, despite the later issue of contents pages that listed the plays in the order of the First Folio, which differed from that of their printing. The images all have quotation-captions, so that most copies have them bound opposite the lines in the text. This does not necessarily make for a unified verbal-visual reading, since many copies have a protective interleaving over the engravings, so that text and image cannot be seen together. This practical feature, coupled with the style and format of the engravings, suggests that they belong to a tradition quite different from the referential rhetoric, and more highly integrated reading experience, produced in earlier editions bound in this way. Instead, a note of emotional reverie is encouraged in the reader through the frequent presentation of individual characters in reflective poses. Such treatment of character is apparent in the engravings to the play that, following the order of the First Folio, opened the edition, The Tempest. William Hamilton’s design (Fig. 79) shows a woman in Grecian dress carrying a lyre, in depiction of Ariel, while Miranda sleeps at the right. Prospero’s power is shown by an upraised right hand. In the background, the quality is stressed emblematically through what seem to be a book and a paper, surmounted by a vessel suggesting an orrery or armillary sphere. Comparison with Romney’s painting for the Gallery,14 reproduced in Boydell’s volume of large prints, which follows Boitard’s engraving and Hogarth’s painting15 in combining elements from the first and second scenes of the play, reveals quite a different approach. Instead of a measured exploration of Prospero’s magic, to show its innate ambiguity and as yet uncertain effects, Hamilton offers a meditation on the aesthetic and emotional qualities of the second scene, the physical beauty of Ariel and Miranda offset against a view of Prospero that is attractive through its imprecision rather than revealing through its allusiveness. The earlier paintings’ compression of the play’s forces is displaced 190

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79 William Hamilton, engraved by James Parker: The Tempest, Plate 1. Boydell’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1802. 42 × 32 (161/2 × 121/2 ).

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80 Robert Smirke, engraved by W. C. Wilson: The Tempest, Plate 2. 42 × 32 (161/2 × 121/2 ).

by the presentation of a single moment, showing Prospero instructing Ariel to conjure the shipwreck. Striking, too, is the similarity of dress, hair and profile between Ariel and Miranda. Perhaps an extension of the stage presentation of Ariel as a woman, and the exploitation of both as alluring figures, it reveals a view of the play concerned with sensory, and sensual, engagement, rather than with larger concerns. The free execution and lack of detail furthers this, suggesting a desire to involve the reader in a direct sensual experience of the moment, rather than provoking contemplation about its consequences. The image thus departs radically from the earlier approaches described by Felton and followed by his favoured artists. Robert Smirke’s second image for The Tempest (Fig. 80) continues this practice. Its presentation of Trinculo and Caliban beneath the tarpaulin, with Stephano looking in bewilderment at the ‘other mouth’ while offering his bottle to Caliban, is a simply comic reading, effective in conveying a specific textual moment 192

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81 Thomas Stothard, engraved by James Osbourne: The Two Gentlemen of Verona. 42 × 32 (161/2 × 121/2 ).

by stressing the principal character’s confusion. Stephano’s caricature Asiatic features would probably have enhanced the comedy at the time of printing. The design rejects the larger implications of the scene – what we might term the Montaigne dimension, present in Edwards’s version for Bell (see Fig. 49) – and instead offers a comic visualisation of the encounter. In their focus on character and immediate event, the engravings for The Tempest typify the approach of the images in Boydell’s edition. Their dismissal of earlier artists’ exploration of larger issues is facilitated by their choice of textual moments, which rejects nodal points of dramatic development in favour of scenes of immediate emotion. Thomas Stothard’s image for The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Fig. 81) demonstrates this. Instead of the conventional choice, Valentine’s appearance to rescue Silvia from Proteus, it shows the fainting Julia holding the ring that will ensure the play’s resolution. The change presents a much more 193

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immediate, and less ambivalent, engagement with the play’s emotional current. If it is Valentine who is attending to ‘the boy’ Julia – the posture implies his line ‘What is the matter? Look up; speak’ (5.4.85) – then Silvia’s body language towards Proteus, at left, would suggest that the rape was never attempted, and that she has quite willingly accepted being given to him by Valentine. The lightness of tone is reinforced by the loose depiction of the forest, dark and rocky but too thinly textured to be threatening. In short, the image elevates ‘curious sentiment’ above ‘palpable situation,’ adopting the approach rejected in the ‘Advertisement’ to Jerningham’s poem and, by implication, throughout Felton’s discussions. Similar combinations of character and moment abound in images for the comedies. The Rev. Matthew William Peters’s treatment of the overhearing scene (3.1) from Much Ado places it precisely within the convention of respectable contemporary erotica,16 and Francis Wheatley’s image of the watch in 3.3 of the same play combines atmosphere with caricature. For Love’s Labour’s Lost 4.2, Wheatley turns to a pastoralism that anticipates Victorian genre painting, and his treatment of 5.2 concentrates more on the textures of fabric and foliage than on language or idea. The same artist’s two images for All’s Well show exchanges between Helena and the Countess, and Helena and the King. Both are elegant refractions of a single emotional encounter. In The Merry Wives of Windsor and Twelfth Night, Smirke uses mock-Tudor settings and furnishings, the assumed naturalism of which contrasts oddly with the exaggerated poses and expressions of the figures. The effect is again immediate, comic and devoid of larger implications. In this company the Midsummer Night’s Dream engravings after Reynolds and Fuseli are powerfully incongruous, working as they do through detailed visualisation of the play’s larger modes and movements. This is true of a few other images. William Miller’s ball scene from Romeo and Juliet, reproduced in both sizes, uses chiaroscuro and composition to imply later event and mood. Hamilton’s The Winter’s Tale achieves something similar, in presenting the tension of Leontes’ seizure of Mamillius. It conveys the confrontation between the worlds of Hermione and Leontes through a difference in tonality and the rigid, rectilinear structures within which the male characters are grouped. Some of the most effective engravings employ the still time of the medium to emphasise a pause in the plays’ action. Richard Westall’s design for The Merchant of Venice 3.3, coming after his scrupulous but strangely empty betrothal of Bassanio and Portia, is surprisingly powerful. Shylock’s exit line ‘I’ll have my bond’ (3.3.4) is shown gesturally in the speaker’s outflung arm, powerful against the weak stance and open hands of Antonio. The selection of a moment detached from other action 194

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82 William Hamilton, engraved by James Stow: Richard II. 42 × 32 (161/2 × 121/2 ).

is effective because it presents an unanswerable pause in the play’s events, the stillness of the image matching the stillness of the play in a pun across genres. A few exceptions apart, the majority of the engravings in the edition follow the style and stance of those from the comedies. The histories are approached through a similarly narrowed focus. Josiah Boydell’s image for I Henry VI, also reproduced as a large plate, shows Warwick and Suffolk plucking the white and red roses as a light-toned choice of favours, without suggesting the scene’s darker, more extensive implications. For Richard II, Hamilton presents the moment in 5.2 when Aumerle’s treachery is discovered by his parents (Fig. 82) through a gestural language that is perhaps too close to parody. More effective, because more restrained, is the use of a similar vocabulary in Robert Ker Porter’s image for King John (Fig. 83), showing Pembroke and Salisbury discovering the body of Arthur. Still concentrating on an intense moment of emotion, it conveys it with greater sensitivity by balancing the energetic gesture of the one against the mute 195

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83 Robert Ker Porter, engraved by Isaac Taylor: King John. 42 × 32 (161/2 × 121/2 ).

sorrow of the other. That it avoids the earlier scene of Arthur’s pleading with Hubert gives it added force. In the Collection of Prints the sequences of three or more images of a single play, each by a different painter, can convey an experience of the play’s movement and idea that can be vigorous and innovative.17 This is rarely the case in the edition. The two images for The Taming of the Shrew by Julius Caesar Ibbetson have parity of mood, and their use of a style reminiscent of the sporting print is not inappropriate. Such consistency is not shared by the images for As You Like It. The engraving by Samuel Middiman after William Hodges’s ‘Jaques and the Wounded Stag’, an image also reproduced in the Collection of Prints, is followed by Smirke’s Orlando and Adam in 2.6, and Hamilton’s account, again borrowed from a large painting, of the masque. The layers of narrative, observation and reflection that are enfolded in the Hodges contrast strongly with the overt sentiment of the Smirke, while the Hamilton occupies a kind of semi-historicist pastoral 196

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middle ground, with the result that the reader’s experience of the play is twice fractured. The use of a single artist within a play rarely achieves greater consistency, and this is especially true of the tragedies, of which Westall’s Macbeth is a prime example. The first engraving, of the three witches seen as Macbeth himself would see them, is simple and forceful, with rhythms suggesting a dark parody of a Three Graces trope and a textural unity that adds force to the bold chiaroscuro. Westall here is at his closest to Fuseli, and the placing of the image before Macbeth’s encounter with the witches adds to its dark vigour. But both the banquet scene and Lady Macbeth sleepwalking lack this direct force. Their application of the less concentrated style used in the comedies to convey a smaller emotional range, at a somewhat lighter intensity, may at best be seen as lacking the seriousness and complexity demanded by the tragedies. But value judgments are inappropriate; instead, it is more fruitful to see such images as an engraved equivalent to earlier eighteenth-century adaptations that match the tragedies to contemporary tastes. Perhaps the most suggestive in this regard, revealing contemporary sensibilities and hinting at their extension in later treatments, is Smirke’s Lear and Cordelia (Fig. 84), which offers a relationship between father and daughter that, in its exploitation of the moment’s feeling, prefigures Victorian filial devotion. With certain important exceptions, the engravings for Boydell’s edition of the plays differ widely from the paintings exhibited in the Gallery and engraved for the Collection of Prints. There are, of course, practical reasons for the difference. The need to produce the engravings quickly was pressing, Boydell himself being aware of the steady loss of subscribers from delays in engraving the larger plates. Joseph Farington notes that subscriptions had ‘fallen off near two thirds’ by 1796,18 and as early as 1789, in the catalogue to the Gallery, Boydell apologised for the delay, pleading that ‘works of genius cannot be hurried’.19 Since so many engravers were engaged on the large plates, many less experienced workers were employed on those for the edition. The most extreme case is evidenced by a fly sheet in the first number of the edition, announcing that Northcote’s image from Richard III, showing the princes embracing in 3.1, was to be ‘re-engraved in a more masterly manner’20 because of the inadequacy of the first version. Yet none of these circumstances convincingly explains the quarto plates’ difference from the large engravings. Put simply, the quarto plates are designed according to quite different principles, and appeal to their readers in quite a different way, because they are products of the new aesthetic of feeling. Already evident in the attractive landscapes and moments of emotion in some of the images for Bell’s 1788 edition of the plays, 197

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84 Robert Smirke, engraved by Anker Smith: King Lear. 42 × 32 (161/2 × 121/2 ).

the approach is now considerably extended, revealing the degree to which, in the intervening years, the taste had spread across social boundaries, to an edition affordable only by the very wealthy. That Boydell’s edition included only the prefaces of Johnson and Pope, had no scholarly annotation, and was printed in a font specially designed by William Bulmer to demonstrate the superiority of British printing, locates it within the world of fashionable nationalism, not that of scholarly enquiry or bourgeois self-advancement. True, the text used was that prepared by Reed and revised by Steevens; but the use of the most recent, most accurate text could itself be seen as a manoeuvre to attract fashionable support. The new stance towards the affections had come about because the emotional engagement with landscape had spread outwards, to the perception, and sharing, of literary-theatrical events, which were now seen as embodiments of genuine emotion. This was a fundamental change in the perception, assimilation and reconfiguration not only of the plays, but of a far wider circle of literary and 198

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historical texts. Once more, Shakespeare imaging was both reflecting and guiding larger tastes: emotional engagement was, with a few significant exceptions, the dominant mode within which the plays were visually presented and perceived.

IV Of the other collections that began to appear, like the separately issued plates of the Boydell edition, towards the close of the century, one stands out for both the nature of its images and the manner in which this is revealed in its title: Number 1. of the Picturesque Beauties of Shakespeare, being a selection of scenes, from the works of that great author; intended to contain the most striking incidents and descriptions of each play; in oval prints, six inches high by four and a half wide.21

In 1768, another volume had appeared with a similar name, yet very different intent: The Beauties of Shakespeare, edited by William Dodd.22 It presented a selection of passages from the plays, each given an appropriate title, and offered as examples of the Longinian Sublime, ‘that which is grand and lofty’ (Preface, p. iv). The later collection’s quite different approach is revealed in a single word from its title: Picturesque. The term was made fashionable by William Gilpin’s Essay upon Prints: Containing Remarks upon the Principles of Picturesque Beauty in 1768 which, in an opening section headed ‘Explanation of Terms’, defined it as ‘expressive of that peculiar kind of beauty, which is agreeable in a picture’.23 The widespread success of the book began the elevation of the Picturesque into a major aesthetic category. Gilpin’s Observations on the River Wye,24 which appeared just before Picturesque Beauties, furthered this, as did the discussion of the term by Uvedale Price25 and Richard Payne Knight.26 All are concerned with the Picturesque in landscape, with roughness and irregularity as its defining qualities. So rapidly did their ideas spread that many of the larger paintings in the Gallery absorb them into their landscape settings, although rarely with the associated emotional directness of de Loutherbourg’s engravings for John Bell. When the term ‘Picturesque’, with its early, general meaning of ‘appropriate to visual presentation,’ is applied to images of Shakespeare, it becomes clear that what Taylor calls the ‘most striking incidents and descriptions’ are selected, and should be judged, with this as the main criterion. There is, of course, nothing surprising about the idea that scenes should be selected because they are visually suggestive; but something more is contained in this definition. The scenes have been judged to have a quality primarily visual, rather than a significance within the plays that their visual treatment would make apparent or clarify through critical address. They are chosen for the sensory, not intellectual, pleasure they 199

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will convey. The Picturesque, in short, has moved across from its generic origin in landscape to become a mode of seeing that affects all forms. In the first part of the Essay on Prints, Gilpin discusses the aim and effect of such images in a manner particularly appropriate to the visualisation of literary and dramatic texts: With regard to a proper time, the painter is assisted by good old dramatic rules; which inform him, that one point of time only should be taken – the most affecting in the action; and that no other part of the story should interfere with it . . . each character should be under the strongest impression of astonishment, and horror; those passions being yet unallayed by any cooler passions succeding. (3–4)

He continues: Expression is the life and soul of painting. It implies a just representation of passion, and of character: of passion, by exhibiting every emotion of the mind, as outwardly discovered by any peculiarity of gesture; or the extention, and contraction of the features: of character, by representing the different manners of men, as arising from their particular tempers, or professions. (23–4)

This is a fine distinction, differentiating between the bodily declaration of a moment of feeling and the underlying, permanent identity of an individual. Gilpin goes on to describe depictions of this second order as ‘manners-painting’, claiming as its most remarkable exponent ‘our countryman hogarth; whose works contain a variety of characters, represented with more force, than most men can conceive them’ (p. 24). This implies that both orders are concerned with surface aspects of identity, not moral or psychological actualities. This seems a very precise definition of the functioning of Boydell’s quarto plates and the images in Taylor’s Picturesque Beauties; and the fact that most of them fall into Gilpin’s first order, defining feeling through gesture and feature, suggests further concentration. Gilpin continues to discuss ‘grace,’ distinguishing between ‘picturesque grace, and that grace which arises from dignity of character’ (p. 27). Of the former, ‘all figures should partake’; ‘but it belongs to expression to mark those characteristics, which distinguish the latter’ (p. 27). Earlier, Gilpin has offered this definition: ‘Picturesque grace: an agreeable form given, in a picture, to a clownish figure’ (p. xi). Given the usage of the day, it is likely that ‘clownish’ here has the sense of rustic or unrefined, rather than comical.27 The result is to stress a dignity implicitly related to social class, inevitably a categorisation suitable for the readers of both Taylor’s collection and Boydell’s edition, and one by implication applying to the characters depicted as the major forces in tragedies, comedies and histories as 200

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then defined. The link between the act of perception and the social echelon of the perceiver is seemingly forged as strongly as that between character and rank in the image perceived. Later, Gilpin strengthens another aspect of the Picturesque image, its immediacy, through defining the elements supporting the compositional focus: The last thing included in a design is the use of proper appendages. By appendages are meant animals, landskip, buildings, and in general, whatever is introduced into the piece by way of ornament. Every thing of this kind should correspond with the subject, and rank in a proper subordination to it. (5–6)

The loosely sketched settings and incomplete detail of Boydell’s quarto plates are given full support by this concept of depiction, quite different from the advice given by Shaftesbury who, after urging the selection of a moment containing the seeds of all later action, accepts the use of ‘certain Enigmatical or Emblematical Devices, to represent future Time’ (p. 9). Reynolds, Fuseli, West and others all make use of such details, as do many earlier painters of Shakespearean subjects, not least Hogarth. Such principles reveal a difference in kind between the Picturesque Beauties and the small plates of the Boydell edition on the one hand, and many of the paintings in the Gallery and those of earlier painters and illustrators on the other. The limitations associated with the Picturesque are implied in another element of Taylor’s title, which specifies their format and size: they are ‘oval prints, six inches high by four and a half wide’. In presenting and describing them in this way, the volume immediately suggests their accessibility. These are intimate views, not visions of the Sublime, in either its Longinian form, as an example of the finest invention, or its Burkean, in producing a sensation of purifying terror. More important, they follow precisely the format used by Gilpin in his Observations on the Wye, which from the first enjoyed widespread acclaim, perhaps genuinely changing the actuality of physical landscape in the popular imagination. As Erin Blake of the Folger Shakespeare Library has suggested,28 the size and format are those of a portable Claude glass, the darkening mirror that Gilpin and his followers would have used to mediate and record landscapes in their sketches. That it has been assumed for Shakespeare images suggests a parallel transformation, into forms suited to a contemporary sensibility already attuned to the new way of giving emotional order to visual experience. Just as important is their suitability for individual contemplation, which takes to a further level the freeing of emotional response implicit within the larger, and often communally viewed, images of the Boydell edition. 201

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85 Robert Smirke, engraved by Moses Haughton Jr: ‘Slender and Ann Page’. 42 × 32 (161/2 × 121/2 ).

Gilpin’s concern is with two entwined elements: organising the landscape on principles of aesthetic attraction rather than the moral or allegorical significance of earlier paintings; and, within this process, establishing a moment of emotional exchange between setting and onlooker. The result, inevitably, is to privilege the beholder’s experience over any objectified concept of external actuality. This shift will establish the foundation of English landscape from Constable onwards, but more immediately it defines exactly the pairing that occurs in the Taylor engravings. They diminish the plays both by focusing on individual moments of feeling, and in offering an isolated, and carefully controlled, emotional experience of them. Part of the collection’s subtitle thus assumes an unwitting but insistent new resonance: the images address ‘the most striking incidents and descriptions of each play’ not to present them but to ‘contain’ them. Taylor’s collection was published in serial parts, each with four images of a single play, accompanied by a passage of twenty or thirty lines on a separate 202

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86 Robert Smirke, engraved by Isaac Taylor: ‘Slender and Ann Page’, Picturesque Beauties of Shakespeare, 1783–7. Oval, 15.2 × 11.4 (6 × 41/2 ).

page. Their appearance in the early 1780s, at the very time when Boydell was launching his scheme and canvassing for subscribers, made them a clear rival for fashionable purchasers – especially since they initially appeared at intervals of no more than six months, before the final parts were issued after a delay of almost a year, and the series ceased publication. It seems not unlikely, then, that Boydell took their approach as a model for the small plates. There was another reason for the similarity. Of the 40 plates for Taylor’s collection, 32 were designed by Robert Smirke, and of these, two were reproduced almost unaltered for Boydell. Picturesque Beauties contains images of ten plays, of which only two, Macbeth and Hamlet, are tragedies, and none is a history. Twelve plates present moments also shown in the Boydell quartos. The similarity is at its most complete in the two versions of Slender before Mrs Page’s house, the version for the quarto plates (Fig. 85) developing the composition by adding the figure of Simple behind Slender and some additional buildings, the Taylor version (Fig. 86) enhancing the 203

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87 Thomas Stothard, engraved by Isaac Taylor: ‘Hermione embracing Perdita’, Picturesque Beauties of Shakespeare, 1783–7. Oval, 15.2 × 11.4 (6 × 41/2 ).

sentiment by the addition of a cat in parody of Slender’s posture. Elsewhere, the concentration on feeling is shown by contrast with other contemporary treatments of the same play. William Hamilton’s Winter’s Tale image for the Gallery, reproduced as one of the large plates, shows Hermione just before her supposed reawakening, introducing suspense through the postures of the figures, and the use of chiaroscuro to illumine Hermione and allow the onlooker to share Leontes’ bewilderment. The simple ploy effectively captures the moment, but also hints at future developments, suggesting the event as a fragment of experience outside time in which the lost sixteen years of the play are contained. For Picturesque Beauties, Thomas Stothard produced ‘Hermione embracing Perdita’ (Fig. 87), a moment existing in a single fragment of emotion, with none of the complexities of the earlier treatment. Here, not only hope, but also narrative suspense, are emptied in delight. 204

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88 Robert Smirke, engraved by Isaac Taylor: ‘Iachimo Disarmed’, Picturesque Beauties of Shakespeare, 1783–7. Oval, 15.2 × 11.4 (6 × 41/2 ).

Some of the Taylor images approach a greater richness. In ‘Portia’s Judgement’, Smirke shows the moment just before the judgment is delivered, offering some suggestion of suspense. This perhaps exalts her qualities over those of Shylock, who is shown preparing to extort the pound of flesh, in a further example of the reduction of the character to near-parody – which his much more energetic depiction by Hamilton for Boydell clearly does not share. Smirke’s ‘Iachimo Disarmed’ (Fig. 88) shows the character falling under an attack by Posthumus; yet the vigorous composition is undermined by the strangely inflated, childlike figures, which endanger the moral and dramatic seriousness of the scene. Despite these exceptions, the Taylor images clearly share the static, emotional focus of the quarto plates. For Much Ado the concluding marriage is presented, not the fainting Hero; Malvolio is seen in the garden, not the dark house. Orlando is shown receiving the chain from Rosalind after the wrestling scene, not in the 205

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combat itself, and Beatrice in reverie after the overhearing scene, not during its enactment beyond the hedge. The principle is precisely that which, in the quarto plates, drives the shift from Valentine’s intervention to Julia’s fainting: both collections place the images in a quite different relation to the plays than the more intricate devices of earlier painters and theorists. The simple antithesis that this suggests, between the narrative and iconographical density of Boydell’s Collection of Prints and Felton’s prescriptions, and the emotional directness of the quarto prints and the Picturesque Beauties, inevitably simplifies a continuum that is in actuality subtly graded. Many of the paintings in Boydell’s Gallery have the emotional directness of engravings in Picturesque Beauties, and a few of the quarto prints assume a greater complexity of form and narrative. Other contemporary collections contribute to the further diversity of style and stance at this period, as Chapter 5 has shown. Yet the popularity of these two collections, and their major aesthetic underpinning in emotion, were shared with other contemporary editions and collections. One of the most extensive is The Cabinet of Genius, containing stipple engravings by John Ogbourne, Charles Taylor and Caroline Watson after designs by Samuel Shelley and – yet again – Robert Smirke.29 Its 95 prints appeared serially between 1787 and 1790, and were later issued in two volumes. They presented characters, largely female, from poets including Gray, Thomson and Milton as well as Shakespeare, a contribution to national canon-building evident in the extensive anthologies produced earlier by Bell, Dodsley and others. Shelley was a portrait miniaturist, working with fashionable sitters, but the engravings also place him within a tradition of sentimental painting. As well as dramatic characters, his work included images titled ‘The Wounded Fawn’, ‘The Wading Nymph’ and ‘Parental Fondness’, repeating the focus on contained emotional exchange. ‘Nature’s Gifts to Shakespeare’, showing the infant in the arms of one of Shelley’s frequent mock-pastoral young women, extends the approach to the poet himself. A larger image of Rosalind and Celia from As You Like It (Fig. 89) is perhaps more adventurous. It shows Rosalind directly engaging the onlooker’s gaze, a forthrightness of address usually found only in male portraits, and thus reflecting the character’s change of gender through a well-judged redirection of painterly tradition. This extends the concentration on a single moment in a simple but forceful way, reaching beyond the simple emotional engagement that, without it, would be the main effect of the image. By contrast, Henry Singleton’s Shakespeare Gallery30 adopts a more direct approach, with single characters depicted in affective poses, tied to the plays by

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89 Samuel Shelley, engraved by J. R. Smith: ‘Rosalind and Celia’, The Cabinet of Genius, 1787–90. Image size 21 × 17.8 (81/4 × 7).

short quotations. Some are declarative moments of emotion, visual speech-acts in which the reader is invited to share, such as the image of Helena and the Countess (Fig. 90), which allows the reader to share a simple act of emotional openness. Sometimes they are tougher. Othello is shown just before Desdemona’s murder,

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90 Henry Singleton, engraved by Charles Taylor: ‘Countess and Helena’, The Shakespeare Gallery, 1792. Image size 15.3 × 9.2 (6 × 35/8 ).

carrying a lamp recalling the implications of his earlier monologue (Fig. 91). Yet there is little to suggest the full depth of this scene, and the impression is more of titillating delay than imminent brutality. The execution of the images, in a sepia stipple engraving, does much to determine their nature as undemandingly decorative. 208

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91 Henry Singleton, engraved by Charles Taylor: ‘Othello and Desdemona’. Image size 15 × 9.6 (6 × 33/4 ).

Alongside these collections, numerous other prints were issued singly. Boydell himself produced several, perhaps to allay his subscribers’ mounting dissatisfaction. Among them was a treatment of Viola’s ‘patience on a monument’ speech (2.4), engraved by Caroline Watson after a design by Samuel Shelley (Fig. 92). Compared with the near-contemporary Richter and Walker design in the Bellamy and Robarts edition (see Fig. 61), this nicely reveals different approaches to the same episode. Whereas the Richter carefully reveals elements of the speech’s language, visualising its metaphorical status to emphasise its identity as a literary and dramatic artifice, the Shelley presents it as an emotional fragment – Viola as a suffering individual with whom the beholder is invited to sympathise. Walker’s engraving makes perceptible the pivotal ‘like’ in the speech, revealing the whole as a rhetorical device; Watson’s presents Viola physically seated on a monument, holding a ‘damask rose,’ and the metacritical awareness is absent. Both have 209

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92 Samuel Shelley, engraved by Caroline Watson: ‘Viola’ from the Miniature in the Collection of Nathaniel Chauncy, Esq. Published by John and Josiah Boydell, 1 January 1790. Image size 25.2 × 18.6 (10 × 73/8 ).

an oval format, but whereas Walker’s image is within a frame that relates it to earlier portraits taking the structure from a memorial school, Watson’s uses the unadorned form and sepia colouring to place it firmly within the emotional mould of the Picturesque. The then fashionable coloration, used in conjunction with the 210

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subtler gradations possible in stipple engraving, work together to heighten the emotional temperature of the image, moving it from a visual treatment of the language’s metaphoric workings towards direct emotional engagement. Another version of the scene, engraved by Taylor after Smirke, shows a woman seated before a Picturesque landscape, with lines from the same speech engraved beneath it, but with the addition of the single-word title ‘Evening’.31 The print is one of four showing the times of the day, each presenting characters from one of the plays with a short quotation – ‘Night’ for example showing Lorenzo and Jessica with the opening lines of the last act of The Merchant of Venice.32 In these prints, Shakespeare’s lines have been absorbed into an emotional complex presented through landscape, characters and title as a single embodiment of an affective state, in one of the most extreme assimilations of a Shakespearean moment into the emotional structuring of the Picturesque. The three treatments of Viola’s speech record the growing pervasiveness of this new way of seeing, and its power to move the viewer away from a direct involvement with the textuality of the play into an imagined, and strictly controlled, emotional sharing with the characters. Writing of some slightly later images, Adrian Poole describes them as instigating a ‘drama in which “character” tries to free itself of circumstance’,33 revealing a greater concern for emotional empathy with the individual. This move towards the psychological construction of character outside the drama is clearly something to which images of this order contributed. It could be argued that this is the most enduring legacy of the exchange of feeling inaugurated by the Picturesque experience of landscape. The importance of literary precedent, most notably in The Man of Feeling, in making the shift has already been noted, but there is another branch of the Picturesque just as closely linked to the perception of the plays: the writing of popular history. David Hume’s History began to appear in the 1750s, the first complete version appearing in 1762.34 Its approachable narrative style, with invented conversations between historical figures and a careful sense of climax, assured its instant success. It also sought to draw the reader into an emotional relationship with its characters, Hume claiming that he wanted to make the reader weep when reading of the execution of Charles I. In thus drawing closer to the popular novel, the history reflected the larger move towards emotionalism – but there is, of course, another reason why Hume is relevant. The Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40), with its assertion that pleasure derives from the workings of the imagination on sensory impressions, had established the equation between outer object and inner state that defines Picturesque experience.

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Engravings for Hume’s History appeared in the 1792 edition which included additional chapters by Tobias Smollett, the choice of a novelist in itself revealing again the closeness of the two forms. These were portraits of monarchs and statesmen, encased in memorial frames. An image of Frederick, Prince of Wales employs as an embellishment the Prince of Wales’s feathers seen earlier in the Bell image of Ferdinand from The Tempest (see Fig. 59), suggesting an elision of political as well as aesthetic allegiances. That the edition was published by Thomas Cadell, who had also published The Man of Feeling, extends the link with Shakespeare. A year later it became closer still. Between 1793 and 1806 Robert Bowyer issued the History, with Smollett’s continuation, in five large folio volumes, with illustrations designed by Robert Smirke. Their similarity to his Shakespeare images is discussed further in Chapter 7. Both show a reductive concentration on climactic moment, with figures posed to accentuate feeling within settings dependent on a small number of architectural cues designed instantly to place the events within a specific period, as seen in the nostalgic Tudor of the Merry Wives images. Smirke was not the only artist to produce images for Hume’s history. In 1793 and 1795, twenty volumes of a ‘Pocket Edition’ appeared, which had engravings by J. Thornthwaite, an engraver who had also contributed to Bell’s British Theatre.35 The stylistic resemblances between these works and the Shakespeare images is striking, but more significant is the fact that events in a play and events of history could both be presented through imaginative visual images, each concentrating on a moment of intense emotional experience presented in key characters – whether Lady Jane Grey or Desdemona – for sympathetic sharing by readers. In less than half a century, the closeness between history and the plays would again be apparent in their illustration, as the discussion of Charles Knight will show (see Chapter 8), but the approach there would rest on quite different conceptual foundations. The assumption that history and the drama are, like the novel, a matter of emotional involvement in a single event, with minimal and at best incidental reference to larger patterns of change and causality in the one, and dramatic or linguistic development in the other, reveals the pervasiveness of a world-view concerned above all with the emotions. That several engravings from works of history were included in extra-illustrated editions of this time (see Chapter 7) gives material form to the convergence. Despite their static and reductive nature, it is too simple to suggest that all these images are less important than their intellectually more demanding equivalents. They are simply different, representing different goals in the attempt to satisfy a different approach in the reader. Yet as critical statements about the plays they 212

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have little to offer, and represent a very particular dimension of the approach both to Shakespeare and to the workings of visual and literary art within a particular social, intellectual and emotional frame. What is perhaps most striking about the emotional Picturesque they present is the lack of an ironic or larger awareness. Henry Mackenzie’s novel is striking in that, as well as introducing the concept of strong feelings in response to the natural world, it strongly satirises it. In Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen continues this detachment and, in Chapter 14, brings together a discussion of Picturesque landscape and the habits of novel reading in an exchange between Catherine Morland and her companions the Tilneys. Begun in 1798 and completed in 1803, the novel is directly contemporary with the images discussed here. That the latter address Picturesque feeling with unqualified directness should not necessarily be taken to mean their direction at a less sophisticated audience, but rather an approach allowing far greater immediacy of emotional exchange between reader and character. The shift is important: reader identification through emotion is now formally legitimised, and will be a major factor, in its continuation, rejection or manipulation, in many subsequent editions. Whereas Gravelot’s images impose a distance between reader and event through their use of an elegant formalism, those of the Picturesque invite a unity that, while apparently more complete, is equally stylised. In the latter, though, the stylisation occurs in its organisation of feeling and the new equation between reader and image by which this is achieved.

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CHAPTER 7

THE EXTRA-ILLUSTRATED EDITION

I Approached conceptually, the extra-illustrated edition is the most complete expression of the dialogue between reader and text. Through the addition of plates, texts and annotations in a range of media, it allows an exchange between these two voices to record sensory reception and re-creation in a way that no other form can approach. But this is achieved at some cost. The integrated experience of word and image is displaced by a more analytical, comparative stance, presenting a reading through a continuous visual commentary, and imposing a duty of comparative analysis within a constant shifting of modes – from performance record to character study, from historical to topographical engraving – that repeatedly redefines the text and the stance adopted towards it. These apparently irreconcilable positions are not, however, mutually exclusive, since the diversity of the imagery is constructed from earlier reading experiences. The edition thus functions as a record of idiosyncratic reading that approaches the status of a variorum of visual annotation. Extra-illustration itself became fashionable after the publication of James Granger’s Biographical History of England in 1765.1 At its original appearance, before the fashion for adding images to which it gave its name, Granger’s publication was significant because of the social matrix that it imposed. Its series of biographical sketches was divided into ten categories and arranged in historical periods. They began with ‘Class I. Kings, Queens, Princes, Princesses, &c. of the Royal Family’ and moved down through ‘Class V. Commoners who have borne great employments’, ‘Class VI. Men of the robe’, Class IX. Physicians, Poets, and other ingenious persons, who have distinguished themselves by their Writings;’ ‘Class X.

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Painters, Artificers, Mechanics;’ ‘Class XI. Ladies, and others of the Female Sex, according to their Rank, &c;’ and finally ‘Class XII. Persons of both sexes, chiefly of the lowest Order’ remarkable for ‘only one Circumstance’ such as longevity, criminality or deformity.2 Each entry was headed by a list of prints, and from this arose the habit of collecting the images and binding them into the volume. The production of the extra-illustrated, or grangerised, edition was thus a way of confirming a social hierarchy; but, like so many other features of the English class system, it flourished through what might be termed progressive downward imitation. Those who could not afford to commission portraits of themselves collected prints of the portraits of others; those who could not buy original old master prints bought modern reproductions; and the process of grangerising the volume was at once an act of record and an assertion of proud complicity within current social structures. That the practice spread rapidly from a work of history to Shakespeare’s works reveals again the growing force of the plays as a marker of cultural maturity; that the editions often included images of actual historical figures and places discloses the subtle amalgamation of the nation’s dramatist and nation’s history, both now the possession of new readers. At this stage, of course, the level of readership was still restricted by income and rank: compiling an extra-illustrated edition was a costly business way beyond the majority. But for those of the upper middling sort, such as country gentlefolk of independent means, it became a way of asserting individual difference from those who purchased their books ready bound, as well as a paradoxical claim to membership of a higher level of participation in national identity. As a rejection of the uniformity of book production, extra-illustrated editions were both individual and social statements since, especially when based on large quarto volumes, they could be read around a library table by a group of people who could then share another fashionable accomplishment that had filtered down from the highest echelons, the art of conversation. The extra-illustrated edition consequently refracts the plays through a complex spectrum of social actualities and aspirations, within which are located specific stances, such as established or emergent critical currents and attitudes towards performance, in its selection and placing of images. Granger’s lists of portraits were specific and detailed, that for henricus iv, for example, beginning: Vertue sc. h. sh. From the ancient portraits of him at Kensington, and at Hampton Court in Herefordshire.3

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This made easy the process of adding engravings, and soon afterwards collections of prints were published that reproduced many of the images Granger listed, aided by subsequent editions of his book with blank pages ready for their insertion. Their relevance to Shakespeare extra-illustration was considerable, since they made available a large number of images of the plays’ historical characters, refinancing their mode of representation and reading as historical actualities rather than theatrical constructions. One of the most celebrated collections was A series of four hundred and six historical portraits to illustrate Granger’s Biographical history of England.4 With reproductions of the engravings mentioned by Granger, it was clearly intended to be broken so that individual plates could be inserted in Granger’s text.5 Similar collections appeared for use in editions of Shakespeare, the most comprehensive being The Whole Historical Dramas of William Shakespeare, Illustrated.6 This collection of 150 plates, published serially by Edward Jeffery between 1789 and 1793 and reissued in two volumes in 1811, was largely the work of Sylvester Harding, who specialised in copying old paintings and prints in watercolour for subsequent engraving. That its title-page announced ‘Price Six Guineas in Boards’ suggests its direction at a well-to-do readership, while allowing it either to be bound as the purchaser wished or broken to illustrate the plays. The ‘Advertisement’ makes plain its approach: While an exuberance of elegant and expensive Ornaments, derived from fancy, has from time to time been published to illustrate the Works of Shakspeare, it may appear rather extraordinary, that so little attention has hitherto been paid to the Countenances of his real Characters, and the scenery of the different places in which their chief exploits were performed. To supply this deficiency, the present Work is most respectfully submitted to the Public, as an assemblage of genuine Heads, and Views appropriated to the whole Series of our Author’s Historical Dramas. (I.iii)

These images, it claimed, were ‘copied from Original Pictures hitherto unengraved, or Prints by Masters of the highest authority; to which are added, Portraits of Editors of, and Commentators on, Shakspeare, together with Actors who are known to have personated his chief Characters, while he himself was on the Stage’ (ibid.). The volume also included topographical prints ‘drawn on their respective spots, for the immediate use of this publication’ or ‘copied from old Engravings in the Collections of our first Antiquaries, many of whom have given their assistance to this undertaking; which cannot fail to reflect honor on themselves, as well as 216

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on the Poet to whose scenes these Illustrations have been applied’ (ibid.). From these it becomes clear that despite its title the volume is not restricted to the history plays: views of Messina, Vienna and other locales of the comedies and tragedies are included. The material-historicist emphasis inherited from Granger has developed to embrace the other plays, in a desire for accuracy of topography equalling that asserted for history. In effect, the volume is a summary of the ethic underlying the practice of extra-illustration, which itself betrays much about an approach to the plays: they are, it unquestioningly assumes, concerned with actual people and places, as presented by actors whose overriding concern is with verisimilitude. Images of this kind were supplemented by others. Prints of actors in character had already been components of an earlier gesture towards extra-illustration, in the double frontispieces found in some copies of Bell’s ‘Acting’ edition (see Chapter 4), and they are important in later volumes, although far less frequent than prints of characters and settings, or imagined, non-theatrical representations of the plays’ action. Engravings produced for earlier editions from Rowe to Hanmer are also common, some extra-illustrated editions almost constituting an archival survey of past responses through near-complete sets of such images, recontextualising and redefining them by placing them opposite the scenes depicted. To these were added images of the kind explored in Chapter 6, picturesque studies of character and scene fashionable towards the end of the century. At their most expansive, extra-illustrated editions can act as valuable tools of preservation for both kinds of image, including proof copies or drawings later engraved for printing and chronicling prints through different states of issue. Watercolour or gouache copies of paintings now untraced can provide valuable records of the colouring, and in some cases the detail, of images surviving only as engravings. Some editions, not necessarily the most luxuriously bound or fully illustrated, include original drawings or watercolours elsewhere unrecorded, offering insights into skilled amateur work that may reveal much about stylistic change or literary interpretation. This final category is often the most suggestive, signifying a direct response to the plays reaching beyond habitual, and more fully recorded, metropolitan reactions. These orders of graphic content represent something of the range of material included in extra-illustrated editions, and at the same time disclose some of the social, political and literary assumptions that underlie them. In addition to the dialogue between past and present audible in any edition of the plays, the volumes present another exchange, between the voice of the individual collector and the larger chorus of social and cultural organisation, manifested through the greater 217

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pictorial reading practice from which the visual materials are chosen for inclusion. This gives them their unique value; but it is one that is essentially fugitive. The images and the criteria for their selection will always contain an element of the unattainable for the present-day reader. The collection and assembly of the images, and the intimate conversations they subsequently generated, rest on reading practices and responses, individual or intimately shared, at which we can now only guess.

II The most opulent extra-illustrated edition of the plays is the ‘Turner Shakespeare’, in the collection of the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California. This uses as its basis the Boydell–Steevens edition of 1805, expanding its original nine volumes into 44 by the addition of some 3,000 prints and 740 original drawings and watercolours. Compiled by Thomas Turner of Gloucester, who began the work in 1832, it includes almost all of the eighteenth-century engravings, in many cases supplementing them with their original designs, as Chapter 4 has suggested in its discussion of Taylor’s engraving for Bell’s 1775 Othello.7 This vast collection deserves a complete volume of annotation and analysis, and its sheer range lies beyond the scope of this chapter. There are also other editions that deserve full analysis. The library of the Shakespeare Centre, Stratford-uponAvon, has an extra-illustrated edition of Knight’s Pictorial Shakspere.8 Expanded to twenty-six volumes, it includes images from Howard, Boydell, Tegg, the Picturesque Beauties, and other less familiar material. Most remarkable are a number of portrait engravings of characters who, while not mentioned by Shakespeare, seemed to the collector to embody the virtues of figures from the plays. Their inclusion offers an original and revealing approach to the moral influence of the plays at some time in the mid-nineteenth century. The collection also confirms some of the tastes demonstrated in other grangerised editions, by having seven images of the death of Desdemona, eight of that of Ophelia, and six of that of Cleopatra. The Folger Shakespeare Library has many editions expanded by the addition of images and documents of various kinds. There is a copy of Dyce’s 1757 edition, extended by the American book-collector Robert Hoe, Jr, notable for some original watercolour designs by Edward Edwards for the Bell ‘Acting’ edition, and some unidentified gouaches that seem of continental European origin.9 A version of the Halliwell edition of 1853, in itself very rare, has been embellished by a number of small marginal watercolours, and then bound in what the 1922 sale-catalogue 218

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describes as ‘full autumn leaf levant’.10 Other editions exist as collections of disbound pages and separate prints, testimony to the methods, and the diligence, of their collectors, but also to the enormity of their task in the face of time and expense. Two editions from the Folger collection offer a more feasible, but no less varied, subject of study. Large quartos from the early nineteenth century, they present a series of insights into individual practices, from which deductions may be made about preferences and concerns surrounding the composition and reading of illustrated editions. Little is known about their compiler, George C. George, of Penryn, Cornwall, who assembled them at some time between 1802 and 1815. The Cornwall Records Office reveals his name on a mortgage of land, possibly a tin mine, in 1804, and its subsequent outright purchase and sale in 1809. His signature appears on the surviving copy of the Boydell subscription list, confirming his presence in London at least once at the end of the century. He is not mentioned in the Victoria County History for Cornwall, nor is he listed as an alumnus of either English university. That he came from a local family and made money from mining is one possibility, which might explain his eagerness for the cultural capital represented by an extra-illustrated Shakespeare. At some stage he had dealings with the Shakespearean enthusiast Samuel Ireland and the descendants of the engraver William Walker, from whom he obtained images. He records with some pride that the prints from both Harding’s and Taylor’s collections are ‘proofs taken off expressly for me on large Paper’.11 His circle included the amateur artists H. Jeayes and Geo (most probably George) Webbe, and he knew or was acquainted with two others, F. L. Duval and Robert Cowan, the latter a Lieutenant in the South Devon Militia. One of George’s editions is based on the edition of Charles Heath, originally published in 1807, the other on the Boydell–Steevens edition from 1802. Establishing the chronology of the two is not easy, and perhaps not of the greatest importance. While both contain some prints dating from between 1814 and 1815, the Boydell-based edition has slightly more from this period, as well as using rather fewer images from Jeffery’s collection. But the Boydell edition has rather more annotations and comments in George’s own hand, and a larger number of rarer mezzotints, possibly suggesting a greater sophistication, which suggests that it is the later. While both share some features, their separate identities emerge through the watercolours that they contain. Yet even these have a common feature that reveals something of George’s approach. Almost all are framed in bands of sepia-grey and pale cream, a presentation frequent in the work of topographical artists such as Cozens and Sandby. Each has the artist’s name inscribed 219

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in George’s handwriting, and some have inscriptions on the reverse. These are important ways of confirming the eminence of the work and the imprimatur of the collector as equal to those of the most fashionable artists and patrons; once again, the status of Shakespeare collecting is absorbed into a larger social and aesthetic commerce. The Heath edition is striking for its opening, which establishes in its first volume the use of portraits as a visual archive. After a print of the Chandos portrait of Shakespeare, engraved above a copy of Hollar’s view of the Globe, and Heath’s original title-page, there follows an uninterrupted sequence of thirty-one images. First is a watercolour copy by Jeayes of the engraving of Thomas Banks’s bas-relief from the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery, emblematically stressing the volumes’ transfer of powers from performance to depiction. Of those that follow, one is the title-page of Two Maids of Moreclacke with Robert Armin, and two show the memorial to John Combe, from whom Shakespeare bought land in Stratford. There are portraits of Jonson, Edward Alleyn and Nathaniel Field. The remainder are portraits of editors and critics of the plays, a visual anthology displacing the conventional collection of prefaces by every editor since Rowe. The portraits seem to be placed at random, actors, editors and critics being mixed without system or hierarchy. Most come from the Jeffery anthology, but some are from other sources, with similar unconcern for mingling of styles. In this the opening sequence prefigures the selection and organisation of the images throughout the volumes. The contents of both editions fall into several categories. Most numerous are the portraits of individual characters, from works of history or more recent collections showing the same personages as characters in the plays. The first kind are often those recommended by Granger – there are, for example, a large number of portraits engraved by Vertue after originals in royal collections or the stained glass of cathedrals and abbeys. These are complemented by prints of historical figures from Jeffery’s Shakespeare Illustrated, mostly copies of older paintings. This raises a concept that will, in different forms, be a recurrent issue throughout later Shakespeare imaging and a major force in production and reading: the relation between the plays and the contemporary construction of history. Behind the selection a specific but unstated idea of historical authenticity is at work. That historical portraits are included on the first appearance of the character, whereas depictions of Shakespeare’s characters are placed later, opposite the appearance in the printed play of the lines by which they are captioned, supports this: the ‘real’ figure is established first, and then comes the dramatic incarnation. Images of this latter kind, showing the characters from the plays, come mostly from 220

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Taylor’s Picturesque Beauties, the Shakespeare Gallery of Singleton and Taylor and the Cabinet of Genius by Shelley and Smirke. These two groups offer what might appear to be alternative readings of characters, but in effect come together as a debate on the single actual person that underlies both. Like a palimpsest of textual readings that is reduced to a single authoritative text, they move towards a constructed but consensual actuality that is the aim of materialist history. It is striking that, with enough exceptions to make the practice more noticeable, both groups move away from depiction within any clear narrative situation, historical or dramatic. The historical portraits are invariably head-and-shoulders depictions with no background, the views of characters often figures shown alone, with little suggestion of the action of which they form part, except for the caption lines – although, as Chapter 6 has shown, there are significant exceptions. Their presentation in series in their new context increases this overlapping of genres and the erasure of dramatic growth, focusing the reader’s attention instead on human identity. As theatre leans towards history, so history leans towards character: the growth of interest in the individual, and history as the result of individual actions, are both symptoms of increasing force as the Picturesque sensibility moves into full-blown Romanticism. A third line of imaging is represented by frontispiece engravings and internal illustrations from earlier editions, including those originally issued with the Boydell and Heath volumes. These differ from the images of historical or dramatic characters, being instead concerned with the currency of dramatic exchange, shown through the filter of period and style. Placed opposite the textual statement of the action they present, however, the engravings earlier employed as frontispieces assume new meanings and perform new functions. Instead of suggesting a play’s trajectory or dominant mode they become immediate reflections of a moment of action, in some cases assessing its causes or implying its consequences. This change is modified by their appearance in series both with other images of the same order and with those of the two kinds mentioned above. The effect is a curious blend of genres, from historical portraits of various styles and functions, through sentimentalised presentation of character, to representations of action of different degrees of performance, sometimes held apart by clear boundaries, sometimes seamlessly overlapping. The effect is to deny any continuity of event and idea within the reader’s experience of the play and, because of the inevitable variance of style such sequences involve, to encourage a comparative and evaluative response to the images as textual illuminations, especially when the volumes are the subject of group discussion. 221

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This infusion of comparative judgments to some degree compensates for the loss of a continuous reading experience. Its effect may be reproduced by looking at one of the more straightforward series of images in the Heath volumes, from All’s Well (Vol. IX, facing page 24/1, 2, 3).12 Here, images of Helena and the Countess appear in the stipple engraving by Singleton and Taylor (see Fig. 90), Fuseli’s Chalmers frontispiece (Fig. 93), and the design by Francis Wheatley, engraved by Francis Legat for the Boydell–Steevens edition (Fig. 94). The diversity of styles in presenting a moment of direct emotional encounter is remarkable: so, too, is the distancing effect produced by its presentation in several versions. Images added to the history plays are far more diverse, adding complexity of genre and subject to that of style, with Henry VIII (Volume IV) as a typical example. The opening pages are full of engravings of historical figures, and only later do their representations as characters in the plays appear. Even then, the sequence is complex. Four images on consecutive verso pages (between pages 60 and 61) are inserted in 2.4.13 They are an engraving by Goldar (after Holbein) of ‘Catharine of Aragon, Queen of Henry VIII’; a stipple engraving of the king after a copy, by Silvester Harding, from ‘an original painting on board in the possession of Wm. Strode Esq.’, taken from the Jeffery collection; an engraving captioned ‘Queen Catherine addressing Henry before the Two Legates’, on the verso of which George has written ‘Baxter’s History of England’ (Fig. 95); and a watercolour copy by F. Duval of a painting by Richard Westall, engraved by W. Ward, published by J. R. Smith on 1 January 1794. This collocation of portraiture, fictionalised history and copied easel-painting of the play, is by no means unusual, and the apparently random mingling of forms makes suggestive comments on the plays and the idea of history. Especially striking is the similarity of approach and style in the final two images, one from a work of history, the other from a treatment of the play. Act 4 of Henry VIII takes further this mingling of orders. Three prints of Whitehall, each of considerable antiquity, are presented inlaid in consecutive pages just before the end of the first scene (facing page 108). The first page of Scene 2 is matched with the engraving by James Parker after Westall’s painting for the Boydell–Steevens edition, showing Katherine, Griffith and Patience (facing page 110). The next opening (between pages 110 and 111) has on the left an engraving of ‘The South View of Leicester’ and, tipped in as a separate folded sheet, a watercolour by Jeayes after Westall’s painting of Wolsey’s arrival, commissioned for the Boydell Gallery. The act concludes with two images of Queen Katherine’s vision, one from the Singleton–Taylor collection (facing page 114/1; Fig. 96) and the other Fuseli’s frontispiece to the Chalmers edition (facing page 114/2: 222

93 Henry Fuseli, engraved by J. G. Walker: Frontispiece to All’s Well from The Plays of William Shakespeare, ed. A. C. Chalmers, 1805. 16.2 × 9.2 (63/8 × 35/8 ).

94 Francis Wheatley, engraved by Francis Legat: ‘Helena and the Countess’, Boydell, 1802. Page size 35 × 31.7 (133/4 × 121/4 ).

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95 Unsigned engraving: ‘Queen Catherine addressing Henry before the Two Legates’, from John Baxter’s A New and Impartial History of England, 1796. Image size 16.6 × 10.6 (61/2 × 41/4 ).

Fig. 97). The act thus combines historical engravings of actual places, images both engraved and as watercolour copies from earlier editions, a watercolour of a freestanding painting, a popular stipple engraving of a character, and a line engraving earlier employed as a frontispiece. Variously, they show action presented in the play, action that is reported by the characters, and a place mentioned in passing by two characters to stress the political force of its renaming from York Place to Whitehall. The last grouping shows more concern with historical change and topographical illustration than with the dramatisation of political event that the reference assumes in the play; the two images of Katharine’s vision represent a contrast of style, technique and approach as large as any between two treatments of the same scene. Within a play that in this edition is almost overwhelmed with historical visualisations, and given such recurrent shifting of genre, the idea 225

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96 Henry Singleton, engraved by Charles Taylor: ‘Queen Katherine’, The Shakespeare Gallery, 1792. Image size 15.3 × 9.2 (6 × 35/8 ).

of the volume as a reading edition giving a consistent experience of the play is completely dispelled. In some of the plays, most obviously the comedies, the selection of images consists largely of frontispieces and internal engravings from successive editions. It is here that the edition takes on most directly the identity of a visual variorum, valuable in instantly displaying changing tastes in selection of scenes and styles of depiction. A major value of this arrangement most likely lay in the stimulus it provided to comparative conversation: which of the images was the most effective, the truest to the play’s progression, or – especially in relation to the more recent images, and current taste – the most effective at showing the characters’ emotions? The process allows, for example, comparison of treatments of Shylock in the court scene by Fuseli, Isaac Taylor, J. H. Ramberg and William Hamilton, along with a very fine mezzotint by H. Meyer after W. H. Watts (1814) and Grignion’s engraving 226

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97 Henry Fuseli, engraved by William Blake: Vision of Queen Katherine, Chalmers, 1805. 16.2 × 9.2 (63/8 × 35/8 ).

after Parkinson of Macklin in the role, from the Bell edition of 1775 – all in the space of eight quarto pages of text (Vol. VI, pp. 87–94). Similar opportunity is offered for the death of Juliet (Vol. II, pp.130–3), with images by Northcote (from the Boydell Gallery), de Loutherbourg (Bell 1788), Rowe (1714), Hayman (Hanmer, 1740–4) and Anthony Walker (1754: see Fig. 46), with Ramberg’s ‘Mrs Kemble as Juliet’ between de Loutherbourg and Rowe. The most extensive collection depicts the death of Cleopatra (Vol. 8, pp.160–1). After Hayman’s frontispiece of the clown delivering the asp come eleven depictions of the death scene, which once more elide notions of history and ideas of Shakespeare. The first image is Thomas Hellyer’s engraving of Anne Damer’s bas-relief of the scene for the Boydell Gallery, from the title-page of the second volume of the Collection of Prints. The death thus first appears in Neoclassical terms, allowing the emotional involvement to increase slowly in the subsequent 227

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98 Angelica Kauffman, engraved by G. Scorodoomoff: Cleopatra, 1776, from an extra-illustrated copy of Heath’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1807. Page size (in this copy) 35 × 31.7 (133/4 × 121/2 ).

images. Moreau le jeune’s version (Bell 1788) follows, and then the first of the non-Shakespearean images, an engraving by G. S. Facius ‘From a Capital Statue at Venice’. A fine stipple engraving after Angelica Kauffman by the Russian emigr´e Gavriil Skorodumov, signed here as G. Scorodoomoff, is next (Fig. 98), followed by an unidentified but probably earlier engraving, again depicting the event rather than its treatment by Shakespeare. Next comes a small circular watercolour inscribed, by George, ‘Mr . Duval Delt. Penryn Cornwall Augt 28. 1803’. A large oval stipple engraving follows, and then the engravings from Rowe (1714), Burney (Bellamy and Robarts), Henry Tresham (Boydell–Steevens) and Fuseli (Chalmers). This is perhaps the illustrative equivalent of glutting one’s sorrow on a morning rose: it is a forceful indication of the importance of the emotional moment, and its essential role in the affective world of its time, to which Shakespeare’s play is harnessed. 228

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While in this case the multiple images reinforce a single reading of the text, where the mood and tone of the plays offer less potential for such one-dimensional readings the use of images can be disjunctive. The abrupt juxtaposition of text and unlikely graphic readings is at its most extreme in the Roman plays, in which prints made from images on coins or cameo portraits are dominant. This is probably the only setting in which any attempt is made to match both content and style of execution with the period of the play – always, it is tacitly assumed, the period in which it is set, not the period of its composition or first performance. This seems to have been an approach followed consensually in several sources, the ‘Advertisement’ to Shakespeare Illustrated explaining why: In respect to such Plays of our Author as are founded on Roman Stories, the most authentic representations of their principal Heroes have been delineated from Coins and Gems, or from copies of them in books of unquestioned fidelity. (I.iv)

The result is a rather curious double assumption, first that the images are accurate representations of the individuals shown, and secondly that these figures – both visually and in their character – resemble those in Shakespeare’s plays. Historical accuracy here attains even greater force, the stylistic incongruity between Roman coins and Shakespearean language and character being simply overridden by the need, overwhelming but unstated, for assumed authenticity of depiction. Consequently, the dysfunction between such images and the presentations of characters in Picturesque mode is best seen not as an obstacle to an experiential reading but as an example of the multiple encounters that such editions facilitate – and that, indeed, define it. This multiplicity of images of characters is balanced in the Heath edition by its other main group of visual elements, watercolours that convey a variance of style and stance just as great as that of the monochrome prints. Geo. Webbe contributed two images, a sketch on toned paper of the witches in Macbeth and a more fully drawn image of Falstaff lying on the battlefield (Vol. VI, facing page 131). While the latter betrays the limitations of the artist’s technique, the former is tightly drawn and suggestive of dark power, a glimpse of the work of a talented amateur in response to what at the time was considered a major element of the play’s force. Jeayes contributes images of three main kinds, significant in different ways as mediations of the plays and their public and critical reception. First there are reduced copies of paintings by Fuseli, Hamilton, Barry, Smirke and Hodges, celebrated in their day through exhibition at the Boydell Gallery. Some are important in suggesting the original coloration of canvases now known only through their 229

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engraved form.14 Francesco Zuccarelli’s Macbeth Meeting the Witches15 is also copied in watercolour, suggesting that Jeayes’s experience as painter and connoisseur was quite extensive. The original exists in two versions16 and, while it was also reproduced as an engraving,17 Jeayes could only have copied its colouring from one of the two originals. One was exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1767, and Jeayes may have seen it there: if not, he could only have done so at the home of the owner – an interesting sidelight on painting practices of the day and the social status of George and his circle. A wholly different level of invention and response is presented in copies of paintings by William Bunbury. Commissioned by Thomas Macklin, these were displayed in public and also reproduced in engravings. That they are reproduced alongside the works of Fuseli and Zuccarelli – images of far greater intellectual force and moral gravity – shows again the breadth of visual identities embraced by the volume, reflecting the inclusiveness of contemporary taste. The images also make clear the wholly non-theatrical basis of the watercolours, and reflect the nature of Bunbury’s engravings as images comical in their own right, not through the representation of comic actors or in appropriating the plays for graphic satire. Jeayes’ remaining sixteen watercolours, of which five are for Macbeth, are the most remarkable, showing an originality of conception and composition in isolating one linguistic component of a speech for presentation within a setting of contemporary landscape and event. Macbeth’s ‘This castle hath a pleasant seat’ is presented as a couple in contemporary dress walking leisurely towards the castle and observing the ‘temple-haunting martlet’ emerging from the eaves (Vol. III facing page 5). The convergence of the figures and the Strawberry Hill Gothic of the castle rests just short of parody. The Dr Syntax images of Thomas Rowlandson would appear in the Poetical Magazine in July 1809, and were published in volume form in 1812. Thereafter, views of this kind would inevitably be read as satirical, but this watercolour works as a direct statement of the lines’ dramatic irony made visible through contemporary graphic style. In the same play, ‘it was the owl that shriek’d’ (Vol. III facing page 30; Plate 4) is reconfigured with a church in a moonlit landscape, an owl perched in a tree to the right making literal the textual image and balancing the moon partly hidden in cloud, in a counterpoint of light sources echoing a favourite device of Joseph Wright’s. Seen within a continuous reading of the play, the image functions – to use a cinematic parallel – by pulling right back from the act of Duncan’s murder towards a landscape that is, quite simply, innocent of the knowledge. In this way, it makes quietly implicit the opposition between natural world and unnatural murder.

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The literary approaches of these watercolours make them remarkable glimpses of what at the time was a wholly new critical approach to the plays, parallelling the ideas of Walter Whiter, whose Specimen of a Commentary on Shakespeare had appeared in 1794.18 The assertion in the volume’s subtitle that it was ‘derived from Mr Locke’s doctrine of the association of ideas’ suggests its analytical approach to metaphor. Whereas Whiter seeks to clarify the working of the image by explaining the nature of the comparison, exploring the exact order and meaning of the ideas which it associates, and their effect, Jeayes’s approach is to take language out of its narrative and moral frame and give it graphic form. In different ways, both explore the nature and effect of fragments of associative language, moving away from the concern with character and morality, then the main thrust of critical writing, towards what would become, in the work of Caroline Spurgeon, the basis of a psychoanalytic approach and, in that of Maud Bodkin, an exploration of mythic archetypes.19 The visual statement of such an associative nature in language appears simply illustrative, but in fact is more intricate in its assertions. It forces the onlooker to draw a connection between graphic and verbal vocabularies, extending the ‘association of ideas’ derived by Whiter from Locke into the process of transfer between verbal and visual media. The result is that what may appear to be an exaggerated focus on a fragment of language becomes an analytic statement rich in implication for the reader – and, more important, a stance that accepts the act of reading and association as fundamental to the experience of the plays, placing at its core the complexity and graphic expression of language, in the process displacing character, event and theatrical action. Jeayes’s images demonstrate their ‘association of ideas’ through a very particular visual channel, the landscape of the Picturesque enlivened through associations with the Gothic imagination. This is most obvious in another image from the same play (Vol. III, facing page 52; see Plate 3) which takes as its source lines from Act 3 Scene 2: Macbeth: ere to black Hecate’s summons The shard-born beetle with his drowsy hums Hath rung night’s yawning peal, there shall be done A deed of dreadfull note (3.2.41–4).

Style and setting are archetypical Picturesque, bringing together features common in Gilpin’s aquatints. The ruined abbey is a reference not only to Gilpin’s images of Tintern Abbey but to a whole tradition of sketches, watercolours and engravings from the last decade of the century.20 More direct assimilation of Gilpin’s infusion

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of landscape with affective qualities is demonstrated by comparison with an aquatint from his Forest Scenery (see Plate 2). The text that accompanies the plate includes this claim: For the use, and beauty of the withered top, and curtailed trunk, we need only appeal to the works of Salvator Rosa, in many of which we find them of great use.21

In Jeayes’s image the aestheticised trees, through the emotional qualities with which they are invested, become a visual metaphor of a verbal one, a hypermetaphor that generates not so much an association of ideas but an association of feeling. The watercolour has one further effect, that takes it beyond the accretion of feeling through allusion. It includes the figure of an observer, so that the onlooker is made aware of the act of Picturesque observation that is taking place, revealing its identity as metaphor. This is reinforced at a literary level by the presence of the words from the text in the cartouche above the image and by the diagrammatic references made in the roundels in the frame. Above, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are shown in postures that reveal their moods at the start of this scene, hers crystallised in the line ‘How now, my lord, why do you keep alone’ (3.2.8), his in the assertion ‘better be with the dead’ (3.2.19). Beneath, the ‘shardborne beetle’(3.2.42) is shown with entomological exactness, conveying the other extreme of the scene, where Macbeth has set the temporal limit for his action in the murder of Banquo. These emotive and temporal signpostings release the main image to reveal the mood, or associative idea, of the speech, in the scenic depiction of the ‘drowsy hums’ that intervene between the speech and the action to which it refers, which is already beyond Macbeth’s control. This framing explains why the solitary figure is an essential part of the composition: such contemplation, like the ability to sleep without ‘the affliction of these terrible dreams’ (3.2.18), is revealed as already lost to Macbeth. Seen within these frames, the allusion to Gilpin’s imagery is powerfully ironic. Not always do Jeayes’s excursions into Picturesque association work so well: a watercolour in Titus Andronicus (Vol. V facing page 92) attempts to repeat the approach but fails because it does not have the same effect of narrative suspense. But in the Macbeth watercolours Jeayes reveals an original, if minor, interpretive talent and, more importantly in the present context, reveals it as the vehicle through which a reading of the plays is given expression. Elsewhere, Jeayes uses the associative power of his visual sense to convey a broader involvement with the plays. An image from Timon of Athens (Vol. VII facing page 86; Plate 5) is headed with a quotation from Timon’s rejection of Apemantus: ‘If thou wert the fox, the lion would suspect thee’ (4.3.331). The 232

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cartouche at the foot shows a lion looking ominously at a fox; but the major key to the image is the very distant viewpoint from which the tiny figure of Timon is seen. The abundance and rich coloration of the foliage contrasts vividly with the pallor of the small passage in which Timon is shown digging to bury his gold. Again, the natural setting is used with a strong irony, and Timon’s isolation is shown with a sympathy rare in responses to the character, and to the play, at this time. If the painting reveals a textual association of ideas in this moment of the play, it is perhaps less to Aesop or even, as some critics have suggested,22 to Machiavelli than, in an ironic reversal, to Isaiah 11.6: ‘the lion shall lie down with the lamb’, an inversion of natural enmities from which Timon is wholly excluded. That this approach to the operation of metaphor was not restricted to Jeayes’ watercolours, but had passed even in small degree into the organising consciousness of George, is shown by an etching that appears in Richard II (Vol. IX facing page 95; Fig. 99). Rather than identifying its source, which remains obscure, George has pencilled these lines on its verso: Give me the crown: . . . Here, cousin, seize the crown; Here, on this side, my hand; on that side, thine. Now is this golden crown like a deep well, That owes two buckets filling one another (4.1.181–4)

It is a remarkable juxtaposition, the image – a well-executed, but otherwise unremarkable excursion into rural actualities in the Dutch style, modified by the enriching gaze of the Picturesque tourist – apparently offering a diagrammatic explication of the image of the transfer of kingship. In a sense, it does this: but, like the Jeayes paintings that perhaps spawned its inclusion, it raises questions about the workings of metaphors and the degrees of ‘literalism’ involved when they are isolated and visualised. It also, in a manner that gains power by the nonchalant, almost incidental presence of the rural figures that are part of the convention to which it belongs, emphasises the common rank to which Richard has returned on yielding up the crown. In this, it adds a new dimension of metaphor to the speech and the situation which it is ostensibly concerned to clarify. One image of Jeayes’s stands out as quite distinct from all the others, and indeed must have few if any equivalents in the period (Vol. III facing page 108; see Plate 6). This appears at the very end of Macbeth and shows a couple in familiar contemporary dress standing before a rough monolith while a man in traditional 233

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99 Unidentified engraving to Richard II, from an extra-illustrated copy of Heath’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1807. Image size 25 × 17.2 (9 × 63/4 ).

plaid is apparently addressing them, in the manner of what even in 1800 would have been a tour guide. The image takes as its basis the reaction of Siward to the news of his son’s death, the following exchange being inscribed in the cartouche above the image: 234

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Siward: Had he his hurts before? Rosse: Ay, on the front. Siward: Why, then, God’s soldier be he! Had I as many sons as I have hairs, I would not wish them to a fairer death: And so his knell is knoll’d (5.9.12–17)

Another cartouche at the foot contains the inscription Monument erected over young Siward slain by Macbeth near Dundee in Scotland

While the image has no relation to any actual monument, it reveals an activity deeply contemporary. The two gentlefolk are visiting the monument as part of a tour, and the scene represented is characteristic of the wildness sought out in such expeditions. The lonely setting of the monument to a young hero is an early Romantic archetype, the figures before it representative Picturesque tourists. At the same time, the deepened critical perspective that the image generates, a conceptual tracking right back to reveal the play in deep focus, is metaphoric of a directorial insight at the close of the play that reinvents a final encounter through the emotional categories of the present. For all its wooden figures, its weakly executed atmospheric perspective and its clumsy recruitment of the nearubiquitous dog as compositional balance, the watercolour is a forcefully original reading of the play, suggestive of the kind of response that was possible when, even within the volume’s formal constraints, the imagination was just partially unleashed.

III George’s second extra-illustrated edition is based on the Boydell–Steevens text of 1805, and in many ways is the more provocative. It has slightly fewer images than the Heath edition, although numbers vary considerably between the individual plays. There are more images of actors, many in the form of fine mezzotints from the earlier part of the century, and rather fewer prints from Picturesque Beauties and similar collections. There is also a sequence of nine silhouettes, cut from black paper and mounted on white, with a handwritten text of a few lines. Appearing 235

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in The Tempest, they suggest one form of creative response to the play by a young man in his early twenties, H. Parnell, later 1st Baron Congleton – a circumstance not without an ironic link to the play, since Parnell later took over his father’s post as Chancellor of the Exchequer for Ireland. There are five watercolours by Webbe, one an image of Beatrice overhearing in the arbour from Much Ado about Nothing, a study that seems to relocate the play in the landscape of Jane Austen, with appropriately muted tones of pink and grey, another a copy of the treatment of Falstaff on the battlefield from the Heath edition. These are balanced by more familiar images, including most of John Hamilton Mortimer’s Shakespeare Heads from the mid-1770s, imposing and influential designs at their best when displayed individually, in part because of their large size but mainly because, although shown over short quotations, they are rather studies of characters from the whole extent of the plays than representations of single moments. The volume also contains some unique etchings by ‘Miss Ireland’, daughter of Samuel Ireland. These are simple line-works that copy other images in the volume, mainly the Grimm watercolours, and are significant in providing another fragment of information about the elusive family – not least by suggesting the name of the daughter, elsewhere unrecorded, as ‘J’ (Twelfth Night Vol. IV, facing pages 31–2), showing them as the work of the younger Ireland daughter in differentiation from her sister, Anna Maria de Burgh. George himself reveals how he came by the etchings in an earlier note which betrays intriguing intersections between George and some other currents of contemporary Shakespeare activity: This is an etching by Miss Ireland, a daughter of the ‘Ireland’ who published the Shakespearean MSS that created so much controversy. This and some other etchings in the Collection were made by Miss Ireland but never was completed, and they were made from such of Grimm’s drawings as I procured from Mr Ireland, & he therefore gave me impressions to the state of the plate & assured me nothing further should be done with them. Indeed, I believe the plates were destroyed. (Much Ado About Nothing, Vol. II facing page 74)

The reference here is to Ireland’s Miscellaneous Papers of 1795, the inventions of his son, William Henry.23 Ireland senior died in 1800, his possessions being sold at auction in the same year. The catalogue lists ‘Various etchings, by Miss Ireland’, which were sold to a bidder identified only as ‘Scott’, for the sum of seven shillings,24 but it makes no mention of Grimm’s watercolours. Perhaps George bought all the material from Ireland some time earlier, possibly when the latter was touring Warwickshire to prepare his Picturesque Views.25 But as well as suggesting the provenance of the Grimm paintings, George’s note raises 236

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the tantalising possibility of a convention of young women artists and etchers working on the comedies of Shakespeare, alongside those encouraged to sketch landscapes, at a time when few had published such material, and the market was being flooded with Picturesque and sentimental views. Two watercolours extend the text’s relation to contemporary aesthetics in similarly remote, though quite different, directions. They are captioned, in George’s hand, ‘Lieut. Rob. Cowan: So. Devon Militia Pinxt. 1801 and Presented by him to Geo: C. George, Penryn Cornwall for his Shakespeareian [sic] Collection’. The first (Cymbeline: Vol. VII facing page 78) shows Imogen entering the cave, barely discernible within a twilight landscape showing a river winding towards a distant bridge, very much in the manner of the darker Claudean landscapes, which Cowan might very well have seen. Of the two, the second (Cymbeline: Vol. VII facing page 92; see Plate 13) is the more interesting since it shows a scene reported rather than depicted. The caption, a classical urn above the image, contains the stage direction ‘Enter Guiderius’ and the line ‘I have sent Cloten’s clotpoll down the stream’ (4.2.183). The borrowing from Claude has interesting resonances. The concern with ideas of Britishness in the play is paralleled in the appropriation of Claude’s paintings into a British setting, a major dynamic of cultural history in the second half of the century. Englishmen bought his paintings on the Grand Tour and at the sales of aristocratic belongings after the revolution; this accelerated the assimilation of the painter’s landscape style into the work of several artists culminating in Turner. The presentation of Claudean imagery in these two watercolours shows its presence in amateur work, from an area of the country at that time distinctly another part of the island. The watercolour is consequently important testimony to the mingling of the play and the style in a non-metropolitan setting. George’s Boydell edition is especially important because it contains 113 original watercolours by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm. These are signed and dated by year, mostly 1769, 1770 or 1780. Grimm came to England from his native Switzerland in 1768, so some are among his earliest work in this country. Since Grimm’s will insisted that his correspondence be burnt, no record remains of why he invested so much time in producing these images, and their dating corresponds to neither the order of the plays in the George edition nor any other chronological arrangement from the First Folio onwards. The most likely explanation is that he produced them speculatively in the hope of a commission for an illustrated edition. This is supported by their size and format, and also by the presence of a second version of one of the images for The Tempest (Vol. I facing page 47/3 and 4) executed in a monochrome wash, a common medium for drawings preparatory 237

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to engraving. An image in The Winter’s Tale also occurs in both forms, but here the second is reversed (Vol. IV facing pages 56 and 57), the strongest evidence of their intended use. Given George’s claim to have bought the watercolours from Samuel Ireland, it seems likely that at some stage Ireland met Grimm and either persuaded him to produce more watercolours or purchased those he had already painted, for his collection of Shakespeareana, and that George purchased them from Ireland, most likely after the exposure of his son’s forgeries. The images are swift, light watercolours within black ink outlines, using a restricted palette ranging from pale blue-grey to dark ochre, mainly at the lighter end of the tonal range. The absence of white gouache for highlights, especially in images of this size, and their production on laid paper rather than the more sympathetic wove ‘Whatman’ paper available from the 1750s, evidences their skilful design and execution. In style and coloration they are markedly different from the topographical watercolours that were Grimm’s main output at this time. These were produced while the artist accompanied the travels of Sir Richard Kaye, his major English patron, and represent local landscapes, houses and areas of antiquarian interest.26 They have captions and annotations in Grimm’s hand, which is identical to that of the verso inscriptions on most of the Shakespeare images. These enhance the images by revealing the artist’s own concept of the scenes depicted, something rare in the imagery of the period. The watercolours are a major addition to eighteenth-century Shakespeare imaging, almost certainly representing the first serial response to many of the individual plays by a single artist in a medium combining colour with the scale of the printed book. Yet this integrity is immediately thrown into confusion by their presence in George’s volumes, since the nature of the extra-illustrated edition inevitably undermines a reading of such continuity. Grimm’s most effective images are for the comedies, romances and problem plays. That they are more numerous than those for the tragedies may have a simple pragmatic cause – they appear earlier in the Folio canon, and Grimm might well have taken more time in developing them had the images been intended as the basis of an illustrated edition. But there is also a sense that his technique lacks the gravity needed for the tragedies and histories. The lighter tone with which many of the other plays approach their sombre purposes offers a subtlety to which Grimm’s address is innately suited, the images being presented with a surface calm, or even a suggestion of the momentarily comic, but with enough hinted uncertainty or spite to reveal their darker qualities. Only rarely do these qualities allow a forceful engagement with tragedic action, shown most effectively in the ghost scene from Richard III (Vol. XI facing page 132/1; Plate 12). Here Grimm’s 238

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100 Miss J. Ireland: Richard III, etching after Samuel Hieronymus Grimm, from an extra-illustrated copy of Boydell’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1802. Page size 42 × 32 (161/2 × 121/2 ).

already restricted palette is further reduced, to a carefully graded grisaille in which the ghosts have a uniform pallor but a dignity of posture that contrasts powerfully with the rigid contortions of Richard: it is as if he is suffering rigor mortis while the ghosts move with peaceful articulation. The swaying chandelier directs the light onto Richard’s face, while emphasising the calm procession of the ghosts. The opposition is softly powerful, concentrated by the tonal unity and the large void of the tent, a vacancy given literal and symbolic statement in the empty suit of armour at the bottom left. The watercolour is one of five reproduced as an etching by Ireland (Vol. XI, facing page 132/2; Fig. 100). Comparison reveals how much Grimm’s effect depends on the washed-out colour, which the etching attempts to duplicate by a thinning of line as the column of ghosts recedes, and the large areas of blank paper 239

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by which they are surrounded. This separation of the plate into two areas, the precisely drawn figure of Richard and the openness of the ghosts, successfully translates the image into the new medium, and wisely avoids any depiction of the swirling grey washes of the watercolour. Together, the two are valuable treatments of a scene that, even when they were composed, was very familiar from treatments by other artists that, through medium, size and vocabulary, adopted far more forceful rhetorical stances. In this they demonstrate their sensitivity to the nature of the illustration medium. This is not, however, shared by Grimm’s visual treatments of the tragedies. Perhaps this reflects the proliferating anxiety in visually addressing these plays during the last quarter-century. It cannot be coincidence that in both George’s editions the histories include the largest number of interpolated images, followed by the comedies and romances, with the tragedies the most sparsely treated. The fashion for the Picturesque, perhaps in reaction against the vastness of the Sublime, led its followers towards clearly delimited emotions of the moment rather than larger moral concerns. The collections of prints produced by Taylor, Harding and others discussed in Chapter 6 all reflect this bias, and only those illustrators and publishers committed to producing images for all the plays – Boydell in easel-paintings and Heath, Chalmers and Boydell again, for editions – undertook the full range of the plays. Grimm’s most extensive work is for The Tempest (Vol. I), which contains eight watercolours, and Measure for Measure (Vol. II), which has six. The first series functions through careful control of viewpoint and eyeline, all the scenes taking place on or near the shore and seen from low down, at a short distance. Working in conjunction with the repeated use of similar natural forms as background, this conveys a strong sense of reader involvement at both perceptual and material levels, but the viewpoint is uncomfortable, the reader seemingly encountering the action on emerging from the water. The result is a rather queasy fusion of involvement and separation – which, however displeasing, emblematises the conflicting worlds of intrusion and belonging with which the play conjures. Within these images the presentation of Caliban is striking, one of the few to construct a cross-species identity without parody or patronage, presenting the character with a remarkable dignity. The confrontation when he is finally revealed to Stephano and Trinculo (facing page 53; Plate 6) shows this most clearly, amplifying the text’s earlier satire of the idea of the monster under the oilskin with Trinculo by showing him in a posture that, while supplicatory, is also dignified. These qualities are balanced against the handling of Ariel, which avoids his presentation as a simple force of supernatural good. In the earliest images 240

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the figure is unremarkable, a winged, androgynous pre-adolescent figure. The uncertainty vanishes in the third act when the banquet is overturned: this is a genuine harpy, fearsome in its aggressive, exaggerated breasts, sunken features and predator’s wings, and the scene has genuine power (facing page 58; Plate 7). The two figures are brought together in the final image (facing page 83; Plate 8), showing Ariel foiling the plan to steal Prospero’s books. Ariel is a sinister form emerging from the darkness of the cave, while Caliban’s open-mouthed flight shows a fear in no way countered by the carefully judged depiction of Stephano and Trinculo. There is no obvious comedy here. Instead, the suggestion is of an updated anti-masque, of which the onlooker, in the now habitual littoral position, is an uneasy spectator. What is lost by the inclusion of these images in series with more familiar, less challenging, graphic treatments is to some degree compensated for by the strengths they take on by comparison: the images of Hamilton, Smirke and Peters, while momentarily effective, lack the sustained reflection of Grimm’s watercolours, and Parnell’s silhouettes seem mere souvenirs of festal sleight-of-hand. In this respect, The Tempest benefits from being one of the less extensively illustrated plays, so that, unobstructed by swathes of popular stipple engravings, the Grimm watercolours can achieve a more sustained effect. The images for Measure for Measure have no such consistency, making them far more appropriate to the play’s shifting nature. They work through subtle placings of figures, in groups and as individuals, and through the resulting direction or absence of eyelines. Especially effective are the first and last, which reveal the double nature of the roles that Angelo and the Duke both adopt and seek to reject. On the verso of the first (facing page 29; Plate 10), Grimm has written ‘Isabella intreating Angelo for the life of her Brother Claudius’, pinpointing a moment unusual in graphic treatments of this scene. Even more precise location is given by lines of the text that Grimm has written on the reverse:27 Knock there, and ask your heart, what it doth know that’s like my brother’s fault, – Ang. She speaks, and ’tis such sense That my sense breeds with it. (2.2.140–2, 146–7)

That the words are in the artist’s own hand reveals in the act of selection a precision of reading and response that underlines the subtlety of the image’s control of time. Much of this is achieved through the delineation of the figures. Angelo’s posture, standing against the light from the window and looking away from the kneeling Isabella, seems to imply a moral struggle, or perhaps a moment just before he 241

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fully grasps the force of his own temptation. His isolation and doubt are enhanced by an exaggerated grip on the arm of the chair; his reaction is intensified by the fact that Isabella’s face is hidden, visible only to Angelo in the picture’s space. The image is as loose and light as any of the watercolours, but within these stylistic limits it powerfully conveys the conflicting moral dynamics of the moment and the uncertainty of their resolution. If used as part of an illustrated edition, it would be a major contribution to the ambivalence and doubt felt by the reader at this point: in this context, between an old print of Vienna and Robert Smirke’s treatment of a slightly later exchange between a simpering Isabella and an Angelo-cumSir Jasper, its force remains, although its cooler rhetoric is endangered by the adjacent images. The final image (facing page 101; Plate 11) offers almost a choreographic notation of the elaborate moves of the last scene, through careful direction of gesture and eye line. Escalus points vigorously past the Duke at Lucio, who has just removed the hood of the friar to reveal his identity. The Duke himself looks up and across the intervening space at Angelo, seated in the throne of state under a ceremonial drape, a pose invested with deep irony by the revelations to come. Mariana, having unveiled herself in the previous image, looks downwards, significantly not meeting Angelo’s gaze; Isabella recoils from the Duke with hand upraised; and the Provost stands between Angelo and the other figures, arms outstretched as if attempting to balance the conflicting actualities disclosed. An officer stands at the rear, his visual separation mimicking his mute role in the scene. The web of relations is contained by a setting that itself underlines the moral movement. At the right is a classical colonnade marking the front of the building, before which is an open scene with trees; at the left, the heavily draped throne of state in which Angelo is seated. In addition to stressing the irony of Angelo’s position, this arrangement fulfils several narrative and interpretive functions. It presents both the coming of light in darkness, and the return of natural justice to dispel human corruption: that the move occurs from right to left both emphasises the unexpected quarter from which the resolution occurs, echoing the sudden unmasking of the Duke, and holds back the natural movement of the beholding eye, again concentrating attention on the single moment. This delay is perhaps the most forceful feature of the image: it offers no more resolution than does the play itself in the final scene. The moral uncertainties are taken a step further by the presence of a small band of shadow around the eyes of the Duke, as he gazes at Angelo. The latter’s outstretched hand might suggest resignation or even fear but, matched with his posture of leaning forward, might just as well convey a sense of counter-accusation. The problems of the play are carefully inscribed 242

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in this image, which has a force far greater than its apparent simplicity of tone would suggest. Elsewhere, Grimm’s images display further insights. The depiction of Hero fainting at the wedding employs an iconography recalling Boitard’s image from 1709 (see Fig. 22) but, instead of an entombment, uses a large crucifix above the main altar of what is clearly a European church. The reference is not quite as strong, because of the conventional presence of the crucifix, but its resonance is still audible, and again enhanced by being the focal point of the perspective, which is carefully controlled by having the characters grouped in the foreground facing to a side altar at the right – a compositional device that reveals once again the integration of idea and structure in Grimm’s work.The treatment of Twelfth Night shows unusual sensitivity in avoiding extremes of comedy or malice in depicting Malvolio, while not undermining the spite with which he is treated by Sir Toby and others. In places, a sense of irony surfaces within the lightness of Grimm’s style. The image showing Titania and Bottom (Vol. II facing page 37; Plate 9) is the most pointed example, the central pair being surrounded by putti in a comic appropriation of the Rococo that finely balances the levels of parody within the play itself, without undermining the scene’s darker implications. Elements from paintings by Gravelot, Boucher or even Fragonard come together – the fairy-putto with a basket of flowers, the soft feathering of the foliage, the self-containedness of the figures regardless of the implied onlooker. The stylistic references underline the incongruous pairing between the central characters but also, through their mock Neoclassicism, hint at the classical parodies in which the moment, and the play itself, abound. To say that the treatment of the comedies and romances most fully accords with the scale and style of Grimm’s images is no slight. The watercolours were produced before any other images intended for use in editions of the plays except those for Rowe, Hanmer and – apart from the latest ones – Bell’s ‘Acting’ edition. Published with the plays as engravings, or better still as coloured aquatints, they would have constituted the earliest edition with several images for each play, a major contribution to reading experiences and, perhaps, influencing later illustrative practice. These images apart, the most striking aspect of this edition is the evidence of the guiding hand of George himself in its contents. As well as the carefully written captions on the watercolours, present also in the Heath edition, there are more extensive annotations. Many images have page numbers from the Boydell edition, to ease the process of binding but also to place them more firmly within the plays’ trajectories. Images in the later volumes, especially the histories, are 243

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101 George C. George: ‘The Three Loggerheads’, Romeo and Juliet, from an extra-illustrated copy of Boydell’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1802. Pen and ink, image size 9.5 × 15.5 (33/4 × 61/8 ).

often annotated with the first lines spoken by the characters depicted, perhaps as a way of uniting historical figures with their characters as drawn in the plays. A more radical departure is marked by the presence of complete pages where annotation is combined with graphic elements, small pen-and-ink drawings of meticulous geometric accuracy appearing above passages of uncial copperplate, the whole signed with a simple, underlined, capital G. Two discuss inn-signs referred to in the texts, with line drawings of ‘The Boar’s Head’ in 1 Henry IV (Vol. V facing page 36) and ‘The Three Loggerheads’ in Romeo and Juliet (Vol. IX facing page 97; Fig. 101). The first asserts the prevalence of signs above houses, the second claims that the ‘We three’ references in Twelfth Night should more properly be related to Capulet’s exchange with the Second Servant (4.4.14–21). A more extensive contention occurs in The Merchant of Venice (Vol. III facing pages 72 and 73), where George takes issue with Warburton, Johnson and Steevens on their reading of ‘Royal Merchant’ (3.2.238): ‘These comments are certainly specious and plausible, but I conceive them to be founded in error.’ What matters here is not the accuracy of George’s assertion, but his evident relish in placing himself within the editorial tradition. By doing so through a page of elaborate 244

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calligraphy, which includes a small pen-and-ink drawing, he is adopting the principles of the variorum in both word and image, returning to Johnson’s use of the word ‘illustration’ as annotation or example. These references, and the few others dotted through the collection, reveal another dimension of readerly activity, suggesting a degree of amateur criticism alongside that of the published scholars. Other annotations provide textual criticisms. A full-page note in Coriolanus includes an elaborate drawing of the points of the compass. The accompanying note begins ‘This is one, among the many anachronism’s [sic] of Shakespere’, and goes on to explain that the mariners’ compass ‘was first invented in 1229 and was made public in 1260’, before generously concluding ‘we overlook the Error in the Justness of the Satire’ (Vol. VIII facing page 52). The passage implies a high Tory political stance in its reference to ‘the changeable and unsteady current of popular affection,’ but its historicism is of greater interest, putting in writing what is already clear in the selection of images. Not only are the history plays by far the most extensively illustrated, but the images included are taken from sources such as the Jeffery collection of 1811 and some much earlier original prints – an important elision with historical illustration. A related concern with material accuracy underlies two elaborate genealogical tables that are drawn, with great precision, by George himself. The larger records the English right to the French throne in as much convoluted detail as the explanations offered by the Archbishop of Canterbury at the beginning of Henry V (Vol. V facing page 39; Fig. 102), where the drawing becomes a visual talisman for the play’s main impulse. In 1 Henry VI, an extended quotation from Richard Knolles’s Generall Historie of the Turks28 is accompanied by an inserted print headed ‘Solyman’ (Vol. VI facing page 88) with, on the verso, a list of titles held by the ruler keyed to the account by superscripts. A corollary of this historical materialism is an almost complete absence of awareness of the levels of irony or ambivalence contained within the plays. To a present-day reader, this is clearest in Troilus and Cressida (Vol. VII), illustrated throughout by prints of classical heroes taken from a volume of reproductions from classical sources. Each is encased in a monumental frame and has a descriptive caption. Agamemnon as ‘Graecorum ad Trojam Imperator’, Achilles as ‘Graecorum fortissimus’, Hector as ‘Trojanorum fortissimus’ – these are not concepts of character easy to relate to the characters in the plays. The images that these texts caption show the heroes of the ancient world, presented in a form as close to their original appearance as can be established, and the play is visually rewritten in this light, its undermining of heroic myth quite overlooked. 245

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102 George C. George: Genealogical table, Henry V, from an extra-illustrated copy of Boydell’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1802. Pen and ink, Page size 42 × 32 (161/2 × 121/2 ).

This is not to argue that, in its concern for various levels of imagined accuracy, the edition altogether rejects the plays’ performative identities. Its mezzotints of actors testify to the cult of celebrity enjoyed by figures such as Quin, Barry, Garrick, Kemble, John Harper and Kitty Clive. They also evidence an earlier period of printmaking, where the richer but more vulnerable technique of the mezzotint could be employed to produce a far smaller number of copies, to be sold at a higher price than the copper engravings, etchings and aquatints aimed later at satisfying a broader market at much lower cost. They are balanced by engravings of editors, added to the prefaces of Pope and Johnson which the Boydell edition, unlike Heath’s, reproduces – although their insertion within these texts produces an effect much more familiar for most readers than the unbroken graphic sequence of the other volume’s opening. But the overwhelming weight, in this edition as the Heath, is given to images of the plays as imagined reconstructions – of 246

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places distant in time and space, of people actual and invented, and of patterns of event historical and dramatic, that are graphically reconfigured in forms which, because of their diversity, constantly generate discussion and repeatedly fracture the reader’s imaginative identification with idea, event and feeling.

IV While the two editions are of special interest because of the layers of individual readings they offer, held together by the collecting and arranging consciousness of George C. George, they are significant also in disclosing a larger stance towards the plays evident throughout the eighteenth century. This is the overlapping between the graphic styles and narrative stances adopted in the depiction of historical events within the writing of history and the reception and reinvention of the plays. While this might be discussed with relation to any individual edition, it is appropriate at this point because the extra-illustrated editions unite the two streams in a directly material way, bringing together engravings from the major historical volumes and editions of the plays as a means of enhancing the narrative of events as directly experienced actuality in which a striving for truth, emotional and factual, is a constant, yet unstated, priority. Together the two editions include all of the main strands of historical illustration and those of Shakespeare imaging, making very clear their mutual assimilation and influence. The relation has already been suggested in the discussion of Henry VIII, but it is closest in the treatment of Richard III. Both editions contain, in different versions, one of the earliest images from a history, part of a series of engravings of monarchs published in the edition of David Hume’s History published by Thomas Cadell. It uses as its main element the anonymous late fifteenth-century portrait that is the basis of most subsequent images,29 although almost certainly the image was copied from the engraving by George Vertue published in Wheatley’s London in 1733. It is surrounded by a monumental frame of the kind used by Bell in his edition of the same year, at the foot of which is a predella showing a scene that, while indistinct, seems to record a series of murders with, at its centre, the smothering of the Princes in the Tower. George’s Boydell edition uses the first version of the print, engraved by S. Hall for inclusion in the edition published by Cadell in 178830 (Vol. XI facing page 100; Fig. 103). The image has been framed further by the heading ‘Shakespere K. Richard 3. Act 4. Sc. 3’. and the quotation of the first eight lines of Tyrrel’s soliloquy. The Heath edition contains the smaller but otherwise identical image engraved by A. Smith for a later version31 (Vol. IX facing page 118/1), with a similar heading but only the first line 247

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103 S. Hall: Engraving of Richard III, from Cadell’s edition of The History of England by David Hume, 1789. 23 × 15 (9 × 57/8 ).

of Tyrrel’s speech. In both, an image produced for a work of history is absorbed into a literary-dramatic text. The Heath edition follows this directly with the engraving produced by James Heath after James Northcote’s painting that was one of the first to be exhibited in the Boydell Gallery and issued in 1791 as one of the earliest prints for inclusion in the Boydell–Steevens edition (Vol. IX facing page 118/2). It typifies the approach of illustrations for both plays and historical narratives, halting the event at the moment just before the murder, echoing the text by showing the victims ‘girdling one another / Within their innocent alabaster arms’ with the ‘book of prayers’ open next to them. The accentuation of these features by their placement in strong light increases the sentiment of the moment, and a religious thrust is added by the crucifix hanging at the rear. All but the last three lines of Tyrrel’s speech is reproduced, strengthening the location of the event in the experienced present rather 248

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than the narrated past, since the lines omitted refer to Tyrrel’s leaving the dead princes and hastening to report to the king. Whereas the play has a spoken account of the murders, the engraving shows the events immediately before them. In this, it acts denotatively, exactly as does a prose account in a historical narrative, seeking to create immediacy from a verbal record. In the wish to present direct experience – and one that stresses emotional reactions driven by sensory impulses – image and text have developed a relationship in the play that is far closer to a continuous prose narrative than a visual response to dramatic action. And, of course, both have contributed to the growth of one of the most enduring myths of popular English history. Among the other images of the death of the princes, the Heath edition includes one engraved by A. Smith after Robert Smirke. This is one of the engravings commissioned for another edition of Hume’s history (Vol. IX facing page 118/7). Encased in a less elaborate frame, bearing a scroll on which is partly legible the words ‘Magna Charta’, it is titled ‘Murder of Edward V and the Duke of York’. The format and framing reveal it as one of the images commissioned for Smollett’s continuation of Hume’s History.32 The image has no additional text, presumably because its large size makes this impractical, but its placement within a series of depictions of the murder reveals that, for George as presumably for many other readers, there is essentially no difference between Shakespeare’s text and the actual events of the past as recorded by engravers. Placed three images before it is a smaller and slightly later engraving by C. Warren after C. M. [Caroline] Metz (Vol. IX facing page 118/4: Fig. 104). Its heading reads ‘Engraved for Cooke’s pocket version of Hume’s England’.33 Beneath it is the caption ‘Edward V. Vol. IV. Ch 23. P. 259. The smothering of the Princes in the Tower by order of Richard Duke of Gloucester’. This reveals the plate’s origin in a discussion not of Richard III but of one of his supposed victims: yet it appears with the other images of the murder, and, like the first Hume print, is placed between George’s manuscript heading ‘Shakespere’ and lines 17–20 from the speech, those most directly descriptive of the murder. Again, the literary subsumes the historical: here, as throughout the edition, the visual narrative forms part of a larger myth of national history developed from Shakespeare’s play and absorbed by the reader in an experience of carefully mediated, carefully directed sentiment.

V The account of these two editions is inevitably limited, because of their size, and because of the brevity of the book in which it appears – so there is within this 249

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104 Caroline Metz, engraved by C. Warren: Richard III, from an extra-illustrated copy of Boydell’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1802. Page size 42 × 32 (161/2 × 121/2 ).

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chapter another act of selective dialogue, parallel to that of the editions being discussed. The only way to recapture anything approaching the experience of reading such a series of volumes is by direct engagement, either individually or through social discourse. But addressing the two editions in this manner has the advantage of revealing in rapid succession a series of approaches to the texts, both graphic and verbal, through which the plays were available in the final quarter of the century. The two editions are particularly valuable in recording such practices in a setting essentially non-metropolitan, despite its betrayal in places of metropolitan influences and directions. That the editions are the product of a small group of enthusiasts, working with various degrees of co-operation, increases rather than diminishes their importance, offering a particular way of seeing not offered by the scholarly editions that are, quite rightly, a major focus of academic attention: the response of a well-informed, amateur readership transmediated into graphic form. This chapter also has another purpose, complementing the earlier chapters in conveying the variety of visual treatments of the plays available to readers in the period of a little more than a century, from Boitard’s first designs for Rowe to the engravings that appeared in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Editions that followed would use very different print procedures, in both letterpress and image, and were directed at, and read by, larger and more diverse audiences. One thread of continuity, however, remains: the concern for historical authenticity and accuracy which, as the last paragraphs have suggested, underlined the approach of George C. George not necessarily in assembling his images, but clearly in writing the notes with which he himself contributed, as ‘illustrations’ both annotative and graphic, to these remarkable volumes.

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CHAPTER 8

EARLY VICTORIAN POPULISM: CHARLES KNIGHT AND KENNY MEADOWS

Writing critically about Victorian editions of Shakespeare is beset by all kinds of problems, which run directly counter to the assumption that, because they are relatively recent, information about them should be easy to acquire. The greatest is the task of establishing what in earlier circumstances would be termed a copytext. From the 1840s, with the new methods of production listed in Chapter 1, and networks of distribution facilitated by railways and improved communication with the empire and North America, publication grew exponentially in the effort to satisfy a rapidly growing and increasingly diverse reading public. The result was that many texts were produced in a bewildering variety of forms. Following the example of the Victorian novel, most Shakespeare editions appeared initially as serial paper-bound parts, which were then issued in three or more volumes, often with a range of different bindings and sometimes in various physical formats. Introductory material was sometimes reissued separately, and the text often presented again in a large-paper edition, or with additional illustrations, before eventually being offered as a cheap single volume text. Many were also published in the United States in slightly altered formats. Perhaps in an effort to keep many versions available simultaneously, little attention was given to recording the date of publication, so that establishing which edition is being referred to in subsequent discussions, or even library catalogues, is far from simple. That many publishers’ records were either lost in the London blitz, or mislaid or deliberately ‘weeded’ through the mergers and acquisitions of the 1970s and 80s, does not make the task any more straightforward. What emerges from this is that, just as the First Folio cannot be regarded as a finite entity because of running changes made by individual typesetters, and the editions of John Bell exist in various forms through different placing 252

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of their illustrations, so must the Victorian illustrated Shakespeares be seen as multiform constructions. The four major editions, those of Charles Knight, Barry Cornwall,1 the Cowden Clarkes and Howard Staunton, all first appeared in serial parts. Soon afterwards they were issued as casebound volumes, and then in many variants – with and without annotations or biographical material, and in formats in which the relation between image and text was significantly changed. Sometimes increased in number, sometimes diminished, and often placed differently within the text, the engravings contributed to the new identities of the volumes in ways that, like the changing forms of the volumes themselves, were designed to appeal to a number of markets, and hence contributed to a variety of reading experiences. Related to this question of identity is one of hierarchy: is it possible, or desirable, to establish which of the forms is the most important, and why? Any attempt to answer these questions will have important consequences for present-day assessments of Victorian experiences of the plays. It is most insistent in discussions of the Staunton edition, where the illustrations were re-sited after the original publication to make full use of the larger format, with important consequences on their interpretive value, as Chapter 9 will make clear. Similar physical changes occur in later editions of both Knight and Meadows, albeit with effects not quite so insistent on the reader’s experience of the plays. For all these reasons, establishing the exact identity of the edition, its physical format, and the nature and extent of its circulation becomes essential. While many of the versions are identical, some contain changes of layout that, apparently minor, have important effects on the reader’s experience of the play. In practical terms, however, because of the editions’ prolixity and the cavalier approach of publishers to their naming and dating, it is not always feasible. One simple deduction may perhaps be made. Because of their cheapness, the serial parts may well have been read by those who were approaching Shakespeare for the first time, rather than reading the plays again in a new edition, or relating them to what they had seen in the theatre. This would imply that they offer an experience of the plays in which the images are as significant as the verbal text and its annotations, if any, in the reader’s construction of the plays. Further, given that serial publication was an early and efficient way of covering the initial costs of typesetting and commissioning engravings, it is reasonable to suppose that, as with serial novels, the revenue they generated made possible the far riskier undertaking of publishing in complete volumes, just as the sale of volumes by subscription had financed publishing ventures in the preceding century. As the individual parts sold for between 1s (5p) and 2s 6d (12 1/2 p) each, their circulation must have been large to allow the costs to be recouped; hence, their influence was 253

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probably the most widespread of the forms the editions assumed. But it would be simplistic to claim that they represented the dual text at its most incisive, as the various forms of the Staunton edition make clear. The material diversity of Victorian Shakespeare editions was largely driven by a wish to attract every level of a rapidly stratifying readership that reflects the Victorian ethos of social mobility through self-improvement. In this way, commercial ambition worked alongside ethical principle. The generation of publishers, principally Constable, Longman and John Murray, who had earlier produced the works of the great Romantic writers, had by the 1830s been displaced by new figures, including John Cassell and the brothers Daniel and Alexander Macmillan, the last-named being instrumental in the production of the so-called ‘Cambridge’ Shakespeare in the 1860s. All were motivated in various proportions by religious zeal, a concern for social betterment through the moral value of education, and a desire to provide forms of entertainment as alternatives to drink. For Charles Knight, it was the latter two that were the impetus behind a number of serial publications of the 1830s and 40s, within which the edition generally known as the Pictorial Shakspere2 should be seen. The first of its fifty-six monthly parts appeared in 1838, the last in 1843. Its subsequent forms began with an edition of seven volumes, with a supplementary eighth containing Knight’s biography of Shakespeare, and moved through various forms including a ‘National Edition’, before appearing in the United States over the imprint of the nascent firm of Peter Fenelon Collier. Of these, the ‘National Edition’ differs in omitting the original title-pages and instead using the ‘Persons Represented’ embellishments around the printed titles, and moving the illustrative note sections to the end of each play. This modification by reduction of the reading experience is strangely contradictory, the relocation of the notes aiding reader involvement, but the absence of the imaginative title-pages removing a major force towards it. As well as being much earlier than the editions of Staunton and the Cowden Clarkes, the Pictorial Shakspere differs from them in the ethical and the hermeneutic stance it adopts to the plays. Knight’s partnership with Henry Brougham in the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (SDUK), for which he published the Penny Magazine (1832–46) and the Penny Cyclopaedia (1833–44), both of which overlapped with the Shakespeare editions, reveals this well. The Pictorial Bible (1836), the Pictorial History of England (1837–44) and London Pictorially Illustrated (1841–4) all display Knight’s concern with Christian education coupled with selfadvancement – of the material fortunes of the publisher as much as of the reader. This quality is apparent, too, in the Shakespeare; but it would be a mistake to regard the work as the quintessence of Gradgrindism. While the primary concern 254

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is with the presentation of what are conceptualised as the historical circumstances that gave rise to the plays’ events, there is also an element within many of the images, most particularly the frontispieces to each play, that offers imaginative and often original interpretation. In his autobiography,3 Knight makes clear his approach to illustration. He rejects Rowe’s frontispieces as ‘chiefly of a theatrical character and, for the most part, thoroughly unnatural’ (II.284), and the ‘grand historical pictures’ of the Boydell–Steevens edition as ‘a remarkable example of how painters of the highest rank in their day had contrived to make the characters of Shakspere little more than vehicles for the display of false costume’ (ibid.). His aim was to produce images based on neither the theatre nor the close textual readings of earlier critics, but which instead offered visual evidence for ‘the realities upon which the imagination of the poet must have rested’. These he listed as ‘the localities of the various scenes, whether English or foreign. The portraits of the real personages of the historical plays; the objects of natural history, so constantly occurring, accurate costume in all its rich variety’ (II.284). The same philosophy of material knowledge supports text and image in the magazines and books Knight had produced for the SDUK, most directly the Penny Magazine. The parallel reveals the fundamental mindset that drove contemporary perception, that was both realised and symbolised in the new technologies of paper-making and printing. The wonders of plant reproduction, the source of the Nile, the operation of a steam engine and the workings of Shakespeare’s genius (with full reference to the language and beliefs of his time and the historical events that the plays chronicled) – all could be explicated through descriptive prose and diagrammatic wood-engraving. Knight introduced the bound edition of the plays by claiming that the images were designed to ‘offer a combination of the beautiful with the real, which must heighten the pleasure of the reader far more than any fanciful representation, however skilful, of the incidents of the several dramas’.4 That this did not always receive public acceptance is suggested by a later comment from the same passage, made in response to criticisms that there were too few interpretive engravings: ‘Imaginative embellishment will, however, be partially employed, in all cases where it is demanded by the character of the particular drama.’ Through this balance, the edition claims to offer both a rigorous inventory of the scenes and origins of the plays and an aesthetic response to them – the fact of Gradgrind and the fancy of Sissy Jupe, to use Dickens’s slightly later statement of the debate. In the serial parts, each play followed a pattern that imposed a rigorous structure on the reading process. After the pictorial title-page came an ‘Introductory 255

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Notice’ of several pages, sometimes with separate sections on period, setting and costume. The following page, headed ‘Persons Represented’, surrounded the list of characters with an elaborate, often emblematic frame. The use of the English heading rather than ‘Dramatis Personae’ perhaps reveals the historicist approach, suggesting that the plays are representations of actual personages rather than imaginative inventions – although, as will later emerge, if this had been the aim it was contradicted by the visual embellishments of these pages. Then would come an engraved headpiece, after which the first act would be presented without visual treatments. At its close there was generally a small engraved tailpiece, sometimes enlarged or even omitted according to the available space. A section of several pages headed ‘Illustrations of Act I’ would follow, containing glossarial and textual notes and, in many cases, small line engravings, combining two senses of the word ‘illustration’ and two kinds of gloss, verbal and visual. Concerned with historical, topographical and etymological elements of the plays’ origins, these commentaries redefine the reader’s approach to the text after interrupting its movement, doubly breaking the involvement. The rest of the play was similarly treated, before a ‘Supplementary Notice’ provided more extensive critical material. Both notes and images are concerned with providing factual information about the period in which the play is set and, in histories or tragedies, with the people and events it dramatises. The swerve towards the annotative and explanatory, coupled with the breaking of the play’s continuity, defines the reading experience as more analytic and historicist than empathetic, an approach quite in accord with the objectives of Knight’s other publications. The result of this procedure is that the plays do not primarily present an aesthetic experience derived from engagement with action and sympathy with character. The fracturing of the dramatic current by the inclusion of comments after each act makes such involvement impossible; and the engravings of settings and sources continually impede it. It is not that the plays are being seen as archival documents, relaying data about the place and time of their setting rather than of their performance, but rather that they are set within the frame of such documents, which act as a corrective or redirection for the imaginative involvement achieved in the theatre or when reading a novel. On the surface, the concern with historical accuracy is an aspect of the move towards super-realism and authenticity in the theatre begun by Kean and Kemble, that will culminate in the productions of Beerbohm Tree. But the implications on the reading experience need careful exploration, since they have something of the nature of historical scholarship, acting to redirect the reader away from what even in the most avowedly ‘authentic’ theatre is the main object, the plays themselves. 256

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The didactic import of the rigid structuring of the plays’ annotations is reinforced by the nature and placing of the illustrations other than the title-pages and ‘Persons Represented’ images. The serial version contains 910 wood engravings, with a further 84 in the supplementary volume containing Knight’s life of Shakespeare – at least as many as any of the other major Victorian pictorialisations. If from these are subtracted the head- and tailpiece to each act of the plays, the titlepage and the ‘Persons Represented’ – a maximum of twelve images for each of the 37 plays – the result is that over 450 of the images occur in the sections of notes, where they function as visual clarifications or examples of textual references. In As You Like It, for example, images clarify the annotations of ‘beadsman’ and ‘boots’; in Hamlet portrait miniatures help gloss ‘Hyperion to a satyr’; in Timon of Athens Hogarth’s Rake’s Progress is adduced to show a moral parallel. This use of images is the same as that of another contemporary discourse, the educational part-work or encyclopaedia, of which Knight’s own publications for the SDUK were early and prominent examples. These were a major form of popular education, expanding the knowledge of large numbers of the newly literate working class: the assimilation of the Shakespeare text into their discursive frame provides a significant, but hitherto overlooked, appropriation of the national dramatist. In his study of the tradition of illustrated editions, Jonathan Bate sees Knight’s engravings as part of the ‘novelization and historicization’5 of the plays. This claim needs qualification. The former process will be explored later; as to the latter, it is clearly evident, but in a very specific sense, often concerned as much with topographical as temporal location. There are, for example, engravings of Messina Cathedral (Much Ado about Nothing) and a mountainous coast with Italianate buildings for Illyria in Twelfth Night. Timon has several images of Athens, the Roman plays suitable classical architectural forms, and the histories depictions of battlefields and castles. Such engravings are visual glosses on the plays, not visualisations of their action. As a result, the reader’s experience of their events is quite different from that in the illustrated novel, offering evidential material about the setting of the plays instead of sensory and empathetic involvement with character. The plays are presented as a particular kind of knowledge, in which images of the actualities to which they allude are offered as visual annotations. They are thus placed within a historicised frame, rather than being offered as an actual history. In its illustrations, Knight’s Shakespeare resembles most closely the part-works produced at the same time by Knight’s own stable of artists and engravers. As recent studies of his work have emphasised,6 Knight’s attitude to visual material was both moralistic and intensely practical. Charges that through his use of Old 257

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Master images Knight tried to inculcate ‘middle-class values’ into his readers are simplistic, and fundamentally misinterpret Victorian ideas of self-improvement: the moral worth of such images was regarded as both valuable in itself and a way of moving towards a fulfilment both moral and practical – as the entry to higher levels of employment and hence financial security. Such a fusion of ethical and fiscal ambition is reflected in Knight’s presentation of such material through the latest techniques of production. Early in the founding of the Penny Magazine he brought together artists, engravers and printers to unite the processes of design and production, ensuring that images were effectively designed for production on rotary presses.7 He was one of the earliest users of the stereotype plate, subsidising his own ventures by selling plates of topographical images to publishers in Europe and, later, avoiding costly import duties in the United States by having his books, including Collier’s version of the Shakespeare edition, printed there from Knight’s stereos. Another aspect of Knight’s practicality is the close exchange between the visual materials employed in his publications. All employ images of approximately the same size, suggesting the use of standard boxwood blocks. The first headpiece to The Merchant of Venice (Fig. 105), for example, could easily be interchanged with that for an article on the city in the Penny Magazine (Fig. 106). Style and technique are nearly identical, no allowance being made for the different discourses over which the images appear. In some cases, the same blocks appear in two of Knight’s publications. That for the Presence Chamber, York House, in Knight’s London (Fig. 107) may well have been designed first for Henry VIII, in which it also appears, showing the king dancing, presumably with Anne Boleyn (Fig. 108). ‘Evidence of the murder of the princes’ is given in an engraving captioned ‘the Bloody Tower’ in the History, which appears in the ‘Illustrations to Act IV’ of Richard III. The image of the Globe Theatre at the head of the first Chorus in Henry V subsequently appeared in Knight’s London, as did the image of the exterior of Westminster Hall that is the headpiece to Richard II Act 4. Sometimes, older images are appropriated for multiple uses: the quarrel of Hereford and Norfolk, copied from Froissart, appears in Volume II of the History and the ‘Illustrations to Act I’ of Richard II. The overlaps reveal again the edition’s approach to the plays, suggestive of a specific early-Victorian stance towards knowledge and cultural advancement. It would, however, be a mistake to see these images as diametrically opposed to the more imaginative title-pages. Many,such as the views of Birnam Wood in Macbeth, or the ‘Argosy in the Marseilles Roads’ from The Taming of the Shrew, assume richer meanings when read in conjunction with the text. The former 258

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becomes not the origin of a scene but a setting transformed by the double meaning it has acquired in the text, and the narrative impulse it provides within it; the latter, a visual statement of exotic distance and richness through its allusive function in the play. What might seem directly representational becomes a reinforcement of the plays’ worlds, word and image combining to offer an experience of the play that is wholly readerly. Knight’s intent to enrich through source material acquires a dual edge, eliding the documentary and the imaginative. Such complexity limits the images’ resemblance to those of the contemporary novel. It is closest to one particular practice, seen most notably in the later editions of Scott, where the text is embellished by the addition of topographical and historical engravings which, like some of Knight’s images in the ‘Illustrations’ sections, act as clarifications of textual references. This is not common: most novels of the 1830s and 40s have engravings emphasising character rather than locale, through the mildly exaggerated caricature of Hablˆot Knight Browne or the moral sentimentalism of George Cattermole. A more direct comparison is to William Harvey’s designs for the Abbotsford edition of Scott, which reveal by contrast the precise nature of Knight’s Shakspere images. Harvey’s designs for Kenilworth,8 a historical romance set during the reign of Elizabeth I, show this well. Many are depictions of characters with little or no visible setting, but some are designed to intensify the narrative experience by uniting the two elements. That for chapter 25 (Fig. 109), appears above the caption ‘Bird’s-eye view of Kenilworth Castle’, but shows the building in the distance behind the foreground figures of the Countess of Leicester and her guide, Wayland Smith. This technique of presenting character and event within a setting with some degree of historical accuracy has the effect of drawing the reader into the imaginative current of the fiction. Only in later editions of the plays are character and setting fused in this way, as the next chapter will make clear. Illuminating though these relationships are, however, they are also reductive, obscuring the greater subtlety of many of Knight’s images. Apparent at intervals throughout the volumes is an awareness of the complexity of the illustrative process itself and the traditions with which it intersects, that are offered as further sources or frames. The first volume of Tragedies in the ‘National Edition’ begins with an embellished title-page showing a version of the bas-relief of Shakespeare between the muses of drama and painting. As in the extra-illustrated copy of the Heath edition, the engraving suggests the increased importance of the visual sense in the pages that follow. The title-page to the second volume includes a version of Reynolds’s portrait of Mrs Siddons as the Tragic Muse, with behind her the attributes of the poisoned cup and the dagger held by personifications of 259

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105 Initial page of The Merchant of Venice 1.1, from Knight’s Pictorial Shakspere, 1838–43. Page size 22.2 × 14.3 (83/4 × 51/2 ).

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106 ‘Venice’, The Penny Magazine, 10 August 1839, p. 1. Page size 27.9 × 18.4 (11 × 71/4 ).

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107 ‘York House’, London, edited by Charles Knight, 1841. Page size 30.5 × 21.6 (12×81/2 ).

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108 Headpiece engraving to Act 1 of Henry VIII, from Knight’s Pictorial Shakespere, 1838–43. Page size 22.2 × 14.3 (83/4 × 51/2 ).

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109 William Harvey: Illustration to Kenilworth, Abbotsford Edition, 1842. Image size 9.5 × 12 (33/4 × 43/4 ).

Pity and Terror. The tragedies in their original printing and subsequent versions include engravings of Thomas Lawrence’s paintings of Kemble as Coriolanus and Hamlet; Reynolds’s head of Lear; and, as the headpiece to the ‘Supplementary Notice’ to Henry V, a small reproduction of George Romney’s Infant Shakespeare. The allusion to Rowe’s Hamlet discussed in Chapter 1 (see Fig. 5) is one more of the small group that explore the plays’ performance history, through modes of historical enquiry rather than aesthetic engagement. The ‘Illustrations of Act III’ to Romeo and Juliet include a discussion of Scene 5 that reprints the title page of Alabaster’s Roxana (1632), a rare image of contemporary performance. Even in images of this kind, the implication is that the plays have become part of a culture of antiquarian reading rather than live action. Some of the plays go further, with visual allusions hinting at interpretive comments. A rare example is the ‘Persons Represented’ page for King Lear. Here, the list is bordered by wild flowers, a simple but immediate synecdochic rendering of Lear’s madness, alluding to the performance tradition of wearing flowers in the hair. These images introduce a self-reflexive quality, an awareness of the nature and tradition of Shakespeare imaging, that provides a deeper interpretive current. While all of the plays’ images, whether glossarial in nature or displaying a reflexive awareness of tradition, are assimilated by the reader along with the plays’ words, this dual process takes place under the aesthetic shadow of the title-pages which, as Knight himself made clear, approach the texts with greater 264

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imaginative invention. Some unite temporally disparate elements of the plays, while others use emblems to reveal key themes or tropes: all reconfigure the plays in terms wholly visual. At their most subtle, they transform into static visual form the whole fictive identity of the play and the assumptions on which it rests, balancing involvement with character against awareness of artifice. The tension between a presentation of visual analogues of the plays’ sources and settings and the visualisation of their imaginative currents is most directly evident in the two volumes of the Histories. The first contains King John and the Richard II– Henry V sequence, the second the historically later tetralogy, declaring in their order a concern for historical narrative rather than order of performance. Each follows the familiar procedure for text, notes and ‘Illustrations’, with images included as head- and tailpieces after the illustrative title and ‘Persons Represented’ pages. Many include elements of what Knight denounced as ‘fanciful representation’. All employ depiction as a way of grounding the verbal text in visual actuality to ensure that, alongside reading, seeing is believing. Considered in themselves, these can be very effective, as the title-page for Richard II (Fig. 110) shows. The engraving was designed by Ebenezer Landells, who brought to it his technical training under Thomas Bewick and work in all the major genres of Victorian illustration, including images for Dickens’s novels, Punch and The Illustrated London News. The frontispiece draws on this breadth of experience. Set in an accurate depiction of Westminster Hall, it suspends the action just before the king’s abdication, uniting historical and topographical accuracy with the control of narrative sequence common to contemporary illustrations of fiction, actuality and historical event. Like many of the title-pages, that to Richard II has a predella showing a key moment of action, while providing space for the title. In it, Bolingbroke looks down at the dead king, with two other figures, one with an arm around Bolingbroke’s shoulder, the other standing with head bowed and arms crossed on his sword. The first is presumably Percy, the second Exton. The pairing makes clear in a moment the duality of the play’s close, suggesting Bolingbroke’s regret at usurpation alongside the brutality of Richard’s death. The narrative is reductive but incisive, a graphic statement of a moral issue crucial to the play, through careful selection of a pivotal event as much historical as dramatic in origin. Neither element of the title-page alludes to the theatre, save tangentially through the depiction of Westminster Hall, used in many avowedly authentic nineteenthcentury stagings. To these elements is added a new, and wholly painterly, aspect of depiction. In the larger image, Bolingbroke is shown in shadow while the kneeling Richard 265

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110 Ebenezer Landells: Title-page to Richard II, from Knight’s Pictorial Shakspere, 1838–43. Page size 22.2 × 14.3 (83/4 × 51/2 ).

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is lit strongly from behind, a clear antithesis of good and evil. The implication of divinity in the light shining on Richard is continued in the predella, where Richard’s face, with long dark hair and full beard, is familiar from countless depictions of Christ. The play’s imagery repeatedly draws this parallel: in using this iconography, the image translates one of the play’s recurrent verbal figures into a graphic image. The reference completes the technical diversity of the titlepage, adding textual interpretation to historical setting and narrative caesura. Where the events of the plays are presented visually, most frequently in the Comedies that lack actual historical settings, they are shown not as performances but as naturalistic events. Thisis true even of the woodland scenes in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which are replete with tiny fairies and magical beings. Here, though, the avoidance of novelistic involvement is continued: the images do not show specific events that invite reader involvement, but instead depict characters in a more general way, within suitable but imprecise settings. The most complete example occurs in The Tempest, which moves from a title-page showing Prospero controlling the storm while holding Miranda’s hand in reassurance, telescoping the first two scenes as have designers since Boitard, through a character list with a sleeping Caliban, images of dancing fairies, to the final tailpiece showing wolves howling at the moon before the tree in which Ariel was once imprisoned, the island now returned to its natural state, devoid even of Caliban. The overall mood is one of carefully controlled graphic fantasy that is offered for the reader to observe, not share. Some of the comedies extend and enrich Knight’s usual palette of styles. The images within the text of The Taming of the Shrew, for example, employ the modified documentary technique discussed earlier. From the opening of the first act with ‘Town House, Padua’ through three other images of the city and one of Pisa, and a ‘Public road’, the action continues with the ‘Argosy’ already mentioned, a group of minstrels in invented-authentic costume, and a costume sketch of Paduan ladies. But these are balanced by more complex readings. The reflexive nature of the title-page (see Frontispiece) has been discussed in Chapter 1; at the end of the play, a page opening offers a different kind of dual reading, seeing the play as topography and performance commentary. On the left, beneath the play’s text, appears ‘Sly at the Alehouse Door’: on the right, at the head of the ‘Supplementary Notice’, an elaborate historical reconstruction of ‘Itinerant Players in a Country Hall’. To the doubleness of the title-page has been added a further level, revealing the whole text of the play as an acted entity. Significantly, this appears only in the 1838 edition. In the later ‘National Edition’, both are omitted. Instead, the final image is of a lakeside castle before a lake and distant mountains, in imitation 267

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of a Turner vignette,9 captioned ‘The pleasant garden of Italy’. Subtle, spatial implication of the various levels of performance involved in the play’s printed form is displaced by what is essentially the default option of Victorian imaging, the material depiction of external circumstance. That the omission was most likely determined by considerations of production cost is another dimension of the power of material forces. Despite these different final treatments, The Taming of the Shrew resembles all the other plays in Knight’s edition in never fully resolving the duality between images that function as topographical or historical annotations and those that offer more immediate aesthetic interpretation. Editorial notes on historical circumstances, comments on the plays’ language and character, and theories about authorship and date are accompanied by images that present actual or invented scenes or costumes. These are augmented, in the sections of ‘Illustrations’ or annotations following each act, by graphic presentations that clarify aspects of language, depictions of birds or animals like the ‘female dove’ in Hamlet V, or demonstrations of historical costumes according to rank in Julius Caesar. This joining of verbal and visual occasionally moves into the sphere of criticism, as in the illustrations to Act 1 of Timon of Athens, where Lamb’s exploration of the parallels between Shakespeare and Hogarth is reprinted, along with the lev´ee from The Rake’s Progress and the second scene from Marriage `a la Mode. In offering such a range of annotation and commentary, the edition presents material that, in a present-day edition, might be offered in an introduction or longer notes. Some of the plays are exceptional in lacking separate ‘Illustrations’ sections, perhaps because annotation was thought unnecessary. The results can be striking. Such an omission at the end of Act 3 in The Winter’s Tale (Fig. 111) allows for the presentation in a single page-opening of Antigonus being attacked by the bear and ‘Time, as Chorus’, the latter a winged figure plunging down to earth holding his scythe. The juxtaposition allows the mutual modification of the two images, time the devourer being located in the larger movement of the play to suggest its resemblance to folk-tales. And, of course, both images present the action in wholly visual terms, moving quite outside the realm of theatre, and representing a quite different order of performance. This kind of reading shows the imaginative power that some of the engravings can achieve, particularly in the comedies where material authenticity in illustration is less feasible. It is also an early example of the use of mise-en-page, in particular the visual structure of a complete page opening, that will be exploited by later Victorian illustrators to produce a critical reading of a play through the oppositions and parallels that it discloses. 268

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111 Page-opening from The Winter’s Tale, engraved by Gray and Jackson, showing Antigonus and Time from Knight’s Pictorial Shakspere, 1838–43. Page size 22.2 × 14.3 (83/4 × 51/2 ).

Quite what original readers made of the declared stratification between imaginative title-page and the more referential visual annotation within is hard to say. The latter clearly offered a parallel to the desire to return to sources in the notes of earlier editions, a tradition that Knight acknowledges and extends in his ‘Notices’ and ‘Illustrations’. The imaginative commentary on the nature of theatrical actuality seems to chime oddly with them; but it serves a function, and offers a perspective, increasingly rare in editions and criticism from the nineteenth century onwards, holding at bay the concern for topographical and historical naturalism – and, by implication, the idea of characters as ‘real’ – by highlighting the layers of artifice that are the basis of constant reflection and refraction in the plays themselves. One of the most effective of the plays in balancing various kinds of visual reading is Macbeth. It begins with a powerful title-page (Fig. 112) by William Dickes, one of the group of designers employed in all areas of Knight’s publishing empire. Rejecting the more usual subject of Macbeth’s first encounter with the witches, 269

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112 William Dickes: Title-page to Macbeth, from Knight’s Pictorial Shakspere, 1838–43. Page size 22.2 × 14.3 (83/4 × 51/2 ).

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the engraving visualises images of the reversal of order debated by Ross and the Old Man in 2.4. In the centre a group of horses move violently and without control, reflecting the events after Duncan’s murder; above them, a ‘mousing owl’ is pursuing a falcon. The events take place within a long perspective of mountain tops swathed in mist. In the foreground are two figures, positioned against a wall with battlements, on which the play’s title is incised. The first is Ross, who confirms the rumours about the horses’ cannibalism in the words ‘They did so; to the amazement of mine eyes, / That look’d upon’t’ (2.4.19–20); the second is the Old Man who, looking out of the scene, is depicted with the long beard traditionally associated with an Old Testament prophet. This device provides the scene with both actual verisimilitude and the authority of the vatic, while forming a powerful compositional device to draw the onlooker into the image. Appearing before an edition that inserts passages from Holinshed between each act, it adds another dimension to the diverse histories – play, chronicle and visualised myth – offered to the reader. The engraving firmly places the events of the play within the territory of oral myth. Nature rebels against the unnatural, moving beyond the actuality of the theatre into a complex, almost anthropological frame that involves the reader as witness. The opposed directions of the two foreground characters is also important. As well as leading the reader’s eye into the main ground of the picture, it acts as a visual equivalent of the queasy alternations recurrent in the play’s language almost from its outset: ‘So foul and fair a day I have not seen’ (1.3.38). This critical breadth continues in the embellishment of the ‘Persons Represented’ page. The list is framed by a doorway on which hang two shields and a collection of contemporary weapons – swords, claymores, halberds, axes, lances, pikes, an assemblage made the more brutal by its haphazard arrangement, quite the opposite of the geometric precision of the equivalent design in All’s Well, that presents in visual form the rhythmic, ritual torture to which Parolles is subjected. In the Macbeth engraving, imaginative force is combined with historical authenticity: the collections of arms resembles very closely that assembled, and meticulously identified, in a wood-engraving of ‘Arms from the Tower Armoury’ by Tiffin and Whimper from Knight’s London (II.265). These interpretive visualisations are held in balance against the head- and tailpieces of each act, engravings of Forres, Inverness and Dunsinane. They convey a bleakness that goes beyond the idea of the play as historical reality; but, since many are set at dusk, they also deepen the mood of encroaching moral and physical darkness. The images include depictions of places not mentioned in the text but revealed as important in its events by the sections of ‘Illustrations’. That these pages include extensive 271

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passages from Holinshed gives the reading experience a quality something akin to a Renaissance intermedium, with separate entertainments between the acts of a play or opera. Taken together, the elements ensure a fractured, faceted reading of the play in which sequence is disrupted but where, from the outset, supernatural disorder is revealed as profoundly natural in its consequential, material forms. These are Highlands far removed from the tamed, sentimentalised wilderness shortly to be popularised by Queen Victoria, and best concretised in Landseer’s Monarch of the Glen. Aided by the absence of tartan or other spurious claims to authenticity, they make the treatment of the play one of the few that combine a sense of place with the mood and movement of action and language. The treatment of Macbeth, powerful though it may be, is perhaps exceptional in successfully uniting images across the whole full range of Knight’s techniques of visualisation. Elsewhere, the shifts of register are less effective, less in accord with the mood of the plays and their linguistic operations. Taken as a whole, their concern for representation of setting is dominant, Knight’s visual constructions openly declaring their place in a reference system that in most senses moves away from textual or theatrical discussion, quite different in direction and effect from that of, say, Boitard. Boitard’s images refer to a tradition of iconography and visual narrative; Knight’s to a pattern of visual statement concerned with factual and experiential immediacy. It is shared most closely with his London, Penny Magazine and History of England, and continues in the first issues of The Illustrated London News of 1842. For all of these, the wood-engraving is essentially mimetic and instructional, the visual medium assumed to be directly representational – a flawed assumption, but one shared by readers for whom the acquisition of knowledge of all kinds was an essential cultural accomplishment and means of material advancement. Of this, a knowledge of Shakespeare – in the new cultural and moral significances the term has acquired – is an essential component: Knight’s edition set out to supply it with a peculiarly Victorian fusion of Protestant zeal and commercial acumen.

III The technique adopted by Kenny Meadows for his illustrated edition is remarkable in a number of ways, not least because it develops a strand of graphic presentation quite different from that of Knight’s Shakespeare. The two editions suggest quite different but near-contemporary approaches to the problem of textual visualisation, hinting at two major directions that would be followed throughout 272

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the later nineteenth century. Meadows began his career by designing illustrations to James Robinson Planch´e’s work on Shakespeare’s costumes.10 The book was conceived with the aid and encouragement of Kemble with the aim of releasing the plays in performance from the ‘barbarisms’ of inaccurate costume which, ‘while they rendered them more picturesque, added but little to their propriety’ (Preface, p. 3). In this way, Meadows probably contributed more significantly to the idea of historical authenticity in production than did Knight, a thought not without irony when the overall nature of his illustrations is considered. Whereas Knight pursues the plays through images of topography and material circumstances, tempered as in Macbeth with subtle visualisations of language or theme, Meadows approaches them largely through character, using techniques of grotesque exaggeration. His Shakespeare designs have two points of contact with popular taste and recent tradition. The first is through caricature, evident in the style, if not the narrative operation, of Hablˆot Knight Browne’s work in Dickens’s early serial fictions. While the experience Meadows gained from his work with Planch´e was valuable preparation for the Shakespeare edition, more important in suggesting their nature is his collection Heads of the People. Published in England in 1840,11 with an American edition in 1841,12 this consisted of caricatures of English types, accompanied by short character sketches mostly by Douglas Jerrold, but with contributions from Thackeray and Leigh Hunt. It was remarkably successful, a two-volume edition and a French translation appearing in 1841 and six further editions by 1878. It gave Meadows experience of developing character through exaggeration, established his partnership with the engraver Orrin Smith, and allowed experiment in the placing of images. Its major innovation – albeit one used rarely in the volume – was the opposed placing of two caricatures on the left and right pages of an opening, to reveal a comic difference or make a satirical thrust by comparison, pairing ‘The Debtor’ and ‘The Creditor’ or ‘Mr Rook and Mr Pigeon’, a card-sharp and his victim. From the visual techniques of this volume, as much as through his work with Planch´e, Meadows developed the approaches used in his Illustrated Shakspere.13 Produced under the editorship of Barry Cornwall, it was first issued in serial parts between 1838 and 1840. As the images for London and The Penny Magazine overlapped with the production of Knight’s Shakespeare, so Meadows’s earlier work interacts with his Shakespeare, suggesting ways of seeing the plays that again exploit other contemporary tastes. One aspect of this is shown in the use of paired images of characters. Peter Holland has rightly drawn attention14 to the dynamic exchange evident in the opening from The Merry Wives of Windsor where Ford leans menacingly across the 273

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113 Kenny Meadows, engraved by Orrin Smith: Page-opening from The Merry Wives of Windsor 2.2. The Works of Shakspere, ed. Barry Cornwell, 1838–43. Page size 28 × 20.3 (11 × 8).

whole breadth of the page towards a relaxed, but angry, Falstaff (Fig. 113). Here, the caricaturist is at his best because most controlled, the characters engaging in a genuine exchange at once threatening and comic, the energy enhanced by the figures breaking through the printed rules that divide the columns. The engraving is crisp and deep, using the full range of effects available in a woodblock, medium and design working together to exploit the comic vigour of the scene. In this it acts as a printed equivalent of a moment of genuine interaction on stage. But it does not go beyond this to offer any larger reading: not until the final version of Staunton’s edition with the engravings of Sir John Gilbert will such exploitation of page layout achieve its full potential. Only once again does Meadows attempt such a pairing, showing Falstaff pretending to be King, with Hal before him, in 1 Henry IV, but here the images are far smaller, the earlier energy lacking. 274

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Meadows’s rejection of this technique may suggest his uneasiness with dramatic interaction. It is with more static images that Meadows is at his most effective in his Shakespeare visualisations, and which constitute his most original contribution to Shakespeare imaging: a highly idiosyncratic use of emblematic images to enfold in single statements facets of language, character or plot. The Victorian emblematic revival15 is generally thought of in terms of the early religious and moral imaging of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the founders of the PreRaphaelite Brotherhood, or with the architectural embellishments of the Oxford Movement. Later, the writings of Henry Green began a renewal of interest in emblematic language in Shakespeare’s plays and the work of Geoffrey Whitney.16 Meadows’s work anticipates the earliest of these by at least a decade. Instead of allying it to traditional Catholic thought, he uses the emblem to delineate character and idea in Shakespeare through the emotional temper of the Gothic, in the process acquiring a reputation for grotesque, if not bizarre, exaggeration. Meadows’s use of emblems as commentary is carefully matched to the target readership, avoiding any arcane references to much earlier conventions. The tailpiece at the very end of The Two Gentlemen of Verona (see Fig. 9) has already been discussed as demonstrating this, as well as showing a subtler use of the progression made possible by use of the page-opening. Serpents are a recurrent feature of his emblems, often in static but no less forceful postures, and especially in fantastic compositions where they are shown as half human. In King Lear, perhaps in illustration of the king’s line about filial ingratitude (1.4.288), he uses the motif twice. The tailpiece to Act 2 shows the heads of Goneril and Regan fused together in Janus-like profile, with serpents coiled around their necks and emerging from their crowns. The headpiece to Act 4 shows them as winged serpent-dragons, one naked from the waist up to emphasise sexual predation. A more general significance is provided in the first engraving for 3 Henry VI (Fig. 114). Two serpents writhe around swords and confront each other, each with a rose in its mouth, to symbolise the beginning of the Wars of the Roses in an image that immediately conveys the force of the confrontation in a manner not conveyed in earlier, more literal, renderings. That the same image, with the central space now containing the single word ‘Tragedies’ and the cartouche at the foot left blank, is used as the title-page of the second volume of the edition in one of its protean forms is further evidence of the pervasiveness of the device, and its application, if not its strict applicability, to a range of textual situations and identities. The ‘Persons Represented’ page for Othello (Fig. 115) is embellished by an image of a bed with closed curtains, into which disappears a rising serpent, with dragon’s 275

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114 Kenny Meadows, engraved by Orrin Smith: Headpiece to Act 1 of 3 Henry VI, from The Works of Shakspere, 1838–43. Image size 12.3 × 9.5 (47/8 × 33/4 ).

wings, on the top of which perches an exotic bird. Its effect is as disturbing as it is unspecific, with vague hints of exotic danger implicitly defined as characteristic of Othello himself. It is matched on the first page of the text (Fig. 116) by a dragon form uncoiling directly at the reader, grasping in its forearms a Cupid, into which it is sinking its teeth. The figure is undeniably black: the racial stances are doubly chilling when placed within the dark animal fantasies elsewhere in the play. Yet there is perhaps another reading: the Cupid emblematically suggests the death of love itself, caused by Iago’s machinations. It is for the individual reader to decide whether this is a statement of Victorian horror at miscegenation, or a reflection of the destructive force of Iago’s deceptions on the pure love of Othello and Desdemona. The headpiece to Act 4 is more direct, a small white bird crushed in the coils of a snake: it is as if Meadows has provided a visual metaphor for the brutal images that Roderigo and Iago fling around at the start of the play. 276

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115 Kenny Meadows, engraved by Orrin Smith: Othello Persons Represented, from The Works of Shakspere, 1838–43. Page size 28 × 20.3 (11 × 8).

Psychoanalytic critics would doubtless explore them further; in visual terms their disturbance comes largely from the absence of an explicative verbal parallel. Meadows’s technique of integrating such imagery with other styles is shown in his treatment of Macbeth. The title-page shows two serpents coiled around a large ring. Both have human heads, one Macbeth and the other Lady Macbeth; both 277

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116 Kenny Meadows, engraved by Orrin Smith: Othello headpiece to Act 1, from The Works of Shakspere, 1838–43. Image size 17.7 × 12 (7×43/4 ).

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117 Kenny Meadows, engraved by Orrin Smith: Macbeth headpiece to Act 3, from The Works of Shakspere, 1838–43. Image size 9.2 × 12.7 (35/8 × 5).

wear crowns. Above hangs a single dagger, dripping blood. This fuses the read experience of the play in a single image, the moral evil of the usurping pair made explicit, the moral pretence of Lady Macbeth unmasked: ‘Look like th’innocent flower, / But be the serpent under’t’ (1.5.65–6). The absence of reference to any single iconographic tradition – the quality of accessible emblem-making noted in Chapter 1 – makes the image at once more immediate and, more significantly at a structural level, shows it as a synchronic embodiment of what is seen as the play’s major driving force. In the headpiece before Act 1 the witches are shown transformed from the coils of vast serpents; seen through the filter of the title-page, this suggests that they directly infest Macbeth and Lady Macbeth with their own amoral identities. This process becomes visible and is related to the perpetual wakefulness of the couple in the headpiece to Act 2, where Macbeth is shown coiled round by smoke in which is written ‘Glamis hath murdered sleep’. The motif continues in the headpiece to Act 3 (Fig. 117). This shows a recumbent Macbeth with a giant cat crouching on his belly. The image is a serious parody of Henry Fuseli’s painting The Nightmare,17 a visual statement of erotic and psychological possession well known both in 279

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its original form and through a series of satiric parodies.18 In the surrounding smoke is written ‘Macbeth sleep no more’. The allusion to Fuseli makes clear the idea of Macbeth’s possession by forces as much sexual as demonic, revealing his thraldom to Lady Macbeth as much as to the witches, a powerful reading of the intersecting relationships in the first half of the play. Even to those readers who do not recognise the allusion, the image is one of diabolic control, and once again Meadows’s skill in projecting his readings is clear. They are also aided by a careful balancing against more conventional depictions, such as that of Lady Macbeth sleepwalking, shown in frontal composition from a lowered viewpoint, in direct eye-contact with the reader. Despite the exaggeration of the grotesques, the combination of such disparate forms is perhaps more successful than Knight’s balancing of imagination and annotation, carefully measured and perhaps most completely achieved as it is in his treatment of the same play. It is perhaps a reflection of larger tastes of the period that it is in Macbeth that both these editions are seen at their most effective, and in radically different ways. The use of emblems that can be immediately decoded by the reader continues throughout the edition. The headpiece to Act 2 of Measure for Measure is a devil about to fire an arrow from a bow formed of the inverted body of what seems to be another devil, with hooked claws for feet and the head of a bird of prey. That the arrow is smouldering completes the image: this is the devil as parody-Cupid, his dart about to induce Angelo’s desire for Isabella. The headpiece to the third act of Twelfth Night shows Malvolio as a peacock, the common emblem of pride; that to the ‘Introductory Remarks’ of Cymbeline has Iachimo as a spider hauling Imogen’s bracelet into his web. These are images of direct force, conveying a moral commentary beyond simple depiction, yet without recourse to arcane reference systems. The Prologue to Romeo and Juliet (Fig. 118) is compelling: a tiny skeleton, perhaps that of a young child, emerges from a rose holding an arrow, imaging the ‘fearful passage of their death-marked love’ (9). These dark elements are counteracted in two ways. The first is the comic elements of many of the images of characters, portrayed with something of the lightness seen in Heads of the People. The technique is that of the popular cartoonist, using visual imagination to comment on events through a shared system of knowledge. The similarity is evident throughout the volumes, in characters who are depicted just this side of caricature. It is easy, looking at Meadows’s earlier heads, to see how his style developed, and the reasons why his edition of Shakespeare was a popular success. The governess, the card-sharp, the waiter

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118 Kenny Meadows, engraved by Orrin Smith: Prologue to Romeo and Juliet, from The Works of Shakspere, 1838–43. Page size 28 × 20.3 (11 × 8).

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and other types are all discernible in Shakespeare’s figures, and the more extreme examples, such as Falstaff, may more effectively be judged within this register – and are certainly more powerful in bringing the plays to life for a wide, popular readership. Often such extreme characterisation is matched by a darker, more economical use of other figurations in full exploitation of the mise-en-page. The ‘Introductory Remarks’ to King Lear begin with a block of text between two small sketches: on the right a pair of hands is seen clutching a crown, with a similar figure on the left, this time beneath the head of a frowning woman whose eyes are turned with apparent malice towards the right. The left-to-right movement and the inflection of hatred it is given forcefully embody the strife between Goneril and Regan, the cause in the division of the kingdom made explicit in the two crowns. A second lightening device is the frequent use of cupids, generally at the end of pages or acts, but sometimes also as adjuncts to larger engravings, presented with a kind of knowing superiority as a commentary on the frailties of human loves, as if extending Puck’s weary ‘Lord, what fools these mortals be’ to all the combatants in the other love-comedies. The headpiece to Act 1 of Much Ado shows Beatrice and Benedick glaring at each other while cupids wreathe them together with flowers. The opening of Antony and Cleopatra (Fig. 119) shows an aerial ballet of cupids around the central figures, who are embracing. Like the smaller figures that punctuate the comedies, these are saccharine in the extreme to twenty-first century onlookers. In the 1840s, however, I would suggest that they tread the very edge of acceptable sentiment – and, in the Antony and Cleopatra design, eroticism. They are restrained by the knowingness of the cupids’ expression which, to later eyes almost terminally cute, may well have seemed an appropriate antidote to the sentimentality of much popular illustration. Meadows’s images are disturbing not simply because of their symbolism or the attitudes they imply, but because of the complex amalgam they present of the sinister, the comic and the freakish. Often this rests on simple compositional elements. The emblems composed of strange, half-imagined animals, and the serpents that merge with erotically forceful women’s bodies, have already been mentioned. Another recurrent device is the depiction of characters half seen behind doors or other barriers, most effective in the smothering of Desdemona, in which a curtain obscures all but the legs of Othello and a single, thin arm reaching out at the opposite side (Fig. 120). Alongside these are caricatures presenting even the most straightforward characters as spiky, sinister figures or exaggerated clowns, and the sickly-sweet cupids that seem almost to ironise their own intensity. It is the juxtaposition of these elements, and the fact that they 282

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119 Kenny Meadows, engraved by Orrin Smith: Antony and Cleopatra, headpiece to Act 1, from The Works of Shakspere, 1838–43. Image size 16.2 × 10.5 (63/8 × 41/8 ).

seem never quite to work together, that constitute the anxious, frenetic quality of Meadows’s visual world. Later versions of Meadows’s Shakespeare incorporate other visual material. Most striking in this way is the edition produced by the London Printing and Publishing Company at some time in the 1850s. One of the significances of the volume is indicated by its full title: 283

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120 Kenny Meadows, engraved by Orrin Smith: Othello 5.2, from The Works of Shakspere, 1838–43. Image size 11.7 × 10.1 (45/8 × 4).

The Complete Works of Shakspere containing the Celebrated Illustrations Of Kenny Meadows, Frith, Nicholson, Corbould, Hayter, Etc. Etc.: and portraits, from photographs, of eminent actors.

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In many ways the final line is the most compelling, revealing the presence of the heavily retouched daguerreotypes that had already been issued in the so-called ‘Tallis Shakespeare’ from by the same publisher in 1850–1. These are remarkable images, deserving of detailed consideration; but, as they are primarily depictions of actors in character, they fall beyond the scope of this book. More relevant is the reference to artists other than Meadows, whose work is represented in separate full-page plates that continue the tradition of historical, naturalistic depictions of single moments in the plays, with little or no interpretive or critical value. Their inclusion, however, marks the edition as one of the first of a new kind of illustrated collection, which includes the work of several artists in the manner of a visual anthology. In a sense this is not new, since the same practice had been followed in the Boydell and Heath Shakespeares, and was a central pillar of the tradition of grangerising. But the inclusion of such images in a popular edition, seen at roughly the same time in the American version of Knight’s Shakespeare, begins a small but valuable convention of publishing that allows the discursive comparison of various views of the plays, either individually or during the shared acts of reading aloud that are increasingly a part of the experience of the plays in family or larger social encounters. Important among these plates are those showing women characters, reflecting the growing interest in what were then known as ‘Shakespeare’s heroines’, from the developing interest evidenced in Anna Brownell Jameson’s book of that title. That it was originally published as Characteristics of Women19 makes clear that the characters were held as exemplary embodiments of femininity. That their visual style is indistinguishable from current painting and engraving of contemporary women – in genre paintings, novels and illustrations to poetry collections – reveals the reinvention of character both as something independent of the plays’ currency and as a reflection of contemporary aesthetic ideology. Particularly striking is Meadows’s Cleopatra (Fig. 121). The staring eyes reflect a common feature of his work, and the armlet in the form of a serpent is a complex of sensual adornment, sexual temptation and prefiguration of the character’s death, revealing again the thoughtful textual awareness beneath the strained visual imagination. Balancing this is the image of Miranda, engraved by W. H. Mote after a design by John Hayter (Fig. 122). Seen in parallel with Meadows’s own image of ‘The Family Governess’ from Heads of the People (Fig. 123), it reveals a complementary figuration of Victorian womanhood. The image itself, reproduced in an engraving made for the American edition after the original by Orrin Smith, reveals the closeness as well as the separation of the production of the editions for the British 285

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121 Kenny Meadows, engraved by J. Brown: ‘Cleopatra’, from Characteristics of Women by Anna Jameson, 1832. Image size 17 × 13.4 (65/8 × 51/4 ).

and American markets. The engraving depicts the modest, unassuming figure, awaiting the awakening of adverse circumstance or male attention that will bring fulfilment through service, presented repeatedly in literary and visual forms from Jane Eyre onwards. Seen individually, such images offer insights into contemporary readings of Shakespeare’s women characters. A clue to their larger significance is given in the subtitle to the earlier collection: or, Portraits of the English. Seen within the complete collection of plays, in which they gain added prominence by the absence of treatments of leading male characters, they provide a view of idealised womanhood that, in themselves and through their earlier placing in Brownell’s essays, contain and redirect characterisations within the plays to assemble a pattern for their initial readers. They provide a curious, but forceful, balance to the deeper, darker, readings of Meadows’s grotesques: the involvement of those images is countered by the greater distance of these other engravings, and by the single-page scenes designed by other artists. The volume in total offers a reading 286

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122 John Hayter, engraved by W. H. Mote: ‘Miranda’, from Characteristics of Women. Image size 17 × 13.4 (65/8 × 51/4 ).

experience of somewhat greater detachment than that of the first Barry Cornwall edition, suggesting a wider, if less focused, approach to the plays. Despite their radical differences, the editions of Knight and Meadows are very much products of their time. The former displays didactic zeal through its use of images for historical and topographical location, as well as textual elucidation, with title-pages that, despite the unwillingness with which Knight included them, offer imaginative critical readings of the plays and their ideas, casting their effect over the other images during the process of reading. Knight’s edition is, in a sense, the official voice of early-Victorian ethics, concerned with factual knowledge relieved by imaginative intellectual modelling in the title-pages, and never quite resolving the discord. Meadows, conversely, is the maverick voice of violent, corrosive sensuality, developing in the eccentricity of his symbolic images an extreme extension of the half-comic, half-satiric grotesquerie fashionable in the 287

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123 Kenny Meadows, engraved by J. Yeager: ‘The Family Governess,’ from Heads of the People, 1841. Page size 24.5 × 14.6 (95/8 × 53/4 ).

illustrations of novels by Dickens and Harrison Ainsworth. Both reveal much about particular strands of the contemporary reading of Shakespeare; perhaps they reveal more about the psychological imperatives, in both statement and concealment, of their own age. In this, and in the popularity they enjoyed in their various forms, on both sides of the Atlantic, they stand as vigorous and successful attempts to relate the plays to their first readers and their visual world. Within a generation, however, they would be displaced by other readings that would re-create the plays quite differently, in response to the rapidly changing world of Victorian publishing and the industrial, mechanical and intellectual forces with which it engaged.

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CHAPTER 9

SELOUS, GILBERT AND READER INVOLVEMENT

I For Knight, illustration was largely a process of subsuming the plays into a pantheon of factual knowledge; for Meadows, a matter of using extreme visual forms for moral enquiry. The editions produced by Mary and Charles Cowden Clarke, with images by Henry Courtney Selous and others, and Howard Staunton, illustrated by Sir John Gilbert, approached the task rather differently. Both exploit their large format through the inclusion of a larger number of illustrations, fully integrated into the page design, but this apparent freedom brings with it a number of problems for both illustrator and reader. An increase in the number of images immediately raises issues of approach to a wider range of textual episodes. How does a predominantly representational convention deal with passages of text primarily lyrical or metaphorical, or present moments for which no visual convention exists? Providing images for events narrated but not presented in the text offers new challenges for both illustrator and reader, necessitating shifts of viewpoint and time that require sensitive handling. Special difficulties surround the complex choreography of resolution scenes, especially those involving large numbers of characters: but illustrating such scenes provides opportunities to control and enhance the play’s movement by the introduction of suspense, holding back the action by offering the reader moments of visual contemplation. Just as important is a rhythmic balance between text and image that is satisfactory in terms of both design and narrative progression. Sparseness of imaging followed by profusion will disrupt the aesthetic, and hence imaginative, continuity; rigid regularity will destroy the fluidity of the play’s growth. Selecting the

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moment for depiction, always crucial, is given further urgency by the question of their location. Simultaneity of event in text and image will not always be practicable; placed before the textual event, an image may remove surprise or slacken tension; placed after it, an illustration might stall the action. Conversely, anticipation or delay may be effective in hastening the action, foreshadowing later events, or providing a valuable delaying function for emotional or conceptual emphasis. All these issues must be resolved within the constraints of production. An engraver producing a frontispiece, or a design to be printed on a separate page, will work on a plate of predetermined size; one producing an image for a headpiece of the kind used in the Knight edition would probably have used a standard block. The designer and engraver of blocks for a text with images cut into the letterpress has no such format to follow, the size and spacing of the images being limited only by constraints of page design and the location of the block within the larger printing forme. The size and placing of the images are consequently determined as much by mechanical as aesthetic considerations, the resolution of these imperatives demanding careful negotiation. The most insistent problems arise in editions of both kinds in the design of tailpieces, which had to be designed to fit the small area left at the end of an act after the text had been set, posing problems of selection and composition as well as execution. Given these complexities, exacerbated by the tight deadlines imposed by regular schedules of production, both editions succeeded in offering visual reconfigurations of the plays remarkable for their consistency and effectiveness. More remarkable still, considering their contemporaneity, is their difference of stance, which reflects the subtle variety of Victorian aesthetic taste, and its location within a meticulous system of social gradation. While the material forms of both make possible far greater integration of character and setting, each addresses this through its own order of stylised naturalism, revealing a fundamental difference of approach. The work of Selous is concerned principally with locating character and event within what might be termed the emotional choreography of the period, employing many of the gestural figurations and techniques of reader involvement of the contemporary illustrated novel. By contrast, the work of Gilbert resembles more closely the idiom of the new pictorial journalism, particularly The Illustrated London News, to which Gilbert was a constant and prolific contributor. Both continue the work of their predecessors in making available a scholarly text, with annotations, to a wider readership: but the greater emotional involvement suggested by Selous’s work, set against the intensified concern for setting and action of Gilbert, suggest that the latter had a slightly more serious intent, and was perhaps aimed at a readership of slightly higher educational status. This is reflected 290

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not only in the nature of the images, but in their placement which, especially in their final use, encourages a more analytical, comparative stance towards character and event. In this it has strong claim to be the most complete exploitation of the advanced production techniques of the period in the visual exploration of the plays’ ideas and movement.

II Cassell’s Illustrated Shakespeare1 appeared in serial parts between 1864 and 1868, and subsequently in the familiar confusion of bound formats. Presenting itself as an edition produced to the highest critical and scholarly standards, it incorporated the textual apparatus produced earlier by Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke, who were proclaimed on the title-page as the respective authors of Shakespeare Characters and The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Heroines and a Shakespeare Concordance. The pronouncement claims their authority and suggests the breadth of the edition’s intended readership. The addition of illustrations to critical annotation placed it in direct competition to the Gilbert–Staunton Shakespeare, although its inclusion of the Cowden Clarkes’ extensive annotations at the foot of each page set it apart from this and from the work of Knight and Meadows, as well as imposing further constraints on the arrangement of text and illustration. The edition follows the order of plays in the Folio, unusual and outdated by the mid-century, perhaps again suggesting its slightly different market through an appeal to popular ideas of antiquarian authenticity rather than recent research. That each of the volumes is referred to as a ‘Division’ perhaps echoes this. It was not expensively produced. Although reasonably sized, the volumes are produced on wood-pulp paper, with small type and machine-made case-bindings. To save space and paper, the pictorial title-page of each play follows immediately the final page of the one preceding, so that, for example, the final scene of King Lear is on a verso facing the title of Othello, an awkward conjunction. Some of the later variants of the edition included a number of full-page engravings, either from existing images or from specially commissioned designs. They include the work of many of the most popular artists and illustrators of the day, including Frederick Barnard, H. M. Paget, Fred Walker and Frank Dicksee. That the last-named subsequently developed his images for Romeo and Juliet into paintings of the same subjects suggests one dimension of the close relation between illustration and painting, but it is one that is deceptive. The resemblance rests on the fact that the engravings present self-contained visual treatments of individual scenes, within the prevailing style for presenting a moment of sentimental 291

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interaction, rather than carrying across the illustrated edition’s concerns with the plays’ development of theme or idea. That all such engravings are presented as separate images, printed on stiff paper, concealed behind protective tissue interleaving, is a material reflection of their aesthetic distance from the dynamic growth of the plays they present. That several of the plays contain images by two or more artists furthers their separation from the plays’ progress, continuing the process of adding separate images to later editions seen in those of Knight and Cornwall, and moving towards the anthologising approach seen in Knight’s ‘Imperial Edition’ (see Chapter 10). However, it is the images that appear within the play-text that are a direct component of the dual verbal and visual progression that the edition offers, and which make the most complete contribution to the reading experience. Like the Knight edition, the Cassell volumes follow the same scheme for each play. A pictorial title-page, by one of several artists, shows a single key scene. On its reverse is a list of Dramatis Personae, and then follows the text of the play. A critical introduction is replaced by an extensive initial footnote summarising the condition of the text. The play itself is set in two columns, each page following the contemporary vogue in being enclosed within a double rule. Every play has between nine and twelve images, of either a half or full page, set within a further single rule and accompanied by a caption, generally of two lines from the play. This effective separation of image from text may be demanded by the double-column format, but it imposes a distance between word and image much greater, and more formal, than that of the three other Victorian editions. This and the number of full-page images produces a rhetoric that, with the presence of scholarly annotations, effectively holds the reader at bay, limiting her or his imaginative involvement. A further distancing is effected by the placing of the engravings in relation to the text they depict. Unlike the close coupling of other editions, the Cassell places them a page or more distant from the episode they visualise, without any underlying principle. Where the illustrations occur before the events they show, a double narrative results, giving the effect of reading while leaning forwards to later developments in the fashion of popular magazine illustration in the next half-century;2 where they come later, they slow the reading process. Occurring so frequently, and following no clear pattern, this displacement is confusing, lacking the meditative or interpretive force of the kind achieved in earlier editions which have occasional full-page images opposite related textual episodes. The practice may suggest the volumes’ address to a particular strand of readership that needed the events of the plot to be suggested or summarised, but it is hard 292

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to avoid the conclusion that the sheer complexity of page design, with its three conflicting elements of text, image and annotation, inevitably causes a rupture between the verbal and visual narrative, to the detriment of unified reading. The edition’s most valuable critical insights are made in its title-pages. One of the most powerful is that to Hamlet (Fig. 124) which, unique in illustrated editions, shows Old Hamlet being poisoned by Claudius.3 Heavily contemporary in the supposedly antique costumes, overgrown garden and rustic branches forming the title, the image makes immediate an episode recounted, not shown, but from which the play derives much of its imagery of corruption and decay. The serpent at the foot extends this by an allusion to the fall, as well as perhaps representing a nod to Kenny Meadows. At the very threshold of the text, the image gives prominence to the driving episode of the play’s plot and its recurrent mood of corruption and disorder. The title-page for Macbeth (Fig. 125) is rare in the collection in introducing an element of iconographical allusion as a critical device. The witches are presented as androgynous figures, continuing the theatrical tradition of presenting them with beards. One carries a serpent as a staff, and another wears one as a girdle. Their aerial dance takes place at the top of the battlements of a castle, a spatial invasiveness to reflect their intrusion into Macbeth’s moral senses. At the top of the tower foliage sprouts, suggesting nests, and to the left there are birds. These are ‘temple-haunting martlets’ rather than ravens, or perhaps ambiguously they are both: silhouetted at the top right is a bat. The composition is concentrated and angular, showing the dark force of the witches yet hinting at strong, female forms to suggest their seductive power when seen through Macbeth’s eyes. The image gains greater strength by its resemblance to a classical Three Graces composition, an ironic allusion rare in this edition and Victorian engraving in general. The first depiction of Lady Macbeth echoes elements from this image: her hair is wild and unkempt, and the sash around her waist suggests the lines of the serpents. This makes explicit a link that, although now a critical commonplace, would have had greater force at the time. The title page to Othello (Fig. 126) reveals most completely the complexity of the edition’s reworking of the plays within a contemporary ideology. This it does by combining attitudes towards race and power with another key element of the edition’s illustrations, the depiction of what might be termed the emotional choreography of the period. The engraving uses an authentically Venetian exterior setting, adding a level of exoticism that was already being made accessible through the paintings of Turner in the 1830s and the subsequent writings of Ruskin, whose Stones of Venice dates from 1851–3. The position of Othello before the distant tower 293

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124 H. C. Selous: Hamlet title-page, from Cassell’s Illustrated Shakespeare, 1864. Page size 31.1 × 22.8 (121/4 × 9).

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125 H. C. Selous: Macbeth title-page, from Cassell’s Illustrated Shakespeare, 1864. Page size 31.1 × 22.8 (121/4 × 9).

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126 H. C. Selous: Othello title-page, from Cassell’s Illustrated Shakespeare, 1864. Page size 31.1 × 22.8 (121/4 × 9).

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of St Mark’s points the contrast between his stylised Moorish appearance and the western religion that the church symbolises, and this is enhanced by the hints of exoticism in his dress, and the darkness in which he sits in contrast with the bright Venetian light beyond. Both Desdemona and Brabantio are looking at him, one with adulation, the other in mistrust: Desdemona’s posture suggests complete reliance on her father, whose hands on her shoulder and forearm suggest mingled nurture and restraint. The network of eye lines explicitly defines the relations between daughter, father and suitor in a Victorian frame, Brabantio and Othello looking at each other over Desdemona’s head in symbolic statement of marriage negotiation. The uneasy balance of exotic and domestic at multiple levels is presented as an anxiety at the root of the play, suggesting the implicitness of its catastrophe within the initial courtship. As a single reading of the play it is powerful and disturbing, not least because of the very familiar, contemporary nature of the body language that it employs – the emotional choreography of courtship adopted by an attractive, yet unproven, outsider – and its uncomfortable inflection with racial mistrust. This complex is extended throughout the play. In a full-page illustration to 3.4 (Fig. 127) Othello is shown as much more obviously Moorish. The rich costume sets the identity, but the expression turns it into stereotype: the eyes twisted sideways and the rigid, square form of the head suggest something distinctly other, an Orientalist reading emphasised by the difference in physical size and body coloration from the small, pure white Desdemona at his side. As so often in the edition, a conventional visual vocabulary, here one of courtship and gender dependence, is revised to offer a sombre reading of the play in contemporary terms. While the stress on accuracy of costume and setting, supported by the Cowden Clarkes’ annotations, suggests the edition’s scholarly basis, the illustrations make clear that it is not concerned with antiquarianism of the kind displayed by Knight. The play is one of the most developed examples of the complete edition’s technique of re-creating characters and events through a visual vocabulary that locates them in the political, domestic and emotional aesthetic of the period. The Tempest again uses contemporary choreography to convey the play’s central relationships. Title-page and early exchanges between Prospero and Miranda reveal an appropriate duty in the latter’s body language, but the first encounter between Stephano, Trinculo and Caliban (Fig. 128) extends the range sharply. Caliban lies in the foreground beneath the tarpaulin, a serpent coiling between him and Trinculo; two small fairy figures climb on a plant to the right, extratextual embellishments or perhaps Ariel’s compound forms. Their presence is striking: with the serpent, the sailors and Caliban they ensure that the whole 297

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127 H. C. Selous: Othello 3.4, from Cassell’s Illustrated Shakespeare, 1864. Page size 31.1 × 22.8 (121/4 × 9).

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range of created beings is present in the image. Darwin’s Origin of Species had appeared in 1859, but ideas of evolution had been circulating since the work of Charles Lyell in the 1830s,4 aided by Tennyson’s despairing visions in the earlier lyrics of In Memoriam, published in 1850. Reading Selous’s Caliban simply as an evolutionary ancestor is much too reductive: he is a figure in which the idea of the undeserving poor is just as strongly present, and more immediate in the contemporary relevance that it contributes to the sociological range encompassed in this image.5 This is a representation of hierarchy embracing the human created in the divine image, ethereal spirits, the instrument of the fall, and fallen man himself balanced against unregenerate, undeserving humankind in the form of Caliban. The hierarchic structure is strengthened by the earlier image of Prospero and Miranda, their relationship of nurture and duty re-created in contemporary idiom balancing the static, uncomprehending lower order that Selous presents in Caliban. This bleak societal outlook is completed in the play’s final image (Fig. 129), which shows Prospero pointing down to Caliban over the caption: ‘He is as disproportion’d in his manners / As in his shape’. The reading is one that wholly overlooks the subtle otherness of Caliban’s language in the play, most particularly his sensitivity towards the natural beauty of the island, and his developing awareness of the corruption which he encounters in Stephano and Trinculo as much as in Prospero. That, in this final image, Caliban has almost exactly the same posture as in the first illustration, conveys the unregeneracy of the character in this reading. It is a stance fitting to Victorian notions of subject races, subject classes, and all who lack the benefit of honest toil. In this lack of advancement, Caliban as presented here embodies the exact opposite of the ideal of autodidacticism represented, ironically enough, in the efforts of the readers of popular Shakespeare. In addition to its demonstration of contemporary social politics, Selous’s treatment of The Tempest is important on quite a different plane in demonstrating the inconsistency of the placing of the images in the edition, and the confusion that ensues. Some engravings are placed conventionally, or may be read as offering valid commentary through their location. The depiction of the ship in the storm that, against convention, opens the visual sequence, is followed by a full page showing Prospero and Miranda, accompanying the first ten lines of 1.2 on the facing left-hand page. This might be seen as an imaginative pairing of the two elements, stressing the balance of retribution and resolution that might be seen as driving the play. Likewise, the presentation of Ferdinand led by Ariel’s song on a full right-hand page may be read as an isolation of the moment in accord with contemporary anthologising of the song. 299

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128 H. C. Selous: The Tempest 2.2, from Cassell’s Illustrated Shakespeare, 1864. Image size 11.3 × 12.9 (41/2 × 5).

Other images, however, show far less relation to their immediate settings. That the textual entry of Ariel is accompanied by an image of the confrontation between Prospero and Caliban might suggest an ironic balancing of the play’s forces, but this is not supported by later placements. Selous’s image of the awakening of Gonzalo and Alonso before the plot of Antonio and Sebastian can be executed occurs a full two pages before the event, at worst diffusing tension and at best confusing the uninformed reader. The image of the exchange between Stephano and Trinculo discussed above is similarly premature, working against Caliban’s log-bearing monologue adjacent to which it appears. The same is true of the three characters’ procession to Prospero’s cave, which is shown opposite the courtship of Ferdinand and Miranda at the start of the third act. The masque of Ceres appears, above Ferdinand’s questioning ‘May I be bold/ To think these spirits?’, cut into the page of text containing the banquet offered to Alonso, Gonzalo and Sebastian, again with no apparent purpose. The dispersal of the 300

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129 H. C. Selous: The Tempest 5.1 final illustration, from Cassell’s Illustrated Shakespeare, 1864. Image size 12.3 × 13.1 (47/8 × 51/8 ).

‘foul conspiracy’ at the end of the scene is again anticipated for no clear reason in the placing of the full-page image opposite the masque’s conclusion. Ariel’s singing ‘On the bat’s back’ appears well before its textual setting, prefiguring an element of the play’s resolution before even the appearance of Alonso and his companions; the final image, of Prospero gesturing to Caliban, is similarly anticipatory, weakening the complex conclusory movement of the play as much as diluting its moment through focusing on a single element, as discussed above. In this sequence, the play is typical of the confused intersection of verbal and visual texts throughout the edition. While the anticipation may have offered some clarification, it is hard not to see it also as a source of confusion; the interpretation that the placing is to accomplish ironic pairings is not sustained by the frequency with which it occurs. What is also revealed in this rapid listing of the images is the 301

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visual concentration on moments of violence and brutality, rather than serenity and resolution, with three full-page images of actual or potential disruption. The final image of Caliban unchanged combines with this, to suggest the severity with which the play’s resolution has been accomplished. While it is too simplistic to see the play only as a reflection of the ideology and methods of Victorian colonisation, it is hard to avoid seeing within it a sense of triumphal providentialism that, at a distance of more than a century, is uncomfortably revealing about the values shared between illustrations and readers. Although the treatments of Othello and The Tempest suggest, in different but related ways, the larger directions of much contemporary ideology, they share with the edition as a whole a concern with more domestic aspects of political relationships in showing a series of equations of gender and power. This they achieve through depicting essential relationships within the choreography of emotional expression conventional in the imagery of the period. Emilia’s appeal to the Duke in The Comedy of Errors is presented almost in stereotypical terms of the beseeching wife asking forgiveness; Miranda turns away with appropriate modesty on the appearance of Caliban bearing logs; Florizel and Perdita locate the archetypal Victorian courting couple within an idealised Arcadia. Perhaps most notably, the interactions between Hamlet and Ophelia (Fig. 130) could be found in the pages of any number of Victorian popular novels. The frequent images of this kind move the plays into the intellectual, emotional and narrative landscape of the Victorian novel and Victorian social structures, with their particular concerns for marital complexities and issues of duty and trust, offering readings of the plays within a precise moment of social and literary activity. To later readers, these transformations present themselves as an illustrator’s attempt at visually reconceptualising the text in the behavioural tropes of the mid-1860s. As Adrian Poole points out,6 the interactions of age and gender are representative of contemporary attitudes, and their visual presentations, in the work of both Selous and Gilbert – although each, as will later become clear, explores them in an individual way. To suggest for comparison a single version of such imagery in the larger frames of Victorian narrative is hardly necessary: a glance through the pages of a representative Victorian novel, for which perhaps David Copperfield is the most obvious candidate, will reveal the emotional choreography at its most direct. How we choose to read Selous’s images today will depend on our views both of the plays and of their transmediation into the aesthetic of Victorian mores. We might, for example, adopt the view of Georgianna Ziegler and see the images as representing the ‘graceful necks and facial features of Victorian Beauties’,7 and so constituting as much a contribution to the history of gender 302

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130 H. C. Selous: Hamlet 3.1, from Cassell’s Illustrated Shakespeare, 1864. Page size 31.1 × 22.8 (121/4 × 9).

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relations as evidence of the changing course of Shakespeare reception. In this, they develop the treatments seen already in the images for Characteristics of Women, but without the darker suggestiveness of Meadows’ treatments of female identities and gender interactions as discussed in Chapter 8. Alternatively, they may be read as a statement of the Victorian ideal of Shakespeare’s timelessness, an assumption curiously at odds with the theatrical concern for accuracy of costume and set design. Selous’s concern for personal rather than dynastic relationships extends into his imaging of the history plays. Perhaps at odds with the volumes’ production at a period of rapid imperial expansion, the underlying implication is of the human values underlying the events presented, suggesting a personal value system as the basis of the providentialist reading of the histories then current. Repeatedly, moments are selected that allow depiction through codes of gesture and expression. Thus, Hal is not shown in the act of trying on the crown at his dying father’s bedside, but in the subsequent moment of reconciliation, weeping extravagantly with his father’s hand in his. In Richard II, the garden scene is developed not to exploit its metaphoric value but to show the personal despair of the Queen and her attendants. The emotional temperature of the exchange between Arthur and Hubert in King John is increased by the young boy’s impassioned grasp on his uncle’s arm, while the Attendants attempt to carry him away. Even those images where convention is rejected in favour of more original readings seem guided by their emotional potential. The death of John of Gaunt is shown in one of the few paired images in the edition, the left-hand page showing the aristocrat within a familiar Victorian deathbed scene with, opposite, the figure of Richard with arm outstretched in malediction towards the old man, who raises his hands in distress under the assault. The scene is powerfully rendered, the reading unusual; but its location within the gestural codes of Victorian melodrama is, to a later reader, impaired by stylistic dissonance. These features of the Cowden Clarke edition need careful assimilation if they are to be fairly assessed. Selous’s re-creation of the plays in contemporary terms fulfils the direct function of making the plays accessible, and for this reason they are important in terms of extending the plays’ readership. It is too easy to reject the stance as merely an exercise in the extension of the Shakespearean market, or the readers at whom the project was directed as representatives of unthinking Pooterism, comfortable in their own political and domestic propriety as exemplified in middle-brow aesthetics. Certainly, the designs adopt popular convention in their expression of relations of gender and their delineation of rank

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and race. But they also, at times, adapt and challenge common approaches to the plays. Several of the title-pages, as earlier paragraphs have shown, reveal critical readings of greater conceptual depth, raising issues of interpretation that might surprise and stimulate their original readers. And, while the physical placing of the images clearly suffers from the presence of the Cowden Clarkes’ footnotes, the problems of page design these cause preventing a continuous close relation between image and verbal text, the attempt to unite annotation and graphic treatment is valuable, and rare, in popular publishing. The edition is the most conventional of the four major Victorian illustrated versions of the plays, but the uses to which it puts the conventions are not always straightforward, and in places, particularly its title-pages, it bears comparison with the others in the insights that it offers.

III The production history of the Howard Staunton edition, with illustrations by Sir John Gilbert, is almost as convoluted as that of Knight’s Pictorial Shakespere. It was first issued as a series of paper-bound parts between 1856 and 1860,8 sold in both England and the United States, at one shilling and twenty cents respectively – significantly less than Knight’s edition, but still a considerable outlay at a time when a complete Shakespeare could be bought for less than a pound. The first part, containing The Two Gentlemen of Verona, appeared in December 1856, the others following at monthly intervals. It also appeared as three volumes, Comedies, Histories and Tragedies, in 1858, 1859 and 1860. The next, and in many ways most successful, incarnation was in 1873–5, when a further three-volume edition was issued as The Library Shakespeare.9 This was a folio in which the text was split into two columns, with only a few very brief marginal notes, material changes which allowed the greater integration of word and image already mentioned. The ‘edition de luxe’ issued in 188110 paradoxically contained far fewer of Gilbert’s images, although it was printed on a richer paper and generally produced to a higher standard. The original illustrations, reproduced through stereo plates, appeared in all these editions. In 1882 they appeared once more, in another partwork in the Routledge Young People’s Library; like the earlier edition, this was reissued in volume form under the title The Gilbert Shakespeare. Both of these reset the text in three columns, with many of the images relocated and several omitted. Similar rearrangement was made for another edition of 1882, issued in a single volume as part of Routledge’s Sixpenny Series.11 The final version came in 1892,

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when a duodecimo version in twelve volumes appeared under the title The Mignon Edition. The same reduction took place in the number of images, which were again less successfully located within the text. The inner back wrapper of the first number of the original issue boasts that the parts will contain an average of twenty illustrations each. The passage continues to explain that the order of the plays follows the most recent scholarship, and that variant readings and glossarial explanations will be given as footnotes, with longer explanatory notes at the end of each play – an arrangement, it should be noted, that results in far clearer page design than the full annotation of the Cowden Clarkes. The underlying assumption is that the presence of what is termed ‘Pictorial Embellishment’ and scholarly apparatus is by no means incongruous – an assumption that was by no means widely current at other times. The publisher’s account concludes with some words on the intention behind the venture: It is the chief aim of the Publishers to produce an Edition of our National Dramatist that may be found upon every drawing-room table, and in the family library – in the public collection, and on the lonely student’s shelf.

Striking here is the intention to make the edition available to the widest possible range of readers, both scholarly and amateur. The reference to the ‘drawing-room’ and ‘family library’ may be a ploy calculated to flatter prospective purchasers, but certainly does not suggest an aim towards the less well-off. Taken with the assumed membership of a group defined by birth and aesthetic sensitivity that is implied by ‘our National Dramatist’, it reiterates the conception of Shakespeare as a marker of English identity and cultural maturity. In this it echoes the claim made a few lines earlier that the plays are ‘the purest fountains of intellectual vigour in the language, and, next to the English Bible, the noblest monument of our literature’. Such notions of cultural identity and tradition are recurrent in the content and style of Gilbert’s illustrations, achieved largely at a subliminal level, through an approach adapted to the furtherance of visual notions of national history and character. Surfacing most clearly in the history plays and in some of the comedies – the depictions of Falstaff are an obvious example – they are an underlying presence throughout, working with cumulative power to reinforce the engravings’ more immediate effects. Their power in reconfiguring the plays depends on their resemblance to another branch of publishing that was of major importance in configuring the world view of the Victorian reader of the upper middle class, the new pictorial journalism typified by The Illustrated London News. In preparing his images, Gilbert had studied Knight’s edition, a copy of which with some very 306

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131 Sir John Gilbert, engraved by the Dalziel brothers: 1 Henry VI 1.1, from The Plays of Shakespeare, 1858–60. Image size (in this copy) 10.5 × 11.8 (41/8 × 45/8 ).

simple pencil sketches of his survives in the collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library.12 Significantly, however, Gilbert modifies Knight’s approach to produce something far more integrated, manipulating the viewpoint so as to place reader alongside character within historical and topographical location. An engraving for 1 Henry VI 1.3 (Fig. 131) exemplifies the approach, in presenting the confrontation between Gloucester and Worcester in the location prescribed by the slightly earlier stage direction ‘London. Before the Tower’. Action is conveyed by the bodies of the soldiers surrounding the two central figures; suspense, by their postures, swords drawn but not in open combat; and reader involvement by the lowered viewpoint of one witnessing the events. The similarity to an image from the new illustrated journalism in its transmediation of event and setting may be shown by comparison with images produced for The Illustrated London News recording the surrender of Napoleon III at Sedan 307

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132 Anonymous sketch of the surrender of Sedan, The Pictorial Press by Mason Jackson, 1885. Image size 8.5 × 14 (33/8 × 51/2 ).

during the Franco-Prussian War. The first of these (Fig. 132) is a rapid sketch drawn in the field; the second (Fig. 133) is a copy of the final engraving. The scene has been reduced to its essential elements, the viewpoint lowered to give a sense of human scale and direct involvement, and the composition made more immediate by the reversal of the figures of the trumpeter and the soldier holding the white flag, which clarifies both the aesthetic and the narrative progression in its movement from left to right.13 The shift from sketch to engraving parallels the act of selection from Shakespeare’s scene to Gilbert’s engraving in Fig. 131. Both images share a manipulation and concentration of event and viewpoint to simplify events and enable reader involvement, revealing another key relationship in the illustration of Shakespeare’s plays to make them accessible to contemporary readers. It is a reasonable assumption that many readers would have seen Gilbert’s images for both publications as they were delivered from the newsagent, or purchased together from one of the new railway bookstalls of W. H. Smith, the first of which opened, at Euston Station, in 1848, to be followed by others that numbered around a thousand at the end of the century.14 308

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133 Engraving of the surrender of Sedan, The Illustrated London News, 17 September 1870, reproduced in The Pictorial Press by Mason Jackson, 1885. Image size 11.6 × 10.7 (41/2 × 41/4 ).

Staunton’s Library edition of 1873–5 was one of the very earliest illustrated Shakespeares to include colour plates, which it presented as frontispieces to supplement Gilbert’s existing wood-engravings. The designs of George Cruikshank and Robert Dudley are concerned with the depiction of picturesque moments or comic scenes. While these are efficient and workmanlike, those of Gilbert himself are more ambitious, revealing the second important reference point of the edition, in their relationship with contemporary painting. Instead of Malvolio in the dark house or Olivia unveiling, the traditional choices for Twelfth Night, Gilbert selects the song ‘Come away, come away death’ (Plate 14). Since the song itself occupies a double position, within the play’s text and as a commentary outside it, the possibilities for visual criticism are correspondingly enhanced. The resulting image emphasises the melancholy awareness of the passage of time that is a quiet but troubling pedal note in the play, darkening the comic wordplay of the kitchen 309

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scenes before becoming explicit in the mistreatment of Malvolio. It is shown in the swirling clouds, lengthening shadows and subdued colouring that together suggest late afternoon. This in turn reveals the Victorian fascination with passing time, a dialogue between Shakespeare and Tennyson present also in the figure of Olivia, whose costume and posture could locate her within ‘Mariana’ or several other of the laureate’s poems. It is the painting’s structure, and its visual statement of elements of the passage from the play, that reveals more directly than its style the relationship with contemporary painting. The setting is exotic, but not specifically so; the garden has about it a suggestion of the medieval walled garden used in earlier paintings, and their Pre-Raphaelite recollections, of the Virgin Mary. The allusion has quietly troubling implications about Olivia’s withdrawal. More obvious is the presentation of the characters to represent different ages, a suggestion of a similar construction used by Millais in his painting Autumn Leaves,15 and thus a notion quite accessible to an intelligent reader of the day. It is a forceful, yet subtle, bringing together of moment and underlying mood, of far greater impact than the edition’s other colour plates, and reveals Gilbert’s use of structural devices from the most popular painters of his day that is apparent in several guises throughout the edition. That the image lacks the sophistication of style found in the work of Millais and Holman Hunt does not impair its function as a critical illustration: instead, the absence of formal rhetoric makes the image if anything better suited to its use and intended readership. The parallel to the imagery and design of Victorian painting is not restricted to the colour plates – a feature that extends the distance between Gilbert’s work and Selous’s in the hierarchy of contemporary aesthetics. The first image to Antony and Cleopatra (Fig. 134) is representative. Its setting is elaborately authentic within the terms of the day, but the Egyptian attendants who are fanning the couple have a symbolic force, appearing above Philo’s assertion that Antony ‘is become the bellows and the fan / To cool a Gipsy’s lust’ (1.1.8–9). The undermining is continued in the close positioning of the central characters that, although again reflecting visual commonplace of the period, is not quite what it seems. While Antony looks directly at Cleopatra, her gaze is directed above and past him. The detail skilfully misdirects contemporary usage to make a critical insinuation about the relationship central to the play’s progress, and one familiar from more restrained paintings of similarly emotionally charged encounters, including Holman Hunt’s treatment of Measure for Measure in Claudio and Isabella, exhibited in 1850.16 Like that painting, Gilbert’s illustration has at its centre a visual element that, while not specified in the text, develops from it to explore a central feature in fully graphic terms. 310

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134 Sir John Gilbert, engraved by the Dalziel brothers: Antony and Cleopatra, headpiece to Act 1 from The Library Shakespeare, 1873–5. Page size 30.5 × 24.1 (12×91/2 ).

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135 Sir John Gilbert, engraved by the Dalziel brothers: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, headpiece to Act 4, from The Plays of Shakespeare, 1858–60. Image size 15 × 13 (6×51/8 ).

It is with this order of painting, rather than genre painting that moves closer towards extreme sentiment or comic exaggeration, that Gilbert’s work aligns itself. It is this that allows his work for A Midsummer Night’s Dream to convey the separate orders of the play’s action with considerable subtlety. In comparison with the more effusive Victorian fairyland confections, the images display a striking sense of the actual. This is shown in the careful control of images such as that showing Bottom and Titania (Fig. 135), which steers adeptly between the excesses of Meadows and popular Victorian painters of the fairy world such as Joseph Noel Paton.17 Gilbert also avoids caricature or heavy-handed comedy: as in performance, the comedy is most effective because it is taken seriously, so that the horror of the mechanicals at Bottom’s ass-head (Fig. 136) is treated with an understatement that mingles Bottom’s confusion with the alarm of the other characters, allowing the comedy to emerge from the text itself. 312

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136 Sir John Gilbert, engraved by the Dalziel brothers: A Midsummer Night’s Dream 3.2, from The Plays of Shakespeare, 1858–60. Image size 7.5 × 13 (3×51/8 ).

While individual images reveal themselves as acute reflections of the momentary moods of the plays, Gilbert’s edition shows its true originality in the Library Edition, which translates the structural sense of mid-Victorian narrative painting to the formal and material identities of the illustrated edition. In consequence, while using the same wood-engravings as those in the original edition, the final version is the most effective of the four major Victorian illustrated editions in exploiting the unified printing of letterpress and image, to both propel the action and offer sensitive critical readings of the plays, within the larger aesthetic sense of the day. Fundamental to this is the unified design of page-openings, a technique that is wholly bibliographic, while relying on recent concerns in painting, and the larger structural sense of paired images that was a significant component of much Victorian narrative art. The large, wide-page format of the edition facilitates an open, spacious presentation that invites unhurried reading, while the setting of the text in two columns, and the absence of footnotes, achieves an ideal balance between moving the events on too quickly and holding them back. Page-openings can thus be used freely to foreshadow events, make retrospective comments on earlier action, or present characters and interactions in balanced pairs, with the effect of stressing unexpected likenesses, revealing antagonisms, or suggesting currents of idea and situation unlikely to be achieved in a format 313

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lacking such breadth and poise. In the exchange between verbal and visual forms, the latter becomes a directorial and interpretive voice, constantly extending the reading experience by commentary, suggestion and movement. While the same images had been used in the earlier editions, they lose much of their force when presented not in opposed pairs but on separate pages, their cumulative effect diminished and the reader left without the visual apprehension they bring of a complex relationship of characters or event. In some, Gilbert again exploits the power of lines of eye contact between characters. An opening from The Tempest presents Ferdinand and Miranda watched by Prospero in 3.3, echoing his musings on the need to control ‘this swift business’ (1.2.453), and matched on the facing page by Stephano and Trinculo with Caliban watched by Ariel. A parallel sense of implied, though forceful, restraint underlies both, and the ambivalence of the island’s magical power, potentially working for disruption as well as resolution, qualifies the scene. Such innovative pairings are disturbingly effective, not least for the present-day reader anxiously aware of faultlines in the plays. Elsewhere, the effect of such pairings is more vigorous and direct. The arraignment of Hermione is shown by placing Leontes’ court on the left hand page while Hermione and her attendants appear on the right. The confrontation is matched by the gap presented by the gutter of the book, so that the two are shown as both close in opposition and widely separate in moral and psychological systems. It is a moment of great effect, equivalent to a particularly powerful piece of stage placing, but resting fully on the use of illustration and mise-en-page to convey a wholly readerly engagement with the text. The effect is similar in the original weekly parts and the three-volume edition but there, because the footnotes provide another visual layer, the impact is diluted. The simple, bold opposition is at its most powerful when seen against the four marching columns of letterpress. Another pairing, that depends not on impassivity between the two main elements but on an almost immediate response, is presented in the players’ scene from Hamlet (Fig. 137). The players’ dumb show and the response of Claudius are set on facing pages, linked by Hamlet’s glance across from one to the other, in a page-opening that in its expansive form reveals itself as the climax of the episode. More subtly, it presents the consequences of the performance visually before they are read, intensifying the language’s power when it is encountered fractionally later. Earlier editions, separating the images, lack this impact. Other confrontations reveal parallels that convey almost a balletic sense of the performative, drawing equations within the plays’ concerns that go beyond the immediate events and invite the reader to make subconscious connections. Such 314

137 Sir John Gilbert, engraved by the Dalziel brothers: Hamlet 3.3, from The Library Shakespeare, 1873–5. Page size 30.5 × 24.1 (12×91/2 ).

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a pairing is shown in All’s Well that Ends Well 5.5 (Fig. 138) where Helena’s handing the petition to the Gentleman is matched with Parolles’ giving Lavache the letter for Lafeu. There is at this point no sense of what will follow; but the parallel action is suggestive and disquieting, maintaining the mood of unfulfilment present throughout the play. At times, unusual relationships are set up that reveal deeper structural patterns. Early in Romeo and Juliet there are paired images of Juliet and her nurse and Romeo and Juliet with Friar Laurence, sharpening the likeness between the two older figures as advisors often dulled by the radical differences between them. One of the most imaginative, and structurally far-reaching, uses of the pairing technique occurs in the third act of Macbeth. Here, some of the effect depends on Gilbert’s illustration of an event mentioned but not depicted in the play, the murder of Banquo. It is shown in dark, deep-focus tones on the left, while on the right is another image, in far closer detail, of the ghost appearing to Macbeth at the banquet. In the folio edition the two appear opposite each other, the murder scene anticipating the ghost at the banquet; yet, because of the depth and darkness of the first image, the reader is forced to move more slowly to the other image, so that the effect is delayed, and thus enhanced in a very subtle manipulation of the physiology of the reading process for psychological effect. In the serial part and the three-volume edition, the murder appears three pages before the banquet: effective as they are, the images lose a great deal by this isolation. In the larger edition, pairings rest on scrupulous control of page layout, the eyeline being constant for both images, the perspective in both precisely the same or, in the case of the Macbeth image, deliberately askew in its manipulation of focal length to delay just for an instant the realisation of the murder’s consequences. They are presented to the reader like paintings hung on the same eye-line, and perhaps reveal the influence of popular, if unusual, Victorian narrative triptychs such as Augustus Egg’s Past and Present,18 displayed at the Royal Academy in 1858. Ruskin’s pamphlets decoding the narrative structures of the RA paintings began to appear from the summer exhibition of 1855:19 it is not, perhaps, unreasonable to suggest that the greater skills of reading fostered by such events were instrumental in the construction, by both artist and reader, of the images in the Gilbert folio. The involvement demanded from the reader by such images may also be seen to parallel that required by a production that uses details of movement or costume to explore relationships. Parallel, but not mimic: the effects of the paired images in the Library Edition can be achieved in no other form than the opened book.

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138 Sir John Gilbert, engraved by the Dalziel brothers: All’s Well 5.1, from The Library Shakespeare, 1873–5. Page size 30.5 × 24.1 (12×91/2 ).

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Gilbert’s structural sense combines with the Victorian preoccupation with human relationships of age and gender in the third scene of Othello (Fig. 139). On the left, Othello is shown talking to Desdemona, who is in her father’s arms; and on the next right hand page he is talking to Brabantio, while Desdemona is in his arms. The similar postures, and the line of eye contact, between father and husband, make the play’s progression both inevitable and disturbing. To a sensitive reader this records the rather queasy speed with which the young woman moves from the protection of a father to that of a husband, opening the movement out for comparison to its occurrence in most of the comedies, and infecting it with a similar disquiet. The overall visual treatment of Othello is perhaps the most successful in its gradual development of the play’s moods through its visual progression. The catastrophe is carefully anticipated through the use of increasingly sombre, concentrated compositions, and in the use of carefully selected pairings of images, as the above example has made clear. The full effect is experienced only in a reading of the complete dual text of the play, revealing again Gilbert’s strong narrative sense – a use of structure and design perhaps not seen since the narrative chiaroscuro of Anthony Walker’s Romeo and Juliet. Selous’s concern with the emotions is here elevated to a different plane so that, instead of single moments of emotion, the illustrations present a visual statement of the play’s turbulent trajectory of feeling, again redefining elements of structure and feeling from the easel-paintings of the period within an idiom and structural design that functions wholly in terms of the printed book. While the editions of Gilbert and Selous are radically different in style, there are elements that draw them together. One similarity is, however, much more important, operating at a level that, to the present-day reader as much as to the volumes’ first purchasers, is so obvious as to go unnoticed. Their images present events from the viewpoint of an observer placed within the centre of the action, yet taking no part within it. It is a parallel to that of a theatre-goer, but one wholly readerly, since the viewpoint changes almost with every illustration. That it is unnoticed reveals its familiarity, a convention become so commonplace as to be invisible. It allows the same kind of involvement with the action that has been present in both the image of the Countess of Leicester and Wayland Smith approaching Kenilworth Castle (see Fig. 109) and that of the surrender at Sedan (see Fig. 133). The similarity to the former echoes Scott’s involvement of ordinary people in extraordinary historical events; the pairing with the latter, the use of similar devices to make accessible contemporary actuality. Imaging in the popular novel, illustrated journalism and editions of Shakespeare thus coalesce 318

139 Sir John Gilbert, engraved by the Dalziel brothers: Othello 1.3, from The Library Shakespeare, 1873–5. Page size 30.5 × 24.1 (12×91/2 ).

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in the presentation of events through an assumed visual realism, located within a narrative progression that has a viewpoint that, while variable and unstated, always places the reader inside the action. In this, the making contemporary of Shakespeare’s plays, coupled with their placing in contemporary views of history, imperial and domestic politics and the vocabulary of Victorian body-language, reaches its climax. The intimacy that results from these approaches separates the work of Gilbert and Selous from another strand of Victorian book illustration with which it is directly contemporary. In a volume long the standard account of the subject, Forrest Reid dismisses Gilbert’s work as ‘completely insensitive to the poetic quality’ of Shakespeare’s writing, asking of his engravings of Bottom and the mechanicals: ‘What have these degraded half-witted clowns to do with Shakespeare’s rustics, whose very simplicity is a kind of poetry?’20 Appearing in the mid-1920s, the comment comes at the peak of the rejection of a certain kind of Victorianism. Regardless of its validity, its setting reveals an aspect of Shakespeare illustration that is not easy to explain: the absence of any editions with illustrations by the so-called ‘Sixties Style’ of wood engraving. The difference between the images of Gilbert, Selous and the others involved with the serial editions and those of the Sixties designers leaps out when they are compared with images such as Fig. 140, a design from Millais’ volume The Parables of Our Lord (1863/4). This has a depth of texture and intensity of feeling absent from the Shakespeare engravings. The work of Gilbert, Selous and the others involved in their editions can never equal such technical complexity and rich suggestions of mood, often ambiguous and disturbing. One simple reason for this is the sheer number of engravings produced for the collected editions in comparison with the far smaller output of the master artist-engravers. Gilbert’s experience with journalistic designs made him experienced at working with great speed and accuracy; Selous’s work, while more concerned with the emotional impact of fiction, was similarly profuse. Fred Walker and Birket Foster, to say nothing of Millais and Holman Hunt, never confronted such pressures: their work was of a different order, designed for a different publishing context and reading situation. Set within collections of poetry, short stories or biblical parables, their designs were objects of sustained contemplation, not components of a dynamic reading continuum: yet the absence of Shakespeare from the editions they illustrated is a source of great regret. The differences in modes of production and reading of these more celebrated images are matched by their more rarefied aesthetic, in essence more meditative, 320

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140 John Everett Millais: ‘The Good Samaritan’, from The Parables of Our Lord, 1863. Page size 26 × 19 (101/4 × 71/2 ).

encouraging participation of a different kind from the onlooker. Its application to Shakespeare can be very successful, but within the different rhetorical setting of large oil paintings such as the many versions of Ophelia, or treatments of the exchange between Claudio and Isabella. All these present a complex of event and feeling in isolation from the play’s dramatic current. One instance of this selective reinvention takes place in both verbal and visual form in a woodengraving that Millais designed for the Moxon Tennyson of 1858 (Fig. 141). Here, the quotation of a single line from Measure for Measure, ‘Mariana in the moated grange’, parallels the engraving in presenting a moment outside the play’s dramatic continuum, suspending its narrative and creating a space for the lush numbness of the verse and the dark enclosure of the image to work together. Such richness of design would be quite unfeasible in the imaging of a whole 321

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141 John Everett Millais: Wood-engraving to ‘Mariana’, from The Poems of Tennyson, Moxon, 1857. Page size 24 × 15.8 (91/2 × 61/4 ).

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play, denying any dramatic progress and being impracticable in terms of production and cost. Gilbert’s work, as has been noted, adopts many of the structural devices of the better-known, more highly regarded artists of his day, but his dilution of their style and diminution of their rhetorical distance is less a failing than an attempt to make accessile complex states of feeling and intellect that are offered by the play-texts within which his images appear. Not a failure, then, but a redirection of technique. And the work of Selous quite simply does not aspire to such status, instead presenting narrative in a manner that offers greater immediacy in its less demanding, and less extensive, aesthetic and social transmediation. As much because of these limitations as in spite of them, the editions of Staunton and the Cowden Clarkes display, in markedly different ways, an integration of text and image that offers an experience of the plays that is immediate, invigorating and at times critically perceptive. In their work, the technique and stance of illustration has moved a long way since the formal separation of Knight or the emblematic horrors of Meadows. Its involvement of the beholder in assimilating the language of the body, or in re-creating the plays’ dynamic within conventions of contemporary fiction and reportage, never approaches the demands of Boitard, but this is in itself a major reason for its original success. In their reliance upon shared codes of involvement and emotion, at their best coupled with subtly suggestive mise-en-page, the designs of Gilbert and Selous produce a reading experience of immediacy and vigour that brings the plays and their issues to life for their mid-Victorian readers. Through their multiple incarnations over many years, each made its own influential contribution to the Victorian construction of Shakespeare.

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CHAPTER 10

DECLINE AND RENEWAL

I At about the same time as the separate parts of Howard Staunton’s edition were being issued, John Dicks began to publish the weekly parts of his Complete Works of Shakspere with a Memoir. Each contained two plays and cost just one penny. The coarse, wood-pulp fascicles were simply sewn together with no cover, and the need to save space reduced the print to surely the smallest point size compatible with the act of reading, the complete text of Hamlet covering a mere thirty-four pages. Despite these constraints, every play was prefaced with an illustration, perhaps to attract prospective purchasers when displayed on railway bookstalls. These images turn the restricted space to their advantage, presenting a single exchange between two characters that, with its locating caption line, reveals a driving force of the play or offers a critical reading of some other kind, as an initial direction, reductive but suggestive, for the reader. Some of the images are signed ‘Ball’, others ‘Williamson’, but most are unnamed: the crude draughtsmanship places them beneath the aesthetic radar of the Dalziels or the more prolific Victorian artists and engravers. These limitations apart, the images have a particular significance in both the course of illustrated editions and the spread of the Shakespeare franchise. Most follow tradition in the scenes they select. Hamlet is shown encountering the ghost, and Macbeth at the cauldron; Lear and the Fool are on the heath, a vestigial lightning-flash continuing the convention begun by Boitard. Henry VIII is shown dismissing Wolsey, and Romeo and Juliet greeting the dawn, while both Richard III and Brutus encounter the ghosts before battle. Others are more original. Othello is shown not in the act of smothering Desdemona, but just before it,

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above the line ‘It is the cause – it is the cause, my soul’, offering suspense for those who know the outcome, and provocation for those who do not. In this it follows the pattern of Victorian novel illustration established in the partnership between Dickens and Cruikshank in, for example, the depiction of Bill Sykes just before the fall from the roof that will cause his death. A similar effect is produced for King John. The image gives new poignancy to the blinding scene by showing Arthur tugging at Hubert’s sleeve, so that he turns back to look down, one hand to his chest, as the boy asks ‘Will you put out mine eyes?’ More frequent, and more suggestive, are images distilling a conflict or relation arguably the major propellant of the play, through the carefully reasoned juxtaposition of two central characters. The constraint of space is thus used to concentrate attention on a major concern for readers nursed on the Victorian novel, a relationship between two individuals. Typical is the image for Antony and Cleopatra (Fig. 142). The two sit awkwardly turned to each other, and while he gazes down at her she looks past him, the absence of eye contact betraying the psychological complexities and reversals of the relationship. References to setting are minimal, the background a few lines suggesting drapes or architectural forms, the arms of the chair implying an Egyptian design. More detailed location is offered by the headbands, Antony’s the laurel wreath of a Roman triumphator, Cleopatra’s plaited in vaguely Egyptian fashion. The caption places the scene as ‘Act i, scene 1’ with Cleopatra’s line: ‘If it be love indeed, tell me how much.’ The extreme economy of caption and image establish situation, mood and character, hinting at the outcome without specifying it. A comparison with Gilbert’s drawing for the same play (see Fig. 134) reveals the obvious source of Dicks’s image, which reproduces its central passage almost exactly in reverse, suggesting again the need for economy by saving time in the engraving process. Despite these shortcomings, the image succeeds by turning to advantage the constrained space in which it operates. Gilbert’s image surrounds the two central characters with a series of attendants, and implies both topographical authenticity and later action in its more expansive, leisurely operation. Dicks’s pared-down version focuses attention directly on the characters, the absence of eye contact and the thrust of the caption suggesting a fracture at the root of the relationship. This immediately redirects the play to the arena of personal relationships, developing the concern for emotional visualisation seen in Cassell’s edition, offering a radical simplification effective as a visual concentration of theme designed to appeal instantly to a new reader. That the concerns of Victorian narrative – evident in the novel, poetry and in personal and social constructions – have overflowed into the reading of the play, 325

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142 Unsigned headpiece, Antony and Cleopatra, from Shakspere’s Works, ed. John Dicks, 1864. Page size 17.8 × 12 (7 × 43/4 ).

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weighting it towards domestic rather than global tragedy, is suggested by the simplicity of the setting. What the image does not show is as significant as what it does: the battle of Actium, for example, is stridently absent in this opening diagnosis of the play’s condition. That this derives from practical imperatives is not relevant: the reader is not called on to judge the pressures working on designer and publisher. Instead, she or he responds to the image as it is and where it is, as the first element of the reading process, seen repeatedly as the text is read, especially in the original paper-bound part, in the physical process of picking up the pages to read the play. That the image follows the pervasive convention in depicting a gender relationship renders the style invisible, making discussion of the characters as actual people the immediate response. The engravings for other plays follow the same approach, the presence or absence of eye contact in particular becoming a major instrument, in conjunction with other bodily cues, to reveal key relationships. The treatment of Coriolanus (Fig. 143) generates an effect opposite to that of Antony and Cleopatra. Volumnia looks resolutely straight up into the eyes of her son, whose folded arms reveal a sullen defensiveness against her curiously halfextended hand. Volumnia’s ‘You are too absolute’ (3.2) becomes in its use as caption a critical comment that makes Bradley’s identification of fatal character flaws redundant before it has been advanced. The same trope of eye contact is apparent in Measure for Measure, but between Isabella and a Duke whose cowl does not conceal what seems to be a state of uncertainty, above the line ‘Unhappy Claudio! wretched Isabel!’ The shift from the more usual scene between brother and sister is enriched by the unanswered question underlying the line quoted. The image nicely focuses the play’s moral complexities, anticipating the coinage of the term ‘problem plays’ by F. S. Boas in Shakspere and his Predecessors (1896). Such images display careful reconsideration of the possibilities and limitations offered to the designer of a small, single image, and its relation to the play’s larger drives rather than to a single moment. They also demonstrate that depth of critical reading is not the preserve of more profusely illustrated editions. Irony, for example, is introduced in the pairing of Troilus and Cressida, embracing above the line ‘Dear, trouble not yourself, the morn is cold.’ To the innocent reader, this suggests devotion; to one qualified by prior reading, a deep irony. The engravings assume greater importance when the edition is seen within the growing popular reception of Shakespeare. Those who had collected the weekly parts could purchase, for sevenpence, a ‘Case for binding’.1 This is the form of one of my two copies, the spine glued directly to the backs of the fascicles that are crudely stitched together with thick black thread. Looking through the unevenly 327

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143 Unsigned headpiece, Coriolanus, from Shakspere’s Works, ed. John Dicks, 1864. Page size 17.8 × 12 (7 × 43/4 ).

printed pages of this assembled volume, the stitching occasionally visible, is oddly moving. Bound with the weekly parts is the whole process of reading and preserving each weekly part before their laborious, amateur enclosure in the sevenpenny casing. On the spine, in thin gold-blocking, are the words shakspere’s works, —— complete

They proclaim to the onlooker, not without pride, the ownership of the volume as a badge of membership of the literary classes. In its construction and ultimate form the volume says much about the acquisition of literary maturity, a process involving the collection of weekly parts and their careful assembly into a trophy 328

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demonstrating the negotiation of a rite of passage at once social, economic and aesthetic. The linen, strawboard and paper of the casing enfolds an experience of the plays of which visualisations, however simple in comparison to the multitemporalism of Rowe or the paired openings of Gilbert, are an essential component. It is perhaps the most extensive act of Shakespeare enfranchisement through a dual text of word and image, and also one of the very last.

II George Eliot famously remarks, at the outset of Daniel Deronda, on the difficulty of knowing where to begin. It is equally hard to know where to stop, and suggesting a moment where the tradition of the illustrated edition comes to an end will inevitably falsify. The Gilbert–Staunton Library Shakespeare, the third and final volume of which appeared in 1875, is in some ways the culmination of the tradition, with its subtle integration of text and image in dynamic page-openings; Dicks’s Shakespeare is most probably the last mass-circulation edition with original illustrations that offered genuine contemporary engagement with the plays. A number of changes, material and ideological, offer themselves as underlying causes for the subsequent decline. One of the most insistent explanations is that the illustrated edition was quite simply the victim of its own success. By 1870, it had probably saturated every possible level of a market stratified by income and social pretension. The most explicit evidence of this is the success claimed, though not necessarily achieved, by Dicks’s edition. Its implications need careful examination. When the weekly penny parts, the edition sold bound at two shillings and the edition sold in paper wrappers – the first complete Shakespeare sold for a shilling and perhaps also (depending on the definition one adopts) the first paperback Shakespeare – are all added together, Dicks’s complete figure for a two-year period was 700,000 copies.2 The 1861 census gave the population of Great Britain as 23.1 million; in 1871 it had risen to 26.1 million. Even without making allowance for the number of children, and taking the second figure, this means that one person in every 37 bought a copy of Dicks’s Shakespeare. Given that many of these sales would have been to families, and also the habit of sharing copies common among less affluent readers, the number who actually saw them would have been greater still. Newspaper historians use a ‘multiplier’ of between 3 and 5 to assess the number of readers for each copy. At best, this raises the readership to 3.5 million, meaning that approaching one person in seven saw Dicks’s edition, and had their impression of the plays modified by its illustrations. These figures, of course, are purely speculative. There is also the 329

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question of whether Dicks’s figure includes copies sold in the United States, first through the agency of Swayne of Boston, and then under their own imprint. Detailed figures aside, it is clear that the potential purchaser of the late 1860s was faced with a bewildering range of illustrated editions. The four pillars of Victorian illustration, discussed in the last two chapters, were each reissued in at least three forms well into the 1880s. An advertising sheet inside an edition published by Routledge in 1882 offers a snapshot that is as inclusive as one of William Powell Frith’s panoramas of Victorian society. It lists five editions with images by Gilbert, ranging from an Edition de Luxe with 824 images in fifteen royal octavo volumes to a single volume with only sixteen; editions of Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare and Dodd’s Beauties of Shakespeare, both with Gilbert’s work; and four versions of Knight’s edition, from an eight-volume ‘superior royal octavo’ at £4 4s to a single volume of 768 pages, with illustrations, bound in cloth for two shillings. When these are added to the earlier editions in serial parts and their subsequent bound forms, the line stretches out to the crack of self-destruction. These circumstances contain other factors. The final, paperback version of Dicks’s Shakespeare sold for one shilling – the price of a single serial number of other contemporary editions. In the price war that this reveals, it became impossible to produce editions with illustrations. Some that followed, including that in Ward and Lock’s ‘People’s Standard Library’,3 had a few tiny images squeezed into gaps at the end of pages; those that came after lacked even these. In a way, too, the sheer pervasiveness of the illustrated edition caused it to be separated from a major section of the reading public, since it became associated with the least positive aspects of populism. These had, of course, been present from much earlier, illustration being associated with the second editions of Pope and Theobald rather than the scholarship of their first issue, a sequence repeated in the two successive forms of the Cowden Clarkes’ edition. The division was sharpened in the 1860s by the appearance of the Cambridge Shakespeare and, in 1864, by its offshoot, the Globe edition. Mass publishing now made scholarly texts available to the average reader. There was also a shift in taste away from illustration, seen first in the novel. George Eliot’s Romola, with images by Frederick, Lord Leighton, appeared in 1862–3, but was her only work in illustrated serial form. George du Maurier’s Trilby appeared with illustrations in its first edition of 1895, but was exceptional in having them designed by the author, and also for its uneasy position somewhat to one side of the serious novel tradition. The pendulum of taste may account for this, but so, surely, does a shift in subject matter and narrative stance, that demanded the reader’s psychological involvement to a degree that frequent illustration might be thought to impede – a stance in 330

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itself, of course, dependent on a reading of images as simple presentations of event. The growth of academic study of the plays, in burgeoning university and college literature departments, clearly also had its effect. The market for editions of Shakespeare was changing, from those who read the plays for pleasure or self-improvement to those who read for study, within single-minded academic departments in which the interdisciplinary engagements of illustrated editions had no place.

III Stalled by its own popular success, spurned by those with new scholarly concerns, the illustrated edition assumed an identity foreshadowed by Hanmer’s edition of the 1740s – a volume the preserve of the aesthete, art-lover and bibliophile. The first evidence of this was perhaps shown by the ‘Imperial Shakespeare’ published by the indefatigable Charles Knight in the early 1870s.4 Its two large folio volumes, sometimes bound as three, included steel engravings not of commissioned illustrations but of paintings of the plays by contemporary artists, capitalising on the taste for literary and narrative painting growing out of the emblematic moralism of the Pre-Raphaelites. Editions with such images were not new: the London Printing and Publishing Company’s three-volume version of the Cornwall–Meadows edition discussed in Chapter 8, with its addition of images of actors and portraits of Shakespeare’s heroines, exemplifies the practice from much earlier. But such volumes were reprints of editions already containing illustrations, which the new plates supplemented. Knight’s later edition was wholly different, including as it did an anthology of pre-existing images, with no central spine of images commissioned from one or more contemporary artists. Appearing alongside the final version of Gilbert’s edition, it presents itself persuasively as marking the end of the illustrated tradition. Other editions were projected, notably those with illustrations by Gustave Dor´e and Edwin Austin Abbey, but neither of these was completed. The full-page engravings in the Imperial Edition are reproduced on much thicker paper, with tissue interleaving, and at right angles to the text. This material feature means that the reading process must be suspended and the volume turned before they can be examined, emphasising their function in personal study or shared debate about the action they present and its place in the play, as isolated images rather than part of a continuum. In places, this function is similar to that of earlier illustrated editions. The engraving of Laslett John Pott’s painting of 331

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144 L. J. Pott, engraved by D. I. Desvachez: Prince Arthur and Hubert, from Knight’s ‘Imperial Shakespeare’, 1873–5. Image size 25 × 17.8 (97/8 × 7).

King John (Fig. 144) shows this well. Within the edition, turned through ninety degrees and bound, like the majority of the images, on a left-hand page, it offers a moment’s pause, concentrating the reader’s emotion on Arthur’s appeal to Hubert, carefully manipulating suspense and exploiting feeling. Many of the images in the edition are reproductions, in fine steel engravings, of paintings fashionable at the time of publication, and still familiar over a century later, among them Richard Dadd’s Puck and the Fairies and Arthur Hughes’s Ophelia. Their contribution to the reading experience functions more through recalling a familiar, yet quite separate, experience of a part of the play than as an integrated part of its dynamic. They bring to the edition the relation between contemporary styles and concerns and the text of the play, the former in a taste for a more darkly erotic faery world, the latter in a fascination with an equally sombre, but more remote, landscape of female insanity, both constructed through an essentially male perspective. Sometimes an artist’s reading of one of the plays may be clarified by comparison with his other work. William Quiller Orchardson’s engraving to 1 Henry IV 332

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145 William Quiller Orchardson, engraved by C. W. Sharpe: Prince Henry, Poins and Falstaff, from Knight’s ‘Imperial Shakespeare’, 1873–5. Image size 26.8 × 16 (101/2 × 61/4 ).

(Fig. 145) is peculiarly effective through such implication. Titled Prince Henry, Poins and Falstaff, it shows Falstaff departing alone between curtains, prefiguring his rejection when Hal is king. That it appears not at this point of the play but in its first scene conveys a sense of proleptic irony, suggesting the rift to come. The composition is such that this is evident – in the distance between the figures, and the short figure seen from behind – even to someone unfamiliar with the play: the structure suggests the later dismissal. For those who know Orchardson’s work, the engraving recalls others that employ wide separation between characters to reveal actual or imminent fracture. The First Cloud 5 and Her Mother’s Voice6 are perhaps the best known, the first showing an elegant woman leaving a man standing hunched before a domestic hearth, the second a seated man listening while his daughter sings at a distant piano, recalling his dead wife. The Shakespeare image deepens the events shown in the moment, intensifies the reading experience by its foreshadowing of later action, and both reinforces and is reinforced by its allusions to works similar in composition and parallel in mood. It provides a forceful, highly personal extension of the technique used in earlier Victorian imaging of locating the relationships of the plays within contemporary emotional choreography. 333

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Many of the other engravings function in related ways, projecting similar triangular relations between moment, movement and larger reference. But their effect is rarely cumulative, offering instead separate readings of the play in which they appear – much as the images in Boydell’s Gallery do when seen in the elephant folio of reproductions. Knight’s is the first edition conceived as a visual anthology, with no concern for a progressive, unified imaging of the text. Perhaps this reflects a change in readership, with fewer readers requiring to be led graphically through the plays, preferring instead to see discrete readings of textual moment or idea and assess each one as an independent act of visual criticism or narrative engagement. It is too simple to assert that the volumes’ size and cost restricted them to those with the education or leisure to appreciate such statements, but this was surely one factor underlying their production, along with a mercantile desire to explore and exploit new ways of presenting the plays. The edition’s title, ‘The Imperial Shakespeare’, suggests an expansionist confidence that is perhaps the high-water mark of the enthronement of Shakespeare as much as the embodiment of national identity. One later edition attempts to return to the practices of the 1860s, the Henry Irving Shakespeare of 1888,7 which paired full-page images with smaller engravings cut into the text of the plays. The intersection here is not with individual artists’ work but with a genre of illustration, of which they are as much the source as the derivative. The images are the work of Gordon Browne, the son of Dickens’s illustrator Hablˆot Knight Browne, better known as ‘Phiz’. Before producing designs for the edition Browne had illustrated books including With Clive in India by G. A. Henty, and went on to illustrate other children’s books by Edith Nesbit and Andrew Lang. More significantly, he also contributed drawings to fiction published in the new illustrated magazines of the period, that redefined popular publishing and reading habits in the last two decades of the century. Cassell’s Illustrated Magazine (launched in 1867) was followed by The English Illustrated Magazine (1889), The Strand (1891) and Pall Mall (1893). Browne was a founder contributor to the last two. The format and style of Browne’s Shakespeare images, cut across the double columns of a page, and each with a single-line caption, prefigure not only his later work but the whole house style of the illustrated magazines. The dates are important, revealing the mutual influence of the illustrative style between the two publications. Once more, they show the plays within the dominant visual frame and material circumstances of their time, as comparison between a page from Richard II (Fig. 146) and one from a historical romance from The Strand (Fig. 147) makes clear.

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The Irving edition in some ways revisits the approaches of some much earlier illustrated editions. The conceptual parallel with Knight’s editions is striking, fictive re-creation now displacing historical reference. In basing its text on the actor’s prompt-books, enclosing between brackets lines cut from his productions, it also suggests the dual identity of Bell’s acting edition. Yet despite these similarities the production, publication method and readership are quite different. Instead of serial parts, the Irving edition was issued in quarto volumes; its format, style and readership all anticipate the later and more lavish illustrated editions of single plays, and thus occupy a middle ground between the old and new forms. One further approach to the integrated, illustrated text was essayed by Edric Vredenburg’s 1897 edition of The Merry Wives of Windsor.8 That it was published by Raphael Tuck and Sons, then known for its high-quality Christmas cards and soon to be celebrated for its art postcards of British scenery, suggests its alignment with images celebrating English rural identity at the time of its accelerating disappearance. This is certainly evident in its images, and perhaps directed the choice of play, the only one produced in what was called Tuck’s ‘Artistic Series’. It is shown also in the rubricated, antique headings to each act. But the graphic approach is quite new, with small vignettes placed in the outer margins of a text unfettered by annotation, to provide simple suggestions of the play’s settings, action and movement, as demonstrated in Fig. 148. That no other plays appeared may suggest the venture’s failure, or the firm’s increasing concern with its gently sentimentalised postcards. If the latter, then the project ironically fell victim to a view of the nation that earlier approaches to the play, in popular writing and performance as well as illustration, had themselves helped to produce. These editions are, however, exceptions. By the end of the nineteenth century, for whatever reason, the tradition of the illustrated complete edition of Shakespeare had effectively run its course. In the succeeding years a new kind of edition emerges: the richly produced, heavily illustrated gift book ostensibly directed at child readers. The most popular plays, such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, appeared with images designed by artists including Arthur Rackham, W. Heath Robinson, and Lorna Burgoyne.9 Material circumstances are again important. Rackham’s colour plates are made practicable by the new four-colour Hentschel process, which produces images of great depth and clarity, saturated colour matched by incisive line. His Midsummer Night’s Dream, familiar from later reprints, includes several comic and diminutive images of Puck and the fairies. But there is a more serious side to many of the plates, that range from the threat

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146 Gordon Browne: page from Richard II, from The Henry Irving Shakespeare, 1888. Page size 23 × 17.25 (9 × 63/4 ).

both exerted and endured by the fairies in the wood, through the vision of Hermia transfigured through Lysander’s eyes in 3.2, to the mature sensuality of Titania asleep in the forest. The edition is designed as much for the adult looking over the child’s shoulder as its declared younger reader. The great resurgence of illustration in the English book from the 1890s onwards is curiously silent in its contributions to Shakespeare. Perhaps the stress on 336

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147 Y. D. Almond: Illustration to ‘The King’s Justice’ by Ellis Pearson, from The Strand Magazine, August 1907. Page size 15.8 × 23.5 (61/4 × 91/4 ).

medievalism inherited from the Pre-Raphaelites and inscribed in the book tradition by William Morris is in part responsible; the vagaries of taste and commercial forces, intersecting in the absence of commissions, were more probably the major force. Whatever the cause, the gaps are extensive and much to be regretted. What, for example, would Aubrey Beardsley have made of Measure for Measure,10 Gwen Raverat of As You Like It? In 1933 the Limited Editions Club produced an edition with 337

148 J. Finnemore and F. L. Emanuel: The Merry Wives of Windsor, 2.3–3.1, ed. Edric Vredenburg, 1897. Page size 23.5 × 17.8 (91/4 × 7).

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fine images by Eric Gill, but far better known are his four small wood engravings for the New Temple Shakespeare,11 used for the title-pages of each of the comedies, tragedies, histories and romances. It is a valuable conceit, and the images make provocative suggestions about the nature of genre; the design for the tragedies is remarkable in suggesting elements of human exchange between genders and generations that are applicable to all of the major plays. But the volumes have nothing like the individual force or narrative sweep of Gill’s magnificent illustrated Chaucer or Aldine Bible. There are notable exceptions. One is Paul Nash’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, a volume in the Player’s Shakespeare series published in 1924. Its images of stylised, minimal figures dwarfed by cylindrical trees are sharpened when read within the artist’s best-known work, his savage canvases of the desolation of First World War battlefields.12 The echo offers a new element of transfiguration, poised between the redemptive and the ironic, to the changes exerted by the wood’s mysterious processes. Regardless of this, the designs offer a Modernist vision of the plays rare in the English illustrated tradition, developing elements of abstraction in the staging of William Poel and Harley Granville Barker. Of more recent editions, the best known are probably those of the Folio Society, alongside which should be placed the uncompleted set of individual plays proposed by the Limited Editions Club of New York in the late 1930s. This contains many suggestive and sensitive treatments. Agnes Miller Parker’s image of Richard II13 (Fig. 149) uses the medium of wood-engraving to convey the magisterial impotence of the central character; Demetrios Gallanis’s Troilus and Cressida locates the characters within the aesthetic circumstances of an ‘Etruscan’ vase painting, carefully matching style to event to convey something of the play’s ironically observed eroticism. The central characters are framed between a feral Cupid and a Pandarus who parodies classical depictions of Zeus, involving the reader in a kind of satiric scopophilia. These editions mark a move away from critical reading towards aesthetic reconstruction, separating them from the main stream of Shakespeare activity – if such a stream could, or indeed should, exist. If they represent the ultimate bibliophilic statement of the plays in visual form, perhaps the opposite extreme is presented by the use of images simply as adjuncts to critical or stage history. Since the 1980s, the holy trinity of critical editions, Cambridge, Oxford and Arden, have begun, reluctantly at first, to include images of production and illustrated editions in their critical introductions. But these are rarely considered as critical or aesthetic statements, and the tradition of imaging remains, save for a small number of scholarly studies discussed in Chapter 1, in another part of the wood. 339

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149 Agnes Miller Parker: Richard II, Limited Editions Club, 1940. Wood engraving, image size 21.2 × 12.8 (83/8 × 5).

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The illustrated edition itself is similarly restricted, with the honourable exception of some reprints and a very few limited editions. It is to different media that we should probably look to find the tradition’s continuity and growth – to strip-cartoon Shakespeare, and The Animated Tales, most remarkably the Hamlet and Macbeth, produced by the Welsh Channel Four television company in collaboration with animators in the final years of the USSR. Here, the link between language, action and imaging within a contemporary frame, begun by Rowe and followed in the differently inflected forms ever since, finds new life, extended by the possibility of discussion and exploration made possible by its shared viewing circumstance. It is early, as yet, to assess the potential of online illustrated editions. The production of digital versions of the text has already established itself as a valuable contribution to the study of textual emendation, with techniques such as the animated alternation of variant readings exploiting techniques unique to the medium. The easy availability of images through hyperlinks will make possible a kind of viewer-directed electronic grangerising unimaginable to earlier readers. Yet unless it is to remain simply the facilitation of an earlier technique through electronic means, the medium will need to develop its own structures: if this is successfully achieved, it will completely reconfigure the syntax and identity of the illustrated edition.

IV The inviolability of the individual reading experience remains mercifully resistant to the most ingenious efforts at theorising to provide a single method or model. The place of the image within it is irrefutable, because of the authority and immediacy of its visual form, its relation with the text determined by a series of complex perceptual codes and devices within the first moments of the encounter. The relationship is in itself a kind of performance, in which a move towards climax is directed by the early presence of a frontispiece, or a continuous visual pattern provided by images within the text. It will be accelerated or dampened by the rhythm of images, at times halted by placement alongside an event for meditation, in a tempo directed as much by the material placing of the image as its conceptual and aesthetic nature in relation to the words, and its own visual idiom. The image will be approached differently by those who know the play, and those approaching it afresh, but also by those for whom visual styles are familiar to the point of invisibility and those for whom they are perceived through historical distance. At times, images will contribute to critical readings; at times, to human engagement or empathy, the balance between these itself mirroring the forms 341

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of engagement offered by the theatre – and, at their most successful, moving towards a unity of mind and spirit that, while equivalent to that of the theatre, depends uniquely on the physicality of the printed book and the individual, private relation that it engenders. These pages have concentrated exclusively on illustrated volumes produced within the British Isles, even if some have achieved much wider circulation. There is much scope for a study of editions from the rest of the world. The existing and developing traditions of publishing and production from Europe, Asia and India are especially rich, and deserve full and rigorous exploration. But not here: instead, I offer a gesture towards such a widening glance, by touching on two editions that both return to the question of relations between page, stage and reader and offer, from different cultural bridges, new visions of how it may be achieved. The first is probably the most complete transformation of the verbal text that is possible within the medium of print, that also allows a wholly individual visual response from a single artist, within a single volume. In the collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library is a copy of Le songe d’une nuit d’´et´e; f´eerie d’apr`es W. Shakespeare, a free translation by Paul Meurice published in Paris in 1886. The volume has been embellished throughout by Pinckney Marcius-Simons with paintings in watercolour and gouache that cover the whole area of every page, obliterating the printed text through their transformations of action, mood and character. Narrative and mood become almost wholly visual, with stanzas of text occasionally visible through the rich, near-tactile colours and textures. The result is a sensuous languor in which event of any kind, especially the complex reversals in the wood, is presented through a layer of transformation that continually refracts those of the play itself, in a structure that marks the free elision of the extra-illustrated edition with the artist’s book. This colouristic fantasy is offset by the second example. Edward Gordon Craig’s Hamlet, produced by the Cranach Press in a German translation in 1928, and in larger format in English in 1930, approaches the text quite differently. Each page-opening balances image, text and narrative source to produce a dense, rigidly organised fabric that generates a unique, performative experience both wholly readerly and intensely visual. Craig’s neglect in England, and the volume’s production as a costly limited edition, mean that they remain little known. Their sombre textures and rigid geometries impose a force on the play that constitutes a major critical reading, an aspect of Weimar culture offering a Neoclassical counter to the satirical bleakness of George Grosz, whose Ecce Homo had appeared in 1923. 342

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The angular rhythms of Craig’s imaging recreate the play’s balancing of forces in several ways, offering a critical reading through structure as well as medium, in which wood-engravings evolved from Craig’s production designs are placed within page-openings juxtaposing a version of Shakespeare’s text with Belleforest’s novella. As much as a practical engagement with the play in performance, the pages constitute a macaronic, transmedial pun between stage design, annotated edition and printer’s forme. That they draw on the perspectival sketches of Sebastiano Serlio, and the blocks and screens that Craig developed as the basis of his dynamics of production, marks a return to the negotiations with stage forms and prescriptions implicit within the images of Franc¸ois Boitard, in which the tradition of Shakespeare illustration has its origins. That the opening shown in Fig. 150 depicts a play within a play offers another metaphor of the framing function of the visual illustration: that it shows the characters retreating from the stage, towards the innate performance of the read image and text is, in this material place, a suitable and necessary return to the medium of the book.

Overleaf: 150 Edward Gordon Craig: Players’ scene from the Cranach Press Hamlet, 1930. Wood engraving and letterpress, page size 36 × 23.4 (141/8 × 71/2 ).

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NOTES

Where quotations from Shakespeare’s plays are taken from captions in images, or from other identified editions, they are given as they appear, with act, scene and line numbers to the corresponding text in the most recent New Cambridge Shakespeare edition, which is also used for direct references to the plays. Because all of the illustrated editions discussed exist in a variety of forms, references are made to the individual play or annotation only, without page reference, except where made to one specific edition. Except where otherwise stated, the medium of paintings is oil on canvas. In all cases, height precedes width, and dimensions are given first in centimetres, with the equivalent in inches following in parentheses.

chapter 1 1 The availability of some of these texts as digital facsimiles places them within another theatre of knowledge that is beyond the scope of this study, but not of the larger identities of Shakespeare’s plays and their visual reconfiguration. The Ortelius may be found through an Early English Books Online facsimile, the Besson at www.sil.si.edu/DigitalCollections/ HST/Besson/besson.htm, and the Parkinson at http://etext.virginia.edu/kinney/theat.html. 2 Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 101. 3 ‘A Copie of certen orders concerning printing’, reprinted in A transcript of the registers of the company of stationers of London: 1554–1640 A.D., ed. Edward Arber (5 vols. Birmingham: Privately printed, 1894. Reprinted Gloucester, MA, 1967), vol. II, p. 43. 4 The images are reproduced and discussed in R. J. Foakes, Illustrations of the English Stage 1560– 1642 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985). The volume is an invaluable record of this kind of material: that it is discussed largely as theatrical evidence, rather than as evidence of an emerging print culture, reveals the dominance of such traditions of criticism.

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5 A helpful introductory study of some important individual images is provided by Mary Corbett and Ronald Leighton in The Comely Frontispiece: The Emblematic Title-Page in England, 1550–1660 (London: Routledge, 1979). A short but valuable discussion of the historical development of the emblem is available in Karl Josef H¨oltgen, Aspects of the Emblem: Studies in the English Emblem Tradition and the European Context (Kassel: Edition Reichenberger, 1986). 6 See, for example, Christopher Baugh, ‘Our Divine Shakespeare Fitly Illustrated’, in Shakespeare in Art, ed. Jane Martineau et al. (London: Merrell, 2003), pp.30–1. This is the most recent of several such attributions. 7 ‘Illustrations of Act II’, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. The Comedies, Histories, Tragedies, and Poems of William Shakespeare. 8 ‘Pictorial Shakespeare: Text, Stage, Illustration’, in Book Illustrated: Text, Image, and Culture, 1770–1930, ed. Catherine J. Golden (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2000), pp. 31–59, quotation from p. 33. 9 The available evidence is explored in full by Allardyce Nicoll in The Garrick Stage: Theatres and Audience in the Eighteenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980), pp. 115–19 and R. B. Graves in Lighting the Shakespearean Stage, 1567–1642 (Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999), pp. 180–3. 10 Most familiar in the version in Tate Britain, 57.15 × 75.88 (22 1/2 × 29 7/8 ). 11 The Empress of Morocco. A tragedy. With sculptures. As it is acted at the Duke’s Theatre. Written by Elkanah Settle, servant to his Majesty. (London: printed for William Cademan at the Popes-head in the Lower Walk of the New Exchange in the Strand, 1673). 12 ‘The Dorset Theatre Garden in Pictures’, Theatre Survey, VI (1965), pp. 134–46. 13 Letter to The Times Literary Supplement of 11 July 1935, p. 448. 14 Many of these images are reproduced and discussed in Martineau (ed.), Shakespeare in Art, especially pp. 120–49. 15 A fuller exploration of this is given in my earlier Painting Shakespeare: The Artist as Critic, 1720–1820 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 70–82. 16 Throughout, I have used the forms of names and the plays themselves as they appear in the edition cited; thus, Imogen rather than Innogen is used here. 17 R. L. Stevenson, Moral Emblems (Davos: The Davos Press and S. L. Osbourne, 1882). 18 Further information on the techniques of printing will be given where relevant, but for detailed discussion of individual techniques The Art of Illustration by Henry Blackburn (London: W. H. Allen, 1894), or How to Identify Prints by Bamber Gascoigne (2nd edn, London and New York: Thames and Hudson, 2004) are recommended. The website of the Melbourne Museum of Printing has excellent images of print processes at www.balanceresearch.com/museum/. 19 The exception of the epistolary novel, itself a dominant genre during the years when illustrated editions were assuming popularity, might be regarded as sited half-way between play and omniscient narrator structure. But the rhythms are very different from those of a play, and the exchange is not a dialogue so much as a reasoned exchange kept separate through time. 20 The essay ‘Introductory’ first appeared in Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1939), pp. 3–31, and then

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21

22 23

24

25 26 27

28

29

reappeared in various forms, including its best known version, ‘Iconography and Iconology: An Introduction to the Study of Renaissance Art’, Meaning in the Visual Arts (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955), pp. 26–54, quotations from p. 41. It is analysed by Michael Podro in The Critical Historians of Art (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982), pp. 178– 208. Explored by David Summers, ‘Meaning in the Visual Arts as a Humanist Discipline’, in Meaning in the Visual Arts: Views from the Outside. A Centennial Commemoration of Erwin Panofsky (1892–1968), ed. Irvin Lavin (Princeton, NJ: Institute for Advanced Study, 1995), pp. 9–24, quotation from p. 10. Theories of Reading: Books, Bodies and Bibliomania (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006), especially the Introduction and Chapter 1. These figures, and those given later for the Bell editions, are taken from William St Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 703–4. Stanley Morison, John Bell, 1745–1831: Bookseller, Printer, Publisher, Typefounder, Journalist, &c. (Cambridge: Printed for the Author at the University Press, 1930), p. 6. Morison does not cite a source for Bell’s claim, nor does he assess its validity. St Clair, The Reading Nation, p. 705. Burnim and Highfill, John Bell, p. 14. This is the figure given by Dicks himself in a letter to the editor of The Bookseller. See Andrew Murphy, Shakespeare in Print: A History and Chronology of Shakespeare Publishing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 177–8. That it should be approached with caution is made clear in Chapter 10. For a discussion of this see Anthony James West, ‘The Life of the First Folio in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, in A Concise Companion to Shakespeare and the Text, ed. Andrew Murphy (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), pp. 71–90. Full details of the writings discussed in this section may be found in the Select Bibliography.

chapter 2 1 Charles Knight, Passages of a Working Life during Half a Century: With a Prelude of Early Reminiscences (3 vols. London: Bradbury & Evans, 1864), vol. II, pp. 283–4; M. C. Salamon. Shakespeare in Pictorial Art. The Studio special number (London: The Studio, 1916), p. 12; Alfred Jackson, ‘Rowe’s Edition of Shakespeare’, The Library, 4th Series, 10 (1930) pp. 455–73, quotation from p. 470; Gary Taylor, Reinventing Shakespeare: A Cultural History, from the Restoration to the Present (London and New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989), p. 75. 2 The works of Mr. William Shakespear; in six volumes. Adorn’d with Cuts. Revis’d and Corrected, with an Account of the Life and Writings of the Author. By N. Rowe, Esq. (London: Jacob Tonson, 1709). 3 See, for example The Works of Mr. William Shakespear, with introduction by Peter Holland (London: Chatto and Pickering, 1999); Barbara A. Mowat, ’Nicholas Rowe and the Twentieth-Century Shakespeare Text’, in Shakespeare and Cultural Traditions, ed. Tetsuo Kishi, Roger Pringle and Stanley Wells (London: Associated University Presses, 1994), pp. 314–22;

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4 5 6 7

8

9

10

11 12 13 14 15

16

Margreta de Grazia, Shakespeare Verbatim: The Reproduction of Authenticity and the 1790 Apparatus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991); Colin Franklin, Shakespeare Domesticated: The EighteenthCentury Editions. (Aldershot: Scolar Press and Brookfield, VT: Gower, c.1991), pp. 60–70, 199–202. ‘Before the Bard: “Shakespeare” in Early Eighteenth-Century London’, English Literary History 64 (1997), pp. 41–75. Robert B. Hamm, Jr, ‘Rowe’s Shakespeare (1709) and the Tonson House Style’, College Literature 31/3 (Summer 2004), pp. 179–205. See Kathleen M. Lynch, Jacob Tonson Kit-Kat Publisher (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1971), p. 120. The attribution was established by H. A. Hammelmann in ‘Shakespeare’s First Illustrators’, Apollo, August 1968, Supplement, ‘Notes on British Art’, pp. 1–4. See also H. A. Hammelmann and T. S. R. Boase, Book Illustrators in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), p. 18. Among those who make the assertion are W. Moelwyn Merchant, Shakespeare and the Artist (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), pp. 49–50; Michael Dobson, The Making of the National Poet: Shakespeare, Adaptation and Authorship, 1660–1769 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 117; Catherine Tate in The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 212; and Geoffrey Ashton, Shakespeare and British Art (exhibition catalogue, New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 1981), p. 58. The diversity of these publications makes clear the widespread nature of the assumption. The paragraph is a digest of the information provided by Emmett L. Avery in The London Stage, 1660–1800. Part 2: 1700–1729 (2 vols. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1960). The single test page in the British Library (C.174.m.1) bears the date 1708, although this would not preclude its preparation in the preceding year. Notable largely for showing signs of being based on the Second rather than the Fourth Folio, it offers little evidence of when the final version was prepared. See Peter Holland. ‘Modernizing Shakespeare: Nicholas Rowe and The Tempest’, Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 51 no. 1 (Spring 2000), pp. 24– 32. ‘The First Illustrated Shakespeare’, The Connoisseur, CII (July–December 1938), pp. 305–9, at p. 307. ‘Modernizing Shakespeare’, p. 27. An Allegorical Scene: The Wheel of Fortune. Pen and black and brown ink and grey wash, 21.2 × 32.4 (8 7/16 × 12 3/4 ). Sotheby’s, 22 April 1998. Pen and ink and grey wash drawing, 31.4 × 45.3 (12 3/8 × 17 7/8 ). Collection of the Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT. The nature and extent of Jones’ use of the designs of Serlio, Bramante and others is explored thoroughly by John Peacock in The Stage Designs of Inigo Jones: The European Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). W[illiam] Rose, The History of Joseph: A Poem. In Six Books. With Cuts proper to each Book. (London: Printed for James Knapton at the Crown in St. Paul’s Church-Yard, 1712), p. 36. Subsequent page references in the text are to this edition.

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notes to pages 39–56 17 Jerome Nadal, also called Hieronymus Natalis S.J., Evangelicae historiae imagines, ex ordine Evangeliorum, quae toto anno in Missae sacrificio recitantur, In ordinem temporis vitae Christi digestae (Antwerp: Martin Nutius, 1593). The plates were also employed in Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia quae in sacrosancto missae sacrificio toto anno leguntur (Antwerp: Martin Nutius, 1595). The plates were engraved by Jean, J´erˆome and Antoine Wierix, Adrien and Jean Collaert and Charles de Mallery. The complex bibliographical history of the volumes is explored by Marie Mauquoy-Hendrickx in ‘Les Wierix illustrateurs de la Bible dite de Natalis’, Quaerendo, vol. VI no. 1 (Winter 1976), pp. 28–63. 18 Le livre illustr´e en occident du haut moyen ˆage `a nos jours (Bruxelles: Biblioth`eque Royale Albert Premier, 1977), p. 99. 19 Marking the Hours: English People and their Prayers 1240–1570 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006). 20 The term ‘polyscenal’ is used by Alastair Fowler in Renaissance Realism: Narrative Images in Literature and Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 121. 21 Ibid., p. 43. 22 Merchant, Shakespeare and the Artist, p. 49. 23 The Masks of Othello: The Search for the Identity of Othello, Iago, and Desdemona by Three Centuries of Actors and Critics (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1961), p.19. 24 Merchant, Shakespeare and the Artist, p. 50. 25 ‘Maluolio Within: Performance Perspectives on the Dark House’, Shakespeare Quarterly 52/3 (Autumn 2001), pp. 393–414, quotation from p. 394. 26 Imagining Shakespeare (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave, 2003), pp. 24–8. 27 Sebastiano Serlio, The Second Booke of Architecture, made by Sebastian Serly (London: Printed for Robert Peake, 1611), in Sebastiano Serlio. The Five Books of Architecture: An Unabridged Reprint of the English Edition of 1611 (New York: Dover, 1982), fos. 25–6. 28 For a full account of Jones’s knowledge of these sources, see John Peacock, The Stage Designs of Inigo Jones which repeatedly shows images of Jones’s designs paired against Italian models. In particular, pp. 62–7 are valuable in exploring the early stage designs. 29 The Five Books of Architecture The Second Book, fo. 25, verso. 30 The relation between the wig and male identity is explored by Marcia Pointon in Hanging the Head: Portraiture and Social Formation in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 107–40. 31 Predella Panel 3 from altarpiece in the church of Santa Lucia dei Magnoli, Florence, 1442–8; tempera on poplar panel, 27.3 × 54 (10 3/4 × 21 1/4 ), Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. 32 William V. Dunning, Changing Images of Pictorial Space: A History of Spatial Illusion in Painting (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1991), pp. 83–6. 33 Reproduced in The Renaissance Stage: Documents of Serlio, Sabbattini and Furttenbach, translated by Allardyce Nicoll, John H. McDowell and George R. Kernodle and edited by Barnard Hewitt (Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1958). 34 Serlio, The Second Booke, fo. 25, verso. 35 The Tempest, or The Enchanted Island. The Complete Works of Thomas Shadwell, ed. Montague Summers (5 vols. London: The Fortune Press, 1927), vol. II. p. 199. 36 Merchant, Shakespeare and the Artist, p. 49.

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notes to pages 57–71

37 Peter Holland has also suggested (in correspondence) the influence of similar forms in the frontispiece to The Cataclysm: or General deluge of the World by Edward Ecclestone (London: John Holford, 1685). 38 ‘Die Kupferstiche nach der Shakspeare-Gallerie in London. Briefe an einen Freund’. 1793. Kritische Schriften, vol. I, pp. 3–34. 39 For a discussion of the place of the passions in reading strategies of the seventeenth century, see Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998), pp. 386–7 and 429–30. 40 The page numbers that some of the plates bear are simple guides to ensure correct placement when the gatherings are sewn. 41 In this it is not dissimilar to the approach used in illustrated stories from popular magazines of the early twentieth century, which generally appear a page or more before the action they present is recorded in the text. This is discussed more fully in Stuart Sillars, ‘The Illustrated Short Story: Towards a Typology’, in The Art of Brevity: Excursions in Short Fiction Theory and Analysis, ed. Per Winther, Jakob Lothe and Hans H. Skei (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2004), pp. 70–80. 42 The Truth in Painting, translated by G. Bennington and I. Macleod (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. 156. 43 123.2 × 137.2 (48 1/2 × 54), Her Majesty the Queen, engraved by John Hall, 1771, 50.4 × 57.6 (21 × 24). 44 Untraced; engraved by Robert Thew, 29 September 1799, 49.5 × 63 (19 1/2 × 24 3/4 ). 45 Untraced; engraved by Luigi Schiavonetti, published 1 August 1792, 50.5 × 63.5 (19 7/8 × 25 3/8 ). 46 ‘Some Account of the Life, &c. of Mr. William Shakespear.’ The Works of Mr William Shakespear, ed. Nicholas Rowe (London: Jacob Tonson, 1709), vol. I, p. xxix. 47 For fuller discussion of this convention, see James Ogden, ‘Lear’s Blasted Heath’, in Lear from Study to Stage: Essays in Criticism, ed. James Ogden and Arthur Scouten (London: Associated University Presses; and Madison, WI: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997), pp. 135– 145 and Stuart Sillars, ‘King Lear: Toward a Visual History’, ibid., pp. 278–96. The tradition is also explored in Painting Shakespeare, pp. 82–92. 48 41.27 × 39 (16 1/4 × 15 3/8 ), British Museum, London. 49 John Harvey. ‘Shakespeare and the Ends of Time: The Illustrations’, The Cambridge Review, May 1966, pp. 25–48, at p. 31. 50 The works of Mr. William Shakespear; in nine volumes, with his life, by N. Rowe Esq. Adorn’d with Cuts (London: Jacob Tonson, 1714). 51 The same is true of Francis Hayman’s painting of the scene in performance, Spranger Barry and Mrs Mary Elmy in ‘Hamlet’ (II.iv.116–19), c.1755–60. Oil on canvas, 127 × 108 cm (50 × 42 1/2), Garrick Club, London. 52 In conversation, September 2006. 53 Cooper, Anthony Ashley (3rd Earl of Shaftesbury), A Notion of the Historical Draught or Tablature of the Judgement of Hercules, according to Prodicus, lib II Xen[ophon] de Mem[orabilibus] Soc[ratis]. (London: A. Baldwin, 1713). For a discussion of the influence of this on Shakespeare painting, see Sillars, Painting Shakespeare, pp. 3–9.

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notes to pages 73–81 chapter 3 1 Murphy, Shakespeare in Print, p. 110. Murphy gives a full account of the conflict in pp. 107–10. It is also discussed by H. L. Ford in Shakespeare 1700–1740 (London and New York: Blom, 1935, repr. 1968), pp. 40–5. His discussion of the publishing of individual plays (pp. 61–142) is also valuable. 2 The Works of Shakespeare: in eight volumes . . . With notes, explanatory, and critical: by Mr. Theobald. The second edition (12 vols. London: H. Lintott, C. Hitch, J. and R. Tonson, C. Corbet, R. and B. Wellington, J. Brindley, and E. New, 1740). 3 The engraver also signed his name as G van der Gucht and G. Vandergucht. The spelling used here is that which appears on the plates in Theobald’s Shakespeare. 4 Fables. By the late Mr. Gay. Volume the Second (London: J. and P. Knapton and T. Cox, 1738). Reprinted in facsimile with volume 1 as John Gay: Fables (1727, 1738), Introduction by Vinton A. Dearing (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles, 1967). 5 ‘Shakespeare Illustration: The Earliest Known Originals’, The Connoisseur 141 (1958), pp. 144–9, quotation from p. 144. 6 See Joseph Burke, English Art 1714–1800, The Oxford History of English Art, vol. IX. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), p. 68. 7 E. and J. de Goncourt, L’Art du XVIIIe si`ecle (2nd edn, 2 vols. Paris: Rapilly, 1873–4), vol. 2, p. 13. 8 Ellis Waterhouse, ‘English Painting and France in the Eighteenth Century’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes XV (1952), pp. 122–35, quotation from p. 128. 9 The instructions, their assumptions and the effect of the Pamela engravings are discussed by T. C. Duncan Eaves, ‘Graphic Illustration of the Novels of Samuel Richardson, 1740– 1810’, Huntington Library Quarterly 14.4 (August 1951), and Stephen A. Raynie, ‘Hayman and Gravelot’s Anti-Pamela Designs for Richardson’s Octavo Edition of Pamela I and II’, Eighteenth-Century Life 23/3 (1999), pp. 77–93. 10 Baron Roger Portalis, Les dessinateurs d’illustrations au dix-huiti`eme si`ecle (2 vols. Paris: D. Morgand et C. Fatout, 1877), vol. I, pp. 274–5. 11 Susan B. Taylor, ’Gravelot’s Working Method’, in Eighteenth-Century French Book Illustration: Drawings by Fragonard and Gravelot from the Rosenbach Museum and Library (Philadelphia, PA: Rosenbach Museum and Library, 1985), pp. 16–24 and plates, especially those illustrating Catalogue Nos. 11–15. 12 ‘The Rococo in England: Book Illustrators, Mainly Gravelot and Bentley’, Burlington Magazine 127 (1985), pp. 870–80, quotation from p. 875. 13 Hamlet and the Visual Arts, 1709–1900 (Newark: University of Delaware Press and London: Associated University Presses, 2002), p. 28. 14 ‘To Play the King: Illustrations of The Tempest in the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery’, The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery, ed. Walter Pape and Frederick Burwick (Bottrop: Pomp, 1996), pp. 113–122. 15 Philip Stewart, Engraven Desire: Eros, Image and Text in the French Eighteenth Century (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992), p. 14.

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notes to pages 83–113 16 Ripa, Cesare. Iconologia: or, moral emblems, by Caesar Ripa . . . Newly design’d, and engraven on Copper, by I. Fuller, Painter . . . By the care and at the charge of P. Tempest (London: Benj. Motte, 1709). 17 ‘Author, Artist, Reader: “The Spirit of the Passages” and the Illustrations to Pamela’, Qwerty 4 (October 1994), pp. 121–30. 18 Le tr´esor de la curiosit´e . . . (2 vols. Paris: Renouard, 1857–8), vol. I, p. 287. 19 Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and the Beholder in the Age of Diderot (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1980). 20 81 × 64.2 (32 × 25 1/4 ), Wallace Collection, London. 21 216 × 185 (85 × 73), Samuel H. Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. 22 216.2 × 197.8 (85 1/8 × 77 7/8 ), Samuel H. Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. 23 The Works of Shakespear in six volumes. Carefully revised and corrected by the former editions, and adorned with sculptures designed and executed by the best hands (6 vols. Oxford: Printed at the Theatre, 1743–4). 24 Some remarks on the tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark: written by Mr. William Shakespeare (London: W. Wilkins, 1736). 25 ‘Sir Thomas Hanmer Instructs Francis Hayman: An Editor’s Notes to his Illustrator (1744)’, Shakespeare Quarterly vol. 27 no. 3 (Summer 1976), pp. 288–315. Subsequent page numbers refer to quotations from the instructions recorded here. 26 See OED, ‘Landscape’, 1a and 1b. 27 ART Vol. b. 72. 28 Words and Pictures: on the Literal and the Symbolic in the Illustration of a Text, Approaches to Semiotics (The Hague: Mouton, 1973). 29 Oil on panel, c.1395. 213.5 × 110 (84 × 43 1/4 ), Westminster Abbey, London. 30 King Lear (London: W. Bowyer and J. Nichols, 1770); Hamlet (London: W. Bowyer and J. Nichols, 1773); Macbeth (London: W. Bowyer and J. Nichols, 1773); Othello (London: W. Bowyer and J. Nichols, 1773); Julius Caesar (London: W. Bowyer and J. Nichols, 1774). 31 c.1740–2?, 52.7 × 92 (20 3/4 × 36 1/4 ), Tate Britain, London. 32 The unacknowledged quotation is taken from the most complete published work on Walker: Hans Hammelmann, ‘Anthony Walker: A Gifted Engraver and Illustrator’, The Connoisseur, July 1968, pp. 167–74, quotation from p. 172. 33 Also known as The Gate of Calais, 78.8 × 94.5 (31 × 37 1/4 ), Tate Britain, London. chapter 4 1 The volume is reproduced in facsimile in Loftus Jestin, The Answer to the Lyre: Richard Bentley’s Illustrations for Thomas Gray’s Poems (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990). 2 The publishing history is discussed in detail by Jestin, pp. 91–103. 3 The details are extensively explored by Kalman Burnim and Philip Highfill Jr. in John Bell, Patron of British Theatrical Portraiture: A Catalog of the Theatrical Portraits in his editions of Bell’s Shakespeare and Bell’s British Theatre (Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998). These paragraphs draw heavily on their account.

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notes to pages 113–32

4 Bell’s edition of Shakespeare’s Plays, as they are now performed at the Theatres Royal in London, regulated from the prompt books in each house. With notes critical and illustrative by the authors of the ‘Dramatic Censor’ (London: John Bell, 1773–4). 5 Burnim and Highfill, John Bell, p. 14. 6 Reissued in facsimile as Dramatic Character Plates for Bell’s Edition of Shakespeare’s Plays 1775– 1776 (London: Cornmarket Press, 1969). 7 Pen and grey wash, (5 1/8 × 3). The drawing is now bound in the ‘Turner Shakespeare’, Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, CA. See Robert R. Wark, Drawings from the Turner Shakespeare (San Marino: Huntington Library, 1973), pp. 45–6. 8 I have explored these questions in ‘Seeing, Studying, Performing: Bell’s Edition of Shakespeare and Performative Reading’, Performance Research: On Shakespeare 10:3 (2005), pp. 18–27. 9 For a detailed account of this see Shearer West, The Image of the Actor: Verbal and Visual Representation in the Age of Garrick and Kemble (London: Pinter, 1991) and Marcia Pointon, Hanging the Head. 10 Advertisement to 1774 edition, p. 7. 11 Henry Saxe Wyndham, The Annals of Covent Garden Theatre from 1732 to 1897 (2 vols. London: Chatto and Windus, 1906), vol. I, facing p. 190. The image is captioned ‘View from front boxes of Covent Garden Theatre (Circa 1770). From an old print’. 12 Bell’s Edition: Dramatic writings of Will Shakespeare, With the Notes of all the various Commentators; printed complete from the best editions of Sam. Johnson and Geo. Steevens (London: J. Bell, 1785–8). 13 Burnim and Highfill reproduce all of the portraits, but the dates of issue on the original prints make clear that not all were produced in accord with the printing of the plays. 14 A copy of the final volume in the collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library (PR 2752 1788b Copy 11 ShCol) has this sheet bound with the text, although in some places the binder has misread the directions and inserted the plates wrongly. 15 See Stanley Morison, John Bell 1745–1831. William Jaggard (Shakespeare Bibliography. Stratford-upon-Avon: The Shakespeare Press, 1911), p. 504, asserts that the images for the edition of 1774–5 were also ‘prepared under the superintendence of F. Bartolozzi’, but there is no evidence to support this either in the editions themselves or from any other source. 16 The uncertainty about the date is explored, within a discussion of de Loutherbourg’s work, by Alicia Finkel in Romantic Stages: Set and Costume Design in Victorian England (Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland, 1996), pp. 5–7. 17 96.5 × 126.4 (38 × 49 3/4 ), National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. 18 68 × 106.7 (26 3/4 × 42), Science Museum, London. 19 See R¨udiger Joppien, Jacques de Loutherbourg, RA 1740–1812. Exh. cat. (London: Greater London Council, 1973), unnumbered page in section headed ‘Theatre’. 20 See, for example, the two designs in the Museum’s Theatre Collection (S.1471– 1986 and S. 1473–1986). 21 For a fuller discussion of these, see Peter Wagner, Reading Iconotexts: From Swift to the French Revolution (London: Reaktion Books, 1995), pp. 75–100 and Nicole Paquin, ‘Le “cadre” comme lieu de paradoxe au dix-huiti`eme si`ecle, Transactions of the Eighth International Congress on the Enlightenment (3 vols. Oxford: Aldine Press, 1992), vol. III, pp. 1485–9.

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notes to pages 133–61 22 Eloisa; or, a series of original letters collected and published by J. J. Rousseau. Translated from the French [by William Kenrick] (4 vols. London: R. Griffiths, T. Becket & P. A. De Hondt, 1761). 23 Mrs Cibber as Cordelia. 1755: 210 × 205 (82 5/8 × 80 5/8 ), Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund, New Haven. 24 The Plays of William Shakespeare, complete in eight volumes (London: Bellamy and Robarts, 1788–91). 25 That the location of the images within the printed volume was still a new development is suggested by two related circumstances. The first is that the engravings do not contain page numbers or directions to the printer, although this may just as well signify that the images were also sold individually, or in ‘setts’, as was the case with the images for Bell’s edition from 1788. The second is their misplacement in several copies – a circumstance that reaffirms the need for the instruction sheet in the final volume of Bell’s ‘Literary’ edition. While such a sheet does not to my knowledge remain for the Bellamy and Robarts volumes, its existence is strongly suggested by the placing of the images in several of the surviving editions. 26 These may have been early work by Henry Richter (1772–1857), who produced illustrations for an edition of Paradise Lost published by his brother in 1796.

chapter 5 1 The whole historical dramas of William Shakespeare illustrated: By an assemblage of portraits of the royal, noble, and other persons mentioned; together with those of editors, commentators, and actors, and views of castles, towns, &c. of the respective places referred to; with short biographical and topographical accounts. In two volumes. (London: Printed for Edward Jeffery, by B. McMillan. Sold by Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Brown, Gale & Curtis, and Sherwood, Neely, & Jones, 1811), vol. I, p. iii. 2 Stockdale’s Edition of Shakespeare: (London: Printed for John Stockdale, opposite Burlington House, Piccadilly, 1784), Preface, unnumbered. 3 Poetic description of choice and valuable prints, published by Mr. Macklin, at The Poets’ Gallery, Fleet Street (London: printed by T. Bensley, 1794), ‘To the lovers of the fine arts’, pp. vi–vii. 4 The Plays of William Shakespeare (London: E. Harding, 1800). 5 The Plays of William Shakespeare (edited by A. C. Chalmers. London: Printed for F. C. and J. Rivington; J. Johnson; R. Baldwin; H. L. Gardner, etc. 1805). 6 Prospectus of a New Edition of Shakespeare’s Plays (London: Alexander Chalmers, 1802), p. iii. 7 Bell’s British Theatre, Consisting of the Most Esteemed English Plays. (22 vols. London: John Bell, 1791–3. 2nd edition, 35 vols. London: George Cawthorn, 1797). 8 A New and Improved History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the End of the Thirtyseventh Year of the Reign of King George the Third (London: J. Johnson, 1798). 9 221 × 160 (87 × 63). Mus´ee du Louvre, Paris. 10 The Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare. With a Life and a Glossary and Fifty-three illustrations (London: Charles Tilt, Fleet Street, 1838).

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notes to pages 164–82 11 Dramatic Works . . . from the corrected text of Johnson and Steevens. Embellished with Plates (6 vols. London: J. Stockdale, 1807). 12 101 × 127 (30 3/4 × 59), Tate Britain, London. 13 A full examination of the scheme is given by T. S. R. Boase, ‘Macklin and Bowyer’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes XXVI (1963), pp. 148–77. 14 151.1 × 212.1 (59 1/2 × 83 1/2). Town Hall, Lytham St Anne’s, Lancashire (Fylde Borough Council Collection). The painting as a reading of the play is discussed fully in Painting Shakespeare, pp. 117–20. 15 The print, and Fuseli’s written response to it, are discussed in Painting Shakespeare, pp. 120–22. 16 The fullest account of the venture is Robin Hamlyn, ‘An Irish Shakespeare Gallery’, The Burlington Magazine, vol. 120 no. 905 (August 1978), pp. 515–29. 17 Prospectus, quoted by David Weinglass in Prints and Engraved Illustrations by and after Henry Fuseli: A Catalogue Raisonn´e (Aldershot: Scolar and Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1994). 18 Whittingham’s Edition, with Remarks on the Life and Writings of William Shakespeare . . . by J. Britton (Chiswick: J. Whittingham, 1813–14). 19 Illustrations of Shakespeare: comprised in two hundred and thirty vignette engravings by Thompson, from designs by Thurston: adapted to all editions (London: Printed for Sherwood, Gilbert and Piper; and Leipzig: Ernest Fleischer, 1825). 20 The spirit of the plays of Shakspeare: exhibited in a series of outline plates illustrative of the story of each play drawn and engraved by Frank Howard; with quotations and descriptions (London: T. Cadell, 24 serial parts, 1827–33; and 5 vols., 1833). 21 For such a reading, see Peter Holland, ‘Performing Shakespeare in Print: Narrative in Nineteenth-Century Illustrated Shakespeare’, in Victorian Shakespeare, Volume 1: Theatre, Drama and Performance, ed. Gail Marshall and Adrian Poole (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 47–72, especially p. 61. 22 Vol. 1, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, p. 1. Each play is individually paginated, in the serial parts and in the five volumes as which they were later issued. Subsequent page numbers are those of the separate plays within each volume. 23 Peter Hall’s 1963 Wars of the Roses amalgamated the three parts of Henry VI and Richard III and cut the original 12,350 lines by almost half: the remaining text included 1,400 new lines by John Barton. It was hailed by many as the most successful production of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

chapter 6 1 Victoria and Albert Museum Library, London, Boydell Publication Proposals, 103.B. Reprinted in Sven H. A. Bruntjen, John Boydell, 1719–1804: A Study of Art Patronage and Publishing in Georgian London, PhD thesis, Stanford University, 1974 (New York and London: Garland, 1985), pp. 252–6. 2 Accounts of the gallery and its publications are given in Geoffrey Ashton, ‘The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery: Before and After’, in The Painted Word, ed. Peter Cannon-Brookes (London: Heim, 1991), pp. 37–43; Bruntjen, John Boydell; Winifred H. Friedman, Boydell’s Shakespeare

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notes to pages 182–99

3 4 5 6

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

24

Gallery, PhD thesis, Harvard University, 1974 (London and New York: Garland, 1976); W. M. Merchant, Shakespeare and the Artist, pp. 66–78, 237–40; Sillars, Painting Shakespeare, pp. 254–99. The Shakspeare Gallery, a poem by Mr Jerningham (London: J. Robson, 1791), p. 4. Reynolds is not named, but identified through a reference to his foreword to William Mason’s translation of du Fresnoy’s Art of Painting, 1773. Imperfect Hints towards a new edition of Shakespeare, written chiefly in the year 1782 (London: Printed at the Logographic Press, for the author, 1787; vol. 2, 1788). The references are to page numbers, not to act, scene and line numbers that would become the standard practice of reference during the next century, suggesting that the Johnson– Steevens was regarded as the last word in textual authority. Shakespeare Bibliography, p. 99. An Explanation of Several of Mr Hogarth’s prints (London: Printed for the Author; and sold by J. Walter, 1785). Testimonies to the Genius and Memory of Sir Joshua Reynolds. By the author of Imperfect Hints towards a new edition of Shakespeare (London: L[ogographic] P[ress], 1792). Painting Shakespeare, pp. 254–99. Also known as Hercules at the Crossroads between Virtue and Vice, 64.1 × 76.8 (25 1/4 × 30 1/4 ). Temple Newsom House, Leeds. The sculpture may still be seen in the Great Gardens of New Place in Stratford-upon-Avon. Both paintings are discussed in Painting Shakespeare, the Reynolds at pp. 206–13 and the Fuseli at pp. 241–2. Oil on canvas, 301 × 457.2 (118 1/2 × 180); untraced. Engraved by Benjamin Smith, 59 × 43.8 (23 1/4 × 17 1/4 ), 29 September 1797. A Scene from Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’, oil on canvas, 1736–8, 80 × 101.6 (31 1/2 × 40), St Oswald Collection, Nostell Priory, Wakefield. This was one of the images appearing in both the Collection of Prints and the edition, presumably because of its format and approach. See Painting Shakespeare, pp. 289–91. See Painting Shakespeare, pp. 286–95. The Farington Diary, by Joseph Farington, R. A., ed. James Greig (8 vols. London, Hutchinson, 1923–8), Entry for 4 August 1796, vol. III, p. 734. Catalogue, p. xiii. The sheet is bound with a copy of the original Prospectus for the edition, dated 1 December 1786, in the Folger Shakespeare Library, PR2752.B7.1791.A1 Cage fo. London: Published at Charles Taylor’s, No. 8, Dyer’s Buildings, Holborn; and at Mr. Taylor’s, Bookseller, opposite Great Turnstile, Holborn, 1783–7. The Beauties of Shakespeare (London: W. Dodd, 1773). An essay upon prints: containing remarks upon the principles of picturesque beauty; the different kinds of prints; and the characters of the most noted masters . . . (London: printed by G. Scott, for J. Robson, 1768), p. x. Observations on the River Wye, and several parts of South Wales, &c. relative chiefly to picturesque beauty; made in the summer of the year 1770, By William Gilpin, Vicar of Boldre near Lymington (London: printed for R. Blamire in the Strand. Sold by B. Law, Ave Mary Lane; and R. Faulder, New Bond Street., 1782).

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notes to pages 199–216 25 An essay on the picturesque, as compared with the sublime and the beautiful; on the use of studying pictures, for the purpose of improving real landscape (London: printed for J. Robson, 1794). 26 The Landscape, a didactic poem, in three books. Addressed to Uvedale Price, Esq. (London: printed by W. Bulmer and Co.: and sold by G. Nicol, 1794). 27 ‘Rustic’ is used in defining the first sense of the word in the OED, which also gives an example of this usage from Scott’s Woodstock, dated 1826. 28 In correspondence and conversation during the preparation of this chapter. 29 The Cabinet of Genius Containing Frontispieces and Characters adapted to the Most Popular Poems, &c. with the Poems &c at large. (2 vols. London: printed for C. Taylor, 1787–90). 30 Shakespeare Gallery: containing a select series of scenes and characters, accompanied by criticism and remarks . . . on fifty plates. (London: Charles Taylor, 1792). 31 The image exists in the extra-illustrated Boydell edition (vol. IV, Twelfth Night facing p. 45) prepared by George C. George that is discussed in the next chapter. 32 Boydell–George, vol. 3, facing p. 89. 33 Shakespeare and the Victorians, The Arden Critical Companions (London: Thomson Learning, 2004), p. 53. 34 The history of England: from the invasion of Julius Cæsar to the accession of Henry VII . . . By David Hume, Esq. (London: printed for A. Millar, 1762). 35 Parson’s genuine pocket edition of Hume’s History of England, with a continuation to the death of George II. by Dr Smollett, and a further continuation to the present time by J. Barlow . . . With . . . engravings . . . portraits, etc. (22 vols. London: 1793–5). chapter 7 1 A biographical history of England, from Egbert the Great to the Revolution: Consisting of Characters disposed in different Classes, and adapted to a Methodical Catalogue of Engraved British Heads. . . . With a preface, shewing the utility of a collection of engraved portraits . . . By the Rev. J. Granger . . . (London: Printed for T. Davies, 1769). 2 ‘plan of the catalogue of engraved british portraits, which are followed by their respective Characters’. Unnumbered prefatory pages, vol. I. 3 I. p.12. The opening abbreviation ‘h.sh.’ refers to the size of the engraving as ‘half sheet’; ‘sc’ is a shortened form of the more usual ‘sculp’ or ‘sculpsit’ meaning engraved. 4 A series of four hundred and six historical portraits to illustrate Granger’s Biographical history of England. Engraved from the rare originals by Pass, Elstracke, Faithorne, Hollar Gaywood, and others (2 vols. London: unnamed publisher, n.d.). 5 For an extended discussion of the process, see Lucy Peltz, ’Engraved Portrait Heads and the Rise of Extra-Illustration: The Eton Correspondence of the Revd James Granger and Richard Bull,1769–74’. The Sixty-sixth Volume of the Walpole Society (London: Maney Publishing, for the Walpole Society, 2004), pp. 1–163. 6 The whole historical dramas of William Shakespeare illustrated: By an assemblage of portraits of the royal, noble, and other persons mentioned; together with those of editors, commentators, and actors, and views of castles, towns, &c. of the respective places referred to; with short biographical and topographical accounts. In two volumes. (London: Printed for Edward Jeffery, by B. McMillan. Sold by

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7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

19

20

21

22 23

24

Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Brown, Gale & Curtis, and Sherwood, Neely, & Jones, 1811). Some of its contents have been explored by Robert R. Wark in Drawings from the Turner Shakespeare (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1973). Catalogue number SR 39/1848. Catalogue number ART Vol a34. The Dupuy sale, Anderson’s, 18 January 1922. The volumes are catalogued as PR 2752 1881m Sh Col Copy 4. Note in George’s handwriting on verso of Singleton–Taylor ‘Cassio’ in his Boydell edition, vol. IX, facing p. 44. Where several images are inserted facing a single page they are numbered in sequence after the page number. Each of the plays is separately paginated within the volume. As an example, see Jeayes’s copy of William Hodges’s painting of The Merchant of Venice, Act 5, reproduced as Plate 15 in Painting Shakespeare. Oil on panel, 81.7 × 142.5 (31 9/16 × 56 1/4 ), Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC. The other, oil on panel, 68.6 × 91.4 (27 × 36), is in the Royal Shakespeare Company Collection, Stratford-on-Avon The engraving was one of the most successful works of William Woollett, and was published 20 December 1770. A Specimen of a Commentary on Shakespeare, containing [I] Notes on As You Like It [II] An Attempt to Explain and Illustrate Various Passages of Shakespeare on a New Principle of Criticism, derived from Mr. Locke’s Doctrine of the Association of Ideas (London: printed for T. Cadell, 1794). Respectively, Shakespeare’s Imagery, and What it Tells Us (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press and New York: Macmillan, 1936) and Archetypal Patterns in Poetry: Psychological Studies of Imagination (London: Oxford University Press, 1974). Gilpin’s aquatints appear in Observations of the River Wye, pp. 41 and 44. Artists who had produced images before 1800 include Gainsborough, Turner, de Loutherbourg and lesser figures such as Edward Dayes. Remarks on forest scenery, and other woodland views, (relative chiefly to picturesque beauty) illustrated by the scenes of New-Forest in Hampshire. In three books (2 vols. London: Printed for R. Blamire, 1791), vol. I, p. 9. See especially The Life of Timon of Athens, ed. John Jowett, The Oxford Shakespeare (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), Note to Scene 14, p. 290. Miscellaneous papers and legal instruments under the hand and seal of William Shakspeare: including the tragedy of King Lear, and a small fragment of Hamlet, from the original mss. in the possession of Samuel Ireland, of Norfolk Street (London: Printed by Cooper and Graham; Published by Egerton, 1796). A catalogue of the books, paintings, miniatures, drawings, prints, and various curiosities: the property of the late Samuel Ireland, esq. . . . Which will be sold by auction, by Leigh, Sotheby and Son, booksellers, at their house in York street, Covent-Garden, on Thursday, May 7, 1801; and seven following days, at 12 o’clock (Sunday excepted) (London: Printed by Barker and Son, n.d. ([1801]). The auction

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25

26 27

28

29 30

31

32

33

results come from manuscript pages interleaved in a copy in the Folger Shakespeare Library, perhaps by Henry B. H. Beaufoy, whose bookplate the volume bears. Picturesque views on the Upper, or Warwickshire Avon, from its source at Naseby to its junction with the Severn at Tewkesbury: with observations on the public buildings, and other works of art in its vicinity (London: R. Faulder and T. Egerton, 1795). The major part of these images are in the collection of the British Library, and some may be viewed on their website at www.imagesonline.bl.uk/. Here as elsewhere, Grimm’s handwriting is confirmed by the similarity to his script on the paintings in the British Library, by the occasional use of words in continental rather than English forms, and the use of the continental forms of the figures 1 and 7. The generall historie of the Turkes, from the first beginning of that nation to the rising of the Othoman familie: with all the notable expeditions of the Christian princes against them. Together with the liues and conquests of the Othoman kings and emperours written by Richard Knolles, sometime fellowe of Lincolne College in Oxford (London: Printed by Adam Islip, 1631). Oil on panel, late 15th century, 63.8 × 47 (25 1/8 × 18 1/2 ), National Portrait Gallery, London. The history of England, from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688. By David Hume A new edition, with the author’s last corrections and improvements (8 vols. London: Printed for T. Cadell: and sold by T. Longman, 1789). The bibliographical history of Hume’s work is extensive and complex: the editions listed here are only some of the large number of editions produced from the first volume of 1754 until the middle of the nineteenth century. The history of England: from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the revolution in 1688. A new edition with the author’s last corrections and improvements . To which is prefixed, a short account of his life, written by himself (8 vols. London: T. Cadell, 1792–3). Tobias Smollett, The history of England from the revolution to the death of George the Second: (Designed as a continuation of Mr. Hume’s History.) In eight volumes. Illustrated with plates A new edition, with the author’s last corrections and improvements (London: Printed for T. Cadell and sold by T. N. Longman, 1794). Cooke’s pocket edition of Hume’s History of England with a continuation by Dr. Smollett (19 vols. London: C. Cooke, 1793–4). Also issued as The history of England: from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the abdication of James the Second, By David Hume, Esq. With the author’s last correction and improvements. To which are added a continuation, from the abdication to the death of George II. By Dr. Smollett; and a farther continuation, from George II. to the present time by T. A. Lloyd, Esq. (13 vols. London: Printed for C. Cooke, 1793).

chapter 8 1 The pseudonym of Bryan Waller Procter, who had earlier written a biography of Edmund Kean. 2 The Pictorial Edition of the Works of Shakspere. Edited by Charles Knight (56 parts. London: Charles Knight and Co, 1838–43. Issued as 7 volumes, with an additional supplementary volume containing the life of Shakespeare). The words Pictorial Shakspere appeared, confusingly, on the title-page of serial parts and early editions, and became the title by which the edition was best known.

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notes to pages 255–85 3 Passages of a Working Life During Half a Century with a Prelude of Early Reminiscences (3 vols. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1864). 4 ‘Advertisement’, Comedies vol. 1. 5 ‘Pictorial Shakespeare: Text, Stage, Illustration’, in Book Illustrated: Text, Image, and Culture 1770–1930, ed. Catherine J. Golden (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2000), pp.31–60, quotation from p. 46. 6 See Patricia Anderson, The Printed Image and the Transformation of Popular Culture 1790–1860 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 57–68, and Valerie Gray, Charles Knight: Educator, Publisher, Writer (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 50–1. 7 See Passages of a Working Life, vol. II, pp. 113–16 and The Penny Magazine, supplement No. 111 (November 1833), on ‘Compositors’ Work and Stereotyping’. 8 Abbotsford Edition, The Waverley Novels (12 vols. Edinburgh: Robert Cadell, 1842 and Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1868), vol. VI: Kenilworth and The Pirate. 9 See, for example, his designs for The Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell (London: Edward Moxon, 1837). 10 James Robinson Planch´e, Costume of Shakespeare’s Historical Tragedy of King John [King Henry the Fourth, As you Like it, Hamlet, Othello, and The Merchant of Venice] selected and arranged from the best authorities Expressly for the Proprietors of the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, with biographical, critical and explanatory notices, by J. R. Planch´e. The figures designed and executed on stone by J. K. Meadows (London: John Miller, 1823–5). 11 Heads of the People; or, Portraits of the English. Drawn by Kenny Meadows. With original essays by distinguished writers (London: Robert Tyas, 1840; vol. 2, 1841). 12 (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1841). 13 The Works of Shakspere revised from the best authorities with a memoir, and essay on his genius, by Barry Cornwall: and, annotations and introductory remarks on the plays, by distinguished writers: illustrated with engravings on wood, from designs by Kenny Meadows (London: R. Tyas, 1843). 14 ‘Performing Shakespeare in Print: Narrative in Nineteenth-Century Illustrated Shakespeares’, in Victorian Shakespeare, Volume 1: Theatre, Drama and Performance, ed. Gail Marshall and Adrian Poole (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 47–72. See especially p. 65. 15 The term was probably coined, and the movement explored, by H¨oltgen in Aspects of the Emblem, pp. 141–96. 16 In particular Shakespeare and the Emblem Writers: An Exposition of their Similarities of Thought and Expression (London: Tr¨ubner, 1870). His facsimile edition of Whitney’s A Choice of Emblems (1584) appeared in 1866. 17 Oil on canvas, 101 × 127 (40 × 50), Detroit Institute of Art. 18 The afterlife of the image in this form is outlined by Nicholas Powell in Fuseli: The Nightmare, Art in Context (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973). Powell goes so far as to claim that ‘over-familiarity with Fuseli’s nightmare image through caricatures and prints led to its devaluation in the later nineteenth century’ (p. 94). 19 First published in 1832, with ‘50 vignette etchings by the author’, it went through a further seven editions before 1880, in addition to a German translation in 1834 and an American edition in 1847.

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notes to pages 291–312

chapter 9 1 Cassell’s Illustrated Shakespeare. The Plays of Shakespeare. Edited and Annotated by Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke, authors of “Shakespeare Characters”, “Complete Concordance to Shakespeare”, “Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Heroines”, &c. (3 vols. London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, 1864). 2 For a discussion of this see my earlier essay ‘The Illustrated Short Story: Towards a Typology’, in The Art of Brevity: Excursions in Short Fiction Theory and Analysis, ed. Per Winther, Jakob Lothe and Hans H. Skei (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2004), pp. 70–80. 3 The watercolour of the same scene by Henry Fuseli was reproduced as an outline engraving by Johann Heinrich Lips in Heinrich Fuessli’s Saemmtliche Werke, ed. J. J. Horner and F. N¨uscheler (Z¨urich: In der Kunsthandlung von Fuessli und Compagnie, 1807). There is no evidence to suggest that Selous saw this, as the work sold in very small numbers, and the composition is quite different from that in the Cassell Shakespeare. 4 The Principles of Geology, 1830–3. The work of Thomas Malthus is also important, as revealed simply in the title of his most significant work, An Essay on the Principle of Population as it affects the Future Improvement of Society. First published in 1789, and revised in 1803, this was a work of considerable influence on early Victorian thought before Darwin. 5 In Unediting the Renaissance (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 8–9, Leah Marcus asserts that an image of Caliban later in the volume next to a primate is a suggestion that he is the ’missing link’. Perhaps; the term was certainly in use at this time, and not in the positive sense it acquired in later palaeontological usage. But a more immediate significance is as an allusion to the ‘nimble marmoset’ of the text (2.2.170). 6 Shakespeare and the Victorians, pp. 47–51. 7 Shakespeare’s Unruly Women (Washington DC: The Folger Shakespeare Library, 1997), p. 79. 8 The Plays of Shakespeare. Edited by Howard Staunton; the illustrations by John Gilbert; engraved by the Brothers Dalziel (London: G. Routledge & Co, 1856–60). 9 The Library Shakespeare Illustrated by Sir John Gilbert, George Cruikshank and R. Dudley. (3 vols. London: William Mackenzie, 1873–5). 10 The works of William Shakespeare: in fifteen volumes edited by Howard Staunton; with illustrations by Sir John Gilbert . . . One thousand copies only of this edition de luxe of the Works of William Shakespeare have been printed for sale, each of which is numbered (London and New York: George Routledge and Sons, 1881). 11 Sir John Gilbert’s Shakespeare. The Works of Shakespeare, edited by H. Staunton, with . . . illustrations by Sir John Gilbert, Routledge’s Sixpenny Series (London: Routledge & Sons, 1882). 12 Catalogued as ART Vol. e100 13 Is there also, perhaps, an ironic echo in this image of the design of Delacroix’s La libert´e guidant le peuple, bringing with it a sense of the failure of the French republic? Such a political stance would not have been inimical to many of the periodical’s readers. 14 See Time Traveller (London: Cover Publishing Ltd, 1998), a publication produced to mark the 150th anniversary of the firm, esp. pp. 6 and 46–7. 15 1856: 188 × 146 (74 × 57 1/2 ), Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, CT. 16 1850, oil on mahogany panel, 75.8 × 42.6 (29 7/8 × 16 3/4 ), Tate Britain, London. 17 In particular, The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania, 1849, 99.1 × 152.4 (39 × 60) and its companion The Reconciliation of Oberon and Titania, 1847, 76.2 × 123.2 (30 × 48 1/2), both National

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notes to pages 316–39 Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh. The full range of images of this kind is explored in Jane Martineau (ed.), Victorian Fairy Painting (Exh. Cat., London: Royal Academy of Arts and Merrell Holberton, 1997). 18 Three panels, each 63.5 × 76.2 (25 × 30), Tate Britain, London. 19 Notes on some of the Principal Pictures Exhibited in the Rooms of the Royal Academy and the Society of Painters in Watercolours. No. I–1855 (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1855). 20 Illustrators of the Eighteen-Sixties: An Illustrated Survey of the Work of 58 British Artists (London: Faber and Gwyer, 1928), p. 23.

chapter 10 1 From an advertisement sheet bound with a copy of the original texts, The Complete Works of Shakspere with a Memoir (London: John Dicks, 1864). 2 This is the figure given by Dicks himself in a letter to the editor of The Bookseller. See Murphy, Shakespeare in Print, pp. 177–8. 3 The Complete Works of Shakespeare, with Glossary and a Critical Biography (London: Ward Lock and Co., n.d. [1880?]). 4 The Works of Shakespeare with Notes by Charles Knight (London: Virtue and Co, n.d. [1873–6?]). 5 1887, oil on canvas, 83.2 × 121.3 (32 3/4 × 47 3/4 ), Tate Britain, London. 6 1888, oil on canvas, 101.6 × 148.6 (40 × 58 1/2 ), Tate Britain, London. 7 The Works of William Shakespeare edited by Henry Irving and Frank A. Marshall (8 vols. London, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dublin: Blackie and Son, 1888–90). 8 The Merry Wives of Windsor, a Comedy by William Shakespeare. Illustrated by J. Finnemore and F. L. Emanuel (London, Paris and New York: Raphael Tuck and Sons, 1897). I am indebted to Clive Wilmer for drawing this edition to my attention. 9 London: Heinemann, 1908; London: Constable, 1914; London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton and Kent, 1919. 10 The only Shakespearean work by Beardsley is titled Hamlet patris manem sequitur, an early work showing Hamlet exploring a forest in search of his father’s ghost. Pencil on paper, 29 × 13.5 (11 3/8 × 5 1/4 ), c.1891, British Museum, London. 11 Ed. M. R. Ridley (London: J. M. Dent and New York: E. P. Dutton, 1934–6). 12 Most immediately, The Menin Road, 1919, oil on canvas, 183 × 317.5 (72 × 125) and We Are Making a New World, 1919, oil on canvas, 71 × 90 (28 × 36), Imperial War Museum, London. 13 Richard the Second: the text of the First Folio, with Quarto insertions edited and amended where obscure by Herbert Farjeon; illustrated with wood-engravings by Agnes Miller Parker (New York: The Limited Editions Club, 1940).

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Anderson, Patricia. The Printed Image and the Transformation of Popular Culture 1790–1860. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991 Anon. A series of four hundred and six historical portraits to illustrate Granger’s Biographical history of England Engraved from the rare originals by Pass, Elstracke, Faithorne, Hollar, Gaywood, and others. 2 vols. London: unnamed publisher, n.d. Anon [Felton, Samuel]. Imperfect Hints towards a new edition of Shakespeare, written chiefly in the year 1782. London: Printed at the Logographic Press, for the author, 1787: Vol. 2, 1788 Anon [Harding, Sylvester]. The whole historical dramas of William Shakespeare illustrated: By an assemblage of portraits of the royal, noble, and other persons mentioned; together with those of editors, commentators, and actors, and views of castles, towns, &c. of the respective places referred to; with short biographical and topographical accounts. In two volumes. London: Printed for Edward Jeffery, by B. McMillan. Sold by Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Brown, Gale, & Curtis, and Sherwood, Neely, & Jones, 1811 Arber, Edward, ed. A transcript of the registers of the company of stationers of London: 1554–1640 A.D. 5 vols. Birmingham: Privately printed, 1894, reprinted Gloucester, MA, 1967 Ashton, Geoffrey. Shakespeare and British Art. Exhibition catalogue. New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 1981 ‘The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery: Before and After’, in The Painted Word, ed. Peter CannonBrookes. London: Heim, 1991, pp. 37–43 Avery, Emmett L. The London Stage, 1660–1800. Part 2: 1700–1729. 2 vols. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1960 Bate, Jonathan. ‘Pictorial Shakespeare: Text, Stage, Illustration’, in Book Illustrated: Text, Image, and Culture, 1770–1930, ed. Catherine J. Golden. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2000. Baxter, John. A New and Impartiall History of England from the most Early Period of Genuine Historical Evidence to the present important and alarming Crisis, A Period pregnant with the fate of Empires Kingdoms and States . . . Intersperesed with remarks, Observations and reflections: By which former Erros are corrected . . . Party Prejudices removed, and what has hitherto appeared obscure and doubtful,

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Eaves, T. C. Duncan. ‘Graphic Illustration of the Novels of Samuel Richardson, 1740–1810’, Huntington Library Quarterly 14.4 (August 1951), pp. 349–83 Erne, Lukas. Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003 Felton, Samuel. An Explanation of Several of Mr Hogarth’s prints. London: Printed for the Author; and sold by J. Walter, 1785 Testimonies to the Genius and Memory of Sir Joshua Reynolds. By the author of Imperfect Hints towards a new edition of Shakespeare. London: L[ogographic] P[ress], 1792 Fielding, Henry. The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling. With an introduction and commentary by Martin C. Battestin, the text edited by Fredson Bowers. The Wesleyan Edition of the Works of Henry Fielding. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974 Finkel, Alicia. Romantic Stages: Set and Costume Design in Victorian England. Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland, 1996 Foakes, R. A. Illustrations of the English Stage 1560–1642. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985 Ford, H. L. Shakespeare 1700–1740. London and New York: Blom, 1935, repr. 1968 Fowler, Alastair. Renaissance Realism: Narrative Images in Literature and Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003 Franklin, Colin. Shakespeare Domesticated: The Eighteenth-Century Editions. Aldershot: Scolar Press and Brookfield, VT: Gower, c.1991 Fried, Michael. Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and the Beholder in the Age of Diderot. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1980 Gascoigne, Bamber. How to Identify Prints: A Complete Guide to Manual and Mechanical Processes from Woodcut to Inkjet. 2nd edition. London: Thames and Hudson, 2004. Gay, John. Fables. By the late Mr. Gay. Volume the Second. London: J. and P. Knapton and T. Cox, 1738 John Gay: Fables (1727, 1738). Introduction by Vinton A. Dearing. Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles, 1967 Gilpin, William. An essay upon prints: containing remarks upon the principles of picturesque beauty; the different kinds of prints; and the characters of the most noted masters . . . London: Printed by G. Scott, for J. Robson, 1768 Observations on the River Wye, and several parts of South Wales, &c. relative chiefly to picturesque beauty; made in the summer of the year 1770, By William Gilpin, Vicar of Boldre near Lymington. London: Printed for R. Blamire in the Strand. Sold by B. Law, Ave Mary Lane; and R. Faulder, New Bond Street, 1782 Remarks on forest scenery, and other woodland views, (relative chiefly to picturesque beauty) illustrated by the scenes of New-Forest in Hampshire. In three books. 2 vols. London: Printed for R. Blamire, 1791 An essay on the picturesque, as compared with the sublime and the beautiful; on the use of studying pictures, for the purpose of improving real landscape. London: Printed for J. Robson, 1794 Goncourt, E and J. de. L’Art du XVIIIe si`ecle. 2nd edn. 2 vols. Paris: Rapilly, 1873–4 Granger, James. A biographical history of England, from Egbert the Great to the Revolution: Consisting of Characters disposed in different Classes, and adapted to a Methodical Catalogue of Engraved British

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Heads . . . With a preface, shewing the utility of a collection of engraved portraits . . . By the Rev. J. Granger . . . London: Printed for T. Davies, 1769 Graves, Algernon. ‘A New Light on Alderman Boydell and the Shakespeare Gallery’. The Magazine of Art No. 201 (July 1897), pp. 143–8 ‘Boydell and his Engravers’, The Queen CXVI (1904), pp. 178–9, 328–9, 444–5, 524–5, 794–5, 1002–3 Graves, R. B. Lighting the Shakespearean Stage, 1567–1642. Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999 Gray, Valerie. Charles Knight: Educator, Publisher, Writer. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006 Grazia, Margreta de. Shakespeare Verbatim: The Reproduction of Authenticity and the 1790 Apparatus. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991 Green, Henry. Shakespeare and the Emblem Writers: An Exposition of their Similarities of Thought and Expression. London: Tr¨ubner, 1870 Halsband, Robert. ‘The Rococo in England: Book Illustrators, mainly Gravelot and Bentley’, Burlington Magazine 127 (1985), pp. 870–80 Hamlyn, Robin. ‘An Irish Shakespeare Gallery’, The Burlington Magazine Vol. 120 No. 905 (August 1978), pp. 515–29 Hamm, Robert B. Jr. ‘Rowe’s Shakespeare (1709) and the Tonson House Style’, College Literature 31/3 (Summer 2004), pp. 179–205 Hammelmann, Hans. ‘Anthony Walker: A Gifted Engraver and Illustrator’, The Connoisseur, July 1968, pp. 167–74 Hammelmann, Hans A. and T. S. R. Boase. ‘Shakespeare’s First Illustrators’, Apollo, August 1968 Supplement, ‘Notes on British Art’, pp. 1–4 Book Illustrators in Eighteenth-Century England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977 Harvey, John. ‘Shakespeare and the Ends of Time: The Illustrations’, The Cambridge Review, May 1966, pp. 25–48 Haywood, Thomas. If you knovv not me, you know no bodie: or, The troubles of Queene Elizabeth. London: Printed [by Thomas Purfoot] for Nathaniel Butter, 1605 Hewitt, Barbara, ed. Documents of Serlio, Sabbattini and Furttenbach, translated by Allardyce Nicoll, John H. McDowell and George R. Kernodle. Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1958 Holland, Peter. ‘Modernizing Shakespeare: Nicholas Rowe and The Tempest’, Shakespeare Quarterly vol. 51 no. 1 (Spring 2000), pp. 24–32 ‘Performing Shakespeare in Print: Narrative in Nineteenth-century Illustrated Shakespeare’. Victorian Shakespeare, Volume 1: Theatre, Drama and Performance, ed. Gail Marshall and Adrian Poole. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, pp. 47– 72 H¨oltgen, Karl Josef. Aspects of the Emblem: Studies in the English Emblem Tradition and the European Context. Problematica Semiotica. Kassel: Edition Reichenberger, 1986 Howard, Frank. The spirit of the plays of Shakespeare: exhibited in a series of outline plates illustrative of the story of each play drawn and engraved by Frank Howard; with quotations and descriptions. London: T. Cadell, 24 serial parts, 1827–1833 and 5 volumes, 1833

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Hume, Robert D. ‘Before the Bard: “Shakespeare” in Early Eighteenth-Century London’, English Literary History 64 (1997) pp. 41–75 Ireland, Samuel. Picturesque views on the Upper, or Warwickshire Avon, from its source at Naseby to its junction with the Severn at Tewkesbury: with observations on the public buildings, and other works of art in its vicinity. London: R. Faulder and T. Egerton, 1795 Miscellaneous papers and legal instruments under the hand and seal of William Shakspeare: including the tragedy of King Lear, and a small fragment of Hamlet, from the original mss. in the possession of Samuel Ireland, of Norfolk Street. London: Printed by Cooper and Graham; Published by Egerton, 1796 A catalogue of the books, paintings, miniatures, drawings, prints, and various curiosities: the property of the late Samuel Ireland, esq. . . . Which will be sold by auction, by Leigh, Sotheby and Son, booksellers, at their house in York street, Covent-Garden, on Thursday, May 7, 1801; and seven following days, at 12 o’clock (Sunday excepted). London: Printed by Barker and Son, n.d. (1801) Jackson, Mason. The Pictorial Press: Its Origin and Progress. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1885 Jaggard, William. Shakespeare Bibligraphy. Stratford-upon-Avon: The Shakespeare Press, 1911 Jameson, Anna Brownell (Murphy), Mrs. Characteristics of women, moral, poetical, and historical: with fifty vignette etchings. 2 vols. London: Saunders and Otley, Conduit Street, 1832 Jerningham, Edward. The Shakspeare Gallery, a poem by Mr Jerningham. London: J. Robson, 1791 Jestin, Loftus, The Answer to the Lyre: Richard Bentley’s Illustrations for Thomas Gray’s Poems. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990 Johns, Adrian. The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998 Joppien, R¨udiger. Jacques de Loutherbourg, RA 1740–1812. Exhibition catalogue. London: Greater London Council, 1973 Knight, Charles. Passages of a Working Life during Half a Century: With a Prelude of Early Reminiscences. 2 vols. London: Bradbury & Evans, 1864 Knight, Richard Payne. The Landscape, a didactic poem, in three books. Addressed to Uvedale Price, Esq. London: Printed by W. Bulmer and Co.: and sold by G. Nicol, 1794 Lathans, Edward. ‘The Dorset Garden Theatre in Pictures’, Theatre Survey VI (1965), pp. 134– 46 Lawrence, W. J. Letter to The Times Literary Supplement of 11 July 1935 p. 448 Littau, Karin. Theories of Reading: Books, Bodies and Bibliomania. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006 Lynch, Kathleen M. Jacob Tonson Kit-Kat Publisher. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1971 Marcus, Leah Unediting the Renaissance. London and New York: Routledge, 1996 Martineau, Jane, et al. Shakespeare in Art. Exhibition catalogue. London: Merrell, 2003 Mauquoy-Hendrickx, Marie. ‘Les Wierix illustrateurs de la Bible dite de Natalis’. Quaerendo vol. VI no. 1 (Winter 1976), pp. 28–63 Meadows, Kenny. Heads of the People; or, Portraits of the English. Drawn by Kenny Meadows. With original essays by distinguished writers. London: Robert Tyas, 1840 (vol. 2, 1841); and Philadelphia, Carey and Hart, 1841 Merchant, W. Moelwyn. Shakespeare and the Artist. London: Oxford University Press, 1959

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Millais, John Everett. The parables of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ with pictures by John Everett Millais . . . engraved by the brothers Dalziel. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, n.d. [1863] Miller, Louise. ‘Author, Artist, Reader: “The Spirit of the Passages” and the Illustrations to Pamela’, Qwerty 4 (October 1994), pp. 121–130 Morison, Stanley. John Bell, 1745–1831: Bookseller, Printer, Publisher, Typefounder, Journalist, &c. Cambridge: Printed for the Author at the University Press, 1930 Mowat, Barbara A. ‘Nicholas Rowe and the Twentieth-Century Shakespeare Text’, in Shakespeare and Cultural Traditions, ed. Tetsuo Kishi, Roger Pringle and Stanley Wells. London: Associated University Presses, 1994, pp. 314–22 Murphy, Andrew. Shakespeare in Print: A History and Chronology of Shakespeare Publishing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003 Nadal, Jerome [also called Hieronymus Natalis S.J.]. Evangelicae historiae imagines, ex ordine Evangeliorum, quae toto anno in Missae sacrifio recitantur, in ordinem temporis vitae Christi digestae. Antwerp: Martin Nutius, 1593 Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia quae in sacrosancto missae sacrificio toto anno leguntur, Antwerp: Martin Nutius, 1595 Nicoll, Allardyce. The Garrick Stage: Theatres and Audience in the Eighteenth Century. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980 Ogden, James. ‘Lear’s Blasted Heath’, in Lear from Study to Stage: Essays in Criticism, ed. James Ogden and Arthur Scouten. London: Associated University Presses; and Madison, WI: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997, pp. 135–45 Orgel, Stephen. Imagining Shakespeare. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave, 2003 Osborne, Laurie E. The Trick of Singularity: Twelfth Night and the Performance Editions. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1996 Panofsky, Erwin. ‘Introductory’, in Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1939, pp. 3–31 ‘Iconography and Iconology: An Introduction to the Study of Renaissance Art’, in Meaning in the Visual Arts. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955, pp. 26–54 Paquin, Nicole. ‘Le “cadre” comme lieu de paradoxe au dix-huiti`eme si`ecle’, in Transactions of the Eighth International Congress on the Enlightenment. 3 vols. Oxford: Aldine Press, 1992. Vol. 3, pp. 1485–9. Peacock, John. The Stage Designs of Inigo Jones: The European Context. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995 Peltz, Lucy. ‘Engraved Portrait Heads and the Rise of Extra-Illustration: The Eton Correspondence of the Revd James Granger and Richard Bull, 1969–74’. The Sixty-sixth Volume of the Walpole Society. London: Maney Publishing, for the Walpole Society, 2004, pp. 1–163 Planch´e, James Robinson. Costume of Shakespeare’s Historical Tragedy of King John [King Henry the Fourth, As you Like it, Hamlet, Othello, and The Merchant of Venice] selected and arranged from the best authorities Expressly for the Proprietors of the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, with biographical, critical and explanatory notices, by J. R. Planch´e. The figures designed and executed on stone by J. K. Meadows London: John Miller, 1823–5

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Podro, Michael. The Critical Historians of Art. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982 Pointon, Marcia. Hanging the Head: Portraiture and Social Formation in Eighteenth-Century England. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993 Poole, Adrian. Shakespeare and the Victorians. The Arden Critical Companions. London: Thomson Learning, 2004 Portalis, Baron Roger. Les dessinateurs d’illustrations au dix-huiti`eme si`ecle. 2 vols. Paris, D. Morgand et C. Fatout, 1877 Raynie, Stephen A. ‘Hayman and Gravelot’s Anti-Pamela Designs for Richardson’s Octavo Edition of Pamela I and II’, Eighteenth-Century Life 23/3 (1999), pp. 77–93 Ripa, Cesare. Iconologia: or, moral emblems, by Caesar Ripa. . . . Newly design’d, and engraven on Copper, by I. Fuller, Painter . . . By the care and at the charge of P. Tempest. London: Benj. Motte, 1709 Rose, William. The History of Joseph: A Poem. In Six Books. With Cuts proper to each Book. London: Printed for James Knapton at the Crown in St Paul’s Church-Yard, 1712 Rosenberg, Marvin. The Masks of Othello: The Search for the Identity of Othello, Iago, and Desdemona by Three Centuries of Actors and Critics. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1961 St Clair, William. The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004 Salamon, M. C. Shakespeare in Pictorial Art. The Studio special number. London: The Studio, 1916 Scott, Grant. ‘To Play the King: Illustrations of The Tempest in the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery’, in The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery, ed. Walter Pape and Frederick Burwick. Bottrop: Pomp, 1996, pp. 113–22 Serlio, Sebastiano. The Second Booke of Architecture, made by Sebastian Serly. London: Printed for Robert Peake, 1611. In Sebastiano Serlio. The Five Books of Architecture: An Unabridged Reprint of the English Edition of 1611. New York: Dover, 1982 Settle, Elkanah. The Empress of Morocco. A tragedy. With sculptures. As it is acted at the Duke’s Theatre. Written by Elkanah Settle, servant to his Majesty. London: Printed for William Cademan at the Popes-head in the Lower Walk of the New Exchange in the Strand, 1673 Shadwell, Thomas. The Tempest, or The Enchanted Island. The Complete Works of Thomas Shadwell, ed. Montague Summers. 5 vols. London: The Fortune Press, 1927, vol. II Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edited by Charles Jennens. London: W. Bowyer and J. Nichols, 1773 Julius Caesar. Edited by Charles Jennens. London: W. Bowyer and J. Nichols, 1774 King Lear. Edited by Charles Jennens. London: W. Bowyer and J. Nichols, 1770 Macbeth. Edited by Charles Jennens. London: W. Bowyer and J. Nichols, 1773 The Merry Wives of Windsor, a Comedy by William Shakespeare. Illustrated by J. Finnemore and F. L. Emanuel. London, Paris and New York: Raphael Tuck and Sons, 1897 A Midsummer Night’s Dream with illustrations by Arthur Rackham. London: Heinemann, 1908 A Midsummer Night’s Dream with illustrations by W. Heath Robinson. London: Constable, 1914 The Play of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Illustrated by Lorna Burgoyne. London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton and Kent, 1919 Othello. Edited by Charles Jennens. London: W. Bowyer and J. Nichols, 1793

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Richard the Second: the text of the First Folio, with Quarto insertions edited and amended where obscure by Herbert Farjeon; illustrated with wood-engravings by Agnes Miller Parker. New York: The Limited Editions Club, 1940 Le songe d’une nuit d’´et´e; f´eerie d’apr`es W. Shakespeare. Translated by Paul Meurice. Paris: Librairie L. Conquet, 1886. Unique copy with gouache and watercolour decorations by Pinckney Marcius-Simons, 1908. Folger Shakespeare Library, catalogue number ART Vol. a71 The Life of Timon of Athens, edited by John Jowett. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004 The works of Mr. William Shakespear; in six volumes. Adorn’d with Cuts. Revis’d and Corrected, with an Account of the Life and Writings of the Author. By N. Rowe, Esq. London: Jacob Tonson, 1709 The works of Mr. William Shakespear; in nine volumes, with his life, by N. Rowe Esq. Adorn’d with Cuts. London: Jacob Tonson, 1714 The Works of Shakespeare: in eight volumes . . . With notes, explanatory, and critical: by Mr. Theobald. The second edition. 12 vols. London: H. Lintott, C. Hitch, J. and R. Tonson, C. Corbet, R. and B. Wellington, J. Brindley, and E. New, 1740 The works of Shakespear. In six volumes. Carefully rev. and cor. by the former editions, and adorned with sculptures designed and executed by the best hands. 6 vols. Oxford: Printed at the Theatre for the University Press, 1744 Bell’s Edition of Shakespeare’s Plays, as they are now performed at the Theatres Royal in London, regulated from the prompt books in each house. With notes critical and illustrative by the authors of the ‘Dramatic Censor’. 5 vols, with 4 volume ‘continuance’ (1774). London: John Bell, 1773–4 Bell’s Edition: Dramatic writings of Will Shakespeare, With the Notes of all the various Commentators; printed complete from the best editions of Sam. Johnson and Geo. Steevens. 20 vols. London: J. Bell, 1785–8 The Plays of William Shakespeare, complete in eight volumes. London: Bellamy and Robarts, 1788–91 The Plays of William Shakespeare. 12 vols. London: E. Harding, 1798–1800 The dramatic works of Shakspeare revised by George Steevens. 9 vols. London: Printed by W. Bulmer and Co. Shakspeare Printing-Office, for John and Josiah Boydell, George and W. Nicol: from the types of W. Martin, MDCCCII [actual publication date 1803] The plays of William Shakspeare accurately printed from the text of the corrected copy left by the late George Steevens; with a series of engravings, from original designs of Henry Fuseli; and a selection of explanatory and historical notes, from the most eminent commentators; A history of the stage, a Life of Shakspeare, &c. by Alexander Chalmers. In nine volumes. London: Printed for F. C. and J. Rivington [et al.], 1805 The Plays of William Shakespeare. Edited by A. C. Chalmers. 9 vols. London: Printed for F. C. and J. Rivington; J. Johnson; R. Baldwin; H. L. Gardner, etc. 1805. Dramatic Works . . . from the corrected text of Johnson and Steevens. Embellished with Plates. 6 vols London: J. Stockdale, 1807 The Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare. 12 vols. London: Thomas Tegg, 1812–15 Whittingham’s Edition, with Remarks on the Life and Writings of William Shakespeare . . . by J. Britton. 7 vols. Chiswick: J. Whittingham, 1813–14 Stockdale’s Edition of SHAKESPEARE: London: Printed for John Stockdale, opposite Burlington House, Piccadilly, 1834

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The Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare. With a Life and a Glossary and Fifty-three illustrations. London: Charles Tilt, Fleet Street, 1838 The Pictorial Edition of the Works of Shakspere. Edited by Charles Knight. 56 parts. London: Charles Knight and Co., 56 monthly parts, 1838–43. Issued as 7 volumes, with an additional supplementary volume containing the life of Shakespeare. Subsequent versions included ‘The National Edition.’ 3 vols. London: Routledge, 1858 The Works of Shakspere revised from the best authorities with a memoir, and essay on his genius, by Barry Cornwall: and, annotations and introductory remarks on the plays, by distinguished writers: illustrated with engravings on wood, from designs by Kenny Meadows. London: R. Tyas, 1838–43 The Plays of Shakespeare. Edited by Howard Staunton; the illustrations by John Gilbert; engraved by the Brothers Dalziel London: G. Routledge & Co., 1856–60 The Works of William Shakespeare. The Text Revised by the Rev. Alexander Dyce. London: Edward Moxon, 1857. Extra-illustrated edition, 6 volumes extended to 21. Folger Shakespeare Library, catalogue Art Vol. a 34 Cassell’s Illustrated Shakespeare. The Plays of Shakespeare. Edited and Annotated by Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke, authors of “Shakespeare Characters”, “Complete Concordance to Shakespeare”, “Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Heroines”, &c. 3 vols. London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, 1864 The Complete Works of Shakspere with a Memoir. London: John Dicks, 1864 The Library Shakespeare Illustrated by Sir John Gilbert, George Cruikshank and R. Dudley. 3 vols. London: William Mackenzie, 1873–5 The Works of Shakespeare with Notes by Charles Knight. London: Virtue and Co., n.d. [1873–6?] The Complete Works of Shakespeare, with Glossary and a Critical Biography. London: Ward Lock and Co., n.d. [1880?] The works of William Shakespeare: in fifteen volumes edited by Howard Staunton; with illustrations by Sir John Gilbert . . . One thousand copies only of this edition de luxe of the Works of William Shakespeare have been printed for sale, each of which is numbered. London and New York: George Routledge and Sons, 1881 Sir John Gilbert’s Shakespeare. The Works of Shakespeare, edited by H. Staunton, with . . . illustrations by Sir John Gilbert. Routledge’s Sixpenny Series. London: Routledge & Sons, 1882 The Works of William Shakespeare edited by Henry Irving and Frank A. Marshall. 8 vols. London, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dublin: Blackie and Son, 1888–90 The New Temple Shakespeare. Edited by M. R. Ridley. London: J. M. Dent and New York: E. P. Dutton, 1934–6 The Works of Mr. William Shakespear, [By N. Rowe, Esq.] with introduction by Peter Holland. 9 vols. London: Pickering and Chatto, 1999 Sillars, Stuart. Visualisation in Popular Fiction 1860–1960: Graphic Narratives, Fictional Images. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. ‘King Lear: Toward a Visual History’, in Lear from Study to Stage: Essays in Criticism, ed. James Ogden and Arthur Scouten. London: Associated University Presses; and Madison, WI: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997, pp. 278–96 ‘The Illustrated Short Story: Towards a Typology’, in The Art of Brevity: Excursions in Short Fiction Theory and Analysis, ed. Per Winther, Jakob Lothe and Hans H. Skei. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2004

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‘Seeing, Studying, Performing: Bell’s Edition of Shakespeare and Performative Reading’, Performance Research 10:3.‘On Shakespeare’ (September 2005), ed. Peter Holland and William Sherman, pp.18–27. Painting Shakespeare: The Artist as Critic, 1720–1820. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006 ‘Image, Genre, Interpretation: The Visual Identities of The Comedy of Errors’, Interfaces: Image, Text, Langage 26 (December 2006), pp. 7–30 ‘“Howsoever, strange and admirable”: A Midsummer Night’s Dream as via stultitiae’, Archiv f¨ ur das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 244 (2007), pp. 27–39 Spurgeon, Caroline. Shakespeare’s Imagery, and What it Tells Us. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press and New York: Macmillan, 1936. Stewart, Philip. Engraven Desire: Eros, Image and Text in the French Eighteenth Century. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992. Summers, David. ‘Meaning in the Visual Arts as a Humanist Discipline’, in Meaning in the Visual Arts: Views form the Outside. A Centennial Commemoration of Erwin Panofsky (1892–1968), ed. Irvin Lavin. Princeton, NJ: Institute for Advanced Study, 1995, pp. 9–24 Summers, Montague. ‘The First Illustrated Shakespeare’, The Connoisseur CII (July–December 1938), pp. 305–9 Taylor, Gary. Reinventing Shakespeare: A Cultural History, from the Restoration to the Present. London and New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989 Taylor, Susan B. ‘Gravelot’s Working Method’, in Eighteenth-Century French Book Illustration: Drawings by Fragonard and Gravelot from the Rosenbach Museum and Library. Philadelphia, PA: Rosenbach Museum and Library, 1985 Thurston, John. Illustrations of Shakespeare: comprised in two hundred and thirty vignette engravings by Thompson, from designs by Thurston: adapted to all editions. London: Printed for Sherwood, Gilbert, and Piper, and Leipzig: Ernest Fleischer, 1825 Tieck, Ludwig. ‘Die Kupferstiche nach der Shakspeare-Gallerie in London. Briefe an einen Freund’. 1793. Kritische Schriften, vol. I, pp. 3–34 Tredwell, Daniel M. (Daniel Melancthon), 1826–1921. A Monograph on Privately Illustrated Books: A Plea for Bibliomania. Lincoln Road, Flatbush, Long Island, Priv. Print. [New York, The De Vinne Press] 1892. Revised and enlarged version of 1881 edition Wadell, Maj-Brit. ‘The Evangelicae Historiae Imagines: The Designs and their Artists’, Quaerendo vol. x no. 4 (Autumn 1980), pp. 279–92 Wagner, Peter. Reading Iconotexts: From Swift to the French Revolution. London: Reaktion Books, 1995 Wark, Robert R. Drawings from the Turner Shakespeare. San Marino: Huntington Library, 1973 Waterhouse, Ellis. ‘English Painting and France in the Eighteenth Century’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes XV (1952), pp. 122–35 Weinglass, D. H. Prints and Engraved Illustrations by and after Henry Fuseli: A Catalogue Raisonn´e. Aldershot, Hants and Brookfield, VT: Scolar Press, 1994

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West, Anthony James. ‘The Life of the First Folio in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, in A Concise Companion to Shakespeare and the Text, ed. Andrew Murphy. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007 West, Shearer. The Image of the Actor: Verbal and Visual Representation in the Age of Garrick and Kemble. London: Pinter, 1991 Whiter, Walter. A Specimen of a Commentary on Shakespeare, containing [I] Notes on As You Like It [II] An Attempt to Explain and Illustrate Various Passages of Shakespeare on a New Principle of Criticism, derived from Mr. Locke’s Doctrine of the Association of Ideas. London: Printed for T. Cadell, 1794 Young, Alan R. Hamlet and the Visual Arts, 1709–1900. Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press and London: Associated University Presses, 2002 Ziegler, Georgianna. Shakespeare’s Unruly Women. Washington DC: The Folger Shakespeare Library, 1997

374

INDEX

Adnotationes (Nadal) 38–9, 41

2 Henry VI 63

Allentuck, Marcia 86–7 Audiences, outside London 141

Macbeth 123 Tempest 116, 118, 125: and Montaigne 116;

Austen, Jane Northanger Abbey 213 Authenticity, historical 97–8, 122–3

and Muldoon 116 Timon of Athens 116 Winter’s Tale 116–17

in Cassell 293 in George extra-illustrated editions 246–7

frontispiece by John Keyes Sherwin 121 Taming of the Shrew 121, 121–2 frontispiece by Isaac Taylor

in Gravelot’s Hanmer designs 97–8 in Knight 257

Othello 116–19, 119 frontispiece, unsigned (probably Edwards) Richard III 120, 120–1, 125

Baker, James 115 Banks, Thomas bas-relief for Boydell Gallery 188,

Gentleman on uses of 126–8 placing of images in 111–12, 115–16, 122 anticipation of extra-illustration 123

220 in Knight 259 Barry, Spranger 104, 187

opposite action 124–5 portraits of actors 115–16, 354n13 Garrick as Macbeth 123

Bate, Jonathan on Boitard’s Hamlet 10 on Knight edition 257, 287–9 Baxter, John History of England 222, 225 Beardsley, Aubrey 363n10 Beauties of Shakespeare, Dodd 199 Bell, John 111–12 ‘Acting’ edition (1774) Burnim and Highfill on 29, 115, 335, 354n13 circulation figures of 28, 115 frontispieces by Edward Edwards 114–16 Hamlet 116, 124

relation to scenes 123: Hamlet 123, 124; Midsummer Night’s Dream 123; Winter’s Tale 123 promptbooks in 113 publication history 26, 113 reading experiences of 122–3, 125–6 in relation to theatre 126–8 ‘Literary’ edition (1788) 128 binding directions 354n14 Burnim and Highfill on 128–9 ‘Characters’ 128–9 actors’ ‘points’ in 141 Richard II 139

375

index

Bell, John (cont.) combination of scholarship and illustration 129 and contemporary scholarship 141 cumulative effect of vignettes and characters

Bleeck, Pieter van Mrs Cibber as Cordelia 135 Boas, F. S. 327

140–1 in reading experience 141–2: Merchant of Venice 140; Romeo and Juliet 141

Boase, T. S. R. 29 Bodkin, Maud 231 Boitard Franc¸ois 33, 36–7

de Loutherbourg designs for 130, 136 multiple forms of 142–7

experience of plays in theatre 14, 33–4 frontispieces for Rowe (1709)

pairing of vignettes and characters 141–3 placing of images in 111–12, 129 publication history 128–9

and continental models 31–3, 35 critical judgments of 31 emblematic devices 52–3

relation to text 132–3 selection of illustrators 130 selection of moment before event 135

image-in-image 54–6 looped curtain as theatre metaphor 43–4 niches in 45–6, 47

as textual propellants 136 ‘Vignettes’ 128–9 emblems in 137

perspective in 44–5, 50 Renaissance stage design 44 style and reading 37–8

feeling in 133–6 frames for 132 individual plays: All’s Well (Burney) 135–6,

techniques for reading 42 and theatre 38–42, 44 uses Tonson’s Paradise Lost 34–5

136; As You Like It 134, 133–5; Comedy of Errors (Hamilton) 139, 140, 141; 2 Henry VI 63, 135; 3 Henry VI 133; King John 135; Lear

Antony and Cleopatra 43 As You Like It 44 Comedy of Errors 45–6, 48, 139

(Burney) 137, 138; Macbeth 136, 137; Richard III (Hamilton) 131, 131; Tempest

Cymbeline 53, 52–3 Hamlet 9, 8–11, 16, 43, 66–7, 68

(Sherwin) 137–8, 139; Timon 136; Twelfth Night 133; Two Gentlemen (Burney) 135 Bell’s British Theatre 14

and stage production 8–11, 16, 34; Jonathan Bate on 10 Henry V 43

Bellamy and Robarts edition 26, 111, 143 frames in 143–4 images and control of reading process 144

2 Henry VI 63 Measure for Measure 45–6, 47 Merchant of Venice 46, 45–6

individual images Comedy of Errors (Dayes) 144 Cymbeline 17–19, 147 2 Henry VI 63 Twelfth Night (Richter) 144–5, 145, 146, 147 and Shelley 146 location of images in 355n25 Bentley, Richard Designs for Gray’s Poems 112–13, 114

376

Blanc, Charles on Gravelot’s Almanach iconologique 85

Much Ado 45, 55, 54–6 Othello 43 Pericles 43 Romeo and Juliet 61, 61–2 Taming of the Shrew 54, 54, 121 Tempest 58, 56–8, 60 and Ecclestone’s Cataclysm 351n37 Timon 63 Twelfth Night 43

Betterton, Thomas 8 possible discussions with Boitard 34

Two Gentlemen 50, 51, 93 History of Joseph 37–8, 40, 50

Bewick, Thomas 21, 147 and wood engraving 147 Blake, Erin 201

knowledge of plays 34–5 from Fourth Folio 34 possible discussions with Betterton 34

index

Book production techniques 19 iron press 21

Peters, M. W. 194 Much Ado 194

mechanical case-binding 21 paper-making machine 21 Boucher, Franc¸ois 74

Porter, Robert Ker King John 196, 195–6 Reynolds, Joshua 190

Bourgignon, Hubert see Gravelot, Hubert Boydell, Josiah 1 Henry VI (Boydell Gallery and

Midsummer Night’s Dream 194 Smirke, Robert 189, 194 As You Like It 196–7

Boydell–Steevens) 195 Boydell Shakespeare Gallery Artists represented in Boydell, Josiah 195 Fuseli, Henry 188 Hamilton, William 188–9, 204 Hodges, William 188 Miller, W. 194 Northcote, James 188 Reynolds, Joshua 187 Banks, Thomas

Lear 197, 198 Merry Wives 194, 202, 203–4 Tempest 192, 192–3 Stothard, Thomas 193–4 Twelfth Night 194 Two Gentlemen 193, 193–4 Westall, Richard 189 Macbeth 197 Merchant of Venice 194–5 Wheatley, Francis 189–90 All’s Well 194, 224

bas-relief 188, 220, 259 choice motif in 188–9 Collection of Plates 189

Love’s Labour’s 194 Much Ado 194 differences from Boydell Gallery paintings

sequences of prints in 196–7 Felton on 187–9 and Imperfect Hints 188

197 and emotion in 182, 190, 197–9 engravings for 189

narrative and event in 188 Boydell–Steevens edition 181 Boydell on quality of 197 and Collection of Prints sequences 196–7 contributors and images 189 Boydell, Josiah 1 Henry VI 195 Fuseli, Henry 190 Midsummer Night’s Dream 194 Hamilton, William 189 As You Like It 196–7 Richard II 195, 195 The Tempest 191, 190–2 Winter’s Tale 194 Hodges, William As You Like It 196–7 Ibbetson, Julius Caesar

Farington on 197 font designed by Bulmer 198 general features 189 and Picturesque 201 prospectus 181 publication form 190 Boydell–Steevens edition extra-illustrated by George C. George 219–20, 235–47 Cowan, Lieut. Rob., Cymbeline watercolours pl. 14, 237 George’s notes to 243 Coriolanus 245 1 Henry IV 244 Henry V 245, 246 Knolles Turks 245 Merchant of Venice 244–5 Romeo and Juliet 244, 244

Taming of the Shrew 196 Miller, William

Grimm, Samuel Hieronymus, watercolours for 237–43

Romeo and Juliet 194 Northcote, James 190 Richard III (reissue of ) 197

see also under Grimm, Samuel Hieronymus Ireland, Miss J., etchings 236–7 Richard III 239, 239–40, 247

377

index

Boydell–Steevens edition (cont.) Mortimer, J. H. Shakespeare Heads 236 Parnell, H. Tempest silhouettes 235–6

Cowden Clarkes’ annotations in 291 depiction of women, Georgianna Ziegler on 302–4

Portraits, mezzotint, of actors 246 Webbe, Geo., watercolours Falstaff 236

emotional choreography in illustrations 302–5 Comedy of Errors 302

Much Ado 236 Bradley, A. C. 327 British Poets series see Macklin, Thomas Browne, Gordon 334 Richard II (Henry Irving Shakespeare) 334–5,

Hamlet 302 and histories 304 2 Henry IV 304 King John 304 Richard II 304

336 work for illustrated magazines 334 Browne, Hablˆot Knight 273

Tempest 302 Winter’s Tale 302 later editions 291–2

Bulmer, William font for Boydell–Steevens edition 198 Bunbury, William, engravings 230

location of images 292–3 relationship with paintings 291–2 scheme of illustration 292

Burbage, Richard 8 Burgoyne, Lorna Midsummer Night’s Dream 115, 335

and Staunton edition 318–20 title-pages (Selous) Hamlet 293, 294, 303

Burney, Edward 130 designs for Bell (1788) All’s Well 136, 135–6 Lear 137, 138 Two Gentlemen 135 Timon print 63 Burnim, Kalman and Philip Highfill on Bell 29, 115, 335, 354n13

Cabinet of Genius (Shelley) 206

and Fuseli, Henry, Hamlet 362n3 Macbeth 293, 295 Othello 296, 297 authenticity of setting 293 later images in 297, 298 and Victorian novels 302, 303 visual vocabulary 297 Tempest 300, 297–300, 302 and evolutionary ideas 299, 301 location of images 297–301 Chalmers, A. C. edition 157–60, 169

contributors 206 All’s Well (Singleton) 207, 208 As You Like It 206, 207

frontispieces (Fuseli) 157 All’s Well 222, 223 Comedy of Errors 160

Othello (Singleton) 207–8, 209 Cadell, Thomas 212, 248 Cadre, in French images 132

Hamlet 160 Henry VIII 160, 227 iconography of 159–60

see also frames Cambridge Shakespeare 330 Camille, Michel 3

Macbeth 160 style of 157, 169 Taming of the Shrew 159, 159–60

Capell, Edward on death of Beaufort 63

Tempest 158, 157–9 Titus Andronicus 160

Carnegie, David on Boitard Twelfth Night 43 Carruthers, Mary 3

378

Cassell’s Illustrated Shakespeare 290–305 Adrian Poole on 302

Troilus and Cressida 160 prospectus 157 Cibber, Mrs (Susannah) 187–9

index

Circulation figures 28–9, 329 Bell (1774) 28, 115 Dicks 28, 329–30 Johnson 28 Steevens 28 Theobald 28 Clarke, Charles Cowden 287–9, 291 Clarke, Mary Cowden 287–9, 291

De Piles, Roger 85 De Vos, Martin 38 Dickens, Charles Oliver Twist illustration 324–5 Dickes, William title-page to Macbeth (Knight) 270, 269–71 Dicks, John, edition 27–8, 324–9 binding 327

Claude glass 201 Claude, (Gell´ee, Claude, Le Lorrain)

circulation figures 28, 329–30 cultural significance of 328–9

landscape style of 237 Cleyn, Franz 32 Corbould, R., Cymbeline 17–19

individual images Antony and Cleopatra 326, 325–7 gender relationship in 325

Cornwall, Barry (pseud. Bryan Waller Procter) 273, 360n1 Cowan, Lieut. Rob.

and Gilbert illustration 311, 325 King John 325 Othello 324–5

watercolours in George extra-illustrated Boydell–Steevens pl. 14, 237 Cowden Clarkes’ edition

and Oliver Twist (Cruikshank) 324–5 Troilus and Cressida 327 last mass-circulation illustrated edition 329

see Cassell’s Illustrated Shakespeare Cowley, Abraham Works (Tonson) 32–3

technique of paired characters 324–9 use of eye contact 327 Coriolanus 327, 328

Craig, Edward Gordon Hamlet (Cranach Press) 342–3, 343 Cranach Press

Measure for Measure 327 use of space 325 Dicksee, Frank

Hamlet (Gordon Craig) 342–3, 343 Cruikshank, George

Romeo and Juliet 291–2 Diderot, Denis 85

Oliver Twist illustration 324–5 Cultural history, and illustrated edition 24–5

Dodd, William 199 Dodsley, Robert 112 Dolle, William

Daily Courant 33 Dance, Nathaniel Timon of Athens 63

Empress of Morocco illustrations 11, 13 Dr Syntax engravings (Rowlandson) 230 Du Bos, L’Abb´e 85

Davenant, William 10 Dayes, Edward 144 De Loutherbourg, Philip James

Du Guernier, Louis illustrations for Pope (1728) 73 illustrations for Rowe (1714) 112

Coalbrookdale by Night 130 designs for Bell (1788) 130, 199 As You Like It 134, 133–5

Antony and Cleopatra 65 Cymbeline 66–71 Hamlet 66–7, 69

Henry V 187 Lear 137 Macbeth 136, 137

2 Henry VI 65 Macbeth 64–5 Measure for Measure 67, 70

Merchant of Venice 186 Twelfth Night 133

Merchant of Venice 65 Much Ado 66

engaged by Garrick 130 Midsummer Afternoon 130 stage designs and paintings 130–1

Romeo and Juliet 78 Taming of the Shrew 66 Tempest 65

379

index

Du Guernier, Louis (cont.) Titus Andronicus 65–6 Twelfth Night 65 Du Maurier, George Trilby 330

Erdman, David 3 Erne, Lukas 2–3 Evangelicae historiae Imagines (Nadal) 38–9, 41

Duffy, Eamonn on medieval meditative images 39 Dugdale, William

Evolution, ideas of 299, 362n4, 362n5 Extra-illustration 26 anticipated by Bell’s editions 123

Antiquities of Warwickshire 97, 99 Dunning, William

archival value 217 collection in Folger Shakespeare library

on compositional climax 50 Duval, Mr 228

218–19 fashion for 214 and Granger, James 214–16

Ecclestone, Edward The Cataclysm and Boitard 351n37 Editing, idea of completion of 149

Halliwell edition 218–19 and Harding 216–17 and hierarchy 215–16

Edwards, Edward frontispieces to Bell (1744) 114–16 Hamlet 116, 123, 124, 150–1

Historical Portraits 216 images, sources of 217 Knight edition, Stratford 218

Macbeth 123 Midsummer Night’s Dream 123 Othello 116–19

as reader expression 214 reading experience of 217–18 watercolour copies in 217

Richard III 120–1, 125 Tempest 116, 118, 125 Timon of Athens 116

see also Boydell–Steevens edition, George C. George editions, Heath edition

Two Gentlemen 63 Winter’s Tale 116–17, 123

Faithorne, William 33 Farington, Joseph

use of earlier edition as text 14 Egg, Augustus Past and Present 316

on Boydell subscriptions 196–7 Felton, Samuel 183 see also Imperfect Hints

Eliot, George Romola 330 Elliott, William

Fielding, Henry Pasquin 11, 12, 44 Finnemore, J.

Spranger Barry and Miss Nossiter 102, 104 Emanuel, F. L.

Merry Wives of Windsor 335, 338 Foakes, R. J. Illustrations of the English Stage 346n4

Merry Wives of Windsor 335, 338 Emblematic revival, Victorian 275 Emblems, use of, in illustration

Folger Shakespeare Library extra-illustrated collection 218 Halliwell extra-illustrated edition 218–19

in Bell (1788) 137 in Meadows 19–20, 275–80 in Thurston 170

Hanmer watercolours 92–3 Format, later Victorian editions 289–91 Fourdrinier, Pierre

Emotion selection of moments for 60–2

images for Tonson, 1730s editions 73 Fragonard, Jean-Honor´e

in Boydell–Steevens 194, 197–9 Engraving techniques on copper 19–21

380

on steel 21 stipple 21

Le Colin-maillard 86 L’Escarpolette 86 Les Hasards 86

index

Frames to images in Bell (1788) 132 in Bellamy and Robarts 18, 143 in Heath Tempest 165 Franklin, Colin 29, 108 Fried, Michael on Rococo art 85 Frontispiece, illustrated in Knight’s Pictorial Shakespere 15–16 later function of 15–16

as Lear 63 engages de Loutherbourg at Drury Lane 130 Gentleman, Francis 113, 141 Preface to Bell (1774) 126–8 George, George C. 219 circle of 219 extra-illustrated editions 219–20, 235 character in 220–1 earlier illustrations in 221 images placed in series 221

narrative, in Rowe 56–60 privileging of scene through selection 62 selection of moments of action, in 60

contents 220–1 and historical reconstructions 246–7, 251

sixteenth and seventeenth century 4–8 see also under individual artists and editions Fuseli, Henry

and history 220–1 Richard III 247–9 as non-metropolitan collaboration 251

and Boydell–Steevens edition 190, 194 2 Henry VI 63 illustrations for Chalmers 157, 160

pagination in 359n12, 359n13 reading experience 251 see also Boydell–Steevens and Heath

iconography of 159–60 style of 157, 169 All’s Well 222, 223

Gilbert, John 289–91 editions with illustrations by 330 see Staunton edition

Comedy of Errors 160 Hamlet 160 Henry VIII 160, 227

Gill, Eric New Temple Shakespeare designs 337–9 Gilpin, William 199

Macbeth 160 Taming of the Shrew 159, 159–60

aquatints 359n20 Essay upon Prints 199

Tempest 158, 157–9 Titus Andronicus 160 Troilus and Cressida 160

Forest Scenery pl. 2, 232 and Jeayes watercolours 231–2 landscape designs and Taylor’s illustrations

illustration for Heath edition 165 Macbeth 165 illustrations for Macklin’s British Poets 167

202 Observations on the Wye 199 Globe Shakespeare 28, 330

Lady Macbeth Seizing the Daggers 165 Lady Macbeth Sleepwalking 160 Macbeth (Woodmason) 169

Goncourt brothers, on Gravelot 75 Granger, James Biographical Dictionary 214–16

engraving 169 Midsummer Night’s Dream paintings (Boydell) 188 The Nightmare

Grangerising, see extra-illustration Gravelot, Hubert 25–6, 73–4 Almanach iconologique 85

and Meadows edition 279–80, 361n18 Queen Katherine’s Dream 167 Gallanis, Demetrios Troilus and Cressida 339 Gardiner, W. N. illustrations to Harding 150, 152, 149–53 Garrick, David

and Fragonard 86 and French art 85–6 changes to Hayman’s designs (Hanmer) 95 Macbeth 89, 87–90 Two Gentlemen 92 designs for Gay’s fables 74 designs for Hanmer 96 1 Henry VI 96

381

index

Gravelot, Hubert (cont.) 3 Henry VI 96–7 Henry VIII 96 original drawings for 92–3 designs for Theobald (engr. Vander Gucht) 77

attitude to history 245 Henry V 245 Richard III pl. 13, 238–40

Hamlet 78–80 Lear 78 Love’s Labour’s Lost 77–8

bias towards comedies 240 comedies 238 Midsummer Night’s Dream pl. 10, 243; irony in

Midsummer Night’s Dream 77–8 Much Ado 78, 79

243 origin and purchase 237–8

and metaphor 78 Othello 84, 83–5 Richard II 78

and Rococo 243 as serial responses to plays 238–40 Measure for Measure pl. 11, pl. 12, 241–3

Richard III 82, 81–2, 120–1 Romeo and Juliet 78 Tempest 80, 80–1

Tempest pl. 7–9, 237–8, 240–1 Winter’s Tale 238 style 238 Twelfth Night 243

Titus Andronicus 80 engravings (Hanmer) 86 and European tradition 110

Halliwell edition, extra-illustrated

Goncourt brothers on 75 Robert Halsband, on 77 and Francis Hayman 77

218–19 Hamilton, William Bell (1788)

illustration, later, effect on 85 illustration work in London 74 moment, selection of, for illustration 78 and naturalism 76–7 and novel illustrations 75–6 Pamela illustrations 82 Richardson illustrations 352n9 and Ripa’s Iconologia 82–3 Ellis Waterhouse on 75 Alan Young on 78–9 Graves, R. B. Lighting the Shakespearean Stage 335, 347n9 Gray, Thomas

Comedy of Errors 139, 140, 141 Richard III 131 Boydell paintings Twelfth Night 188–9 Winter’s Tale 204 Boydell–Steevens engravings 189 As You Like It 196–7 Richard II 195, 195 Tempest 191, 190–2 and Romney’s Boydell painting 190–3 Winter’s Tale 194 Picturesque Beauties engravings Winter’s Tale 204

Poems 112, 114 Green, Henry and Victorian emblematic revival 361n16

Hamm, Robert on Tonson and English canon 32 Hammerton, H. A. 29, 74

Green, W. T. 15–16 Taming of the Shrew 15–16 Greenaway, Kate 19

Hanmer, Thomas 1740–4 edition 85–6 letter to Francis Hayman 87–90

Grimm, Samuel Hieronymus handwriting 360n27 topographical watercolours 360n26 watercolours for George C. George Boydell–Steevens edition 237–43

382

absence of irony in selection of Troilus images 245

on Julius Caesar 87 on Macbeth 88, 87–8, 90 on Titus Andronicus 87 notes to illustrators 86–7, 90 on Hamlet 86

index

on Richard II 99 and Dugdale’s Antiquities 97, 99 on Tempest 90, 90–2 Harding, Edward edition 149–53 Hamlet 149, 150, 150–1, 152 Merry Wives 151–2 Romeo and Juliet 152 Harding, Sylvester Whole Historical Dramas 216–17 see also extra-illustration Harvey, John 29 on Lear illustration tradition 63 Harvey, William illustration to Kenilworth (Scott) 259, 264 title-page to Taming of the Shrew (Knight) 15–16 Hayman, Francis illustrations to Hanmer edition 86 Antony and Cleopatra 95 Coriolanus 95 Hamlet 94 1 and 2 Henry IV 96 Henry V 96 Julius Caesar 87

Spranger Barry and Mrs Mary Elmy 351n51 Vauxhall Gardens As You Like It painting 99 Heath edition illustrations in 164 and convention 165 Merchant of Venice 165 Midsummer Night’s Dream 164–5 Tempest 165, 166 Heath edition, extra-illustrated by George C. George 219–20, 235 contents 220–1 All’s Well images 222 Antony and Cleopatra 228, 227–8 Banks bas-relief (Jeayes) 220 Baxter’s History image 222, 225 Combe memorial 220 diversity of images 222–6 George’s notes 233 Henry VIII images 226, 222–6, 227 Jeayes original watercolours Macbeth pl. 3, pl. 4, 230 ‘Monument’ pl. 6, 233–5 and Picturesque pl. 3, 4, 231–2 Timon pl. 5, 232–3

Lear 93 Macbeth 88, 87–8, 90, 94

Titus Andronicus 232–3 Jeayes watercolour copies 229–30

modified by Gravelot 89, 87–90 Measure for Measure 93 Merry Wives 93

of Bunbury engravings 230 portraits 220 Richard II engraving 233, 234

Midsummer Night’s Dream 93, 96 Much Ado 93 Richard II 97, 98

Roman plays 229 Two Maids of Moreclacke 220 versions of Shylock 226–7

Romeo and Juliet 93 Tempest 90, 92 Timon 63

as visual variorum 226 Webbe sketches 229 and Whiter, Walter 231

Titus Andronicus 87 Two Gentlemen 92, 94 modified by Gravelot 92, 95 illustrations to Jennens edition 98–9 As You Like It 99 Hamlet 98–9 Othello 98 original drawings for Hanmer 92–3 Macbeth 88, 87–8, 90 Two Gentlemen 92, 94

Henry Irving Shakespeare 334–5 and earlier editions 335 Richard II 334, 336 and Strand Magazine illustration 334, 337 Highfill, Philip and Kalman Burnim on Bell 29, 115, 335, 354n13 Historical Portraits 216 History of Joseph (Rose) 37, 40 Hodges, William As You Like It (Boydell–Steevens) 196–7 paintings for Boydell Gallery 188

383

index

Hogarth, William Beggar’s Opera 11

Illustrated book study of 3

Calais Gate 106 Holland, Peter 29 on Kenny Meadows 273–4

resurgence of 336 Illustrated edition as art book 331

on Rowe and Paradise Lost folio 35 Hollar, Wenceslas 32 H¨oltgen, Karl Josef

for children 335–6 circulation of 28–9 earlier study of 29

Aspects of the Emblem 347n5 Howard, Frank, Spirit of Shakespeare

and illustrated novel 23, 75–6, 259, 302, 318–20, 352n9

174 and chronology 174 images and production 179 note to Much Ado 179 number of images in plays 179 ‘outline’ and narrative 174, 178 realignments of texts 178–9 Comedy of Errors 176–7 Lear 177, 177–8 Midsummer Night’s Dream 176, 175–6 Tempest 175, 175 Two Gentlemen 178 Winter’s Tale 178 Hume, David History of England 182, 211

tradition of 3–4 Victorian, range of 330 Illustrated London News and Gilbert designs 306–8 Sedan images 307, 308, 308, 309, 318–20, 362n13 Illustrated short stories 351n41 Illustration, definition of, in eighteenth century 30 Illustration of Shakespeare actor portraits 12–14, 246 changes in, 1780–1840 148 collections of separate images, in nineteenth

Bowyer edition 212 illustrations by Smirke 212

century 28 decline of, in nineteenth century 27–8

Cadell edition engravings 212 Richard III (S. Hall) 247, 248 Richard III (A. Smith) 249

expanding demand for, 1780–1840, 149 functions of 4, 16

illustrations 15 Pocket Edition 212 resemblance to Shakespeare illustrations

and in historical writings 212 see also Hume, David move from frontispiece to text 25

212 engraving of Richard III (Metz) 250, 260–269

and new readership 149 and novel 23, 75–6, 259, 302, 318–20, 352n9 placing in volume 17, 19

Smollett, Tobias, extension by 212 Treatise of Human Nature 211 Hume, Robert D.

opposite action in Bell (1774) 124–5; scholarly effects of 125–6

on earlier status of Shakespeare 32

in Bell (1788) 129 in Bellamy and Robarts edition 18, 144 left- and right-hand page 17–19, 35

Ibbetson, Julius Caesar Taming of the Shrew (Boydell Gallery) 196 Identity, national and Knight’s Imperial Shakespeare 334 If you know not me (Anon), Frontispiece 4, 6

384

online 341 outline history of 25 populism and 330

turned 19 variation in 111–12 in Bell (1774) 111–12, 124–5 in Bell (1788) 111–12, 142–7 in present-day scholarly editions 339–41

index

range of 179–80 in late eighteenth century 180

Ireland, Miss J. etchings (George Boydell–Steevens) 236–7

realism in 93 scholarship and in Bell (1788) 129

Richard III 239, 239–40 Ireland, William Henry 236 Miscellaneous Papers 236

in Cassell’s Illustrated Edition 291 in second not first editions 74 and smaller format 149–69

Irish Shakespeare Gallery see Woodmason, James

standards for other imaging 27–8 and theatre 4, 8, 15

on Rowe images 31 Jaggard, William 184

Imperfect Hints on 185 as textual propellant 136 traditions of 62–4, 120–1

Jameson, Anna Brownell Characteristics of Women 285, 286–287 Jeayes, W.

in 2 Henry VI 63 in King Lear 63–4 in Timon 63 in Two Gentlemen 20, 63, 94–95, 135, 193–4, 203–4 see also frontispiece Imperfect Hints 183 ‘Advertisement’ 183–4 analytical and referential illustration 185–7 on Boydell Gallery 187 on Boydell paintings 188 comments on illustrating plays

Jackson, Alfred

watercolour copies, in George editions 229 of Banks bas-relief 220 of Bunbury engravings 230 of Zuccarelli Macbeth 230 watercolours, original of Macbeth pl. 3, pl. 4, pl. 6 of Titus Andronicus pl. 5, 232–3 Jerningham, Edward Shakespeare Gallery 182–3 and national identity 186 idea of renewal in illustration 183 on repetition in illustration 182–3

Cymbeline 186 1 Henry IV 185

and Reynolds 182–7 Johnson, Samuel

Henry V 187 King John 186 Lear 185

edition, circulation of 28 Jones, Inigo 38–42, 44 imports perspectival stage design 45

Othello 185 Richard III 185 Romeo and Juliet 187

and Italian stage design 349n15 Jonson, Ben frontispiece to Works 6–7

Tempest 185 on de Loutherbourg’s Bell (1788) designs Henry V 187

Kauffman, Angelica 189 Cleopatra 228

Merchant of Venice 186 Jaggard on 184 painting and performance parallels 187–8

Two Gentlemen (Boydell) 188 Two Gentlemen (Boydell–Steevens) 63 Kirkall, Elisha 33

and theatre 185 Imperial Shakespeare (Knight) 331–4 engravings reproducing paintings 331–4 1 Henry IV (Orchardson) 333, 332–3 King John (Pott) 332, 331–2 reflection of popular taste 332–4 title, and national identity 334 visual anthology 334

engravings see Boitard, Franc¸ois Knight, Charles 254 autobiography 255 and Society for Diffusion of Useful Knowledge 254–5 Knight’s Imperial Shakespeare see Imperial Shakespeare Knight’s Pictorial Shakspere 22, 122–3 ‘advertisement’, on role of illustrations 255

385

index

Knight’s Pictorial Shakspere (cont.) on Alabaster’s Roxana 264 Bate, Jonathan, on 257 on Boitard’s Rowe images 31 Hamlet 8, 9, 264

references to tradition of illustration 259–64 serial parts 255–7 stereotype plates, use of 22, 258

experiential and topographical immediacy in 272 extra-illustrated edition of 218

technical innovations in use of illustrations 258 title pages 264–5 topographical images 271–2

see also George, George C. history and imagination balance 265

use of older images 258 Banks’ Boydell bas-relief 259

illustration approach to 255 authenticity 257 of comedies 267 as critical commentary 257 and Knight’s other part works 257 similarity of images 258; Merchant of Venice and Penny Magazine 258, 260–261 use of same blocks 258: Henry V and London 258; Henry VIII in London 258, 262–263; Richard II and London 258; Richard III and History of England 258 meanings in context 258 and novel 259 illustration to Kenilworth 259, 264 illustrations of plays As You Like It 257

Froissart image in History of England and Richard II 258 Reynolds Mrs Siddons as Lady Macbeth 259–64 unity of text and illustration 255 Knight, Richard Payne 199 Kyd, Thomas Spanish tragedy frontispiece 4, 5 Lambert, Pierre 32 Landells, Ebenezer 266, 265–7 Later Victorian editions format in 289–91 production of 290–305 Lawrence, W. J. on Empress of Morocco 11, 13 Lighting effects in engraving 10

Hamlet 8, 257 1 Henry IV 16 Lear, ‘Persons Represented’ 264

in eighteenth-century theatre 10 Limited Editions Club 339 Richard II (Miller Parker) 339, 340

Macbeth 258, 269 and arms in Tower from London 271 ‘Persons Represented’ 271

Troilus and Cressida (Gallanis) 339 Littau, Karin 24 London Gazette 33

title page (Dickes) 270, 269–71 Midsummer Night’s Dream 267 Much Ado 257

London Printing and Publishing Company edition 282–7, 331 see also under Meadows, Kenny

Richard II (Landells) 266, 265–7 Taming of the Shrew 258, 267–8 frontispiece 15–16

Mackenzie, Henry Man of Feeling 133–4, 182

Tempest 267 Timon of Athens 257, 268 Twelfth Night 257

Macklin, Charles as Shylock, in Bell (1788) 140 Macklin, Thomas

Winter’s Tale 268, 269 reading experience 269–72 ‘Illustration’ sections of notes 256 resultant reading experience 256, 258 and Kenny Meadows edition 287–9

386

moral use of ‘Old Master’ reproductions 257–8 National Edition 254

British Poets 167 Bunbury engravings 230 on new demand for engraving 149 Marcius-Simons, Pinckney Songe d’une nuit d’´et´e pl. 16, 342

index

Marlowe, Christopher Doctor Faustus frontispiece 4, 5

Meditative images, medieval 39 Melchiori, Barbara 29

Matteis, Paolo de and Historical Draught 188 McArdell, James

Merchant, W. Moelwyn 29 on Boitard Antony and Cleopatra 43

Garrick as Lear mezzotint (after Wilson) 63 Meadows, Kenny 170, 273

Tempest 56–7 Twelfth Night 43 Messalina frontispiece 4–6

and Hablˆot Knight Browne 273 concern for character 273

Metaphor, in visual depiction, by Gravelot 78

and ‘Barry Cornwall’ 273 Heads of the People 273 ‘Family Governess’ 285–6, 288

Metz, Caroline Richard III engraving 249, 250 Meurice, Paul

Illustrated Shakspere 273 emblematic technique 19, 275 serpents 275: 3 Henry VI 275, 276; Lear

Songe d’une nuit d’´et´e 342 Millais, John Everett Autumn Leaves 310

275; Macbeth 279, 277–80; Othello 277, 275–7, 278, 284; Two Gentlemen 19–20, 275

‘Mariana’ wood engraving 322, 321–3 Parables of our Lord 320, 321 Miller Parker, Agnes

comic elements 280–2 concealment of characters 282–3 cupids 282

Richard II 339, 340 Miller, Louise on Gravelot’s images 82–3

Antony and Cleopatra 282, 283, 285 Much Ado 282–3 and immediacy

Miller, W. Romeo and Juliet (Boydell Gallery) 194

Cymbeline 280 Measure for Measure 280 Romeo and Juliet 280, 281 Twelfth Night 280 mise-en-page 282 Lear 282 paired characters 273 1 Henry IV 274 Merry Wives 274, 273–4; Peter Holland on 273–4 London Printing and Publishing edition 282–7,

(Boydell–Steevens) 194 Mise-en-page manipulation of 19 in Gilbert Library Edition 313–18 in Meadows 282 Moment for depiction, selection of for illustration 60 in Gravelot 78 before event, in Bell (1788) 135 for emotion 60–2 Montaigne, Michel de

331 actor portraits in 282, 285 character plates in 282–5

‘On Cannibales’ 116 Mortimer, John Hamilton Shakespeare Heads 186, 236

and Jameson, Anna Brownell 285 women characters 285–7 Cleopatra 285, 286

Moseley, Charles 67 Muldoon, Paul 116 Multitemporalism

Miranda 285, 287 Medina, John Paradise Lost Illustrations (Tonson edition) 32 Book II 57, 59 Book IX 52, 50–2

in narrative images 39 in Boitard 50 Comedy of Errors 45–6, 139 History of Joseph 40 Murphy, Andrew 29

387

index

Nadal, Jeronimo Evangelicae historiae 38–9, 41

Pasquin (Fielding) 12, 44 Passeri, Bernardino 38

Nash, Paul Midsummer Night’s Dream (Player’s Shakespeare) 339

Perspectival recession, in Boitard 50 Peters, Matthew William Much Ado (Boydell–Steevens) 194

National identity, Shakespeare and 186 New Temple Shakespeare 337–9 Nicoll, Allardyce

and Woodmason 167–8 Pictorial Shakspere (Knight) see Knight’s Pictorial Shakspere 254

The Garrick Stage 347n9 Noli me tangere pl. 1, 67

Picturesque, The as aesthetic category 199, 212–13

Northcote, James King John (Boydell) 188 Richard II (Woodmason) 168, 168–9

and Bell (1788) 133 and Boydell–Steevens plates 201 in Jeayes watercolours 23

Richard III (Boydell) 248–9 Richard III (Boydell–Steevens) 197 Novel

setting 231 and Gilpin, Forest Scenery 232 and reading experience in Shakespere editions

Cassell’s Illustrated Shakespeare, and 302 epistolary 347n19 Gravelot, Hubert and 75–6, 352n9

388

212–13 Picturesque Beauties (Taylor) 199–206 and Boydell Collection of Prints 206

growth of, and effect on illustration 71 illustrated 23 Knight Pictorial Shakspere, and 259

and Claude glass 201 compared with Boydell–Steevens designs Merry Wives (Smirke) 203, 203–4

Narrative use of, in changes to chronology 59–60 Staunton, and 318–20

Winter’s Tale (Stothard) 204, 204 contrast to Felton’s suggestions 206 designs 201

Ogbourne, John 206

As You Like It 205–6 Cymbeline (Smirke) 205, 205

Online editions, and illustration 341 Opie, John, and Woodmason 168 Timon image 63

Merchant of Venice (Smirke) 205 Much Ado 205–6 Twelfth Night 205

Orchardson, William Quiller Prince Henry, Poins and Falstaff 333, 332–3 Orgel, Stephen

and Gilpin’s ideas of Picturesque 202 publication and format 202 Pine, Robert Edge

on Serlio 44 Orlando Furioso, illustrations to 39 Osborne, Laurie 29

Tempest 185 Planch´e, James Robinson on Shakespearean costumes 273

Paillet, portrait of Corneille and Rowe edition 17–19, 35, 36

Player’s Shakespeare 339 Points, actors’, in illustration 14 Poole, Adrian 29

Painting and performance, as parallel forms 187–8 Panofsky, Erwin 24–5

on Victorian imaging 211 Pope, Alexander, 1728 edition 73–4 ‘considerable’ moments list 14

Paradise Lost (Tonson edition) 32, 52, 59 see also Medina, John and van der Gucht,

Porter, Robert Ker, King John (Boydell–Steevens) 195–6, 196

Michael Parnell, H. Tempest silhouettes 236

Portraits of actors in Bell (1774) 13–14, 115–16, 123, 354n13 in Bell (1778) 128–9, 139–42

index

in illustrated editions 12–14 mezzotints in extra-illustrated editions 246

engravings for Tegg 154, 153–4, 155–156, 156 Richard II Enthroned, Westminster Abbey 97

paintings 12–13 Pott, John King John 332, 331–2

Richardson, Jonathan 71 Richter 144, 145, 144–5, 146, 147, 355n26 Ripa, Cesare

Price, Uvedale 199 Prince of Wales feathers, as emblem 138 Print, plays in 1–2

Iconologia 82–3 Rivington edition Chalmers, A. C. edition Robinson, W. Heath

as equal equivalent to performance 1–3 Printing, techniques of 347n18

Midsummer Night’s Dream 335, 347n9 Rococo, serious aspect of, and Gravelot 86

Prompt-books, in Bell (1774) 113 Rackham, Arthur

Romanska, Magda 29 Rose, William History of Joseph 37, 40

Midsummer Night’s Dream 335–6 Ramberg, H. 130 Readers

Rosenberg, Marvin on Boitard’s Othello 43 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques

and cultural settings 24–5 kinds of 23 new 238

La Nouvelle H´elo¨ıse 133 Rowe, Nicholas on death of Beaufort in 2 Henry VI 63

qualified 24 Readership expanding, Stockdale on 148

and formation of English canon 32 1709 edition advertised 33

growth of 27 Reading and theatre, relationship of, in Bell (1774) 126–8

experiments with Second Folio 34, 349n10 use of Fourth Folio 34 frontispiece Shakespeare portrait, and

Reading experience 341–2 in Bell (1774) 122–3

Corneille 17–19, 35, 36 frontispieces to individual plays see Boitard,

in Boydell–Steevens 190 and extra-illustrated edition 217–18 in Knight Pictorial Shakspere 269–72 and Picturesque 212–13 in Rowe’s Romeo and Juliet 61–2 in Rowe’s Tempest 60

Franc¸ois production 33 1714 edition 64–71 emblematic meaning, absence of 66–7 Hamlet 151 narrative devices 67–71

in Thurston 171 Turner Shakespeare 218 Reading of images, technique for Boitard 42

presentation of textual detail 65–6 see also du Guernier Royal Academy, effects of foundation 149

Reading of plays 1–2 in illustrated editions 2, 22 medieval techniques of, for meditation 3

Ruskin, John Academy Notes 316 Stones of Venice 293

in nineteenth century 26–7 see also reading experience Reynolds, Joshua 182–7

Sabbattini, Niccol`o 38, 50 Salamon, M. C.

and Boydell–Steevens edition 190, 194 Death of Cardinal Beaufort 63, 187 Mrs Siddons as Lady Macbeth in Knight edition 259–64 Rhodes, Richard

on Rowe images 31 Schapiro, Meyer 97 Scott, Grant F. 29 Scott, Walter Kenilworth 259, 264, 318–20

389

index

Selous, Henry Courtenay 287–9 see also Cassell’s Illustrated Shakespeare

3 Henry VI 63, 65, 96–7, 133, 275, 276 Henry VIII 96, 160, 167, 225, 222–5, 226, 226,

Sensibilit´e, and Bell (1788) 133–6 Serlio, Sebastiano 38, 44 comedy design 44

227, 258, 263 Julius Caesar 87 King John 135, 168, 186, 188, 196, 195–6, 304,

and tragedy 49, 53 tragedy design 46–7 Settle, Elkanah

325, 332, 331–2 King Lear 63–4, 78, 93, 135, 137, 138, 173, 171–4, 177, 185, 197, 198, 275, 282

Empress of Morocco illustrations 11, 13 Shadwell, Thomas

Love’s Labour’s Lost 77–8, 194 Macbeth 3, 4, 6, 10, 64–5, 88–89, 123, 136, 137,

Tempest 56–7 Shaftesbury, Third Earl of Historical Draught 71, 188 Shakespeare, William editions of see under individual editors: Bell, Bellamy and

Measure for Measure 11, 12, 45–6, 47, 67, 70, 93, 154, 170, 241–3, 280, 310, 321–3, 327 Merchant of Venice 46, 45–6, 65, 140, 165, 186,

Robarts, Boydell–Steevens, Chalmers, Cowden Clarkes, Dicks, Hanmer, Harding, Irving and Marshall, Knight,

194–5, 205, 211, 226–7, 244–5, 258, 260 Merry Wives of Windsor 93, 151–2, 156, 203,

Limited Editions Club, Meadows, ‘New Temple’, Pope, Rowe, Staunton, Stockdale, Stoddard, Tegg, Theobald,

203–4, 274, 273–4, 335, 338 Midsummer Night’s Dream 10, 16, 77–8, 93, 96, 123, 154, 161, 164–5, 176, 175–6, 188,

Tilt, Ward and Lock, Whittingham individual plays Antony and Cleopatra 43, 65, 95, 163, 163, 228,

194, 243, 312, 312, 313, 335–6, 339, 342 Much Ado about Nothing 45, 55, 54–6, 66, 78, 79, 93, 179, 194, 205–6, 236, 257,

227–8, 282, 283, 285, 286, 310, 311, 326, 325–7

282–7 Othello 43, 84, 83–5, 98, 119, 116–19, 154–5,

As You Like It 44, 99, 134, 133–5, 161, 170–1, 196–7, 205–6, 207, 257, 317, 319 All’s Well 136, 135–6, 194, 207, 208, 222,

185, 207–8, 209, 277, 275–7, 278, 284, 296, 297, 298, 318–20, 324–5 Pericles 43

223–4, 314–16 Comedy of Errors 45–6, 48, 139, 140, 141, 144, 160, 162, 171, 176–7, 302

Richard II 78, 97, 98–99, 139, 168, 168–9, 195, 195, 233, 234, 258, 266, 265–7, 304, 334, 336, 339, 340

Coriolanus 95, 163, 245, 327, 328 Cymbeline 14, 17–19, 53, 52–3, 66–71, 147, 186, 205, 205, 237, 280

Richard III 13, 82, 81–2, 120, 120–1, 125, 131, 185, 197, 239, 238–40, 247, 248, 250, 258, 260–269

Hamlet 9, 8–9, 11, 16, 43, 66–7, 68–69, 78–80, 86, 94, 98–9, 116, 123, 124, 150, 149–51, 152, 153–4, 160, 170, 177–8, 257, 293,

Romeo and Juliet 61, 61–2, 78, 93, 101, 103, 100–3, 104–105, 107, 109, 141, 152, 156, 163, 168, 187, 194, 244, 244, 280, 281,

294, 302, 303, 314–15, 342–3, 343 1 Henry IV 16, 96, 159–162, 162, 185, 195, 236, 244, 274, 333, 332–3

291, 316, 318 Taming of the Shrew 15–16, 54, 54, 66, 121, 121–2, 159, 159–60, 162, 196, 258,

2 Henry IV 96, 162, 229, 304 Henry V 43, 96, 156, 155–6, 187, 245, 246,

267–8 Tempest 28, 58, 56–8, 60, 65, 80, 80–1, 90,

258 1 Henry VI 96, 307, 307–8 2 Henry VI 135, 153, 187

390

160, 165, 169, 197, 229–30, 233–5, 258–64, 269, 270, 279, 277–80, 293, 295, 316

90–2, 116, 118, 125, 137–8, 139, 153, 154, 157–9, 165, 167–8, 175, 185, 190–3, 235–8, 240–1, 267, 285, 297–302, 314

index

Timon of Athens 5, 63, 116, 136, 257, 268 Titus Andronicus 65–6, 80, 87, 160, 232–3 Troilus and Cressida 160, 245, 327, 339 Twelfth Night 43, 65, 133, 145, 144–5, 146, 147, 171, 172, 188, 194, 205, 209–11, 236–7,

and Taylor’s Picturesque Beauties 203–4 Cymbeline 204, 205 Merry Wives 203, 203–4, 212 Merchant of Venice 205, 213 Four Times of the Day prints 211

243–4, 257, 280, 310 Two Gentlemen of Verona 19–20, 50, 51, 63, 92–3, 135, 153–4, 178, 188, 193, 193–4,

Twelfth Night 211 Smith, John Pasquin engraving 11, 12, 44

275 Winter’s Tale 116–17, 123, 155, 155, 162, 178,

Smith, Orrin 273 see also Meadows, Kenny

204, 204, 238, 268, 269, 302, 314 Shakespeare Gallery (Singleton) 206–8 All’s Well 207 Othello 207–8 ‘Queen Katherine’ (Henry VII) 226, 222–6 Twelfth Night 209–11

Smollett, Tobias and Hume’s History 15, 182 Society for Diffusion of Useful Knowledge 254–5 Songe d’une nuit d’´et´e (Meurice) pl. 16, 342 Spirit of Shakespeare see Howard, Frank

Shakespeare, and cultural maturity 148–9 Shakespeare plays performed in London, 1707–9 33–4

Sprat, Thomas 33 Spurgeon, Caroline 231 Stage design, Renaissance, and Boitard 44

Shakespeare: The Animated Tales 341 Shelley, Samuel Cabinet of Genius 206

Stationers’ Company 2–3 on edition sizes 2–3 Staunton edition 289–91

As You Like It 206, 207 and Shakespeare Gallery (Singleton) Twelfth Night 209–11 Twelfth Night 146, 210 Sherwin, John Keyes 121 design for Bell (1774) Taming of the Shrew 121 design for Bell (1788) Tempest 137–8, 139 Sillars, Stuart Painting Shakespeare 29 on Boydell Gallery paintings 187–9 Singleton, Henry 206–8 Cabinet of Genius 206 All’s Well 207, 208 Othello 207–8, 209 Shakespeare Gallery ‘Queen Katherine’ (Henry VII ) 226, 222–6 Smirke, Robert and Boydell–Steevens edition 189 As You Like It 196–7 Lear 197, 198 Merry Wives 194, 202 Tempest 192, 192–3 Twelfth Night 194 and Cabinet of Genius 206

and ‘1860s style’ wood-engraving 320–3 Forrest Reid on 320–3 and ‘Mariana’ (Millais) 321–3 and Parables (Millais) 320 early serial editions 305–6 cultural identity in 306 and illustrated journalism 306–8, 318–20 and, 1 Henry VI 307, 307–8 and reader involvement 318–20 shared readership 308 and Illustrated London News 307 engraving of Sedan 308, 309 sketch of Sedan 308, 308 Midsummer Night’s Dream 312, 312, 313 and novel illustration 318–20 structure and approach 306 viewpoint in 318–20 ‘Library Edition’ 1255 Antony and Cleopatra 310, 311 and Claudio and Isabella (Hunt) 310 colour plates in 309 Twelfth Night pl. 15, 309–10; and Autumn Leaves (Millais) 310 and Cowden Clarke edition 318–20

391

index

Staunton edition (cont.) as end of illustrated tradition 329 integrated page-openings 313–18 All’s Well 314–17 Hamlet 314–15

Theatrum, concept of 2 Theatrum Anatomicum (Leiden) 2 Theatrum Botanicum (Parkinson) 2

Macbeth 316 Othello 318–19 and Past and Present (Egg) 316

Theatrum Instrumentorum (Besson) 2 Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Ortelius) 2 Theobald editions, circulation of 28

Romeo and Juliet 316 and Romeo and Juliet (Walker) 318

Theobald, Lewis, 1740 edition 73–4 Thompson, John

Tempest 314 Winter’s Tale 314 and Victorian painting 310–12 Stereotype plate 21–2, 258 Stewart, Phillip on engraving 81–3 Stockdale, John, edition 148 Stothard, Thomas Tempest (Heath) 166, 193–4 Two Gentlemen (Boydell–Steevens) 193, 193–4 Winter’s Tale (Picturesque Beauties) 204, 204

engravings after Thurston 172, 169–72, 173, 174 Thompson, [?] illustrations for Tilt edition 159–163, 163 Thornthwaite, J. 212 Thurston, John 169–74 and Harding’s edition 152 Illustrations of Shakespeare 170 As You Like It 170–1 Comedy of Errors 171 Hamlet 170 Henry V 156 Lear 173, 171–4

Summers, Montague 29 on Boitard’s depiction of stage costume 34

Measure for Measure 170 The Tempest 154 Twelfth Night 171, 172

Taylor, Charles 206, 226 Taylor, Gary

and Tegg’s edition 153–6 Winter’s Tale 155

on Boitard images 31 Taylor, Isaac Othello design (Bell, 1774) 119, 116–19

reading experience 171 use of emblems 170 Tieck, Ludwig 59

Twelfth Night engraving 211 Taylor, Joseph 8 Teatro Olimpico 44–5

Tilt, Charles, edition 161–3 illustrations of initial dissent in comedies 161 All’s Well 161

Tegg, Thomas edition 153 frontispiece illustrations 153–6 Hamlet 154 2 Henry VI 578 Measure for Measure 154 Merry Wives 156

Antony and Cleopatra 163, 163 As You Like It 161 Comedy of Errors 162 1 Henry IV 159–162, 162 Midsummer Night’s Dream 161 Taming of the Shrew 162

Midsummer Night’s Dream 154 Othello 154–5 Romeo and Juliet 156

Winter’s Tale 162 moral trajectory in histories 162 1 Henry IV 162

Tempest 153, 154 Two Gentlemen 153–4

2 Henry IV 162 tragedies 163

and title-page vignettes 155 Henry V 155, 155–6 Winter’s Tale 155, 155

392

The Wits frontispiece 31 Theatre, images of 11

Antony and Cleopatra 163 Coriolanus 163 Romeo and Juliet 163

index

Title page Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century 4–7 see also under individual editions Tonson, Jacob idea of canon and Shakespeare 32–3

Walker, Anthony and Elliott, Spranger Barry 102, 104 and Hogarth, Calais Gate 106 Romeo and Juliet 101, 100–1, 103–105, 107–108, 109, 318

individual editions 73 secures rights to Shakespeare’s plays 33 ‘Tonson–Walker Battle’ 73

Walker, John engravings for Bellamy and Robarts 143–7 Walker, Robert, editions of, 1730s 73

Tradition, in illustration 165 end of 329

Walker, William engravings for Bellamy and Robarts 143–7

causes 329 academic study, growth of 331 Cambridge Shakespeare 330

Cymbeline 17–19 Twelfth Night 209–11 Walpole, Horace

Globe Shakespeare 330 market saturation 329–30 move from illustration 330–1

notes to Bentley’s Designs 113 Ward and Lock ‘Sixpenny edition’ 330 Wars of the Roses (Peter Hall) 356n23

populism, association with 330 prices 330 and scholarly editions 330

Waterhouse, Ellis on Gravelot 75 Watson, Caroline 206, 210, 209–11

in Knight edition 259–64 Lear 351n47 Two Gentlemen 20, 93, 193–4 ‘Turner Shakespeare’ 218 Van der Gucht Michael Paradise Lost illustrations 32, 52, 59 Shakespeare portrait for Rowe, 1709 35, 36

Webbe, Geo. Falstaff sketch 229 Macbeth sketch 229 Westall, Richard and Boydell–Steevens edition 189 Macbeth 197 Merchant of Venice 194–5 and Hume’s History 212

see also Gravelot, Hubert Van der Passe, Crispijn Engraving of Queen Elizabeth I 4, 7

Wheatley, Francis and Boydell–Steevens edition 189–90 All’s Well 194, 224

Vander Gucht, Gerard 73, 77–8 Veneziano, Domenico Annunciation 50

Love’s Labour’s 194 Much Ado 194 Whiter, Walter

Verdi, Giuseppe Otello 85 Via regia (recessional perspective) 44–5

Specimen of a Commentary 231 Whittingham edition 169–70 engravings for see Thurston, James

Victorian editions publishers 254 difference from predecessors 254

Wigs, and identity 350n30 Wilson, Benjamin Garrick as Lear 63

readerships 253–4 and various forms 252–3 Victorian emblematic revival 361n15

Woodcut 21 Wood-engraving 21, 147 Woodmason, James

Virgil (Dryden) 32 Vollet, Guillaume, engraving of Corneille and Rowe, 1709 edition, 17–19, 35, 36 Vredenburg, Edric Merry Wives edition 335, 338

Irish Shakespeare Gallery 167–9 collapse 167 contributors 167 images in King John (Opie) 168

393

index

Woodmason, James (cont.) Richard II (Northcote) 168, 168–9 Romeo and Juliet (Peters) 168 Tempest (Peters) 167–8 Winter’s Tale (Opie) 168 prospectus 167

394

Young, Alan 29 on Gravelot’s Hamlet 78–9 Ziegler, Georgianna 29 Zuccarelli, Francesco Macbeth meeting the Witches 230, 359n17

1 Noli me tangere. Historiated initial from a Latin Gradual or Antiphonal, Franconia, c.1514. Image size 19 × 20.6 (71/2 × 81/8 ).

2 William Gilpin: Plate from Remarks on Forest Scenery, 1791. Oval, image size 15.5 × 9 (6 × 31/2 ).

3 W. Jeayes: ‘It was the Owl that shriek’d’, from an extra-illustrated copy of Heath’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1807. Watercolour, paper size 35 × 31.7 (133/4 × 121/2 ).

4 W. Jeayes: ‘Ere to black Hecate’s summons’, from an extra-illustrated copy of Heath’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1807. Watercolour, paper size 35 × 31.7 (133/4 × 121/2 ).

5 W. Jeayes: ‘If thou wert the fox’, from an extra-illustrated copy of Heath’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1807. Watercolour, paper size 35 × 31.7 (133/4 × 121/2 ).

6 W. Jeayes: ‘Had he his hurts before?’ from an extra-illustrated copy of Heath’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1807. Watercolour, paper size 35 × 31.7 (133/4 × 121/2 ).

7 Samuel Hieronymus Grimm: ‘Ariel giving Caliban the lie’, from an extra-illustrated copy of Boydell’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1802. Watercolour, paper size 42 × 32 (161/2 × 121/2 ).

8 Samuel Hieronymus Grimm: ‘Ariel as harpy’, from an extra-illustrated copy of Boydell’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1802. Watercolour, paper size 42 × 32 (161/2 × 121/2 ).

9 Samuel Hieronymus Grimm: ‘Every man shift’, from an extra-illustrated copy of Boydell’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1802. Watercolour, paper size 42 × 32 (161/2 × 121/2 ).

10 Samuel Hieronymus Grimm: ‘Titania and Bottom’, from an extra-illustrated copy of Boydell’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1802. Watercolour, paper size 42 × 32 (161/2 × 121/2 ).

11 Samuel Hieronymus Grimm: ‘Isabella intreating Angelo’, from an extra-illustrated copy of Heath’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1807. Watercolour, paper size 42 × 32 (161/2 × 121/2 ).

12 Samuel Hieronymus Grimm: ‘The Duke discovered’, from an extra-illustrated copy of Boydell’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1802. Watercolour, paper size 42 × 32 (161/2 × 121/2 ).

13 Samuel Hieronymus Grimm: ‘Ghosts appearing before Richard’, from an extra-illustrated copy of Boydell’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1802. Watercolour, paper size 42 × 32 (161/2 × 121/2 ).

14 Lieut. Rob. Cowan: So. Devon Militia: ‘I have sent Cloten’s clotpoll down the stream’, from an extra-illustrated copy of Boydell’s Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, 1802. Watercolour, paper size 42 × 32 (161/2 × 121/2 ).

15 John Gilbert: ‘Come away death’: Frontispiece to Twelfth Night from The Library Shakespeare, 1873–5. Image size 14.3 × 19.7 (55/8 × 73/4 ).

16 Pinckney Marcius-Simons: Final page from Le songe d’un nuit d’´et´e; f´eerie d’apr`es W. Shakespeare, translated by Paul Meurice, 1886. Gouache and watercolour, 1908. 19 × 13 (71/2 × 51/8 ).