Painting Shakespeare

Painting Shakespeare explores the tradition of critical and interpretive painting and engraving that developed when eighteenth-century artists rejected the depiction of Shakespeare’s plays in performance to produce images based on the new scholarly editions. The opening chapter locates Shakespeare painting alongside contemporary performance, editing and criticism, and discusses its relation to art history and practice. The book proceeds to examine Hogarth’s use of ironic allusion, and the development of this and other tech- niques of critical visualisation by artists of the succeeding decades. Later chapters discuss the arcane allusions and supernatural visions of Fuseli; the gestural immediacy of Romney; the fluid, critical mythologising of Blake; and the compound subtleties of Reynolds. The book concludes with a study of the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery and the radically new reading practices it constituted. Richly illustrated with over a hundred pictures including a colour plate section, this study provides a complete critical history of Shakespeare painting and engraving in this period.

Currently Professor of English at the University of Bergen, STUART SILLARS was previously a member of the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge, and has been a visiting professor at universities in Texas, Washington and Croatia. He has written extensively on the relationship between literature and the visual arts, with books including Art and Survival in First World War Britain (1987) and British Romantic Art and the Second World War (1991), and has had many articles and reviews published in major journals in the UK, Europe and the USA.

Frontispiece: Bas-relief in the front of the Shakespeare Gallery, drawn and etched by G. Vitalba, published 8 May 1792. From an extra-illustrated copy of Illustrations of Shakespeare, and of Ancient Manners by Francis Douce, reproduced by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C. The etching shows a version of the sculpture by Thomas Banks for the façade of John Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery in Pall Mall, together with the commemorative medallion struck for subscribers to the Collection of Prints and the edition of the plays. Banks’ sculpture, Shakespeare between the Dramatic Muse and the Genius of Painting, presents a visual allegory of the mediating function of the gallery: see Fig. 2 and Chapter 9.

PAINTING SHAKESPEARE

THE ARTIST AS CRITIC 1720–1820

STUART SILLARS

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Cambridge University Press
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Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

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© Stuart Sillars 2006

This book 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 2006

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

Sillars, Stuart, 1951--
Painting Shakespeare : the artist as critic, 1720–1820 / Stuart Sillars.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-521-85308-8
ISBN-10: 0-521-85308-7
1. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616 – Illustrations. 2. Art and literature – England – History – 18th century. 3. Art and literature – England – History – 19th century. 4. Painting, English – 18th century. 5. Painting, English – 19th century. 6. English drama – Illustrations. I. Title.
PR2883.S45 2006
822.3′3–dc22

ISBN-13 978-0-521-85308-8 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-85308-7 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 book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

For my graduate students in Texas, Cambridge, and Norway with affection and gratitude

CONTENTS

COLOUR PLATES

ILLUSTRATIONS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book has benefited greatly from the advice, expertise and kindness of many people. The following have contributed in diverse ways to the book’s content, clarified its expression or aided in other ways: Julie Ainsworth, Catherine Alexander, Charles Armstrong, Erin Blake, Kent Cartwright, Johanna Drucker, Charles Edelman, Antonia Forster, Nicholas Friend, Claire Haynes, Ludmilla Jordanova, Sandra Kroupa, Laurence Lerner, Raimonda Modiano, Ruben Moi, Jane Monro, Charles Moseley, William L. Pressly, Ren Renfro, William Sherman, Bettina Smith, Valerie Wayne, Gary Jay Williams, William Williams, Mary Williams, Claire Wills, Clive Wilmer, David Worrall, Georgianna Ziegler, Orm Øverland.

   I am grateful to the Bergen-Seattle Exchange Committee of the University of Bergen for making possible an extended research trip to the University of Washington, the Historisk-Filosofisk Fakultet of the University of Bergen for granting a sabbatical semester, and the Bergen University Fund for a generous grant towards the book’s production.

   The staffs of the following libraries were unfailingly helpful: the University Library, Cambridge; Selwyn College Library, Cambridge; the University of Bergen; the Library of Congress; and the Library of the University of Washington. 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, Leigh Anne Palmer, Camille Seerattan, and Betsy Walsh. The dedication reflects a debt perhaps too often overlooked within the academic community.

   At Cambridge, Sarah Stanton gave generous support to the project from the outset, and Rebecca Jones and Alison Powell oversaw the production process with great efficiency. Laurence Marsh edited the text with tact, precision and patience. I am deeply grateful to them all for their help and kindness.

   It should not be necessary to add that those errors and inadequacies that remain are the product of my own unaided perversity.

SJS
Bergen, January 2005