Illustrating Shakespeare

Artists have been drawn to the plays of Shakespeare for more than three centuries. For the artist, the challenge was to re-create the characters and the drama not on the living stage, but to freeze them into images that were timeless, and not bound within the walls of a theater. Painters as varied as Hogarth, Blake, Fuseli, West, Delacroix, Millais, and Waterhouse produced works of art which have strongly influenced our mental image of the plays. Other less-known artists in the 18th and 19th centuries produced magnificent illustrated editions of Shakespeare’s works, which functioned as private theaters, enabling readers at home to re-create the plays in their own imagination. This book shows how some artists succeeded in capturing the psychological truth of the dramas, while others merely dressed them up to suit the taste of their time. In this respect of course, the history of Shakespearean art exactly resembles that of Shakespearean theater production; but where the theater is ephemeral, the artistic tradition has become the rich and permanent legacy displayed in this fascinating book.