Boydell Shakespeare Gallery - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery in London, England, was the first stage of a three-part project initiated in November 1786 by engraver and publisher John Boydell

John Boydell

John Boydell was an 18th-century British publisher noted for his reproductions of engravings. He helped alter the trade imbalance between Britain and France in engravings and initiated a British tradition in the art form...

in an effort to foster a school

School (discipline)

A school of thought is a collection or group of people who share common characteristics of opinion or outlook of a philosophy, discipline, belief, social movement, cultural movement, or art movement....

of British history painting

History painting

History painting is a genre in painting defined by subject matter rather than an artistic style, depicting a moment in a narrative story, rather than a static subject such as a portrait...

. In addition to the establishment of the gallery, Boydell planned to produce an illustrated edition of William Shakespeare's

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

plays and a folio of prints based upon a series of paintings by different contemporary painters. During the 1790s the London gallery that showed the original paintings emerged as the project's most popular element.

The works of William Shakespeare enjoyed a renewed popularity in 18th-century Britain. Several new editions of his works were published, his plays were revived in the theatre and numerous works of art were created illustrating the plays and specific productions of them. Capitalising on this interest, Boydell decided to publish a grand illustrated edition of Shakespeare's plays that would showcase the talents of British painters and engravers. He chose the noted scholar and Shakespeare editor George Steevens

George Steevens

George Steevens was an English Shakespearean commentator.He was born at Poplar, the son of a captain and later director of the East India Company. He was educated at Eton College and at King's College, Cambridge, where he remained from 1753 to 1756...

to oversee the edition, which was released between 1791 and 1803.

The press reported weekly on the building of Boydell's gallery, designed by George Dance the Younger

George Dance the Younger

George Dance the Younger was an English architect and surveyor. The fifth and youngest son of George Dance the Elder, he came from a distinguished family of architects, artists and dramatists...

, on a site in Pall Mall

Pall Mall, London

Pall Mall is a street in the City of Westminster, London, and parallel to The Mall, from St. James's Street across Waterloo Place to the Haymarket; while Pall Mall East continues into Trafalgar Square. The street is a major thoroughfare in the St James's area of London, and a section of the...

. Boydell commissioned works from famous painters of the day, such as Joshua Reynolds

Joshua Reynolds

Sir Joshua Reynolds RA FRS FRSA was an influential 18th-century English painter, specialising in portraits and promoting the "Grand Style" in painting which depended on idealization of the imperfect. He was one of the founders and first President of the Royal Academy...

, and the folio of engravings proved the enterprise's most lasting legacy. However, the long delay in publishing the prints and the illustrated edition prompted criticism. Because they were hurried, and many illustrations had to be done by lesser artists, the final products of Boydell's venture were judged to be disappointing. The project caused the Boydell firm to become insolvent, and they were forced to sell the gallery at a lottery.

Shakespeare in the 18th century

In the 18th century, Shakespeare became associated with rising British nationalism, and Boydell tapped into the same mood that many other entrepreneurs were exploiting. Shakespeare appealed not only to a social elite who prided themselves on their artistic taste, but also to the emerging middle class who saw in Shakespeare's works a vision of a diversified society. The mid-century Shakespearean theatrical revival was probably most responsible for reintroducing the British public to Shakespeare. Shakespeare's plays were integral to the theatre's resurgence at this time. Despite the upsurge in theatre-going, writing tragedies was not profitable, and thus few good tragedies were written. Shakespeare's works filled the gap in the repertoire, and his reputation grew as a result. By the end of the 18th century, one out of every six plays performed in London was by Shakespeare.

The actor, director, and producer David Garrick

David Garrick

David Garrick was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of theatrical practice throughout the 18th century and was a pupil and friend of Dr Samuel Johnson...

was a key figure in Shakespeare's theatrical renaissance. His reportedly superb acting, unrivalled productions, numerous and important Shakespearean portraits, and his spectacular 1769 Shakespeare Jubilee

Shakespeare Jubilee

The Shakespeare Jubilee was staged in Stratford-upon-Avon between 5-7 September 1769. The jubilee was organised by the actor and theatre manager David Garrick to celebrate the jubilee of the birth of William Shakespeare. It had a major impact on the rising tide of bardolatry that led to Shakespeare...

helped promote Shakespeare as a marketable product and the national playwright. Garrick's Drury Lane theatre

Theatre Royal, Drury Lane

The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is a West End theatre in Covent Garden, in the City of Westminster, a borough of London. The building faces Catherine Street and backs onto Drury Lane. The building standing today is the most recent in a line of four theatres at the same location dating back to 1663,...

was the centre of the Shakespeare mania which swept the nation.

The visual arts also played a significant role in expanding Shakespeare's popular appeal. In particular, the conversation pieces designed chiefly for homes generated a wide audience for literary art, especially Shakespearean art. This tradition began with William Hogarth

William Hogarth

William Hogarth was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects"...

(whose prints reached all levels of society) and attained its peak in the Royal Academy

Royal Academy

The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...

exhibitions, which displayed paintings, drawings, and sculptures. The exhibitions became important public events: thousands flocked to see them, and newspapers reported in detail on the works displayed. They became a fashionable place to be seen (as did Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, later in the century). In the process, the public was refamiliarized with Shakespeare's works.

Shakespeare editions

The rise in Shakespeare's popularity coincided with Britain's accelerating change from an oral

Oral tradition

Oral tradition and oral lore is cultural material and traditions transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants...

to a print culture

Print culture

Print culture embodies all forms of printed text and other printed forms of visual communication. One prominent scholar in the field is Elizabeth Eisenstein, who contrasted print culture, which appeared in Europe in the centuries after the advent of the Western printing-press , to scribal culture...

. Towards the end of the century, the basis of Shakespeare's high reputation changed. He had originally been respected as a playwright, but once the theatre became associated with the masses, Shakespeare's status as a "great writer" shifted. Two strands of Shakespearean print culture emerged: bourgeois popular editions and scholarly critical editions.

In order to turn a profit, booksellers chose well-known authors, such as Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...

and Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

, to edit Shakespeare editions. According to Shakespeare scholar Gary Taylor

Gary Taylor (English literature scholar)

Gary Taylor is George Matthew Edgar Professor of English at Florida State University, author of numerous books and articles, and joint editor of the Oxford Shakespeare and .-Life:...

, Shakespearean criticism became so "associated with the dramatis personae of 18th-century English literature ... [that] he could not be extracted without uprooting a century and a half of the national canon". The 18th century's first Shakespeare edition, which was also the first illustrated edition of the plays, was published in 1709 by Jacob Tonson

Jacob Tonson

Jacob Tonson, sometimes referred to as Jacob Tonson the elder was an 18th-century English bookseller and publisher....

and edited by Nicholas Rowe

Nicholas Rowe (dramatist)

Nicholas Rowe , English dramatist, poet and miscellaneous writer, was appointed Poet Laureate in 1715.-Life:...

. The plays appeared in "pleasant and readable books in small format" which "were supposed ... to have been taken for common or garden use, domestic rather than library sets". Shakespeare became "domesticated" in the 18th century, particularly with the publication of family editions such as Bell's in 1773 and 1785–86, which advertised themselves as "more instructive and intelligible; especially to the young ladies and to youth; glaring indecencies being removed".

Scholarly editions also proliferated. At first, these were edited by author-scholars such as Pope (1725) and Johnson (1765), but later in the century this changed. Editors such as George Steevens

George Steevens

(1773, 1785) and Edmund Malone (1790) produced meticulous editions with extensive footnotes. The early editions appealed to both the middle class and to those interested in Shakespeare scholarship, but the later editions appealed almost exclusively to the latter. Boydell's edition, at the end of the century, tried to reunite these two strands. It included illustrations but was edited by George Steevens, one of the foremost Shakespeare scholars of the day.

Boydell's Shakespeare venture

Boydell's Shakespeare project contained three parts: an illustrated edition of Shakespeare's plays; a folio of prints from the gallery (originally intended to be a folio of prints from the edition of Shakespeare's plays); and a public gallery where the original paintings for the prints would hang.

The idea of a grand Shakespeare edition was conceived during a dinner at the home of Josiah Boydell

Josiah Boydell

Josiah Boydell was a British publisher and painter, whose main achievement was the establishment of the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery with his uncle, John Boydell.-Biography:...

(John's nephew) in late 1786. Five important accounts of the occasion survive. From these, a guest list and a reconstruction of the conversation have been assembled. The guest list reflects the range of Boydell's contacts in the artistic world: it included Benjamin West

Benjamin West

Benjamin West, RA was an Anglo-American painter of historical scenes around and after the time of the American War of Independence...

, painter to King George III; George Romney

George Romney (painter)

George Romney was an English portrait painter. He was the most fashionable artist of his day, painting many leading society figures - including his artistic muse, Emma Hamilton, mistress of Lord Nelson....

, a renowned portrait painter; George Nicol

George Nicol (bookseller)

George Nicol was a bookseller and publisher in 18th-century London. In 1781, he became bookseller to George III, a position he held until 1820. In 1785, he published an improved edition of James Cook's third voyage. In 1786, he became involved with John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery and bore...

, bookseller to the king; William Hayley

William Hayley

William Hayley was an English writer, best known as the friend and biographer of William Cowper.-Biography:...

, a poet; John Hoole

John Hoole

John Hoole was an English translator, the son of watch-maker and inventor, Samuel Hoole and Sarah Drury. He was born in London, and worked in India House , of which he rose to be principal auditor...

, a scholar and translator of Tasso

Torquato Tasso

Torquato Tasso was an Italian poet of the 16th century, best known for his poem La Gerusalemme liberata , in which he depicts a highly imaginative version of the combats between Christians and Muslims at the end of the First Crusade, during the siege of Jerusalem...

and Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

; and Daniel Braithwaite, secretary to the postmaster general and a patron of artists such as Romney and Angelica Kauffmann

Angelica Kauffmann

Maria Anna Angelika/Angelica Katharina Kauffman was a Swiss-Austrian Neoclassical painter. Kauffman is the preferred spelling of her name; it is the form she herself used most in signing her correspondence, documents and paintings.- Early years :She was born at Chur in Graubünden, Switzerland,...

. Most accounts also place the painter Paul Sandby

Paul Sandby

Paul Sandby was an English map-maker turned landscape painter in watercolours, who, along with his older brother Thomas, became one of the founding members of the Royal Academy in 1768.-Life and work:...

at the gathering.

Boydell wanted to use the edition to help stimulate a British school

School (discipline)

of history painting

History painting

History painting is a genre in painting defined by subject matter rather than an artistic style, depicting a moment in a narrative story, rather than a static subject such as a portrait...

. He wrote in the "Preface" to the folio that he wanted "to advance that art towards maturity, and establish an English School of Historical Painting". A court document used by Josiah to collect debts from customers after Boydell's death relates the story of the dinner and Boydell's motivations:

[Boydell said] he should like to wipe away the stigma that all foreign critics threw on this nation—that they had no genius for historical painting. He said he was certain from his success in encouraging engraving that Englishmen wanted nothing but proper encouragement and a proper subject to excel in historical painting. The encouragement he would endeavor to find if a proper subject were pointed out. Mr. Nicol replied that there was one great National subject concerning which there could be no second opinion, and mentioned Shakespeare. The proposition was received with acclaim by the Alderman
Alderman
An alderman is a member of a municipal assembly or council in many jurisdictions founded upon English law. The term may be titular, denoting a high-ranking member of a borough or county council, a council member chosen by the elected members themselves rather than by popular vote, or a council...

[John Boydell] and the whole company.

However, as Frederick Burwick argues in his introduction to a collection of essays on the Boydell Gallery, "[w]hatever claims Boydell might make about furthering the cause of history painting in England, the actual rallying force that brought the artists together to create the Shakespeare Gallery was the promise of engraved publication and distribution of their works."

After the initial success of the Shakespeare Gallery, many wanted to take credit. Henry Fuseli

Henry Fuseli

Henry Fuseli was a British painter, draughtsman, and writer on art, of Swiss origin.-Biography:...

long claimed that his planned Shakespeare ceiling (in imitation of the Sistine Chapel ceiling

Sistine Chapel ceiling

The Sistine Chapel ceiling, painted by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512, at the commission of Pope Julius II, is a cornerstone work of High Renaissance art. The ceiling is that of the large Papal Chapel built within the Vatican between 1477 and 1480 by Pope Sixtus IV after whom it is named...

) had given Boydell the idea for the gallery. James Northcote

James Northcote

James Northcote RA , was an English painter.-Biography:He was born at Plymouth, and was apprenticed to his father, a poor watchmaker. In his spare time, he drew and painted. In 1769 he left his father and set up as a portrait painter. Four years later he went to London and was admitted as a pupil...

claimed that his Death of Wat Tyler and Murder of the Princes in the Tower had motivated Boydell to start the project. However, according to Winifred Friedman, who has researched the Boydell Gallery, it was probably Joshua Reynolds's

Joshua Reynolds

Royal Academy

lectures on the superiority of history painting that influenced Boydell the most.

The logistics of the enterprise were difficult to organise. Boydell and Nicol wanted to produce an illustrated edition of a multi-volume work and intended to bind and sell the 72 large prints separately in a folio. A gallery was required to exhibit the paintings from which the prints were drawn. The edition was to be financed through a subscription campaign, during which the buyers would pay part of the price up front and the remainder on delivery. This unusual practice was necessitated by the fact that over £

Pound sterling

The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...

350,000—an enormous sum at the time, worth about £ today—was eventually spent. The gallery opened in 1789 with 34 paintings and added 33 more in 1790 when the first engravings were published. The last volume of the edition and the Collection of Prints were published in 1803. In the middle of the project, Boydell decided that he could make more money if he published different prints in the folio than in the illustrated edition; as a result, the two sets of images are not identical.

Advertisements were issued and placed in newspapers. When a subscription was circulated for a medal to be struck, the copy read: "The encouragers of this great national undertaking will also have the satisfaction to know, that their names will be handed down to Posterity, as the Patrons of Native Genius, enrolled with their own hands, in the same book, with the best of Sovereigns." The language of both the advertisement and the medal emphasised the role each subscriber played in the patronage of the arts. The subscribers were primarily middle-class Londoners, not aristocrats. Edmund Malone, himself an editor of a rival Shakespeare edition, wrote that "before the scheme was well-formed, or the proposals entirely printed off, near six hundred persons eagerly set down their names, and paid their subscriptions to a set of books and prints that will cost each person, I think, about ninety guineas; and on looking over the list, there were not above twenty names among them that anybody knew".

Illustrated Shakespeare edition and folio

The "magnificent and accurate" Shakespeare edition which Boydell began in 1786 was to be the focus of his enterprise—he viewed the print folio and the gallery as offshoots of the main project. In an advertisement prefacing the first volume of the edition, Nicol wrote that "splendor and magnificence, united with correctness of text were the great objects of this Edition". The volumes themselves were handsome, with gild

Gilding

The term gilding covers a number of decorative techniques for applying fine gold leaf or powder to solid surfaces such as wood, stone, or metal to give a thin coating of gold. A gilded object is described as "gilt"...

ed pages that, unlike those in previous scholarly editions, were unencumbered by footnotes. Each play had its own title page followed by a list of "Persons in the Drama". Boydell spared no expense. He hired the typography

Typography

Typography is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading , adjusting the spaces between groups of letters and adjusting the space between pairs of letters...

experts William Bulmer and William Martin to develop and cut a new typeface specifically for the edition. Nicol explains in the preface that they "established a printing-house ... [and] a foundry to cast the types; and even a manufactory to make the ink". Boydell also chose to use high-quality wove Whatman

James Whatman (papermaker)

James Whatman , the Elder, was a paper maker, born in Kent, who made revolutionary advances to the craft in England. He is noted as the inventor of wove paper , an innovation used for high quality art and printing...

paper. The illustrations were printed independently and could be inserted and removed as the purchaser desired. The first volumes of the Dramatic Works were published in 1791 and the last in 1805.

Boydell was responsible for the "splendor", and George Steevens

George Steevens

, the general editor, was responsible for the "correctness of text". Steevens, according to Evelyn Wenner, who has studied the history of the Boydell edition, was "at first an ardent advocate of the plan" but "soon realized that the editor of this text must in the very scheme of things give way to painters, publishers and engravers". He was also ultimately disappointed in the quality of the prints, but he said nothing to jeopardize the edition's sales. Steevens, who had already edited two complete Shakespeare editions, was not asked to edit the text anew; instead, he picked which version of the text to reprint. Wenner describes the resulting hybrid edition:

Throughout the edition, modern (i.e. 18th-century) spelling was preferred as were First Folio

First Folio

Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. is the 1623 published collection of William Shakespeare's plays. Modern scholars commonly refer to it as the First Folio....

readings.

Boydell sought out the most eminent painters and engravers of the day to contribute paintings for the gallery, engravings for the folio, and illustrations for the edition. Artists included Richard Westall

Richard Westall

Richard Westall was an English painter and illustrator of portraits, historical and literary events, best-known for his portraits of Byron. He was also Queen Victoria's drawing master.-Life and works:...

, Thomas Stothard

Thomas Stothard

Thomas Stothard was an English painter, illustrator and engraver.-Life and work:Stothard was born in London, the son of a well-to-do innkeeper in Long Acre, London. A delicate child, he was sent at the age of five to a relative in Yorkshire, and attended school at Acomb, and afterwards at...

, George Romney

George Romney (painter)

, Henry Fuseli

Henry Fuseli

Henry Fuseli was a British painter, draughtsman, and writer on art, of Swiss origin.-Biography:...

, Benjamin West

Benjamin West

Benjamin West, RA was an Anglo-American painter of historical scenes around and after the time of the American War of Independence...

, Angelica Kauffmann

Angelica Kauffmann

, Robert Smirke

Robert Smirke (painter)

Robert Smirke , was an English painter and illustrator.-Life and work:Smirke was born at Wigton near Carlisle, the son of a clever but eccentric travelling artist. In his thirteenth year he was apprenticed in London with an heraldic painter, and, at the age of twenty, began to study at the schools...

, John Opie

John Opie

John Opie was an English historical and portrait painter. He painted many great men and women of his day, most notably in the artistic and literary professions.-Life and work:...

, Francesco Bartolozzi

Francesco Bartolozzi

Francesco Bartolozzi was an Italian engraver, whose most productive period was spent in London.He was born in Florence...

, Thomas Kirk

Thomas Kirk (artist)

Thomas Kirk was a noted English artist, book illustrator and engraver of the late 18th century.A pupil of Richard Cosway, Kirk exhibited the first of 25 works at the Royal Academy in 1785, and created many famous engravings based either upon his own work or works by, amongst others, Angelica...

, Henry Thomson

Henry Thomson (painter)

Henry Thomson RA was an English artist and Royal Academician who became Keeper of the Royal Academy.As a painter, he specialized in historical, mythological and literary subjects. He was also a translator.-Life:...

, and Boydell's nephew and business partner, Josiah Boydell

Josiah Boydell

Josiah Boydell was a British publisher and painter, whose main achievement was the establishment of the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery with his uncle, John Boydell.-Biography:...

.

The folio and the illustrated Shakespeare edition were "by far the largest single engraving enterprise ever undertaken in England". As print collector and dealer Christopher Lennox-Boyd explains, "had there not been a market for such engravings, not one of the paintings would have been commissioned, and few, if any, of the artists would have risked painting such elaborate compositions". Scholars believe that a variety of engraving methods were employed and that line engraving

Line engraving

Line engraving is a term for engraved images printed on paper to be used as prints or illustrations. The term is now much less used and when is, it is mainly in connection with 18th or 19th century commercial illustrations for magazines and books, or reproductions of paintings.Steel engraving is...

was the "preferred medium" because it was "clear and hardwearing" and because it had a high reputation. Stipple engraving, which was quicker and often used to produce shading effects, wore out quicker and was valued less. Many plates were a mixture of both. Several scholars have suggested that mezzotint

Mezzotint

Mezzotint is a printmaking process of the intaglio family, technically a drypoint method. It was the first tonal method to be used, enabling half-tones to be produced without using line- or dot-based techniques like hatching, cross-hatching or stipple...

and aquatint

Aquatint

Aquatint is an intaglio printmaking technique, a variant of etching.Intaglio printmaking makes marks on the matrix that are capable of holding ink. The inked plate is passed through a printing press together with a sheet of paper, resulting in a transfer of the ink to the paper...

were also used. Lennox-Boyd, however, claims that "close examination of the plates confirms" that these two methods were not used and argues that they were "totally unsuitable": mezzotint wore quickly and aquatint was too new (there would not have been enough artists capable of executing it). Most of Boydell's engravers were also trained artists; for example, Bartolozzi was renowned for his stippling technique.

Boydell's relationships with his illustrators were generally congenial. One of them, James Northcote

James Northcote

, praised Boydell's liberal payments. He wrote in an 1821 letter that Boydell "did more for the advancement of the arts in England than the whole mass of the nobility put together! He paid me more nobly than any other person has done; and his memory I shall ever hold in reverence". Boydell typically paid the painters between £105 to £210, and the engravers between £262 and £315. Joshua Reynolds

Joshua Reynolds

at first declined Boydell's offer to work on the project, but he agreed when pressed. Boydell offered Reynolds carte blanche for his paintings, giving him a down payment of £500, an extraordinary amount for an artist who had not even agreed to do a specific work. Boydell eventually paid him a total of £1,500.

There are 96 illustrations in the nine volumes of the illustrated edition and each play has at least one. Approximately two-thirds of the plays, 23 out of 36, are each illustrated by a single artist. Approximately two-thirds of the total number of illustrations, or 65, were completed by three artists: William Hamilton

William Hamilton (painter)

William Hamilton was an English painter and illustrator.Hamiliton was born in Chelsea, London, but travelled and worked in Italy with Antonio Zucchi for several years. He trained first as an architectural draftsman, but soon moved to theatrical portraits and scenes from plays...

, Richard Westall

Richard Westall

, and Robert Smirke

Robert Smirke (painter)

. The primary illustrators of the edition were known as book illustrators, whereas a majority of the artists included in the folio were known for their paintings. Lennox-Boyd argues that the illustrations in the edition have a "uniformity and cohesiveness" that the folio lacks because the artists and engravers working on them understood book illustration while those working on the folio were working in an unfamiliar medium.

The print folio, A Collection of Prints, From Pictures Painted for the Purpose of Illustrating the Dramatic Works of Shakspeare, by the Artists of Great-Britain (1805), was originally intended to be a collection of the illustrations from the edition, but a few years into the project, Boydell altered his plan. He guessed that he could sell more folios and editions if the pictures were different. Of the 97 prints made from paintings, two-thirds of them were made by ten of the artists. Three artists account for one-third of the paintings. In all, 31 artists contributed works.

Gallery building

In June 1788, Boydell and his nephew secured the lease on a site at 52 Pall Mall

Pall Mall, London

51°30′20.5"N 0°8′12"W to build the gallery and engaged George Dance

George Dance the Younger

George Dance the Younger was an English architect and surveyor. The fifth and youngest son of George Dance the Elder, he came from a distinguished family of architects, artists and dramatists...

, then the Clerk of the City Works, as the architect for the project. Pall Mall at that time had a mix of expensive residences and commercial operations, such as bookshops and gentleman's clubs, popular with fashionable London society. The area also contained some less genteel establishments: King's Place (now Pall Mall Place), an alley running to the east and behind Boydell's gallery, was the site of Charlotte Hayes's high-class brothel

Brothel

Brothels are business establishments where patrons can engage in sexual activities with prostitutes. Brothels are known under a variety of names, including bordello, cathouse, knocking shop, whorehouse, strumpet house, sporting house, house of ill repute, house of prostitution, and bawdy house...

. Across King's Place, immediately to the east of Boydell's building, 51 Pall Mall had been purchased on 26 February 1787 by George Nicol

George Nicol (bookseller)

, bookseller and future husband of Josiah's elder sister, Mary Boydell. As an indication of the changing character of the area, this property had been the home of Goostree's gentleman's club from 1773 to 1787. Begun as a gambling establishment for wealthy young men, it had later become a reformist political club that counted William Pitt

William Pitt the Younger

William Pitt the Younger was a British politician of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He became the youngest Prime Minister in 1783 at the age of 24 . He left office in 1801, but was Prime Minister again from 1804 until his death in 1806...

and William Wilberforce

William Wilberforce

William Wilberforce was a British politician, a philanthropist and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. A native of Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780, eventually becoming the independent Member of Parliament for Yorkshire...

as members.

Dance's Shakespeare Gallery building had a monumental, neoclassical

Neoclassical architecture

Neoclassical architecture was an architectural style produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century, manifested both in its details as a reaction against the Rococo style of naturalistic ornament, and in its architectural formulas as an outgrowth of some classicizing...

stone front, and a full-length exhibition hall on the ground floor. Three interconnecting exhibition rooms occupied the upper floor, with a total of more than 4000 square feet (371.6 m²) of wall space for displaying pictures. The two-storey façade was not especially large for the street, but its solid classicism had an imposing effect. Some reports describe the exterior as "sheathed in copper".

The lower storey of the façade was dominated by a large, rounded-arched doorway in the centre. The unmoulded

Molding (decorative)

Molding or moulding is a strip of material with various profiles used to cover transitions between surfaces or for decoration. It is traditionally made from solid milled wood or plaster but may be made from plastic or reformed wood...

arch rested on wide piers, each broken by a narrow window, above which ran a simple cornice

Cornice

Cornice molding is generally any horizontal decorative molding that crowns any building or furniture element: the cornice over a door or window, for instance, or the cornice around the edge of a pedestal. A simple cornice may be formed just with a crown molding.The function of the projecting...

. Dance placed a transom

Transom (architectural)

In architecture, a transom is the term given to a transverse beam or bar in a frame, or to the crosspiece separating a door or the like from a window or fanlight above it. Transom is also the customary U.S. word used for a transom light, the window over this crosspiece...

across the doorway at the level of the cornice bearing the inscription "Shakespeare Gallery". Below the transom were the main entry doors, with glazed panels and side lights matching the flanking windows. A radial fanlight

Fanlight

A fanlight is a window, semicircular or semi-elliptical in shape, with glazing bars or tracery sets radiating out like an open fan, It is placed over another window or a doorway. and is sometimes hinged to a transom. The bars in the fixed glazed window spread out in the manner a sunburst...

filled the lunette

Lunette

In architecture, a lunette is a half-moon shaped space, either filled with recessed masonry or void. A lunette is formed when a horizontal cornice transects a round-headed arch at the level of the imposts, where the arch springs. If a door is set within a round-headed arch, the space within the...

above the transom. In each of the spandrels to the left and right of the arch, Dance set a carving of a lyre inside a ribboned wreath. Above all this ran a panelled band course dividing the lower storey from the upper.

The upper façade contained paired pilaster

Pilaster

A pilaster is a slightly-projecting column built into or applied to the face of a wall. Most commonly flattened or rectangular in form, pilasters can also take a half-round form or the shape of any type of column, including tortile....

s on either side, and a thick entablature

Entablature

An entablature refers to the superstructure of moldings and bands which lie horizontally above columns, resting on their capitals. Entablatures are major elements of classical architecture, and are commonly divided into the architrave , the frieze ,...

and triangular pediment

Pediment

A pediment is a classical architectural element consisting of the triangular section found above the horizontal structure , typically supported by columns. The gable end of the pediment is surrounded by the cornice moulding...

. The architect Sir John Soane criticised Dance's combination of slender pilasters and a heavy entablature as a "strange and extravagant absurdity". The capitals topping the pilasters sported volute

Volute

A volute is a spiral scroll-like ornament that forms the basis of the Ionic order, found in the capital of the Ionic column. It was later incorporated into Corinthian order and Composite column capitals...

s in the shape of ammonite

Ammonite

Ammonite, as a zoological or paleontological term, refers to any member of the Ammonoidea an extinct subclass within the Molluscan class Cephalopoda which are more closely related to living coleoids Ammonite, as a zoological or paleontological term, refers to any member of the Ammonoidea an extinct...

fossils. Dance invented this neo-classical feature, which became known as the Ammonite Order

Ammonite Order

The Ammonite Order is an architectural order that features fluted columns and capitals with volutes shaped to resemble fossil ammonites. The style was invented by George Dance and first used on John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery in Pall Mall, London in 1789 .Ammonite motifs were also used on...

, specifically for the gallery. In a recess between the pilasters, Dance placed Thomas Banks's

Thomas Banks

Thomas Banks , English sculptor, son of a surveyor who was land steward to the Duke of Beaufort, was born in London. He was taught drawing by his father, and in 1750 was apprenticed to a woodcarver. In his spare time he worked at sculpture, spending his evenings in the studio of the Flemish émigré...

sculpture Shakespeare attended by Painting and Poetry, for which the artist was paid 500 guineas

Guinea (British coin)

The guinea is a coin that was minted in the Kingdom of England and later in the Kingdom of Great Britain and the United Kingdom between 1663 and 1813...

. The sculpture depicted Shakespeare, reclining against a rock, between the Dramatic Muse and the Genius of Painting. Beneath it was a panelled pedestal inscribed with a quotation from Hamlet: "He was a Man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again".

Reaction

The Shakespeare Gallery, when it opened on 4 May 1789, contained 34 paintings, and by the end of its run it had between 167 and 170. (The exact inventory is uncertain and most of the paintings have disappeared; only around 40 paintings can be identified with any certainty.) According to Frederick Burwick, during its sixteen-year operation, the Gallery reflected the transition from Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...

to Romanticism

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

. Works by artists such as James Northcote

James Northcote

represent the conservative, neoclassical elements of the gallery, while those of Henry Fuseli

Henry Fuseli

Henry Fuseli was a British painter, draughtsman, and writer on art, of Swiss origin.-Biography:...

represent the newly emerging Romantic movement. William Hazlitt

William Hazlitt

William Hazlitt was an English writer, remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism, and as a grammarian and philosopher. He is now considered one of the great critics and essayists of the English language, placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell. Yet his work is...

praised Northcote in an essay entitled "On the Old Age of Artists", writing "I conceive any person would be more struck with Mr. Fuseli at first sight, but would wish to visit Mr. Northcote oftener."

The gallery itself was a fashionable hit with the public. Newspapers carried updates of the construction of the gallery, down to drawings for the proposed façade. The Daily Advertiser featured a weekly column on the gallery from May through August (exhibition season). Artists who had influence with the press, and Boydell himself, published anonymous articles to heighten interest in the gallery, which they hoped would increase sales of the edition.

At the beginning of the enterprise, reactions were generally positive. The Public Advertiser

Public Advertiser

The Public Advertiser was a London newspaper in the 18th century.The Public Advertiser was originally known as the London Daily Post and General Advertiser, then simply the General Advertiser consisting more or less exclusively of adverts. It was taken over by its printer, Henry Woodfall, and...

wrote on 6 May 1789: "the pictures in general give a mirror of the poet ... [The Shakespeare Gallery] bids fair to form such an epoch in the History of the Fine Arts, as will establish and confirm the superiority of the English School". The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

wrote a day later:

Fuseli himself may have written the review in the Analytical Review

Analytical Review

The Analytical Review was a periodical established in London in 1788 by the publisher Joseph Johnson and the writer Thomas Christie. Part of the Republic of Letters, it was a gadfly publication, which offered readers summaries and analyses of the many new publications issued at the end of the...

, which praised the general plan of the gallery while at the same time hesitating: "such a variety of subjects, it may be supposed, must exhibit a variety of powers; all cannot be the first; while some must soar, others must skim the meadow, and others content themselves to walk with dignity". However, according to Frederick Burwick, critics in Germany "responded to the Shakespeare Gallery with far more thorough and meticulous attention than did the critics in England".

Criticism increased as the project dragged on: the first volume did not appear until 1791. James Gillray

James Gillray

James Gillray , was a British caricaturist and printmaker famous for his etched political and social satires, mainly published between 1792 and 1810.- Early life :He was born in Chelsea...

published a cartoon labelled "Boydell sacrificing the Works of Shakespeare to the Devil of Money-Bags". The essayist and soon-to-be co-author of the children's book Tales from Shakespeare

Tales from Shakespeare

Tales from Shakespeare was an English children's book written by Charles Lamb with his sister Mary Lamb in 1807. It was illustrated by Arthur Rackham in 1899 and 1909....

(1807) Charles Lamb criticised the venture from the outset:

Northcote, while appreciating Boydell's largesse, also criticised the results of the project: "With the exception of a few pictures by Joshua [Reynolds] and [John] Opie, and—I hope I may add—myself, it was such a collection of slip-slop imbecility as was dreadful to look at, and turned out, as I had expected it would, in the ruin of poor Boydell's affairs".

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By 1796, subscriptions to the edition had dropped by two-thirds. The painter and diarist Joseph Farington

Joseph Farington

Joseph Farington was an 18th-century English landscape painter and diarist.-Life and work:Born in Leigh, Lancashire, Farington was the second of seven sons of William Farington and Esther Gilbody. His father was the rector of Warrington and vicar of Leigh...

recorded that this was a result of the poor engravings:

West said He looked over the Shakespeare prints and was sorry to see them of such inferior quality. He said that excepting that from His Lear by Sharpe, that from Northcote's children in the Tower, and some small ones, there were few that could be approved. Such a mixture of dotting and engraving, and such a general deficiency in respect of drawing which He observed the Engravers seemed to know little of, that the volumes presented a mass of works which He did not wonder many subscribers had declined to continue their subscription.

The mix of engraving styles was criticised; line engraving was considered the superior form and artists and subscribers disliked the mixture of lesser forms with it. Moreover, Boydell's engravers fell behind schedule, delaying the entire project. He was forced to engage lesser artists, such as Hamilton and Smirke, at a lower price to finish the volumes as his business started to fail. Modern art historians have generally concurred that the quality of the engravings, particularly in the folio, was poor. Moreover, the use of so many different artists and engravers led to a lack of stylistic cohesion.

Although the Boydells ended with 1,384 subscriptions, the rate of subscriptions dropped, and remaining subscriptions were also increasingly in doubt. Like many businesses at the time, the Boydell firm kept few records. Only the customers knew what they had purchased. This caused numerous difficulties with debtors who claimed they had never subscribed or had subscribed for less. Many subscribers also defaulted, and Josiah Boydell spent years after John's death attempting to force them to pay.

The Boydells focused all their attention on the Shakespeare edition and other large projects, such as The History of the River Thames and The Complete Works of John Milton, rather than on lesser, more profitable ventures. When both the Shakespeare enterprise and the Thames book failed, the firm had no capital to fall back upon. Beginning in 1789, with the onset of the French revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

, John Boydell's export business to Europe was cut off. By the late 1790s and early 19th century, the two-thirds of his business that depended upon the export trade was in serious financial difficulty.

In 1804, John Boydell decided to appeal to Parliament for a private bill

Private bill

A private bill is a proposal for a law that would apply to a particular individual or group of individuals, or corporate entity. If enacted, it becomes a private Act . This is unlike public bills which apply to everyone within their jurisdiction...

to authorise a lottery to dispose of everything in his business. The bill received royal assent

Royal Assent

The granting of royal assent refers to the method by which any constitutional monarch formally approves and promulgates an act of his or her nation's parliament, thus making it a law...

on 23 March, and by November the Boydells were ready to sell tickets. John Boydell died before the lottery was drawn on 28 January 1805, but lived long enough to see each of the 22,000 tickets purchased at three guinea

Guinea

Guinea , officially the Republic of Guinea , is a country in West Africa. Formerly known as French Guinea , it is today sometimes called Guinea-Conakry to distinguish it from its neighbour Guinea-Bissau. Guinea is divided into eight administrative regions and subdivided into thirty-three prefectures...

s apiece (£ each in modern terms). To encourage ticket sales and reduce unsold inventory, every purchaser was guaranteed to receive a print worth one guinea from the Boydell company's stock. There were 64 winning tickets for major prizes, the highest being the Gallery itself and its collection of paintings. This went to William Tassie

William Tassie

William Tassie was a gem engraver and cameo modeller of Scottish descent, who worked in London in the early 19th century...

, a gem engraver and cameo modeller, of Leicester Fields (now Leicester Square

Leicester Square

Leicester Square is a pedestrianised square in the West End of London, England. The Square lies within an area bound by Lisle Street, to the north; Charing Cross Road, to the east; Orange Street, to the south; and Whitcomb Street, to the west...

). Josiah offered to buy the gallery and its paintings back from Tassie for £10,000 (worth about £ now), but Tassie refused and auctioned the paintings at Christie's

Christie's

Christie's is an art business and a fine arts auction house.- History :The official company literature states that founder James Christie conducted the first sale in London, England, on 5 December 1766, and the earliest auction catalogue the company retains is from December 1766...

. The painting collection and two reliefs by Anne Damer

Anne Seymour Damer

Anne Seymour Damer, née Conway, was an English sculptor.-Life:Anne Conway was born into an aristocratic Whig family, the only daughter of Field-Marshal Henry Seymour Conway and his wife Caroline Bruce, born Campbell, Lady Ailesbury , and was brought up at the family home at Park Place, Remenham,...

fetched a total of £6,181 18s. 6d. The Banks sculpture group from the façade was initially intended to be kept as a monument for Boydell's tomb. Instead, it remained part of the façade of the building in its new guise as the British Institution

British Institution

The British Institution was a private 19th-century society in London formed to exhibit the works of living and dead artists; it was also known as the Pall Mall Picture Galleries or the British Gallery...

until the building was torn down in 1868–69. The Banks sculpture was then moved to Stratford-upon-Avon

Stratford-upon-Avon

Stratford-upon-Avon is a market town and civil parish in south Warwickshire, England. It lies on the River Avon, south east of Birmingham and south west of Warwick. It is the largest and most populous town of the District of Stratford-on-Avon, which uses the term "on" to indicate that it covers...

and re-erected in New Place

New Place

New Place is the name of William Shakespeare's final place of residence in Stratford-upon-Avon. He died there in 1616. Though the house no longer exists, the land is owned by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust....

Garden between June and November 1870. The lottery saved Josiah from bankruptcy and earned him £45,000, enabling him to begin business again as a printer.

Legacy

From the outset, Boydell's project inspired imitators. In April 1788, after the announcement of the Shakespeare Gallery, but a year before its opening, Thomas Macklin

Thomas Macklin

Thomas Macklin was a British 18th-century printseller and picture dealer.Macklin married Hannah Kenting in 1777 and started a printselling business in London in 1779. His first year, his sold 7,000 copies of a print of Rear Admiral Richard Kempenfelt...

opened a Gallery of the Poets in the former Royal Academy

Royal Academy

building on the south side of Pall Mall. The first exhibition featured one work from each of 19 artists, including Fuseli, Reynolds, and Thomas Gainsborough

Thomas Gainsborough

Thomas Gainsborough was an English portrait and landscape painter.-Suffolk:Thomas Gainsborough was born in Sudbury, Suffolk. He was the youngest son of John Gainsborough, a weaver and maker of woolen goods. At the age of thirteen he impressed his father with his penciling skills so that he let...

. The gallery added new paintings of subjects from poetry each year, and from 1790 supplemented these with scenes from the Bible. The Gallery of the Poets closed in 1797, and its contents were offered by lottery. This did not deter Henry Fuseli

Henry Fuseli

Henry Fuseli was a British painter, draughtsman, and writer on art, of Swiss origin.-Biography:...

from opening a Milton

John Milton

John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...

Gallery in the same building in 1799. Another such venture was the Historic Gallery opened by Robert Bowyer

Robert Bowyer

Robert Bowyer was a British miniature painter and publisher.Bowyer was born in Portsmouth to Amos and Betty Ann Bowyer and baptized on 18 June 1758. His first job was as a clerk to a merchant in Portsmouth and then London. Two different accounts of his career shift survive...

in Schomberg House at 87 Pall Mall in about 1793. The gallery accumulated 60 paintings (many by the same artists who worked for Boydell) commissioned to illustrate a new edition of David Hume's

David Hume

David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...

The History of Great Britain

The History of Great Britain is the name sometimes given to David Hume's The History of England. According to the British Library, "The History of Great Britain" refers to the last two volumes of The History of England....

. Ultimately, Bowyer had to seek parliamentary approval for a sale by lottery in 1805, and the other ventures, like Boydell's, also ended in financial failure.

The building in Pall Mall was purchased in 1805 by the British Institution

British Institution

, a private club of connoisseurs founded that year to hold exhibitions. It remained an important part of the London art scene until disbanded in 1867, typically holding a Spring exhibition of new works for sale from the start of February to the first week of May, and a loan exhibition of old master

Old Master

"Old Master" is a term for a European painter of skill who worked before about 1800, or a painting by such an artist. An "old master print" is an original print made by an artist in the same period...

s, generally not for sale, from the first week of June to the end of August.

The paintings and engravings that were part of the Boydell Gallery affected the way Shakespeare's plays were staged, acted, and illustrated in the 19th century. They also became the subject of criticism in important works such as Romantic poet

Romantic poetry

Romanticism, a philosophical, literary, artistic and cultural era which began in the mid/late-1700s as a reaction against the prevailing Enlightenment ideals of the day , also influenced poetry...

and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge's

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...

"Lectures on Shakespeare" and William Hazlitt's

William Hazlitt

dramatic criticism. Despite Charles Lamb's criticism of the Gallery's productions, Charles and Mary Lamb's

Mary Lamb

Mary Ann Lamb , was an English writer, the sister and collaborator of Charles Lamb.-Biography:She was born on 3 December 1764. In 1796, Mary, who had suffered a breakdown from the strain of caring for her family, killed her mother with a kitchen knife, and from then on had to be kept under constant...

children's book, Tales from Shakespeare

Tales from Shakespeare

Tales from Shakespeare was an English children's book written by Charles Lamb with his sister Mary Lamb in 1807. It was illustrated by Arthur Rackham in 1899 and 1909....

(1807), was illustrated using plates from the project.

The Boydell enterprise's most enduring legacy was the folio. It was reissued throughout the 19th century, and in 1867, "by the aid of photography the whole series, excepting the portraits of their Majesties George III. and Queen Charlotte, is now presented in a handy form, suitable for ordinary libraries or the drawing-room table, and offered as an appropriate memorial of the tercentenary celebration of the poet's birth". Scholars have described Boydell's folio as a precursor to the modern coffee table book

Coffee table book

A coffee table book is a hardcover book that is intended to sit on a coffee table or similar surface in an area where guests sit and are entertained, thus inspiring conversation or alleviating boredom. They tend to be oversized and of heavy construction, since there is no pressing need for...

List of art works

The Folio and Illustrated Edition lists were taken from Friedman's Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery.

Sculptures

Shakespeare attended by Painting and Poetry by Thomas Banks
Thomas Banks
Thomas Banks , English sculptor, son of a surveyor who was land steward to the Duke of Beaufort, was born in London. He was taught drawing by his father, and in 1750 was apprenticed to a woodcarver. In his spare time he worked at sculpture, spending his evenings in the studio of the Flemish émigré...

(on façade of gallery building)
Coriolanus by Anne Seymour Damer
Anne Seymour Damer
Anne Seymour Damer, née Conway, was an English sculptor.-Life:Anne Conway was born into an aristocratic Whig family, the only daughter of Field-Marshal Henry Seymour Conway and his wife Caroline Bruce, born Campbell, Lady Ailesbury , and was brought up at the family home at Park Place, Remenham,...

(bas relief)
Antony and Cleopatra by Anne Seymour Damer (bas relief)

Illustrated edition

The Tempest

The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place,...

Act I, scene 2 by William Hamilton
Ferdinand and Miranda (Act III, scene 1) by William Hamilton
Act II, scene 2 by Robert Smirke

Two Gentlemen of Verona

Act V, scene 3 by Thomas Stothard

Merry Wives of Windsor

Mrs. Page with a Letter (Act II, scene 1) by Matthew Peters
Act I, scene 1 by Robert Smirke
Act I, scene 4 by Robert Smirke
Act IV, scene 1 by Robert Smirke
Act V, scene 5 by Robert Smirke

Measure for Measure

Measure for Measure is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1603 or 1604. It was classified as comedy, but its mood defies those expectations. As a result and for a variety of reasons, some critics have labelled it as one of Shakespeare's problem plays...

Act II, scene 4 by Robert Smirke
Act IV, scene 3 by Robert Smirke

Volume II

The Comedy of Errors

The Comedy of Errors

The Comedy of Errors is one of William Shakespeare's earliest plays. It is his shortest and one of his most farcical comedies, with a major part of the humour coming from slapstick and mistaken identity, in addition to puns and word play. The Comedy of Errors is one of only two of Shakespeare's...

Act I, scene 1 by Francis Wheatley
Act IV, scene 4 by Francis Wheatley

Much Ado About Nothing

Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy written by William Shakespeare about two pairs of lovers, Benedick and Beatrice, and Claudio and Hero....

Hero, Ursula, and Beatrice (Act III, scene 1) by Matthew Peters
Borachio, Conrade and Watchmen (Act III, scene 3) by Francis Wheatley
Act IV, scene 1 by William Hamilton
Examination (Act IV, scene 2) by Robert Smirke
Act V, scene 4 by Francis Wheatley

Love's Labour's Lost

Love's Labour's Lost is one of William Shakespeare's early comedies, believed to have been written in the mid-1590s, and first published in 1598.-Title:...

Act IV, scene 2 by Francis Wheatley
Act V, scene 2 by Francis Wheatley

A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play that was written by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta...

Puck (Act II, scene 1) by Henry Fuseli
Puck (Act II, scene 2) by Joshua Reynolds

Volume III

Merchant of Venice

Act III, scene 2 by Richard Westall
Act III, scene 3 by Richard Westall

As You Like It

As You Like It is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1599 or early 1600 and first published in the folio of 1623. The play's first performance is uncertain, though a performance at Wilton House in 1603 has been suggested as a possibility...

Jacques and the Wounded Stag (Act II, scene 1) by William Hodges
Act II, scene 6 by Robert Smirke
Act IV, scene 3 by Robert Smirke
Act V, scene 4 by William Hamilton

The Taming of the Shrew

The Taming of the Shrew is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1590 and 1591.The play begins with a framing device, often referred to as the Induction, in which a mischievous nobleman tricks a drunken tinker named Sly into believing he is actually a nobleman himself...

Act IV, scene 1 by Julius Caesar Ibbetson
Julius Caesar Ibbetson
Julius Caesar Ibbetson was a British 18th-century landscape and watercolour painter.-Early life and education:...
Act IV, scene 5 by Julius Caesar Ibbetson

All's Well That Ends Well

All's Well That Ends Well is a play by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1604 and 1605, and was originally published in the First Folio in 1623....

Act I, scene 3 by Francis Wheatley
Act II, scene 3 by Francis Wheatley

Shakespeare in the 18th century

Shakespeare editions

Boydell's Shakespeare venture

Illustrated Shakespeare edition and folio

Gallery building

Reaction

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Legacy

List of art works

Sculptures

Illustrated edition

Further reading

External links