Description
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.
Table of Contents
1. Play, page and image; 2. Spatial narratives and Rowe's Shakespeare; 3. Rococo and reflection: Gravelot, Hayman and Walker; 4. Bell, performance and reading; 5. 'Ornaments, derived from fancy': illustrating the plays, 1780–1840; 6. The growth of feeling: Boydell, Taylor and the picturesque; 7 The extra-illustrated edition; 8. Early Victorian populism: Charles Knight and Kenny Meadows; 9. Selous, Gilbert and reader involvement; 10. Decline and revival.
