BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Folger Shakespeare Library -- Exhibit: Shakespeare's the Thing

DC -- Folger Shakespeare Library -- Exhibit: Shakespeare's the Thing:

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Description of Pictures: Shakespeare's the Thing
January 28 - June 15, 2014
Kick off William Shakespeare's 450th birthday year with this wide-ranging, often unexpected display drawn from our unequalled Shakespeare holdings.
From Russian and Czech translations to a musical score by Felix Mendelssohn, from centuries-old printed editions to Salvador Dali set designs, Shakespeare's the Thing offers a wealth of responses to Shakespeare's genius. Join us in exploring four frequent ways of encountering the Bard: fixating on Shakespeare, printing his works, performing his plays, and depicting the man and his characters, from Falstaff to Cleopatra.

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. FOLTHI_140406_001.JPG: Performing Shakespeare Shakespeare, of course, wrote his plays mainly for performance, and we miss much of their richness if we do not consider their three-dimensional quality on stage. Actors and directors have always needed to take the text from the book back to the stage, where ephemeral gestures and sounds have been difficult to capture, especially in the pre-film era. Promptbooks, or play scripts marked for production, are one means of capturing performance. Drawings or paintings of stage sets or of actors in their roles are another. When recorded sound was developed in the 1880s and 90s, it was possible to "fix" the voices of actors, giving some sense of their style. Music has been one of the most accessible aspects of performance over the ages. We can pick up a piece of sheet music from the nineteenth century and sing it today. Shakespeare included music in many of his plays, and as styles have changed over the centuries, more music has been added. The items included in this section of the exhibition span from the eighteenth century to the present, capturing changes in the ways Shakespeare has been performed that mirror the style of each period.
2. FOLTHI_140406_005.JPG: Printing Shakespeare Shakespeare's plays have been distributed in various forms of print over the centuries, including their most recent iterations as digital texts. The first plays to be printed were Titus Andronicus and a rather unreliable version of Henry VI, pt. 2 as cheap quarto-sized paperbacks in 1594. Four folio-sized editions of the collected plays were printed between 1623 and 1685. But the first edition in a modern sense did not appear until 1709 when dramatist Nicholas Rowe, basing his text on a corrected Fourth Folio (printed in 1685), added scene divisions and a list of characters for each play. From that time on, the editing of Shakespeare has never stopped. Simultaneously, however, Shakespeare's plays have been printed in many other ways. They have been translated, illustrated, shaped into acting editions, retold, adapted into children's books, comic books, paperbacks, and now digital editions. This section on Printing Shakespeare explores early editions, illustrated editions, and translations. Stop to explore the new Folger Luminary Apps based on Folger Shakespeare Library editions. It's just the latest form of "printing" Shakespeare.
3. FOLTHI_140406_009.JPG: Depicting Shakespeare Shakespeare's plays and poems still capture our imagination because of their ability to create wonderful word-images. Even if we don't hear the words spoken or see the plays performed, we see images of Bottom with an ass's head, or Banquo's ghost, or Cleopatra's barge in our minds as we read. Over the centuries, artists have attempted to express visually what Shakespeare expresses in words, by illustrating his plays and poems or by decorating the books themselves. At the same time, people have wondered what Shakespeare the man looked like, and they have depicted him in many guises, ranging from a bohemian playwright with open collar and gold earring to a courtier with lace ruff. Displayed here is a selection of creative works that interpret "Shakespeare" - the man and his writings - through artistic imagination.
4. FOLTHI_140406_014.JPG: Fixating on Shakespeare "Bardolatry," or the craze for all thing Shakespeare, began in the eighteenth century and has never ceased. Perhaps its most startling expression was by actor David Garrick who, gesturing towards a statue of the Bard at the end of his 1769 Shakespeare Jubilee, cried, "Tis he! 'tis he! The god of our idolatry!'" Though we may no longer view him as a "god," Shakespeare is still so recognizable that a couple of telephone companies have used modernized clips of Romeo and Juliet in commercials to sell their products. In the nineteenth century, one of the most popular Shakespearean references was to the Seven Ages of Man from a speech by Jacques in As You Like It. The theme was used in books, paintings, games, accessories, and advertising. At the same time, a passion developed for collecting Shakespeare relics; a few people even went so far as to create fake ones. Today Shakespeare's presence is ubiquitous, not only on the web (28,600,000 Google hits and counting), but also in the novels we read, the movies we watch, and the games we play. As our culture evolves at ever greater speeds, Shakespeare is still present as a kind of grounding force, creating new communities of fans.
5. FOLTHI_140406_021.JPG: Shakespeare's the Thing January 28 - June 15 Georgianna Ziegler, curator Kick off William Shakespeare's 450th birthday year with this wide-ranging, often unexpected display drawn from our unequalled Shakespeare holdings. From Russian and Czech translations to a musical score by Felix Mendelssohn, from centuries-old printed editions to Salvador Dali set designs, Shakespeare's the Thing offers a wealth of responses to Shakespeare's genius. Join us in exploring four frequent ways of encountering the Bard: fixating on Shakespeare, printing his works, performing his plays, and depicting the man and his characters, from Falstaff to Cleopatra. -- Shakespeare's the Thing! Celebrating 450 Years of Shakespeare "Who is Silvia? what is she?" asks the song in Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona. For at least 300 years, people have been asking the same set of questions about Shakespeare. The desire to understand this poet and playwright, born in 1564, began with the first scholarly edition of his works, published in 1709. New editions, performances, adaptations, and memorabilia appear every year. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Shakespeare's plays enjoyed a revival on stage that has not ceased. At the same time, antiquarians scoured the archives to find any new bits of information about Shakespeare. Others were not shy about forging documents, so eager was the public for anything "new." General admiration for Shakespeare spilled over into popular culture then and now: artists have depicted his characters and Shakespeare himself; composers have interpreted his writings in music; actors have defined and redefined his roles; and the rage for Shakespeare has led to a multitude of celebratory objects from tea caddies and dolls to statues and artists' books. For this exhibition, we asked members of the Folger staff to propose some of their favorite Shakespeare things in the collection, which we then arranged in four sections: Fixating on Shakespeare; Printing Shakespeare; Performing Shakespeare; and Depicting Shakespeare. Discover how we are still celebrating Shakespeare 450 years after his birth.
6. FOLTHI_140406_024.JPG: Case 1: The Great Shakespeare Forger: William Henry Ireland started forging Shakespearean documents as a teenager in 1794. He dutifully presented them to his father, printmaker Samuel Ireland, an obsessive collector of Shakespearean relics. Ireland claimed to have discovered letters, plays, signatures, and books from Shakespeare's library. While his "discovery" initially stunned the literary world, Ireland's downfall was as swift as his rise to fame, as scholars pointed out innumerable inaccuracies in the documents. In 1805, after his father's death, Ireland published his "tell all" book, The Confessions of William Henry Ireland, in which he laid out his motives and practices.
7. FOLTHI_140406_040.JPG: On the right is one of Ireland's handwritten copies of his original forgery of a love letter from Shakespeare to Anne Hathaway, with a lock of real hair attached. On the left is a printed facsimile of the forgery, published as his father in 1795. The letter begins, "Dearesste Anna" and goes on in a romantic style, "I praye you perfume thus mye poore Locke withe thye balmye Kysses forre thenne indeede shelle Kynges themmselves bowe ande paye homage toe itte." It ends, "Thyne everre, Wm Shakspeare." When in doubt, add an "e" seems to have been Ireland's motto while attempting to write Elizabethan English! But this proliferation of extraneous letters in Ireland's forgeries was one of the signs that they were not authentic. After his duplicity was exposed, Ireland created additional copies of his forgeries to sell and to give as gifts to supporters.
8. FOLTHI_140406_044.JPG: Case 2: Seven Ages of Man (And Woman): All the world's a stage. And all the men and women merely players... And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. In this wonderful speech given by Jacques in As You Like It, Shakespeare draws on a tradition that originated in classical literature. In his words, however, the old ideas take on a freshness that makes them memorable even today. Shakespeare describes the Seven Ages as the infant, the schoolboy, the lover, the soldier, the justice, the "lean and slippered pantaloon" or old man, and finally the very old man in "second childishness." Some later writers added a variation that applied the ages to women as well. The theme was very popular among artists, and we show here a selection of interpretations ranging from humorous adaptations to a design for a fan, an artist's book, and cards advertising soap.
9. FOLTHI_140406_057.JPG: George James De Wilde The Seven Ages of Man, 1823 In this imaginative work, English painter and writer George James De Wilde depicts all seven ages from the baby to the left of the canvas, through the comfortable justice in the middle, and finally the old man on his deathbed to the far right. On the floor in front, a monkey shows a Shakespeare First Folio open to the famous Droeshout portrait of Shakespeare. To the left of the monkey, De Wilde painted the title page of one of William Henry Ireland's forgeries, the play Vortigern and Rowena, which Ireland passed off as Shakespeare's. The monkey symbolized this copying -- or "aping" -- but turns away from the copy to the real Shakespeare Folio.
10. FOLTHI_140406_063.JPG: Case 3: Bardoloatry: "Baldolatry," the adoration of all things Shakespearean, began in the eighteenth century, encouraged by actor and theater manager David Garrick. In 1755, Garrick built a temple to Shakespeare on the grounds of his home outside London, and in 1769 he organized a Shakespeare Jubilee at Stratford-upon-Avon -- Shakespeare's birthplace. By the early nineteenth century Stratford itself was becoming a tourist attraction, and the craze for relics had begun. The Folger holds a large collection of Shakespearean souvenirs from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
11. FOLTHI_140406_065.JPG: George Cruikshank The First Appearance of William Shakespeare on the stage of "The Globe," surrounded by part of his Dramatic Company, the other members coming over the hills. In this busy scene, Shakespeare is centrally cast as the baby lying in the laurel-garlanded cradle, while around him appear many of the characters he will go on to create. Ophelia, standing next to Lady Macbeth and to the right of the baby Shakespeare, presents two handfuls of flowers, while behind them Richard III glowers in his crown. See how many of the other characters you can identify.
12. FOLTHI_140406_079.JPG: William Shakespeare Dramatic Works, 1921 The binding on this copy of Shakespeare's Works contains a small piece of mulberry wood, supposedly from a tree planted in Stratford by Shakespeare himself.
13. FOLTHI_140406_084.JPG: Case 4: David Garrick, Shakespeare Promoter: David Garrick (1717-79), the greatest British actor of his time, was almost single-handedly responsible for the eighteenth-century Shakespeare revival. He produced twenty-six of Shakespeare's plays, performed in seventeen roles himself, and organized a Shakespeare Jubilee at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1769. Perhaps realizing that Shakespeare had paved the way for his own success, Garrick honored the Bard by building a temple to Shakespeare on the grounds of his Hampton home. Historian Edmund Burke wrote of Garrick: "Shakespeare was the chosen object of his study: in his action, and in his declamation he express all the fire, the enthusiasm, the energy, the facility, the endless variety of that great poet."
14. FOLTHI_140406_087.JPG: Painted wooden model of David Garrick's Temple to Shakespeare, c 1830 containing a miniature set of William Shakespeare Plays This whimsical bookcase reproduces Garrick's temple in miniature. On top is a small model of a Shakespeare statue by Louis-Francois Roubiliac that stood inside the temple. The bookcase houses a miniature set of Shakespeare's plays bound with the royal coat of arms. Both the case and books were apparently a coronation gift of William IV in 1830.
15. FOLTHI_140406_092.JPG: Joseph Constantine Stadler, from a drawing by Joseph Farington The Late Mr. Garrick's Villa, 1793 Garrick's temple to Shakespeare, built in 1755-56, appears on the left in this print, with Garrick's country house in the background on the right. The temple still stands on the banks of the Thames, fifteen miles southwest of London.
16. FOLTHI_140406_102.JPG: Case 5: Shakespearean Adaptations and Spin-Offs As a form of flattery or approval, adaptation has a long history in Western literature. Shakespeare himself based many of his plots on old stories or other plays, and no author has been adapted as much as Shakespeare. His plays have formed the inspiration for later novels, plays, movies, and toys, such as Marina Warner's novel Indigo, based on The Tempest, and the Barbie Titania from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Shakespeare's life has also inspired later writers. British playwright Edward Bond, for example, imagines Shakespeare's last days in Bingo, while book artist Graham Clarke humorously created Shakespeare's "actual nottebooke." Shakespeare's broad cultural appeal has led to countless spin-offs, including a box of "bon mots" instead of bon bons, and a Shakespeare board game. What are some of your favorite spin-offs from the Bard?
17. FOLTHI_140406_111.JPG: 10 Things I Hate About You, 1999 Loosely based on The Taming of the Shrew, this film was directed by Gil Junger and stars Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger as the Kate and Petruchio figures.
18. FOLTHI_140406_114.JPG: Collector's Edition Barbie as Titania from A Midsummer Night's Dream Mattel, 2004
19. FOLTHI_140406_122.JPG: "The Play's The Thing" Board Game Aristoplay, 2008
20. FOLTHI_140406_124.JPG: Case 6: Editing Shakespeare: Modern editions of Shakespeare that we read today are the result of centuries of interpretation by Shakespearean editors. Early on, scholars realized there were differences between the small, individual, quarto versions of the plays published during Shakespeare's lifetime and the collected plays published after Shakespeare's death in the 1623 First Folio. These differences were due in part to handwritten copy texts from which early printers often set their type, and to mistakes made by the printers themselves. Beginning with Nicholas Rowe in 1709, scholars tried to make sense of various readings in the early printed texts, and such editorial work continues to this day. The 1773 edition is important for editor George Steevens' knowledge of Elizabethan literature and his use of the early quarto editions. Steevens' folio volume stands in stark contrast to the small, affordable volumes printed by John Bell beginning in 1774.
21. FOLTHI_140406_127.JPG: William Shakespeare Works... in six volumes, 1709 The first modern edition of Shakespeare.
22. FOLTHI_140406_131.JPG: William Shakespeare The Dramatic Works, revised by George Steevens, 1791-1803 This is a proof copy of volume one of a nine volume set, with editor George Steevens' handwritten corrections. In this opening, he reverses two groups of lines by pasting slips with the correct lines over the incorrect ones.
23. FOLTHI_140406_145.JPG: William Shakespeare Sen Noci Svatojanske (A Midsummer Night's Dream) Prague, 1993
24. FOLTHI_140406_150.JPG: Case 7: Mr. Furness and Mr. Folger: The first important American editor of Shakespeare was Horace Howard Furness (1833-1912), a genial lawyer and founding member of the Shakspere Society of Philadelphia. Based on members' needs for annotated editions of the plays. Furness had the idea of conveniently combining notes from the best editions in one volume below the text of each play. Thus was born the Variorum SHakespeare. As Furness worked on the plays, he was in touch with Library founder Henry Clay Folger (1857-1930), a major collector of Shakespeare editions. Emily Jordan Folger (1858-1936), Mr. Folger's wife and a scholar of Shakespeare herself, had consulted Furness when she was working on her master's thesis, "The True Text of Shakespeare." Furness hoped that the Folgers would take to editing as he had, and, though they were not interested in scholarly pursuits, Mr. Folger dod reply to Furness' questions. The correspondence here concerns textual problems in The Winter's Tale and Much Ado About Nothing.
25. FOLTHI_140406_166.JPG: Horace Howard Furness, autograph letter to Henry Clay Folger, December, 1899 Folger helped Furness with a reading in Act 5, scene 3 of Much Ado About Nothing. In this letter, Furness writes that he fears the copy, which he inscribed to the Folgers in gratitude for their help, may have been lost in his publisher's warehouse fire. He continues: "Although the plates of half the plays at least are destroyed, luckily 'Much Ado' has been found unharmed," so that another edition could be printed. He was thus able to send them another, inscribed.
26. FOLTHI_140406_170.JPG: Case 8: Hanmer & Hayman: An Illustrated Edition
27. FOLTHI_140406_174.JPG: Francis Hayman The Play Scene from Hamlet, c 1745 Francis Hayman first illustrated this scene for Thomas Hanmer's edition of Shakespeare (shown below). Soon after, he made an oil painting of the scene, one of several based on Shakespeare's plays for the Prince of Wales' Pavilion at Vauxhall Gardens, a kind of amusement park in London. It is thought that this small oil painting at the Folger was the model for the larger Vauxhall painting.
28. FOLTHI_140406_180.JPG: Francis Hayman Illustrations to Shakespeare, 1740 In 1740, artist Francis Hayman signed a contract with Sir Thomas Hanmer (1677-1746) to illustrate his edition of the Works of Shakespeare. This copy contains Hayman's original designs bound opposite the prints that were made from them. Here we see Act 3, scene 2 of Hamlet, showing Claudius rising in alarm during the play-within-the-play, which Hamlet has planned as a way to determine if Claudius is guilty of murdering Hamlet's father.
29. FOLTHI_140406_189.JPG: Case 9: Translating Shakespeare: Afrikaans, Bengali, Chinese, Hebrew, Persian, Russian, Turkish -- these are only a few of the more than 45 languages into which Shakespeare's works have been translated. The Germans were the first, with a version of Romeo and Juliet in 1604, but the Dutch chimed in as early as 1638, followed by the Italians and the French in the eighteenth century, with many more coming after. Displayed here is a selection from the Folger's larger collection of translations: Macbeth in Estonian, Hamlet in Sanskrit, The Merchant of Venice and As You Like It in Spanish, Romeo and Juliet in German, and the Sonnets in Italian. Many translators have seen their task as both a political statement and a labor of love.
30. FOLTHI_140406_207.JPG: Case 11: Charles Kean's The Tempest: A revival of The Tempest by actor and manager Charles Kean (1811?-1868) occurred in July 1857. It was the style of the day to produce theater with elaborate scenery, and Kean's Tempest was no exception. Novelist Lewis Carroll said it surpassed "anything I ever saw." We get a sense of the scenery from the watercolors included in this prompt copy made for Kean. The decorative playbill for an 1854 production of The Tempest was made to announce one of Kean's productions for the royal family and guests at Windsor Castle. Queen Victoria also came to the 1857 revival at Kean's Princess's Theatre in London, after which she wrote enthusiastically in her journal: "Such scenery, & such effects of light."
31. FOLTHI_140406_210.JPG: Facsimile of a drawing added to Charles Kean's copy of William Shakespeare The Tempest, arranged for representation at the Princess's Theatre... by Charles Kean, 19th century This watercolor is a set design for Act 3 where "a long perspective of desolation gradually changes from barrenness to tropical luxuriance; trees rise from the earth, fountains and waterfalls gush from the rocks; while naiads, wood-nymphs, and satyrs enter, bearing fruit and flowers."
32. FOLTHI_140406_216.JPG: Artist Unknown Sarah Siddons as Lady Macbeth, ca 1790-1810 Sarah Siddons (1755-1831) was the greatest tragic actress of her day, and Lady Macbeth was her signature role. She first performed the role in 1785 and played it for her farewell performance in 1812. This painting by an unidentified artist shows here commanding presence as she chides Macbeth after he has murdered Duncan: "Why did you bring these daggers from the place? ... Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers." According to an eyewitness, she "seiz[ed] the daggers very contempuously," as depicted here.
33. FOLTHI_140406_225.JPG: William Heath The rival Richards of Sheakspear [sic] in danger, 1814 Shakespeare shouts "Murder!" as he is pulled by established actor Charles Young (1777-1856) at Covent Garden on the right and upstart actor Edmund Kean (1787-1833) at Drury Lane on the left. Artist William Heath depicts the rivalty between two schools of acting: the declamatory style of the older Young and the naturalistic style of the younger Kean. The audience could judge for themselves by attending Richard III in both theaters.
34. FOLTHI_140406_228.JPG: The Rival Richards!!!, 1817 By 1817, a third actor had joined the fray of competing Richard IIIs. This print shows Junius Brutus Booth (1796-1852) being held in the balance by Folly, against Edmund Kean on the right. The old-timers, John Philip Kemble (1757-1823) and Charles Young flee from the back legs of Folly's kicking donkey> Booth moved to America in 1821 and fathered his own acting dynasty.
35. FOLTHI_140406_234.JPG: Case 12: Turn of the Century Performance and Recorder Voices: London artist Ralph Cleaver (fl 1893-1926) made sketches as theatrical performances of his day, which were then published by The Sketch, a popular London magazine. Here we see his designs for an amateur production at the Garrick Theatre of Rosencrantz and Guilderstern by WS Gilbert (of Gilbert and Sullivan fame), and for a production of The Tempest at His Majesty's Theatre, both in 1904. The technology to record sound was developed in the 1880s and '90s, and from the beginning, Shakespeare was an important subject. The earliest recordings were only a few minutes long and sought mainly to register actors' voices: Ellen Terry reciting the "Mercy" speech from The Merchant of Venice, or John Barrymore doing "To be" from Hamlet. As sound and recording became more sophisticated, whole plays could be recorded, providing documentary evidence for the ephemeral history of stage production. Thus the rich voice of African-American actor Paul Robeson resonates for us today as he played Othello in 1943.
36. FOLTHI_140406_245.JPG: Great Shakespearean Actors
37. FOLTHI_140406_249.JPG: Case 13: Jean Cocteau Stages Romeo and Juliet: French poet and playwright Jean Cocteau adapted and produced Romeo and Juliet in a spectacular Paris production in June 1924. He teamed up with Surrealist artist Jean Hugo (great-grandson of novelist Victor Hugo), who designed the consumes and scenery. Cocteau's version was more an elaborate choreographed sketch than a faithful reproduction of Shakespeare's play. Biographer Francis Steegmuller writes that "Hugo designed a set whose hangings and floor would be of black cloth with colored linear decorations, and for the actors black tights and black velvet dresses, doublets and short hose, painted with 'embroidery' that would be picked out by [red] lighting ... [around the stage]." The predominant colors black, red, and white, and the use of surprise served to fascinate but also distance the audience.
38. FOLTHI_140406_287.JPG: Case 15: Modern Musical Shakespeare: Shakespeare's plays have inspired musical adaptations and interpretations for centuries. Directors and writers have often made use of political issues or cultural trends to inform how they shape and stage a production for a contemporary audience. John Guare's musical adaptation of Two Gentlemen of Verona unmistakably situates itself in the 1970s and the issues of the day, while the Fiasco Theatre Company looks back to an American folk-music tradition to inform its interpretation of Cymbeline.
39. FOLTHI_140406_314.JPG: Salvador Dali Etching from Much Ado about Shakespeare, 1970 Much Ado About Shakespeare represents Salvador Dali's imaginative interpretation of sixteen of Shakespeare's plays. The confrontation between cat and dog depicted here is his humorous response to the warring couple in The Taming of the Shrew.
40. FOLTHI_140406_338.JPG: Salvador Dali William Shakespeare: Come vi place, 1948 In 1948, Italian director Luchino Visconti asked Spanish artist Salvador Dali to collaborate with him by designing sets and costumes for a production of As You Like It at the Teatro Elisio in Rome. Critic Mario Praz wrote about its "riot of colour and wild imagination," in which Arden was represented as an apple in a cube. While the sets evoked modern art, the costumes were based on baroque designs.
41. FOLTHI_140406_348.JPG: Wyndham Lewis Designs for Timon of Athens, 1912 The artist Wyndham Lewis made a series of drawings for Timon of Athens, several of which were displayed at the Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition, London, 1912. A limited number were then published by the Cube Press in December, 1913, and distributed by Max Goschen. This is one of the original pen-and-ink drawings from which the plates were made for the limited edition.
42. FOLTHI_140406_351.JPG: J. Franklin Mowery Jeweled binding on William Shakespeare Sonnets, 1990 This private press limited edition of the Sonnets, printed on vellum, was specially bound by Frank Mowery, former Folger Head of Conservation, on the occasion of the Folger's 60th anniversary in 1992. The jeweled binding includes fifty-six diamonds and four rubles. The fourteen gold bands on the front and back covers represent the fourteen-line structure of a sonnet.
43. FOLTHI_140406_359.JPG: Case 19: Droeshout Portrait: Shakespeare's fellow actors collected his plays and had them printed in 1623 in what is now known as the First Folio. Either they are the printer thought it would be a handsome gesture to place a portrait of Shakespeare on the title page. They chose Martin Droeshout (1601-ca 1642), an English engraver of Flemish descent, for the job. The portrait that he produced obviously met the approval of the actors who had known him, though poet Ben Jonson commented on the facing page that to know Shakespeare, you need to read his works, not look at his picture. The portrait was reproduced in all four Folios (1623, 1632, 1664, 1685). Thanks to various touch-ups over the course of the printing plate's life, four distinct "states" of the Droeshout portrait exist.
44. FOLTHI_140406_374.JPG: Thomas Sully Portrait of Shakespeare, 1864 Philadelphia artist Thomas Sully painted this portrait in 1864, the same year that marked the 300th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth. According to a contemporary, Sully based his likeness on the best characteristics from nearly 400 images of Shakespeare in his private collection.
45. FOLTHI_140406_377.JPG: Edouard Jean Conrad Hamman Shakespeare with his Family, at Stratford, reciting the tragedy of Hamlet, mid to late 19th century This romanticized view of Shakespeare shows him reading to his family. The original painting on which the lithograph is based was by Edouard Jean Conrad Hamman, a Belgian artist, who made a number of studies of writers in historical genre paintings.
46. FOLTHI_140406_384.JPG: Case 20: Shakespeare Portraits: Found on the title page of the 1623 First Folio, the Droeshout portrait of Shakespeare (shown in the previous case) is one of only two widely accepted authentic likenesses of William Shakespeare (the other is the portrait bust on his funerary monument). However, as Shakespeare's popularity grew, so did the desire to imagine what he really looked like.
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