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In the 18th century, Shakespeare dominated the London stage

In the 18th century, Shakespeare dominated the London stage, while Shakespeare productions turned increasingly into the creation of star turns for star actors. DELL NSK-DG101 Laptop Keyboard

After the Licensing Act of 1737, one fourth of the plays performed were by Shakespeare and on at least two occasions rival London playhouses staged the very same Shakespeare play at the same time (Romeo and Juliet in 1755 and King Lear the next year) and still commanded audiences. HP Pavilion G6-1223TX Laptop Keyboard

This occasion was a striking example of the growing prominence of Shakespeare stars in the theatrical culture, the big attraction being the competition and rivalry between the male leads at Covent Garden and Drury Lane, Spranger Barry and David Garrick. Apparently no incongruity was perceived in having Barry and Garrick, SONY VAIO VGN-FS550 Laptop Keyboard

in their late thirties, play adolescent Romeo one season and geriatric King Lear the next: age appropriateness was nothing, the power to command and electrify audiences was all. In September 1769 Garrick staged a major Shakespeare Jubilee in Stratford-upon-Avon which was a major influence on the rise of bardolatry. HP Pavilion dv6-2112sa Laptop Keyboard

As performance playscripts diverged more and more from their originals, the publication of texts intended for reading developed rapidly in the opposite direction, with the invention of textual criticism and an emphasis on fidelity to Shakespeare's original words. The texts that we read and perform today were largely settled in the 18th century. HP 640436-001 Laptop Keyboard

Nahum Tate and Nathaniel Lee had already prepared editions and performed scene divisions in the late 17th century, and Nicholas Rowe's edition of 1709 is considered the first truly scholarly text for the plays. It was followed by many good 18th-century editions, crowned by Edmund Malone's landmark Variorum Edition, TOSHIBA NSK-TBD01 Laptop Keyboard

which was published posthumously in 1821 and remains the basis of modern editions. These collected editions were meant for reading, not staging, and some of them were even convenient for a poetry lover to carry around; Rowe's 1709 edition was, compared to the old folios, a light pocketbook. Shakespeare criticism also increasingly spoke to readers, rather than to theatre audiences. TOSHIBA Satellite L755-SP5102CL Laptop Keyboard

The only aspects of Shakespeare's plays that were consistently disliked and singled out for criticism in the 18th century were thepuns ("clenches") and the "low" (sexual) allusions. While a few editors, notably Alexander Pope, attempted to gloss over or remove the puns and the double entendres, they were quickly reversed, HP 640436-001 Laptop Keyboard

and by mid-century the puns and sexual humour were (with only a few exceptions, see Thomas Bowdler) back in to stay.

Dryden's sentiments about Shakespeare's matchless imagination and capacity for painting "nature" were echoed without a break in the 18th century by, for example, Joseph Addison ("Among the English, Shakespeare has incomparably excelled all others"),HP Pavilion G6-1223TX Laptop Keyboard

Alexander Pope ("every single character in Shakespeare is as much an Individual as those in Life itself"), and Samuel Johnson (who scornfully dismissed Voltaire's and Rhymer's neoclassical Shakespeare criticism as "the petty cavils of petty minds"). HP Mini 110-3004tu Laptop Keyboard

The long-lived belief that the Romantics were the first generation to truly appreciate Shakespeare and to prefer him to Ben Jonson is contradicted by unstinting praise from writers throughout the 18th century. Ideas about Shakespeare that many people think of as typically post-Romantic were frequently expressed in the 18th and even in the 17th century: TOSHIBA Satellite M645-S4047 Laptop Keyboard

he was described as a genius who needed no learning, as deeply original, and as creating uniquely "real" and individual characters (see Timeline of Shakespeare criticism). To compare Shakespeare and his well-educated contemporary Ben Jonson was a popular exercise at this time, a comparison that was invariably complimentary to Shakespeare. DELL Inspiron N4050 laptop keyboard

It functioned to highlight the special qualities of both writers, and it especially powered the assertion that natural genius trumps rules, that "there is always an appeal open from criticism to nature" (Samuel Johnson).

Opinion of Shakespeare was briefly shaped in the 1790s by the "discovery" of the Shakespeare Papers by William Henry Ireland. Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E520 laptop keyboard

Ireland claimed to have found in atrunk a goldmine of lost documents of Shakespeare's including two plays Vortigern and Henry II. These documents appeared to demonstrate a number of unknown facts about Shakespeare that shaped opinion of his works, including a Profession of Faith demonstrating Shakespeare was a Protestant and that he had an illegitimate child.

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Although there were many believers in the provenance of the Shakespeare Papers they soon came under fierce attack from scholars who pointed out numerous inaccuracies. Vortigern had only one performance at the Drury Lane Theatre before Ireland admitted he had forged the documents and written the plays himself. HP Mini 210-2070sb laptop keyboard

Some of Shakespeare's work was performed in continental Europe during the 17th century, but it was not until the mid 18th century that it became widely known. In Germany Lessing compared Shakespeare to German folk literature. Lenovo 0A62075 laptop keyboard

Goethe organised a Shakespeare jubilee in Frankfurt in 1771, stating that the dramatist had shown that the Aristotelian unities were "as oppressive as a prison" and were "burdensome fetters on our imagination". Herder likewise proclaimed that reading Shakespeare's work opens "leaves from the book of events, of providence, of the world, blowing in the sands of time." LENOVO IdeaPad S10 20015 laptop keyboard

This claim that Shakespeare's work breaks through all creative boundaries to reveal a chaotic, teeming, contradictory world became characteristic of Romantic criticism, later being expressed by Victor Hugo in the preface to his play Cromwell, in which he lauded Shakespeare as an artist of the grotesque, a genre in which the tragic, absurd, trivial and serious were inseparably intertwined. Lenovo 3000 Y500 laptop keyboard

Theatres and theatrical scenery became ever more elaborate in the 19th century, and the acting editions used were progressively cut and restructured to emphasize more and more the soliloquies and the stars, at the expense of pace and action.^[4] Performances were further slowed by the need for frequent pauses to change the scenery, HP Pavilion dv6-3023sy laptop keyboard

creating a perceived need for even more cuts in order to keep performance length within tolerable limits; it became a generally accepted maxim that Shakespeare's plays were too long to be performed without substantial cuts. The platform, or apron, stage, on which actors of the 17th century would come forward for audience contact, ACER Travelmate 4670 laptop keyboard

was gone, and the actors stayed permanently behind the fourth wall or proscenium arch, further separated from the audience by theorchestra, see image right.

Through the 19th century, a roll call of legendary actors' names all but drown out the plays in which they appear: Sarah Siddons (1755—1831), John Philip Kemble (1757—1823), SONY VAIO VGN-FZ460EB laptop keyboard

Henry Irving (1838—1905), and Ellen Terry (1847—1928). To be a star of the legitimate drama came to mean being first and foremost a "great Shakespeare actor", with a famous interpretation of, for men, Hamlet, and for women, Lady Macbeth, and especially with a striking delivery of the great soliloquies. HP Pavilion DV6z artist edition 2 laptop keyboard

The acme of spectacle, star, and soliloquy Shakespeare performance came with the reign of actor-manager Henry Irving at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in London from 1878 to 1899. At the same time, a revolutionary return to the roots of Shakespeare's original texts, and to the platform stage, absence of scenery, and fluid scene changes of the Elizabethan theatre, was being effected by William Poel's Elizabethan Stage Society. HP Pavilion DV7-3069wm laptop keyboard

The belief in the unappreciated 18th-century Shakespeare was proposed at the beginning of the 19th century by the Romantics, in support of their view of 18th-century literary criticism as mean, formal, and rule-bound, which was contrasted with their own reverence for the poet as prophet and genius. Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E520 laptop keyboard

Such ideas were most fully expressed by German critics such as Goethe and the Schlegel brothers. Romantic critics such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Hazlitt raised admiration for Shakespeare to worship or even "bardolatry" (a sarcastic coinage from bard + idolatry by George Bernard Shaw in 1901, meaning excessive or religious worship of Shakespeare). DELL Latitude E6400 laptop keyboard

To compare him to other Renaissance playwrights at all, even for the purpose of finding him superior, began to seem irreverent. Shakespeare was rather to be studied without any involvement of the critical faculty, to be addressed or apostrophized—almost prayed to—by his worshippers, as in Thomas de Quincey's classic essay "On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth" (1823): SONY VAIO VGN-N350N laptop keyboard

"O, mighty poet! Thy works are not as those of other men, simply and merely great works of art; but are also like the phenomena of nature, like the sun and the sea, the stars and the flowers,—like frost and snow, rain and dew, hail-storm and thunder, which are to be studied with entire submission of our own faculties…".GATEWAY V030946FS1 US laptop keyboard

As the concept of literary originality grew in importance, critics were horrified at the idea of adapting Shakespeare's tragedies for the stage by putting happy endings on them, or editing out the puns in Romeo and Juliet. In another way, what happened on the stage was seen as unimportant, as the Romantics, DELL 9Z.N1K82.C01 laptop keyboard

themselves writers of closet drama, considered Shakespeare altogether more suitable for reading than staging. Charles Lamb saw any form of stage representation as distracting from the true qualities of the text. This view, argued as a timeless truth, was also a natural consequence of the dominance of melodrama and spectacle on the early 19th-century stage. SONY Vaio VGN-AW41MF/H laptop keyboard

Shakespeare became an important emblem of national pride in the 19th century, which was the heyday of the British Empire and the acme of British power in the world. To Thomas Carlyle in On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841), Shakespeare was one of the great poet-heroes of history, in the sense of being a "rallying-sign" for British cultural patriotism all over the world, including even the lost American colonies: HP Pavilion DV7t-2200 CTO laptop keyboard

"From Paramatta, from New York, wheresoever… English men and women are, they will say to one another, 'Yes, this Shakespeare is ours; we produced him, we speak and think by him; we are of one blood and kind with him'" ("The Poet as Hero"). As the foremost of the great canonical writers, the jewel of English culture, and as Carlyle puts it, SONY VAIO VGN-NW15L laptop keyboard

"merely as a real, marketable, tangibly useful possession", Shakespeare became in the 19th century a means of creating a common heritage for the motherland and all her colonies. Post-colonial literary critics have had much to say of this use of Shakespeare's plays in what they regard as a move to subordinate and deracinate the cultures of the colonies themselves. HP Pavilion DV7-2013tx laptop keyboard

Shakespeare continued to be considered the greatest English writer of all time throughout the 20th century. Most Western educational systems required the textual study of two or more of Shakespeare's plays, and both amateur and professional stagings of Shakespeare were commonplace. TOSHIBA Satellite P305-S8906 laptop keyboard

It was the proliferation of high-quality, well-annotated texts and the unrivalled reputation of Shakespeare that allowed for stagings of Shakespeare's plays to remain textually faithful, but with an extraordinary variety in setting, stage direction, and costuming. Institutions such as the Folger HP Pavilion dv6-2159tx laptop keyboard

Shakespeare Library in the United States worked to ensure constant, serious study of Shakespearean texts and the Royal Shakespeare Company in the United Kingdom worked to maintain a yearly staging of at least two plays.

Shakespeare performances reflected the tensions of the times, and early in the century, HP Pavilion DV7-3165dx laptop keyboard

Barry Jackson of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre began the staging of modern-dress productions, thus starting a new trend in Shakesperian production. Performances of the plays could be highly interpretive. Thus, play directors would emphasize Marxist, feminist, or, perhaps most popularly, Lenovo Thinkpad T520 laptop keyboard

Freudian psychoanalytical interpretations of the plays, even as they retained letter-perfect scripts. The number of analytical approaches became more diverse by the latter part of the century, as critics applied theories such as structuralism, New Historicism, Cultural materialism, African American studies, queer studies, and literary semiotics to Shakespeare's works. HP Pavilion dv6-3020tu laptop keyboard

In 1934 the French government banned, in permanence, performances of Coriolanus because of its perceived unpatriotic qualities. In the international protests that followed came one from Germany, from none other than Joseph Goebbels. Although productions of Shakespeare's plays in Germany itself were subject to 'streamlining', SONY VAIO VGN-FS760/W laptop keyboard

he continued to be favoured as a great classical dramatist, especially so as almost every new German play since the late 1890s onwards was portrayed by German government propaganda as the work of left-wingers, of Jews or of "degenerates" of one kind or another. Politically acceptable writers had simply been unable to fill the gap, TOSHIBA Satellite M105-S3001 laptop keyboard

or had only been able to do so with the worst kinds of agitprop. In 1935 Goebbels was to say "We can build autobahns, revive the economy, create a new army, but we... cannot manufacture new dramatists." With Schiller suspect for his radicalism, Lessing for his humanism and even the great Goethe for his lack of patriotism, the legacy of the "Aryan" Shakespeare was reinterpreted for new purposes. HP Envy 15-1040er laptop keyboard

Rodney Symington, Professor of Germanic and Russian Studies at the University of Victoria, Canada, deals with this question in The Nazi Appropriation of Shakespeare: Cultural Politics in the Third Reich (Edwin Mellen Press, 2005). The scholar reports that Hamlet, for instance, was reconceived as a proto-German warrior rather than a man with a conscience. SONY VAIO VGN-FZ19VN laptop keyboard

Of this play one critic wrote: "If the courtier Laertes is drawn to Paris and the humanist Horatio seems more Roman than Danish, it is surely no accident that Hamlet's alma mater should be Wittenberg." A leading magazine declared that the crime which deprived Hamlet of his inheritance was a foreshadow of the Treaty of Versailles, and that the conduct of Gertrude was reminiscent of the spineless Weimar politicians. SONY VAIO VGN-CR220E laptop keyboard

Weeks after Hitler took power in 1933 an official party publication appeared entitled Shakespeare - a Germanic Writer, a counter to those who wanted to ban all foreign influences. At the Propaganda Ministry, Rainer Schlosser, given charge of German theatre by Goebbels, mused that Shakespeare was more German than English. DELL 1R28D Laptop Keyboard

After the outbreak of the war the performance of Shakespeare was banned, though it was quickly lifted by Hitler in person, a favour extended to no other. Not only did the regime appropriate the Bard but it also appropriated Elizabethan England itself. To the Nazi leaders, it was a young, vigorous nation, much like the Third Reich itself, quite unlike the decadent British Empire of the present day. GATEWAY V030946FS1 US Laptop Keyboard

Clearly there were some exceptions to the official approval of Shakespeare, and the great patriotic plays, most notably Henry V were shelved. But interestingly the reception of The Merchant of Venice was at best lukewarm (Marlowe's The Jew of Malta was suggested as a possible alternative) because it was too ambiguous and not nearly anti-semitic enough for Nazi taste. HP G61-424CA Laptop Keyboard

So Hamlet was by far the most popular play, along with Macbeth and Richard III.

That divergence between text and performance in Shakespeare continued into the new media of film. For instance, both Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet have been filmed in modern settings, sometimes with contemporary "updated" dialogue. DELL Vostro PP37L Laptop Keyboard

Additionally, there were efforts (notably by the BBC) to ensure that there was a filmed or videotaped version of every Shakespeare play. The reasoning for this was educational, as many government educational initiatives recognized the need to get performative Shakespeare into the same classrooms as the read plays. GATEWAY NV-54 Laptop Keyboard

Many English-language Modernist poets drew on Shakespeare's works, interpreting in new ways. Ezra Pound, for instance, considered the Sonnets as a kind of apprentice work, with Shakespeare learning the art of poetry through writing them. He also declared the History plays to be the true English epic. TOSHIBA Satellite P305-S8906 Laptop Keyboard

Basil Buntingrewrote the sonnets as modernist poems by simply erasing all the words he considered unnecessary. Louis Zukofsky had read all of Shakespeare's works by the time he was eleven, and his Bottom: On Shakespeare (1947) is a book-length prose poem exploring the role of the eye in the plays. ACER Aspire 5742 Laptop Keyboard

In its original printing, a second volume consisting of a setting of The Tempest by the poet's wife, Celia Zukofsky was also included.

Most biographical information about William Shakespeare's life and death derives from public instead of private documents: vital records, real estate and tax records, lawsuits, records of payments, and references to Shakespeare and his works in printed and hand-written texts. DELL NSK-D8001 Laptop Keyboard

The historical record documents that Shakespeare was baptised on 26 April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, England, in the Holy Trinity Church; at age 18 married Anne Hathaway with whom he had three children; and was an actor, playwright, poet, and theatre entrepreneur in London. Compaq Presario CQ57 Series Laptop Keyboard

Though more is known about Shakespeare's life than most other Elizabethan and Jacobean writers, because of his social status as a commoner, the low esteem in which his profession was held and the general disinterest of the time in the personal lives of writers, few personal biographical facts about Shakespeare survive.^[1] ACER Aspire 5742ZG Laptop Keyboard

West said He looked over the Shakespeare

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, LENOVO IdeaPad S10 20015 Laptop Keyboard

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.^[71] DELL NSK-D8001 Laptop Keyboard

Moreover, Boydell's engravers fell behind schedule, delaying the entire project.^[29] 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.^[72] Modern art historians have generally concurred that the quality of the engravings, particularly in the folio, was poor. LENOVO IdeaPad S10 20015 Laptop Keyboard

Moreover, the use of so many different artists and engravers led to a lack of stylistic cohesion.^[73]

Although the Boydells ended with 1,384 subscriptions,^[74] 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. HP G62-450SV Laptop Keyboard

Only the customers knew what they had purchased.^[75] 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. TOSHIBA Satellite L300 Laptop Keyboard

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.^[76] When both the Shakespeare enterprise and the Thames book failed, the firm had no capital to fall back upon. Beginning in 1789, HP G72-b52SF Laptop Keyboard

with the onset of the French revolution, 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.^[51][77]

In 1804, John Boydell decided to appeal to Parliament for a private bill to authorise a lottery to dispose of everything in his business. IBM Lenovo Thinkpad X201 Laptop Keyboard

The bill receivedroyal assent on 23 March, and by November the Boydells were ready to sell tickets.^[78][79] 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 guineas apiece (£230 each in modern terms). GATEWAY AEPA6TAU111 Laptop Keyboard

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, a gem engraver and cameo modeller, of Leicester Fields (nowLeicester Square). HP 496878-001 Laptop Keyboard

Josiah offered to buy the gallery and its paintings back from Tassie for £10,000 (worth about £690,000 now), but Tassie refused and auctioned the paintings at Christie's.^[80] The painting collection and two reliefs by Anne Damer 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. SONY VAIO VGN-FZ21E Laptop Keyboard

Instead, it remained part of the façade of the building in its new guise as theBritish Institution until the building was torn down in 1868–69. The Banks sculpture was then moved to Stratford-upon-Avon and re-erected in New Place Garden between June and November 1870.^[51] Lenovo 04W0872 Laptop Keyboard

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

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 opened a Gallery of the Poets in the former Royal Academy building on the south side of Pall Mall. HP 519265-001 Laptop Keyboard

The first exhibition featured one work from each of 19 artists, including Fuseli, Reynolds, and Thomas Gainsborough. 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.^[81] Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E520 Laptop Keyboard

This did not deterHenry Fuseli from opening a Milton Gallery in the same building in 1799. Another such venture was the Historic Gallery opened by Robert Bowyer 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 The History of Great Britain.^[82] TOSHIBA Satellite L775D-S7305 Laptop Keyboard

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, a private club of connoisseurs founded that year to hold exhibitions. SONY VAIO VGN-NR11Z/S Laptop Keyboard

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 masters, generally not for sale, from the first week of June to the end of August.^[84] HP G42-164LA Laptop Keyboard

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 asRomantic poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Lectures on Shakespeare" and William Hazlitt's dramatic criticism. HP G42-415DX Laptop Keyboard

Despite Charles Lamb's criticism of the Gallery's productions, Charles and Mary Lamb's children's book, Tales from Shakespeare (1807), was illustrated using plates from the project.^[85]

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, DELL Vostro 3450 Laptop Keyboard

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".^[86] Scholars have described Boydell's folio as a precursor to the modern coffee table book. DELL FM8 Laptop Keyboard

In his own time, William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was rated as merely one among many talented playwrights and poets, but since the late 17th century he has been considered the supreme playwright and poet of the English language. No other dramatist has been performed even remotely as often on the world stage as Shakespeare. TOSHIBA Mini NB 505-SP0160 Laptop Keyboard

The plays have often been drastically adapted in performance; the version of King Lear used in performance between 1681 and 1838, for example, had a happy ending provided by the Irish poet Nahum Tate. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the era of the great acting stars, to be a star on the British stage was synonymous with being a great Shakespearean actor. DELL Vostro PP37L laptop keyboard

Then the emphasis was placed on the soliloquies as declamatory turns at the expense of pace and action, and Shakespeare's plays seemed in peril of disappearing beneath the added music, scenery, and special effects produced by thunder, lightning, and wave machines.

Editors and critics of the plays, disdaining the showiness and melodrama of Shakespearean stage representation, SONY VAIO VGN-SZ640 laptop keyboard

soon began to focus on Shakespeare as a dramatic poet, to be studied on the printed page rather than in the theatre. The rift between Shakespeare on the stage and Shakespeare on the page was at its widest in the early 19th century, at a time when both forms of Shakespeare were hitting peaks of fame and popularity: Compaq Presario CQ56-110SE laptop keyboard

theatrical Shakespeare was successful spectacle and melodrama for the masses, while book or closet drama Shakespeare was being elevated by the reverential commentary of theRomantics into unique poetic genius, prophet, and bard. Before the Romantics, Shakespeare was simply the most admired of all dramatic poets, SONY VAIO VGN-AR230G laptop keyboard

especially for his insight into human nature and his realism, but Romantic critics such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge refactored him into an object of almost religious adoration or "bardolatry" (from bard + λατρεία, Greek for worship—a word coined by George Bernard Shaw), who towered above mere mortal writers, and whose plays were to be worshipped as not "merely great works of art" but as "phenomena of nature, SONY VAIO VGN-CR32S laptop keyboard

like the sun and the sea, the stars and the flowers" and "with entire submission of our own faculties" (Thomas de Quincey, 1823). To the later 19th century Shakespeare became in addition an emblem of national pride, the crown jewel of English culture, and a "rallying-sign", as Thomas Carlyle wrote in 1841, for the whole British empire. SONY VAIO VGN-FS790 laptop keyboard

Beginning around the turn of the 20th century, the historic rift between poet and playwright has begun to heal.

It is impossible to calculate Shakespeare's reputation in his own lifetime and shortly after. England scarcely had a modern literature to speak of before the 1570s, and detailed critical commentaries on modern authors did not begin to appear until the reign of Charles I.SONY VAIO VGN-AR230G laptop keyboard

The facts about his reputation must be surmised from fragmentary evidence. He was included in some contemporary lists of leading poets, but he seems to have lacked the stature of the aristocratic Philip Sidney, who became a cult figure due to his death in battle at a young age, or of Edmund Spenser. SONY VAIO VGN-AR670 laptop keyboard

Shakespeare's poems were reprinted far more frequently than his plays; but Shakespeare's plays were written for performance by his own company, and because no law prevented rival companies from using the plays, Shakespeare's troupe took steps to prevent his plays from being printed. HP Pavilion dv6-2030ev laptop keyboard

That many of his plays were pirated suggests his popularity in the book market, and the regular patronage of his company by the court, culminating in 1603 when James I turned it into the "King's Men," suggests his popularity among higher stations of society. Modern plays (as opposed to those in Latin and Greek) were considered ephemeral and even somewhat disreputable entertainments by some contemporaries; Compaq Presario CQ56-102SE laptop keyboard

the new Bodleian Library explicitly refused to shelve plays. Some of Shakespeare's plays, particularly the history plays, were reprinted frequently in cheap quarto (essentially pamphlet) form; others, including many of his finest, took decades to reach a third edition. TOSHIBA Satellite C655-SP6010L laptop keyboard

After Ben Jonson pioneered the canonization of modern plays by printing his own works in folio (the luxury book format) in 1616, Shakespeare was the next playwright to be honored by a folio collection, in 1623. The fact that that folio went into another edition within nine years indicates that he was held in unusually high regard for a playwright. HP 9J.NOL82.W01 laptop keyboard

The dedicatory poems by Ben Jonson and John Milton in the second folio were the first to suggest that Shakespeare was the supreme poet of his age. These expensive reading editions are the first visible sign of a rift between Shakespeare on the stage and Shakespeare for readers, a rift that was to widen over the next two centuries. FUJITSU Lifebook S7210 laptop keyboard

In his 1630 work 'Timber' or 'Discoveries', Ben Jonson praised the speed and ease with which Shakespeare wrote his plays as well as his contemporary's honesty and gentleness towards others.

During the Interregnum (1642–1660), all public stage performances were banned by the Puritan rulers.SONY VAIO VGN-N38Z/W laptop keyboard

Though denied the use of the stage, costumes and scenery, actors still managed to ply their trade by performing "drolls" or short pieces of larger plays that usually ended with some type of jig. Shakespeare was among the many playwrights whose works were plundered for these scenes. HP Pavilion DV6t-4000 laptop keyboard

Among the most common scenes were Bottom's scenes from A Midsummer Night's Dream and the gravedigger's scene from Hamlet. When the theatres opened again in 1660 after this uniquely long and sharp break in British theatrical history, two newly licensed London theatre companies, the Duke's and the King's Company, SONY VAIO VGN-N250E/B laptop keyboard

started business with a scramble for performance rights to old plays. Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and the Beaumont and Fletcher team were among the most valuable properties and remained popular after Restoration playwriting had gained momentum.

In the elaborate Restoration London playhouses, designed by Christopher Wren, HP Pavilion dv6-2112sa Laptop Keyboard

Shakespeare's plays were staged with music, dancing, thunder, lightning, wave machines, and fireworks. The texts were "reformed" and "improved" for the stage, an undertaking which has seemed shockingly disrespectful to posterity. A notorious example is Nahum Tate's happy-ending King Lear(1681) (which held the stage until 1838), COMPAQ Presario CQ60-201EP Laptop Keyboard

while The Tempest was turned into an opera replete with special effects by William Davenant. In fact, as the director of the Duke's Company, Davenant was legally obliged to reform and modernize Shakespeare's plays before performing them, an ad hoc ruling by the Lord Chamberlain in the battle for performance rights which "sheds an interesting light on the many twentieth-century denunciations of Davenant for his adaptations" (Hume, p. 20). HP Pavilion G7-1167DX Laptop Keyboard

The common modern view of the Restoration stage as the epitome of Shakespeare abuse and bad taste has been shown by Hume to be exaggerated, and both scenery and adaptation became more reckless in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The incomplete Restoration stage records suggest that Shakespeare, although always a major repertory author, HP AEUT5U00010 Laptop Keyboard

was bested in the 1660–1700 period by the phenomenal popularity of Beaumont and Fletcher. "Their plays are now the most pleasant and frequent entertainments of the stage", reported fellow playwright John Dryden in 1668, "two of theirs being acted through the year for one of Shakespeare's or Jonson's". ACER Aspire 1410-742G16n Laptop Keyboard

In the early 18th century, however, Shakespeare took over the lead on the London stage fromBeaumont and Fletcher, never to relinquish it again.

By contrast to the stage history, in literary criticism there was no lag time, no temporary preference for other dramatists: Shakespeare had a unique position at least from the Restoration in 1660 and onwards. DELL Inspiron 1750 Laptop Keyboard

While Shakespeare did not follow the unbending French neo-classical "rules" for the drama and the three classical unities of time, place, and action, those strict rules had never caught on in England, and their sole zealous proponent Thomas Rymer was hardly ever mentioned by influential writers except as an example of narrow dogmatism. HP Pavilion dv6-2112sa Laptop Keyboard

Dryden, for example, argued in his influential Essay of Dramatick Poesie(1668) — the same essay in which he noted that Shakespeare's plays were performed only half as often as those of Beaumont and Fletcher — for Shakespeare's artistic superiority. Though Shakespeare does not follow the dramatic conventions, HP G62-147NR Laptop Keyboard

Dryden wrote,Ben Jonson does, and as a result Jonson lands in a distant second place to "the incomparable Shakespeare", the follower of nature, the untaught genius, the great realist of human character.

Boydell Shakespeare Gallery

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 in an effort to foster a school of British history painting. In addition to the establishment of the gallery, Boydell planned to produce an illustrated edition of William Shakespeare's plays and a folio of prints based upon a series of paintings by different contemporary painters. COMPAQ Presario CQ60-201EP Laptop Keyboard

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. SONY Vaio PCG-K23 Laptop Keyboard,SONY 147664712 Laptop Keyboard

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 editorGeorge Steevens to oversee the edition, which was released between 1791 and 1803. SONY Vaio PCG-K215S Laptop Keyboard

The press reported weekly on the building of Boydell's gallery, designed by George Dance the Younger, on a site in Pall Mall. Boydell commissioned works from famous painters of the day, such as Joshua Reynolds, 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. TOSHIBA Satellite L775D-S7226 Laptop Keyboard

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.

In the 18th century, Shakespeare became associated with rising British nationalism, and Boydell tapped into the same mood that many other entrepreneurs were exploiting.^[2] HP G42-164LA Laptop Keyboard

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.^[3] The mid-century Shakespearean theatrical revival was probably most responsible for reintroducing the British public to Shakespeare. Lenovo 04W0872 Laptop Keyboard

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.^[4] 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.HP Envy 15 Laptop Keyboard

The actor, director, and producer David Garrick was a key figure in Shakespeare's theatrical renaissance.^[6] His reportedly superb acting, unrivalled productions, numerous and important Shakespearean portraits, and his spectacular 1769 Shakespeare Jubilee helped promote Shakespeare as a marketable product and the national playwright. GATEWAY NX570X Laptop Keyboard

Garrick's Drury Lane theatre was the centre of the Shakespeare mania which swept the nation.^[7]

The visual arts also played a significant role in expanding Shakespeare's popular appeal. In particular, theconversation pieces designed chiefly for homes generated a wide audience for literary art, especially Shakespearean art.^[8] HP G61-336NR Laptop Keyboard

This tradition began with William Hogarth (whose prints reached all levels of society) and attained its peak in the Royal Academy 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.ASUS X53S Laptop Keyboard

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.

The rise in Shakespeare's popularity coincided with Britain's accelerating change from an oral to a print culture. HP Pavilion DV7-3065dx Laptop Keyboard

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.^[10] HP 519265-001 Laptop Keyboard

In order to turn a profit, booksellers chose well-known authors, such as Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson, to edit Shakespeare editions. According to Shakespeare scholar Gary Taylor, Shakespearean criticism became so "associated with the dramatis personae of 18th-century English literature ... [that] HP Compaq NW8440 Laptop Keyboard

he could not be extracted without uprooting a century and a half of the national canon".^[11] The 18th century's first Shakespeare edition, which was also the first illustrated edition of the plays, was published in 1709 by Jacob Tonson and edited by Nicholas Rowe.^[12] The plays appeared in "pleasant and readable books in small format" which "were supposed .ACER TravelMate 2403 Series laptop keyboard

to have been taken for common or garden use, domestic rather than library sets".^[13] 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".^[14] DELL Vostro PP38L laptop keyboard

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 (1773, 1785) and Edmund Malone (1790) produced meticulous editions with extensive footnotes.Lenovo Thinkpad X220 laptop keyboard

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. Compaq Presario CQ42-173TU laptop keyboard

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.HP Pavilion dv6-2124eo laptop keyboard

The idea of a grand Shakespeare edition was conceived during a dinner at the home of Josiah Boydell (John's nephew) in late 1786.^[18] Five important accounts of the occasion survive.^[19] 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: TOSHIBA Satellite P305-S8906 laptop keyboard

it includedBenjamin West, painter to King George III; George Romney, a renowned portrait painter; George Nicol, bookseller to the king;William Hayley, a poet; John Hoole, a scholar and translator of Tasso and Aristotle; and Daniel Braithwaite, secretary to the postmaster general and a patron of artists such as Romney and Angelica Kauffman. GATEWAY NX570X laptop keyboard

Most accounts also place the painter Paul Sandby at the gathering.^[20]

Boydell wanted to use the edition to help stimulate a British school of history painting. 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".^[21] HP Pavilion dv5-1044ca laptop keyboard

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. HP Pavilion dv5-1050ed laptop keyboard

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. Lenovo 3000 G430 4153 laptop keyboard

The proposition was received with acclaim by the Alderman [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, SONY VAIO VGN-CR23G laptop keyboard

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."^[23]

After the initial success of the Shakespeare Gallery, many wanted to take credit. Henry Fuseli long claimed that his planned Shakespeare ceiling (in imitation of the Sistine Chapel ceiling) had given Boydell the idea for the gallery.^[24] HP Pavilion G6-1B87CL laptop keyboard

James Northcote claimed that his Death of Wat Tyler and Murder of the Princes in the Tower had motivated Boydell to start the project.^[25] However, according to Winifred Friedman, who has researched the Boydell Gallery, it was probably Joshua Reynolds's Royal Academy lectures on the superiority of history painting that influenced Boydell the most.^[26] HP Mini 110-3004tu laptop keyboard

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, HP Pavilion dv6-2150es laptop keyboard

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 £350,000—an enormous sum at the time, worth about £36.4 million today^[27]—was eventually spent.^[28] The gallery opened in 1789 with 34 paintings and added 33 more in 1790 when the first engravings were published. SONY 148084122 Laptop Keyboard

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.^[29]

Advertisements were issued and placed in newspapers. TOSHIBA Mini NB 505-SP0160 Laptop Keyboard

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."^[30] SONY VAIO VGN-CR520E Laptop Keyboard

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, ACER Aspire 5610Z Laptop Keyboard

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".TOSHIBA Satellite A110 Series Laptop Keyboard

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.^[16] 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".^[32] HP Pavilion dv5-1104tu Laptop Keyboard

The volumes themselves were handsome, with gilded 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 experts William Bulmer and William Martin to develop and cut a new typeface specifically for the edition. HP Envy 15 Laptop Keyboard

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".^[33] Boydell also chose to use high-quality wove Whatman paper.^[34] The illustrations were printed independently and could be inserted and removed as the purchaser desired. HP 640892-001 Laptop Keyboard

The first volumes of the Dramatic Workswere published in 1791 and the last in 1805.

Boydell was responsible for the "splendor", and 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, HP G56-118CA Laptop Keyboard

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".^[36] He was also ultimately disappointed in the quality of the prints, but he said nothing to jeopardize the edition's sales.^[36] TOSHIBA Satellite L550-ST5701 Laptop Keyboard

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:

The thirty-six plays, printed from the texts of Reed and Malone, divide into the following three groups: Compaq Presario CQ42-228LA Laptop Keyboard

(1) five plays of the first three numbers printed from Reed's edition of 1785 with many changes adopted from the Malone text of 1790 (2) King Lear and the six plays of the next three numbers printed from Malone's edition of 1790 but exhibiting conspicuous deviations from his basic text (3) twenty-four plays of the last twelve numbers also printed from Malone's text but made to conform to Steevens's own edition of 1793. HP 488590-001 Laptop Keyboard

Throughout the edition, modern (i.e. 18th-century) spelling was preferred as were First Folio readings.^[38]

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, HP 519265-001 Laptop Keyboard

Thomas Stothard, George Romney, Henry Fuseli, Benjamin West, Angelica Kauffman, Robert Smirke, John Opie,Francesco Bartolozzi, Thomas Kirk, Henry Thomson, and Boydell's nephew and business partner, Josiah Boydell.

The folio and the illustrated Shakespeare edition were "by far the largest single engraving enterprise ever undertaken in England".^[39] HP AEUT3U00140 Laptop Keyboard

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".^[40] Scholars believe that a variety of engraving methods were employed and that line engraving was the "preferred medium" because it was "clear and hardwearing" and because it had a high reputation. TOSHIBA Mini NB 505-SP0160 Laptop Keyboard

Stipple engraving, which was quicker and often used to produce shading effects, wore out quicker and was valued less.^[41] Many plates were a mixture of both. Several scholars have suggested that mezzotint andaquatint were also used.^[42] Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E520 Laptop Keyboard

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).^[40] Most of Boydell's engravers were also trained artists; for example, Bartolozzi was renowned for his stippling technique. TOSHIBA Satellite L505-S5984 Laptop Keyboard

Boydell's relationships with his illustrators were generally congenial. One of them, 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; SAMSUNG R522 Laptop Keyboard

and his memory I shall ever hold in reverence".^[45] Boydell typically paid the painters between £105 to £210, and the engravers between £262 and £315.^[46] 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.^[47][48] HP 597635-001 Laptop Keyboard

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, Richard Westall, and Robert Smirke. ACER TravelMate 4150 Series Laptop Keyboard

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.^[49] 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.^[50] HP G42-380LA Laptop Keyboard

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.HP 636376-001 Laptop Keyboard

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.

In June 1788, Boydell and his nephew secured the lease on a site at 52 Pall Mall (51°30′20.5″N 0°8′12″W) to build the gallery and engaged George Dance, then the Clerk of the City Works, as the architect for the project.^[51] COMPAQ Presario CQ40-117TU Laptop Keyboard

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.^[52] LENOVO V022402AS1 Laptop Keyboard

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, 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. HP G62-a38SE Laptop Keyboard

Begun as a gambling establishment for wealthy young men, it had later become a reformist political club that counted William Pitt and William Wilberforce as members.

Dance's Shakespeare Gallery building had a monumental, neoclassical stone front, and a full-length exhibition hall on the ground floor. Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E520 Laptop Keyboard

Three interconnecting exhibition rooms occupied the upper floor, with a total of more than 4,000 square feet (370 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.^[51] Some reports describe the exterior as "sheathed in copper".^[53] HP Pavilion dv5-1160ep laptop keyboard

The lower storey of the façade was dominated by a large, rounded-arched doorway in the centre. The unmoulded arch rested on wide piers, each broken by a narrow window, above which ran a simple cornice. Dance placed a transom across the doorway at the level of the cornice bearing the inscription "Shakespeare Gallery". HP Pavilion DV6-1145ew laptop keyboard

Below the transom were the main entry doors, with glazed panels and side lights matching the flanking windows. A radialfanlight filled the lunette 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.^[51] HP G61-435ST laptop keyboard

The upper façade contained paired pilasters on either side, and a thick entablature and triangular pediment. The architectSir John Soane criticised Dance's combination of slender pilasters and a heavy entablature as a "strange and extravagant absurdity".^[54] The capitals topping the pilasters sported volutes in the shape of ammonite fossils. SONY Vaio PCG-K315S laptop keyboard

Dance invented this neo-classical feature, which became known as the Ammonite Order, specifically for the gallery. In a recess between the pilasters, Dance placed Thomas Banks's sculpture Shakespeare attended by Painting and Poetry, for which the artist was paid 500 guineas. Lenovo 3000 G450 2949 laptop keyboard

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".

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.^[57] COMPAQ Presario R3000 laptop keyboard

(The exact inventory is uncertain and most of the paintings have disappeared; only around 40 paintings can be identified with any certainty.^[58]) According to Frederick Burwick, during its sixteen-year operation, the Gallery reflected the transition from Neoclassicism to Romanticism.^[59] COMPAQ Presario CQ41-219AX laptop keyboard

Works by artists such as James Northcote represent the conservative, neoclassical elements of the gallery, while those of Henry Fuseli represent the newly emerging Romantic movement. William Hazlitt 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."^[60] HP 407218-001 laptop keyboard

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.^[61] The Daily Advertiser featured a weekly column on the gallery from May through August (exhibition season). TOSHIBA Satellite M645-S4070 laptop keyboard

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.^[62]

At the beginning of the enterprise, reactions were generally positive.^[63] The Public Advertiser wrote on 6 May 1789: "the pictures in general give a mirror of the poet ... SONY VAIO VGN-NW15L laptop keyboard

[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".^[64] The Times wrote a day later:

This establishment may be considered with great truth, as the first stone of an English School of Painting; HP 576835-001 laptop keyboard

and it is peculiarly honourable to a great commercial country, that it is indebted for such a distinguished circumstance to a commercial character—such an institution—will place, in the Calendar of Arts, the name of Boydell in the same rank with the Medici of Italy.

Fuseli himself may have written the review in the Analytical Review, which praised the general plan of the gallery while at the same time hesitating: HP G62-450SV laptop keyboard

"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".^[65]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".^[66] SONY VAIO VGN-FZ21E laptop keyboard

Criticism increased as the project dragged on: the first volume did not appear until 1791.^[29] James Gillray published a cartoon labelled "Boydell sacrificing the Works of Shakespeare to the Devil of Money-Bags".^[67] The essayist and soon-to-be co-author of the children's book Tales from Shakespeare (1807) Charles Lamb criticised the venture from the outset: SONY VAIO VGN-N250E/B laptop keyboard

What injury did not Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery do me with Shakespeare. To have Opie's Shakespeare, Northcote's Shakespeare, light headed Fuseli's Shakespeare, wooden-headed West's Shakespeare, deaf-headed Reynolds' Shakespeare, instead of my and everybody's Shakespeare. HP Pavilion dv6-3089la laptop keyboard\

To be tied down to an authentic face of Juliet! To have Imogen's portrait! To confine the illimitable!

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, SONY VAIO VGN-N38Z/W laptop keyboard

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".

By 1796, subscriptions to the edition had dropped by two-thirds.^[29] The painter and diarist Joseph Farington recorded that this was a result of the poor engravings: HP Pavilion dv6-3190ee laptop keyboard