look here upon this picture and on this
So I got paid today, and in celebration I ordered a copy of the RSC's Essential Shakespeare CD, which has bits and pieces from most of the high-profile productions of the last 50 years or so. I am positively brimming with squee, although since it won't be released until 25 October I'll have to wait about a month for it.
But actually the reason for this post was to link you to the University of Wisconsin's Illustrated Shakespeare Collection, which is full of online facsimiles of 19th-century Shakespeare illustrations (as, erm, you've probably guessed from the name of the collection). I love this sort of thing -- it's fascinating to see some of the tropes in depictions of the plays, and also pictures of Shakespeare stuff are just fun.
I especially recommend Frank Howard's Spirit of the Plays of Shakespeare series (which is in six volumes: comedies in parts one and two, histories (with special guests the Merry Wives of Windsor) in part three, and tragedies in parts four and five), and Charles Heath's Heroines of Shakespeare, the latter not so much because it's pretty as because it's sort of interesting from a gender-studies POV: even Shakespeare's steeliest heroines are here rendered as rather sentimental and dewy-eyed. (See, for instance, Queen Margaret, or Constance. Also, Lavinia is depicted with her mouth closed and her hands decorously out of the frame.) Also, this one is interesting in terms of its definition of "celebrated English dramatists" -- even I'm not sure who some of the people at the bottom of the page are...
(Also, in re the Howard illustrations, for the histories buffs, mad props to whoever can spot the evidence that he's studied his Holinshed... ;) )
Ah, Shakespeare. Verily he is like unto crack.
But actually the reason for this post was to link you to the University of Wisconsin's Illustrated Shakespeare Collection, which is full of online facsimiles of 19th-century Shakespeare illustrations (as, erm, you've probably guessed from the name of the collection). I love this sort of thing -- it's fascinating to see some of the tropes in depictions of the plays, and also pictures of Shakespeare stuff are just fun.
I especially recommend Frank Howard's Spirit of the Plays of Shakespeare series (which is in six volumes: comedies in parts one and two, histories (with special guests the Merry Wives of Windsor) in part three, and tragedies in parts four and five), and Charles Heath's Heroines of Shakespeare, the latter not so much because it's pretty as because it's sort of interesting from a gender-studies POV: even Shakespeare's steeliest heroines are here rendered as rather sentimental and dewy-eyed. (See, for instance, Queen Margaret, or Constance. Also, Lavinia is depicted with her mouth closed and her hands decorously out of the frame.) Also, this one is interesting in terms of its definition of "celebrated English dramatists" -- even I'm not sure who some of the people at the bottom of the page are...
(Also, in re the Howard illustrations, for the histories buffs, mad props to whoever can spot the evidence that he's studied his Holinshed... ;) )
Ah, Shakespeare. Verily he is like unto crack.