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  • Gallery Six: The Pantaloon

Gallery Six: The Pantaloon

Shakespeare beautified, appropriated and commemorated

The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice

Even when it was the object of careful thought, text ceased to be the driving factor in certain editions of the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. Instead, Shakespeare’s words have become a vehicle for sumptuous production: for beautiful book design, specially cut type harking back to the earliest printed books, and for striking or beautiful illustration. From visual celebration of the Shakespearean text we merge into a celebration of Shakespeare the writer: a celebration seen also in previous anniversaries of his birth and death, in 1864, 1916 and 1964.

In particular, there were plans for a Shakespeare National Theatre in Bloomsbury to mark the 1916 Tercentenary. War meant the scheme had to be put on hold, but Israel Gollancz, chair of the committee, created the YMCA ‘Shakespeare Hut’ on Gower Street, where Shakespeare’s plays were performed for Anzac troops.

Yet Shakespeare’s popularity was not restricted to the English speaking world; translations of his work were produced across the world, with texts often appropriated and incorporated into local cultures – so much so that Shakespeare was claimed in Germany by Sturm und Drang writers such as Goethe and Schiller, and the world’s first learned Shakespeare society founded in Weimar in 1864.

Gallery

Thumbnail for The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke
Thumbnail for The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke
Thumbnail for The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke
Thumbnail for A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Thumbnail for A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Thumbnail for A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Thumbnail for A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Thumbnail for A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Thumbnail for A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Thumbnail for A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Thumbnail for Shake-Speares Sonnets
Thumbnail for Shake-Speares Sonnets
Thumbnail for The Poems of William Shakespeare
Thumbnail for The Poems of William Shakespeare
Thumbnail for The Poems of William Shakespeare
Thumbnail for Shakespeare Memorial Souvenir of the Shakespeare Ball: 1616-1916
Thumbnail for Shakespeare Memorial Souvenir of the Shakespeare Ball: 1616-1916
Thumbnail for Shakespeare Memorial Souvenir of the Shakespeare Ball: 1616-1916
Thumbnail for Shakespeare Memorial Souvenir of the Shakespeare Ball: 1616-1916
Thumbnail for Shakespeare Memorial Souvenir of the Shakespeare Ball: 1616-1916
Thumbnail for Shakespeare Memorial Souvenir of the Shakespeare Ball: 1616-1916
Thumbnail for Othello, the Moor of Venice
Thumbnail for Othello, the Moor of Venice
Thumbnail for Much Ado about Nothing: A Comedy
Thumbnail for The Comedy of Errors
Thumbnail for The Comedy of Errors

Further reading

  • Brinks, John Dieter (ed.), The Book as a Work of Art: The Cranach Press of Count Harry Kessler (Laubach and Williamstown, 2005)
  • Peterson, William S., The Kelmscott Press: A History of William Morris's Typographical Adventure (Oxford, 1991)
  • Tidcombe, Marianne, The Doves Press (London, 2002)
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