Henry Woodward as Petruchio
It isn’t just the UK that’s gone Shakespeare-mad to coincide with this year’s London Olympics and World Shakespeare Festival. At Yale University in the USA a fabulous exhibition is running that highlights the Beinecke Library’s outstanding collections, called Remembering Shakespeare. To accompany the exhibition Matt Hunter is posting a daily blog containing a variety of digital images and commentary. Among the books and documents which they are illustrating on the blog are many examples of published plays by both Shakespeare and his contemporaries, and for anyone not able to visit in person this is a wonderful resource. Among artistic responses to Shakespeare’s works I particularly like Walter Crane’s illustrations for The Tempest.
Thomas Dowse's notebook including a quotation from The Rape of Lucrect
Other Shakespeare-related exhibitions at Yale include one called While these visions did appear and there’s an online exhibition featuring some of the glorious works of art from the Yale Center for British Art.
If you’re able to get to these exhibitions, they are obviously exceptional, so do go. Otherwise, enjoy the online exhibitions and the blog!
