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Shakespeare and the Fine Arts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Margaret Farrand Thorp
Margaret Farrand Thorp*
Affiliation:
Princeton, New Jersey
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Extract

It is, or at least it ought to be, illuminating to discover the attitude of a worker in any of the arts toward the other media of artistic expression. It seems curious therefore that, although it has been thought worth while to investigate Shakespeare's acquaintance with the law, his interest in medicine and in flower gardening, no one has been much concerned about his knowledge of pictures. Upon Shakespeare and music some one writes an article almost once a month but upon Shakespeare and the fine arts we have little beside the brief chapters in Shakespeare's England, a page or two in Prof. J. M. Manly's article on “Shapespeare Himself,” and Mr. Sidney Colvin's discussion of “The Sack of Troy in Shakespeare's Lucrece and in Some Fifteenth Century Drawings and Tapestries.”

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Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 46 , Issue 3 , September 1931, pp. 672 - 693
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1931

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References

1 Shakespeare's England, Oxford, 1916. v. 2, Ch. xvii, “The Fine Arts, §1 ”Painting, Sculpture, and Engraving,“ by Lionel Cust; §3 ”Architecture,“ by J. Alfred Gotch.

2 J. M. Manly, “Shakespeare Himself,” Memorial Volume to Shakespeare and Harvey, University of Texas, 1916.

3 Sidney Colvin, “The Sack of Troy in Shakespeare's Lucrece and in Some Fifteenth-Century Drawing and Tapestries,” A Book of Homage to Shakespeare, I. Gollancz, ed., Oxford, 1916.

4 And even this is probably derived not from observation but from literary tradition and contemporary handbooks, as Prof. Carleton Brown has interestingly demonstrated. “Shakespeare and the Horse,” The Library, iii, 152, April, 1912.

5 Love's Labour's Lost, ii, 236; Hamlet, iii, iv, 60; etc.

6 The Merchant of Venice, v, i, 147; As You Like It, iii, ii, 286; Hamlet, iii, ii, 162; etc.

7 2 Henry IV, v, iii, 6; Merry Wives of Windsor, i, i, 157; ii, ii, 223.

8 Love's Labour's Lost, iv, iii, 239; The Tempest, i, ii, 143; etc.

9 Twelfth Night, i, v. 250; Troilus and Cressida, iii, ii, 48.

10 Twelfth Night, iii, ii, 85; 2 Henry VI, iii, i, 203; Richard III, ii, iv, 54; etc.

11 See also I Henry VI, iii, iii, 14; Coriolanus, ii, i, 281; etc.

12 Mr. Cust in Shakespeare's England (op. cit.) tells of statues of the Nine Worthies on the façade of Montacute House in Somerset but the pageant in Love's Labour's Lost, v, ii, came in all probability out of books or from painted cloths.

13 Reproduced in Shakespeare's England, op. cit.

14 Sonnet xxiv, for instance.

15 E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, Oxford, 1923.

16 The Merry Wives of Windsor, iii, iii, 96; King John, iv, i, 2; etc.

17 See also The Two Gentlemen of Verona, iii, ii, 51; Twelfth Night, ii, iv, 45.

18 See for example Hotspur, 1 Henry IV, iii, i, 129; Orsino, Twelfth Night, ii, iv; Shylock, The Merchant of Venice, ii, v, 30.

19 Henslowe's Diary, ed. W. W. Greg, London, 1904, i, 6.

20 Shakespeare's England, vide supra.

21 Works of John Taylor the Water Poet not included in the folio volume of 1630, Printed for the Spenser Society, Manchester, 1870–78.

22 Sidney Lee, “Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton,” Dictionary of National Biography, v. 63.

23 Shakespeare's England, vide supra.

24 W. J. Lawrence, Pre-Restoration Stage Studies, Cambridge, Mass. Ch. 5.

25 A Winter's Tale, Variorum edition, H. H. Furness, Philadelphia, 1900.

26 Giorgio Vasari, Vite de' piu' eccellenti Pittori, Scultori e Architetti, Milan. 1807–11, v. 10.

27 Francis Meres, Palladis Tamia, An English Garner, J. Churton Collins, ed. London, 1903.

28 Carlo d'Arco, Istoria della vita e delle opere de Giulio Romano, Mantua, 1842.

29 Timber, “De progres, picturae.”

30 G. Sarrazin, “Shakespeare in Mantua,” Jahrbuch der Deutscher Shakespeare-Gesellechaft, Weimar, 1894.

31 Vide supra, note 28.

32 Op. cit.

33 Metamorphoses, i, 614.

34 Frederick Hard, “Spenser's ‘Clothes of Arras and of Toure,‘” Studies in Philology, April, 1930.

35 Hamlet, iv, vii, 167; King Lear, iv, vi, 11; As You Like It, ii, i, 30; A Midsummer-Night's Dream, ii, i, 249.

38 Printed by Sidney Lee in the New Preface, §4, to his Life of Shakespeare, New York, 1909.

37 Op. cit.

38 Op. cit.

39 Op. cil.

40 This idea evidently interested Shakespeare, for he makes a simile of it in Venus and Adonis, 601.

41 Timber, “De pictura.”

42 Essays, “Of Beauty.”

43 See also the descriptions of the “wanton pictures” in the Shrew Induction and of the statue of Hermione, quoted above.

44 Abraham Fraunce, The Countess of Pembroke's Ivy Church, Entitled Amintas Dale, London, 1592.

45 Thomas Elyot, The Boke named the Gouvernor, ed. H. H. S. Croft, London, 1883, v. 2.

46 Timber, “Poesis et pictura.”