'@£ ardolatry" is a pejorative term. It means the uncritical adulation of Shakespeare, "the Bard," cultural hero-worship.

Bardolatry is unfashionable now, at least among scholars, but Shakespeare seems as popular as ever - as popular as Ethan

. Hawke and Leonardo DiCaprio, the Shakespearean actors. The great age of Bardolatry, however, spanned the 18th and 19th

centuries, when Shakespeare could bid fair to be the most influential artist in European culture. Boydell's Shakespeare prints, which appeared

right on the cusp of the two centuries, testify to this extraordinary influence.

When we call artists "influential," what do we mean? That these artists shape the culture we inhabit, certainly - but that's as vague

as the term "influential." A crude but astonishing way of establishing Shakespeare's influence is to recite some numbers. For example, during

Shakespeare's twenty-year career as a dramatist he was personally responsible for ten percent of all the words which entered English and

stayed: a staggering, incomparable linguistic influence. Shakespeare's vocabulary extended to approximately thirty-four thousand words,

versus the eight thousand words of the King James Bible (published in 1611, about the time Shakespeare was writing The Tempest).

Over twenty-one thousand musical works have been composed upon Shakespearean themes - thirty operas based upon The Tempest

alone. A number of these compositions are themselves masterpieces: Beethoven's "Coriolan" overture; Verdi's Othello and Falstaff;

Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet;"

Mendelssohn's incidental music to A

Midsummer Night's Dream, including the

"Wedding March" familiar to everybody.

Today, over twenty thousand books,

articles and reviews about Shakespeare are

published each year. Add the number of

performances and internet postings and you will

come up with a figure only astronomers could

comprehend. In Keats' words, it "doth tease us

out of thought, as doth eternity." (Keats kept a

small picture of Shakespeare in front of him

when he wrote.)

All these numbers serve only to

suggest that Shakespeare has long been a

cultural powerplant, radiating energy to ourXLIV

language, music, scholarship and, as this exhibit reveals, our art. In the 1780's John Boydell was inspired to an elaborate multi-media project.

Boydell, an engraver who had become a wealthy arts printer and exporter, commissioned leading British artists to paint scenes from Shakespeare's

plays: one hundred paintings in all. The painters included Sir Joshua Reynolds, Benjamin West, and Henry Fuseli. Boydell built a free-

standing exhibition hall at 52 Pall Mall, London, to house the "Shakespeare Collection," which opened in 1789. Boydell also arranged for the

best engravers to make engravings of the paintings and for printers to produce a giant folio atlas of the prints. This collector's edition was

published in 1805 by Josiah Boydell, John's nephew. Lastly, the Shakespearean scholar George Steevens was hired to edit a new, nine-volume

"National Ediiien" of Shakespeare's plays. This ~ppeared in 1802, beautifully printed and illustrated by another one hundred engravings from

smaller ShaKespearean paintings. It is still regarded as a landmark work of Shakespearean scholarship.

Boydell's vl~ion ~s ~pinglY patriotic - and exp,e"'nsive~oydell poured three hundred thousand pounds into hispfojecf; a"" ../ q c·' -

RockefellC C7€8que sum at the time. Boydel! wished to~stablish, in on.:;reat stroke?n ire school" of British paimi~g to ~~'))

~ -: _'" ~/4: //

Europe's academic-historical tradition. He wished to celebrate

England and England's supreme poet; the gallery of paintings and

the edition would stand as permanent monuments to Shakespeare

and his "sceptered isle." And, through the engravings, Boydell

intended to extend the reputation of English arts - poetic, painted,

engraved, printed - to cultured people everywhere. Though

Boydell's project lost money and eventually the gallery was closed,

his vision was realized beyond what he could foresee. How could

he have predicted that a collection of his prints would one day find

its way into the hands of the Jesuits, much less into the hands of

the "black robes" of the Oregon Province? The prints were

published in 1805,just as Lewis and Clark were making their way

past us on the Snake River. The Oregon Province of the Society of

Jesus donated these prints to Gonzaga University in 1978.

These prints were meant for an audience quite familiar

with Shakespeare's plays. Unless the viewer knows the storyline

and characters illustrated in each print, the artworks remain mute.

The prints, therefore, expect to be "read," not just looked at. A

few sample "readings" might. demonstrate this method of

appreciation.

~

rint XLIV, the Ghost's first appearance in

Hamlet, captures the grand theatricality and VII

melodrama of all the collection; these are not understated works. Romantic Age emotionalism suits this scene, perhaps the most

famous of stage tableaux. Were we at a great research library, such as the Huntington in Pasadena, we could study centuries of attempts by

painters, film-makers, illustrators, actors, and photographers to do justice to this dramatic supernatural revelation scene. Earlier in the century,

David Garrick had been the most famous Shakespearean actor and director: the Olivier or Branagh of his time. His confrontation with the

Ghost became a celebrated set-piece, a show-stopper like the helicopter's descent in Miss Saigon. As Hamlet, Garrick would pace the stage

front, near the edge, between Horatio and a guard. Garrick wore a long black coat and a broad-brimmed black hat. The Ghost entered from the

back of the theatre, behind the audience, and slowly moved forward down the center aisle. Awareness of the Ghost's presence would thus

sweep forward through the audience, finally reaching Horatio on stage. He would grab Hamlet's shoulder, crying, "Look, my lord, it comes!"

Garrick, his back to the audience, would whirl, throwing open his cloak with both arms, bat-like, and knocking his hat off so that it sailed to the

rear of the stage. Then, in shock and horror ("Angels and ministers of grace defend us!") he would seem to plunge off the stage's edge, only

to be seized at the last instant by Horatio and the guard, one on each side. Only his feet still on stage, his rigid body extended over the front

rows, Hamlet would hang suspended above the abyss, his arms and cloak still spread like a funereal Winged Victory.

This was great spectacle, though not everyone applauded it. Dr. Johnson, the Garrick ofliterary criticism at the time, condemned the

staging's overblown effects. His biographer, Boswell, asked, "Would not you, sir, start as Mr. Garrick does if you saw a ghost?" Johnson

replied, "I hope not. IfI did, I should frighten the ghost." Our engraving, based upon Henry Fuseli's painting, certainly favors Garrick-style

flamboyance over Johnsonian restraint. Hamlet and Horatio wrestle heroically, their hair streaming in the tempest. Hamlet's head and

massive neck are worthy of Michelangelo; this is no neurasthenic young man but a romantic titan. The Ghost, likewise, is no purgatorial

wraith, despite the chain beneath him, suggestive of afterlife penance, but "the majesty of buried Denmark" as Colossus of Rhodes. The

Ghost's absolute, rooted stance contrasts with the wrestling~'s physical and emotional instability. The full moon behind the Ghost's head~ '#"d"!'hi f d th ~'l"d-l . Th -""~H '1" -1-d''''-f -h~; h /~ h' ~ 'ld b h-- ,..;"'-'h·"'he eate ~ IS ixe .,0 er or yeyes. ey"sull)J:lIona;!l.et to a-wor 0 c aos -note t e raves WUJ,c.grow WI ~r.(;!. mo 1!J1,')!H e

tion his'sword ,points. The Gh st will lead Halfl1~ th~tl~ymbolic Of"cu7ritYJ10vio1'ened'. adness, ancLdest:tl1ttio;'-'l Y iF': ji A /' "'~¢ a

../ \ 'f ;~ ~. _,,4 ~~ ~_,' \"L.,,-

Print VII, from a painting by Rigaud, also works architectonically. It illustrates just what Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1 reveals

structurally at its conclusion - the splendid emergence on the Shrewsbury battlefield of Prince Hal as England's great champion, the warrior-

king-to-be Henry V. Indeed, the longbow archers behind Hal's shoulder will prove the deadly force which destroys the French chivalry at

Agincourt, where Henry V conquers France - another climactic moment in Shakespeare's "Henriad." In this print, Hal stands triumphant over

the rebel warlord Hotspur, whom he has mortally wounded. Behind Halon the other side lies Falstaff, not mortally wounded but feigning

death to avoid danger. The arrangement, like the play itself, dramatizes Hal's life-choice. Will he remain with his father-figure of Vice,

Falstaff, and continue to play the pub-crawling prodigal son? Or will he join the great world of kingship and war, and play his part as Prince

of Wales? The picture reveals the answer. Hal has turned his back on the craven Falstaff. In fact, Falstaff appears most terrified not of the

enemy, but of Hal's sword directly over his head, which he covers with his shield. (In Henry N,Part 2, Hal will banish Falstaff; heartbroken

by this rejection, Falstaff soon dies.) Hotspur, who defied the crown and sought to steal it from Hal, now gazes up at Hal's ostrich plume,

symbolic of the Prince of Wales. Hotspur is about to utter his death speech, but, choking on blood, will halt in mid-sentence. Hal completes

Hotspur's final line: "and food ...for worms, brave Percy." Physically

and verbally, Halfinishes off Hotspur; he royally appropriates Hotspur's

words, his victories, and his valor. But in a gesture or princely courtesy,

he plucks his ostrich plume to cover Hotspur's face. Hal is suitably

central in the composition, towering in the foreground, the only fully

upright, unmoving figure in the entire scene. He is as Shakespeare

intended us to see him, "every inch a king."cg hiaroscuro is the term from art criticism for the

dramatic interpl~y of light and dark in a picture.

Print L, from Act V of Othello, relies upon

chiaroscuro to depict that tragedy's light versus dark main theme. The

scene is Desdemona's bedchamber, where Othello, entirely in shadows,

is about to murder his wife. He will not use the dagger he carries; he

will smother her and then stab himself when confronted with his crime.

The dagger anticipates Othello's suicidal guilt. His hand covers his face,

suggesting both his agony and his blindness; Desdemona is innocent.

She lies asleep, bathed in a brilliant light that has no source. It radiates

from behind Desdemona, or even from Desdemona herself. As Othello

moves toward her, he says, "Put out the light, and then put out the light."

He speaks repetitively because he means, literally, "Snuff the candle"

and, figuratively, "Extinguish Desdemona." Desdemona is identified

with whiteness, purity, brilliance, and virtue all through the play. She is

"a pearl" to him, and yet, driven by the dark passion of jealousy which eclipses his reason, he will commit a great crime.

Othello, of course, is "the Moor" and Shakespeare makes much of his exotic, threatening "blackness" amongst the Venetians. In the

very first scene Desdemona's father, Brabantio, refuses to believe that his submissive daughter could elope with Othello. The rumor is absurd:~, ------"This is Venicefmy house is not a grange." Comfoll,ted"wlth the truth, he can,nly accuse Othello of "black magic." The play moves from

Ul;ba:ti1'~htened" Veq~where accusatiOJ;lSC'b\ly investigated by th1wise men's council, the Signory - to fortress Cyprus, on the

wild frontier~on. The Turkj,,4tptkrces of darkn,ess, lurk over the aorizon, threatening Christian Europe. As a general and as a

husb£6thello must confrolt b J;trify-and chaos. "whe(Othello weighs his love for Desdemona, he says fearfully, "and when I love thee" "'" - (, , Mk f~ /,s

nofiChaos is come agai .' In QyPpls, a~~~ not afforded due process. They prompt violenc~in the darLdriinkln street figlits,. h -- bbi ". bl' all I'd ~hu A" .Jl"'\ lki/ hr' h/h I'a b d / 1'\, h ~ll f II' .,,,, hi / 0/ • d -+/~

~pgiflll 1 s, esperat~ sDanu~tang'1 oug s a Owy} rooms',l~te 0 asweyto .•lso;usymboh~ ar~~~s,

Skelton's engr~ing of Northcote's Burfinff'i ~ ilren (pri v: Ico/ er) is ,e finest w~~k'1~H the ,6Ydelf prints - a

. /""

L

masterpiece which Gonzaga is especially

fortunate to own. The scene is from Richard

1lI, Shakespeare's own masterpiece of character

assassination. Shakespeare's Richard is an

unforgettable arch villi an. Other characters call

him "that bottled spider," "hell's black

intelligencer,' and an "elvish-marked, abortive,

rooting hog." For once in Shakespeare,

appearance and reality match: Richard is

hunchbacked, lame, and morally deformed.

Shakespeare's stroke of genius, though, is to

make Richard a self-aware, self-mocking, and

confiding monster. From the first, when Richard

drags himself upstage and hisses to us, "Now is

the winter of our discontent," we are his appalled

but fascinated accomplices. Shakespeare

exploits the seductiveness of evil: Hannibal Lecter is Richard of York's direct descendent.

Shakespeare never lets us forget just how wicked Richard is; this engraving illustrates Richard's worst crime, the murder of the two

princes, his nephews, in the tower of London. Northcote's work emphasizes the pathos and the sacrilege of this crime by drawing upon

archetypal images from art history. The boys' limp, naked bodies being lowered recall any number of Renaissance "deposition" paintings, in

which Christ's body is handed down from the cross. The figure in armor here, too, echoes the Roman soldier who appears in many deposition

scenes. The bare, massive arm at center - creating the strongest line of movement in the work - is drawn from Michelangelo. This is the arm

of the Cumaean Sibyl on the Sistine ceiling, or the carved arm of Moses or David, grafted onto a murderer. The soldier's plated arm reinforces

the line, as does the curved stone archway to the lower right. These three downward curves draw the viewer from the torchlight, top right, to

the beseeching hands, bottom left. These hands are another deposition image; they might be the hands of Mary or the apostle John, were they

not the hands, here, of a conspirator. Moreover, do not the princes' bodies recall Christ's body in Michelangelo's Pietd't We are meant to feel

the pity, pieta, evoked by the slaughter of innocence. This scene is indeed of a primal, not just specific, fall, symbolized by the stairs

descending into darkness. The repeated strong, downward, vertical arrow-points of the ~on bars direct us straight into an actual dungeon and

the symbolic moral pit, the hell of Richard's wickedness. We are not witnessing a mere political crime, but a martyrdom. As the murderer

Tyrell says in this scene, "The tyrannous and bloody act is done,ffhe most arch deed of piteous massacre/That ever yet this land was guilty

of." Centuries of work by revisionist historians have failed to rehabilitate Richard ill's reputation after Shakespeare's portrait, and Northcote

here is Shakespeare's ally.

~-,..;;;:=::;)he story behind the scene of one last print - XXVill, from Henry VIII - serves as the best conclusion to our exhibit.

Shakespeare's Globe Theater was built in 1599. It was nearly circular (a "wooden 0," it is called in Henry V), open to the sky,

timber-framed, with a thatch roof. In other words, it was perfectly designed for burning down; a giant chimney that could hold

twenty-five hundred people. And bum it did, on June 29, 1613, in a most appropriate way. By 1613 Shakespeare had retired to Stratford. He

was handing his quill pen over to his successor as the Globe troupe's playwright, John Fletcher. Shakespeare and Fletcher collaborated upon

Shakespeare's final play, Henry VIII. The play premiered on June 29, 1613.

Up in the "hut" - a sort of loft room above the stage, on top of the Globe - was a cannon. This cannon provided basic sound effects

- during battle scenes, for example. Obviously, they frred no cannon ball, but a full gunpowder charge, held against the fuse by a paper or

fabric "wadding." On June 29, 1613, during the first performance of Henry VIII, the cannon was frred in Act V, scene IV (the scene illustrated

in our print). The salute celebrated the dramatized baptism of Elizabeth, who of course would become Queen Elizabeth I; her glorious reign

coincides with Shakespeare's career. Shakespeare in this last play draws English history up to his own life; he can go no further. The wadding

xxvru

from that cannon shot lodged in the roof thatch and smoldered there during the final scene. Then the roof ignited, the fire raced around the

'0," and the entire theater burned to the ground. Somehow the whole audience escaped through the Globe's two insufficient doorways. One

man's breeches caught fire; they were doused with some handy beer.

How fitting, that, as Shakespeare quitted the stage, his stage itself - "the great globe itself,lYea, all which it inherit" - should

dissolve. How could it exist without its creator to give it life?

At the center of our print stands Crammer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, his hand raised in benediction. His title, pose, and

vestments repeat the central figure of the High Priest in Raphael's Marriage of the Virgin: this is a sacred scene, a holy day in the national

religion of the Tudor monarchy. At the side of the Archbishop is Henry VIII himself, new head of the Church of England. The painter,

Anglican priest W. Peters, has copied Henry from Hans Holbein's great portraits, the definitive images of Tudor absolutism. At the left edge

is the Duke of Norfolk, holding his marshal's staff; his other hand is raised almost as in an Adoration or Nativity painting. On the other side

of the Archbishop is the Duchess of Norfolk, the godmother holding the holy child Elizabeth. This pageant scene shows us the inauguration

of the "Elizabethan Age," just as the Globe fire, during this scene, ends the "Age of Shakespeare." Yet the Archbishop's speech, from this

scene, reminds us:

As whenThe bird of wonder dies; the maiden phoenix,Her ashes new-create another heirAs great in admiration as herself ....Who from the sacred ashes of her honorShall starlike rise, as great in fame as she was,And so stands fixed.

The great Boydell project of the 18th Century, and our exhibit here in the 21st century, prove that the "Age of Shakespeare" never

really ended. Shakespeare's influence seems immortal, like the self-perpetuating phoenix; Shakespeare's reputation "so stands fixed," made

permanent, like an engraving.

Michael Richard Bonin, Ph.DDr. Michael Richard Bonin is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Gonzaga University.

Image Plates:

XXIV:XLIV:VII:L:XXVIII:

Burying the Royal Children (cover), engraved by William Skelton, after a painting by James Northcote, RA., 1795.Hamlet, Horatio, Marcellus, and the Ghost, engraved by Robert Thew, after a painting by Henry Fuseli, RA., 1796.Prince Henry, Hotspur, and Falstaff, engraved by Thomas Ryler, after a painting by 1. Francis Rigaud, R.A., 1796.DesdemonaAsleep, engraved by William Leney, after a painting by Josiah Boydell, 1800.The Christening of Queen Elizabeth, engraved by Joseph Collyer, after a painting by the Rev. Matthew William Peters, RA., 1803.

This publication was funded by the Jundt Art Museum's Annual Campaign 2001-2002.© Jundt Art Museum, Gonzaga University, Spokane, Washington 99258-0001