ABSTRACT
In considering the trio of Shakespeare, memory and the visual arts, we are immediately faced with three vast areas whose relationship is complex and by no means straightforward. Artists came to terms with Shakespeare’s writing by producing paintings, engravings, sculptures, drawings and photographs, but this engagement did not emerge until the eighteenth century, at a time when England was beginning to portray Shakespeare as a national genius not least through other means, such as festivals and new editions of his plays. At the same time, this burgeoning of Shakespearean visual culture gave the English public a new way to think about and remember Shakespeare’s plays that sometimes drew upon, and sometimes eschewed, contemporary theatrical portrayals. Teasing out the role of visual culture in memory studies helps provide us with a method of engaging with specific examples of the way in which Shakespeare and his plays were commemorated and remembered, from the Stratford Jubilee of 1769, the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery of 1789–1803, and the photographs of performances by Ellen Terry and Henry Irving that were produced in the 1870s and 1880s.
