The Face and Figure of Shakespeare (Iain Mackintosh)

Writing about web page http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/hrc/events/vf/

The HRC lecture series at Warwick has been fascinating this year, and this evening's talk was no exception, being particularly relevant to my own research. Iain Mackintosh, a theatre designer (he designed the Cottesloe!) is curating an exhibition opening in April at the Orleans House Gallery entitled The Face and Figure of Shakespeare, which for the first time will be bringing together most of the major sculptures, frontispieces and illustrations of Shakespeare during the 18th century, creating a narrative showing Shakespeare being recast as the national hero.

The talk itself was illuminating, particularly in the context of what I've been hearing (Stuart Sillars etc.) and reading (Jonathan Bate, Gary Taylor, Michael Dobson et. al.) this year so far. The issue of illustration, artistic representation and other visual incarnations of Shakespeare keeps recurring in my investigations into Bardolatry and the rise of Shakespeare as national/cultural icon in the eighteenth century. Yet I'm painfully aware that, as exciting and rich as this area is, it can only be a footnote to my main concern, the apocrypha.

However, the exhibition sounds wonderful. If you go on a Sunday, they are running free shuttle buses to Garrick's Tempe to Shakespeare at Hampton, so you can catch both exhibition and the original sight of Garrick's specially commissioned Roubiliac statue in the same day. Catch it if you can, it runs April 18th - June 7th.

: 04 Mar 2009 21:10 |  Tags: Seminars |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem