3-016-889 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Tableau of Shakspeare characters, designed by John Gilbert, 1864. Illustration celebrating the tricentenary of Shakespeare's birth. 'In the foreground...[is] the unhappy Prince of Denmark...while poor Ophelia, frenzied with his neglect of her, plays with her silly posies, and sings her wild song before she dies...the vindictive Jew sharpening his knife and poising his scales...beneath the pelting of the pitiless storm, accompanied by the Fool and the Madman at midnight on the bare heath, old Lear declares the raging tempest less unkind than his ungrateful daughters...Above, the jealous Moor, turning a dreadful glance upon his innocent and imploring wife, receives the poisonous falsehood which a traitor is pouring into his ear...As we see on the left hand King Henry VIII., leaning upon the shoulder of Wolsey, we expect the Cardinal's fall under that dangerous weight of royal favour. On the right hand...Here are the phantoms of witchcraft that met the gaze of Macbeth; here is Puck, laden with the ass's head to be fixed on the shoulders of that ass Bottom; here is Ariel, the delicate and crafty sprite, hovering at the magician's hand'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.