Shakespeare, Time and the Victorians: A Pictorial Exploration

by Stuart Sillars

• ISBN13: 9780521509695
• ISBN10: 0521509696
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-02-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Time and the visual sense were two essential preoccupations of the Victorians, and both were central to their presentations of Shakespeare's plays. In this extensive new study, Stuart Sillars examines multiple facets of this complex relationship. The desire for authenticity in production, in the work of Charles Kean and his followers, leads to elaborate sets that define and direct the performances' movement through time. Visual artists of all kinds fracture and extend the plays' movements, the Pre-Raphaelites through new techniques and approaches, illustrators through new forms of engraving and printing, and photographers through the emerging forms of the medium. The book also considers the multiple forms in which performances were recorded and re-created visually, and absorbed into the memories of their viewers. With many previously unpublished images, it draws together multiple fields to offer a new perspective on one of the most productive and various periods of Shakespeare activity.

Table of Contents

History, theatre and Shakespeare

Dress, attribute and image

Pre-Raphaelite Meridian

Charles Kean, staging and time

Memorialising performance

Ars et Veritas: photography and the Victorian stage

Fragmentation, excision and dispersal

Painting beyond Pre-Raphaelitism

Later stagings and the debate with painting

Encounters and memories

Select bibliography

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