Shakespeare's Comedies

Davidson College and Davidson Arts and Creative Engagement (DACE) welcomes Britain's Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) for a Fall 2022 Residency. With the purpose “to ensure that Shakespeare is for everyone, unlocking the power of his plays and live performance, throughout the UK and across the world,” RSC’s two-week residency includes workshops, visits to local public schools, seminars, lectures, after-play discussions, master classes, and staging The Taming of the Shrew.

The Taming of the Shrew is but one of the fourteen comedies written by William Shakespeare (1564–1616). As an accompaniment to the RSC performance and residency, Davidson College Art Galleries presents a selection of engravings featuring scenes from several of Shakespeare’s other comedies.

In the eighteenth century British publisher and engraver, John Boydell (1719-1804), initiated a grand plan to produce an illustrated edition of Shakespeare’s plays. This began with commissioning a series of illustrative paintings for each play, which were then turned into engravings for printing alongside the text. After ten years, a nine-volume folio was printed in 1802. What is on view here are a sampling of elephant folios produced the following year as stand-alone artworks.

Each image is identified with the play’s title and the specific act and scene that is depicted, along with some of the bard’s most well-known lines.

With the briefest of synopses, the comedies on view here are:

All’s Well That Ends Well.
Helen saves the King's life, he gives her his son to marry, who runs away from her, and she tricks him into impregnating her. Everything ends happily.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
People get lost in the woods. Puck manipulates their romantic affections and (in one case) anatomical head-shape. They put on a play.

As You Like It.
All brothers hate each other for some reason. Rosalind dresses up as a boy and convinces her crush to hit on her while she's a boy. Everyone is married by a Greek god.

Love’s Labor’s Lost.
Four men forswear women right before four women arrive to meet them; the men change their minds.

Measure for Measure.
Angelo rules as a religious tyrant, tries to manipulate a nun to sleep with him, is foiled, and ultimately punished.

Much Ado About Nothing.
Benedick and Beatrice don't love each other but then they do. Claudio and Hero love each other but then they don't, but then they do again. Everyone gets married.

The Merchant of Venice.
Shylock asks for a pound of flesh as part of a loan contract, Bassanio agrees to it, and Portia saves the day by cross-dressing and pretending to practice the law.