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Go to this gallery and tell me what your favorite painting is and why.

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5 min read

And in the 400 years since his first folio was published, Shakespeare's plays have in turn inspired not only actors but also artists. Explore a range of artists' interpretations of his most popular plays. Click the link to related scenes to read text from the Folger Shakespeare Library.

As a teenager American artist Edwin Austin Abbey used a pen name from Shakespeare's Hamlet. As a young adult, he illustrated hundreds of Shakespeare scenes magazines. "Who Is Sylvia? What Is She, That All the Swains Commend Her?" is one of seven large paintings of Shakespeare scenes that Abbey made in 1890.

The title echoes a song in act 4, scene 2 of The Two Gentleman in Verona. Proteus, one of the play's main characters, sings the poem about his love Sylvia. Unfortunately for Proteus, "all the swains" (or suitors) are in love with Sylvia-including his friend Valentine. In Abbey's painting, Sylvia lifts the skirts of her Italian Renaissance-style gown as she walks through a room of men enchanted by her presence.

Canadian American painter, illustrator, printmaker, and typographer Claire Van Vliet paired her dramatic woodcuts with key characters and scenes from King Lear. She focused on faces and expressions, bringing out the emotions and drama of the text.

Van Vliet's woodcuts show Lear gradually descending into madness. By act 4, scene 6, he has wild hair, a ragged beard, and a mystified look on his face. In the scene, a wandering Lear comes upon his son Edgar and his loyal nobleman Gloucester. The two don't recognize him, but they do recognize his voice. When Gloucester asks whether this is the king, Lear replies, "Ay, every inch a king. / When I do stare, see how the subject quakes." His mad expression in Van Vliet's woodcut captures the full meaning of that line.

At first glance, Scottish artist David Young Cameron's watercolor looks like an abstracted rocky landscape. But Cameron wrote these words on the back of the paper: "Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day / stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops."

The line comes from the beginning of act 3, scene 5 of Romeo and Juliet. Juliet pleads with Romeo not to leave, assuring him that they have more time before sunrise. But Romeo is fearful that they will be discovered, saying in the next line, "I must be gone and live, or stay and die." The two never see each other alive again.

As a young woman, Kyra Markham acted professionally in American theaters and movies. In her 30s, she shifted her focus to art. She became known for her prints and lithographs and worked for the Federal Arts Project.

Her acting experience gives Markham a unique perspective on interpreting Shakespeare. In this print, she shows herself as Lady Macbeth. Her gaze is piercing, and behind her, billowing flames light up a castle wall. Does the composition show Lady Macbeth's strength? Or does it come from the part of the play in which her guilt has driven her to sleepwalking?

Other interpretations of Macbeth:

American artist and printmaker Dorothy Newkirk Stewart made this mesmerizing woodcut book of an abridged Hamlet in 1949. Stewart wove her colorful prints with the text, creating a book that almost reads like a contemporary graphic novel.

This page starts with act 4, scene 5. King Claudius enters to find Ophelia singing. He grows worried that she has had a mental break after the death of her father and son. Moving right, Stewart shows a scene in which Horatio reads a letter from his friend Hamlet. The artist simply shows a letter held in a hand. Below the letter and encircled in a bubble, an image tells the letter's story of Hamlet being taken captive on a pirate ship.

Other interpretations of Hamlet:

This print of a scene in A Midsummer Night's Dream is based on a painting by Sir Edwin Landseer. Landseer was best known for painting animals, and he picked the perfect play to display those skills. The fairy queen Titania is under the spell of a potion (from the flower she holds in her hand) that made her fall in love with the first creature she saw-Nick Bottom, a man with the head of an ass. Landseer painted the ass's head with precise detail and accuracy.

The scene comes from act 3, scene 1. The pair is in the woods, Titania resting her head on Bottom's shoulder. They are surrounded by faeries and animals. Titania asks the fairies Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Mote, and Mustardseed to care for her new love.

The painting was exhibited and widely admired at London's Royal Academy in 1851. Even Queen Victoria called the work "a gem, beautiful, fairy-like and graceful." Lewis Carroll also enjoyed the painting when he saw it in 1857, noting in his diary that Bottom's head and the white rabbit were "wonderful points."

Other interpretations of A Midsummer Night's Dream:

In Twelfth Night, Viola is rescued from a shipwreck. She disguises herself as a young man, Cesario, and becomes a page (servant) for the Duke of Orsino.In act 2, scene 4, the duke is lovesick for a woman that doesn't love him back. Cesario tries to give the duke hope that his beloved might just have difficulty expressing her feelings. Cesario (actually Viola) tells a story about his sister (actually herself) who died of lovesickness (actually alive-and in love with the duke). The title of Henry Peach Robinson's photograph She Never Told Her Lovecomes from that story.

In Robinson's photograph, his model acts as a young woman dying of consumption, presumably with a broken heart. His work recalls Cesario/Viola's description of the sister: "She never told her love, / But let concealment, like a worm i' th' bud, / Feed on her damask cheek. She pined in thought, / And with a green and yellow melancholy / She sat like Patience on a monument, / Smiling at grief." Viola's story isn't true, though-she is talking about herself and her love for the duke.

Other interpretations of Twelfth Night:

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William Shakespeare's Plays in Art | National Gallery of Art

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See how six artists envisioned the Bard's plays, from "Romeo and Juliet" to "King Lear."

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We watched this video at the beginning. Which tragedies do you recognize now?

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Shakespeare Made You Die (Dumb Ways to Die Parody)

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"Hamlet," "Romeo & Juliet", "King Lear", and "Othello" are largely considered Shakespeare's best tragedies. Which one do you like best?

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Which of the Big 4 Shakespeare Tragedies was your favorite?

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Quiz yourself about Shakespeare's Tragedies

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Quiz yourself about Shakespeare's Tragedies

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This is an online quiz that you can take to quiz yourself about Shakespeare's tragedies.

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Our main theme for this course was how Shakespeare's characters see Fortune- the force that controls their destinies. How much control do you think people have in real life?

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Today, June 24rth, is the ancient Roman festival of Fortuna, the goddess of luck and worldly fortunes. I've chosen to use this opportunity to explain a little bit about the concept of Fortune, which Shakespeare uses frequently in his tragedies. But first, a short musical interlude:

Does this song sound familiar? You've probably heard it underscored in hundreds of commercials, TV shows, maybe even in concerts, it's a song composed by composer Carl Orff called "O Fortuna."

In Roman mythology, Fortuna was the goddess of luck, wealth, and fertility. If you listen to the lyrics of the song above, you can see that for centuries, people chose to represent Fortune as a fickle, changeable, and irresponsible goddess. Unfortunately, one of the reasons she's personified as a woman is the long-held prejudice that women are weak, have frequent changes of mind and mood, and can't commit to one person, (a view of women that I and Shakespeare believe to not be true). However, based on his writing he does seem to think Fortune fits these characteristics:

"I am Fortune's fool" -Romeo and Juliet
O fortune, fortune! all men call thee fickle: If thou art fickle, what dost thou with him. That is renown'd for faith? Be fickle, fortune; Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods, In general synod 'take away her power; Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel, And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven, As low as to the fiends! -Hamlet The Wheel of Fortune. For then, I hope, thou wilt not keep him long, Fortuna In Tragedies But send him back. EDMUND -Romeo and Juliet
"When Fortune means to men most good, She looks upon them with a threatening eye." -King John

In Dante's Inferno, Fortuna lives in the Underworld with Plutus the god of gold, helping to distribute the god's wealth to people above ground. In the Middle ages she was an explanation for why some people have good luck, some have bad, and why luck frequently changes.

Fortuna's most recognizable symbol is her wheel; the symbol of how luck can change; just when you think your life is perfect, the wheel turns and you find yourself on the bottom. Frequently in tragedy when things go wrong, the characters blame Fortune, such as when the Lord of Kent finds himself put in the stocks like a common thief and gripes: "Fortune good night, smile once more, turn thy wheel," King Lear, Act II, Scene ii. And yes, the real game show was partially inspired by the goddess' most famous symbol.

Shakespeare mentions fortune over 500 times in his plays and frequently in his tragedies. Characters in Shakespearean tragedy frequently single out Fortuna as the cause of their unhappiness and curse her as a liar and a strumpet. In a Christian society, it was a lot more appealing to blame a pagan goddess than a loving, Christian god, (which would probably be considered blasphemous). Now you see why she has become a popular scapegoat for misfortune in tragedy. At the same time, all tragedy raises questions about the nature of free will; how much of bad fortune is the result of fate, and how much is a direct result of the character's bad choices? Edmund in King Lear laughs at the notion of any kind of fate, and accuses all of humanity of shirking responsibility in this speech:

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that,
when we are sick in fortune,-often the surfeit
of our own behavior,-we make guilty of our
disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as
if we were villains by necessity; fools by
heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and
treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards,
liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of
planetary influence; and all that we are evil in,
by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion
of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish
disposition to the charge of a star! ( King Lear, Act I, Scene ii).

At the same time, the audience also knows that Edmund was cursed by Fortune from the beginning, since he is the illegitimate child of the Duke of Gloucester, which might prove exactly the opposite point of his speech. He may act like he is absolute in his free will, but his behavior and his violent end suggests otherwise. So when characters curse Fortune or Fortuna in Shakespeare's plays, take a look at the language they use to characterize this abstract concept. The way we think about luck or fate helps shape our perspective of our own lives, and therefore how playwrights depict this mysterious goddess helps us see the possibilities of human choice, and maybe help us make better choices than the tragic men who slander her in these plays!

For more insight into this topic: Click here to listen to my podcast about this week's post:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/45002/284936-the-shakespearean-student-episode-6-o-fortuna

1. Brittanica.com: Fortuna: http://www.britannica.com/topic/Fortuna-Roman-goddess

2. Internet Shakespeare Editions: Fortuna in Medieval Drama: http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/drama/early%20tragedies/medievaltragedy.html#boethius

3. Encyclopedia Mythica: Fortune: http://pantheon.org/areas/mythology/europe/roman/articles.html

4. The Obscure Goddess Online Dictionary: http://www.thaliatook.com/OGOD/fortuna.html

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Today, June 24rth, is the ancient Roman festival of Fortuna, the goddess of luck and worldly fortunes. I've chosen to use this opportunity to explain a little bit about the concept of Fortune, which Shakespeare uses frequently in his tragedies. But first, a short musical interlude: Does this song sound familiar?