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Georgetown University's Mask and Bauble Dramatic
Society promotional poster, "Twelfth Night," 1983
production.
This spring Lauinger Library’s Fairchild
Gallery opens its exhibit, Shakespeare at Georgetown,
featuring fine art, rare books and archival documents from the
Library’s Special Collections. The exhibit is presented
in conjunction with the Shakespeare in Washington festival,
a city-wide celebration featuring events and performances from
over 40 area arts organizations celebrating the 75th anniversary
of the Folger Shakespeare Library.
Many of the artists represented in Georgetown’s extensive
fine print collections turned their hand at some time in their
careers to illustrating characters and scenes from Shakespeare’s
plays and sonnets. Isac Friedlander, Kyra Markham, and Washington
D.C.’s own Kathleen Spagnolo are just some of the printmakers
featured in the exhibit.
The lithograph
reproduced here, “…and let me rest.”,
is the work of one of the most popular artist/illustrators
of the mid-twentieth century, Rockwell Kent. He became known
to the American public through his work in new editions of
classics such as The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Moby
Dick, Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, Leaves
of Grass, Paul Bunyan, Faust, The
Decameron, Candide, and The Complete Works
of William Shakespeare (New York: Doubleday, 1936).
Rockwell Kent (1882-1971), "...and
let me rest." Titania (Act II, Scene 2) from A
Midsummer-Night's Dream. From a series of 40 drawings to
illustrate the works of William Shakespeare. Offset lithograph,
1937, 225 x 165 mm., 475/1000.
Perhaps
to capitalize on the success of the latter, the publishers
issued a limited edition folio of 40 Drawings Done by Rockwell
Kent to Illustrate the Works of William Shakespeare a
year later. They were sold in a special box, individually matted,
with one of the forty prints signed in pencil by the artist.
The exhibit also puts on display some of Georgetown’s
rare and handsomely illustrated editions of Shakespeare, dating
from 1725 through the twentieth century. Examples include the
1908 Heinemann edition of Midsummer Night’s Dream,
illustrated by Arthur Rackham and widely acknowledged as his
first great success; Rev. William Dodd, LL.D.’s 1820 anthology The
Beauties of Shakespeare, frequently reprinted from its first
appearance in 1752 up through 1935; and a 1908 facsimile edition
standing in for our prized 1623 First Folio, acquired
from the estate of University benefactor Mrs. John Vinton Dahlgren.
The exhibit also documents the history of Shakespearean presentations
on the Georgetown University campus, using rare 1850s playbills,
posters of student productions throughout the years, and archival
photographs.
The exhibit will be on view through July in the Fairchild Gallery.
A related website is available at www.library.georgetown.edu/dept/speccoll/guac/shakespeare_07.
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