SHAKESPEARE MOTLEY: An Illustrated Assortment

William Shakespeare the great Bard was not writing in isolation but drew on the domestic and the natural world as well as history, and the literary and folk cultures of his time. Specific references that were common knowledge in his time may be lost to us today and this book aims to restore some of those resonances for the reader, from the tools and techniques of the falconer to the healing properties of spiders' webs. With 225 archive illustrations like Gloucester's eyes being pulled out from King Lear in the chapter on Eyes and Eyesight, there are dozens of references from Macbeth, Hamlet and a 1612 text on the diseased eye which helped Shakespeare with his eye imagery in his plays and how characters failed to see, so powerfully explored in King Lear. Hands and hand gestures, school, the rose, here shown with contemporary botanical illustrations in beautiful colour, the quill with references to the Rape of Lucrece and Twelfth Night, to rings from Richard III 'Look how my ring encompasseth thy finger; even so thy breast encloseth my poor heart. Wear both of them, for both of them are thine.' As we learn history about jewellery popular in Tudor England with semiprecious and precious stones being worn by both men and women on every finger and sometimes the thumb. The themes introduce us to Tudor history at the time of Queen Elizabeth I, printing, the plague, the Mulberry Owl, gloves, cherubin, the bear, from the apothecary to witches and the X garter, a ribbon or piece of fabric worn around the leg which held up a stocking or a sock, there are beautiful bookplates like the Herball of Generall Hiftore of Plantes in this most delightful compendium with marble decorated endpapers. 160pp.