Tieck's Essay on the Boydell Shakspere Gallery

George H. Danton examines a young critic's encounter with a major scheme to illustrate Shakespeare. His subject is Ludwig Tieck's first published critical essay, a response to the engravings commissioned for John Boydell's gallery. Danton traces the gallery's ambitions, the circumstances of Tieck's writing and the earlier reviews on which the student critic drew. Comparing the essay with the prints, he asks how closely Tieck's judgments match what the pictures actually show.

The study moves from publication history to questions of composition, costume, facial expression and dramatic interpretation. Danton finds a gap between Tieck's stated principles and his responses to particular figures and scenes, including illustrations of Romeo and Juliet. Readers interested in Shakespeare on the page and in visual art can follow a detailed example of criticism being tested against its evidence. It also offers a view of the standards brought to literary illustration around the end of the eighteenth century.