Shakespeare in Art Author:Sadakichi Hartmann Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE PAINTERS OF THE HISTORICAL DRAMAS. i HE year 1585, in which Shakespeare is supposed to have gone up from Stratford to London, was a p... more »roud one in his country's annals, for it was then that seamanship in alliance with the ocean saved the soil of Britain from the pollution of a Spanish invasion, driving the scattered remnants of the Armada as far north as the storm- tossed Hebrides. The heart of the people beat with the heart of the sovereign; and chivalry mingled with loyalty to do honour to the woman-monarch. And this feeling, which was predominant then, outlasted all her pomp and power, for in every English family Bible she still stands recorded to-day as " the bright, occidental star, Queen Elizabeth, of most happy memory." The feeling of loyalty to the government was so fervid, the masses so enamoured with the glory of English history, that the historical dramas of Shakespeare seem to-day merely a natural outcome of a time so fervid in emotions as the days of Queen Elizabeth. For that Shakespeare also took part in the general adulation of the " maiden queen" is best shown in the loving care he bestowed, in his "Henry VIII.," upon the description of the coronation ceremony of her mother, Anne Bullen, and in having her, as an infant in swaddling clothes, carried across the stage at the end of the play, symbolising the beginning of a new era. Painters fond of elaborate figure composition have always turned to history for inspiration, in particular in those days when colour was not yet regarded as the predominant quality in painting. Historical subjects once enjoying an undue share of favour and patronage have lately met with perhaps undue depreciation by recent critics. John Ruskin was especially severe upon them. To paint an historical incident...« less