This Figure, that thou here seest put,
        It was for gentle Shakespeare cut;
      Wherein the Graver has a strife
        With Nature, to out-doo the life: 
      O, could he but have drawne his wit
        As well in brasse, as he hath hit
      His face; the Print would then surpasse
        All, that was ever write in brasse. 
      But, since he cannot, Reader, looke
        Not on his Picture, but his Booke.

B.I.

A most attractive and instructive exhibition of reproductions of the portraits of Shakespeare, or supposedly of him, was shown at the rooms of the Grolier Club, April 6-29, 1916.  The catalogue[28] embraces 436 numbers, illustrating all the principal types.  The exhibition also comprised the principal editions of the poet’s plays, from the First Folio of 1623 to the great Variorum Edition by Dr. Furness, begun in 1871.

[Footnote 28:  Catalogue of an exhibition illustrative of the text of Shakespeare’s plays, as published in edited editions, together with a large collection of engraved portraits of the poet.  New York, The Grolier Club, April 6-29, 1916, vi+114 pp.]

For the Tercentenary of Shakespeare’s birth, celebrated in April, 1864, a special commemorative medal was struck in England, designed by Mr. J. Moore.  The obverse shows a profile head of the poet, in the modelling of which the artist seems to have been chiefly influenced by the Stratford bust.  This fundamental type he has not unskilfully combined with that of the Droeshout print in the First Folio, the dome-like forehead being evidently suggested by the latter.  The nose is more accentuated than in the bust, and the mouth, though still small, is somewhat firmer.  Toward the edge of the field are disposed the titles of his various works, as though radiating from the head, and in the exergue is his signature, framed by a half-garland over which extends a mace.  The tribute offered to Shakespeare by the Muses, figured on the reverse, is a rather stiff and conventional composition.[29]

[Footnote 29:  W. Sharp Ogden, “Shakspere’s Portraits:  painted, graven, and medallic”, in The British Numismatic Journal, and Proceedings of The British Numismatic Society, 1910, London, 1911, pp. 143-198; see p. 189.]

For those who may wish to see the original form of the passages regarding precious stones in the text of the First Folio, of 1623, the page and column references have been given here.  In this text the three sections into which the plays have been divided, Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies, are separately paged; moreover, the pagination offers a number of irregularities. Troilus and Cressida, added at the end of the “Histories”, has page numbers on a couple of leaves neither connected with what precedes nor with what follows, the remainder of the pages bearing no figures; furthermore, there are several obvious, though unimportant, misprints. Pericles, first issued in Folio, in the Third Folio, of 1664, is therein separately paged, as are the other of the plays attributed to Shakespeare printed therein, in continuation of the series of the First and Second Folios.  This play had, however, previously appeared six times in quarto in the years 1609, 1611, 1619, 1630, 1635 and 1639.