A Study of Shakespeare's Portraits

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Chiswick Press, 1876 - 75 pages

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Page 14 - Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings, And Phoebus 'gins arise, His steeds to water at those springs On chaliced flowers that lies; And winking Mary-buds begin To ope their golden eyes; With everything that pretty bin : My lady sweet, arise! Arise! arise!
Page 65 - Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself; An eye like Mars, to threaten and command; A station like the herald Mercury, New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill; A combination and a form, indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal, To give the world assurance of a man: This was your husband.
Page 65 - Prospero's wand and burying his book, — a sort of sad prophecy, based on self-knowledge of the nature of that man who, after such thaumaturgy, could go down to Stratford and live there for years, only collecting his dividends from the Globe Theatre, lending money on mortgage, and leaning over his gate to chat and bandy quips with neighbors...
Page 48 - ... arrive. To a working artist's mind, the agreement of these measures is either a miracle, or demonstration that they are from the same face. "And, still further, the failure or misfit of the other more than dozen measures is confined to those parts of the face where there is acknowledged error on the part of the sculptor of the Stratford bust. In the language of science, ' measures are the inflexible judges placed above all opinions supported only by imperfect observations.
Page 70 - HesseDarmstadt, do you believe she would not pawn her islands rather than possess it? . . . While royal sons and daughters are dowered, and jewels remain in the Tower, Shakespeare's face lies in a foreign land unredeemed. Oh, the pity of it...
Page 24 - ... the distance from the parting of the lips to the bottom of the lobes of the nostrils, where the nasal topography has been changed by the upheaval of art.
Page 8 - ... resolved to make it of colossal size in plaster, which I did. During this time, the whole history of its tally with existing records unravelled itself to satisfy me that it is Shakespeare." Proceeding, he adds : " Let us consider the generally-accepted portraits of Shakespeare, and observe their likeness to each other, and then, afterwards, observe the greater likeness of each of these to the German mask, and see if you also will not come to the conclusion that the death-mask is the true model,...
Page 50 - ... instead. I had been told that the mask was not much impaired by the injuries it had received; but when I counted over those injuries, both of accident and ignorant design, I could not but feel thankful for the very much that had been left us. How should we have known positively that the first plaster mask was cast in a waste mould, over a wax face, but from the fact that while the face existed in this substance a pressure of sufficient weight had been made on the bridge of the nose to flatten...
Page 4 - ... Page, whose colossal bust of Shakespeare might fittingly have its home in the Poet's native town, says, before commencing it he fell in with " two photographs from the German mask reputed to have been taken from Shakespeare's face just after death. Then I gathered from various friends, to whom I here record a few thanks, other views, till the impression became fixed that I must model in the round this mask, so as to be able to determine with deliberation if it has any claim to authenticity by...
Page 4 - Shakespeare, unless h is Shakespeare. I finally had thirteen different photographic views of the mask. After modelling from these twice a face of life-size (my first efforts in clay being lost by accident), I resolved to model it of colossal size in plaster, which I did, repairing as well as I could the breaks. During this time, the whole history of its tally with existing records unravelled itself to satisfy me that it is Shakespeare.

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