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Shakspeare, Love's Labour Lost, Act IV, Scene I

1803, Engraving
Shakspeare, Love's Labour Lost, Act IV, Scene I
Shakspeare, Love's Labour Lost, Act IV, Scene I
Shakspeare, Love's Labour Lost, Act IV, Scene I
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Category
Library Item
Item no
40228
Title
Shakspeare [Shakespeare]. Love's Labour's Lost. Act IV, Scene I
Description
(PRINCESS): Then, forester, my friend, where is the bush/That we must stand and play the murderer in?
FORESTER: Here by, upon the edge of yonder coppice/A stand, where you may make the fairest shoot.

Not a particularly comedic or dramatic, albeit very pleasant illustration of Love’s Labour’s Lost from the artist, William Hamilton. Depicting a scene where the Princess of France and her ladies are preparing to go on a hunt and asking the forester about the specifics of it. In the background riders chase a stag in the idyllic landscape. Behind is also a castle, presumably the castle of Navarre, at which the characters are staying. Although the main figures are seemingly standing in woodland, the tree behind the highborn ladies has a drape tangled in its branches, this is a tent for the aristocrats to retreat to after the hunt, but it also evokes the theatrical curtain and thus lets the viewer know what this scene really is: a enactment of the Shakespearean comedy.
Engraver
Thomas Ryder
Date
1803
Size
63.5 x 50 cm
Type
Location
Art and Design Library
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