In 1799 Wivell was apprenticed to a wigmaker and hairdresser. He set up his own hairdressing business and, always interested in art, he advertised his portraiture skills by exhibiting miniatures in his shop window. Wivell produced a sketch of Queen Caroline that came to her notice; she gave him a sitting so he could complete the portrait. He received wider attention when his portraits of the participants of the queen's trial in the House of Lords were published. Wivell obtained many portrait commissions from the royal family, the aristocracy and society members. He painted the portraits of nearly 200 members of parliament for a view of the interior of the House of Commons published by Bowyer and Parkes.1
Mr. Wivell also published An inquiry into the history, authenticity, & characteristics of the Shakspeare portraits: in which the criticisms of Malone, Steevens, Boaden, & others,... (1827).
In many ways, Wivell is just another Stratford tourist at heart. “The remark having been made to me,” the author informs us,
by a gentleman, who is an ardent admirer of Shakspeare, and of the arts, that amongst all the numerous engravings purporting to be done from the bust, no satisfactory resemblance could be found, and some discussion upon the subject taking place, it was shortly followed by my being liberally commissioned to visit Stratford, for the purpose of making the drawing from which the plate was engraved, and to which these pages refer....2
Beyond the plate a pamphlet about the Monument was also written.
The following remarks on the Monumental Bust of Shakespeare, in the Church of the Holy Trinity, Stratford-upon-Avon, in Warwickshire, is printed from my Pamphlet, 1825, with additions.3
He is working, true, but his curiosity about all he sees, whether it bears on his task or not, is that of the tourist. Being unaffected by any debate regarding the Stratford Monument he says a good deal that bears upon it without bias.
He has also done his homework — before and after the fact, for his pamphlet. While the refurbishment of the monument in 1748 is well known to Oxfordians the general reader needs to be informed.
In the year 1748, this monument was carefully repaired, and the original colours of the bust, &c, as much as possible preserved, (by Mr. John Hall, a limner of Stratford,) by the receipts arising from the performance of the play of Othello, at the old Town-hall, on Tuesday, the 9th day of September 1746; and generously given by Mr. John Ward, (grand-father of the present Mrs. Siddons,) manager of a company of comedians then performing in the town;
Less known, perhaps, is the change made at the behest of the great Shakespeare scholar Edmond Malone.
...and, in 1793, the bust and figures above it, together with the effigies of Mr. Coombe, were painted white, at the request of Mr. Malone, to suit the present taste, for which act he was severely satirized, in the following stanzas, that were written in the Album, at Stratford Church, by one of the visitors to Shakspeare’s tomb :—
Stranger to whom this monument is shown,
Invoke the Poet's curses upon Malone;
Whose meddling zeal his barbarous taste betrays,
And daubs his tomb-stone as he marr’d his plays.
Had Mr. Malone, before he destroyed this antient relic, have had a picture first painted by some able artist, I should not so much have regretted the act; and, as it is possible to restore it again to its original state, I am in hopes, that in a short time it will be done, as the expence would be but small.4
The original colors, Mr. Wivell informs us, cannot be vouched for. But he seems to have known of John Hall's color painting of the monument done prior to the 1749 repairs. His exact meaning here is not quite clear unless he suspects that the colors in Hall were not correct to some extent.
“Mr. George Bullock,” we next learn,
in December, 1814, had the bust taken down for the purpose of making a mould for a very limited number of casts. The mould was afterwards destroyed, and the casts soon became scarce. James De Ville, of the Strand, has since had one of these casts moulded, and another without the hands, and also one of the head only.5
Just how many casts survive I do not know. There is a fine example at Golden Gate Park: Shakespeare Garden, at MLK and Nancy Pelosi Drive, of which a range of high quality reproductions are provided on the San Francisco Art Commission site.6 Another copy done in bronze-colored plaster and including the canopy resides in the National Portrait Gallery7
For myself, I do not subscribe to theories that the Monument has been altered from the original shown in Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656) in a conspiracy to hide the identity of the grain-dealer and businessman who actually inhabits the grave. I have every confidence that the Latin inscription on the Monument replaced Shakspere's original plaque, circa 1623, instantaneously turning him into The Bard, England's greatest writer ever. The striking difference between the original rudely worded inscription on the tombstone (shown above) and the highly educated Latin inscription on the substituted plaque, on the Monument, extends the stark dissociation constantly on display between the works of Shakespeare and the biography of Shakspere of Stratford to the grave.
Were changes later made to the Monument at Trinity church? Was the present tasseled writing-pillow reshaped from an original tasseled wool-sack? Well, more than a few Stratfordians have stated that it is not possible that changes can have been made because the Monument is made of a single piece of marble.
As can be read in any number of descriptions, however, only the columns were originally made of marble. The half-length bust itself is good ole English limestone. It is a separate sculpted piece. Seen from the various views of Bullock's castings, at ArtUK,org [link],8 it is clear that the bust itself could easily be removed. From Wivell's description it was removed by Bullock. A wool- of grain-sack could quite easily have been transformed into a writing pillow during an earlier "repair".
If the bust originally featured a wool-sack, or some close variation, it would only have been natural for the investors in the Stratford-upon-Avon tourist trade to “repair” the inexplicable blunder of the previous sculptor in order to improve upon the tourist experience.
1Abraham Wivell (1786-1849), Portrait painter https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp07749/abraham-wivell
2 Wivell, Abraham. An Historical Account of the Monumental Bust of William Shakspeare, in the Chancel of the Church, at Stratford-Upon-Avon, Warwickshire (1827). iii-iv.
3 Wivell, Abraham. An Historical Account of the Monumental Bust of William Shakspeare, in the Chancel of the Church, at Stratford-Upon-Avon, Warwickshire (1827). 5.
4Wivell, 11-15.
5Wivell, 18.
6William Shakespeare, 1814, George Bullock, English, (1783–1818). https://kiosk.sfartscommission.org/objects-1/info?query=mfs%20any%20%22shakespeare%22&sort=9&page=2&objectName=William%20Shakespeare
7 William Shakespeare after Gerard Johnson, George Bullock (1778-1818). Sir John Sloane's Museum. Coloured plaster cast, 1846,... https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw05720/William-Shakespeare
8William Shakespeare (1564–1616). George Bullock (1778–1818). Sir John Soane’s Museum. https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/william-shakespeare-15641616-299289
Also at Virtual Grub Street:
Matthew Gasda on the Shakespeare Authorship Debate. May 15, 2023. 'Among his Compact Mag pieces is the March 24 article “The Right Wing Crusade Against Shakespeare”.'
Shakespeare CSI: Sir Thomas More, Hand-D. April 22, 2023. “What a glory to have an actual hand-written manuscript from the greatest English writer of all time!”
Edward de Vere in the Lives of his Daughters. February 27, 2023. "At least they take some comfort from their belief that De Vere had no demonstrable relationship with his daughter, the Countess of Montgomery, Susan de Vere."
- Shakespeare’s Character Names: Shylock, Ophelia, etc. July 13, 2021. “The name Ophelia was, by all indications, quite rare in the 16th century.”
A 1572 Oxford Letter and the Player’s Speech in Hamlet. August 11, 2020. “The player’s speech has been a source of consternation among Shakespeare scholars for above 200 years. Why was Aeneas’ tale chosen as the subject?”
- Check out the Shakespeare Authorship Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
- Check out the Letters Index: Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford for many letters from this fascinating time, some related to the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
1 comment:
Your article sheds much light on the history of the monument, but you are mistaken (or at least somebody is): the bust and alcove are made of separate parts. In 1973 thieves stole the bust from the alcove. Thankfully it was retrieved some time later. If the alcove remained while the bust was missing, then there is no possibility that the monument is carved from one piece of marble.
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