Imagining Shakespeare: Mythmaking and Storytelling in the Regency Era
November 11 2025
Picture: Folger Shakespeare Library
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
A reader has very kindly been in touch to alert me to the following exhibition entitled Imagining Shakespeare: Mythmaking and Storytelling in the Regency Era which opened at the Folger Shakespeare Library last month.
According to their website:
Displayed together for the first time since 1805, 14 paintings from the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery in London are now on view at the Folger. The paintings, created by leading artists of 18th-century England, depict scenes from Shakespeare’s plays.
The Boydell Gallery contributed to the story of Shakespeare as a genius from birth—the Bard, a symbol of British imperialism and economic power. This exhibition offers visitors the chance to consider both the stories Shakespeare created and the stories that were created about him.
The show will run until 2nd August 2026, so there's lots of time to make your way (including myself, perhaps) to Washington D.C. to see it!
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As it happens, this exhibition has provided me the chance to publish an image of one of my favourite paintings of all time, George Romney's The Infant Shakespeare attended by Nature and the Passions. It is a composition where Romney almost seems to leap decades ahead in a very strange yet beautiful reimagining of Shakespeare in the quasi-guise of the Christ Child. An example, perhaps, of a very concerted effort to show that English painting (as the Boydell Gallery tried to demonstrate) could produce works of a native inspired genius (although many of its most prominent artists like Fuseli were foreign born, of course). Romney's work for the gallery proved to be amongst some of his best, even during this late stage of his career when the quality of his painting did begin to wane somewhat. I have a Boydell print of the composition, which I admire almost every day.
