The Seven Ages of Man, described by William Shakespeare; depicted by Robert Smirke
- Shakespeare, William
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This slim volume pairs extracts from the ‘All the world’s a stage’ monologue in William Shakespeare’s As You Like It (1599-1600) with albumen print reproductions of paintings by Robert Smirke (1752-1845). The book takes Shakespeare’s ‘seven ages of man’ and pairs each with one of Smirke’s paintings. Extracting the monologue from the play, the editor of this volume treats it as a short poem, depicting its images as theatrical tableaux. In photopoetic terms, the volume is of questionable importance given both the nature of the photographs (reproductions of works of art) and the arbitrary, literalising nature of the relationship between text and image (hence the subtitle of the book: The Seven Ages of Man: Described.)
The volume is, however, one of the earliest photopoetic books published by Lionel Booth, who would become one of the most important British publishers in late nineteenth-century photopoetry, publishing Fairylife and Fairyland (1870) among other volumes.
Author: Shakespeare, William
Title: The Seven Ages of Man, described by William Shakespeare; depicted by Robert Smirke
Publication Year: 1864
Poets Featured: Shakespeare, William
Photographers Featured: Smirke, Robert
Subjects: Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616, Illustrations
Photographic process: Albumen prints
This book can be found in the University of St Andrews Library catalogue HERE
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Website design: Callum Kenny, School of Computer Science
Website text: Michael Nott, School of English. The original idea for the website came from Professor Robert Crawford of the School of English, who continues to act as Project Consultant.
Scanning by the Digital Humanities team of the University of St Andrews Library (Carys Adamson, Kyle Brady, Elaine Miller) with assistance from reprographics staff in the Special Collections Division.
Website images: Edward R. Dickson, The Poems of the Dance, 1921 (Homepage, right); Mabel Eardley-Wilmot, The Light of Asia, 1908 and 1911 (Photographers page & External Resources page); Emma Justine Farnsworth, Sunshine and Playtime, 1893 (Home page, top, and Books page); Robert Smirke, The Seven Ages of Man, 1864 (Poets page).
Books digitised on this site have been established as out of copyright and no copyright issues are known to exist.
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