Enfilade

Begun in September 2018, ‘Shakespeare in the Royal Collection’ is a three-year AHRC funded project, focusing primarily on the period 1714–1945. From the project website:

Finding Shakespeare in the Royal Collection
Online, 17–19 June 2021

The Royal Collection contains Shakespeare-related items collected by generations of British monarchs, stretching back as far as Charles I, though principally concentrated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Including paintings, rare books, prints, watercolours, furniture, decorative objects, and photographs, these items tell a fascinating and overlapping set of stories about Shakespeare’s afterlife, the history of collecting, the histories of royalty and empire, and the histories of elite and popular culture. This conference brings together an international group of experts from fields including Shakespeare studies, history of art, collection studies, Romantic literature, and royal history.

Participants are invited to attend live online panels, or to view recorded panels for a limited time afterwards. We have speakers from Singapore to Texas, and the panels are timed across the day to maximise the possibility of attendance worldwide. A full conference programme, including abstracts and speaker bios, can be downloaded here.

The online conference platform is Zoom webinar, registered attendees will be emailed details of how to join the day before the event. To join, simply click on the join link in the email, your web browser will open up and you may be prompted to open Zoom. For further details of how to join Zoom meetings, see the company’s webpage. Live panels will be recorded, by attending you consent to the filming of the event and to being filmed yourself should you ask questions and in any other way participate live.

The conference is free to attend, but registration is essential. Tickets are available from Eventbrite. By registering, you agree to abide by the conference’s Code of Conduct. Participants violating the Code of Conduct will be removed from the event and will not be able to rejoin. For further information please email sharc@kcl.ac.uk.

All times are BST/ UTC+1 and subject to confirmation

T H U R S D A Y ,  1 7  J U N E  2 0 2 1

Panel 1 | Exhibiting Shakespeare  10.00–11.30am
Chair: Gordon McMullan
• Michael Dobson (Shakespeare Institute), Hamlet Disowned: Kemble, Lawrence, and Royal Legitimacy
• Kate Retford (Birkbeck University of London), ‘A Wild and Unruly Youth’: Princes of Wales and The Harry the Fifth Club
• Shormishtha Panja (University of Delhi), ‘Moral Painting’: Nathaniel Dance Holland’s Timon of Athens, c. 1765–70
• Rosie Dias (University of Warwick), Personalising Public Art: Royal Narratives in Boydell’s Shakespeare Prints

Panel 2 | Shakespearean Relics  1.00–2.30pm
Chair: Kirsten Tambling
• Anna Myers (University of Edinburgh), David Garrick and the President’s Chair: Embodying Shakespeare through Intermedial Adaptation
• Mark Westgarth (University of Leeds), ‘Well-authenticated Blocks’: Materiality and the Market for Shakespearean ‘Mulberry Tree’ Relics in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries
• Simon Spier (University of Leeds), For Leisure or Learning?: An As You Like It Make-up Box by Hester Marian Wagstaff

Panel 3 | Shakespearean Reputations  4.00–5.30pm
Chair: Elizabeth Eger
• Kate Heard (Royal Collection Trust), ‘Pistol’s a Cuckold – or Adultery in Fashion’: Following a Print from Performance to Portfolio
• Arthur Burns (King’s College London), George III and the Other ‘Mad King’
• Essaka Joshua (University of Notre Dame), ‘I Only Change When I Die’: Gainsborough’s Portrait of Mary Robinson and Mutable Spectatorship
• Fiona Ritchie (McGill University), Fake and Authentic Shakespeare in the Diaries of Joseph Farington

F R I D A Y ,  1 8  J U N E  2 0 2 1

Panel 4 | Shakespearean Books  10.00–11.30am
Chair: Sally Barnden
• Emma Stuart (Royal Collection Trust), Why did George IV Own a First Folio?
• Gordon McMullan (King’s College London), The ‘Disappointment’ of Charles I’s Second Folio
• Eleine Ng-Gagneux (National University of Singapore), Crossing Straits with Shakespeare Translation

‘Shakespeare in the Royal Collection’ Project Overview  12.00–1.00pm
Gordon McMullan, Kate Retford, Kirsten Tambling, Sally Barnden, and Felicity Roberts

Panel 5 | Shakespearean Interiors  2.00–3.30pm
Chair: Gail Marshall
• Elizabeth Clark Ashby (Royal Collection Trust), Shakespeare in Miniature: Shakespeare, Queen Mary, and Books for Dolls
• Kirsten Tambling (King’s College London), ‘All England in Warm Sepia’: Queen Mary and the Church of the Holy Trinity
• Morna O’Neill (Wake Forest University), Much Ado about Tapestry: Shakespeare, the Royal Family, and National Identity

S A T U R D A Y ,  1 9  J U N E  2 0 2 1

Panel 6 | Mementoes of Performance  3.00–4.30pm
Chair: Richard Schoch
• Karen Harker (Shakespeare Institute), Remediation and Memory: Egron Sellif Lundgren’s Watercolours of The Winter’s Tale in Queen Victoria’s Theatrical Album
• Sally Barnden (King’s College London), Monument and Montage: Horatio Saker’s Visual History of the Stage
• Éilís Smyth (King’s College London), The Politics of Shakespeare at Windsor Castle in Louis Haghe’s The Performance of Macbeth in the Rubens Room
• Martin Blazeby (Blazebuild), Visualising Shakespearean Spaces and Stages of Performance at Windsor Castle

Panel 7 | Education and Performance  6.00–7.30pm
Chair: Kate Retford
• Lynne Vallone (Rutgers University), Princess Victoria and the Cult of Celebrity
• Gail Marshall (University of Reading), Puck and the Prince of Wales
• Vijeta Saini (Northeastern University), Disappearances and the Durbar: The Hidden Colonial Legacy of Queen Victoria’s Shakespearean Tableaux Vivants
• Kathryn Vomero Santos (Trinity University), ‘In Shakespeare’s Land’: Education, Cultural (Dis)inheritance, and the Decline of Empire in and around The Prince’s Choice