Ophelia (Shakespeare's Hamlet)

William Shakespeare|Edward Gordon Craig

1910 · Wood engraving · Drawings and Prints

Son of the actress Ellen Terry and architect Edward William Godwin, Craig became a gifted actor and innovative stage designer. This print represents Ophelia with her mind unhinged by the murder of her father in Act 4, Scene 5 of Shakespeare's play, where she appears crowned with weeds and flowers, singing pathetically. Craig developed a visionary staging of Hamlet for Constantin Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1912, and built model sets and carved figures out of wood in low relief to demonstrate his ideas. Experimenting, he discovered that these could be printed to create "black figure" images, this being a rare surviving example.

Artist

William Shakespeare|Edward Gordon Craig

Date

1910

Medium

Wood engraving

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1924