Details

Title

The Works of William Shakespeare

Author

Shakespeare, William

Place of Publication

London

Publisher

Fredderick Warne and Co.

Collection

Scans provided by and used with permission of Archival & Special Collections, University of Guelph Library. From the L.M. Montgomery Collection.

Note

This is Montgomery’s copy of “The Works of William Shakespeare.” She did not inscribe it with her name or date, nor does it have a clear publication date, so it is unclear if this was Montgomery’s first or only copy of his works. Either way, browsing this volume reveals a wealth of annotations, markings, and most remarkable of all, scrapbooking. Montgomery tucked and pasted illustrations, paintings, and photos of actors that played famous characters throughout the book. On the back of the title page, she has pasted an image of Shakespeare (it appears to be the portrait attributed to John Taylor c. 1610) that she had cut out of a magazine, and the following pages include cut-outs of Shakespeare’s birthplace. The first play in the volume is “The Tempest,” and into its pages Montgomery has tucked multiple drawings and illustrations of Prospero, Miranda, and Ferdinand, illustrating different scenes and moments in different styles. She took time to cut out illustrations of Puck, Petruchio, Caesar, and others. On page 621, she has included a photo of well-known actress Adelaide Neilson as Juliet. Neilson played many leads in Shakespeare productions in London and New York through the 1870s. On page 581, Montgomery included a picture of Sarah Bernhardt as Lady Macbeth. While some of her in-book scrapbooking might appear haphazard (see the unsigned postcard, perhaps used as a bookmark, from page 200), much of it is clearly deliberate and carefully included. On page 167, in Act 3, scene II of “The Taming of the Shrew,” she has left a photo of an unnamed actress with the caption “I see a woman may be made a fool, if she has not the spirit to resist.” Montgomery has left the photo on the very page where the line appears. In addition to illustrations, Montgomery has also annotated the text. Multiple pages show her underlining or bracketing lines. Given that every novel she wrote alludes to or quotes Shakespeare at some point, it is fascinating to see her encounters with the original text. For example, on page 110, she has drawn a line next to Lysander’s lines in Act I, Scene I of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” where he says “The course of true love never did run smooth.” The line appears, comically altered by Father Cassidy, as “the path of genius never did run smooth” in Montgomery’s “Emily of New Moon” (1923). You can explore the Shakespeare references in “Anne of Green Gables” here.

Genre

drama