Illustration as Simile: Conversations between Visual and Textual in Tales from Shakespeare

Abstract: The relationship between word and image reached new levels of complexity with the rise of illustration in the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Scholars in recent years have argued for the visual arts as not merely a means of textual enrichment but also as interpretation and critique, a view particularly prevalent in studies of nineteenth-century paintings of Shakespearean subjects. While many of these contemporary studies center on painting, this theory of the critical role of visual art can be applied to illustration. Taking the oeuvre of Victorian illustrator John Moyr Smith as a case study, this article examines the purpose of illustration in nineteenth-century prose. Moyr Smith’s 1879 illustrations for Tales from Shakespeare are principal here in exploring how illustrations supplement, modify, and even critique a text, the overall effect that illustrators can be seen something akin to co-authors.