Boydell's Illustrations of Shakespeare, Vol. II: Romeo and Juliet, Act IV, Scene V (after John Opie)

The drama of the star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet has attracted artists for centuries, and for good reason: its powerful combination of romance, pathos, revenge, and ineluctable fate seems to touch the full range of human emotions. This print reproduces a painting that the artist John Opie made for London’s Shakespeare Gallery, a venture that sought to unite Britain’s most ambitious artists around the grand tradition of the National Poet, William Shakespeare. The Facius brothers’ engraving documents an early stage of Opie’s painting, before he decided to reduce the number of figures and make other changes to the composition. Notable in this version is the forest of outstretched, upraised hands—a conventional theatrical gesture that conveys the helplessness of all those present in the face of irreversible tragedy.