Boydell's Illustrations of Shakespeare, Vol. II: King Lear, Act V, Scene III (after James Barry)

At the conclusion to Shakespeare’s King Lear, the mad old king grieves for his dead daughter, Cordelia. But at the time of James Barry’s large-scale painting of the subject (which this print by Francis Legat reproduces), British audiences were accustomed to a much sunnier adaptation of the original play, so this dark ending would have come as a shock. The whirling, centripetal composition achieves tremendous effects: even the wind seems to be blowing in contrary, center-pointing directions. Among the lines excerpted at the bottom of the print is Lear’s declaration, "O, you are men of stones," alluding to his companions’ lack of expressivity in the face of his own bottomless grief. As if to concur, Stonehenge itself rises unexpectedly in the landscape background; the action of King Lear takes place nowhere near Stonehenge.