Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

had created monuments for Garrick’s Shakespeare Temple, for Stratford-on-Avon, Westminster
Abbey and various private collections. These portrait busts and statues were, however, much
developed from the tomb effigy and the Droeshout engraving, improved to accord with a
predominantly classical taste, like Cibber and Garrick’s versions of the plays. For the next
generation of antiquaries, who unearthed the original texts, adjusted Macbeth’s bonnet and
opened King John’s tomb, this would not do. Britton called them ‘caricature statues’. 114 A more
authentic image was an imperative. The Stratford monument, however aesthetically
unsatisfactory was more acceptable, both historically and emotionally. It was as Britton put it in
his Autobiography, ‘a family record’ and ‘as a memorial raised by the affection and esteem of
relatives…This invaluable “Effigy”’ was :
Attested by tradition, consecrated by time, and preserved in the inviolability of its own simplicity and sacred station.
It was evidently executed immediately after the poet’s decease; and probably under the superintendence of his sonin-law,
Dr Hall, and of his daughter; the latter of whom, according to her epitaph, was “witty above her sexe”, and
therein resembled her father. 115
As Britton moves unhesitatingly from the bust to its commissioning a narrative begins, a family
group gathers round the tomb, with Britton himself among them. Yet the bust has, he adds, been
either neglected ‘or treated slightly or superciliously’ by previous Shakespeare scholars, the
worst of whom in this regard was Malone, who whitewashed it. 116 ‘In this very act’, Britton
thought ‘our zealous annotator has passed an irrevocable sentence on his own judgment.’ 117
Britton, who states with embarrassing candour the extent to which his own ‘personal acts
and literary tributes’ to Shakespeare ‘have been wholly neglected by the generality of
Commentators on the works of the Bard of Avon’ no doubt felt by 1849 a certain protective
sympathy for the unjustly overlooked bust. 118 In 1814, however, he was filled with antiquarian
enthusiasm for ‘the most authentic and genuine Portrait’ as well as a (misplaced) confidence in
114 Britton, Autobiography, (1850), Appendix, p. 22.
115 Britton, Autobiography, (1850), Appendix, p. 12.
116 Britton, Autobiography, (1850), Appendix, p. 13.
117 Britton, Autobiography, (1850), Appendix, p. 14.
118 Britton, Autobiography, (1850), Appendix, p. 4.
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