Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Boydell Shakespeare Gallery

Boydell Shakespeare Gallery

• Featured article candidates/Boydell Shakespeare Gallery

This article on an eighteenth-century project that was dedicated to promoting Shakespeare both through art and through a new edition of the Bard's plays has been quite difficult to write. The project covers a gallery of paintings, a folio of prints, and an edition of the plays. The article has been peer reviewed and critiqued on the talk page. Rupert Clayton has provided valuable assistance, particularly with regards to the gallery building itself. One hurdle to be overcome in writing this article is the source limitations: the most commonly cited sources are two dissertations. I have used them because they are the most complete sources and because they are cited by other published works on the topics. I am not sure this issue has arisen at FAC before, but I wanted to make reviewers aware of it. I know this issue has arisen elsewhere on Wikipedia and I wasn't sure what the ultimate consensus was regarding the use of dissertations. I believe that since there is so little scholarship on this topic and since these dissertations are cited by experts in the field, their use is justified. Awadewit (talk) 03:01, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

• Support: Watching this since since it's inception last November, and am impressed with its development since. Its great. Ceoil (talk) 10:19, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
• Support Comment - it's excellent work, but it seems a little confused over what the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery was. The lead says it was was a collection of pictures...focused around an illustrated edition of William Shakespeare's works and a folio of prints from the London gallery; later on we are told Boydell's Shakespeare project contained three parts: an illustrated edition of Shakespeare's plays, a folio of prints from the gallery... and a public gallery where the original paintings for the prints would hang; and then we get The "magnificent and accurate" Shakespeare edition which Boydell began in 1786 was to be the focus of his enterprise. The second explanation treating it as a "project" would seem better to me (after all, Boydell published other works "From the Shakespeare Gallery" that weren't anything to do with Shakespeare). Yomangani^talk 14:35, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

• Boydell started by thinking that the edition and its illustrations would be the focus but then the gallery took over the project. How best to make this clear? The initial statements attempt to describe what the gallery is and later the articles tries to describe the changing focus of the project. Any help on this would be appreciated. (Note: all of the works associated with the Shakespeare Gallery were on Shakespearean subjects, as far as I know.) Awadewit (talk) 14:40, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

• Maybe just reword the opening paragraph, as the rest isn't contradictory. I left a suggestion—very much a draft—on the talk page. (With regard to the note: he published Hogarth's Works in 1790 from the Shakespeare Gallery—admittedly there were a few Shakespearean scenes in there, but it wasn't chiefly a Shakespeare set). Yomangani^talk 15:00, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

• Are you sure the Hogarth's Works was connected with the Gallery and not a separate project? During the 1790s the Boydells engaged in several other projects. If this is part of the Gallery, it should be part of the article. Do you have any references for that? Awadewit (talk) 18:37, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
• See new first paragraph of lead. Awadewit (talk) 18:47, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

• The publisher info reads thus:The Original Works of William Hogarth. Sold by John and Josiah Boydell, at the Shakespeare Gallery, Pall-Mall, and No. 90, Cheapside, London, 1790. I suppose you could argue they weren't publishing it as a "Shakespeare Gallery" edition, but it probably rates a mention. It's reproduced in Hogarth's Graphic Works, 3rd edition, p.20. (The plates that Boydell bought from Jane Hogarth were sold off in the auction too). Yomangani^talk 18:47, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

• I don't think you can use that as evidence since the Boydell publishing firm was located at that building throughout all of the years of the Shakespeare enterprise and published other books under that address (as the article notes). I think that is just advertising for the Shakespeare Gallery embedded in publishing information. Moreover, everything Boydell owned was sold off in the auction. I think we need much more solid evidence than this that Hogarth's Prints was considered part of the Shakespeare enterprise. I haven't seen it mentioned in any of the published works I have read on the Gallery, so I am reticent to include it on such slim evidence. Awadewit (talk) 18:56, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

• I don't have a problem with not including it; the "at the Shakespeare Gallery" was what I wanted to point out, and the new lead makes it clear it is more than just a collection of paintings (the mention of the plates being sold off was just for colour. I think it is a sad twist that Hogarth got the whole Shakespeare painting thing rolling and Boydell ends up having to flog his plates off to finance the white elephant of the gallery). Anyway, you've addressed my one niggle, so I'm supporting. Have you considered using Hogarth's David Garrick as Richard III in place of the scene from The Tempest? - you could illustrate two sub-topics with a single image (but maybe that's over the top). Yomangani^talk 23:49, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

• I used to have that image in the article when the Shakespeare section was longer. :) Replaced. Awadewit (talk) 23:59, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Comments

Issues resolved, Ealdgyth - Talk 18:44, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

• Current ref 44 "Quoted on Shakespeare Illustrated" is that website in the bibliography? If not, it's lacking publisher information

• Publication information added. Awadewit (talk) 18:37, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

• The West "John Boydell" reference, the link requires registration, probably should put that in the reference.

• Link removed. Awadewit (talk) 18:37, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

All other links and sources look good. I don't have an issue with using a dissertation, myself. In medieval history, it isn't that unknown to cite dissertations and theses. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:44, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I also have no problem with the dissertations, considering they appear to comply with WP:SPS: the most commonly cited sources are two dissertations. I have used them because they are the most complete sources and because they are cited by other published works on the topics. But. My long experience at WP:FAR tells me that we don't want to be chasing this down five years from now if Awadewit is gone from Wiki and someone questions those sources (it is such a shame to have to defeature articles because no one is around who can locate the original info, and it happens frequently). It would be helpful to leave a record of the authors' credentials and publications on the FAC, where they can easily be tracked down five years from now. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:00, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

The two major dissertations used have both been published by Garland Press and would be available in any major university research library. I'm not sure what credentials and publications you want me to list here - if these authors had gone on to write books and articles on their dissertation topics, I would have used those. They did not. I have already listed the reasons I used the dissertations. Awadewit (talk) 18:37, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

If they would be widely available, then there's no issue (that wasn't clear from your first statement). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:09, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

A quick comment on this... I'd say a dissertation (even unpublished) is absolutely a reliable source. And North American dissertations, at least, are easy enough to get hold of (increasingly as online download) from UMI (though that link may require a subscription) in Michigan. In fact, here's mine! If you order it from them, I get a (very small) royalty! Go on, you know you want to!  ;) --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 05:46, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

• Comment The illustrations in "Gallery" subheading sandwich the text.

• I think this is justified because one illustration shows the building and one shows the sculpture on the building, a sculpture of Shakespeare. Awadewit (talk) 00:05, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't know if sandwiching text can ever really be justified, based on formating concerns. Try moving the picture, shrinking size, adding text, etc, so that they aren't across from each other. Ottava Rima (talk) 02:55, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

There is nowhere to move the image to and the image sizes are not supposed to be forced per WP:MOS#Images. This is the best possible solution. Sometimes sandwiching can't be avoided and I think that it is worth it to have both of these images. Awadewit (talk) 03:01, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

The following lines need citations:

• "His superb acting—acknowledged as such both then and now—unrivalled productions, numerous and important Shakespearean portraits, and his spectacular 1769 Shakespeare Jubilee, helped to promote Shakespeare as the ultimate British product and playwright."

• Covered by the footnote after the following sentence. Awadewit (talk) 21:49, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

• "The exhibitions became important public events: thousands of spectators flocked to see them each year and newspapers carried detailed reports and critiques of the works displayed. "

• Covered by footnote after the following sentence. Awadewit (talk) 21:49, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

• "However, the mid-century Shakespearean theatrical revival was probably most responsible for reintroducing the British public to Shakespeare. The theatre itself was in the midst of a resurgence and Shakespeare's plays aided this revitalization."

• Covered by footnote after the following sentence. Awadewit (talk) 21:49, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

• "In order to turn a profit, booksellers chose only well-known authors, such as Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson, to edit Shakespeare editions"

• Covered by footnote after the following sentence. Awadewit (talk) 21:49, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

• "Apart from these popular editions, scholarly editions also proliferated. In the first half of the 18th century, these were edited by author-scholars such as Pope (1725) and Johnson (1765), but later in the century this changed. Editors such as George Steevens (1773, 1785) and Edmund Malone (1790) used painstaking care in collating their editions and included extensive explanatory footnotes from previous editors as well as themselves. The early editions appealed to both the middle class and those interested in Shakespeare scholarship, but the later editions appealed almost exclusively to those interested in scholarship. "

• Covered by footnote after the following sentence. Awadewit (talk) 21:49, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

• "The print folio, A Collection of Prints, From Pictures Painted for the Purpose of Illustrating the Dramatic Works of Shakspeare, by the Artists of Great-Britain (1805), was originally intended to be a collection of the illustrations from the edition, but a few years into the project, Boydell altered his plan. He guessed that he could sell more folios and editions if the pictures were different. "

• Added note. Awadewit (talk) 23:46, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

• "Pall Mall at that time had a mix of expensive residences and commercial operations, such as bookshops and gentleman's clubs, popular with fashionable London society. "

• Covered by footnote after the following sentence. Awadewit (talk) 21:49, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

• "Across King's Place, immediately to the east of the Boydells' building, 51 Pall Mall had been purchased on 26 February 1787 by George Nicol, bookseller and future husband of Josiah's elder sister, Mary Boydell. As an indication of the changing character of the area, this property had been the home of Goostree's gentleman's club from 1773 to 1787."

• Covered by footnote at end of paragraph. Awadewit (talk) 21:49, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

• "Dance's Shakespeare Gallery building had a monumental, neoclassical stone front, and a full-length exhibition hall on the ground floor. Three interconnecting exhibition rooms occupied the upper floor, with a total of more than 4,000 square feet (370 m²) of wall space for displaying pictures. "

• Covered by footnote at end of paragraph. Awadewit (talk) 21:49, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

• "The lower story of the façade was dominated by a large, rounded-arched doorway in the centre. The unmoulded arch rested on wide piers, each of which was broken by a narrow window, above which ran a simple cornice. Dance placed a transom across the doorway at the level of the cornice bearing the inscription "Shakespeare Gallery". Below the transom were the main entry doors, with glazed panels and side lights matching the flanking windows. "

• Covered by footnote at end of paragraph. Awadewit (talk) 21:49, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

• "The capitals topping the pilasters sported volutes in the shape of ammonite fossils—a neo-classical architectural feature invented by Dance specifically for the gallery that became known as the Ammonite Order. In a recess between the pilasters, Dance placed Thomas Banks's sculpture Shakespeare attended by Painting and Poetry, for which the artist was paid 500 guineas. The sculpture depicted Shakespeare, reclining against a rock, between the Dramatic Muse and the Genius of Painting"

• Covered by footnotes at end of paragraph. Awadewit (talk) 21:49, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

• "Boydell decided to appeal to Parliament for a private bill to authorise him to organise a lottery to dispose of everything in his business. Boydell died before the lottery was held, but he was alive to see each of the 22,000 tickets purchased, which cost three guineas a piece. The lottery was drawn on 28 January 1805: there were 64 winning tickets, with the highest prize being the Gallery itself with its collection of paintings. This went to William Tassie, a modeller, of Leicester Fields (now Leicester Square). "

• Covered by next footnote. Awadewit (talk) 21:49, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

• "From its beginning, Boydell's project inspired imitators. In April 1788, after the announcement of the Shakespeare Gallery, but a year before its opening, Thomas Macklin opened a Gallery of the Poets in the former Royal Academy building on the south side of Pall Mall, opposite Market Lane, which had been previously leased to the auctioneer James Christie. The first exhibition featured one work from each of 19 artists, including Fuseli, Reynolds, and Thomas Gainsborough. The gallery added new paintings of subjects from poetry each year, and from 1790 supplemented these with scenes from the Bible"

• Covered by next footnote. Awadewit (talk) 21:49, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

• "the paintings and engravings that were part of the Boydell Gallery affected the way Shakespeare's plays were staged and acted in the 19th century; they influenced Shakespearean illustration for the rest of the century; and they became the topic of criticism in important works such as Romantic poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Lectures on Shakespeare" and William Hazlitt's dramatic criticism"

• Covered by footnote at end of next sentence. Awadewit (talk) 21:49, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

The above should be most of them. Ottava Rima (talk) 21:18, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

• Not every sentence is required to have a footnote. I will find a citation for the one problem sentence you have identified when I get home and have access to all of my notes and books. Awadewit (talk) 21:49, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

• One missing note has been added. Awadewit (talk) 23:46, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

If a footnote covers multiple lines, then you should use the ref name= template so that you can link them all under the same ref. Otherwise, it is impossible to identify which ref is actually citing which information and which information is not cited at all. Ottava Rima (talk) 02:55, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

It is not impossible to determine what information is being covered. The footnotes cover the same topic. This is a common convention. It is not necessary to pepper the article with footnotes after every sentence. Awadewit (talk) 03:01, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

But unless you are there to tell people, how will someone know this same thing years from now? I think it would be important to "pepper" an 18th century article because most of us didn't grow up in the 18th century, soooo, it would be hard to verify from our actual experience. :) (and no, I'm not accusing you of being really old, I don't need a ANI complaint over that). Ottava Rima (talk) 13:55, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Almost every piece of information in this article is cited, above and beyond the demands of WP:V. There is no need to replicate the footnotes. Awadewit (talk) 08:57, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

• Support Certainly meets FA standard, although I would hope it can be broadened as per my earlier comments on the talk page at some point. Johnbod (talk) 03:21, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

• I tried to address those. I added a paragraph or so about the engravings from the catalogue I obtained and more material on the artistic legacy of the Gallery's works. Unfortunately, the articles in the catalogue discuss many of the paintings individually. It is a good resource for the artists' individual articles, I think. Awadewit (talk) 03:30, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

• Comment. I wonder if you could get Tony1 to give this the once-over. I felt that the prose was awkward at times, and though I tried to do some copy-editing I didn't have time or energy to do more. (Probably the same for Tony1, sadly). A couple of quick examples:

  "the theatre was rebounding" Strange word, and "rebounding" from what?

  "Shakespeare's reputation profited from this dearth, for his were the only decent ones playing." "Dearth" and "decent" both seem odd choices.

  NB was Shakespeare really promoted as British rather than (more specifically) English?

  "Britain was changing from an oral to a print culture." British culture was changing, rather than Britain itself?

  "Boydell's Shakespeare project contained three parts: an illustrated edition of Shakespeare's plays; a folio of prints from the gallery (originally intended to be a folio of prints from the edition of Shakespeare's plays); and a public gallery where the original paintings for the prints would hang." The second element of the list assumes the gallery, which is only in fact mentioned subsequently, as the third element.

  "Even the paper quality was extraordinarily high: Boydell chose to use Whatman paper." Given that Whatman paper's a redlink, it might be worth explaining what's so special about it. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 10:19, 25 April 2008 (UTC)