Shakespearean Objects in the Royal Collection, 1714-1939: From National Treasure to Family Heirloom

The British royal collection includes nearly 2,000 objects with a connection to Shakespeare. What stories do these objects tell of the relationship between the man often described as Britain’s ’national poet’ and Britain’s royal family? Royal collecting of Shakespeare did not really begin until 1714, and has therefore broadly tracked the development, and entrenchment, of the Hanoverian--and latterly the Saxe-Coburg Gotha--royal family. Not entirely coincidentally, this period also saw a general increase in public interest in objects associated with Shakespeare’s life and biography, often to the detriment of Shakespeare’s works--a development partially spearheaded by the ’Shakespeare Jubilee’ masterminded by the actor David Garrick at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1769. The histories of specific works of art in the royal collection, from Thomas Gainsborough’s painting of Mary Robinson to a collection of relic objects relating to ’Herne’s Oak’ and Shakespeare’s mulberry tree, reveal how royal engagement with Shakespearean objects between 1714 and 1939 contributed to the development of a new constitutional settlement between the monarchy and its subjects under George IV, Queen Victoria, and George V and Queen Mary. During this period, objects relating to Shakespeare--increasingly regarded (by the royal family) as nostalgic souvenirs from a fantastical national past--were useful tools in shoring up these ideas, and in yoking the fortunes of the British monarchy to a new vision of shared national history.

Kirsten Tambling, Independent researcher

Kirsten Tambling completed her PhD in History of Art at Birkbeck, University of London on the art of Jean-Antoine Watteau and William Hogarth. She was a postdoctoral research associate for ’Shakespeare in the Royal Collection’, and subsequently Associate Lecturer on the Curating the Art Museum programme at the Courtauld Institute of Art. She has worked in various museums and collections, including the Royal Collection Trust and Watts Gallery, where she was co-curator of the exhibition James Henry Pullen: Inmate, Inventor, Genius (2018). She has published articles on eighteenth-century art, the intersection of art and psychiatry, and the history of collections.