William Shakespeare by Giovanni Fontana, 1874
Leicester Square Gardens
London, October 2009
“A statue of William Shakespeare, by the sculptor Giovanni Fontana after an original by Peter Scheemakers, has formed the centrepiece of Leicester Square Gardens in London since 1874. The marble figure, copied from Scheemakers's 18th-century monument to Shakespeare in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, stands on a pedestal flanked by dolphins at the centre of a fountain. It is the result of improvements to the gardens made by the financier Albert Grant, who bought the Square in 1874 and had it refurbished to a design by James Knowles. The scroll held by Shakespeare is inscribed with a quotation from Twelfth Night (Act IV, Scene II), ‘There is no darkness but ignorance’, where the original in Poets' Corner has a misquoted passage from The Tempest. The Leicester Square statue also differs from its model in omitting portrait reliefs of Henry V, Richard III and Elizabeth I from the plinth on which Shakespeare rests.” (Statue of William Shakespeare, Wikipedia)
3 comments:
The post to go with yesterday's bench?
@ ciel - It happens...
Interesting synchronicity... I don't have enough time for blogging much lately, but I did just visit a blog that discussed the controversy of Willie's being the real author of the plays: the Statfordians vs the anti-Stratfordians. It's an interesting issue.
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