VISSCHER REDRAWN

By Robin Reynolds after Claes Jansz Visscher

1 Visscher Redrawn is a pen-and-ink revision of Dutch engraver Claes Jansz Visscher’s London panorama, published in 1616. In it, 21st century artist Robin Reynolds depicts modern London, arranged on the fantastic Visscher landscape. The new work was first exhibited at London’s Guildhall Art Gallery from February to November 2016, as part of the City of London’s William Shakespeare 400th and Great Fire 350th anniversary programmes.

The piece includes references to the Great Fire and the London Blitz – two events that reshaped London – and hidden in the drawing are visual references to all of Shakespeare’s major works. You can find the clues, drawn from Shakespeare’s texts, on pages 17-20.

While researching Visscher Redrawn, Robin Reynolds explored the life and works of Visscher and his associates in the . Included in this handbook is his essay, Secrets in the Sky, setting out the evidence that he believes explains how the Visscher panorama was compiled by a man who had never set eyes on London.

1 CONTENTS THE 2016 PROJECT

Claes Jansz Visscher 4-5 The idea of a modern London revision would be 2016 – the 400th The secret was a scroll-box, designed view in the fashion of the 1616 anniversary of the Visscher version and built by Reading carpenter Robin Reynolds 6-7 Visscher panorama surfaced in the – so again, the idea was put on ice. Graham Kemp. This permitted the mid-1990s, when Robin Reynolds artist to work on one section of the The Visscher panorama: factfile 8-9 was pursuing fantasy drawings as Early in 2014, encouraged by drawing while the rest of it was safe a hobby. Recognising that his pen- publicist Richard Peel, a friend and inside the box. It also allowed the Secrets in the Sky 10-15 and-ink work had a flavour of many former colleague, he began work on work-in-progress to be transported Renaissance engravings, he obtained the 2016 panorama. and shown to topographers, Visscher Redrawn - Things to look for 16 a photographic copy of Visscher’s historians, city planners and others view from the Museum of London. As a first step, he sought the advice who could offer advice. The work The Shakespeare Challenge 17-20 of Berkshire paper conservationist was completed in January 2016. However the idea went no further Susan Hourigan. There were two Acknowledgements 20 until 2007, when he retired from his objectives – one, to produce a work The objective was to portray post as head of the BBC’s history that would last at least 400 years, London as it was early in 2016. projects and heritage collections. and two, to minimise wear and tear However for practical purposes on two-and-a-half metres of heavy Southwark had to be researched This gave him time to begin drawing paper during a long and earlier. As a consequence, what research, but by then it was clear labour-intensive process. you see in the foreground is an that the ideal target date for a interpretation of Southwark in 2014.

Progress: The skyscrapers and Tower Bridge take shape The Kemp scroll box

2 3 About the artists

CLAES JANSZ VISSCHER

Biographical information is sketchy. In time he became one of the Netherlands, and Visscher, an He was born in around largest print publishers in Europe, arch-Calvinist, produced many 1586-7. The son of a shipyard producing maps, cityscapes and biblical maps and landscapes. carpenter, he identified his talents at other topographical publications and an early age, and is believed to have landscapes. Around 1,000 pieces He also produced a number of studied under the Flemish painter originated in his workshop, and the graphic topical prints depicting the David Vinckboons. family business generated prints from torture and execution of Catholic more than 4,000 second-hand plates. and other religious adversaries. By the age of 18 Visscher was working for the publisher Willem As an artist he appears to have Visscher died in 1652, but the Jansz Blaeu on a huge world map enjoyed creating landscape scenes, family business prospered into the printed from twenty plates. But but religion was important to him eighteenth century in the hands of within two years he was producing personally, and to his business. In his son Nicolaes Visscher I (1618– work in which he identified himself the age of the Dutch Revolt (1560s 1679), and grandson, Nicolaes as the publisher as well as the artist. to 1648) against the Catholic Visscher II (1649–1702). Spanish, new protestant bibles emerged in Germany and the

Images: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

4 5 About the artists

ROBIN REYNOLDS

Born in Zimbabwe in 1952, Robin the demands of family life and work Reynolds lives and works in England. limited his activities as an artist to fantasy pieces for the amusement His professional background of friends. is journalism and business communication. He worked at the Now retired, he works full-time BBC for 23 years and was latterly on images that have historic head of the BBC’s art, history and resonance for general and specific collections unit (BBC Heritage). markets. Prospects include the New Orleans tricentennial (2018) and the As a semi-professional draughtsman 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 he produced pocket illustrations, moon mission (2019). including a series of Dickens characters, for newspapers and He says of his work: ‘My pictures are magazines. For a time he was a about having fun with what I think regular contributor to Popular of as the human beehive. I like to Gardening magazine. offer grand-scale spectacle while at the same time drawing the observer He had an exhibition of larger pieces into the minutiae of a piece.’ in Luton in 1981, but for many years

6 7 Image: Library of Congress, Washington

THE VISSCHER • When it first appeared, the • The Visscher panorama was important prints and drawings • Visscher did not visit all the cities who lived in London for some Visscher engraving was headed printed on paper which was collector of the early seventeenth that were the subject of his years, acquired sketches from an PANORAMA ‘Londinum florentissima then glued to linen, to make a century. His collection was panoramas. In fact it’s possible artist unknown. Britanniae urbs toto orbe prestigious wall-hanging. purchased for the King in 1762 by that Amsterdam was the only • Published in 1616, the Visscher celeberrimum emporiumque’ the Scottish architects James and panorama subject that he saw • In 1662 the image was adapted panorama is one of the few visual (London, Britain’s most • Proud Britons were the target Robert Adam. first hand. for King Charles II’s Great Seal. records of the mediaeval city. flourishing city, famous market, but the text was also The image, measuring over two throughout the world). It was printed in French and Dutch for • Precisely when Visscher compiled • There is no evidence that he metres in width, was engraved on accompanied by a tract of Latin European buyers. the panorama is a mystery. The corresponded with anyone in copper plates in four sections. text, running to several thousand bulk of the work on the London London. Equally, there’s no words, describing London in • None of the wall-hangings has panorama was almost certainly evidence that he travelled there • In the image Visscher is identified flattering terms. survived. Only one complete 1616 completed years before it was (although even in those times the as the artist, but it was published print remains (although there finally published. Why the publisher trip from London to Amsterdam by a rival, Ludovicus Hondius. • This text was lifted from Britannia, were subsequent issues). It is part waited so long is the subject of was not difficult). After Visscher’s death in 1652, the ’s topographical of King George III’s collection, speculation. (See Secrets in the Sky, family workshop was publishing and historical survey of the British and now resides with the British Page 10) • If as many believe, Visscher did prints of at least 28 city panoramas Isles, published in several editions Library. It may originally have not visit London, what were his – many from the second-hand between 1586 and 1607. been purchased and assembled sources? Some believe that he plates of other engravers. by Cassiano del Pozzo, the most relied on John Norden’s Civitas Londini, published in 1600. In Visscher’s panorama, a water • But he could have had other tower built by Sir Bevis Bulmer sources. Anton Van den helps us date the sketches from Wyngaerde’s detailed 1543 which Visscher worked. The tower panorama, commissioned by carries the badge of the Tudor A section of the only surviving complete Henry VIII, would have been a queen, so it’s a safe guess the first edition print of Visscher’s London model for subsequent views from sketches were made after the panorama. This cartouche names the the south bank. However it seems stucture was completed in 1595, publisher as Ludovicus Hondius. more likely that the publisher’s and before the queen died in 1603. John Norden’s Civitas Londini. Image: Royal Library, Stockholm Image: British Library late father, I, Image: British Library

8 9 VISSCHER’S LONDON: THE SECRET IN THE SKY

We can only conclude that the Published in 1611, it is revealing. sketches came to him much later. Twelve years earlier Pieter Bast produced a relatively drab, Scouloudi went on to say: ‘By uninteresting view of the city, that year [1608] he had seen from across the IJ. Visscher definitely established his publishing acquired the plates, flattened out firm, the House of Visscher, in the many of the lines and replaced Kalverstraat. them with his own composition. The In view of the imprint, which result, which no doubt startled the states that the publisher was engraving community, is both a stark Jodocus Hondius [sic], one showcase of Visscher’s talent, and justifiably hesitates to believe that confirmation that he was happy to Visscher would have made such an let other people do the leg-work. If elaborate drawing for he didn’t have to row across the IJ – a firm other than his own.’ or for that matter sail to England – to make sketches, he wouldn’t. But going on the evidence in Image: British Library the detail I have found in So if he didn’t, who did? Visscher’s engravings, that’s For centuries people have puzzled by Irene Scouloudi, sage of the Royal study, Scouloudi concludes that precisely what happened. Finding links between Visscher and over how Claes Visscher compiled Historical Society, the Institute of the view was drawn between London is not difficult. First, and his famous engraving of London Historical Research, the London 1600 and 1608, and she declares In my researches I looked at his most obvious, is via the publisher before the great fire. Topographical Society and British it ‘unlikely that he drew the view earlier city panorama, his home himself. Named on the image as Archaeological Association? after 1608’. In fact the inclusion, town Amsterdam. Ludovicus Hondius, he was the Some think he might have sailed to twice in separate places in the England from his native Amsterdam, But happily there was further image, of the colours of Queen climbed the church tower on the site documentary evidence, unexplored Elizabeth I has always suggested of what is now Southwark Cathedral, in 1952. Where Scouloudi was the sketches were made before her Visscher includes the Tudor flag and made his own sketches. speculative on Visscher’s lineage – death in 1603. on what is, presumably, the royal was his father an artist, a jeweller, barge. It also appears on Bevis Others speculate that he stayed at or a shipwright – Dutch researchers And a cursory study of Visscher’s Bulmer’s water tower, near St Paul’s home and cribbed his view from have since established that he was other works confirms that he had other maps and pictures of London indeed a shipwright. And much is nothing to do with the creation at the turn of the 16th century. now known about how he branded of those sketches. Aside from the his business, how he revived and fact that Visscher would have been By the mid-20th century there was exploited second-hand engraving just 16 in 1603, there is conclusive broad agreement that Visscher plates, and about the political and evidence that in 1606 he had no probably didn’t come to London, but religious convictions that steered his idea what London looked like. In a that, it appeared, was that. Without life and business. news sheet depicting the execution further documentary evidence of the gunpowder plotters, his St would we ever solve the questions Then there is the evidence to be Paul’s Churchyard is distinctly Dutch posed in a 1952 study found in Visscher’s images. In her in appearance. St Paul’s Churchyard with a foreign flavour.Image: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

10 11 The Bast view of Images: Utrecht archives, Amsterdam and, below, Amsterdam City archive Visscher’s version, and World Digital Library/ extended and improved. Royal Library of Sweden Images: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

son of the aforementioned (and There, he was busy and well- recently produced a stunning view of incorrectly cited) Jodocus Hondius. connected. Aside from three Amsterdam, she knocked on his door Jodocus, a Flemish artist, map-maker portraits of Sir Francis Drake and negotiated. She would provide and engraver, was not the publisher now held by the National Portrait the drawings, he would create the (he had been dead four years when Gallery, he produced maps of the engraving, and her son Ludovicus the prints came out), but he was New World and he contributed would be named as publisher. certainly alive when the sketches to the development of the were made, and, moreover, he ‘’, a method But there is another, more lived in London for ten years. of charting the surface of the persuasive scenario. When in the globe as a flat image. 1580s Joost de Hondt – his name would have had English friends, panoramas. He produced a number And his strangely lopsided before he latinised it to Jodocus and we know that he had made of stadprofiels, including Utrecht in Amsterdam panorama So while it seems unlikely that Hondius – fled to London to escape important connections in England, 1603, Amsterdam in 1614, is somewhere in between. this heavyweight in the publishing religious strife in Ghent, he took producing maps for John Norden and Constantinople (as it was world would himself have spent along his 16-year-old girlfriend, and latterly, the publisher then called), in 1616. Constantinople stands out for weeks sketching London from the Colette van den Keere, and her George Humble. He doubtless made another reason. It appears in church tower in Southwark, he 13-year-old brother Pieter. In London many journeys to and from England So of the two, Pieter is the precisely the same format as almost certainly knew who did, and Hondius married Colette, and he over the following twenty years or more interesting, and he Visscher’s London. A headline it is entirely feasible that he had taught her brother to compile and so. So he would certainly have had becomes increasingly so on over the top, and beneath, possession of the sketches for ten engrave maps. the opportunity to climb the church further inspection. sixteen columns, in Latin, years or so before he died. tower in Southwark in order to describing the city. The ten years the trio spent in make the sketches, or to have asked His Utrecht (top) stands out for So one guess is that after he died London were formative for Pieter. someone else to do it for him. the awfulness of its sky. In contrast, So somewhere along the line his widow found the drawings By the time they set up shop in the Constantinople sky (bottom) is there has been a meeting of minds, among his papers. Knowing that her Amsterdam in 1594, he would have And unlike his brother-in-law, so improved as to suggest, in the and, intriguingly, a sharing of skills. A Drake portrait by Hondius. neighbour, young Claes Visscher, had spoken near perfect English, he Pieter had a track record in city intervening years, a brain transplant. In each view the clouds, alongside Image: Library of Congress

12 13

Left, birds and clouds over Constantinople and, below, birds and clouds over London

Visscher’s sketch, Road between locks in polder with farms and trees, dated 1615 - 1620 Image: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam weird birds that look like a cross in the Rijksmuseum collection as many cases a different individual between a swan and a hang glider, Road between locks in polder with or business takes the credit as are, indisputably by the same farms and trees, 1615 – 1620, it is publisher. An van Camp advised The gaps in the story permit us to One possibility is that van den Keere hand. The hand is at work again a small countryside view of a man that in those days engravers speculate. Although the presentation was trying to help his widowed sister in the Amsterdam panorama, and to fishing – and sketching while he tended to copy one another – so of van den Keere’s Amsterdam and his nephew Ludovic. Perhaps judge from the Utrecht panorama, it fishes. It is, perhaps, Visscher’s little such likenesses are not necessarily doesn’t match exactly that of London Visscher was similarly motivated. does not belong to van den Keere. joke about himself. evidence of collaboration. and Constantinople, it does include a headline and columns of text. My Another is that she and Ludovic I put the conundrum to Huigen But it is undoubtedly his hand. But the birds and the clouds, guess is it was the prototype for a sourced and typeset the text (lifted Leeflang, curator of Golden Age And there in the sky is one of surely, are. product line to meet a particular from William Camden’s Britannia). It prints at the Rijksmuseum, but those weird birds. demand. As the world opened up does, after all, end with a line saying he cautioned against jumping to I can only conclude that after people wanted not only to see the ‘from the workshop of [the late] conclusions. In Kalverstraat, freelance I asked An van Camp, curator of Utrecht, Pieter van den Keere places they would never visit, but to Jodocus Hondius’. artists and engravers tended to move Dutch, Flemish and German prints, acknowledged that his skies were a know more about them. from job to job, and studio to studio. drawings and paintings at the problem. And after seeing Visscher’s But the explanation may be simpler So it would be quite feasible for both Ashmolean, about the family of city glorious Amsterdam, he identified And Visscher bought into it. His than that. Perhaps the Hondiuses Visscher and van den Keere to have panoramas of that period, presented the solution. reward, in return for adding decent and van den Keere were, and always asked the same individual to finish in the same style (headline over the skies and other embellishments to had been, one and the same when it off their skies. top, Latin commentary underneath). But why would Visscher have Amsterdam and Constantinople, was came to business. There are several such panoramas, lent his superior skills to a rival and the London sketches. But then I found a Visscher sketch, including and Leiden. aesthetically inferior panorama Robin Reynolds in pen and ink on paper. Described But while they look the same, in of Amsterdam? And what of Hondius’s involvement? 2016

14 15 VISSCHER REDRAWN THE SHAKESPEARE THINGS TO LOOK FOR CHALLENGE

1. Cartouches top left and right. The to be confused with the fishermen Study the extracts from William Shakespeare's major works, and look for corresponding visual quotations highlight the Great Fire on today’s Southwark Bridge) references in the drawing and the Blitz of World War II – major reappears in the new version, events that shaped modern London. a hundred yards downstream near When shall we three meet again Exit pursued by a bear the Anchor pub. In thunder, lightning, or in rain? (Stage directions, Winter’s Tale, III, 3) 2. The secret of the Visscher (First Witch, Macbeth, I, 1) perspective is simple. His foreground 4. Balloons on strings echo the My lord, they say five moons stretches from what is today Tate macabre display of severed heads Your heart is burst, you have lost half your soul; were seen to-night; Modern to the mooring of HMS on the same spot four hundred Even now, now, very now, an old black ram Four fixed, and the fifth did whirl about Belfast – a distance of less than a years ago. At the same junction you Shakespeare and fellow thespians Is topping your white ewe. Arise, arise; The other four in wondrous motion mile. In contrast his north bank is can see characters from Visscher’s between shows at the Globe Theatre Awake the snorting citizens with the bell, (Hubert, King John, IV, 2) nearly 2.3 miles long, stretching London. Some cluster around stalls nearby. It would certainly have Or else the devil will make a grandsire of you from Whitehall in the west to St outside what is now No I London provided a ringside view of the Great (Iago, Othello, I, 1) So cowards fight when they can fly no further; Katharine’s Dock in the east. So Bridge. A man with a barrow is Fire – in which many treasured So doves do peck the falcon’s piercing talons everything on the north bank is still crossing the road to what is now copies of the Visscher panorama Andronicus, stain not thy tomb with blood: (Clifford, Henry VI Part 3, I, 4) small and far away. the Barrow Boy and Banker pub. doubtless perished – fifty years later. Wilt thou draw near the nature of the gods? And on the bridge itself Visscher’s Coincidentally the visual signature Draw near them then in being merciful: Their silent war of lilies and of roses, 3. Visscher had fun with his name, horse-drawn carriage is holding up on many of Visscher’s works was an Sweet mercy is nobility’s true badge: Which Tarquin view’d in her fair face’s field, adopting the fisherman as his motif. 21st century traffic, including arrangement of the letters CJV, in the Thrice noble Titus, spare my first-born son. In their pure ranks his traitor eye encloses; In many of his own publications he a cement truck. shape of an anchor. In the new version (Tamora, Titus Andronicus, I, 1) Note: The scene is Where, lest between them both it should be kill’d, included a fisherman with two rods. it is reproduced on the pub sign. depicted in The Longleat Manuscript – the only surviving The coward captive vanquished doth yield However in the London panorama, 5. The Anchor stands to the west sketch of a Shakespeare performance from Shakespeare’s To those two armies that would let him go, engraved by Visscher but published of Canon Street railway bridge in 6. Test your semaphore: The birds, time. Can you spot it? Rather than triumph in so false a foe by Ludovicus Hondius, he limits the centre foreground. According flying from the Golden Hind to (The Rape of Lucrece, 71-2) himself to a figure on bankside, to the sign above the door it’s been Southwark Cathedral spell out a line These often bathed she in her fluxive eyes, more or less where the new Globe there since 1615. If so it might well from a children’s film set in London And often kiss’d, and often ‘gan to tear: Some will evermore peep through their eyes Theatre now stands. The figure (not have been frequented by William (see alphabet). Cried ‘O false blood, thou register of lies… and laugh like parrots at a bag-piper A reverend man that grazed his cattle nigh – (Salarino, Merchant of Venice, I, 1) 7. The Mayor of London, 2008-2016. Sometime a blusterer, that the ruffle knew Can you spot him? Of court, of city, and had let go by The devil speed him! no man’s pie is freed The swiftest hours, observed as they flew – From his ambitious finger. What had he 8. The artist. The viewpoint for the Towards this afflicted fancy fastly drew, To do in these fierce vanities? I wonder north bank sketches in the 1616 And, privileged by age, desires to know That such a keech can with his very bulk panorama was almost certainly In brief the grounds and motives of her woe… Take up the rays o’ the beneficial sun St Mary Overie church – today’s So slides he down upon his grained bat And keep it from the earth. Southwark Cathedral. Accordingly, (A Lover’s Complaint, 50-64) (Buckingham, Henry VIII, I, 1) Robin Reynolds places himself in the new version, on top of the Please you, my lord, that honourable I heard myself proclaimed, and cathedral tower. gentleman, Lord Lucullus, entreats your company by the happy hollow of a tree escaped to-morrow to hunt with him, and has sent your honour (Edgar, King Lear, II, 3) 9. The Shakespeare Challenge. two brace of greyhounds. Look for visual references to 37 plays, (Third servant, Timon of Athens, I, 2) Continued... three major poems and the sonnets.

16 17 Shakespeare Challenge (continued)

If I were sawed into quantities, I should make But ‘tis a common proof, I then, all smarting with my wounds being cold, In the most high and palmy state of Rome, dozen of such bearded hermits’ staves as Master Shallow That lowliness is young ambition’s ladder, To be so pester’d with a popinjay, A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, (Falstaff, Henry IV Part 2, V, 1) Whereto the climber-upward turns his face; Out of my grief and my impatience, The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead But when he once attains the upmost round. Answer’d neglectingly I know not what, Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets; Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? He then unto the ladder turns his back, He should or he should not; for he made me mad As stars with trains of fire, and dews of blood, Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees To see him shine so brisk and smell so sweet Disasters in the sun; and the moist star Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, By which he did ascend And talk so like a waiting-gentlewoman Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands And summer’s lease hath all too short a date: (Brutus, Julius Caesar, II, 1) Of guns and drums and wounds — God save the mark! Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, (Hotspur, Henry IV Part 1, I, 3) (Horatio, Hamlet, I, 1) And often is his gold complexion dimm’d: No, my complete master: but to jig off a tune at And ev’ry fair from fair sometime declines, the tongue’s end, canary to it with your feet, humour O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo? I come to answer thy best pleasure; be’t to fly, By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d; it with turning up your eyelids, sigh a note and (Juliet, Romeo and Juliet, II, 2) To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride But thy eternal summer shall not fade, sing a note, sometime through the throat, as if you On the curl’d clouds, to thy strong bidding task Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st, swallowed love with singing love, sometime through Now, Mars, I prithee, make us quick in work, Ariel and all his quality. Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade, the nose, as if you snuffed up love by smelling That we with smoking swords may march from hence, (Ariel, The Tempest, I, 2) When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st; love; with your hat penthouse-like o’er the shop of To help our fielded friends! Come, blow thy blast. So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, your eyes; with your arms crossed on your thin-belly (Coriolanus, Coriolanus, I, 3) Now is this golden crown like a deep well So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. doublet like a rabbit on a spit; or your hands in That owes two buckets, filling one another, (sonnet, n. A piece of verse consisting of fourteen your pocket like a man after the old painting; and Here is such patchery, such juggling and such The emptier ever dancing in the air, decasyllabic lines Oxford English Dictionary) keep not too long in one tune, but a snip and away. knavery! all the argument is a cuckold and a The other down, unseen and full of water: (Moth, Love’s Labours Lost, III,1) whore; a good quarrel to draw emulous factions That bucket down and full of tears am I, Marry, as I told you before, John and Robert, and bleed to death upon. Drinking my griefs whilst you mount up on high be ready here hard by in the brew-house: and when I I am great with woe, and shall deliver weeping. (Thersites, Troilus and Cressida, II, 3) (King Richard II, Richard II, IV, 1) suddenly call you, come forth, and without any pause My dearest wife was like this maid, and such a one or staggering take this basket on your shoulders: My daughter might have been: my queen’s square The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale, I’d rather hear my dog bark at a crow that done, trudge with it in all haste, and carry brows; Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me; than a man swear he loves me it among the whitsters in Datchet-mead, and there Her stature to an inch; as wand-like straight Then slip I from her bum, down topples she, (Beatrice, Much Ado about Nothing, I, 1) empty it in the muddy ditch close by the Thames side (Pericles, Pericles Prince of Tyre, V, 1) And ‘tailor’ cries, and falls into a cough; (Mistress Ford, Merry Wives of Windsor, III, 3) And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh, I think Crab, my dog, be the sourest-natured Note: Mistress Ford plans to conceal her unwelcome Methought this staff, mine office-badge in court, And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear dog that lives: my mother weeping, my father beau, Sir John Falstaff, in the basket when her husband Was broke in twain; by whom I have forgot, A merrier hour was never wasted there. wailing, my sister crying, our maid howling, our cat comes home But, as I think, it was by the cardinal; (Puck, Midsummer Night’s Dream, II, 1) wringing her hands, and all our house in a great And on the pieces of the broken wand perplexity, yet did not this cruel-hearted cur shed Winchester goose, I cry, a rope! a rope! Were placed the heads of Edmund Duke of Somerset, Royal wench! one tear: he is a stone, a very pebble stone, and Now beat them hence; why do you let them stay? And William de la Pole, first duke of Suffolk. She made great Caesar lay his sword to bed: has no more pity in him than a dog Thee I’ll chase hence, thou wolf in sheep’s array. (Gloucester, Henry VI Part 2, I, 2) He plough’d her, and she cropp’d (Launce, Two Gentlemen of Verona, II, 3) Out, tawny coats! out, scarlet hypocrite! (Agrippa, Antony and Cleopatra, II, 2) (Duke of Gloucester, Henry VI Part 1, I, 3) So holy writ in babes hath judgment shown, …To a strong mast that lived upon the sea; When judges have been babes; great floods have flown The roof o’ the chamber Where, like Arion on the dolphin’s back, Petruchio is the master, From simple sources, and great seas have dried With golden cherubins is fretted: her andirons— I saw him hold acquaintance with the waves That teacheth tricks eleven and twenty long, When miracles have by the greatest been denied. I had forgot them—were two winking Cupids So long as I could see. To tame a shrew and charm her chattering tongue. (Helena, All’s Well that Ends Well, II, 1) Of silver, each on one foot standing, nicely (Captain, Twelfth Night, I, 2) (Tranio, The Taming of the Shrew, IV, 2) Depending on their brands (Iachimo, Cymbeline, II, 4) Continued...

18 19 Shakespeare Challenge (continued) MY THANKS TO... With one fair hand she heaveth up his hat, Richard Peel (RPPR) Her other tender hand his fair cheek feels: His tenderer cheek receives her soft hand’s print, Vini and Natalie Walker As apt as new-fall’n snow takes any dint. (www.thesaucecreative.com) (Venus and Adonis, 369) Simon Reynolds (Semperaliquid)

More direful hap betide that hated wretch, Mike Paterson (London Historians) That makes us wretched by the death of thee, Huigen Leeflang (Curator of Prints, Than I can wish to adders, spiders, toads, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) Or any creeping venom’d thing that lives! (Lady Anne, Richard III, I, 2) David Pearson (Director of Culture, Heritage and Libraries, City of London Corporation)

Now, as fond fathers, Sonia Solicari (Chief Curator, Guildhall Art Gallery) Having bound up the threatening twigs of birch, Jeremy Mayhew (Common Councilman, Only to stick it in their children’s sight City of London Corporation) For terror, not to use, in time the rod Becomes more mock’d than fear’d; so our decrees, Nick Bodger, Cultural and Visitor Development, Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead; City of London Corporation And liberty plucks justice by the nose; Graham Kemp (Carpenter) The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart Goes all decorum. Rob Shanks (Carpenter) (Duke, Measure for Measure, I, 3) John Schofield (London archeologist and historian)

A lioness, with udders all drawn dry, David Cordery (Max Communications) Lay couching, head on ground, with catlike watch, Peter Barber (London Topographical Society, When that the sleeping man should stir; for ‘tis former head of Map Collections, British Library) The royal disposition of that beast Peter Rees (Bartlett School of Planning, UCL, To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead formerly chief planning officer, City of London) (Oliver, As You Like It, IV,3) Peter Ross (London Topographical Society and …You may as well go about to Guildhall Library) turn the sun to ice with fanning in his face with a Eden Phillips (edenco creative) peacock’s feather. (Williams, Henry V, IV, 1) Susan Hourigan (Senior Conservator, Berkshire Record Office)

The sailors sought for safety by our boat, Pat Hardy (Curator of Paintings, Prints and And left the ship, then sinking-ripe, to us: Drawings, Museum of London) My wife, more careful for the latter-born, Ralph Hyde (London Topographical Society) Had fasten’d him unto a small spare mast, Such as seafaring men provide for storms Tom Harper (Curator of Antiquarian Mapping, (Aegeon, The Comedy of Errors, I,1) British Library)

Eric Schmitz (Municipal Archive, Amsterdam) You can also play the Shakespeare game online: visscherredrawn.london And my wife Gillian To learn more about Robin Reynolds and his work visit robinreynolds.co.uk Robin Reynolds

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