David Garrick as King Lear (Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 3, Scene 1)

James McArdell

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Garrick, who spearheaded the eighteenth-century Shakespeare revival, appears here as King Lear. In the play, the king is cast out by his power-hungry daughters, and wanders on a stormy heath attended by the faithful duke of Kent, and by Edgar, disguised as Poor Tom. The image reflects Nahum Tate's revised version of the play, staged in London between 1681 and the early nineteenth century, where the role of the Fool is removed, Lear and Cordelia do not die, and the princess marries Edgar.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art