An English Country Performance of Macbeth

J. Wright

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Shakespeare's wide popularity around 1790 is demonstrated by this satire. A provincial audience crowds a barn-like theater to attend a performance of Macbeth. We view the scene from backstage as the three witches emerge from a trap door. At left, unseen by the audience, a prompter sits on a barrel as players mend a costume, smoke, and having their hair dressed. At right, peeking around a flat, a booted and cloaked figure who may be Macbeth, waits to come on.

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