Sigh no more

Sigh no more

Paul Woodroffe

Photomechanical reproduction of pen and ink drawing.

5½ x 4 inches

Songs from the Plays of Shakespeare , facing p. 20.

Woodroffe’s interpretation of Balthasar’s song in Much Ado About Nothing. The ladies are Rossettian beauties and the sighing is accompanied by the melancholy notes of a lute. The treatment of the faces and hands is derived from Rossetti’s paintings of Jane Morris in the seventies, and the oppressive atmosphere is completed by the congested rose-vine that encloses it. Essentially a series of enclosures within enclosures, the image stresses the contrast between the venturing openness of men, ‘one foot in sea and one on shore’, and women’s traditional passivity and inertness.

Click on image to enlarge it.

Scanned image and text by Simon Cooke.

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

<