A polished wooden bust of Shakespeare on a small plinth. "William Shakespeare", "Born 1564" and "Died 1616" are carved around the base in a blackletter style. Shakespeare's coat of arms and the masks of comedy and tragedy are carved on the plinth. Shakespeare is recognisable by his bald head, short beard, and costume with a narrow collar and row of small buttons, based on that of his funerary monument in Statford.

Bust of Shakespeare

William Perry

1863

Oak

26.2 x 13.5 x 7.5 cm

RCIN 7021

Image credit: Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2021

In the 1860s, the woodcarver William Perry used the wood of various ‘Shakespearean’ trees to make a series of these busts.

This example follows the pattern of the bust originally commissioned by Queen Victoria, who supplied Perry with the wood of the second Herne’s Oak as raw material. Queen Victoria's bust is now in the Windsor & Royal Borough Museum; this is the version acquired by Victoria's son, Edward, Prince of Wales.

Shakespeare’s likeness is based on the effigy at his tomb in Stratford, but with strategic enhancements. The poet is rendered more youthful, and the shape of his head has been changed, in line with the contemporary (pseudo-)science of phrenology, to suggest his intelligence.

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Block of oak, polished to show the grain

c.1863

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A Treatise on the Identity of Herne’s Oak Shewing the Maiden Tree to have been the Real One

William Perry

1867

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