William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
William Perry (active 1860s)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
c. 1863 - c. 1867
Materials
Oak
Measurements
239 x 129 x 97 mm
Place of origin
London
Order this imageCollection
Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire
NT 514607
Summary
Oak, William Shakespeare (1564-1616), William Perry (active 1860s), c. 1863-67. A bust of William Shakespeare carved of oak and varnished, by William Perry, woodcarver to Queen Victoria (1819-1901). Mounted upon a socle and half-octagon base, the socle carved with a cartouche containing ‘WS’ in monogram. The underside of the socle stamped ‘HERNE’S OAK/ W. PERRY/ NO. AUDLEY STREET’. The portrait based on the demi-figure of Shakespeare in Gerard Johnson’s funerary monument at Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon.
Full description
William Perry, a woodcarver to Queen Victoria, purports to have carved this bust and other Shakespeare-related souvenirs from the timber of Herne’s Oak, a fabled tree in Windsor Forest haunted by Herne the Hunter. This woodland ghost of English folklore was popularised by Shakespeare in his 1597 comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor. Published versions of the play characterise Herne as the ghost of a former keeper of Windsor Forest who haunts a particular oak tree at midnight in winter: There is an old tale goes, that Herne the Hunter (sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest) Doth all the winter-time, at still midnight Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns; And there he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle, And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain In a most hideous and dreadful manner. You have heard of such a spirit, and well you know The superstitious idle-headed eld Receiv'd, and did deliver to our age This tale of Herne the Hunter for a truth. The Merry Wives of Windsor (Act IV, scene IV) The Victorian revival in Shakespeare studies led some dedicated scholars to seek out the ‘real’ Herne’s Oak by literally interpreting topographical clues in the play, despite the fact that a tree of that name, recorded in Ordnance Survey maps, was felled by George III in 1796. Forty years later Queen Victoria’s interest was piqued when the natural historian Edward Jesse claimed that a different tree on Long Walk was instead Herne’s Oak. That tree was blown down on 31 August 1863 and replaced with another. Investigating the exact location of the legendary oak became the subject of a two-volume antiquarian study, The Annals of Windsor (1858), while William Perry was compelled to publish a treatise on the matter in 1867 after the ‘Herne’s Oak’ he had used to sculpt a bust of Shakespeare for Victoria was alleged to be fake (Perry 1867, p. x). Such was the Queen’s belief in the veracity of the ‘Maiden Tree’ that Perry also carved, of ‘Herne’s Oak’, an ornate ‘casket’ to house her First Folio, a first quarto edition of sonnets, and other Shakespearean relics as well as an ornate binding for the royal copy of his own treatise, its front board inlaid with a photograph of the Oak taken before its fall in 1863 (Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 1047000). The book was presented with a certificate of authenticity signed by Perry stating that the wood had been given to him from the Royal Gardens, Windsor. Despite determined efforts, no evidence was found to prove the tree’s actual existence. As Adam Zucker writes, ‘Herne’s Oak is a strictly imaginary tree, but it was imagined by Victorian audiences so intensely, through such a culturally powerful narrative form, that it actually came into being’ (Zucker 2011, p. 27, see also pp. 25-9). In the introduction to his Treatise on the Identity of Herne’s Oak, Perry refers to a bust of Shakespeare made before Her Majesty’s and carved ‘for a gentleman… out of a piece of oak from Shakespeare’s Barn at New Place, Stratford-on-Avon, the late residence of the immortal Bard.’ (Perry 1867, p. x). The other known bust in public collections, in addition to the Anglesey Abbey which is stamped ‘Herne’s Oak’, is the one presumably carved for Victoria and donated to the Guildhall Exhibition (now the Windsor and Royal Borough Museum) by King George VI in 1951 (inv.no. WNDRB 12.51). Alice Rylance-Watson 2020
Provenance
Bequeathed to the National Trust by Huttleston Rogers Broughton, 1st Lord Fairhaven (1896-1966) with the house and the rest of the contents.
Credit line
Anglesey Abbey, The Fairhaven Collection (The National Trust)
Marks and inscriptions
On front of socle: WS (in monogram) On underside of socle: HERNE’S OAK/ W. PERRY/ NO. AUDLEY STREET
Makers and roles
William Perry (active 1860s), woodcarver
References
Perry 1867: William Perry, A Treatise on the Identity of Herne's Oak, Shewing the Maiden Tree to Have Been the Real One, London 1867 Zucker 2011: Adam Zucker, The Places of Wit in Early Modern English Comedy, Cambridge 2011, pp. 25-9. Christie, Manson & Woods 1971: The National Trust, Anglesey Abbey, Cambridge. Inventory: Furniture, Textiles, Porcelain, Bronzes, Sculpture and Garden Ornaments’, 1971, vol. I, p. 155, no. 3