‘Gestures Proper to Each of Them’: Shakespeare and the Mediation of Gendered Social Exchange in Eighteenth-Century England

Abstract

William Shakespeare ascended to the status of English national poet over the course of the eighteenth century. His literary work entered the cultural imagination not only through theatrical performances and printed texts, but the playwright's corpus was also represented visually — in painted and printed media, and as or on material culture objects. Privileging Shakespearean themed printed fans and snuff boxes, this article probes the capability of Shakespeare's works (as their decoration) to act as emotive and expressive mechanisms in gendered social exchanges. It evaluates the way in which the ornamentation of these gestural objects informed extra-linguistic forms of communication, mediating and shaping contemporary users' engagement with and experience of the playwright and his corpus.