Monday 21 December 2015

Welcome to the Shakespearean Menagerie - Shakespeare's Animals

Today the Illustrated Menagerie was interviewed by Hannah Sperring, Creative writing student at the University of Portsmouth, who's now penned an exciting piece about our involvement in the upcoming festival in Portsmouth celebrating all things Shakespeare; Much Ado about Portsmouth. We have a number of things in the pipeline for exploring animals this year with this new focus of how Shakespeare himself employed their characteristics to describe characters in his plays.

Our remit ordinarily involves illustrating animals which are actually living and breathing, but this year we will embrace the mythical and legendary creatures also to try to capture some of the range of the creatures which featured in plays and sonnets penned four hundred (plus) years ago.

We are also lucky enough to have been offered a very exciting opportunity to exhibit of some of the work as a group student show, in the Freda Swain room at Portsmouth Guildhall.

Exhibition Dates: 12 March - 7 June 2016 

Sunday 20 December 2015

Much Ado!

The Illustrated Menagerie is now dipping its toes into the writings of Shakespeare for inspiration to work with, as part of the upcoming Much Ado About Portsmouth Festival (see maap.port.ac.uk for more details)


Portsmouth-based festival events marking the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death. The festival will run from the 18th to the 23rd April 2016 (culminating on the day of Shakespeare's death).