As soon as you enter Senate House the enthusiasm of the team behind the Metamorphosis exhibition is evident. A mural of Shakespeare covers the grand staircase and excerpts from some of his plays are arranged in bright, colourful displays in the elevators where motion-activated audio recordings are also played.  

The exhibition itself also incorporates many different forms of media. As suggested by the title, the exhibit emphasizes the changing ways through which Shakespeare’s readers encounter him. To emphasize this, the exhibit is broken up into seven distinct, chronological ages (inspired by the Seven Ages of Man speech in As You Like It, Act II Scene VII): Sources, Plain Text, Editor Emerges, Discordance, Authority, Shakespeare Beautified, and Oblivion. Each of the ages (with the exception of the last one, Oblivion) presents early printed books to guide the viewer through a visual timeline of editing Shakespeare. The Sources (or, ‘The Infant’) section contains early printed editions of Chaucer, Plutarch, and Boccacio, authors who Shakespeare drew from. The Plain Text (or, ‘The Schoolboy’) presents early, unedited editions of Shakespeare’s plays, including a ‘bad quarto’ version of Pericles.  

The Editor Emerges (or, ‘The Lover’) presents printed versions of Shakespeare’s edited works. This particular case proves the most fascinating in the entire display, since it introduces the viewer to how different editors have approached and presented Shakespeare for wider consumption. There’s Rowe’s edition, which introduces act and scene divisions; Hammer’s, which provides illustrations; S. Johnson’s edition, which made over 14,000 changes to the text, and Ayscough’s edition that made the Complete Works more relevant for middle and lower classes.  

Discordance (‘The Soldier’) presents those editions that are now considered ‘controversial’, including Bowlder’s attempt to make Shakespeare more child-friendly. Authority, (‘The Justice’) presents the work of the ‘new bibliographers’, including Granville-Barker’s annotated version of Antony & Cleopatra for his stage production. Beautified Shakespeare (‘The Pantaloon’) presents illustrated and fine text versions including Harry Kessler’s illustrated Hamlet. The last age, Oblivion, is completely digital and presented on a larger, interactive tablet as a timeline of efforts to digitize editions of Shakespeare. In addition to this, every display case features a QR code with which the viewer can obtain more information using a smartphone.  

The entire exhibition is beautifully done and features a clear chronological (and methodological) path to follow. However, although the last age emphasizes the digital world in which we currently live the interface is clunky and not as immediately user-friendly as the other sections. Regardless of this fact, the journeys from printed book to digital, from Shakespeare’s sources to editors’ interpretations, and how Shakespeare’s works have changed over the centuries truly is a metamorphosis, and Senate House’s exhibition is not to be missed.