This full-standing portrait of celebrated playwright and poet William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was made by John Quincy Adams Ward (1830-1910) and unveiled here on Literary Walk on May 23, 1872.
In 1864, coinciding with the tricentennial of Shakespeare's birth, a group of actors and theatrical managers, among them noted Shakepearean actor Edwin Booth (1833-1893), received permission from Central Park's Board of Commissioners to lay the cornerstone for a statue at the south end of the Mall between two elms. Nothing further was done until the end of the Civil War, and through a competition in 1866, Ward was selected as the sculptor. Later referred to as the "Dean of American Sculptors," he contributed nine sculptures to the parks of New York; among them Roscoe Conkling (1893), Alexander Holley (1888), William Earl Dodge (1885), Horace Greeley (1890), Henry Ward Beecher (1891), The Indian Hunter (1869), The Pilgrim (1885), and the Seventh Regiment Memorial (1874). The last three can be found in Central Park.
The committee raised funds through several benefits, including a performance of Julius Caesar. Jacob Wrey Mould (1825-1886) - chief architect for parks at the time, and responsible for much of the ornament and architecture in Central Park - designed the elaborate pedestal for this statue. Ward combined a classical pose with many details of Elizabethan dress, and he relied on numerous images of Shakespeare, especially a bust in Stratford. The sculpture was cast in Philadelphia in 1870, and due to delays in procuring and cutting the granite pedestal in Scotland, was unveiled on a temporary base in 1872; some commentators found the work a noble effigy, and others derided it statue as a costume piece.
