Delacroix was without doubt an anglophile, his works often being inspired by the literature of Scott and Byron. However, during the 1820’s it was the works of William Shakspeare that were going to take the Parisian art world by storm, fusing the imagination of artists and composers as much as they had done in Germany through the works of Goethe in the previous century. The plays of the Elizabethan playwright represented for Delacroix the embodiment of the British spirit. In 1825 Delacroix chose to visit England — not Italy to study the Old Masters like so many of his predecessors — where he could immerse himself in the emerging British school of art, which he wished to see at first hand in the works of Constable and Bonington. Whilst staying in London his impressions of the foreign capital were mostly mixed and he felt that the culture of London was overall lacking in comparison to Paris. Nevertheless, he was greatly impressed by the quality of drama on the London stage: chiefly in the presentation of Shakespeare’s works.
During the course of his artistic career, Delacroix would produce numerous paintings inspired by Shakespeare’s plays, as well as a suite of thirteen lithographs in 1843 on Hamlet. The following plate, completed in 1839 and held in the Louvre, concerns the famous Yorick scene in the play, shortly before the Danish prince delivers his ‘To be or not to be’ speech. The foreboding sky, eerie graveyard setting and the dark portrayal of the tragic, wind-swept protagonist are all typically appealing choices for the Romantic painter. The canvas was exhibited in the Salon of 1839, along with Cleopatra and the Peasant, also based on a Shakespeare scene.