French Romantic artist, Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), had an abiding love of English literature, particularly the plays of William Shakespeare. In 1834 Delacroix embarked on an ambitious series of lithographs inspired by Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, Hamlet. In their energy and spontaneity, the Hamlet lithographs evoke the dynamism of theater—as if Delacroix were in the audience making studies of a live performance. In some cases, however, Delacroix departed from the text and imagined scenes that do not take place on stage, such as the poignant ‘Death of Ophelia.’ In 1843, ten years after Delacroix began the Hamlet project, the Gihaut brothers in Paris issued the first set of 13 lithographs, printed by Villain, with captions in French from the relevant passage in the play printed below each image. The series initially met with critical resistance, but has come to be acknowledged as a masterpiece of French Romanticism.