The First Non-Royal Face on a British Stamp

The First Non-Royal Face on a British Stamp

The Shakespeare Festival set of 1964 broke new ground with its portrait of a commoner, and with its presentation pack, postmarks and aerogrammes.

The exact date on which William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon is unknown, but tradition says it was on St George’s Day, April 23, 1564. The Post Office’s long-standing refusal to countenance stamps in honour of famous people gave it a problem in 1964 when there was agitation for a special issue of stamps to mark the 400th anniversary. They found a way around its discomfort. It argued that its special issue was to celebrate an event of international importance (the annual Shakespeare Festival at Stratford), rather than the man himself. Nevertheless, this was a real break with previous policy, in that the four lower denominations featured the first portrait of a commoner to appear on British stamps. In the original version of the Droeshout portrait the poet faced left. On the stamps it was reversed so that he faced towards the centre, balancing the familiar Dorothy Wilding portrait of the Queen.

Surprisingly, given the importance of playwright and poet William Shakespeare’s contribution to world culture, requests to commemorate the 400th anniversary of his birth on stamps were not immediately approved. At the time the Post Office would only mark Royal or postal anniversaries, and current events of national or international significance. Lobbying followed, and eventually the stamps were approved as a commemoration of the national Shakespeare Festival of 1964, held to mark Shakespeare’s quatercentenary.

Reynolds Stone and Edward Bawden were amongst those who submitted designs for the stamps, but it was David Gentleman’s designs which were chosen. The artists had been asked to ensure that if an image of Shakespeare was included in their design that it was not larger than the Queen’s head. Gentleman’s design complied with these instructions but still proved to be controversial, partly because Shakespeare’s head was the same size as the Queen’s, giving it equal importance, but mainly because the image of a commoner had never appeared on a stamp before. “This caused a fuss that would be unimaginable now,” Gentleman later noted in his book Artwork. “…And there were jokes in Parliament about the proximity of the Queen’s head to Shakespeare’s Bottom.