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This engraving was made after one of Opie's large compositions for Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery. It depicts Act II, scene III of Shakespear's Winter's Tale.
The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery was a three-part project initiated in November 1786 by engraver and publisher John Boydell (1720-1804) in an effort to foster a school of British history painting. Boydell planned to focus on an illustrated edition of William Shakespeare's plays and a folio of prints, but during the 1790s the London gallery that showed the original paintings emerged as the project's most popular element.
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