Shakspeare's Mental Photographs

A curious artifact of Victorian literary culture, this 1866 volume invites readers to play a game with the Bard himself. Structured as ten questions about one's character, desires, and temperament, each prompt offers twenty possible answers culled directly from Shakespeare's plays. The reader becomes both participant and protagonist, selecting responses that reveal (or perhaps construct) their inner landscape through the voices of Hamlet, Lady Macbeth, Falstaff, and countless others. What emerges is a peculiar form of self-portraiture composed entirely of borrowed lines, a parlor entertainment that transforms passive reading into active collaboration. The game asks: are you more Juliet or more Goneril? Would you choose the throne or the wind? Shakespeare becomes a oracle, his plays a deck of cards from which one's fate is drawn. The book endures not as great literature but as a fascinating window into how Victorians worshipped Shakespeare, and how they longed to see themselves reflected in his mirror.