page_title: Memorials to William Shakespeare
section_title: Australia
hierarchical_section_title: Memorials to William Shakespeare / 20th century / Australia
caption_attribution_description: The 1926 Shakespeare Memorial in Sydney, Australia
context_page_description: William Shakespeare has been commemorated in a number of different statues and memorials around the world, notably his funerary monument in Stratford-upon-Avon; a statue in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey, London, designed by William Kent and executed by Peter Scheemakers; and a statue in New York's Central Park by John Quincy Adams Ward.
context_section_description: A memorial in Sydney, Australia was erected in 1926, designed by Australian sculptor Sir Bertram MacKennal. It was commissioned by Henry Gullett (d. 4 August 1914), a former president of the Shakespeare Society of New South Wales. Paid for with a bequest from his estate, Gullett's daughter Lucy Gullett ensured that the commission was carried out after her father's death. It depicts not only Shakespeare at the top, but five of his most famous characters around the base – Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet embracing, Portia and Falstaff. It is located in Shakespeare Place, between the Mitchell Library (part of the State Library of New South Wales) and the Royal Botanic Gardens. In 1959 the statue was repositioned to make way for the Cahill Expressway.
  Though initiated in 1889, the project to create a Shakespeare statue in Ballarat was not completed until 1960. Financial problems led to repeated shelving of the project. Eventually private donations to the fund produced sufficient resources to commission a bronze sculpture from Andor Meszaros, an Australian artist originally from Hungary. The statue depicts Shakespeare bowing, as if at the end of a performance.
caption: An early Frank Hurley photo of the Sydney Shakespeare Memorial
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