“The three-room Shakespeare Gallery, opened by the publisher John Boydell in 1789 on the fashionable Pall Mall in London, closed in 1805. In its day, it was a sensation, attracting emotional crowds who came to gawk at enormous canvases depicting scenes from Shakespeare’s tragedies, comedies and history plays, commissioned from Britain’s leading painters and hung cheek by jowl on the pale blue walls. ‘It was the Georgian equivalent of binge-watching Shakespeare,’ said Janine Barchas, an English professor who led the project.”