is honored to announce
the Winner of the
14th Marfield Prize
for outstanding writing
about the arts in 2019 to
Andrew McConnell Stott
author of
“What Blest Genius?
The Jubilee That Made Shakespeare”
Mr. Stott will receive $10,000 as the Marfield award winner for 2019.
“King George III was not mad about Shakespeare. ‘Was there ever such stuff as the great part of Shakespeare?’ he complained to the novelist Frances Burney, listing all the characters and plays he objected to. ‘Only it’s Shakespeare, and nobody dare abuse him… one should be stoned for saying so!’
Why would the king, a monarch with dominions spanning five continents, need to hide his opinion of a playwright? Yet at the time of this royal confession in 1785, Shakespeare had attained near god-like status, and harboring an opposing view ran the risk of seeming lunatic. Such veneration was still relatively new, the result of a period of intense cultural and artistic focus that had transformed Shakespeare from one writer among many to the ‘Blest Genius of the Isle.’ While this transformation occurred over several decades, one event stands out as the moment at which his ascension into national icon and literary deity was finally realized, the Shakespeare Jubilee of 1769.”
Andrew McConnell Stott is a writer and academic whose books include The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi (2009); The Poet and The Vampyre: The Curse of Byron and the Story of Literature’s Greatest Monsters (2013); and What Blest Genius? The Jubilee That Made Shakespeare (2019). He lives in Los Angeles.
The Marfield Prize or the National Award for Arts Writing is given annually by the Arts Club of Washington to the author of a nonfiction book about the visual, literary, media, or performing arts. Established to generate broader interest in the arts among general readers, the award celebrates prose that is clear, eloquent and inspiring, creating a strong connection with the arts and artists. Books are judged by a distinguished independent panel of judges. First given in 2006, the prize's endowment was established by a devoted and generous Arts Club member Jeannie S. Marfield.