Sir Peter Hall’s 1968 film of A Midsummer Night’s Dream has never really achieved classic status, but it does start with a memorable joke.

The opening shot shows a classic English landscape, over which the caption “Athens” appears, neatly underlining the essential artificiality of Shakespeare’s world.

It was not until many years after seeing the film that I discovered the actual location of that English landscape was the park at Compton Verney.

Designed by the greatest of all British landscape gardeners, Lancelot “Capability” Brown, it adds another layer of artificiality to the mix.

By coincidence, Capability Brown was born in 1716, exactly 100 years after Shakespeare died.

Both anniversaries are being commemorated this year, so it is doubly appropriate that Compton Verney Art Museum is launching its 2016 season with an exhibition devoted to Shakespeare. With a £2.5 million Heritage Lottery grant towards a restoration programme for the park, it is also playing a leading role in the Brown celebrations.

The exhibition, Shakespeare in Art: Tempests, Tyrants and Tragedy, is wide­-ranging and, in the well­ established Compton Verney tradition, includes work by contemporary artists.

George Romney, The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 1, engraved by B Smith, 1797

But inevitably there is an emphasis on the latter half of the 18th century, because this was the period which rediscovered Shakespeare in a big way.

This came about largely through the efforts of David Garrick, the actor and theatrical impresario (and almost exact contemporary of Capability Brown) who did more than anyone else to initiate his age’s love­ affair with Shakespeare.

Another key figure of the time was John Boydell, whose Shakespeare Gallery featured specially commissioned illustrations of the plays by leading artists including Reynolds, Joseph Wright and the eccentric Swiss neo­ Mannerist, Henry Fuseli.

Henry Fuseli, Macbeth, Act I, The Weird Sisters

Boydell’s project is explored in a kind of annexe to the main exhibition which includes a digital recreation of his London gallery, hung from floor to ceiling with large canvases, by Janine Barches of the University of Texas. It opened in 1789 and closed in 1804 ­ not a bad run by modern standards ­ and it was constantly refreshed by new commissions.

However, the more profitable aspect of Boydell’s scheme was the vast number of prints he produced based on the paintings ­an enterprise savagely lampooned by the cartoonist James Gillray with the caption Shakespeare Sacrificed ­ the Offering to Avarice.

The 18th century craze for Shakespeare was intimately connected to its taste for the subliime and supernatural. It is Macbeth’s blasted heath and the storms of Lear and Prospero that particularly appeal to these artists.

The visitor is thrown into this romantic maelstrom at the beginning of the main exhibition.

Not only is the subject of the first gallery the shipwreck which launches The Tempest, but something has gone awry with the floor, which has tipped alarmingly and is now covered in rough planks.

This reflects the fact that the exhibition has been conceived in partnership with the Royal Shakespeare Company, whose head of design, Stephen Brimson Lewis, has brought a theatrical dimension to its presentation.

This section includes some very raw fragments by George Romney from the store rooms of Bolton Museum, and a fine painting by Philip de Loutherbourg from the RSC’s own collection.

From here the layout does not follow chronologically, and Fuseli’s paintings are a recurring thread throughout.

Ophelias Ghost Kristin and Davy McGuire, photograph by Electric Egg

The first contemporary work in the sequence is also the most impressive. Davy and Kristin McGuire have created a life­sized hologram of a drowning Ophelia which is uncannily realistic, complete with bubbles and swimming fish.

At the technical cutting edge, it clearly references Millais’ famous Pre­-Raphaelite painting, which is also reworked in a more conventional way in a painting by Bryan Organ.

The 19th century is rapidly passed over, the Tate’s full­ length portrait of Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth by John Singer Sargent providing a prelude to a room devoted to the austere early 20th century designs of her son Edward Gordon Craig, including two set models for the Moscow Arts Theatre’s production of Hamlet in 1911.

Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth

There is a nod to Victorian stage technology in a reconstruction of Pepper’s Ghost (the stage illusion which gave us the expression “smoke and mirrors”) and the exhibition ends with its 21st century counterpart.

This is a digital Ariel, devised by the RSC’s Stephen Brimson Lewis in partnership with Intel and the Imaginarium Studios, for Gregory Doran’s forthcoming production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Someone really should do a major exhibition on art and visual illusion. Here it is part of a mix which is rich and interesting, but also somewhat unbalanced. For instance, too much space is taken up by Tom Hunter’s large photographs relocating the characters of A Midsummer Night’s Dream to contemporary London to no great purpose.

But it’s good to see the photographs of Sir Peter Hall on location with his starry cast, recording how Shakespeare and Compton Verney crossed each other’s paths nearly 50 years ago.

Shakespeare in Art: Tempests, Tyrants and Tragedy and Boydell’s Vision: The Shakespeare Gallery in the 18th century are at Compton Verney Art Museum, near Kineton, until June 19 (Tue­, Sun and Bank Holidays 11am- ­5pm). For details of admission charges and related events, visit www.comptonverney.org.uk or call 01926 645500.