Speaking Pictures [1 ed.] 9780838642290, 9780838641828

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Speaking Pictures

Speaking Pictures The Visual/Verbal Nexus of Dramatic Performance

Edited by

Virginia Mason Vaughan, Fernando Cioni, and Jacquelyn Bessell

Madison • Teaneck Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

© 2010 by Rosemont Publishing & Printing Corp. All rights reserved. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use, or the internal or personal use of specific clients, is granted by the copyright owner, provided that a base fee of $10.00, plus eight cents per page, per copy is paid directly to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, Massachusetts 01923. [978-0-8386-4182-8/10 $10.00 + 8¢ pp, pc.]

Associated University Presses 2010 Eastpark Boulevard Cranbury, NJ 08512

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Speaking pictures : the visual/verbal nexus of dramatic performance / edited by Virginia Mason Vaughan, Fernando Cioni, and Jacquelyn Bessell. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8386-4182-8 (alk. paper) 1. Theater—England—History—16th century. 2. Theater—England—History— 17th century. 3. Theater—Great Britain—History. 4. English drama—Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500–1600—History and criticism. 5. English drama— History and criticism. 6. Visual perception in literature. 7. Visualization in literature. 8. Speech in literature. I. Vaughan, Virginia Mason. II. Cioni, Fernando. III. Bessell, Jacquelyn, 1967– PN2589.S74 2010 792.0942′09031—dc22 2009030493

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Contents Acknowledgments

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Introduction: Verbalizing the Visual and Visualizing the Verbal

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Part I: Performance Spaces Staging Arthur, the Future King: Signs of Edward, the Black Prince SUNHEE KIM GERTZ

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The Place of the Human: Shakespeare’s Stage and the Bear Garden ANDREAS HÖFELE

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Part II: Stage Practices “Most truly limned and living in your face”: Looking at Pictures in Shakespeare KEIR ELAM

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“Why do you bend your eye on vacancy?”: Visual Meaning and Its Absence in Hamlet ANN THOMPSON

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Mist and Fog on the Elizabethan and Jacobean Stage ALAN C. DESSEN Enter three Turks and a Moor: Signifying the “Other” in Early Modern English Drama VIRGINIA MASON VAUGHAN

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Part III: Revisioning Performance Visualizing and Performing Jewishness: Jews and “Shylocks” on Stage from the Restoration to Late Romanticism FERNANDO CIONI 5

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CONTENTS

Dramatic Illusion and Sympathetic Curiosity in Romantic Drama LILLA MARIA CRISAFULLI

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Part IV: Actors’ Bodies The Early Modern Physical Theater JACQUELYN BESSELL

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The Animal Within: The Study and Application of Animal Characteristics as Part of an Actor’s Preparation for a Role ANNA NORTHAM

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Works Cited

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Contributors

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Index

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Acknowledgments THE ESSAYS COLLECTED HERE BEGAN AT A SYMPOSIUM IN MONDORF-

les-Bains, Luxembourg, in June 2008, funded by a grant from Clark University’s Henry J. Leir–Luxembourg Program. All the contributors are grateful to the Leir Charitable Foundation for supporting the Henry J. Leir–Luxembourg Program, which has furthered internationally diverse meetings like ours in honor of Mr. Leir. We are especially grateful to Uwe Gertz, program coordinator, for his knowledgeable, efficient, and collegial assistance at every stage of our endeavors. During our stay in Mondorf-les-Bains, in particular, he made our symposium as pleasant as it was productive. We also wish to thank Kate Rafey, a recent graduate of Clark University, who served as our student assistant during the symposium. The notes she took were invaluable in our transition from symposium to book. Joining our enterprise at a later date, Alan C. Dessen made many helpful suggestions that have improved our essays. Finally, we sincerely thank Harry Keyishian, Director of Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, who encouraged our early efforts and helped us work our essays into a book much larger than the proverbial sum of its parts.

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Speaking Pictures

Introduction: Verbalizing the Visual and Visualizing the Verbal SPEAKING PICTURES

THIS ANTHOLOGY TAKES ITS TITLE FROM SIR PHILIP SIDNEY’S DE-

fence of Poetry, the first major work of English literary criticism. Defending poetry from its detractors, particularly those who described England’s burgeoning theaters as hotbeds of iniquity, Sidney argued that poetry—the medium used in most stage plays in Early Modern England—was indeed a “speaking picture—with this end, to teach and delight.” He went on to claim that the poet was a better moral teacher than the philosopher because “he yieldeth to the powers of the mind an image of that whereof the philosopher bestoweth but a wordish description.”1 The poet’s language could shape an image in the reader’s or auditor’s mind; and such pictures, argued Sidney, were the best moral teachers, inspiring readers to “well-doing,” not simply “well-knowing.” By including tragedy and comedy along with the epic and the lyric in his overview of poetry, Sidney did not distinguish the drama from other poetic forms. Taking its cue from him, this anthology takes the discussion of dramatic performance beyond the physical space of the theater to examine texts that were meant to be spoken but not literally performed, such as public rituals and processions, medieval chivalric chansons, and the “closet dramas” of nineteenth-century Britain. Such texts are dramatic in the broadest sense. They call upon the auditor (who may also be a spectator) to visualize a particular scenario, fleshing out the language by visualizing the text. Shakespeare, aware of the limitations of his stage, frequently asked his audience to “piece out” the text’s “imperfections” with their thoughts (Henry V, 1.0.23).2 Language, he knew, could paint a convincing picture. The words Edgar uses to paint for his blind father a picture of the Dover cliffs are a case in point: How fearful And dizzy ’tis, to cast one’s eyes so low! The crows and choughs that wing the midway air

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Show scarce so gross as beetles. Halfway down Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade! Methinks he seems no bigger than his head. The fishermen, that walk upon the beach, Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark, Diminished to her cock; her cock, a buoy Almost too small for sight. (King Lear, 4.6.11–20).

Here the dramatist shows his awareness that “perspective it is best painter’s art” (Sonnet 24), for it enables the viewer to see as it were from life, especially how small objects seem when seen from a distance.3 The result is a compelling example of word painting, providing the audience with a palpable image of the view atop the Dover cliffs.

THE VISUAL VERBAL NEXUS Using the term “nexus,” a “connected group or series” (Oxford English Dictionary), our subtitle stresses the indivisibility of the aural and visual experience in dramatic performance. “The STAGE feeds both the eare and the eye,” according to the seventeenth-century commentator Owen Feltham. “Through this latter sence, the Soule drinkes deeper draughts. Things acted, possesse us more, and are too more retaineable, then the passable tones of the tongue.”4 Drama’s unique power fuses verbal and visual signals not simply through the combination of words and spectacle, but also through word painting, so that the audience sees and hears at the same time. Yet, as Andrew Gurr observes, we have no term in English that “acknowledges the full experience of both hearing and seeing the complete ‘action’ of a play.”5 “Audiens” is the Latin word for “hearing,” while “spectare” is the Latin for “to watch”; the English language adopted the former for the play’s “auditor,” the latter for the drama’s “spectator.” During Shakespeare’s lifetime, according to Gurr, there was a gradual shift from emphasis on the play’s language—what the auditor heard—toward spectatorship. Not surprisingly, Ben Jonson believed in the primacy of the poet’s language and considered the groundlings’ preference for spectacle a sign of their ignorance. Jonson’s prejudices notwithstanding, by the late Jacobean period “the distinction between hearers and spectators gradually lost its point” and eventually conjoined in our modern term for theater-goers—the audience.6 Early Modern theatrical commentary frequently emphasized the dualistic nature of dramatic performance. While there were repeated ref-

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erences to Londoners going to “hear a play,” writers paid equal attention to what the audience would see. John Taylor’s prefatory poem to Thomas Heywood’s Apology for Actors is a case in point. The “Water Poet” argued that A Play’s a briefe Epitome of time, Where man may see his virtue or his crime Layd open, either to their vices shame, Or to their virtues memorable fame. A Play’s a true transparent Christall mirror, To shew good minds their mirth, the bad their terror: Where stabbing, drabbing, dicing, drinking, swearing Are all proclaim’d unto the sight and hearing, In ugly shapes of Heaven-abhorrid sinne, Where men may see the mire they wallow in.7

Like Sidney before him, Taylor praises the drama for its ability to present moving images of vice and virtue that lead to “well-doing.” But to be effective, the playwright must tap into both “sight and hearing.” The word and the image must cohere. The meanings attributed to drama’s visual images and to the language that frames and accompanies them, as these essays demonstrate, inevitably depend on the contexts and conventions the audience brings to the theater, whether it’s a physical theater or a theater of the mind. A case in point is the religious ritual of the medieval church. It took its meaning from the congregation’s shared knowledge of the symbols invoked, and in most cases, it combined a verbal text with visual images. When the medieval priest processed through the streets during the festival of Corpus Christi, the host he held signified Christ’s body, the word made flesh in the religious ritual of communion. The sacred words he recited provided the verbal cues, the elevation of the host the visual. For both verbal and visual signifiers, meaning stemmed from the community’s shared culture and beliefs. It is unlikely a stranger from a nonChristian culture would read the signs in the same way. What is true of religious ritual is true of other types of performance, whose significance is equally shaped by community-wide values, which in turn influence the way the auditor “sees” the image being described. The Early Modern plays that were performed in London’s theaters and defended by John Taylor were intended for particular theaters and particular audiences. On any given day, two thousand or more witnesses shared both “sight and hearing” in performances geared to both auditors and spectators. Given London’s population in the Early Modern period—around two hundred thousand—and the financial success of the theatrical enterprise, it is clear that a sizable number of Lon-

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doners attended theatrical performances. Even those who could not read and write were there exposed to a panoply of visual/verbal experiences. The stage brought to life peoples from distant geographical regions, who were relatively unknown to the insular English. Thomas Platter, the Swiss doctor from Basel who visited England in 1599, observed that by attending the theater, English audiences “learn what is going on in other lands, and this happens without alarm, husband and wife together in a familiar place, since for the most part the English do not much use to travel, but are content ever to learn of foreign matters at home.”8 In the safe environment of the theater and the comfortable company of friends and relatives, Londoners were exposed to images of faraway places, strange customs, and exotic strangers. To be effective, the plays had not simply to teach and delight, but to affect the audience’s emotions. While Homer and Virgil’s great epics could move the reader’s passions, argued playwright Thomas Heywood, the theater could be even more effective in rousing an audience’s feelings. Words could describe and paintings create static images, but only drama could stir the spirit and make an action come alive: “A Description is only a shadow received by the eare but not perceived by the eye; so lively portraiture is merely a forme seene by the eye, but can neither shew action, passion, motion or any other gesture, to move the spirits of the beholder to admiration: but to see a souldier shap’d like a souldier, walke, speake, act like a souldier; to see a Hector all besmered in blood, trampling upon the bulkes of Kinges.”9 The actor himself is Sidney’s speaking picture, appealing to the verbal by his words and the visual by the movement of his arms and legs, his facial expressions, his posture, his costume, and properties he carries. The playwright and the actor who spoke Hector’s lines may have taken inspiration from Homer’s descriptions of his valor or from engravings and illustrations. But only the actor could fuse the visual and the verbal and enliven the character.

WHAT THE SPECTATORS SAW Visual and verbal signifiers are particularly intertwined in dramas written for a purpose-built theatre. John Russell Brown sums up the possibilities for the Early Modern English stage. On the playhouse’s forty-foot-by-thirty-foot-stage, the spectator might see “the grouping of actors, the isolation of one or two, the costumes they wore, the hand-properties they carried (plays often demand sword, torch, prayerbook, bed, crown, and so forth) and the gestures they used (wringing

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of hands, kneeling, kissing, running, [and even] ‘making a stand.’ ”10 These are the elements key to any theatrical performance. Costume is the most obvious visual signifier, and even in the eclecticism of our contemporary theaters, the actor’s dress can convey a myriad of signals. In Early Modern England, clothes literally did “make the man.” In the putting on of clothes, a person was constituted as “a monarch or a freeman of a guild or a household servant.” “Investiture was,” argue Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, “the means by which a person was given a form, a shape, a social function, a ‘depth.’ ”11 Clothing signaled that an individual belonged to a larger social unit. Servants wore livery to indicate who their master was; priests appeared in clerical garb; apprentices wore badges that marked their guild. The loss of such dress indicated a change in identity. London’s theater companies availed themselves of a thriving market in used clothing to dress their actors according to the character’s identity and station: brightly colored velvets and taffetas for the nobility, plain wool for servants and commoners. But clothing could do more than display the character’s status. As Ophelia suggests in her description of Hamlet’s appearance with his “doublet all unbraced, / No hat upon his head, his stockings fouled, / Ungartered, and down-gyved to his ankle” (2.1.79–81), dishabille could signal an emotional state. The putting on of a disguise thus figured the character’s subversion of his role in society, and cross-dressing applied to class as well as gender. As David Bevington shows, Shakespeare and his contemporaries used “traditional distinctions in costuming to characterize the structured social order,” while simultaneously they contrasted “that structure with a holiday world of costume featuring disarray in dress, divestiture of tokens of rank, exchanging of garment by master and servant, transsexual disguise, illusory use of religious vestments and icons, and lower-class protest against sumptuary legislation.”12 In addition to the articles of dress the actor wore, he often carried properties whose significance was readily apparent to the audience. Letters and documents appeared frequently in the public arena to convey royal decrees and in the private to express romantic yearnings. Lovers exchanged rings as tokens of affection, patrons paid their retainers with bags of ducats, and brave (or cowardly) soldiers brandished their swords. Larger properties could be used to set the scene, the most notable being a throne or a bed thrust on the stage. The signals emitted by the actor’s body are perhaps more subtle but nevertheless potent. Hamlet urged his players to “suit the action to the word, the word to the action” (3.2.16–17), so that what the audience saw and heard were compatible. “Kneeling, embracing, clasping of

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hands, bowing, removing the hat, assuming a proper place at table, deferring to others in going through a doorway,” argues Bevington, “— all are part of a rich vocabulary expressing contractual obligation, obedience, homage, submission, fealty, petition, hospitality, parental authority, royal prerogative” and other interpersonal relationships.13 Such actions often shape an audience’s response. Take for example the final scene of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. The Duke’s public trial of Angelo and his administration of justice lurches between a tragic mode in which the innocent will be punished along with the guilty, and the comic, in which malefactors are forgiven. Shakespeare uses gestures to signal the shift. The scene begins on a tragic note, for when Isabella kneels before the Duke, it seems as if Angelo will succeed in his deception over the powerless novice. After she is hauled off to prison, Mariana arrives, and her unveiling—the conventional ending of a comic intrigue—suggests a happier outcome. She, in turn, kneels before the Duke but receives no satisfaction, and the ethos moves back toward the tragic. With the Duke’s unveiling, however, the audience is assured that justice will be meted out to the malefactors. But Mariana must kneel again and petition Isabella to kneel with her to save Claudio’s life. The tension is relieved again when Claudio appears and is “unmuffled,” freeing Angelo from the charge of murder and ending the play with multiple marriages, the conventional symbol of social reintegration at the end of a comedy. The play’s final gesture, however, muddies the waters once again. When Duke Vincentio holds out his hand to Isabella, does she take it? The actor’s choice of gesture at this moment determines the final tone of the play. The arrangement of characters and variations in stage blocking are also powerful signifiers. Banquets traditionally draw the members of a community together in a shared meal, and when they are disrupted (as in Macbeth), they embody the breakdown in social harmony. Aligning feuding families or followers on opposite sides of the stage is also a powerful indicator of social disharmony. Titus Andronicus opens, for example, with the followers of Saturninus and Bassianus entering from opposite doors to quarrel over the emperorship, setting the tone for the rest of the play. The brawl between the servants of Montague and Capulet that initiates Romeo and Juliet is another physical representation of a feud. Sightlines in Early Modern English playhouses were forerunners in some ways to our television screens in the age of CNN and the Internet. They offered multiple images competing simultaneously for the audience’s attention. They also looked backward, as Roland Mushat Frye has shown, to a medieval aesthetic (best exemplified in the religious triptych) that was “diachronic rather than synchronic, repre-

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senting many places in one picture, and providing multiple rather than single perspectives.”14 The stage offered much to look at. Not only were the richly painted playhouses covered with intriguing designs and classical images; their architecture also offered multiple playing spaces, so that action could take place simultaneously on the upper stage, the lower stage, and upstage in the discovery space. Changing status could be indicated by “rising” or “falling,” movement from the upper stage to the lower and vice versa. Actors moving from the locus, the upstage location of thrones and other sites of authority—to the platea, the downstage area close to the audience—could indicate their status and their relationship to the action and the audience. Such movements were generally accompanied by textual commentary, the dramatist’s words reinforcing the moment’s visual impact. Such “spatial relationships,” as David Bevington calls them,15 provide visual leitmotifs that underscore the drama’s major themes. Thus Titus Andronicus begins with the burial of the Andronici sons slain in battle and concludes with the burial of Titus himself, as well as the unburial of Aaron and Tamora. The ceremonial carrying of bodies rounds out the scenic design, making the play end in some sense right where it began. Hero’s veiled entrance in the concluding scene of Much Ado About Nothing visually echoes her entrance in the aborted wedding of act 4. And in an amazing reversal of normal theatrical practice—which searched for ways of getting dead bodies off the stage—Shakespeare directs the corpses of Goneril and Regan to be brought back on stage at the end of King Lear, as if to replicate the blocking of king and daughters used in the play’s opening scene. Scenic design, in other words, worked on the audience’s visual memory, combining with text, plot, and characters to create a multifaceted theatrical experience.

THE ESSAYS HEREIN The essays gathered here assume that in all types of performance, seeing and hearing are interactive, overlapping rather than discrete. But understanding this complex dynamic is particularly difficult when we have no record of what was actually seen. Edward the Black Prince left evidence as to how he wanted to be remembered by designing the effigy for his tomb—a medieval exercise in self-fashioning. The visual image he crafted for his life is now carved in bas relief in Canterbury Cathedral. In contrast, the theatrical performances of the Middle Ages until the Restoration were ephemeral, and we must rely on the cues hidden in surviving texts to understand how they were intended to look. For plays written after 1660, scholars can glean impressions of a

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performance’s visual impact from actors’ memoirs and reviews, but before the development of news media it is especially challenging to understand how a particular performance appeared, and even more difficult to determine just how the visual cues we do have were interpreted in a visual/verbal nexus. We know that the costumes used in Early Modern plays were sumptuous and, presumably, visually interesting. We also have records of stage properties that clearly served as visual signifiers, but we can’t be sure just how they were read. Among the properties listed in theater-manager Philip Henslowe’s papers from the Rose Theatre, for example, is a “Mahomet’s head.” What this head looked like and how it was used, however, remain, as Tom Stoppard’s re-created Henslowe would say, “a mystery.”16 In June 2008 one actor and eight scholars from Europe and North America gathered for a symposium to pursue these questions at Mondorf-les-Bains in Luxembourg under the auspices of Clark University’s Henry J. Leir–Luxembourg Program. Our task was to explore together the challenges of recuperating and understanding the visual dynamics of all types of dramatic performances produced before the advent of twentieth-century technology. Most of the participants were specialists in Early Modern English drama, but our inquiry extended chronologically from the pageantry of the Middle Ages to the work of nineteenthcentury women dramatists to the contemporary actor’s challenge of physicalizing the text through her body. After we discussed our precirculated papers, we realized that the common thread in our work was the effort to understand the verbal/visual nexus. At that time we also decided to ask Alan C. Dessen, who had not been a participant at our symposium, to contribute something to our discussion from his wealth of knowledge about Early Modern staging practices. We have grouped our essays by common areas of interest. The first part, “Performance Spaces,” examines atypical performance experiences: the courtly recitation of a heroic chanson, a funeral procession, the bas relief on a tomb, and bear-baiting in an amphitheatre. Such spaces provide the auditor/spectator with what Andreas Höfele describes as an “intermedial” relationship. Two types of media overlap and consequently influence the ways each in turn is interpreted. Sacred ritual and secular drama, as SunHee Kim Gertz observes, coalesced in the cycle plays performed yearly in England from the fourteenth century to the Reformation. Even in the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, the liturgical drama’s signifiers—its use of a threelevel staging area with the heavens above and hell below, for example— continued to resonate. Ghosts arise from the cellarage and Faustus descends to hell through the trap door while longing to rise to the fir-

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mament. The signification of words and actions was thus layered, drawing on historical memory and residual conventions as well as contemporary material contexts. While cycle plays related everyday human experience to a universal spiritual quest for salvation, weighing the human against the supernatural, the juxtaposition of bear-baiting spectacles with theatrical performances led audiences—as Höfele demonstrates—to explore the relationship of humanity to the animal world. Through such intermedial experiences, the spectator/auditor was exposed to multivalent readings of human experience. Gertz’s analysis of the self-fashioning of Edward, the Black Prince— his creation of a chivalric ethos through poetry and panorama to circulate his heroic image—also takes us back to Sidney’s Apology. While the poet—who may also be a dramatist—draws on the things we know, he can also make us visualize things that never were: “Lifted up with the vigour of his own invention,” his work “doth grow in effect into another nature, in making things either better than Nature bringeth forth, or, quite anew, forms such as never were in Nature.” Unlike the brazen world we live in, “the poets only deliver a golden.”17 Charles VI’s description of Prince Edward’s heroic efforts against the French, which “Mangl[ed] the work of battle and deface[d] / The patterns that by God and by French fathers / Had twenty years been made” (the epigraph to Gertz’s essay), is a case in point, as is John of Gaunt’s description of England as “this seat of Mars, / This other Eden, demiparadise” (Richard II, 2.1.41–42). In these two passages, Shakespeare harks back to a medieval chivalric ideal and brings his audience to another space, a space of the character’s imagination. The second part of our collection, “Stage Practices,” focuses on the visual properties of Early Modern theatrical performances. Keir Elam begins this exploration of visual/verbal cues with an examination of scenes in which a character produces a miniature painting or portrait on stage and discusses it as if the audience could see it too. What did it mean, he asks, for a character to look at a such a picture? And how did the pictures held up on stage construct the characters’ identities? Other essays examine particular stage practices and interrogate their visual impact. Ann Thompson poses the challenge twenty-first century theater historians face in trying to strip away four hundred years of visual clichés to understand what the first-time experience of Hamlet must have been like. To understand the text’s original staging, she looks at the conflicting cues raised by the three texts of Hamlet that survive: the so-called “bad” quarto of 1603, the second quarto of 1604/05, and the First Folio of 1623. Does the Ghost appear in his nightgown in Gertrude’s closet? Or not? And what is the significance of choosing

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one performance mode over another? Alan C. Dessen also explores Early Modern English staging. He contends that the plays worked from a different theatrical logic than twenty-first-century drama because actors, not lighting designers and technicians, painted the scene. He draws on his vast knowledge of stage directions to address the challenge of creating scenes of mist and fog on a sunlit stage, which, like Edgar’s description of the cliffs of Dover, depended on the hearers’ powers of imagination. Virginia Mason Vaughan considers the role theater played in the Early Modern construction of race. She examines the visual impact of the exotic characters who were strikingly different from the mostly English audience—Turks and Moors. She shows how these characters were represented by makeup, items of clothing, facial hair, and hand properties, and speculates about what those signifiers meant to the audience. All four essays in this part attempt to tease out from surviving texts not simply an understanding of what the spectators at the Globe or the Blackfriars might have seen, but how the audience’s expectations colluded with the players’ theatrical legerdemain to craft a mutually acceptable illusion. The third part, “Revisioning Performance,” takes us to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Fernando Cioni examines the ways in which post-Restoration actors reshaped Shylock, transforming him from the stereotypic hated Jew of Early Modern England—most notably in Christopher Marlowe’s Barabas—to a more sympathetic, complex creation. Here the symbiotic relationship between audience and text is particularly clear, for with changes in English culture—and in acting styles—came new ways to see Shylock. And to complicate things still further, by the eighteenth century Shylock had been given a life beyond the theater’s walls and become a symbol whose meaning morphed in accordance with changing cultural mores and expectations. Lilla Maria Crisafulli shifts our attention to the Romantic poets’ great debate as to whether Shakespeare’s works were better experienced by the individual reader in the privacy of his study or by the audience member at a theatrical performance. The “mental dramas” of Joanna Baillie provide both types of experience, she argues, blending the visual delights of the theater with the intensity of private reading by drawing on the reader’s sympathetic curiosity. The reader of her dramatic characters’ language thus experiences a special kind of theater in which he can “see” into the character’s very soul. The fourth part, “Actors’ Bodies,” moves to a discussion of the most visible signifier on any stage, the actor. Richard Burbage, the leading performer in Shakespeare’s company, best embodies the actor’s fusion of visual and verbal, perhaps because he moonlighted as a limner. A funeral elegy written in his praise claims that

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Oft have I seene him play this part in jeast, Soe lively, that spectators, and the rest Of his sad crew, whilst he but seem’d to bleed, Amazed, thought even then hee dyed in deed.18

Clearly it was not simply Burbage’s delivery of Shakespeare’s lines that moved the audience, for what they saw—the way he controlled his body—amazed them as well. John Webster’s description of “An excellent Actor” perhaps suggests Burbage, because he describes the actor as “much affected to painting, and ’tis a question whether that make him an excellent Player, or his playing an exquisite Painter.” Nevertheless, “He addes grace to the Poets labours; for what in the Poet is but ditty, in him is both ditty and musicke.” Combining words, music, and picture, “by a full and significant action of body, hee charmes our attention.”19 The perfect Early Modern actor, it would seem, was a one-man multimedia event. Since we have no way of recuperating Burbage’s power, the last part takes us to the twenty-first century with a discussion of contemporary actors’ staging choices. Jacquelyn Bessell draws on her work with actors at the Globe Centre in London and the Blackfriars Theatre in Staunton, Virginia, to outline the techniques used at “Original Staging Practices” venues to fuse the actor’s speaking of Shakespeare’s lines with the movement and expression of his body. Anna Northam’s explanation of “Animal Studies”—the actor’s exploitation of animal characteristics to physicalize the text—demonstrates that the Early Modern link between human and animal outlined by Höfele resonates in contemporary performance as well. We believe that the essays assembled here help to bridge the gap that so often looms between theater practitioners, who focus on material stage practices, and literary critics, who specialize in the close reading of text. If, as we think, performance is a hybrid experience, not fully verbal, not fully visual, but an amalgam of both, we must bring both perspectives to bear to understand its totality. Theater practitioners and literary specialists need to converse with each other. This collection is, we hope, the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

NOTES 1. Philip Sidney, A Defence of Poetry, ed. J. A. Van Dorsten (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), 25 and 32. 2. Quotations from Shakespeare’s plays are taken from The Norton Shakespeare, 2nd ed., ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al. (New York: Norton, 2008).

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3. For a discussion of Shakespeare’s recurring use of the “perspective glass” as a metaphor, see Virginia Mason Vaughan, “Shakespeare’s Perspective Art,” in The Bucknell Review, ed. Mark Neuman and Michael Payne (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1986), 17–36. 4. Quoted in David Bevington, Action is Eloquence: Shakespeare’s Language of Gesture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 188. In this, as in other citations from the Early Modern period, we have regularized spelling in regard to i, j, u, and v. 5. Andrew Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 85. See 86–97 for further discussion of the dynamics of “hearing” and “seeing” plays during the Early Modern period. 6. Ibid., 96. 7. Thomas Heywood, An Apology for Actors (London, 1612), Sig. A3v. 8. Quoted in E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923), 2:365–66. 9. Heywood, Sig. B3v. 10. Quoted in Alan C. Dessen, Elizabethan Drama and the Viewer’s Eye (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), 77. 11. Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 2. 12. Bevington, 54–55. 13. Ibid., 136. 14. Roland Mushat Frye, “Ways of Seeing in Shakespearean Drama and Elizabethan Painting,” Shakespeare Quarterly 31 (1980): 342. 15. See Bevington, 108–18. 16. ‘It’s a mystery” was frequently reiterated by Philip Henslowe (as performed by Geoffrey Rush) in Tom Stoppard’s Shakespeare in Love (Miramax, 1997). 17. Sidney, 24. 18. Quoted in Chambers, 2:309. 19. John Webster, “An excellent Actor,” in Sir Thomas Overburie his Wife. With additions of new characters, and many other wittie conceits never before printed (London, 1628). STC 18916.

I Performance Spaces

Staging Arthur, the Future King: Signs of Edward, the Black Prince SunHee Kim Gertz And he is bred out of that bloody strain That haunted us in our familiar paths. Witness our too much memorable shame When Crécy battle fatally was struck, And all our Princes captived by the hand Of that black name, Edward, Black Prince of Wales;1 Whiles that his mountain sire, on mountain standing, Up in the air, crowned with the golden sun, Saw his heroical seed, and smiled to see him, Mangle the work of nature and deface The patterns that by God and by French fathers Had twenty years been made. Shakespeare, Henry V 2.4.51–622

IN THESE LINES, CHARLES VI, THE KING OF FRANCE, ASSESSES HIS

opponent, King Henry V, via the memory of the Battle of Crécy, allowing Shakespeare to foreshadow Henry’s victory on St. Crispin’s Day and to celebrate the view that the battles fought at Crécy and Agincourt emblematize English excellence. Putting praise in the enemy’s mouth is, of course, a rhetorical ploy intended to amplify the praise, for if even an enemy recognizes an individual’s worthiness, then surely the individual must be superior indeed. More importantly here, in Charles’s admiration, Shakespeare creates a vignette based upon what English audiences surely would have known: the 1346 Battle of Crécy allowed Prince Edward to earn his spurs in part because his father, King Edward III, refused to send military reinforcements even when it seemed the Prince was in dire need of them. Shakespeare’s lines prove useful for introducing this essay for two reasons. First, they focus on the Black Prince’s reputation, critical to this essay. Secondly, they help illustrate my approach, which I characterize as rhetorically semiotic, insofar as it emphasizes the centrality of conventions and context—akin to Charles S. Peirce’s ground—in or25

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der to communicate, while following how certain emphases generate literary expectations, an attribute that poets may modulate to create multiple levels.3 Shakespeare does not, for example, opt to bring Edward on stage in, say, a dream vision; rather, he has Charles articulate a vignette encouraging audiences to visualize, to “direct the scene” by themselves. By first mentioning Crécy, then moving to Prince Edward before conveying King Edward’s approbation for his son’s destruction of the French forces, the King of France respectively sets the scene, focuses on the main character, delineates the ground, and invokes the action. With just a few words, then, Shakespeare conveys enough of a well-known episode to allow audiences not only to see Charles sizing up his opponent, but also to visualize, to allow their imaginations, as Shakespeare’s Hermia puts it, to “see these things with parted eye, / When everything seems double.”4 Indeed, by invoking the Black Prince to comment upon Henry V, Shakespeare suggests, among other things, that both leaders signify the same thing: England’s best. Looking at the Black Prince’s reputation through the semiotic prism of staging, whether in verbalized or public spaces, has relevance for those of us exploring the past. Since that which is visualized must rely on well-known conventions to a heightened degree in order to communicate at all, studying such visualizations can shed light on what actual conventions were and thus allow us to adumbrate “speaking pictures.” In this essay, I explore how Prince Edward embodies and displays the chivalric hero, as conveyed in Chandos Herald’s La Vie du Prince Noir and in the Prince’s own testament. In order to do so, it may prove useful first to sketch relevant portions of the ground.

CONTEXT AND CONVENTIONS The English fourteenth century was not only defined by warfare; deep tensions emerged and effected changes within the nation’s social fabric as well. For example, French became increasingly dominant in juridical and official venues, replacing Latin, while the vernacular grew in importance too, as may be measured in the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer as well as in King Edward III’s rallying cry against the French, who, he claimed, wished to destroy England’s language.5 In part, the attempt to conquer linguistic “territory” may well have been shaped by the Black Death, which wiped out approximately one-third of Europe’s population. Its erosion of social hierarchies and norms led also, among other things, to widely spread crime, thereby generating clear challenges to chivalric ideals and established hierarchies.6 Concomitantly, the Commons began more and more to influence government policies through

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leveraging their role in taxation,7 and attempts were made to create more equitable legal standards.8 W. M. Ormrod argues that although the majority of Edward’s subjects remained powerless, “realizing the dangers of perpetual conflict and the positive advantages to be gained from consensus, Edward III acknowledged the influence not only of the magnates but also of the other politically active classes—the clergy, the county landholders and the prosperous townsmen—and tried to win their active support for his domestic and foreign policies.”9 Magnifying the domestic unrest, foreign policy created opportunities and challenges as well. Edward III’s desire to yoke Scottish and French territories under English rule, for example, required superior fighting forces and contributed to dependency on mercenaries for both the English and French—mercenaries who, like those loosely grouped together to form La grande compagnie, lawlessly pillaged throughout English and French territories in times of treatied peace. Given both domestic and foreign upheaval, the need to provide inspiring images of leaders, such as embodied in Prince Edward, probably seemed more than important. Fourteenth-century rulers needed to win over their subjects, since, beyond obvious reasons like discouraging armed revolts, their subjects were indeed the ones being taxed to fuel their wars and lifestyles.10 In the midst of this turbulence, the Church too was undergoing its own divisive trials, as patently demonstrated by the move of the papal seat from Rome to Avignon (1309–1377) the split that evolved into the Great Schism with both cities anointing competing Popes (1378–1417). Less spectacular indices echoed the dissension, from confrontations with heads of states to battles between royalist and canon lawyers. In England, papal bulls deemed prejudicial to the nation were banned, and churches were encouraged to support Edward’s war efforts abundantly. Adding to the volatile mix, Lollards and mystics posed significant challenges to the Church’s authority.11 Perhaps the accumulation of such complexities along with what must have seemed like destabilizing changes in social hierarchies fueled the increasing popularity of medieval theater, which was at times used for propaganda.12 In fourteenth-century England, theater was still mostly associated with religion, as it had been since the tenth century, when, as the earliest extant records suggest, the stage for biblical vignettes was found either in or in front of a church.13 Late medieval drama evolved from this “staged bible” through a variety of forms before it narrowed into the Early Modern fixed stage associated with Shakespeare, made familiar to many of us today through Johannes de Witt’s 1596 sketch of the Swan Theatre. In the fourteenth century, however, theater was somewhere between a fixed stage and the Church’s dramatized rituals,

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not only with respect to the actual platforms, but in the fact that religious plays were sponsored by the Church and by secular guilds as well.14 The transitions theater was experiencing in fourteenth-century England may be seen, for example, in the relations between the Corpus Christi cycle—a series of plays performing biblical scenes on movable platforms processing through a town—and the Corpus Christi procession celebrating the transubstantiation,15 a high religious feast that finally took hold in the early fourteenth century, after having been called into being in 1246.16 Of the two kinds of celebrations, Clifford Davidson writes: “We may . . . see the York Passion pageants not only as an aid to understanding and imaginatively seeing the Passion but also as an adjunct to the ritual of the Mass. . . . It should be kept in mind that the usual act of devotion for laypersons at Mass was not communion but seeing the consecrated Host or, as the experience was then understood, eating through seeing.17 In other words, the distinction between the two staged events was probably not an unrelentingly sharp one, since, in all likelihood, the same audiences were drawn to both highly festive performances. Indeed, as Roger E. Reynolds argues, medieval processions are per se a form of drama.18 Regardless of how they were distinguished, the boundaries between plays and processions, religious and secular, must have come close to disappearing, or rather, to coexisting, thereby encouraging an authoritative language of the visual to emerge, complete with “pomp and circumstance” to convey superiority. The Black Prince himself seems to have been aware of how important it was for a royal to claim triumphant space in authoritative language. As reported in the Anonimalle Chronicle, for example, crowds jubilantly gathered to watch his lavish and elaborate procession to and through London in celebration of his 1356 victory at Poitiers, with the King of France riding by his side as his prisoner.19 In such processions, more than community is elicited.20 When modulating conventions effectively, a procession uses public space to effect a narrative, one firmly anchored in the ground defining the community, and that, for example, promises a glorious future far more inspiring than any blood-drenched military victory. Like the Corpus Christi plays and processions, such processions transform public into theatrical space, a space for which Keir Elam’s observations provide insight: It is an essential feature of the semiotic economy of the theatrical performance that it employs a limited repertory of sign-vehicles in order to generate a potentially unlimited range of cultural units. . . . The ‘generative capacity’ of the theatrical sign [refers to] the extraordinary economy of

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communicational means whereby in certain forms of dramatic presentation . . . a rich semantic structure is produced by a small and predictable stock of vehicles . . . [articulated in the dramatic possible worlds that] are presented to the spectator as ‘hypothetically actual’ constructs, since they are ‘seen’ in progress ‘here and now’ without narratorial mediation [in, as John Searle argues, a] “pretended state of affairs itself.”21

In other words, the semiotic efficiency of ritual allows for the instantaneous communication of authority, especially when, as Ernst H. Kantorowicz argues, the state and church conferred upon each other, and shared, symbols, authority, and laws.22 That is, even though occupying the same space, secular and religious worlds do not so much cancel each other out as they allow for the coexistence of both worlds, even if such coexistence creates tensions. Of course, the subject matter of a procession would serve to highlight which conventions were dominant, but in “blends,” such as in the carefully staged splendor of a royal funeral, both secular and spiritual worlds proclaim not only, simply, that everyone must die, but also, at the same time, that those who rule are privileged. Ordinarily, the two messages would clash, but in the performance space of a ritual, the tensions can remain unchallenged in emblematic, mythic, “flatness.”23 The processional evocation, then, of glorious and patriotic heroism can convince audiences to support the English kingdom and “act out” the kingdom’s ideals. Ulrich von Lichtenstein, for example, wrote that he took two journeys, in 1227 and in 1240, in Arthur’s manner and jousted with all comers; as Richard Barber describes his forays, “From the outset we are in an Arthurian play.” Similarly, other knights staged Arthurian round tables, whereby they assumed fictional names and “played” Camelot.24 With Arthurian legends defining chivalric demeanor, the tensions between real and ideal can coexist in peacetime courtesies and “plays” as well as in “flat” processions, such as the Black Prince’s triumphant entry into London; but when carried out on the battlefield, as Prince Edward seems to have realized, the same tensions were not always flattened or blurred—they could erupt into fissures.

EDWARD, THE PRINCE OF WALES The arc of Prince Edward’s life traces an adverse trajectory. He was born to King Edward III and Queen Philippa of Hainault as their eldest son on June 15, 1330, in Woodstock, and he died on June 8, 1376, in Westminster. In October 1361, he married his cousin, Joan, the “Fair Maid of Kent,” after she was divorced and widowed, and they had two

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sons—Edward, who died at Bordeaux at the age of six, and Richard, who became King Richard II in 1377. Prince Edward is best known for his military victories. His father knighted him when they landed in France for a military campaign that led, as mentioned above, to his winning of his spurs (and signature ostrich feathers) during the Battle of Crécy on August 26, 1346, when he was sixteen. Not much later, in about 1348, the Prince became one of the original Knights of the Garter. As also indicated above, Edward successfully fought his next major battle on September 19, 1356, near Poitiers—the battle for which he is best known, since, King John II of France was captured there; and for a brief moment, King Edward’s goal of reclaiming territories in France and the French throne seemed within grasp.25 Aquitaine did revert to the English crown in 1360, but negotiations were troubled and not, in the end, satisfactory.26 Shortly thereafter, in July 1362, Edward became Prince d’Aquitaine, and he left England in 1363, with Joan, to govern his principality.27 Convinced to help King Pedro of Castile regain his throne against the usurper Enrique of Trastamara (the Spanish king’s bastard half brother, who was to become Enrique II of Castile), the Black Prince won the battle of Nájera on April 3, 1367. But the battle took a debilitating toll on his health and, due to Pedro’s treachery, also on his fortunes. Probably aware of Edward’s enervating illness, the new French King, Charles V, commanded him in May 1369 to appear in Paris to respond to complaints from his subjects, thereby trying to reassert French control of Aquitaine. The Black Prince retorted that he would come, along with thousands of his fighting men. This did not happen; instead, his principality was destabilized by revolts, which he unsuccessfully tried to contain, as witnessed in the merciless sacking of Limoges in October 1370,28 perpetrated by mercenaries whom Edward had engaged and could not compensate.29 The Prince of Wales formally surrendered Aquitaine to Edward III in October 1372, after which he returned to England. Not much is known about his three and a half years in England before he died. He was buried, according to his wish, in Canterbury Cathedral.30

EDWARD’S ARTHURIAN REPUTATION Virtually all these data are covered in the Chandos Herald’s account of the Black Prince’s life, a biography framed in unrelenting praise for Edward, his men, and all those devoted to chivalry. Indeed, writing at the end of the fourteenth century, the Herald of Sir John Chandos valorizes the Prince of Wales by emphasizing his virtues:

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Depuis le jour q’il fuist nasqui Ne pensa forsqe loiautée, Fraunchise, valour et bountée. Et si fuist garniz de proesce, Tant fuist cil prince de hautesce, Q’il voilleit toutz les jours de sa vie Mettre tout son estudie En tenir justice et droiture, Et la prist il sa noriture. (64–72) [Since the day that he was born, he thought of nothing else but loyalty, nobility, valor, and excellence. And he was endowed with prowess; this prince was so noble that he wished all the days of his life to put all his effort in maintaining justice and right, from this he took his sustenance.]

The Herald also characterizes the heir apparent through the respect he receives. Before the Battle of Poitiers, for example, the narrator describes how Edward was surrounded by the best of the kingdom and everywhere attracted adulation. La poist homme, a voir jugier, Voier le flour de chivalrie Et tres noble bachelrie Qui feurent en grant voluntée De bien faire et entalentée. . . . . . . Ils arriverent a Burdeaux, Dount moult fesoient grauntz reveaux Lui noble baroun du pais. La veissez grantz et petitz Venir vers le Prince tut droit Qui doucement les festoioit. (610–22) [(Around the Prince) a man could, to tell the truth, observe the flower of chivalry and truly noble bachelor knights, who were very eager to do well and show their ability. . . . They arrived at Bordeaux, where the noble barons of the country held great celebrations. High and low, the vassals came immediately to the Prince, who received them warmly.]

The Chandos Herald’s praise was in and of itself not singular; other near-contemporary accounts similarly lionize the chivalric warrior. A political poem celebrating the Prince of Wales’s expedition into Spain, for instance, begins as follows:

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Gloria cunctorum detur Domino dominorum, Qui regit astrorum fabricam terraeque polorum, Per quem grandescit princeps nosterque valescit, Bellis florescit, laudisque valore virescit. Anglia laetatur, Vasconia jam modulatur; Francia tristatur, Hispania justificatur; Scotia languescit, et Flandria falsa timescit; Dacia decrescit, Hibernia victa quiescit.31 [Wright 94: Let glory be given to the lord of all lords, who governs the creation of the stars and the poles of the earth, through whom our prince became great and grew strong, flourished in wars, and thrived on praise for valor. England rejoices, Gascony sings; France mourns, Spain is vindicated. Scotland languishes, and false Flanders fears; Dacia (west and northcentral Romania) wanes, and defeated Ireland is brought to a standstill.]

In other words, the glorious reputation of Edward of Woodstock, Prince d’Aquitaine, Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, Earl of Chester, the eldest son of King Edward III and Queen Philippa of Hainault, and heir apparent to the English crown, conveyed the portrait of a leader who stood for chivalry. As such, he served as a sign in Charles S. Peirce’s sense of the term: “A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object. It stands for that object, not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea, which I have sometimes called the ground of the representamen.”32 Thus, standing for chivalry made Edward into a sign whose interpretant evoked the best England had to offer. More importantly here, the Arthurian ground from which his ideals seem to have been shaped generated the tensions he committed to “playing out” in his life and that subsequently informed his reputation.

THE EDWARDS’S ARTHUR Straight out of a medieval romance situated in Arthur’s court, it seems, Edward married for love; and, as conveyed by the Chandos Herald, the couple remained the most devoted of lovers. Although the union seemed not to have pleased his parents,33 the Herald conveys an idealized portrait of Joan; indeed, he never names her and only briefly notes the event of their marriage (1585–1589), contributing to the impression that she was an ideal rather than a historical figure. When Joan briefly

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appears later in the narrative, the Herald deepens her Arthurian register. Thus, when the Prince announces that he will leave for Spain, the narrator focuses on Joan’s grief as she curses the goddess of love for her husband’s singular prowess, which, ironically, takes him from her: Et la tres amiers dolours Eust a coer la noble princesse, Et la regretoit la dieusse D’amours, qi l’avoit assenée A si tres haute maiesté, Car elle avoit le plus puissant Prince de ceo siecle vivant. (2050–56; cf. 3769–72) [And the most bitter sorrow the noble princess had in her heart and she blamed the goddess of love, who had raised her to such high majesty, for she had the bravest Prince living in this age.]

In portraying Joan’s loyal passion, the Chandos Herald echoes the stylized courtly life epitomized in Chrétien de Troyes’s portraits of the brilliant knights and ladies attracted to Arthur’s court, portraits that contrast sharply with, for example, the depiction of Arthur in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, which extols his military successes in epic starkness. These complete contrasts inform the ground in Edward’s time, and, like rituals and processions, yoke together unquestioned contraries. Indeed, Arthur’s tension-ridden legend had grown so popular by the fourteenth century that it proliferated into multiple languages, variations, and forms, both prose and verse, as well as in visual narratives such as tapestries.34 Ironically, the legend’s popularity may be due in large part to its central paradox: such brilliant excellence, balancing between courtly and military demands, is doomed to extinction, but in its certain demise a phoenix-like promise to return is also generated, as evidenced in the existence of story after story about the mythical leader, as well as in the hope for an equally great kingdom, the promise captured in the phrase “rex quondam rexque futurus” [once and future king].35 The popularity of the Arthurian legend made it an ideal nexus for English royalty to promote loyalty and authority.36 Indeed, in addition to the knights playing Arthurian roles mentioned above, Edward III himself deliberately hypostatized Arthurian romances. Thus, he planned building projects to re-create the magnetic grandeur of Camelot, including a more imposing Windsor castle and an attempt to reconstruct the Round Table. Although these projects more or less fizzled over time, Edward III did successfully emulate the Knights of the Round Table in establishing the Order of the Garter.37

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Thus, Arthurian chivalry had become a norm, regardless of its being at times ill-suited to wartime and political situations.38 Indeed, although King Edward III furthered his association with Arthur, he was not blind to the problems created in doing so. In Arthurian vein, for example, the King established a new cadre of nobles not favored for their birth or inheritance. As James Bothwell reports, of the two hundred forty-three people receiving individual summons to Parliament during Edward’s reign (1330–77), fifty-nine of them, along with their fathers and grandfathers, had no previous writ. For them to thrive, Edward had to provide opportunities; accordingly, he appears to have been the first English king to distribute lands and other incentives as patronage.39 In addition, the King understood that reputation comprised a critical component of Arthurian success, and he proved adept at valorizing his men.40 Given the context in which Prince Edward was raised and the Arthurian vein running throughout the literary system of the time, it is not too difficult to understand how the Arthurian ethos became a touchstone for the Black Prince as well, one against which he developed his own Arthurian signature. Aware of the ground of Arthurian excellence that informed perceptions of English kings, both Edwards attempted, in a sense, to reestablish Camelot both on the battlefield and in the court. Both settings provided opportunities to demonstrate excellence and virtue, as long as the spheres were kept separate and loyalty maintained. As stages for performing excellence, however, martial and courtly settings could also expose fissures. Without the loyalty ideally articulated on the battlefield, for example, a fault line could crack open a kingdom, as evidenced by Geoffrey’s depiction of Mordred’s fatal treachery initiated in peacetime. Likewise, performing courtly conduct towards an enemy could also deepen a fault line, as seen in Chrétien’s depiction, in Le Chevalier de la Charette [The Knight of the Cart], of Launcelot, who allowed himself to be imprisoned to uphold his vow, but in doing so, he also left Camelot without its best knight. Importantly, Prince Edward seemed both aware of and caught in the tensions demanded by mythically Arthurian performance, as exemplified at the beginning and end of his military career.

PRINCE EDWARD AS ARTHUR At the beginning of his military career, the Battle of Crécy served not only as the venue by which the young Prince of Wales earned his spurs and ostrich feathers, “the foundation for his military and chivalric reputation,” as David Green puts it—41 he also defined himself from

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about this time onward through two mottos, one for war, Houmout [courage], and the other, for peace, Ich Dene [I serve]. That these mottos were important to Edward is evident in the fact that he used them to authenticate his signature.42 Coupled, they also express Arthurian tensions. Thus, Houmout is the inner quality that allows for battlefield heroism, but it can also prove less than ideal in courtly situations that require diplomacy. Similarly, the courtly service implied in Ich Dene may articulate the ideal that we are all equal before God, but its application on the battlefield can lead to tragedy. Importantly, the two mottos essentially reformulate Arthur’s rationale for the Round Table; that is, they paraphrase the ideal of Arthur’s reigning as primus inter pares, first among equals. Even the first should serve, as King Edward demonstrated when serving his defeated enemies at the banquet following the successful siege of Calais.43 Perhaps this example is what Prince Edward had in mind in the aftermath of the Battle of Poitiers: when King John II was captured at Poitiers, he received the French King not as a fallen enemy, but as his superior.44 Thus, he tried to serve John by helping him remove his armor. The French regent protested that the Prince should not render him this service, since he had proved to be the worthier warrior. The Prince, the Chandos Herald informs us, responded: “Sire douls, Dieux l’ad fait et noun mie nous. Si lui ent devons remercier Et de bon coer vers lui prier Q’il nous voille ottroier sa glorie Et perdoner ceste victoire.”

(1427–32)

[“Sweet sir, God did this, not we. So we must thank him and with good heart pray to him that he will grant us his glory and pardon this victory.”]

Courtly and Arthurian, the Black Prince not only serves the French King in this vignette, he also gives thanks to God, and in so doing, he modulates the paradox. Mortals, he implies, may construct hierarchies, but a leader can at best serve primus inter pares, since God is the only superior being. Even though the Chandos Herald thus clearly conveys the Prince of Wales’s chivalric excellence, he also chooses to emphasize the episode in Edward’s life that unequivocally left him broken on fortune’s wheel. That is, rather than dilating the Battle of Poitiers and telescoping the Spanish campaign, as might be expected, the Herald dwells for about half of his narrative on the glorious preparations for and the wretched

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aftermath of the battle of Nájera.45 Since his primary audience would have known how Edward was deceived by Pedro, the suppression of negative comments on Pedro’s treachery and on the Prince’s judgment must have seemed striking. What eventually emerges from this emphasis is a portrait of a leader willing to fight at his own personal cost for justice, but one whose Arthurian excellence inevitably leads to his downfall.46 Indeed, for the Herald, the Spanish campaign re-creates the tensions inherent in the coupling of the Prince’s two mottos. For, right before turning to the events that lead to the Battle of Nájera, we learn that Bertrand du Guesclin is rallying French forces to fight against Pedro. That is, not only has the Black Prince reached the apex of his life as perfectly as can be imagined, but another star is ascending on the horizon. Importantly, the Herald’s primary audience would have known not only of Edward’s crumbling demise after the Spanish campaign, but also that his Arthurian gesture of allowing Guesclin to go free essentially allowed the mercenary hero to continue harassing and killing the English.47 Essentially, the Chandos Herald suggests that in performing courtly peacetime principles on the stage of war, the Black Prince secures his reputation for chivalry by allowing power to devolve to another. This is the essence of serving, Ich Dene, which, after all, places others center stage.48

STAGING HOUMOUT AND ICH DENE The Chandos Herald underscores the tensions coupling the Prince’s two mottos by providing vignettes, by visualizing ritual performances, that demonstrate the principle of Ich Dene in its positive iterations, when service may be performed “on stage” to enhance the chivalric ethos. Thus, several times, rather than describing someone rushing headlong into battle or frantically preparing his weapons, the narrator statically describes a noble or the Prince himself ceremonially requesting permission to engage in battle or to take over a command. The Prince courteously asks his father to give him permission to occupy Aquitaine (533–46); the Cardinal of Périgord humbly begs the King of France to allow him to sue for peace (767–90); and Audeley sincerely requests of the Prince that since he vowed to be the first on the battlefield, he might be allowed the privilege (1282–92). Likewise, rather than simply uttering a command or focusing on the dire need to have a good soldier take over a specific post, the narrator has the Prince entreat the Earl of Warwick in about twenty-five lines to take command of the vanguard at Poitiers (1070–95). The ritual, staged, courtesy evinced on the battlefield is taken to its height in the Spanish campaign,

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when with similar language the Herald describes how John Chandos unfurls his banner, without a single word informing audiences that this vignette presents a formal ritual conveying upon the petitioner the status of banneret:49 Monsire Johan de Chaundos Est venuz au Prince tantos Et la porta sa baniere Qi fuist de soie riche et fier. Moult doucement li dist ensi: “Sire,” fait il, “pur Dieu mercy, Servi vous ai du temps passée, Et tut quant Dieux m’ad donée De biens, ils me veignent de vous; Et bien savez qe je sui touz Le vostre, et serray touz temps; Et s’il vous semble lieu et temps Qe je puisse a banier ester, J’ai bien de quoi a mon mester, Qe Dieux m’ad donée, pur tenir. Ore en faitz vostre pleisir. Veiez le ci, je vous present.” Adonqes le Prince, sanz attent, Et le roi dan Petro, sanz detri, Et le duc de Lancastre auxi La banier li desploierent Et par la hant li baillerent; Et lui disrent, sanz plus retraire: “Dieux vous en laist vostre preu faire!” (3121–44) [Sir John Chandos came to the Prince immediately and carried his banner, which was of silk, rich and proud. Very sweetly he spoke thus to him: “Sire,” says he, “for the mercy of God, I have served you in times past, and all that God has given me of goods, they came to me from you; and well you know that I am always yours and will be for all time. And if it seems to you the place and time for me to raise my banner, I have enough of my own that God gave me to maintain it. Now at your pleasure, see this, I present it to you.” Then the Prince, without waiting, and the King, Lord Pedro, without delay, and the Duke of Lancaster also unfurled the banner and they gave it to him by the handle, and they said to him, without longer waiting, “May God allow you to prosper with it.”]

After this, John Chandos takes the banner and formally passes it on to his men, so that they all share in the processional-like ritual, “Car auxi bien est vostre come nostre” [“For it is also just as much yours as

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ours”]. It is not only that John Chandos requested that he may take his banner into the field, thereby communicating to anyone “watching,” his loyalty to the Prince. Giving special attention to the beauty of the banner, the courteous request, and the approbation articulated by the Prince, King Pedro, and John of Gaunt, who themselves lay hands on the banner to unfurl it and return it to the petitioner, the ritual captured in this vignette dramatizes chivalric heroism. In the midst of what all four know will become a bloody and chaotic mass of men seeking to extinguish or take charge of the lives of others, this performance generates an emblem that can be remembered and repeated as required. Shortly after John Chandos’s formal request, the Herald turns to the Black Prince, whom he depicts addressing and praying with his men. Modulating the ritual formality so prominent in the ceremony declaring John Chandos a banneret, Prince Edward uses the rhetorical and semiotic tool of visualization associated with processions and rituals in order to vivify the conventional rallying cry. That is, the Black Prince creates a vignette, a visual argument, that allows his men to see the benefits of winning:50 “Seigniours, n’i ad autre termine. Vous savez bien qe de famine Par defaute de vitaille sumes pres pris, Et veez ci et la noz enemis Qui de vitaille ont assez, Pain et vin et de pessons salez Et freez de douce eawe et de meer, Mais il les nous faut conquester Au ferir du glaive et d’espée. Ore faceons tant ceste journée Qe partir puissons a honour.” (3161–71) [“Sirs, there is no other ending. You know well that we are very near famine, for want of food, and you see that our enemies have food enough, bread and wine and fish salted and fresh, from sweet water and the sea, but we have to conquer with the lance and sword. Now let us do this day in such a way that we can part with honor.”]

Linking the rallying vignette to chivalric honor in the last cited line, Edward recognizes the tensions in serving ideals, much as his father did when appointing “the new nobility” to his court. Adjusting conventions and taking into account his immediate context, the Chandos Herald’s Black Prince encounters a fissure that demands attention be given to the “actors,” cajoling them into fulfilling the “playscript” ending in

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glorious victory by appealing to their basic needs. Interestingly, his ability to visualize arguments in his immediate context in order to project a narrative of chivalric honor and victory did not desert Edward on his deathbed.

STAGING THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING Prince Edward seemed to have a special connection with Canterbury Cathedral, its Trinity Chapel, and its bishop. His affection especially for the Trinity (he also died on its feast day) was conveyed by the Chandos Herald in various places (e.g., ll. 80–92, 4176–78).51 Nonetheless, while fulfilling expectations regarding a knight’s worship of God, Edward does not allow anything, it seems, to overcome his allegiance to England (e.g., ll. 822–44). This proves true even in his last wishes. The Black Prince made his will on June 7, 1376, and he died the next day. His body was embalmed and kept until the meeting of Parliament at Michaelmas, September 29, 1376, in order to inter him as he wished at Canterbury. With great detail, he devoted about a fifth of his approximately three thousand-word testament to how he would like to be buried, before instructing that his wealth be distributed to the chapel of Our Lady Undercroft in Canterbury, which he himself had founded, and to his loved ones. In part, the 250 words describing his donations to the chapel could be added to the instructions regarding his burial, since they called for lavish materials along with gold and silver objects to adorn the space where his tomb was to be constructed.52 What the will expresses recapitulates the theme discussed here: the tensions inherent in Arthurian excellence are performed on the stage of lavish, material, public display, exacerbating the pursuit of inner worth, since courtly rituals and opulent displays stand for, but at times, also seem to replace inner chivalric values. On one side of the tension, that addressing inner worth, the Black Prince not only remembers Canterbury Cathedral first among those to whom he wished to distribute his belongings, but he also begins the divesting of all he had with his soul, “Primerement nous devisons notre alme à Dieu notre Creatour, et à la seinte benoite Trinite et à la glorieuse virgine Marie, et à touz lez sainz et seintez . . .” (Stanley 164) [First, we give our soul to God our Creator and to the holy blessed Trinity and to the glorious virgin Mary and to all male and female saints]. Likewise, he requests that a twenty-eight line French poem be inscribed on his tomb where it might easily be read, one derived from a French translation of Clericalis Disciplina by Petrus Alphonsus that exhorted all who read it to contemplate the inevitability of death and

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the pointlessness of accumulating material wealth.53 With this wish, it seems as if the Prince of Wales had totally assimilated the medieval exhortation to live in remembrance of death, in memento mori. While “purely” focused on the afterlife in these two sections of his will, some of his other requests re-create the tensions characterizing his life and reputation, as they evoke the chivalric splendor and excellence of Arthur’s court along with the knightly propensity for war. In addition to the lavish magnificence of his funeral and tomb, for example, Edward requested that a full-length brass effigy in armor be created, suggesting the preparedness for battle that Charny praised as a virtue belonging to the true chivalric knight.54 In thus formally evoking the warrior, the Prince of Wales also transcends the conventional stance by visualizing, figuratively, a specific narrative of England’s eventual victory over France: his “armes pur la guerre” (Stanley 166) [arms for war] are to be embossed in quarters on his breastplate—the lion of England alternating with the fleur-de-lis of France. Indeed, the same processional alternation of the English lion with the French fleur-de-lis occurs on the tester suspended above his tomb as well.55 Edward moreover requested that his marble tomb be decorated with twelve one-foot-wide brass scutcheons around it. Six of these were to be prepared with his whole quartered arms (displaying the lion and fleurs-de-lis) and Houmout embossed above them, while the other six should display the ostrich feathers with Ich Dene inscribed over them. To underscore the message, for the procession taking his corpse to Canterbury, Edward requested that he be preceded by two knights riding in full armor on fully draped horses, one knight and horse in full arms of war quartered and the other pair with the ostrich feathers and the accoutrements of peace. In emphasizing these alternating emblems, the mottos subtly serve to move the narrative of victory being displayed in the alternating lions and fleur-de-lis beyond the kind of ritual, chivalric request found in the Herald’s narrative, and into the realm of performance, the type of move conveyed when the Black Prince had addressed his soldiers on the battlefield of Nájera. That is, through this interplay of English and French symbols along with emblems of war and peace, Edward exhorts the English not to lose faith in their claims to France and verifies the formal request through his own authenticating mottos. Using the formal procession of a royal funeral to declare the chivalric ritual of preparing for war as articulated in the specific necessity to “perform” victory over France, Edward—the prince groomed to become the future King—additionally attempts to rally the English, to draw them into a community inspired by Arthurian ideals by means of his own authenticating presence: he too had given up his life for England.

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Even when contemplating death, the Black Prince knew the importance of staging chivalric ethos and evoking Arthurian excellence in narratives that modulated conventions found in rituals and processions and that made himself central as a sign for what England was and could be. When successful, such performances could repair fault lines and level tensions in a surge of loyalty that could secure a kingdom and crown a future king. They could just as easily erupt into fissures that destroy all that had been won.

NOTES I am very grateful for the support for this essay, derived from a chapter of a current project, granted by Clark University’s Higgins School of Humanities and English Department. I also benefited from the collegial exchanges in Luxembourg, made possible by Clark’s Henry J. Leir Luxembourg Program. This essay represents a modified version of a monograph chapter I am currently working on, “The Rhetoric of Leadership in René d’Anjou, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Edward the Black Prince.” 1. Prince Edward was not called the “Black Prince” until the sixteenth century. See Diana B. Tyson, ed., La Vie du Prince Noir by Chandos Herald (Tübingen, Germany: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1975), 10. This is the edition used for this essay; unless otherwise indicated, translations are mine. 2. I thank Virginia Mason Vaughan for suggesting these lines. Edition used: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, ed. David Bevington (New York: Pearson Longman, 2008). 3. Fundamental to my approach are: Maria Corti, An Introduction to Literary Semiotics, trans. Margherita Bogat and Allen Mandelbaum (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), who presents the “literary system” as a communication system dependent on shared conventions; Charles Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers, ed. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1960), who analyzes signs and their components; Umberto Eco, The Limits of Interpretation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), who comments on the ground’s role in interpretation; and Roman Jakobson, “Linguistics and Poetics,” in Language In Literature, ed. Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1996), 66–71, who defines various components of literary communication. 4. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ed. David Bevington (New York: Bantam, 2005) 4.1.188–89; see SunHee Kim Gertz, “Authorial Audiences in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Semiotica 106 (1995), 153–70. 5. See: John Barnie, War in Medieval English Society (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974), 97–103, on the uneasy relationship between English and French courts. 6. See, for example, David Green, The Black Prince (Stroud: Tempus, 2001), 2–7; Maurice Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages (London: Methuen, 1973), 169–201; and W. M. Ormrod, The Reign of Edward III (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990) for general context. Also see Barnie, 38–45, 118–25, on criticism of Edward’s governance; and John Aberth, “Crime and Justice under Edward III,” The English Historical Review 107, no. 423 (April 1992): 283–301, on Edward III’s inconsistent personal judgments contributing to the failure of his attempts to improve the legal system. 7. See Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages, 154–57; and Ormrod, 77–81.

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8. See Anthony Musson, “Second ‘English Justinian’ or Pragmatic Opportunist?” in The Age of Edward III, ed. James S. Bothwell (Woodbridge UK: York Medieval Press, 2001) 69–88. Musson argues that Parliament acquired more legislative responsibility under Edward III. 9. Ormrod, xii; cf. 37–39, 201; and Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages, 161. 10. See Chris Given-Wilson, The Royal Household and the King’s Affinity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986), on the historical circumstances, logistics, and finances of Edward III, Richard II, and Henry IV from 1360 to 1413. Also see Green, 107–40, on the Black Prince’s household. 11. Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages, 211, 216–17, 226–47. 12. See Glynne Wickham, The Medieval Theatre (London: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1974). Also see Clifford Davidson, ed., A Middle English Treatise on the Playing of Miracles (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1981), who presents a Wycliffite treatise objecting to theater, thereby suggesting its popularity. 13. See Thomas P. Campbell, “Liturgy and Drama,” Theatre Journal 33 (1981): 289– 301, for the centrality of the liturgy in medieval drama; and Carol Symes, “The Appearance of Early Vernacular Plays,” Speculum 77 (2002), 778–831, for extant sources prior to the fourteenth century; her review of past approaches to medieval drama; and her analysis revealing dramatic codes in literature. 14. See Richard Beadle, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); David Bevington, ed., Medieval Drama (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975); A. C. Cawley, Marion Jones, Peter F. McDonald, and David Mills, Medieval Drama, vol. 1 (London: Methuen, 1983); and Stanley J. Kahrl, Traditions of Medieval English Drama (London: Hutchinson, 1974). 15. See Martin Stevens, “Illusion and Reality in the Medieval Drama,” College English 32, no. 4 (January 1971), 460–64, on the relations between the procession and the plays; Clifford Davidson, Festivals and Plays in Late Medieval Britain (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), 49–79, on performances’ relation to the transubstantiation ritual; Ann Higgins, “Streets and Markets,” in A New History of Early English Drama, ed. John D. Cox and David Scott Kastan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 77–92, on how the plays “took to the streets”; Mervyn James, “Ritual, Drama and Social Body in the Late Medieval English Town,” Past and Present 98 (1983), 3–29, on the social integration performed by the Corpus Christi ritual and complemented by the plays; V. A. Kolve, The Play Called Corpus Christi (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1966), on both feast and plays; Alan H. Nelson, The Medieval English Stage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), on town records concerning the plays; Cecilia Pietropoli, “Il dramma ciclico inglese come teatro popolare,” Quaderni di filologia germanica 2 (1982), 45–60, on how medieval biblical drama elicits celebratory participation; and Wickham, 59–67, on the relationship of the physical universe to the theatrical representation, macrocosm evoked in the microcosm. 16. The feast day had a troubled history ever since Pope Urban IV called a synod in 1246 to order the celebration; see the Catholic Encyclopedia New Advent article, www.newadvent.org/cathen/04390b.htm. 17. Davidson, 65, his italics; cf. Rainer Warning, “On the Alterity of Medieval Religious Drama,” trans. Marshall Brown, New Literary History 10 (1979), 265–92. Warning argues that medieval drama flattens the difference between stage performance and ritual participation; also see Bevington, 234. 18. “The Drama of Medieval Liturgical Processions,” Revue de Musicologie 86 (2000), 127–42. 19. Edition used: The Anonimalle Chronicle, ed. V. H. Galbraith (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press), 40–41.

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20. See Gerd Althoff, Die Macht der Rituale (Darmstadt, Germany: Primus, 2003), 24. 21. The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama (London: Methuen, 1980), 11–12, 111. 22. “Mysteries of State,” Selected Studies (Locust Valley, NY: J. J. Augustin, 1965), 381–98; also see Steven Gunn and Antheun Janse, eds., The Court as a Stage (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2006) on court life. 23. See Martin Stevens, “The Intertextuality of Late Medieval Art and Drama,” New Literary History 22 (1991): 317–37, who argues that art and drama shared much with the political realm; and D. A. Bullough, “Games People Played,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 24 (1974): 97–122, who compares the theatrical in aristocratic behavior with medieval plays to argue that both kinds of staged activities were used as propaganda for state and church. 24. See Richard Barber, “Why did Edward III Hold the Round Table?” in Edward III’s Round Table at Windsor, ed. Julian Munby et al., (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2007), 87–89; and Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984), 92–93. 25. See A. H. Burne, “The Battle of Poitiers,” The English Historical Review 53 (1938): pp. 21–52. Geoffrey le Baker signaled the importance of Poitiers to the English when recounting the Prince’s birth: “Hoc anno scilicet 1330, regis vero 4, die 15 mensis Junii, natus est apud Wodestoke primogenitus dominus Edwardus de Wodestoke, cujus laudes et mangificos triumphos, quos in captura Regis Francorum habuit, et alios, suis locis describere divina clementia nos permittat” [114: In this year, that is 1330, in the king’s fourth year, on the 15th day of June, his first son was born at Woodstock, Lord Edward of Woodstock, whose praiseworthy and magnificent triumphs, which include the capture of the King of France, and other deeds, will be described in various places, if God’s mercy permits us.] Edition used: Geoffrey le Baker de Swinbroke, Chronicon Angliae, ed. J. A. Giles (London: Jacob Bohn, 1847). 26. See John Le Patourel, “The Treaty of Brétigny, 1360,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 19 (1960): 19–39, on the vicissitudes of the demands made for King John’s freedom, troubled in part because Edward’s 1359–1360 campaign against the French was not successful. 27. Even though “Gascony” is the more common medieval name, I will refer to the region as Aquitaine, in part because it underscores the Prince’s title and in part because “the region to which the Prince of Wales was to go was called in English writings of the fourteenth century Aquitaine, Guienne or Gascony without careful distinction.” See Herbert James Hewitt, The Black Prince’s Expedition of 1355–1357 (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1958), 4. 28. As Tyson points out (p. 35), the Black Prince’s sacking of Limoges, in which he ordered that innocent civilians be killed and the town razed to the ground, is related by the Chandos Herald in only two lines, 4049–50. See Richard W. Barber, The Black Prince (Phoenix Mill, UK: Sutton, 2003), 225–26; Barnie, 74–82; and John Hooper Harvey, The Black Prince and His Age (Totowa, NJ: Rowan and Littlefield, 1976), 25–27, who ameliorate or contextualize the massacre by reference to battle norms of the times. 29. Engaging in mercenary service was not per se deemed unchivalric. The Chandos Herald shows, for example, his patron, John Chandos, approaching members of La grande compaignie to leave Henry and join Pedro’s forces (ll. 1971–82). According to Geoffroi de Charny, the motive was the more important factor (e.g., p. 92): “Et pour ce doit l’en mettre en ce mestier plus son cuer et s’entente a l’onnour, qui tous temps dure, que a proffit et gaing que l’en peut perdre en une seule heure” [Elspeth Kennedy’s translation p. 98.22–24: In this vocation one should therefore set one’s heart and mind on winning honor, which endures for ever, rather than on winning profit and booty,

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which one can lose within one single hour]. Edition used: Geoffroi de Charny, The Book of Chivalry, eds. Richard W. Kaeuper and Elspeth Kennedy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996). 30. He was Prince d’Aquitaine from 1362 to 1372, and he became Prince of Wales in May 1343, the first Duke of Cornwall in February 1337, and the Earl of Chester in March 1333. Numerous biographies exist, many of which are unabashedly panegyric. As a small sampling, see Barber, The Black Prince; Hubert Cole, The Black Prince (London: Hart-Davis MacGibbon, 1976); R. P. Dunn-Pattison, The Black Prince (London: Methuen, 1910); Barbara Emerson, The Black Prince (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976); Green; Harvey; G. P. R. James, A History of the Life of Edward the Black Prince, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1842); and Henry Dwight Sedgwick, The Life of Edward the Black Prince 1330–1376 (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1932). There are even children’s versions, such as that of John George Edgar, Heroes of England (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1853). 31. Edition used: Thomas Wright, ed., Political Poems and Songs, vol. 1 (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1859). The most popular characterization of the Prince as the flower of chivalry stems from Jean Froissart’s Chroniques, which for reasons of space I will not treat here. 32. Peirce, 135. 33. See Green, 14; Harvey, 102; Tyson, 36. 34. See Norris J. Lacy et al., The Arthurian Handbook (New York: Garland, 1997), xx–xxiii, 57–135. The material on Arthur is endless. For overviews, see the studies written and overseen by Lacy, among them: Norris J. Lacy, ed., A History of Arthurian Scholarship (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006); and Norris J. Lacy, Geoffrey Ashe et al., eds., The New Arthurian Encyclopedia (New York: Routledge, 1996). Also see W. R. J. Barron, The Arthur of the English (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2001); and Glyn S. Burgess and Karen Pratt, The Arthur of the French (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006). 35. While this formulation did not appear, as far as is known, until the fifteenth century, I use it here to indicate that the attempt of English kings since at least Edward I to effect the desire to reestablish Arthur’s kingdom. See Lacy, Ashe, and Mancoff, 27. 36. See N. J. Higham, King Arthur: Myth-Making and History (London: Routledge, 2002), 229–30. 37. See Harvey, 73–74; and Higham, 232–34. On the Order of the Garter, see Barber, 80–109; and Juliet Vale, Edward III and Chivalry (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 1982), 76–91. 38. See Green, 73–105; Howell Chickering and Thomas H. Seiler, eds., The Study of Chivalry (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1988); Keen, Chivalry; and Vale. 39. Edward III and the English Peerage (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2004), 16, 71, 94. 40. See James Bothwell, “Edward III and the ‘New Nobility,’” English Historical Review 112 (1997), 1128; and Chris Given-Wilson, The English Nobility in the Middle Ages (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987), 1–25. 41. Green, 12; also see 34–39; and Andrew Ayton and Philip Preston, eds., The Battle of Crécy (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2005). 42. See Sir Israel Gollancz, Ich Dene (London: Geo. W. Jones, 1921); and Stanley, 174. 43. See, for example, James, vol. 2, 66–75; and Sedgwick, 73–77. 44. Green, 19–20, points out that Edward’s status was ambiguous—he had the power of a king in Aquitaine, but he was also a prince, and his status had consequences for how he was to interact with those around him.

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45. For example, Stanley, p. 142, keeps the Spanish venture to a minimum. 46. In this respect, the Herald echoes Charny’s understanding of what chivalry is; e.g., pp. 126–27, ll. 41–49. Of course, in actuality, political considerations along with promised compensation served as additional motivating factors for the Black Prince. 47. See Harvey, 17, 113–14. 48. In benign form, Chrétien de Troyes’s romances depict Arthur, although respected, leaving the stage for others to demonstrate prowess. 49. See Green, 99; and Keen, Chivalry, 168. 50. This convincing visualization is based on the basic “unit” of persuasion, according to rhetorical theory, the enthymeme, popularly known as the “rhetorical syllogism.” On the enthymeme per se, see Lloyd F. Bitzer, “Aristotle’s Enthymeme Revisited,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 45 (1959), 399–408. On the enthymeme in classical and medieval sources, see Heinrich Lausberg, Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik (Munich: Max Hueber, 1960), §§371, 875, 879. On the enthymeme in literature, see SunHee Kim Gertz, Poetic Prologues (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1996), 47–54. 51. See Green, 16; Harvey, 48–49; and Stanley, 177. 52. In spite of detailed instructions, some of Edward’s wishes were not executed. See Stanley, 148–71, for the burial, the text of the will, and illustrations. 53. See Diana B. Tyson, “The Epitaph of Edward the Black Prince,” Medium Aevum 46 (1977): 98–104. 54. An image of the effigy is provided at, for example: home.gwu.edu/~jhsy/ chaucer-ppp-bp.html. Also see Janet Arnold, “The Jupon or Coat-Armour of the Black Prince,” Church Monuments 8 (1993): 12–24; and James Mann, The Funeral Achievements of Edward, the Black Prince (London: Wm. Clowes and Sons, 1950). 55. According to Marie-Louise Sauerberg, Conservator of the Hamilton Kerr Institute at the University of Cambridge, who graciously met with me on August 25, 2006, the tester was probably built in the same year of the Black Prince’s death, suggesting that it was likely to have been commissioned during Edward’s long illness.

The Place of the Human: Shakespeare’s Stage and the Bear Garden Andreas Höfele

HOLLAR’S MISTAKE

WHEN THE BOHEMIAN ENGRAVER WENCESLAUS HOLLAR, “AT A

time near the beginning of the English Civil War,“1 undertook to make a panoramic etching of London, he chose the steeple of St. Mary Overies in Southwark as his vantage point for the preliminary drawings. From aloft he had a splendid view across the Thames to St. Paul’s, the Tower, and the riverfront mansions of the aristocracy (including that of his own patron, the Earl of Arundel). With his expert eye for topographical composition, he would also have appreciated the advantageous effect of London Bridge spanning the river to the right of his perch. The fact that he also had an excellent view of two odd circular structures a few hundred yards to the west surely did not interest him especially. But it is for the sake of these two edifices—in particular the one inscribed “Beere bayting h”—that posterity has most often turned to Hollar’s “Long View.” When, years ago, I looked at it in the Prints and Drawings Department of the British Library (then the Old North Library), posterity’s interest had all too visibly impressed itself on the work. The section showing the “Beere bayting h” was worn to a paler shade than the rest of the seven-plate etching. This extra wear and tear has next to nothing to do with the once popular entertainment of bearbaiting. But it has everything to do with Shakespeare because, by a mistake so famous that Laurence Olivier alluded to it in the opening sequence of his 1944 film of Henry V, Hollar got the two buildings mixed up. What the inscription identifies as “Beere bayting h” is in fact the (Second) Globe Theater. A refugee from the Civil War, Hollar did not finish his etching of Caroline London until 1647, when he had been living in Antwerp for several years and apparently had forgotten which of the two amphitheaters was for human actors only and which for animals. An un46

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derstandable mistake, for—to exaggerate a little, but not much—an apple cleft in two could hardly be more twin than these two structures.2 Their kinship, if not twinship, is patently obvious. And it is not just architectural. To the Puritan mind, it hardly mattered whether Christians wasted their time on earth watching bears or watching plays. The two entertainments, catering to the same audiences, were equally reprehensible. After the collapse of the old baiting arena at Paris Garden in 1583, causing five deaths and injuring many, John Field, the “Lenin of Puritanism,”3 directed a “godly exhortation” at “these Heathenishe Enterludes and Playes” as well as at “that cruell and lothsome exercise of bayting Beares”: “For surely it is to be feared, . . . by frequenting the Theater, the Curtin and such like, that one day those places will likewise be cast downe by God himselfe, & being drawen with them a huge heape of such contempners and prophane persons vtterly to be killed and spoyled in their bodyes.”4 Ironically, John Field’s son Nathan, some three decades later, bitterly took issue with his father’s way of thinking in his “Letter to Mr. Sutton, Preacher att St. Mary Overs” (1616).5 Nathan Field happened to be both a parishioner at St. Mary’s and one of the most prominent actors of his day.6 St. Mary Overies, notwithstanding its proximity to the Globe and the Bear Garden, was a stronghold of Puritanism and thus of anti-theatricalism. Positioning himself in the belfry of St. Mary’s, Hollar had put himself at, or rather atop, the crucible of the conflict between stage and pulpit. If his “Long View” gives what Puritans might have censured as undue prominence to the two neighboring “sincks of synne,”7 it quite literally shares the point of view of the Protestants whose disapproving gaze would have found the two buildings and the profane entertainments they housed interchangeable. Nothing remotely like disapproval speaks to us from from Hollar‘s painstakingly impartial perspectivism,8 but his error inadvertently reproduces the outlook (both literally and figuratively) of the godly. When Hollar committed his plate to the printing press, the Globe Theater had ceased to exist, having been torn down in 1644.9 Thus, even beyond the grave, so to speak, the Globe continues to be haunted by its family resemblance to the baiting arena.

THEATER AND BEAR-BAITING: SIMILAR BUILDINGS, SAME BUSINESS Theater historians are aware of the curious substitution that occurs when one tries to trace the public playhouse back to its origins with the help of Hollar’s sixteenth-century predecessors, the extant Tudor

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maps, and panoramas of London.10 Turning from Norden’s Speculum Britanniae (1593) to the map of London published by Braun and Hogenberg (Cologne, 1572) in search of the Ur-Globe, a plausible progenitor of James Burbage’s Theatre—more primitive perhaps, yet recognizably a stage for human acting—one finds instead two baiting arenas: odd round structures that look like no other but clearly resemble their more elaborate descendants, the theaters and baiting arenas of the 1590s. According to Edmund Chambers, “There was an obvious precedent for the amphitheatrical form in the bear and bull rings which preceded the public theaters.”11 Later scholars such as Glynne Wickham12 and Andrew Gurr concur. “Burbage’s building,” Gurr states, “was a wooden, unroofed amphitheater, close kin to the bear-baiting houses and the innyards.”13 Arguing against this generally accepted view, Oscar Lee Brownstein maintains that the primitive, corral-like baiting rings depicted in the early maps were a far cry from the splendor of the Elizabethan playhouse.14 John Orrell, too, denies the baiting rings any role in the genesis of Shakespeare’s theater, contending that the group of London tradesmen and artisans responsible for the building of The Theatre in 1576 disregarded all native precedent and relied wholly on the—highly conjectural—transmission of Vitruvian models instead.15 This hypothesis, one would think, founders on socio-biographical grounds alone. Both scholars are, of course, right in noting the considerable differences between the baiting rings of the mid-sixteenth century and the playhouses of forty years later. But these differences cannot erase the typological kinship of the buildings.16 For one thing, there is evidence that at least some early baiting rings cannot have been just circular scaffolds with spectators looking in from the outside but must have had viewing arrangements very much like the roofed galleries of the Globe.17 Even if those arrangements were more primitive, the difference is one of degree, not of kind, and therefore hardly apt to support Brownstein’s main intent: to disaffiliate the Elizabethan theater from its disreputable cousin. The collapse of the old Bear Garden in 1583—the event that prompted John Field’s diatribe—would indicate that it was a more rickety structure than the solidly built Theatre or Curtain. But the fact that these playhouses served as models in the rebuilding of it shows that the performance spaces of play-acting and bear-baiting developed in a process of mutual give-and-take. The early bull-ring and bear-ring on the Bankside may not constitute the single architectural “source” of the Elizabethan playhouse. But they do supply a suggestively plausible link in the development of the English theater from vagrancy to settlement in permanent, purpose-built structures. Moreover, they launch a lasting interplay between the two kinds of entertainment in which

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each mirrors the other. For Justus Zinzerling, a visitor from Germany, they became one and the same thing. In his Latin account of the sights of London (c. 1610), he simply conflates them: “Theatra comoedorum,” he writes, “in which bears and bulls fight with dogs.”18 Recent research suggests that the mingling of human actors and baited animals in one venue may in fact have begun as early as 1587, when Philip Henslowe built his first theater on Bankside, the Rose. The “key evidence,” writes Andrew Gurr, “is the indication that the first stage was tacked on asymmetrically. . . . Its irregular positioning in the otherwise carefully surveyed groundplan suggests that it must have been built as a temporary structure.”19 Just such a temporary, removable stage is the salient feature of the dual-purpose Hope theater that Henslowe, twenty-seven years later, contracted the carpenter Gilbert Katherens to build on the site of the old Bear Garden: a “Plaiehouse fitt & conveniest in all thinges, bothe for players to playe in, and for the game of Beares and Bulls to be bayted in the same.”20 The new theater was to be reserved for “Stage Playes on Mundayes, Wednesdayes, Fridayes and Saturdayes, And for the Baiting of Beares on Tuesdayes and Thursdayes, the Stage being made to take vp and downe when they please.”21 Despite being predominantly used as a playhouse, the Hope continued to be referred to by its old name, the Bear Garden. And it is as such that it appears—and exchanges names with the Globe—in Hollar’s “Long View.” “Difficult though it is for us to imagine,” Gurr concludes wryly, “it does seem that [Henslowe] always saw bears and players coming close to parity as his tenants” ( Gurr 2004, 41). At least one player, the famous Edward Alleyn, Henslowe’s son-in-law and business partner, must have shared this view. Having bought the Bear Garden in 1594, he remained in the baiting business up to his death in 1626. From 1604 to 1616, Alleyn and Henslowe jointly held the court office of Master and Keeper of Bears, Bulls and Mastiff Dogs. Not only did theater and bear-baiting share the same locations and audiences, they were also branches of the same business enterprise.

SEEING DOUBLE All these connections are, of course, well known. “The idea that theater and blood sports were closely related in early modern England” has indeed become, as one recent critic observes, “something of a commonplace.”22 But the architectural, economic or, more generally speaking, sociocultural overlap of the two types of entertainment,23 provides only the first step toward a realization of their collusion in

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what we might call the perceptual topography or, borrowing a term coined by the Russian structuralist Yuri Lotman, the semiosphere of Early Modern London.24 Looking at the Globe and “Beere bayting h” with Hollar’s sharp if confused eye, we are directed from the similarity of the “frames” to the consequences of this similarity for the perception of the “pictures,” from the venues to the shows—from the medium, as it were, to the message. Twentieth-century aesthetics is nothing if not relational (and, so far, this holds true for the twenty-first century as well).25 Taking up an idea first formulated in Broder Christiansen’s Philosophy of Art,26 the Russian Formalists declared that “the form of a work of art is determined by its relationship to other, already existing forms.”27 Difference, not in the sense of absolute novelty, otherness, creation ex nihilo, but as a specific blend of continuous and discontinuous elements, determines the degree and quality of the new work’s newness, the aesthetic surplus that entitles it to be considered a work of art at all. The Modernist imperative of “making it new” may have exhausted itself, but variations of the basic idea of a relational aesthetics can be seen to ramify into the theories of Bakhtin and Kristeva and from structuralism to poststructuralism. And although relational aesthetics was developed in conjunction with twentieth-century artistic trends and theories, its working principle can be found in older forms as well. Of Shakespearean drama, too, it might be said that it is nothing if not relational. One of the elementary features of Shakespearean dramaturgy is the intratextual web of parallels and contrasts—more precisely, of parallels interlaced with contrasts. Thus Hamlet’s plight is paralleled by that of Laertes, and their contrasting responses are thereby made all the more conspicuous. Similarly, the opening streetfighting scene in Romeo and Juliet is paralleled by and contrasted with the scene in which Mercutio meets Tybalt (3.1). Both present the swaggering derring-do of Verona’s male youth, but only one ends with a double killing. In each of these cases and the many others that work on the same principle, the effect is achieved by something that we might call “double vision”: a simultaneous recognition of likeness and unlikeness. “For by the image of my cause, I see / the portraiture of his [i.e. Laertes’s],” says Hamlet (5.2.77–78). We as spectators are induced to see both “the portraiture,” i.e. likeness, and a gap of unlikeness hardly less marked than that which Hamlet enjoins his mother to see in comparing her two husbands: “Look here upon this picture, and on this” (3.2.53). Precisely such friction between like and unlike is the effect of intertextuality, a textual strategy that invites, and directs, a double-focused response or “interreading.” The strongly marked intertextual irony of

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Troilus and Cressida, for example, relies on the “knownness” of its plot and characters, a “constant ironic signaling of difference at the heart of similarity,”28 a playing out of Bakhtinian heteroglossia in a permanent engagement with the play’s powerful Homeric and Chaucerian pretexts. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, too, the intertextual presence of a classical pre-text, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, is everywhere in evidence. But whereas Troilus and Cressida draws its satirical force from a collision with the Iliad, A Midsummer Night’s Dream releases its characteristic energy and tone in collusion with the Metamorphoses. To be sure, the Ovidian vision does not prevail unchallenged. The play’s telescopically interlocking spheres of reality and dream ensure that each attempt to enclose the metamorphic nightworld in a frame of daylight rationalism is in turn contained within another frame of “dream.” It is not Ovid, but counter-Ovidian realism, that becomes the butt of Shakespeare’s irony when we realize that Theseus himself is a creature of “antique fables.”29 I want to suggest that the theater’s proximity and resemblance to bear-baiting provided the basis for an equally powerful double vision whose working principle might be described as “inter-medial.” This term may require some explanation.30 “Intermediality” has its roots in 1960s performance art in the United States,31 but it is still much less familiar in English than in French and, particularly, German, where it has gained wide currency since the 1990s. If we regard “media” as a set of conventions contingent on specific technical devices, the prefix interpoints to a crossing-over from one such set to another. In our own day, for instance, we may observe that the aesthetics of computer games together with their concomitant habits of perception encroach on the aesthetics of feature films, or that patterns of cinematic montage reappear in literature. Brecht detected such intermedial transfer as early as 1931: “The film viewer,” he wrote, “reads stories differently. But he who writes stories is also a film viewer. The technification of literary production is irreversible.”32 Adapting Brecht, we could say that the Elizabethan theatergoer, too, saw plays differently, quite differently than someone living in a world without bear-baiting and other blood rituals, such as public executions. And, obviously, those Elizabethans who wrote plays were also viewers of those spectacles. The blood rituals of baiting and criminal justice would inevitably be part of their physical and cultural environment and thus be incorporated in the store of everyday experiences that their imagination drew on. There are good reasons to assume that early modern perceptions were particularly attuned to the workings of intermediality. The vast system of analogical relationships that the Renaissance inherited from medieval Scholasticism may, by the late 1500s, have come under severe

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strain; it may even, as some historians would claim, have entirely lost its power to maintain the coherence of a unified cosmic order, in the face of radical pluralization. But as a habit of thinking, the forming of analogies remained ubiquitous in all areas of Early Modern culture. Cut from its moorings in Thomistic certainty, analogizing has a way of inducing as well as arresting movement. Once begun, the exercise is effectively interminable. Just about anything can be seized upon as convertible currency in an open process of exchange. I contend that the intermedial relationship between the playhouse and the bear pit provides a highly productive matrix for precisely such open processes of analogizing between human actors and their animal counterparts.

BEAR STAGE What Christia[n] harte can take pleasure to see one poor beast to rent, teare, and kill an other, and all for his foolish pleasure? And although thei be bloudie beasts to mankind, and seeke his destruction, yet we are not to abuse them, for his sake who made them, and whose creatures thei are. For notwithstandyng that thei be euill to vs, & thirst after our bloud, yet are thei good creatures in their own nature and kind, and made to set forth the glorie, power and magnificence of our God, and for our vse, and therefore for his sake wee ought not to abuse them.33

According to Macaulay, “The Puritan hated bearbaiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.”34 Much as this brickbat might appeal to modern-day anti-Puritanical reflexes, the foregoing quotation from Phillip Stubbes’s Anatomy of Abuses hardly corroborates it. The protest of Stubbes and other Puritans against blood sports was, as Terence Hawkes has noted, “often expressed in terms with which we, in the twenty-first century, would readily sympathize.”35 But people did indeed derive pleasure—the word appears twice in Stubbes’s first sentence—from watching the animals renting, tearing, and frequently (if by no means always) killing one another. The evidence for this is overwhelming, the following account of the famous royal entertainment at Kenilworth Castle in 1575 being quite typical in its unreserved enthusiasm: It waz a sport very pleazaunt of theez beastz: to see the bear with hiz pink nyez [eyes] leering after hiz enmyez approach, the nimblness and wayt of the dog too take hiz avauntage, and the fors and experiens of the bear agayn to avoyd the assauts: if he wear bitten in one place, hoow he woold pynch in an oother too get free: that if he wear taken onez, then what shyft with byting with clawyng, with roring tossing and tumbling he woold woork

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too wynde him self from them: and when he waz lose, to shake hiz earz twyse or thryse with the blud and the slaver aboout hiz fiznamy [physiognomy], waz a matter of goodly releef.36

Other contemporary sources speak of “good contentment,” “jolly pastimes,” “great amusement,” or that “it cannot be spoken of what pleasure the people took.”37 What was the nature of this pleasure? Presumably it was not so very different from the pleasure people derive to this day from watching bullfights (human vs. animal) or prizefights (human vs. human). At the centre of all these spectacles “there throbs a ‘live’, unpredictable quality of immediacy” (Hawkes, 89). All involve a thrilling confrontation with real danger (though not to one’s own person) and the license to legitimately watch otherwise illicit acts of violence. But the documentary evidence also suggests, as Jason Scott-Warren has pointed out, “that a large part of the pleasure of blood sports for the early modern viewer had to do with what it revealed about the animals,” with a detached connoisseurial admiration for their fighting skills, their strength, courage and cunning.38 This inevitably involved a high degree of anthropomorphism, the ascription of quasi-human volition, character traits, even personalities to the creatures in the arena. Some of the ursine prizefighters, accordingly, acquired celebrity status and were given human names: Sackerson, Harry Hunks, George Stone, Don Jon, Tom of Lincoln, Little Bess of Bromley. The anthropomorphism of bear-baiting reflects interestingly upon Early Modern notions of the relation between humans and beasts, notions that were far from unequivocal. The faith in the absolute ascendancy of man over beast coexisted with the no less firmly held belief in man’s ever-lurking propensity to abandon his distinctly human traits and degenerate to a lower, beastlike state.39 While the one conviction posits insuperable difference, the other maintains irrepressible similarity. Together they highlight a fundamental instability at the heart of the Early Modern project of human self-fashioning. This instability is institutionalized in the proximity of playhouse and bear garden. On the one hand, baiting depended on the categorical difference between humans and animals, because without it the cruelty of the spectacle could hardly have been considered—as it evidently was—a harmless pleasure to be enjoyed—as it also evidently was—with such innocent gusto. On the other hand, bear-baiting strongly depended on similarity, because without similarity there could not have been any pleasure at all. “In the ascent from brutes to man,” the eighteenth-century novelist Oliver Goldsmith asserts, “the line is strongly drawn, well marked, and unpassable.”40 But in the London entertainment dis-

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trict of some hundred and fifty years earlier, man and beast faced each other across this line in a way more apt to undermine than support that confident assertion. Instead of functioning as a barrier, the humananimal distinction is more like the line between objects outside and inside a mirror, a liminal zone that enables a constant trafficking of perceptions, of animal blending into human, human into animal. The assignment of a “physiognomy” to the bear in the account of the Kenilworth baiting show captures this blending. The term anthropomorphizes the animal and animalizes the human, physiognomy being the art that read the human face and character in terms of animal analogies.41 The transfer of meaning between theater and baiting is reciprocal. Each of the two spectacles confers its affective energies on the other, its capacity for signification. Just as the game of bear-baiting can be, and in contemporary eyewitness accounts often is, perceived as drama, theatrical play can present itself as a form of baiting. A notable instance of this occurs in 2 Henry VI, 5.1, where York and his two sons, Edward and the hunchbacked Richard, dare the Lancastrian Lord Clifford to a baiting match: Clifford. Why, what a brood of traitors have we here? York. Look in a glass, and call thy image so: I am thy king and thou a false-heart traitor. Call hither to the stake my two brave bears, That with the very shaking of their chains They may astonish these fell-lurking curs: Bid Salisbury and Warwick come to me. Enter the EARLS OF WARWICK and SALISBURY [with DRUM and SOLDIERS] Clifford. Are these thy bears? We’ll bait thy bears to death And manacle the bearherd in their chains, If thou dar’st bring them to the baiting-place. Richard. Oft have I seen a hot o’erweening cur Run back and bite because he was withheld; Who, being suffered with the bear’s fell paw, Hath clapped his tail between his legs and cried: And such a piece of service will you do, If you oppose yourselves to match Lord Warwick. (5.1.141–56)42

The extended conceit on baiting is sparked by Warwick’s crest of “The rampant bear chained to the ragged staff” (5.1.203), which visibly presides over the scene because, Warwick says,

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This day I’ll wear [it] aloft my burgonet— As on a mountain top the cedar shows That keeps his leaves in spite of any storm— Even to affright thee with the view thereof. (5.1.204–7)

As Stephen Dickey observes, this verbal contest, “the most sustained instance of explicit bearbaiting imagery” in the Shakespearean oeuvre, “would best be called a draw; the very duration and futility of the exchange enacts in small the military and political stalemate that this play largely dramatizes” (Dickey, 265). At the same time, the bear-baiting references point to the precarious boundary between feudal order and the savagery that this order is not only incapable of suppressing but indeed keeps generating with every supposedly legitimate new claim to the throne. York, who introduces the bear-baiting trope, reserves for himself the role of the human master or “bearherd” (l. 149). But the controlled violence of baiting, on one level the emblem of man’s rule over brute nature (and of York’s royal ascendancy over his allies, Warwick and Salisbury), turns into an image of chaotic, unruly wildness when humans take on the parts of beasts, or, more alarming still, when humans reveal their bestial nature. There is a difference between Warwick’s donning his heraldic character of “rampant bear,” that is after all grounded in a chivalric code of honor (a code which is shown to retain some validity in the subsequent fight between York and Clifford), and the more sinister ursine character associated with York’s offspring, the misshapen Richard. Addressing him as “heap of wrath, foul indigested lump” (5.1.157), young Clifford evokes the folk notion that “bear cubs were . . . born formless and licked into shape by their mothers.”43 Such maternal licking has manifestly not been bestowed on the young Crouchback. His nature conspicuously lacks the softening influence of nurture. While York’s call for “my two brave bears” (l. 144) ostensibly refers to Warwick and Salisbury, it may also be directed at his two sons; and the fiercest “bear” unleashed in this scene is the future Duke of Gloucester and King of England, Richard III. His grim predatory callousness shows up in his killing of Somerset, which follows (the parallel highlighting the contrast) immediately upon York’s victory over Cifford. While York bids farewell to his dead enemy with a conciliatory “Peace with his soul” (5.2.30), his son Richard parts from his quarry with the chilling exit line: “Priests pray for enemies, but princes kill.” This is not yet the treacherous villain who will suddenly “speak . . . out in full-throated theatricality the grandeur of his ambition” in the next play (3 Henry VI, 3.2.124–195).44 But already, in Part 2 of the series, York’s “youngest, . . . fiercest, and . . . most intransi-

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gently loyal” son (Grene, 122) begins to acquire what we might call an “animal character.”45 As Wolfgang Clemen notes, “The repulsive figure of the hunch-backed Richard as we see it upon the stage is repeatedly transformed into animal bodies conforming to his nature.” His animality is not limited to the ursine, but encompasses “the wretched, bloody, and usurping boar,” the “poisonous bunch-back’d toad,” “bottled spider,” “rooting hog,” and, most frequently, the bear’s canine adversary in the pit. In Queen Margaret’s words to Richard’s mother: From forth the kennel of thy womb hath crept A hell-hound that doth hunt us all to death: That dog, that had his teeth before his eyes, To worry lambs and lap their gentle blood . . . (Richard III, 4.4.47)

In Shakespeare’s first tetralogy, the bestialization of Richard Gloucester unequivocally denotes a steep downward moral trajectory from human to subhuman status. This is perfectly in keeping with the meaning that most previous critics have ascribed to Shakespeare’s zoomorphous humans. From traditional imagery studies,46 to the most recent monograph on the subject,47 Shakespearean beasts have been interpreted as vehicles of social or moral—and frequently social and moral—discrimination. It is true, of course, that bestialization, the ascription of animal properties to beggars, women, foreigners, or any other group or individual considered unworthy of full human status, has always been a widely practiced strategy of social exclusion. Nor can it be denied that Shakespeare’s animal references often share this practice— often, but by no means always. The monstrous Richard may do no more than spell out a moral alphabet in which the hierarchical distinction between man and beast is always already fixed, where individuals may lapse from the norm of the human but the norm itself is never in doubt.48 But in Macbeth the situation is much more ambiguous.49 Macbeth, too, becomes a “hellhound” to his righteous adversary Macduff. He, too, fights his last battle in a baiting-ring: “They have tied me to a stake, I cannot fly, / But bear-like I must fight the course” (5.7.1–2). But when the beast is bagged and Macduff presents Macbeth’s severed head as a hunting trophy, this final image hardly captures the complex response evoked by the play’s central character. Of all the dramatis personae, the bestial tyrant Macbeth is the most fully realized human being. His story draws on a more comprehensive view of the human than the Cartesian rationalism of the Enlightenment would care to acknowledge.50 Not securely cordoned off from the beast within, Macbeth’s “state of man,”

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disturbingly, includes “the animal that will,”—to quote Foucault— “stalk man, capture him, and reveal him to his own truth.”51 In Shakespeare’s theater, the place of the human teeters on a highly contested border. The intermedial collusion of playhouse and bear garden ensures that this border will remain forever open.

NOTES 1. C. Walter Hodges, Shakespeare’s Second Globe: The Missing Monument (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), 11. 2. See Antonio, Twelfth Night, 5.1. 215. 3. According to Patrick Collinson, “The Theater Constructs Puritanism,” in The Theatrical City: Culture, Theater and Politics in London 1576–1649, ed. D. Smith, R. Strier, D. Bevington (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 160. 4. E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage (Oxford: Clarendon, 1923), 4:221. 5. Calendar of State Papers. Domestic Series: James I, ed. Mary Anne Everett Green, vol. 89: 1611–1618 (London: Longman, 1858), 105. I am indebted to Enno Ruge for directing my attention to this source and for a brilliant discussion of its implications for the intricate relationship between Puritans and players. See Ruge’s forthcoming study, “Stage-Puritans: Zum Verhältnis von Theater und Puritanern im England der Frühen Neuzeit.” Habilitation thesis (Munich, 2008). 6. He is listed among the principal actors in the Shakespeare First Folio. His celebrity is attested to by a reference in Bartholomew Fair, 5.3. 72–75: “Which is your Burbage now? . . . Your best actor. Your Field?” Ben Jonson, Bartholomew Fair, ed. George R. Hibbard (London: Ernest Benn, 1977). 7. John Field, quoted in Eleanor Rosenberg, Leicester: Patron of Letters (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955), 255. 8. But, as John Orrell points out, for all its “apparent realism [Hollar’s ‘Long View’] is as much a composed work of art as a Kokoschka.” John Orrell, The Quest for Shakespeare’s Globe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 10. 9. Gerald Eades Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage (Oxford: Clarendon, 1941), 6:200. 10. For this section, I gratefully acknowledge my debt to Christoph Daigl, “All the world is but a bear-baiting”: Das englische Hetztheater im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Gesellschaft für Theatergeschichte, 1997). Unfortunately, Daigl’s well-researched, highly informative study is not available in English. 11. Chambers, 2:525. 12. Glynne Wickham, Early English Stages 1300–1660 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1959), 2/I:166. 13. Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearean Stage 1574–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 113. 14. Both the Braun and Hogenberg and the so-called “Agas” map (Civitas Londini, 1561–70, Guildhall Library) show spectators standing outside a circular scaffold leaning on a railing to look in at “The bolle bayting” and “The Beare bayting.” 15. John Orrell, The Human Stage: English Theater Design, 1567–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). One problem with Vitruvius is that his precepts for theater design are far from clear; another, that the Elizabethan playhouses show much less resemblance to the theaters of antiquity than, for example, Andrea Palladio’s explicitly Vitruvian Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza (completed 1585) (cf. Daigl, 100).

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16. A model T Ford may be hugely different from the latest Lexus or Porsche, but they are still all cars. 17. Daigl, 96, quotes William Lambarde, A Perambulation of Kent. . . . Collected and written (for the most part) in the yeare 1570 (London, 1576), 187–88: “No more than suche as goe to Parisgardein, the Bell Sauage, or some other such common place, to beholde Beare bayting, Enterludes, or Fence playe, can account of any pleasant spectacle vnlesse they first paye one penny at the gate, another at the entrie of the Scaffolde, and the third for a quiet standing.” 18. William Brenchley Rye, ed., England as Seen by Foreigners in the Days of Elizabeth and James the First (London: John Russell Smith, 1865), 133. 19. Andrew Gurr, “Bears and Players: Philip Henslowe’s Double Acts,” Shakespeare Bulletin 22, no. 4 (2004), 34. 20. Henslowe Papers, ed. W. W. Greg (London: A. H. Bullen, 1907), 19. 21. In a 1631 continuation of John Stow’s Annales by E. Howes. Quoted in C. W. W. Wallace, “The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars, 1597–1603,” University of Nebraska Studies 8 (1908), 147. 22. Jason Scott-Warren, “When Theaters Were Bear-Gardens; or, What’s at Stake in the Comedy of Humors,” Shakespeare Quarterly 54 (2003), 64. 23. Theater and animal-baiting were “culturally isomorphic events.” Stephen Dickey, “Shakespeare’s Mastiff Comedy,” Shakespeare Quarterly 42 (1991), 255. 24. Yuri Lotman, Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture (London: Tauris, 1990), 123–24. 25. Introduced by Nicolas Bourriaud in 1996, the term ‘relational aesthetics’ has gained wide currency in contemporary discussions of the nature and social function of art. See Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics (Paris: Presses du réel, 2002). 26. Broder Christiansen, Philosophie der Kunst (Hanau: Clauss & Feddersen, 1909). To my knowledge, there is no English translation. 27. Viktor Shklovsky, Theory of Prose, trans. Benjamin Sher (Elmwood Park, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 1990). The structural analogy of this claim to the basic axiom of Saussurian linguistics is obvious. 28. Linda Hutcheon’s definition of a central feature of postmodernist aesthetics captures the dynamics of this Early Modern text very well. Linda Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction (New York: Routledge, 1988), 124. For the intertextuality of Troilus and Cressida, see Elizabeth Freund, “ ‘Arachne’s broken woof’: The Rhetoric of Citation in Troilus and Cressida,” in Shakespeare and the Question of Theory, ed. P. Parker and G. Hartman (New York: Methuen, 1985), 19–36. 29. I have addressed this issue in more detail in “Twentieth-Century Intertextuality and the Reading of Shakespeare’s Sources,” Poetica (Tokyo) 48 (1997), special issue, Shakespeare’s Plutarch, 211–27. 30. For this paragraph, I am largely drawing on Christopher B. Balme’s useful explication, “Intermediality: Rethinking the Relationship between Theater and Media,” TheWis 1 (2004). 31. See also Dick Higgins, Horizons: The Poetics and Theory of the Intermedia (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984). 32. Bertolt Brecht, Gesammelte Werke trans. Christopher B. Balme (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1967), 18:156. 33. Phillip Stubbes, The Anatomy of Abuses (London, 1583), sigs. Qvv–Qvir. 34. Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England: From the Accession of James the Second, ed. Charles Harding Firth (London: Macmillan, 1913–1915), 1:42. 35. Terence Hawkes, “Harry Hunks, Superstar,” in his Shakespeare in the Present (London: Routledge, 2002), 84.

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36. Robert Langham, A Letter, ed. R. J. P. Kuin (Leyden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1983), 48. Langham’s letter describes the famous royal entertainment at Kenilworth (1575), where a day of stag-hunting was followed by a day of bear-baiting. 37. These and other statements to the same effect are quoted by Stephen Dickey, “Shakespeare’s Mastiff Comedy,” Shakespeare Quarterly 42 (1991), 255–75; esp. 257– 59. 38. Jason Scott-Warren, 71 (italics in the text). Again, there is an obvious analogy with boxing. 39. See Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World (London: Allen Lane, 1983), 17–50. 40. Quoted in Thomas, 35. 41. Epitomizing more than a century of Renaissance physiognomy, Charles Le Brun’s famous physiognomical studies (1671, Paris, Louvre, Cabinet des Dessins) of human/animal likeness present a menagerie of troublingly indeterminate, chimerical creatures. 42. The Second Part of King Henry VI, in The New Cambridge Shakespeare, ed. Michael Hattaway (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 43. Annotation line 157, New Cambridge Shakespeare. 44. Nicholas Grene, Shakespeare’s Serial History Plays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 123. 45. Or what Greta Olson calls “Richard III’s Animalistic Criminal Body,” Philological Quarterly 82 (2003), 301–324. 46. Cf. George Wilson Knight, The Wheel of Fire: Interpretations of Shakespearean Tragedy (London: Methuen, 1965); Robert B. Heilman, This Great Stage: Image and Structure in King Lear (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1948); Caroline F. E. Spurgeon, Shakespeare’s Imagery and What It Tells Us (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1935); Clemen, 51. 47. Bruce Boehrer, Shakespeare Among the Animals: Nature and Society in the Drama of Early Modern England (New York: Palgrave, 2002). 48. Although the pervasive atrocity of the Wars of the Roses may also be seen to make Richard the perfect embodiment of this particular state of human affairs. 49. I have developed the following argument more fully in my “Humanity at Stake: Man and Animal in Shakespeare’s Theater,” Shakespeare Survey 60 (2007), 118–129. 50. The relevant passages for Descartes’s strict segregation of man and animal are in part 5 of his Discourse on the Method (1637) and in his letter to the Marquess of Newcastle, November 23, 1646. Although Descartes’s blatantly counterintuitive reduction of animals to the status of mere machines found by no means unanimous acceptance (such prominent thinkers as Locke, Hume, and Leibniz disagreed), it is generally recognized to mark a general drift, an increasing detachment of modern humanist discourse from animality. Opposition to the anthropocentrism of modern philosophy seems to be gathering head, though. See, for example, Matthew Calarco, Zoographies: The Question of Animal from Heidegger to Derrida (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008). 51. Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization, trans. Richard Howard (London: Tavistock, 1987), 21.

II Stage Practices

“Most truly limned and living in your face”: Looking at Pictures in Shakespeare Keir Elam

PICTURES SPEAKING AND SPOKEN

PICTURES SPOKE IN QUITE DIFFERENT WAYS ON THE EARLY MOD-

ern English stage. If theatrical representation could be seen, in Sidney’s terms, as a speaking picture, a good deal of rhetorical energy within the plays themselves was also expended on what we might term spoken pictures: either imagistic verbal portraits or descriptions, or actual discourse about paintings or other visual images. In most cases, both rhetorical portraits and talk about pictures concerned missing objects, since the evoked images were not visible on stage but were to be imagined by cooperative spectators. In certain cases, however, pictures, in addition to being spoken of, were able to speak for themselves, being physically present in performance. What I am concerned with in this essay is the way in which, in a number of plays, Shakespeare introduces pictures on stage: not (or not only) of the verbal variety, but actual pictorial objects more or less visible to the audience. I want to consider some of the uses and implications of these onstage art objects: in what ways do they speak in Early Modern, and especially Shakespearean, drama? What does it mean for characters to look at pictures in these plays? And what did it mean for Shakespeare’s audience to look at actor-characters looking at pictures? There are six main episodes in Shakespeare involving pictures being introduced or taken out on stage in order to be displayed and discussed. The best known of these episodes are Hamlet’s comparison of the portraits of his father and uncle-stepfather in Hamlet 3.4 and Bassanio’s extracting of Portia’s portrait from the winning casket in The Merchant of Venice 3.2. Less celebrated instances include Christopher Sly’s artistic education by means of the “wanton pictures” shown to him (perhaps) in the induction to The Taming of the Shrew; Julia’s examination of Silvia’s portrait in Two Gentlemen, 4.4; Olivia’s bestowal of her “jewel,” or miniature portrait, to the bemused Cesario in 63

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Twelfth Night, 3.4; the Painter’s exhibiting of his portrait of Timon to the Poet in the incipit of Timon of Athens; and Emilia’s entry “with two pictures” in The Two Noble Kinsmen, 4.2. These episodes involve, among other things, different staging requirements and perhaps different kinds of stage property; in particular, there is a degree of ambiguity regarding the dimensions of some of the pictures in question. The staging solutions adopted have notoriously varied, as in the episode of Hamlet’s comparison of the portraits: Hamlet. Look here upon this picture, and on this, Hamlet. The counterfeit presentment of two brothers: . . . (3.4.51–52)1

The issue that has long occupied commentators and challenged directors with regard to this scene has to do precisely with the size and, consequently, the stage disposition of the two pictures. As Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor note, “Onstage, the pictures can be large formal portraits, miniatures, coins, or even photographs, depending on the overall concept of the production” (Thompson and Taylor 339n). There is of course a considerable aesthetic—and, in the context, ideological— as well as a practical difference between large formal portraits, presumably hung somewhere on stage and thus visible to the audience, and handheld miniatures or coins fully visible only to Hamlet and Gertrude. The latter option is the one more frequently adopted in production, sometimes by referring back to an earlier scene (2.2) in which Hamlet alludes scathingly to the Danes who idolize miniature portraits of King Claudius (“those that would make mouths at him while my father lived give twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats apiece for his picture in little,” 2.2.301–3). As Thompson and Taylor note, “A possible piece of stage business is for Hamlet to grab a locket with a picture of the King from one of his companions here and produce it at 3.4.51, but more often he grabs it from the Queen in that scene” (note to 2.2.303). In any case, Hamlet’s “picture in little” in the earlier episode constitutes evidence in support of the hypothesis that the pictures Hamlet compares in 3.4 are likewise miniatures. The size of the portrait that Silvia gives the disguised Julia in Two Gentlemen is similarly ambiguous. Proteus asks Silvia in 4.2 for “the picture that is hanging in your chamber,” apparently implying a wall portrait. When Silvia duly brings on the requested picture in 4.4, giving it to “Sebastian” (the disguised Julia) to pass on to his master Proteus, it is again said to “fit his chamber,” thus still seeming to imply a wall portrait:

LOOKING AT PICTURES IN SHAKESPEARE

Silvia. Julia. Silvia.

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O, he sends you for a picture? Ay, madam. Ursula, bring my picture there. [She brings it.] Go, give your master this. Tell him from me, One Julia, that his changing thoughts forget, Would better fit his chamber than this shadow. (4.4.113–18)2

The passing of the picture from hand to hand, however, and the ease with which it is put aside and picked up (as in Julia’s words, “Come, shadow, come, and take this shadow up,” 4.4.195) seems instead to suggest a small and manageable prop, the size normally adopted in production. Similar considerations can be made regarding the Painter’s portrait of Timon, which the Poet asks to see and duly admires: Poet. Painter.

What have you there? A picture, sir. . . . . . . . . . . Poet. Let’s see your piece. . . . . . . . . . . . . this comes off well and excellent. Painter. Indifferent. Poet. Admirable! How this grace Speaks his own standing! What a mental power This eye shoots forth! How big imagination Painter. Moves in this lip! To th’ dumbness of the gesture One might interpret. (1.1.26–35)3

There is no specific allusion here to the dimensions of the portrait, which might well be a large painting; but the poet’s emphasis on the subject’s facial features suggests an intimate mode of portrayal suited to the miniature, and it seems probable that the stage property concerned is of analogous size to the other objects introduced on stage in the opening episode, namely the jeweller’s jewel and the poet’s book. More ambiguous still are the “wanton pictures” supposedly shown to Christopher Sly in Taming of the Shrew. Here the uncertainty is more radical, since the promised erotic pictures are not necessarily—or indeed usually, in production—physically present in performance. The Lord orders his servants to bring them on stage: “Carry him gently to my fairest chamber, / And hang it round with all my wanton pictures” (Ind. 1, 45–46),4 but the text gives no indication that these directions are actually carried out (although in some productions they are).

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There would seem, instead, to be no issue regarding the dimensions of the putative pictures themselves, since the Lord’s instructions to hang his chamber all around with (wall) paintings are explicit enough. In reality, however, they have a somewhat contradictory intertextual and interartistic history—precisely in respect to their size. The phrase “wanton pictures” itself may take up George Gascoigne’s rather generic denial in the prologue to Supposes—one of Shakespeare’s main sources for Shrew—of any intent to “trouble you with the vain suppose of some wanton suppose.” This in turn adapts Ariosto’s more specific reassurance, in the prologue to the original 1509 prose version of I suppositi (Gascoigne’s source), that he will not reproduce the “wanton” illustrations to the erotic work of the Greek poetess Elephantis.5 The origins of Sly’s pictures thus turn out to be not large wall paintings but small engravings. The picture—in all senses—is more complex than this, however. Ariosto elaborates on the Elephantis allusion in his 1529–1531 verse adaptation of I suppositi (apparently not consulted by Gascoigne); the author complains in the prologue that the wanton illustrations “have been renewed today, in holy Rome, and printed on fine and honest paper, for all the world to see.”6 This alludes to the notorious erotic engravings by Marcantonio Raimondi after the large-scale paintings by Giulio Romano commissioned by Duke Frederick II of Mantua for the Palazzo Te. Raimondi’s engravings were published in 1524 together with Aretino’s Sonetti lussuriosi in an infamous volume known to have circulated throughout Europe, including England (cf. Ariosto’s “all the world”). The wanton pictures alluded to by Ariosto are thus small engravings, while Romano’s original paintings were large-scale pictures to be “hung round” an aristocratic chamber, like the Lord’s in Shrew. Given the notoriety of Raimondi’s illustrations, the more educated members of Shakespeare’s audience may have associated Sly’s wanton pictures—whether present on stage or not—with printed engravings rather than with full paintings to be hung in lordly chambers. Less problematic in terms of staging is Emilia’s revisiting of Hamlet’s comparing-pictures trope in Two Noble Kinsmen—her placing side by side of the portraits of Arcite and Palamon. The Q stage direction reads: “Enter EMILIA alone, with 2. Pictures.” This is the only original stage direction in Shakespeare (unless it is John Fletcher’s) specifying the introduction of a picture or pictures on stage. As Lois Potter notes, the pictures concerned are handheld objects, “probably miniatures, such as were often exchanged by lovers”: Emilia presumably holds one in each hand and addresses each in turn.7 In Merchant of Venice, Bassanio’s discovery of Portia’s portrait, instead, is a taking out rather than a bringing on, a showing off of the hid-

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den treasure already on stage inside the third casket, i.e., a small prop contained within a larger prop: Bassanio. Bassanio.

What find I here? [He opens the leaden casket.] Fair Portia’s counterfeit. (3.2.114–15)8

In Twelfth Night, Olivia describes her gift to Cesario as a “jewel,” a term that might occasion further ambiguity regarding the nature of the object concerned were it not for the fact that Olivia herself goes on to gloss it immediately: Olivia.

Here, wear this jewel for me: ’tis my picture. Refuse it not, it hath no tongue to vex you. . . .

(3.4.202–3)9

What she gives Orsino’s servant, therefore, is another small stage prop, a miniature passable from hand to hand. There is no direct indication that Viola actually looks at it, although in performance she almost invariably does. In all these episodes, therefore—with the possible, but improbable, exception of Shrew, and of Hamlet if we accept the less likely “large formal portraits” hypothesis—the objects exhibited and scrutinized on stage are small. There were practical reasons for this on the Elizabethan stage: not only were small pictures easily portable and transportable, so that they could be produced at will out of pockets or caskets, but their reduced visibility also avoided the problem of their actual pictorial quality. A supposed miniature might consist of a mere framed card without any actual artwork, since the latter was in any case hardly verifiable by spectators. A full-size painting, by contrast, had to live up to comparison with its subject (e.g., Claudius’s portrait with the stage Claudius), and it had to justify the praise or descriptive discourse bestowed upon it. While it is true that Richard Burbage painted an impresa for the Earl of Rutland to Shakespeare’s design in 1613, proving that one could paint and the other could draw,10 it was nevertheless a far easier option to allow the audience to imagine rather than view the artistic performance in question. Pictures that could be borne or held on stage were among the wide range of hand properties widely used on the Elizabethan stage. As Douglas Bruster observes, “The early modern playhouse in England was a theatre of easily held things. Handheld objects figured centrally in plays of all genre there” (67). Like other hand properties, they offered

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the advantage of being able to participate directly in the stage action— as tokens of exchange, as gifts, or as representations of the giver—without obstructing, unlike scenery or larger objects, the view of spectators. They also cost little or nothing, so little that they left no trace in theatrical inventories such as Henslowe’s Diary. Neil Carson notes, “Almost as surprising as the presence of so many large properties [in Henslowe’s Diary] is the inexplicable absence of some small ones. . . . Many of these smaller items were probably kept backstage or supplied by the actors” (53). Henslowe fails to mention small pictures, while he does list more substantial pictorial and scenic items such as “the sittee of Rome” (presumably a painted cloth).11

PERFORMERS, PROPERTIES, AND VIEWERS The role of the handheld picture on the Shakespearian stage varied according to who was holding it or looking at it, as well as according to whom it represented. With the actor-character, the pictorial prop entertained a relationship of intimacy and even of symbiosis. Because a “property,” as Frances Teague observes, belongs etymologically to a particular individual, it is “an object on a stage that often has a strong association with a performer, [and] can become a metonymic token of that performer’s identity in the role, and even function as a substitute for the actor” (30). This is even more the case when the property concerned is an actual representation of the character him/herself or of his/her beloved, making its metonymic or substitutive role essential and explicit, as in Olivia’s “wear this . . . for me” or in Emilia’s “Lie there, Arcite” (Kinsmen, 4.2.43). Associated with the beloved, the portrait often becomes virtually a fetish object, as in the case of Bassanio’s hyperbolical idolizing of the painted Portia (“What demi-god / Hath come so near creation?” 3.2.115–16), or Emilia’s effusions over the depicted Arcite, seen as a personification of Eros (“Here love himself sits smiling,” 4.2.14). At the same time, being a means of exchange, the handheld picture acted as what we might term a transactional object, used to create a relationship not only between two characters but also between the character-actor and the audience: Hamlet’s invitation, “Look here upon this picture” (3.4.51), is addressed as much to the spectators as it is to his mother. This is especially the case when, as in Two Gentlemen of Verona and Two Noble Kinsmen, the picture is displayed during a soliloquy, so that the only onlooker is the theatrical spectator. Emilia’s rhetorical performance “alone” with the two pictures is an episode in itself, allowing her to act out before the audience the psychodrama of

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her triangular predicament by bringing her rival suitors into direct (albeit symbolic) physical contact with her and with each other. This in turn forms the basis for the relationship of complicity that Emilia establishes with the audience through her showing of the props. She invites the spectators to share her gaze and her perception, even if they cannot actually see the objects of her judgments: “What an eye / Hath this young prince!” (4.2.12–14). As for Shakespeare’s audience itself, the fact that the pictures brought on stage were small hand props certainly conditioned its experience, making its role one of inclusion and exclusion at the same time. The spectator was included in the picture-giving game and its potential intimacies (as in the Emilia episode) and ironies (for example, the amorous triangular ironies of Two Gentlemen and Twelfth Night, which the audience—unlike Silvia and Olivia, respectively—was in a position to appreciate), but was excluded from actually viewing the pictures, which were too small for it to perceive in any detail. The appeal “Look here upon this picture” was thus inviting but also potentially frustrating. The “here,“ “this,” and similar deictic pointing terms (compare Bassanio’s “What find I here?” Silvia’s “Give your master this,” Olivia’s “Wear this jewel,” Emilia’s “this young prince,” the Poet’s “What have you there?”) drew the audience’s attention to the picture as material stage object, but only to underline further the impossibility of close visual access to “this” “here”, i.e., the object verbally pointed to. Such exclusion made the audience more or less reliant on the accompanying “spoken pictures,” the verbal responses or descriptions by the “looking” character, responses that in Shakespeare are never in short supply. By such descriptions, the spectator’s direct perceptual experience was brought indirectly into play, in most cases focusing less on the barely visible portrait than on the highly visible actor playing the part of the portrayed character. Thus Hamlet’s contrasting of his two “fathers” (“Look upon this picture, and on this”) was at least partially verifiable by the audience’s visual perception of the two stage figures involved, even if Hamlet’s father is, to say the least, no longer what he was when he sat for his portrait: Hamlet. Hamlet.

See what a grace is seated on this brow, Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself, An eye like Mars to threaten and command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Here is your husband like a mildewed ear Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes? (3.4.53–63)

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Hamlet’s angry “Have you eyes?” might be directed to the onlookers in the audience, temporarily “blind” toward the portrait, but at least able to form an opinion with regard to Claudius’s (i.e. the actor’s) “mildewed” figure. More fully descriptive, and more directly verifiable by the spectators, is the comparison trope performed by Emilia in Kinsmen, so much so that the respective verbal portraits of the two noble kinsmen can be—but need not necessarily be—taken virtually as stage directions for the theatrical incarnation of the two roles: Emilia.

Emilia.

Two such young, handsome men . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [Looks at one of the pictures.] Good heaven, What a sweet face has Arcite! . . . What an eye, Of what a fiery sparkle and quick sweetness, Has this young prince! Here love himself sits smiling . . . What a brow, Of what a spacious majesty, he carries, Arched like the great-eyed Juno’s, but far sweeter, Smoother than Pelops’ shoulder! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [Looks at the other picture.] Palamon Is but his foil; to him, a mere dull shadow; He’s swart and meagre, of an eye as heavy As if he had lost his mother; a still temper; No stirring in him, no alacrity: Of all this sprightly sharpness, not a smile. (4.2.3–30)

Portia’s portrait in Merchant of Venice, instead, is an eminently and dramatically “speaking” picture within the play’s narrative, at once decreeing Bassanio’s victory and representing his “prize.” It duly provokes him to produce an elaborate rhetorical version of what the audience cannot see but can compare with the stage Portia, although his description is so idealized as virtually to rule out any question of mimetic realism: Bassanio.

What find I here? [He opens the leaden casket.] Fair Portia’s counterfeit! What demi-god Hath come so near creation? Move these eyes? Or whether (riding on the balls of mine) Seem they in motion? Here are severed lips Parted with sugar breath.—so sweet a bar Should sunder such sweet friends: here in her hairs

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The painter plays the spider, and hath woven A golden mesh t’entrap the hearts of men Faster than gnats in cobwebs,—but her eyes! How could he see to do them? (3.2.114–24)

As for Sly’s pictures, the highly detailed description of the (probably unseen) contents provided by the Lord and his servants has a more straightforwardly substitutive role, supplying missing perceptual data in the form of a series of highly evocative rhetorical tours de force, hypotyposes or “spoken pictures.” The result is more a literary than a visual performance, the more so since the putative pictures depict erotic scenes derived from Ovid’s Metamorphoses: 2 Servingman.

Lord. 3 Servingman.

Dost thou love pictures? We will fetch thee straight Adonis painted by a running brook, And Cytheria all in sedges hid, Which seem to move and wanton with her breath Even as the waving sedges play with wind. We’ll show thee Io as she was a maid, And how she was beguiled and surprised, As lively painted as the deed was done. Or Daphne roaming through a thorny wood, Scratching her legs that one should swear she bleeds, And at that sight shall sad Apollo weep, So workmanly the blood and tears are drawn. (Taming of the Shrew, Induction 2, 52–57)

With most of these episodes, Shakespeare’s audience was placed in the position of looking at one “picture,” the configuration of actors on stage (one of whom has a prop in his hand), while hearing about another. In reality, the two visual spheres—the overall stage picture and the contents of the portrait—would appear to have been irreconcilably, indeed ontologically, different, since, in Suzanne Langer’s terms, the theatrical performance took place in real, experiential space, while the painted image occupied a virtual space of its own: “The harmoniously organized space in a picture is not experiential space, known by sight and touch, by free motion and restraint, far and near sounds, voices lost or re-echoed. It is an entirely visual affair; for touch and hearing and muscular action it does not exist. . . . Between the picture space and any other space there is no connection. The created virtual space is entirely self-contained and independent.”12 What is more, the space occupied by Shakespeare’s pictures was in fact doubly virtual: if they were perceptible as material stage objects, their contents remained purely imag-

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inary, so that the ontological divide between stage picture and described portrait became absolute. At the same time, however, the pictures, as properties, and the portraits they supposedly contained were part of what we might term a pictorial continuum on the Elizabethan stage. Hand props interacted with main props: the picture might be placed in or on larger stage objects (Portia’s portrait in the leaden casket, itself probably placed on a table or other movable). Even more, they entered into a close physical and semiotic relationship with costume, by far the richest and most important visual component of Elizabethan staging: when Olivia invites Cesario to wear her “jewel,” she is underlining the fact that miniature portraits were often borne or worn on or over (aristocratic) clothing as ornamental tokens and as status objects. Moreover, the portraits were not the only pictorial representations present on stage: the theater’s frons scenae bore carved statuary; the canopy or “heavens” over the stage displayed paintings of celestial bodies, while (according to some scholars) the central opening in the frons was “concealed behind a hanging or elaborate cloth woven in panels with pictures of scenes from classical myths.”13 Not to mention Henslowe’s city of Rome. The overall Gestalt that the audience perceived, therefore, was not that of an isolated figure—the displayed or described “picture”—standing out against a qualitatively dissimilar (nonpictorial) ground, but rather a complex stage configuration in which different modes of visual and pictorial representation converged and competed.14 The notion of a picture (the portrait) within a picture (the stage) was not a purely literary conceit.

PAINTERLY DISCOURSE AND THE ART OF LIMNING Shakespeare’s plays contain several pictures, but only one stage direction makes explicit reference to them, and this occurs in a late play, Two Noble Kinsmen, co-written with Fletcher. Other Early Modern playwrights were less reticent. Dessen and Thomson’s Dictionary of Stage Directions in English Drama has a total of thirty-five explicit directions indicating the introduction or display of pictures on the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage. These range from the early “Shew Tarltons picture” in Robert Wilson’s The Three Lords and Three Ladies of London (1590),15 to “Enter William the Conqueror: Marques Lubeck, with a picture,” in the anonymous Faire Em (c. 1593),16 to “Enter Aegiale, Herald, Euribates, Clearchus with a picture,” in George Chapman’s The Blind Beggar of Alexandria (1598),17 to “Enter Doyt with the picture, and Frisco,” in Thomas Dekker’s Blurt Master-constable (1602),18

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and so on. The sheer frequency of these references to stage pictures— almost invariably portraits—bears witness both to the theatrical versatility of the device and to the fashion for portrait painting itself in Early Modern London, with the consequent heightened audience interest in the subject. Entrances with pictures in non-Shakespearian plays confirm and extend the theatrical roles of paintings in Shakespeare. They emphasize, for example, the contiguity of handheld pictorial props with larger properties and with costume, as in the extravagant congeries of objects and apparel introduced by Lavel (and pointed out by the King) in George Chapman’s A Humorous Day’s Mirth (1599): Enter LAUELE with a picture, and a paire of large hose, and a codpeece, and a sword. . . . King. We will stand close Lauele, but wherefore bring you this apparell, that picture, and that sword?

Other stage directions foreground instead the decorative quality of the picture, and in particular that of its frame, as ornamental “jewel” (compare Olivia’s use of the same term). We see this in the anonymous Wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll (1600): “Enter CORNELIA sola, looking vpon the picture of Alberdure in a little Iewell, and singing.”19 In these examples, as in most of the Shakespearean instances, the pictures concerned are evidently (and in Doctor Dodypoll explicitly) miniatures. In other cases, the role of the paintings within the play’s dramatic action calls unambiguously—unlike the Shakespearean episodes—for large-scale stage objects, easily “readable” by the spectator. In [Thomas Heywood’s?] A Warning for Fair Women (1599), for example, a wall portrait takes on a fully narrative as well as representational role within a dumbshow that recalls Hamlet (including a “dishevelled” female figure reminiscent of the Q1 Ophelia): The Musicke playing, enters Lust bringing forth Browne and Roger at one ende mistres Sanders and mistres Drurie at the other, they offering cheerefully to meete and embrace, suddenly riseth vp a great tree betweene them, whereat amazedly they step backe, wherupon Lust bringeth an axe to mistres Sanders, shewing signes, that she should cut it downe, which she refuseth, albeit mistres Drurie offers to helpe her. Then Lust brings the Axe to Browne, and shews the like signes to him as before, wherupon he roughlie and suddenly hewes downe the tree, and then they run togither and embrace. With that enters Chastitie, with her haire disheueled, and taking mistres Sanders by the hand, brings her to her husbands picture hanging on the wall, and pointing to the tree, seemes to tell her, that that is the tree so rashly cut downe. Whereupon she wringing her hands, in teares departes,

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Browne, Drurie, Roger and Lust, whispering, he drawes his sword, and Roger followes him. Tragedie expressing that now he goes to act the deed.20

The accompanying verbal comment narrates the conscience-catching effect of scene and portrait on the remorseful (Gertrude-like) Queen: The act performde, now Chastitie appeares, And pointing to the picture, and the tree, Unto her guiltie conscience, shewes her husband, Euen so cut off by that vile murtherer Browne, She wrings her hands repenting of the fact, Touch’t with remorse, but now it is too late.21

A large (and curtained) picture takes part likewise in the dumbshow in John Webster’s The White Devil (1622), 2.2, where Bracciano’s portrait substitutes for him metonymically as subject of the mimed dramatic action (namely the poisoning of his wife Isabella): Enter suspiciously, IULIO and CHRISTOPHERO, they draw a curtaine where BRACHIAN’S picture is, they put on spectacles of glasse, which couer their eyes and noses, and then burne perfumnes afore the picture, and wash the lips of the picture, that done, quenching the fire, and putting off their spectacles they depart laughing. Enter Isabella in her night-gowne as to bed-ward, with lights after her, COUNT LODOUICO GIOUANNI, GUID-ANTONIO and others waighting on her, shee kneeles dawne as to prayers, then drawes the curtaine of the picture, doe’s three reuerences to it, and kisses it thrice, shee faints and will not suffer them to come nere it, dies, sorrow exprest in GIOUANNI and in COUNT LODOUICO, shees conueid out solemnly.22

In James Shirley’s The Traitor (1635), by contrast, the portrait substitutes for its sitter, the Duke of Florence, as object of violent action: Lo[renzo]. Every day I kill a Prince, appeare thou Tragicke witnesse. Hee discovers the DUKES Picture, a Ponyard sticking in it. Lo[renzo]. Which though it bleed not, I may boast a Murder: Here first the Duke was painted to the life: But with this Pencill to the death: I love My braine for the invention, and thus Confirm’d, dare trust my resolution.23

At its fullest degree of participation in the dramatic narrative, the picture is accompanied on stage by its supposed creator. There are two

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Early Modern entry directions involving both paintings and their painters (whereas Timon has no direction referring to the picture, only an entry direction for the Painter). John Marston’s Antonio and Mellida (1602) has an artist bearing two of his portraits: “Enter BALURDO, a Painter with two pictures, and Dildo.”24 And in the anonymous Wit of a Woman (1604), the painter is discovered exhibiting several of his works: “RINALDO hanges out pictures.”25 The stage presence of the painter in association with his work underlines first of all the narrative importance of the pictures concerned—in these cases, probably unlike that of Timon, they may be visible wall paintings (objects “hanged out”). But it also brings out their pretensions to supposed artistic quality, even though Marston’s Balurdo, unlike Shakespeare’s Poet (who admits “this comes off well and excellent”), questions precisely the anonymous artist’s professional claims: Bal. Pay. Ba.

And are you a painter sir, can you drawe, can you drawe? Yes sir. Indeede lawe? now so can my fathers forehorse. (Act 5, line 1)

The presence of a painter among the dramatis personae also gives the playwright the opportunity to introduce a particular variety of pictorial discourse, namely talk about the act of painting and about paintings themselves. Rinaldo, in Wit of a Woman, presents his professional credentials with pretentious self-importance: “Sir I am called, my qualitie is in the explaining of Phisiognomy: or in the drawing of a counterfet neere the life, & in pure colours, in briefe I am a painter, at your seruice: and I sell complexion.” He further endeavours to impress his sitter Isabella with his artistic know-how: “Lady I would craue your pleasure to let me know how you will be drawne, either but a little below the brest or at full length, and eyther as you came into the world, of as you walke in the world, with the ornaments of nature, or the furniture of Art: or as a Sunne in the clowde, with a lawne ouer your Beautie. Marston uses his nameless artist in order to parody the fashionable technical jargon of Elizabethan portraiture; called on by Balurdo to affirm his authorship of his paintings, he pulls out of his artistic hat a modish term that impresses his potential client: Ba. And are these the workmanshippe of your hands? Payn. I did lymne them. Bal. Lymne them? a good word, lymne them . . .

Balurdo is prompted, in response, to show off his own supposed knowledge of pictorial genres and terminology in commissioning the

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kind of device that Shakespeare and Burbage excelled in (perhaps echoing Ben Jonson’s Sogliardo and his motto “Not without mustard,” itself a parody of Shakespeare):26 Bal.

Approach good sir. I did send for you to drawe me a deuise, an Imprezza, by Sinecdoche a Mott. By Phoebus crymson taffata mantle, I thinke I speake as melodiously, looke you sir, how thinke you ont? I wold haue you paint mee, for my deuice, a good fat legge of ewe mutton, swimming in stewde broth of plummes (boy keele your mouth, it runnes ouer) and the word shall be; Holde my dish, whilst I spill my pottage. Sure, in my conscience, twould be the most sweete deuice, now.

Shakespeare himself indulges more parsimoniously in technical painterly discourse. His Painter’s talk of his art in Timon is both more self-effacing (“indifferent”) and less jargon-filled. The primary concern in Timon is not technical but aesthetic and ethical, regarding the degree of mimetic skill (and thus of authenticity, a favorite theme of Timon’s) achieved by the portraitist: Painter. Poet.

It is a pretty mocking of the life; Here is a touch—is’t good? I will say of it It tutors nature; artificial strife Lives in these touches livelier than life. (1.1.36–39)

The contrast between “liveliness,” in other words, the ability to capture the authentic subject, and “mocking,” a superficial imitation or simulacrum, is at the center of much Shakespearean discourse on painting. Shakespeare’s key term is “counterfeit,” in the opposing senses it assumes in Hamlet: “The counterfeit presentment of two brothers,” or a perfect likeness or liveliness (in the case of Hamlet’s father) but also (in the case of Claudius) a fake. The positive value attributed to the term by Bassanio (“Fair Portia’s counterfeit”) is shared by the painter Rinaldo in Wit of a Woman (“the drawing of a counterfet neere the life”), but less so by Frisco in Dekker’s Blurt, Master Constable: Imp[eria]. Heere hang this counterfeit at my beds feete. Fris. If he be counterfeit, nayle him vp vpon one of your poastes.27

The other, equally problematic, Shakespearean term for likeness in a portrait is “shadow,” which usually has its derogatory Platonic sense

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of a false image or illusion. “I am but a shadow,” complains Proteus in The Two Gentlemen, “And to your shadow [portrait] will I make true love” (4.2.121–22). The word is taken up in negative ethical terms by Silvia, subject of the “shadow” itself: I am very loath to be your idol, sir; But since your falsehood shall become you well To worship shadows and adore false shapes, Send to me in the morning and I’ll send it . . . (4.2.125–28)

In general, Shakespeare’s pictorial discourse is fairly essential: his own catchall term for artistic representation is the simple “picture,” a word that occurs fifty-nine times in substantive form and does not distinguish between size or genre of painting. The term “portrait” occurs only once in his works, in the Merchant passage quoted above, which is given by the Oxford English Dictionary as only the second recorded use of the word: b. spec. A drawing or painting of a person, often mounted and framed for display, esp. one of the face or head and shoulders; (also) an engraving, photograph, etc., in a similar style. (Now the usual sense.) 1585 T. WASHINGTON tr. N. de Nicolay Nauigations Turkie III. xiv. 97 The pourtractes and figures of the principallest amongst them. 1600 SHAKESPEARE Merchant of Venice II. ix. 53 What’s heere, the pourtrait of a blinking idiot.

There is also an isolated “portraiture” (in the sense of “A painting, drawing, etc., depicting an object or (more frequently) a person; a portrait,” OED) in F (but not Q2) Hamlet, 5.2. The term “painting” is rarely used by Shakespeare as a substantive synonym for “picture.” It often has a verbal sense (the act of painting), and not infrequently has a cosmetic meaning (making up), as in Love’s Labour’s Lost 4.3.259 or Sonnet 67.5. Where the term does have its substantive and artistic sense, it usually appears to be derogatory, associated with outmoded and inferior art, as in “like a man after the old painting” (Labour’s 3.1.21) or “like Pharoah’s soldiers in the reechy painting” (Much Ado, 3.3.134). The other Shakespearian synonym for “picture,” and his one technical term, shared with Marston, is “limning,” a word that first appeared in the English language in the late fifteenth century, but that took on new cultural kudos, and a more specific pictorial meaning, toward the end of the sixteenth century. The OED quotes Shakespeare as the first recorded use with the general meaning “paint(ing)”:

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3. To paint (a picture or portrait); to portray, depict (a subject). Formerly spec. to paint in water-colour or distemper (see LIMNING vbl. n. 2). Also with forth, out. 1592 SHAKES. Ven. & Ad. 290 Looke, when a Painter would surpasse the life, In limming out a well-proportioned steed.

Duncan-Jones and Woudhuysen gloss the verbal noun here as “portraying, depicting.”28 The other occurrence of the term in Shakespeare (again as a verb) is in As You Like It, where Duke Senior applies it metaphorically to Orlando’s facial resemblance to his dead father: If that you be the good Sir Rowland’s son, As you have whispered faithfully you were, And as mine eye doth his effigies witness, Most truly limned and living in your face, Be truly welcome hither. (2.7.195–99)29

The Duke’s application of the term suggests that in Shakespeare—or at least in this passage—limning may not be a generic term for painting, but may take on the more specific meaning it has in the title of Nicholas Hilliard’s Treatise concerning the arte of limning (c. 1598), dedicated to the theory and practice of the miniature portrait, of which Hilliard himself was the most celebrated exponent. The Duke, scrutinizing Orlando’s features, imagines himself taking a close look at the kind of intimate personal portrait to which the painting of miniatures was devoted. That limning was a “special technique” of painting is Hilliard’s own chief contention in his Treatise: it is, he claims, “a thing apart from all other painting or drawing, and tendeth not to common men’s use . . . and is for the service of noble persons, very meet in small volumes in private manner for them to have portraits and pictures of themselves, their peers and any other.”30 The twin characteristics of limning, in Hilliard’s conception, are gentility and intimacy. Only gentlemen are worthy (especially financially) of having their portraits limned, and the skillful attention to the details of their facial features is testimony to their gentle status and breeding. It speaks also to the skill and analogous gentility of the artist: “None should meddle with limning but gentlemen alone, for that it is a kind of gentill painting . . . and tendeth not to common mens use” (16). The genre of miniatures called for an intimate subject and for mimetic virtuosity on the part of the portraitist in capturing, within so small a space, not only the features but also the expressions of the subject. Hilliard claimed to be able to “catch . . . the lovely graces, witty smilings [and] stolen glances” of his sitters.31 Gentility and intimacy coincide to a sovereign degree in Hilliard’s celebrative, ornamental, yet delicately individualized miniatures of

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Elizabeth I, to whom the artist was official limner. These veritable crown “jewels” are the supreme expression of the “thing apart,” the special technique that translated portraiture into dynastic power and vice versa. The value that the queen placed on the miniature as a token of intimacy, as well as prestige, preceded Hilliard’s rise to fame. In 1564, Sir James Melville, Ambassador to Mary Queen of Scots, paid a visit to Elizabeth, who took him to the most private quarter of the palace and opened up for him the casketlike hiding place of her most prized and secret images: She took me to her bed-chamber, and opened a little desk, wherein were divers little pictures wrapt within paper, and their names written with their own hand upon the papers. Upon the first that she took up was written, “My Lord’s picture.” I held the candle and pressed to see the picture so named. She was loath to let me see it; at length my importunity prevailed for a sight thereof [and found it to be the Earl of Leicester’s picture]. I desired that I might have it to carry home to my queen; which she refused, alleging that she had but that one picture of his. I said again that she had the original; for he was at the farthest part of the chamber, speaking with secretary Cecil.32

Melville’s anecdote is revealing not only as court gossip (with Elizabeth’s intriguing admission regarding “My Lord” Leicester), but also of the role played by the limning in the private and public life of the queen herself: her collection of “pictures wrapt within paper” has personal and sentimental value that nevertheless translates readily into political and diplomatic value when necessary. Moreover, the pictures are at the same time private properties, concealed in her chamber, but to be revealed on opportune occasion with a series of eminently theatrical gestures (“she took up,” “she was loath,” “she refused”). Miniatures were, among other things, erotic icons to be worn close to the body, and as such became objects of desire and of envy. Another anecdote recounts how the queen once insisted on acquiring a portrait of Robert Cecil that “Lady Derby wore about her neck and in her bosom,”33 while in his autobiography Edward Lord Herbert of Cherbury relates how his portrait, produced in little by the limnist Isaac Oliver from the original full-size portrait by Larkin, becomes an erotic fetish object for a female admirer, likewise to be hidden/displayed between her breasts: There was a lady also, wife to Sir John Ayres, Knight, who, finding some means to get a copy of my picture from Larkin, gave it to Mr. Isaac [Oliver] the painter in Blackfriars X, and desired him to draw it in little after his manner; which being done, she caused it to be set in gold and enamelled, and so wore it about her neck so low that she hid it under her breasts. . . .

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Coming one day into her chamber, I saw her through the curtains lying upon her bed with a wax candle in one hand, and the picture I formerly mentioned in the other. I coming thereupon somewhat boldly to her, she blew out the candle, and hid the picture from me; myself thereupon being curious to know what that was she held in her hand, got the candle to be lighted again, by means whereof I found it was my picture she looked upon with more earnestness and passion than I could have easily believed, especially since myself was not engaged.34

Lady Ayres’s earnest poring over Cherbury’s image is reminiscent of Emilia’s idolatrizing of the painted Arcite, just as her portrait in little in its gold enamelled frame, worn close to her body, recalls Olivia’s “jewel,” given to Viola to wear about her person. As John Buxton notes, “The jewelled case . . . was intended to conceal from public gaze a private message between two lovers,”35 but at the same time it was intended to be opened to the vision of a chosen viewer. The miniature was a threefold jewel: the gold and precious stones of the frame or case were continued within the portrait thanks to the rich materials, including gold itself, employed by the limnist. Indeed, Hilliard had trained as a goldsmith: “[Limning] excelleth all other Painting what so ever, in sundry points, in giving the true lustur to pearle and precious stone, and worketh the merals Gold or Silver with themselfes which so enricheth and innobleth the worke that it seemeth to be the tinge it se[l]fe even the worke of god and not of man, being fittest . . . to put in ewells of gould.”36 The continuity between outer and inner jewels is underlined by Henry Constable’s punning compliment in his sonnet “To Mr Hilliard, upon occasion of a picture he made of my Lady Rich”: To diamonds, rubies pearls, The worth of which Doth make the jewell which you paynt seem Rich.37

Such material riches are justified by the third kind of “jewel” in play, namely the beauty of the subject—Lady Rich, made to “seem rich” (see figure 1). Such ornamental interplay between outer and inner jewels is the point of an episode involving a richly decorated miniature/jewel in The Wisdome of Doctor Dodypoll, recalling Olivia’s jewel in that it is bestowed by an adoring woman on her beloved. The difference that in this case is that the portrait represents the admired receiver, not the admiring giver: Corn[elia]. First, (if it please you) giue me leaue to greete Your Princely hand with this vnworthy gift: Yet woorthy, since it represents your selfe.

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Nicholas Hilliard, Portrait of a Lady, possibly Penelope, Lady Rich, c. 1590. Courtesy of the Royal Collection © 2009 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

Alber[dure]. What? my selfe Lady? trust me it is pittie Alber[dure]. So faire a Iemme should hold so rude a picture. Corn. My Lord ’tis made a Iewell in your picture, Which otherwise had not deseru’d the name. Alber. Kinde mistresse, kindly I accept your fauour. (Dodypoll, Act 2)

What I want to argue is that many of the references to pictures in Shakespeare and his contemporaries allude, in reality, more specifically to the art of limning. The kind of attention to intimate features and expressions that emerges in the “spoken” versions of these pictures in Shakespeare—from the grace of Hamlet senior’s brow and his Hyperion-like curls and Jove-like front, to Portia’s “severed lips” and “golden mesh,” to Arcite’s sparkling and fiery eyes, to the “mental

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power” of Timon’s eye—recaptures precisely the limnist’s endeavour to catch the lovely graces and stolen glances of his sitters. The almost exclusive emphasis on the subject’s face is the distinguishing and canonical feature of the art of limning—compare Duke Senior’s “Most truly limned and living in your face” and the punning on the face in little and large in Lover’s Complaint: “For on his visage was in little drawn / What largeness thinks in Paradise was sawn” Vv. 90–91).38 As Hilliard writes, “Of all things the perfection is to imitate the face of man kind, or the hardest part of it, and which carieth most prayesse [praise] and commendations . . . greatest of all is the grace in countenance, by which the affections apeare . . . and this princepall part of the beauty a good painter hath skill of and should diligently noet.39 The singling out of the eye (Hamlet père’s, Arcite’s, Palamon’s, Timon’s, and especially Portia’s: “but her eyes! / How could he see to do them?”) as chief locus of personal expression and as primary object of admiration is likewise perfectly in keeping with the canons of miniature painting: “So Chiefly the drawer should observe the eyes in his pictures . . . for the eye is the life of the picture.”40 The miniature portrait, the mode of pictorial representation probably best known to Shakespeare’s audience, as the most fashionable and most characteristically English art form of the time, is evoked not only by the size of the hand property on display but by the descriptive register and perceptual emphases of Shakespeare’s verbal limning.

LITTLE AND GREAT: PICTORIAL AND THEATRICAL REPRESENTATION There is an evident paradox in the appeal to the audience to imagine the confined virtual space of the portrait “in little” while witnessing an art form, theatrical spectacle, that was emphatically “in great,” literally lifesized. The relationship between the two modes of representation is by definition a dialectic of opposites. This dialectic, and the paradox, are not lost on Shakespeare and other dramatists, who on more than one occasion raise the issue of the impossible equivalence between miniature and stage picture. Indeed, it is perhaps not by chance that the most explicit discussion of miniature painting in Shakespeare occurs precisely within the context of a discourse on theatre. Hamlet makes his first allusion to his father’s portrait at the end of his complaint about boy actors, immediately prior to news of the players’ arrival: “It is not very strange, for my uncle is King of Denmark, and those that would make mouths at him while my father lived give twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats apiece for his picture in little” (2.2.300–305). As

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Thompson and Taylor note, “picture in little” is synonymous here with “miniature portrait (an art highly prized in Elizabethan England).”41 This passage involves two main issues. The first is the market value of the miniature as object of exchange and as token of status. As Roy Strong argues, the purpose of Elizabethan pictures was “not aesthetic but dynastic. . . . For most . . . Elizabethans, the idea of painting as a work of art perhaps never existed; . . . it was primarily an expression of rank and class.”42 The limning was a precious object—a “jewel”—to be worn, not so much on account of its artistic value but on account of the social rank of the sitter. The problem for Hamlet is that the king’s status is usurped, so that his portrait is false coinage—a “counterfeit”— grotesquely overvalued on the artistic and monetary exchange market. The second issue has to do again with the sheer size of the painting in relation to the demands of theatrical performance. The paradox for Hamlet is that “miniature” players can compete with fully grown actors in representing adult characters; this is clearer in F, where Hamlet’s “in little” comment is preceded by an exchange with Rosencrantz: Hamlet. Do the boys carry it away? Rosencrance. Ay, that they do, my lord—Hercules and his load too. (2.2. 348)43

One of Hilliard’s claims for limning is precisely that the artist’s skill lies in achieving a full likeness in a portrait painted “in little.” The comparison between painting in little and stage representation became something of an early seventeenth-century topos. In the induction to Marston’s Antonio and Mellida (1602), it takes the form of a disclaimer regarding not the size of the actors but the length of the play, likened to the minuteness of the vellum on which limning was carried out. The character Feliche says, “I feare it is not possible to limme so many persons in so small a tablet as the compasse of our playes afford.” For Hamlet, the problem is that the picture in little is a simulacrum, a false representation, due not merely to its subject and its size but to the fact that all “seeming”—and thus any kind of representation, visual or verbal—is suspect. His chosen vehicle for a true portrait of the king is not a supposedly lifelike picture but a supposedly fictional play performed “in great” by the adult company at court. There is an implicit claim, in Hamlet’s choice of the drama (“The play’s the thing”), that theatrical representation possesses superior truthfulness and efficacy compared to other modes, including the pictorial. This is despite, or perhaps because of, its declaredly fictional quality. This claim is again a recurrent one in early seventeenth-century discussions of the arts. It is implicit, for example, in the exchange between the Poet and the

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Painter in the incipit to Timon of Athens, where the poet claims the naturalness of his own art (“Our poesy is a gum which oozes / From whence it nourishes,” 21–22), but at the same time admires the less natural skills of the painter (“It tutors nature”), while the painter himself upholds the superior efficacy of his art (whether in little or in great is not specified): “A thousand moral paintings I can show / That shall demonstrate these quick blows of Fortune’s / More pregnantly than words” (1.1.92–94). In the event, however, both poetry and painting give way to drama with the entrance of Timon and his suitors, as much as to say that theater incorporates and transcends both arts. The superiority of dramatic representation to verbal art on the one hand and painting on the other is made more explicit in another more or less contemporary text, Heywood’s Apology for Actors (1612), where—in the context of the most explicit discussion of the triangular relationship between painting, verbal description, and stage representation—the latter is seen to be a supremely efficacious fusion of verbal and visual showing: Oratory is a kind of a speaking picture, therefore may some say, is it not sufficient to discourse to the eares of princes the fame of these conquerors: Painting likewise, is a dumbe oratory, therefore may we not as well by some curious Pigmalion, drawe their conquests to worke the like loue in Princes towards these Worthyes by shewing them their pictures drawne to the life, as it wrought on the poore painter to bee inamored of his owne shadow? I answer this. . . . A Description is only a shadow receiued by the care but not perceiued by the eye: so liuely portrature is meerely a forme seene by the eye, but can neither shew action, passion, motion, or any other gesture, to mooue the spirits of the beholder to admiration: but to see a souldier shap’d like a souldier, walke, speake, act like a souldier: to see a Hector all besmered in blood, trampling vpon the bulkes of Kinges. A Troylus returning from the field in the sight of his father Priam, as if man and horse euen from the steeds rough fetlockes to the plume in the champions helmet had bene together plunged into a purple Ocean: To see a Pompey ride in triumph, then a Cæsar conquer that Pompey: labouring Hanniball aliue, hewing his passage through the Alpes. To see as I haue seene, Hercules in his owne shape hunting the Boare, knocking downe the Bull, taming the Hart, fighting with Hydra, murdering Gerion, slaughtring Diomed, wounding the Stimphalides, killing the Centaurs, pashing the Lion, squeezing the Dragon, dragging Cerberus in Chaynes, and lastly, on his high Pyramides writing Nilvltra, Oh these were sights to make an Alexander.44

If a similar claim is implicit in Hamlet, this may explain in part why it is the Prince’s second version of The Mousetrap—the spoken version— that captures the conscience of the King, whereas Claudius apparently

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fails to respond to the same events shown forth visually in the dumbshow (cf. Heywood’s “dumb oratory”). The question of limning and its relationship to stage performance is repeatedly explored in Twelfth Night, bringing into play the range of issues I have been examining: pictures in little versus pictures in great, private life versus public life, intimate versus political relations, secrecy versus revelation. Olivia’s “jewel,” moreover, is itself framed within a rich context of iconographical allusions in which the dialectic between pictorial and theatrical representation is foregrounded, including Feste’s allusion to the “We three” pictorial quiz at 2.3.14–17 and Orsino’s perception of the reunion of the twins as a form of optical illusion in 5.2. Both episodes propose the momentary “freezing” of the action in order to view the stage configuration precisely as a picture “in great.” The most ambiguous and intriguing of the comedy’s explorations of the in-little/in-great dialectic is produced by Olivia in her first encounter with Viola, disguised as Cesario (1.5). On Cesario’s arrival, Olivia is veiled in mourning for her dead brother. Playfully but seductively unveiling, she figures the moment of her self-revelation to Cesario as a sort of vernissage of an art exhibition: Olivia. Have you any commission from your lord to negotiate Olivia. with my face? You are now out of your text. But we will draw the curtain and show you the picture. [Unveils.] Look you, sir, such a one I was this present. Is’t not well done? Viola. Excellently done, if God did all. Olivia. ’Tis in grain, sir, ’twill endure wind and weather. Viola. ’Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white Nature’s own sweet and cunning hand laid on. Lady, you are the cruell’st she alive If you will lead these graces to the grave And leave the world no copy. Olivia. O sir, I will not be so hard-hearted. I will give out diverse schedules of my beauty. It shall be inventoried, and every particle and utensil labelled to my will, as, item, two lips, indifferent red; item, two grey eyes, with lids to them; item, one neck, one chin and so forth. Were you sent hither to praise me? (1.5.224–41)

Olivia is alluding to the dustcover protecting a painting, something of a standing, or running, joke in the comedy. Compare Sir Toby’s feigned admiration for Sir Andrew’s dancing talents: “Wherefore have these gifts a curtain before ‘em? Are they like to take dust, like Mistress Mall’s picture? (1.3.120–22). Her allusion is to the art of portraiture, in

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the first instance in great (hence the curtain or dustcover); but her indication of her own facial features, especially her “two grey eyes,” suggests again the miniature mode. Her gesture of revelation of a private and concealed property was likewise typical of the miniature (compare Elizabeth and Melville), exploiting the ambiguous status of limning as a more or less public art representing, at the same time, the private subjectivity of the sitter. As Patricia Fumerton observes of the picture in little, “‘Publication’ of the miniature, . . . while creating a sense of inwardness—and thus appearing to respond to a real need for expressing the private, inner self—could only be arrived at through outer, public rooms, whether political chambers or ornamental encasings.”45 Hence the power of Olivia’s gesture in revealing or publicizing herself at the moment of greatest intimacy, her private bereavement. The allusion anticipates the intimacy of the later scene (3.4) in which she presents Cesario with a literal miniature portrait. Like Feste’s “We three” joke, Olivia’s game of portraying herself as icon involves an interpretative verbal tag: “such a one I was this present,” which is to say, this is what I looked like at the time the portrait was painted (in this very instant). Here she is rather cryptically evoking the inscription frequently found in Renaissance portraits, including Hilliard’s miniatures—suæ ætatis (of her or his age)—which went together with the effective age of the sitter and the date of composition, as in Hilliard’s portrait of the lady-in-waiting Mrs. Holland (Lady Elizabeth Russell), inscribed “Ano Dni 1593; Aetatis Suae 26.” A pictorial joke on the same device is unwittingly produced by Marston’s ignorant Balurdo, who takes the tag to be the names of the respective subjects of two portraits: “Whose picture is this? Anno Domini 1599. Beleeue mee, master Anno Domini was a good settled age when you lymn’d him. 1599 yeares old? Lets see the other. Etatis suæ 24. Bir Ladie he is somwhat younger. Belike master Etatis suæ was Anno Dominies sonne (Marston, Act 5). Olivia plays instead—and quite wittingly—on her double presence as “painter” and subject of her self-portrait, whereby the time of composing and the time of viewing the picture coincide. As Louis Marin says of Renaissance historical painting, “In the present presence of the pictorial representation, it has to express . . . temporal relationships” (306). In Olivia’s case, what we are shown in the present presence is contemporary history, whose temporal relations involve the moment of the stage representation rather than being frozen forever within the time of the pictorial representation. Indeed, the point of the joke is that the literally speaking picture of Olivia’s face portrays itself through the words that issue from it in the dynamic present of theatrical performance. In a sense, by pretending to be a fixed image, she underlines precisely the fluidity of dra-

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Miniature; portrait of a woman, formerly called Mrs. Holland; by Nicholas Hilliard (1547–1619). English: Dated 1593. Watercolor on vellum. Courtesy V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum, London/Salting Bequest.

matic art, which, try as she may, she cannot suspend: she can never become a picture, only a moving and breathing body. To “draw the curtain” also has specifically theatrical connotations, evoking the tiring house door of the Elizabethan stage or the curtain covering the central opening (if such a thing ever existed), a fact underlined by Cesario’s sarcastic “Excellently done, if God did all,” hinting at the fact that Olivia is played by a made-up actor. There is a certain poignancy to Olivia’s pictorial game, since she is exhibiting precisely the fact that, unlike her brother, she is still alive and able to speak on stage; her game of fixing the moment in time may be read, inter alia, as a talismanic gesture against mortality. In this vital difference between being a picture and speaking her own portrait lies the unbridgeable distance between the “liveliness” of the art of limning and the living performance of the art of drama.

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NOTES 1. Hamlet, ed. Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, The Arden Shakespeare, 3rd series (London, 2006). 2. Two Gentlemen of Verona, ed. William C. Carroll, The Arden Shakespeare, 3rd series (London, 2004). 3. Timon of Athens, ed. Anthony B. Dawson and Gretchen E. Minton, The Arden Shakespeare, 3rd series, (London, 2008). 4. The Taming of the Shrew, ed. Brian Morris, The Arden Shakespeare, 2nd series (London: Methuen, 1981). 5. “Non pigliate, benigni auditori, questo supponere in mala parte: che non lasciò ne li suoi libri Elefantide figurato.” Ludovico Ariosto, Le commedie, ed. Andrea Gareffi (Turin: Utet, 2007), 282. 6. “Le mie supposizioni però simili / Non sono a quelle antique, che Elefantide / In diversi atti e forme e modi varii / Lasciò dipinte; e che poi rinovatesi / Sono al dì nostri in Roma santa, e fattesi / In carte belle, più che oneste, imprimere, / Acciò che tutto il mondo n’abbia copia” Ariosto, 350. 7. John Fletcher and William Shakespeare, The Two Noble Kinsmen, ed. Lois Potter, The Arden Shakespeare, 3rd series, (London, 1997), note to 4.2.0.1, p. 271. 8. The Merchant of Venice, ed. John Russell Brown (London: Methuen, 1959). 9. Twelfth Night, ed. Keir Elam, The Arden Shakespeare, 3rd series (London, 2008). 10. See Samuel Schoenbaum, William Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 272; Katherine Duncan-Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare: Scenes from his Life (London: The Arden Shakespeare, 2001), 92. 11. Philip Henslowe, Henslowe’s Diary, 2nd ed., ed. R. A. Foakes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 319. 12. Susanne K. Langer, Feeling and Form: Theory of Art (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1953), 72. 13. Andrew Gurr and Mariko Ichikawa, Staging in Shakespeare’s Theatres (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 6. 14. See Rudolf Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974); Ian Verstegen, Gestalt and Art: A Psychological Theory (Vienna: Springer, 2005). 15. Robert Wilson, The Three Lords and Three Ladies of London (London, 1590), Sig. C2r. 16. Anonymous, Faire Em (London, c.1593). 17. George Chapman, The Blind Beggar of Alexandria (London, 1598). 18. Thomas Dekker, Blurt, Master Constable (London, 1602). 19. Chapman, A Humourous Day’s Mirth (London, 1599); Anonymous, The Wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll (London, 1600). 20. Anonymous [Thomas Heywood?], A Warning for Fair Women (London, 1599). 21. Ibid. 22. John Webster, The White Devil (London, 1612). 23. James Shirley, The Traitor (London, 1635). 24. John Marston, Antonio and Mellida (London, 1602). 25. Anonymous, The Wit of a Woman (London, 1604). 26. Duncan-Jones, 96–99. 27. Dekker. 28. Shakespeare’s Poems, ed. Katherine Duncan-Jones and H. R. Woudhuysen, The Arden Shakespeare 3rd series (London, 2007).

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29. As You Like It, ed. Juliet Dusinberre, The Arden Shakespeare, 3rd series (London, 2006). 30. Nicholas Hilliard, Nicholas Hilliard’s Art of Limning, ed. Arthur F. Kinney (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1983), 23. 31. Ibid., 24. 32. James Melville, The Memoirs of Sir James Melville of Halhill, ed. Gordon Donaldson (London: The Folio Society, 1969), 37. 33. Linda Bradley Salamon, “The Art of Nicolas Hilliard,” in Hilliard, Art of Limning, 61–145. 34. The Autobiography of Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, ed. Sidney Lee (London: George Routledge, 1886), 69. 35. John Buxton, Elizabethan Taste (London: Macmillan, 1966). 36. Hillard, Art of Limning, 36. 37. Henry Constable, “To Mr. Hilliard: upon occasion of a picture he made of my Lady Rich,” in Hilliard, Art of Limning, v. 38. A Lover’s Complaint, Renascence Editions, The University of Oregon, http:// www.uoregon.edu/~rbear/shake/lc.html. 39. Hilliard, Art of Limning, 22–23. 40. Ibid., 24. 41. Thompson and Taylor, 260 n. 42. Roy Strong, The Englsh Icon: Elizabethan and Jacobean Portraiture (London: Paul Mellon Foundation for British Art; Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), 44. 43. Hamlet, The Texts of 1603 and 1623, ed. Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, The Arden Shakespeare, 3rd series (London, 2006). 44. Thomas Heywood, An Apology for Actors (London, 1612), Sig. B3v 45. Patricia Fumerton, “ ‘Secret’ Arts: Elizabethan Miniatures and Sonnets,” Representations 15 (Summer, 1986): 57–97, 62.

“Why do you bend your eye on vacancy?”: Visual Meaning and Its Absence in Hamlet Ann Thompson

THOSE OF US WHO ARE LUCKY ENOUGH TO LIVE IN LONDON HAVE

access to Globe Education’s splendid and ambitious series of “Read not Dead” play-readings on Sunday afternoons in the Bear Gardens Theatre, just across the street and around the corner from the reconstructed Globe itself. This project aims to perform and record staged readings of every one of the 372 plays that survive from the Early Modern period. If we are specialists in the Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, many of these plays will be familiar to us as verbal texts—words on the page—sometimes evocative and exciting, sometimes tedious or even incomprehensible. We think we can read them; we may even have edited them or written essays and books about them, but we have very little idea how the actors would have interpreted them on the stage and what visual impact they would have had on the audience. We all have our favorite hobbyhorses when it comes to plays we would prioritize for a full-scale revival if we were in a position to put one on, but meanwhile we can at least be interested, and often surprised and delighted, by what a rough-and-ready, quickly rehearsed, and minimally staged reading can achieve. On the other hand, out of those 372 plays, the one perhaps least in need of a full-scale revival is Hamlet. As Simon Russell Beale put it in a joint interview with Adrian Lester he did for the New York Times (April 8, 2001), when he was starring in John Caird’s production at the National Theatre in London and Lester was starring in Peter Brook’s production at the Bouffes du Nord in Paris, “There has never been a time when there aren’t 800 Hamlets. . . . You are aware consciously that there is a history about it. You see this list of Hamlets and you think, ‘Oh, my God, no. There’s Adrian opening in five minutes. There’s Olivier. There’s Gielgud. . . .’ ” For the actor, the part of Hamlet brings with it a formidable quantity of baggage, and similarly, for the spectator, there are not too few but far too many visual meanings associated with the play. Some of them are even iconic: the man in black holding 90

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a skull, the ghost on the battlements, the woman dead in the water. The problem here, then, is not so much to reconstruct something we have never seen on stage but to strip away four hundred years of reconstructions and visual clichés and to try to get back to what the visual impact might have been for Hamlet’s earliest audiences.

TO SHOW OR NOT TO SHOW Some of those visual icons have nothing to do with the stage. “It is perhaps something of an irony that one of the most popular of all Hamlet subjects among visual artists should have been an episode in the play that is only described,” writes Alan R. Young.1 He is referring to the death of Ophelia, described by the Queen in 4.7, which became a compelling subject for artists in the eighteenth and especially the nineteenth centuries.2 Young seems a little surprised by this, and perhaps even more so by another moment in the play that has been much illustrated on the strength of narration rather than representation on stage, namely Hamlet’s appearance in Ophelia’s closet “with his doublet all unbraced,” as described by her at 2.1.74–97.3 Nineteenth-century paintings of both moments, as Young shows, tended to be quite heavily eroticized, at a time when Ophelia on stage was presented as naïve and innocent, the songs in her mad scene abbreviated to avoid any suggestion of sexuality. Both of these images are of course familiar to us from modern film versions of the play (Laurence Olivier in 1948 deliberately posed Jean Simmons to resemble Elizabeth Siddal in the well-known 1851 painting by John Everett Millais), and Hamlet’s appearance in Ophelia’s closet is also often enacted in dumb show on the stage, perhaps because it provides an early opportunity to display Hamlet’s “antic disposition.” These pictures and films have become part of the visual meaning of Hamlet over time, although there is no likelihood at all that they were part of its original dramatic performances. Other descriptive passages have also proved popular with filmmakers: the “dreadful summit of the cliff” that potentially deprives Hamlet of his reason, evoked by Horatio at 1.4.70, has induced some of them to set the next scene literally overlooking the sea. Hay Plumb in 1913, Eleuterio Rodolfi in 1917, and Olivier all chose to do this, but Grigori Kozintsev’s 1964 film is perhaps the most striking example; and many have chosen to show Hamlet’s substitution of his own commission for the warrant carried by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, as described by him to Horatio in 5.2—there are interesting examples in the 1920 film directed by Svend Gade and Heinz Schall, and in the 2000 film directed by Michael Almereyda. Conversely, none have chosen to

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show Hamlet’s sea fight with the pirates as described by him in 5.1, probably for financial reasons. (Russell Jackson has, however, informed me privately that Kenneth Branagh did originally intend to film the sea fight for his 1996 film.) The play also sets up some interesting relationships between events that are both staged and described. For example, the Ghost appears in 1.1, an event described to Hamlet, mainly by Horatio, in 1.2, and then reenacted in 1.4; the death of Hamlet’s father is described by the Ghost in 1.5 and reenacted in the dumb show in 3.2; Hamlet’s behavior in the closet scene with his mother, staged in 3.4, is described by her in 4.1. Directors (and illustrators) have to decide whether to take the description in each case as a totally accurate account of what the audience has already seen, or is about to see, on stage. In the last case, for example, they need to decide whether Hamlet has really been “mad as the sea and wind” (4.1.7) or whether the Queen is deliberately exaggerating to protect him; some directors have gone the other way and exaggerated his madness by not presenting the Ghost on stage at all, apparently agreeing with the Queen that he is “bend[ing] his eye on vacancy“ (3.4.113); Richard Eyre’s direction of Jonathan Pryce at London’s Royal Court Theatre in 1980 became a famous example of this, with Hamlet seeming to retch up the Ghost’s voice from inside himself. It is obvious enough that Hamlet can be discussed as an exploration of what is seen and what is not seen, of who does the seeing and from what perspective; and this could be said of many other plays in this period. Hamlet might indeed serve as some kind of caveat in the present context, reminding us that visual meanings are not simple but complex, not single but multiple. How can we begin, however, to reconstruct specific moments in the play as they might have appeared at the Globe around 1600, and how do we take into account that we have not one but three early texts that may relate to not one but three rather different early stagings?

REENTER THE STAGE DIRECTION This seems an obvious place to start. Stage directions in the earliest printed texts of Shakespeare’s plays, if not necessarily authorial, constitute a significant body of evidence as to what may have actually happened on the contemporary stage. In the case of Hamlet, variations among the stage directions in the three texts may be conflated to produce a sort of composite picture of what happened or may, on the other hand, testify to three slightly different stagings. I will focus here on four main examples: (1) the opening direction of the second scene of

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the play; (2) the appearance of the Ghost in the closet scene (3.4); (3) the appearance of Ophelia in her mad scene; and (4) the fight between Hamlet and Laertes in the graveyard (5.1). I will also consider a couple of differences in the stage directions relating to the dumb show. These all provide evidence of significant differences between the three texts: the First, so-called “Bad” Quarto of the play (Q1) printed in 1603, and the later and more familiar texts, the Second Quarto (Q2) printed in 1604/5, and the First Folio (F) printed in 1623. The First Example In the first example, the stage directions for the three texts are: Q1: Enter King, Queene, Hamlet, Leartes, Corambis, and the two Ambassadors, with Attendants. Q2: Flo[u]rish. Enter Claudius, Kinge of Denmarke, Gertrad the Queene, Counsaile: as Polonius, and his Sonne Laertes, Hamlet, Cum Aliis. F: Enter Claudius King of Denmarke, Gertrude the Queene, Hamlet, Polonius, Laertes and his Sister Ophelia, Lords Attendants. The most obvious difference here (apart from the names, which are not relevant to this discussion)4 is the presence of Ophelia in the Folio. She does not speak in any of the three texts and hence is usually omitted by editors, but she frequently appears on stage and screen, where directors tend to invent some piece of silent stage business to establish her relationship with Hamlet. In Michael Almereyda’s 2000 film, for example, she tries to pass a small packet to Hamlet, which is intercepted by Laertes. Directors do not of course need to be aware of the textual warrant of the Folio to justify Ophelia’s presence: a comparable case might be the frequent appearance of the Fool on stage and screen in the opening scene of King Lear even though he does not have an entry in the stage directions in either of the two texts until 1.4. The Fool could not have been present originally if, as has been argued, the part was doubled with that of Cordelia, but it is understandable if, free from this casting constraint, a modern director might want to give him an early appearance and establish his relationship with the King. Does the editorially suppressed stage direction in 1.2 of Hamlet indicate, however, that Ophelia might have appeared in this scene on Shakespeare’s stage? The actor playing Ophelia would have been available,5 and it seems quite likely that an effort would have been made to muster as many actors as possible to fill the stage for this, the first big scene at the Danish court. Secondly, the placing of Hamlet in the various directions is interesting: he is placed with his mother and stepfather in the First Quarto and

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Folio versions, but separated from them and last in the list in the Second Quarto version. Can we assume that stage directions reflect the order in which the characters actually appeared? They usually list the most socially important characters such as royalty first, and there are some examples in which the order is apparently explicit. In the Quarto text of the opening scene of King Lear, for example, the direction for the King’s entry reads: Sound a Sennet, Enter one bearing a Coronet, then Lear, then the Dukes of Albany, and Cornwall, next Gonorill, Regan, Cordelia, with followers.

So one might perhaps conjecture that in the original staging of the Second Quarto of Hamlet (the text supposedly closest to Shakespeare’s manuscript), Hamlet’s disaffection was emphasized by the visual impact of his physical position in the entry procession as well as by his black mourning clothes.6 The Second Example In the second example, the entry direction for the Ghost in the two later texts reads simply “Enter Ghost,” while in the First Quarto we find “Enter the ghost in his night gowne.” Nightgowns are not uncommon on the Early Modern stage: Alan C. Dessen and Leslie Thomson note around forty examples, though none other involving a ghost.7 On the whole, stage ghosts seem to have worn the clothes they wore when they were alive; Henslowe’s inventory of properties owned by the Admiral’s Men in 1598 lists “j gostes sewt” (1 ghost’s suit) and “j gostes bodeyes” (1 ghost’s bodice), but it is not clear what these might have been.8 Various living characters in other Shakespeare plays enter wearing nightgowns, notably the sleepless Henry IV at the beginning of 3.1 in 2 Henry IV; the similarly sleepless Julius Caesar at the beginning of 2.2 in Julius Caesar; and the disturbed Brabantio in 1.1 of Othello. In all these cases, the nightgown signals not only the fact that on stage it is supposed to be night or early morning but also that the character is troubled or disturbed in some way. Editors of Hamlet, even those who dismiss the First Quarto as a “bad” text (an unauthorized or bootleg text, reported by someone who had been involved in or had witnessed a production), are inclined to take the nightgown seriously. Harold Jenkins, for example, who edited Hamlet for the Arden second series in 1982, prints “Enter Ghost” in his text but comments: “How the Ghost now appeared, in contrast with the armoured figure of 1.1, is indicated by Q1, ‘in his night gowne,’ i.e. his robe of undress. It is not per-

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haps what we should expect from l.137 below [Hamlet’s reference to ‘My father, in his habit as he lived’] but not incompatible with it.”9 George Hibbard, who edited Hamlet for Oxford in 1987, prints “Enter the Ghost in his night-gown” and comments: It seems right to preserve this direction from Q1 for several reasons. It is the only indication we have of how the Ghost appeared in this scene in Shakespeare’s day. Moreover, its precision leaves little room for doubt that it represents what the reporter recalled. Nor is there anything incongruous about the “night-gown,” so long as one remembers that what it signifies is a “dressing-gown” and, it can be assumed, a very splendid one at that. . . . Above all, however, the “night-gown” has at least two functions: it reminds the audience that it is night on the stage; and, in its domesticity, it suggests that old Hamlet is about to play a rather different role from that of the martial figure of the first act. In fact, our last glimpse of “the majesty of buried Denmark,” showing him “in his habit as he lived,” modifies our previous impression of him greatly by bringing out his humanity.10

This domestic and relatively benign representation of the Ghost has been available only since the rediscovery of the long-lost First Quarto in 1823; before then he always appeared in armor, usually carrying a truncheon, as in Horatio’s description in 1.2. The appearance of the Ghost in this very scene, complete with armor and truncheon, was, according to Alan Young, the first-ever visual illustration of Hamlet, appearing as an engraved frontispiece to Rowe’s 1709 edition of the plays,11 and it subsequently became one of the most popular subjects for illustration, which may in part explain why it apparently took a full fifty years after the rediscovery of the First Quarto for the first stage production to dress the Ghost in this way, when Henry Irving did so in 1874.12 Irving’s Ghost, played by Tom Mead, wore a dark dressing gown, and the domestic character of the scene was further emphasized by the appearance of a nightgown warming by a fire and by the fact that the Ghost exited “as though going to a familiar place, into the adjoining bedchamber.”13 This did not, however, start a trend in stage practice: most subsequent nineteenth-century Ghosts continued to wear armor, and modern productions choose the costume according to their interpretation of this moment. We do not know, of course, whether the nightgown would have been dark or light in color. A few stage ghosts do seem to have worn white: a character disguised as a ghost in Cyril Tourneur’s The Atheist’s Tragedy (1611) wears a sheet; and Jasper, disguised as a ghost in Francis Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607), enters in with “his face mealed” (presumably meaning whitened with flour). The

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Jews’ Tragedy (1626) has a stage direction for the entry of “his Father’s Ghost in white,” and the ghost of the Lady in Thomas Middleton’s The Lady’s Tragedy also appears “all in white.”14 Stephen Greenblatt points out that a change in costume would “lightly echo those multiple hauntings in which spirits from Purgatory displayed their progressive purification by a gradual whitening of their robes.”15 A more prosaic reason for the nightgown, regardless of its color, might be that, if the actor playing the King in Hamlet were doubling as the Ghost (a piece of casting that can and does happen), a nightgown or dressing gown could be put on quickly over his previous costume and taken off again for his next entry: in the First Quarto there are just twenty-one lines between the Ghost’s exit and the King’s entry. Did the rediscovery of the First Quarto allow for the reconstruction of a hitherto lost visual meaning of early performances of Hamlet, or did it simply reinforce what became, in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, an Anglo-American preference to strip the play of its politics and present it as a domestic (indeed Oedipal) drama? If there is already a bed on stage, a nightgown seems only logical. The Third Example In the case of Ophelia’s mad scene, the stage directions for the three texts are: Q1: Enter Ofelia playing on a Lute, and her haire downe, singing. Q2: Enter Ophelia. F: Enter Ophelia distracted. In this instance, Jenkins prints “Enter Ophelia“ and comments, “Q1 no doubt records some contemporary staging. The hair down is conventional for madness, but the lute, uncalled for in the text and incongruous with the ballad snatches Ophelia spontaneously breaks into, looks like an actors’ embellishment.”16 The hair down, loose, dishevelled or “about her ears” does indeed signal feminine distress when characters enter in a number of other plays, including Queen Elizabeth in 2.2 of Richard III and Cassandra in 2.2 of Troilus and Cressida, while the lute is often used to accompany more serious or quiet moments like the “sleepy tune” Lucius plays for Brutus in 4.3 of Julius Caesar. Early Modern audiences must have been able to pick up visual markers like the hair down, much as they would have picked up the use of a turban or a scimitar to signal the entry of a Moor or Turk.17 Hibbard, as with his treatment of the Ghost in 3.4, again prints the First Quarto stage direction and comments, “This full and explicit direction . . . probably reflects the manner in which the part was played

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when a boy who could play on the lute—the Lucius of Julius Caesar for example—was available. Jenkins’s objection that the lute is incongruous with Ophelia’s songs is, in fact, an argument for her using it, since only a mad woman would think of doing so.”18 This last point is probably lost on modern audiences, who have become accustomed to the appearance of the lute in this scene in “traditional” productions; it often indeed appears earlier, on Ophelia’s first appearance in 1.3 (if she has not appeared in 1.2), when Laertes is presented as interrupting her music practice to make his farewells. Even if we agree with Jenkins that this is “an actors’ embellishment,” we have to admit that those actors had introduced it by 1603; so perhaps it was part of the visual iconography of the play for some early audiences. The Fourth Example In the graveyard scene (5.1), all three early texts have a direction for Laertes to leap into Ophelia’s grave after he has said, “Hold off the earth awhile / Till I have caught her once more in mine arms” (5.1.238– 39). But again, the so-called “bad” First Quarto adds to this by having, two lines later, the direction, “Hamlet leapes in after Leartes.” This piece of staging is supported by an anonymous elegy on Richard Burbage, the first actor to play Hamlet: “Oft have I seen him, leap into the Grave,” this poet writes; and, assuming that an open trapdoor were used as the grave, the moment could provide a striking visual parallel with the entrances and exits of the Ghost in Act 1, if indeed the trapdoor was used then. But in this case, unlike in the case of the costuming of the Ghost in 3.4, editors are much more ready to dismiss the First Quarto as having no authority. For Hamlet to leap in after Laertes makes him the aggressor, which they don’t like; hence Laertes must come out of the grave to attack him. This essentially character-based interpretation of a moment of staging is comparable to a similar situation in the opening scene of As You Like It, where editors routinely add stage directions to make it clear that Oliver (the bad brother) is the aggressor, not Orlando (the good brother), even though the dialogue might imply otherwise. Another consideration in the case of the Hamlet scene is visibility. When Giles Block directed Mark Rylance at the reconstructed Globe in London in 2000, Rylance did leap into the “grave” made by a trapdoor, but the subsequent fight was very cramped, having three actors (including the “corpse“ of Ophelia) in a very small space, and it was not easily visible from the yard. In this case, practical considerations of stagecraft are usually allowed to overrule the apparent “evidence” of the First Quarto stage direction and the Burbage elegy, even though,

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as with the costuming of the Ghost, an element of subjective interpretation has also crept in. It seems worth mentioning one other indication of a specific staging in the First Quarto’s stage directions that is perhaps less controversial. The opening direction for the dumb show has two points of interest— in the First Quarto it begins: Enter in a Dumbe Shew, the King and Queene, he sits downe in an Arbor, she leaves him: Then enters Lucianus with poyson in a Viall.

Firstly, there is no mention of an “arbor” in the Second Quarto or in the Folio, where the King “Layes him downe upon a Banke of Flowers.” This might indicate a difference in staging: both the “Arbor” and the “Banke of Flowers” imply an outdoor setting, although within the diegesis of Hamlet, the dumb show is of course performed in an indoor space at Elsinore, ending with the King calling for lights. The First Quarto’s “Arbor” perhaps calls for the use of an inner stage or “discovery space,” while the “Banke of Flowers” in the other texts sounds more like a portable property: the Admiral’s Men’s inventory of 1598 lists “ij mose [mossy] banckes” (2 mossy banks) and they appear in a handful of other stage directions.19 Curiously enough, the examples cited by Dessen and Thomson are exclusively from dumb shows and mimes.20 This obviously cannot be a full picture: one can assume that some such property would have been on stage during 2.2 of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, when Hermia says pointedly to Lysander, “Find you out a bed, / For I upon this bank will rest my head.” And it would have been there again in the last scene of The Merchant of Venice, when Lorenzo remarks, “How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! / Here will we sit.” So we are reminded that objects can of course appear on the stage without appearing in the stage directions. The Arbor/Banke distinction would be a surprising difference in Hamlet if the First Quarto had originated with a touring company of actors, as many critics have believed, since its “Arbor” sounds more like a fixed and substantial structure, perhaps like the one in Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy (1587), in which Horatio is murdered by being hanged in an arbor that is later cut down by his mother, Isabella.21 The use of an inner stage would, however, eliminate the need for the players to remove the body, as is specified in the Second Quarto and Folio directions. Secondly, in this same direction, neither the Second Quarto nor the Folio mentions a “Viall” for the poison, simply stating that a “Fellow . . . powres poison in the Kings eares.” In this case, whoever contributed the First Quarto stage direction seems to have gone back to the description of the murder of old Hamlet in the fifth scene of the play,

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where all three texts have the Ghost specify that his brother came “with juice of [cursed] hebona in a vial.” Dessen and Thomson record several examples of the use of “vial” in stage directions of the period as “a small container for liquids, usually poison,” with the present example from the First Quarto of Hamlet as the earliest instance.22

COSTUMES AND PROPS Any company staging any one of the three texts of Hamlet would need more or less the same minimal supply of specified costumes and small stage properties, in this order: 1.1: some kind of military dress and “partisans” (long-handled spears or halberds) for the sentinels, armor and a truncheon for the Ghost; 1.2: a crown for the King (and possibly one for the Queen), mourning clothes for Hamlet, documents for the King to give to the ambassadors; 1.5: a sword for Hamlet; 2.1: a purse and letters for Polonius (Corambis in Q1) to give to Reynaldo (Montano in Q1); 2.2: documents for the ambassadors to give to the King, a letter for Polonius to read, a book for Hamlet to read; 3.1: a book for Ophelia to read, “remembrances” (gifts, love tokens) for her to try to return to Hamlet; 3.2: a crown for the player king, an arbor or a “bank of flowers,” a vial of poison, gifts for the poisoner to give the player queen, recorders; 3.3: a sword for Hamlet; 3.4: an “arras” or curtain, a sword for Hamlet, pictures of old Hamlet and the King, a nightgown for the Ghost in Q1; 4.4: military dress for Fortinbras and his army; 4.5: flowers for Ophelia and a lute in Q1, a sword for Laertes; 4.6: a letter for Horatio to read; 4.7: a letter for the King to read; 5.1: a spade, at least two skulls, a coffin or bier, flowers for the Queen to throw; 5.2: a “commission” or document for Hamlet to show to Horatio, a hat for Osric, a table with stoups of wine and cups, two rapiers and daggers, a napkin for the Queen. Other more standard requirements would include: lanterns or torches for the nighttime scenes (1.1, 1.4, 1.5, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3); seats of some sort, including a throne for the King when he is present in several scenes (at least in 1.2, 2.2, 3.2, 3.4, 5.2); a tolling bell, trumpets, kettledrums, and “pieces” (artillery) for sound effects. Again, I shall focus on possible differences between the three texts, in this case concentrating on the books, the pictures, and the skulls. The Books Books are very common stage properties in Early Modern drama: Dessen and Thomson find roughly one hundred and thirty examples,

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including “tablebooks” (notebooks) and prayer books. In all three texts of Hamlet, the first book appears in the seventh scene of the play (2.2 in the Second Quarto and the Folio). The scene begins with the King and Queen welcoming Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and setting them up to find out what is troubling Hamlet; Polonius enters (with Ofelia in the First Quarto, but alone in the Second Quarto and the Folio) and says he has already discovered “the very cause of Hamlet’s lunacy,” but postpones revealing it until after the King has dealt with the ambassadors who have returned from Norway; Polonius then reads Hamlet’s letter to Ophelia and claims that her rejection of his advances has driven him to madness; he proposes to test this theory by spying on their next encounter, and the King agrees to do this. The Folio alone has a stage direction at this point, “Enter Hamlet reading on a Booke,” but all three texts specify the book in the dialogue: “But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading,” says the Queen in the Second Quarto and the Folio; “See where he comes, poring upon a book,” says the King in the First Quarto. But at this point, the First Quarto differs radically from the other texts: Corambis moves straight into carrying out his test, introducing the second book (presumably a prayer book) with the command “Here, Ofelia, read you on this book” only three lines after the mention of the first; and Hamlet duly launches into “To be or not to be.” In the longer texts, we get the “fishmonger” exchange with Polonius; the first encounter between Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; the appearance of the players, including the Pyrrhus speech; and Hamlet’s soliloquy, “O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I,” all before Polonius’s plan is activated—so the second book appears one scene (but some five hundred lines) later. All this material appears in the First Quarto, but not until after “To be or not to be” and the encounter between Hamlet and Ophelia. The question I want to ask in this context is whether early audiences would in fact have seen two characters on stage, both reading books? Several scholars have used what they see as the awkwardness of this visual image as evidence that the First Quarto version is simply erroneous;23 others would claim that the First Quarto ordering of these scenes, and particularly its placing of “To be or not to be,” actually makes more sense in the theater, and thus directors have frequently adopted it. We are told, for example, in the program for Trevor Nunn’s production of Hamlet at the London Old Vic in 2004, starring Ben Whishaw, that [Nunn} is . . . very conscious of the fact that, in this production, he is contributing to an ongoing debate as to where the most famous speech in the

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English language should come in the play. Hamlet’s soliloquy, “To be or not to be,” traditionally appears in a place which is difficult to justify in terms of either the character or the narrative itself . . . [it] comes only a few lines after the previous soliloquy, “O what a rogue and peasant slave am I,” at the end of which Hamlet has a positive plan of campaign: “The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.” He is patently intent upon action here. Then, only 50 lines later, he is discussing whether or not he should take his own life. This is an uncomfortable development. . . . So Nunn has taken the controversial decision to move the soliloquy.

Although this essay is called “Director’s Cut” and refers elsewhere to textual variants between the First Quarto, the Second Quarto, and the Folio, it is surprisingly silent on the fact that Nunn’s “controversial decision” is supported by the First Quarto: he moves both the soliloquy and the encounter with Ophelia to exactly where they occur in that text. Nor does it acknowledge that this decision has become almost conventional on the British stage in the second half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first: examples before 2004 include Michael Benthall directing John Neville at the Old Vic in 1957; Tony Richardson directing Nicol Williamson at the London Roundhouse in 1969; and two Royal Shakespeare Company productions—Ron Daniels directing Mark Rylance in 1989 and Matthew Warchus directing Alex Jennings in 1997. The Royal Shakespeare Company continued with this rearrangement when, in the same year as Nunn’s production, Michael Boyd directed Sam West in 2004; and the most recent production, with Greg Doran directing David Tennant in 2008, yet again follows suit. The justification of the rearrangement is always of course in terms of what people in the theater refer to as Hamlet’s “journey” and his changes of mood, but an incidental effect has been to bring those two books onstage at the same time. The First Quarto version has also made it possible for critics to argue that “To be or not to be” is inspired by what Hamlet has just been reading rather than by his personal circumstances, making his reflections on suicide abstract and general rather than immediate and personal. The Pictures There has been much discussion of the pictures required in the closet scene (3.4). “Look here upon this picture, and on this,” says Hamlet to his mother in the Second Quarto and the Folio; “See here, behold this picture,” he begins in the First Quarto, requiring her in all three texts to compare a picture of his father with one of his uncle. The earliest il-

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lustration of this scene, the 1709 frontispiece to Rowe’s edition again, shows large formal portraits hanging on the wall; but it has been argued that miniatures were used in 1600, as they certainly were later in the eighteenth century.24 The only possible hint of a difference between the three texts here lies in yet another text, the German play, Der bestrafte Brudermord, known in English as Fratricide Punished, which dates from the early eighteenth century and seems to derive from the First Quarto, or at least from a version of Hamlet very like the First Quarto. In this play, Hamlet says, “But look, there in that gallery hangs the counterfeit resemblance of your first husband, and there hangs the counterfeit of your present one,”25 perhaps implying that he gestures towards unseen pictures offstage. The Skulls Yorick’s skull, as addressed by Hamlet in the graveyard scene, must be the most famous prop in Early Modern drama.26 The moment is often misrepresented iconically, when the man in black with the skull is captioned “To be or not to be,” an image that conflates the soliloquy from much earlier in the play with the dialogue between Hamlet and the gravedigger near the end. All three texts require at least two skulls, and our reading of the First Quarto text requires three, but this has been disputed. The First Quarto is the only text to have a stage direction at the end of the second stanza of the gravedigger’s song, and it actually reads “he throwes vp a shouel.” Most editors adopt this direction but change “shouel” to “skull,” a reading supported by Hamlet’s immediate response, “That skull had a tongue in it . . .” and his remark some twenty lines later, “There’s another! Why, may not that be the skull of a lawyer?” The Riverside edition, however, defends “shouel” and expands the direction to “Throws up a shovelful of earth with a skull in it,” and Graham Holderness and Bryan Loughrey defend “shouel” on its own, though it is not clear what “throwing up a shovel” might mean.27 They also mistranscribe the First Quarto’s line, “may’t not be the skull of some lawyer” (Q1 actually spells it “scull”) as “may’t not be the soul of some lawyer,” an error that allowed the gravedigger in one production of the First Quarto that I have seen,28 faithfully following the actor’s text, to dig up an old boot and indicate a pun on “sole”—a visual meaning that was effective in its context, but one that would be difficult to ascribe to Shakespeare. To move toward a conclusion on another note of caution: editors of the First Quarto have disagreed as to whether Fortenbrasse (as he is consistently spelled in this text) refers to a “sight” or a “fight” in the closing lines of the play. Does he say “Such a sight as this / Becomes

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the fields but here doth much amiss” (more or less what he says in the Second Quarto and the Folio), or does he say “Such a fight,” which Paul Bertram and Bernice W. Kliman argue in their 2003 edition is the correct reading?29 We do need to think about sight and visual impact (and perhaps souls as well as skulls); but as an editor, I would say we also need to start from an accurate text. This is not easy to achieve. Editors of Early Modern plays have the paradoxical task of trying to produce accurate texts out of inaccurate originals, a challenge perhaps at its most extreme for those undertaking editions of the so-called “bad” quartos. Having defined a text as “bad,” should we proceed to “improve” it in cases where, as in the case of Hamlet, we have one or more “good” texts for comparison? It is difficult not to do this in some areas, for example in questions of lineation, where the First Quarto presents as rough verse virtually all of the passages that are printed as prose in the other texts; virtually all editors print these passages as prose. But if we “improve” the stage directions by making the same assumption that the later texts are correct, we lose distinctive features like the Ghost’s nightgown and Ophelia’s lute. And if we “tidy them up,” as often happens in modern editions even of the “good” texts, we lose Hamlet’s significant positioning on his first appearance in 1.2 of the Second Quarto and Ophelia’s silent presence in the same scene in the Folio. It seems to me that these variant stage directions gain in weight and vividness when set beside each other, and that they allow us at least to speculate about what might have happened on Shakespeare’s stage (or stages) in a productive way. Similarly, a focus on costumes and stage properties adds to our sense of the material realities and requirements of the drama: someone wrote those stage directions, and someone worked out what props were needed and how they were to be deployed. Hamlet comes down to us overburdened, if anything, with visual signifiers, but its three surviving texts give us tantalizing glimpses into how it might have looked to its original audiences over four hundred years ago.

NOTES 1. Alan R. Young, “Hamlet” and the Visual Arts, 1709–1900 (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2002), 323. 2. See Kaara Peterson, “Framing Ophelia: Representation and the Pictorial Tradition,” Mosaic 31 (1998): 1–24. 3. All Hamlet quotations and references are from Hamlet and Hamlet: The Texts of 1603 and 1623, ed. Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor (The Arden Shakespeare, 3rd series (London, 2006). 4. In the First Quarto, Laertes is consistently spelled “Leartes,” Ophelia, is con-

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sistently spelled “Ofelia” and their father Polonius is called Corambis. (His servant Reynaldo is called Montano.) 5. See casting charts for all three texts in Arden Hamlet, 555–57. 6. For a comparable argument about a seemingly anomalous ordering of entry directions, see Pamela Mason, “ ‘. . . and Laertes’: The Case against Tidiness,” in Stage Directions in “Hamlet,” ed. Hardin L. Aasand (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2003): 92–98. 7. See entry under “nightgown” in Alan C. Dessen and Leslie Thomson, A Dictionary of Stage Directions in English Drama, 1580–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 8. See Philip Henslowe, Henslowe’s Diary, 2nd ed., ed. R. A. Foakes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 318, appendix 2, line 37. 9. Hamlet, ed. Harold Jenkins, The Arden Shakespeare, 2nd series (London: Methuen, 1982), 325. 10. Hamlet ed. G. R. Hibbard, The Oxford Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 282. 11. Young, 18. 12. See Henry P. Phelps, Hamlet from the Actors’ Standpoint (New York: Edgar S. Werner, 1890), 147. 13. See Young, 226–27. 14. See entry under “ghost” in Dessen and Thomson. I use The Lady’s Tragedy rather than The Second Maiden’s Tragedy for the title of the Middleton play, following the text edited by Julia Briggs for Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino, eds., Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 15. See Hamlet in Purgatory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 223. 16. Jenkins, 348. 17. See Virginia Mason Vaughan’s contribution to this collection: 119–38. 18. Hibbard, 298. 19. See Henslowe, 320, appendix 2, line 74. 20. See entry under “bank” in Dessen and Thomson. 21. The Spanish Tragedy, ed. Philip Edwards (London: Methuen, 1959). 22. See entry under “vial” in Dessen and Thomson. 23. See, for example, James D. Fitzgerald, The First Quarto of “Hamlet”: A Literary Fraud (Glasgow: Carter and Pratt, 1910), 29–36; Richard Grant White, “The Two Hamlets,” Atlantic Monthly 48 (1881): 475–76; W. H. Widgery, The First Quarto Edition of Hamlet (London: Smith, Elder, 1880), 128–29; and G. I. Duthie, The “Bad” Quarto of Hamlet: A Critical Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1941), 210–13. 24. See Keir Elam’s contribution to this collection (63–89), and see Ann Thompson, “ ‘I’ll have grounds more relative than this’: The Puzzle of John Ward’s Hamlet Promptbooks,” Yearbook of English Studies 29 (1999): 138–50. 25. From Act 3, scene 5; quoted from the translation given in Geoffrey Bullough, ed., Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare (London: Routledge, 1957–75), 145. 26. For recent discussions of this topic, see “ ‘Not dead? Not quite dead?’: Hamlet‘s unruly corpses,” in Pascale Aebischer, Shakespeare’s Violated Bodies: Stage and Screen Performances (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004): 64–101, and “Yorick’s skull: Relocating reality in Hamlet,“ in Marvin W. Hunt, Looking for Hamlet (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007): 71–84. 27. See G. Blakemore Evans, ed., The Riverside Shakespeare (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), 1178 and 1195; and Graham Holderness and Bryan Loughrey, eds., The

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Tragicall Historie of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke (Shakespearean Originals, Hemel Hempstead: Harvester, 1992), 91 and 128. 28. This was in the production by Red Shift, directed by Jonathan Holloway, with Peter Collins as Hamlet, performed in London and on tour in the U.K., 1999–2000. 29. See Paul Bertram and Bernice W. Kliman, eds., The Three-Text Hamlet: Parallel Texts of the First and Second Quartos and First Folio, 2nd ed. (New York: AMS Press, 2003).

Mist and Fog on the Elizabethan and Jacobean Stage Alan C. Dessen

IN MY MORE THAN THIRTY YEARS OF HAND-TO-HAND COMBAT with

the surviving evidence, I have encountered many differences between the sense of theater taken for granted today (what I term “theatrical essentialism”) and the logic of presentation in the age of Shakespeare. Nonetheless, the most telling distinction remains the approach to staging night and darkness. As I have argued at length,1 to convey “night,” most directors today use lighting to establish stage darkness and then have actors enter carrying torches, groping in the dark, or unable to see something of importance; we thereby start with a verisimilar stage night as a justification for confusion in the dark. But an Elizabethan or Jacobean dramatic company would have used dialogue, torches, nightgowns, groping in the dark, and failures in “seeing”—all presented in full light—to establish the illusion of darkness for a playgoer who would infer night from such signals and onstage behavior. From such a distinction emerges a fundamental difference in theatrical logic. For us, the lighting technician supplies night and the actors perform accordingly; for them, the actors provided the signals and the audience cooperated in supplying the darkness. For us, one figure fails to see another because the stage is dark; for them, one figure failed to see another and therefore the stage was assumed to be dark. Our theatrical sense of cause-and-effect (the stage is dark, therefore a given action took place) may then at times be inappropriate or misleading. At the Globe or Blackfriars, a greater burden lay upon the playwright, the players, and the playgoers to sustain the illusion of night and darkness through imaginative participation—a situation highlighted by the injunctions from Henry V: “Let us . . . / On your imaginary forces work”; “Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts”; “eche out our performance with your mind.”2 For plays such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello, and Macbeth, various implications follow when all the scenes, whether taking place during day or night according to the narrative fiction, are played 106

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in the same light. In particular, to display an onstage figure’s inability to “see” by means of a darkness that must be imagined by the playgoer is potentially to alter how such confusion or deception is perceived. That same dynamic is also evident in the relatively few scenes where the narrative demands a fog or mist. A look at a cluster of such moments can therefore be instructive. Fog and mist form part of various plots and, as with night and darkness, are regularly associated with confusion or deception, as typified by the proverb cited by Morris Palmer Tilley: “To cast a mist before one’s eyes.”3 Comparable usages are found in the Shakespeare canon. Feste as Sir Topas describes Malvolio as “more puzzled than the Egyptians in their fog” (Twelfth Night, 4.2.44); Lucrece tells Tarquin: “Wipe the dim mist from thy doting eyne” (Rape of Lucrece, 643); Imogen tells Pisanio that she cannot “see before me” the events to come but only “a fog in them / That I cannot look through” (Cymbeline, 3.2.78– 80). To describe his total confusion, Antipholus of Syracuse asks, “Am I in earth, in heaven, or in hell? / Sleeping or waking, mad or well-advis’d?” and concludes: “I’ll say as they say, and persever so, / And in this mist at all adventures go” (Comedy of Errors, 2.2.212–16). The famous lines that end scene 1 of Macbeth may also be relevant: “Fair is foul, and foul is fair, / Hover through the fog and filthy air” (1.1.11– 12)—especially if a playgoer later sees smoke emerging from the caldron in 4.1. Such associations in playtexts are not limited to Shakespeare. Robed in ominous black, Marlowe’s Tamburlaine asks the virgins of Damascus: “Behold my sword, what see you at the point?” and gets the response: “Nothing but fear and fatal steel, my Lord,” to which he replies: “Your fearful minds are thick, and misty, then, / For there sits Death, there sits imperious Death, / Keeping his circuit by the slicing edge” (1 Tamburlaine, 5.1.108–12).4 Webster incorporates the image of mist at key points in his two tragedies. In The Duchess of Malfi, Bosola’s dirge for the Duchess describes life as “a general mist of error” (4.2.188); and his response to the question how Antonio died is: “In a mist: I know not how—/ Such a mistake as I have often seen / In a play” (5.5.94–96). Similarly, shortly before his death in The White Devil, Flamineo observes: “While we look up to heaven we confound / Knowledge with knowledge. O I am in a mist” (5.6.259–60).5 Although such associations are commonplace, specific stage directions that call for a mist are rare, with many of them linked to special effects in masques or comparable no-expense-spared events, as opposed to the narratives of plays in the repertories of professional companies. For his 1606 masque Hymenaei, Jonson specifies “at the lower end of the Hall, a Mist made of delicate perfumes; out of which (a bat-

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tle being sounded under the stage) did seem to break forth two Ladies, the one representing Truth, the other Opinion“ at which point “the Mist was vanished” (681–84, 689). Elsewhere in the Jonson canon, the “Argument of the third Act” of Jonson’s The Sad Shepherd, an unfinished play not targeted at the public theatre, includes the description, “There ariseth a mist suddenly, which, darkening all the place, Clarion loseth himself, and the tree where Earine is enclosed. . . . The Air clearing, enters the Witch . . . tells them how she had caused that late darkness” (39–44).6 Especially elaborate is Middleton’s 1613 Lord Mayor’s Show, The Triumphs of Truth, where both figuratively and visually Error is repeatedly linked to mist and fog (e.g., lines 273–75, 361) so that “the beauty and glory” of London are eclipsed by “a thick sulphurous Darkness, it being a fog or mist raised from Error, enviously to blemish that place” (494–96). Truth arrives (“What’s here? the mist of Error? . . . Dare darkness now breathe forth her insolent rages, / And hang in pois’nous vapours o’er the place,” 506, 509–10) and orders “Vanish, infectious fog“ so that “the cloud suddenly rises” (522, 525), but Error returns, complains about the failure of “Such a thick and poisonous mist / Which I set Envy’s snakes to twist” and commands that once again “rotten darkness shroud / This Mount Triumphant: drop down, sulphurous cloud,” at which point “the Mist falls again, and hangs over all the beauty of the mount” (627–28, 633–36).7 As to the four relevant stage directions found in professional plays, one begins a masque-within-a-play, where “Night rises in mists” (The Maid’s Tragedy, 1:8). Elsewhere in the Fletcher canon, signals for a mist are clearly linked to deception. As the climax to a dumb show in The Prophetess, “Delphia raises a mist,” for, as the chorus spells out, a “speedy rescue” of some prisoners would have taken place “If Delphia by her cunning had not raised / A foggy Mist, which, as a Cloud, concealed them, / Deceiving their pursuers” (5:363–64). In the first play in Four Plays in One, Dorigen vows never to give in to Martius’s lust until “These rocks we see so fix’d, shall be removed” and repeats that “my vow is fix’d, / and stands, as constant as these stones do, still.” To satisfy this condition, Valerius provides a bogus supernatural event wherein “A mist ariseth, the rocks remove” (10:304, 307). The fourth example is from the anonymous Histriomastix,8 in which “Pride casts a mist” and then five or more figures “vanish off the Stage” (D1r); however, in the final sequence (H2r), five figures are again directed to vanish, but no mist is specified. Clearly, to present a verisimilar mist by means of a special effect in a masque or pageant was feasible, as may have been the case for the outset of a masque-within-a-play when the mist is of short duration, as when “Night rises in mists.” The same may be true for Delphia’s rais-

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ing of a mist to prevent a rescue, a mist to conceal the removal of rocks, or a mist to accompany a vanishing; though any or all of these three situations could have been presented as to-be-imagined phenomena (and the use of such a mist in Histriomastix is the only one of the many “vanish” scenes to call for such a device).9 What interests me, however, are the more extensive presentations of mist and fog comparable to the many available scenes in which actors are called upon to “play” nightdarkness, as with the signal to enter “as if groping in the dark” (Heywood, 2 The Iron Age, 3:380).10 To explore the possibilities, I have singled out a series of scenes, each of which lacks a specific stage direction but nonetheless builds on the familiar associations, often in inventive fashion. I exclude situations where the mist or fog is offstage and is therefore described rather than enacted, as in Edward III, where King John announces that “A sudden darkness hath defac’d the sky,” an omen that is followed by “a clamor of ravens,” after which, according to Prince Philip, “there came this sudden fog” to discomfit the French army (4.5.1, 18.s.d., 32).11 In such scenes I see no need for onstage fog (or ravens). As with The Prophetess, Four Plays in One, and Histriomastix, mists —like darkness—are often associated with concealment. In the “mission impossible” sequence in Fletcher’s The Island Princess, Armusia and his group bring off the rescue of the captive king by means of the distraction provided by a fire (“Let it flame on, a comely light it gives up / To our discovery”), so that one of the rescuers says: “We are not seen in the mist, we are not noted. Away, / Away” (8:114). For this rapid sequence, some visible smoke from the fire is possible but not necessary to set up the covering effect.12 Such a verisimilar effect is unlikely in Edmond Ironside,13 where a mist is linked to flattery. Canutus starts the sequence by terming Edricus a sycophant, then is startled by a “strange miracle” consisting of various “prodigious signs” in the heavens: “Look how the Sun looks pale the moon shines red / The stars appear in the perturbed heaven / Like little Comets and not Twelve a Clock” (784–88). When Edricus reappears with a torch “to light the day,” he reports that “the misty vapors were so thick / They almost quench’d the torch.” Canutus responds: True as all the rest, I say thy wit is thick Gross flattery: all soothing Sycophant Doth blind thy eyes and will not let thee see That others see thou art a flatterer. (796–802)

Here, following the omens in the daytime heavens, a mist is equated with the “gross flattery” of an “all soothing Sycophant” that blinds the eyes.

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More developed is a sequence late in Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me (1:302–7) that starts with the entrance of the impoverished Tawnycoat “with a spade” to lament the miserable condition of the poor, followed by the appearance of his former employer, the merchant Hobson, saying, “What a thick mist is here? / I walked abroad to take the morning’s air, / And I am out of knowledge.” Hobson reveals that he has “crossed the water in my gown and slippers” to see his properties but in the process has “slipped clean out of ken, fore-god, / A wool-gathering,” so that he tells himself: “Sit thee down, Hobson, a right man in the mist.” When Tawnycoat speaks up, Hobson at first thinks his companion, whom he cannot see, is a spirit, adding, “I am in the mist. What art thou? speak.” When he hears that Tawnycoat is his debtor, he offers to “discharge thee / Of debts and duties” in return for help. The debtor, still unseen by the merchant, makes his case—that he used the goods given him to help his poor neighbors—and reveals that “This spade alas, ’tis all the wealth I have,” to the point that Hobson responds: “It melts my heart to hear him, and mine eyes / Could weep for company.” What follows is a moment of revelation as the mist breaks, literally and figuratively. Tawnycoat by his labors has scraped together five shillings “which I lay up / Towards your worship’s debt”—a matter of twenty pounds. Hobson’s first reaction is “Give it me,” but he then goes on: And yet shall I spend that which the poor laborer got? No, God forbid: old Hobson ne’er will eat, Rather than surfeit upon poor men’s sweat. Take it again, and buy thy children bread. But soft, the mist doth break: what town is this?

Once the mist has cleared, Hobson can see clearly both his surroundings and the plight of his debtor. Certainly such a link between mist and sight would work with a verisimilar mist, though in the original production, presenting a convincing mist that would “break” in the original production would have been a challenge. However, Hobson’s new “sight” can be heightened if the staging involves a mist-that-is-to-beimagined, so that the actor finally “sees” what has been visible to the playgoer from the outset (and, in a sense, should have been visible to Hobson all along). Again, the scene can work with a realistic mist, but in the original nonrealistic staging, Hobson’s initial failure to “see” and his subsequent breaking through the mist is highlighted for the playgoer in a fashion blurred by any emphasis on the verisimilar. Which staging more forcefully presents the proverbial “mist before one’s eyes”?

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A comparable scene, albeit without the accompanying insight or breakthrough, is to be found in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Much has been made of the “moonlit” woods in Acts 2 and 3 of this comedy, but in the original production, all the scenes—whether in Athens or the woods, night or morning—would have been played in the same onstage illumination. As with Hobson and Tawnycoat in the mist, one result of that original staging may have been a greater emphasis upon failures in “seeing” linked not to poor visibility or even to the lovejuice applied by Oberon and Puck but to the transforming power of love or the imagination, a motif orchestrated throughout the play. In a major speech at the outset, Helena notes that “things base and vile, holding no quantity, / Love can transpose to form and dignity,” because “Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind; / And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind”; later, Bottom observes shrewdly that “reason and love keep little company together now-a-days” (1.1.234–35; 3.1.143–44). In the absence of any verisimilar stage darkness, many of the comic events may appear more clearly linked to such speeches. The play’s fog scene comes at the height of the comic confusion. After observing the quarrel among the four lovers, Oberon orders Puck to “overcast the night; / The starry welkin cover thou anon / With drooping fog as black as Acheron” and to “lead these testy rivals so astray / As one come not within another’s way” (3.2.355–59). Cinema directors can readily conjure up a fog just as they can produce night, but what is lost or blurred by such a verisimilar choice? Note, in particular, the confusion involving Demetrius and Lysander wherein each takes Puck for his intended opponent and is therefore led astray (“Where art thou?”—“I will be with thee straight”—“Where dost thou hide thy head?”—“Yea, art thou there?”—3.2.401, 403, 406, 411). Is this exchange to be understood as a consequence of dim light linked to a stage mist or gloom, so that the stage is murky and therefore a playgoer knows why the two men cannot see each other? Or is the playgoer to see two actors who act as if they do not see each other and are therefore understood to be in a fog? In the latter scenario, the fog (as with the mist affecting Hobson and Tawnycoat) is the product not of a stage technician but of our “imaginary forces,” in the phrase of the choric appeals in Henry V. The sequence, moreover, can display in one climactic (and very funny) moment the brand of myopia or blindness everpresent in this part of the comedy. The implicit suggestion in many modern productions that physical darkness causes these and other errors may blur some shrewd comic insights into the nature of love and lovers. Also to be factored in is some textual evidence about the staging of this segment (3.2.396–430). The sequence of events is clear. After

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Puck’s “Up and down, up and down, / I will lead them up and down,” Lysander enters looking for Demetrius, while Puck, using Demetrius’s voice, urges, “Follow me then / To plainer ground.” At this point the Riverside editor inserts a stage direction typical of today: “Exit Lysander, as following the voice.” Next, Demetrius enters, looking for Lysander, and Puck again challenges the would-be brawler, ending with “Follow my voice”—at which point the two exeunt so that (after a reentrance inserted in the Riverside) Lysander has an eight-line speech and is the first of the four lovers to fall asleep onstage, to be followed by Demetrius after he reenters with Puck. The scene as printed in the Riverside is the scene familiar on the page and on the stage today, but it is not the scene found in the early printed texts. Although the First Folio does provide some additional stage directions in this scene, neither it nor the 1600 First Quarto supplies an exit and reentrance for Lysander (despite Puck’s “Follow me then / To plainer ground,” 403–4). Editors have found fault with this omission, so that almost all of the editions I consulted made the choice found in the Riverside by adding some version of “Exit Lysander” at line 404 (after Puck’s “Follow me”), and an “Enter Lysander” after the Exeunt for Demetrius-Puck at line 412. Indeed, the Stanley Wells–Gary Taylor Oxford edition creates a new scene, 3.3, because the stage has been cleared once Lysander exits. An exception is David Bevington’s Bantam edition, which provides “Lysander wanders about, following the voice” instead of an Exit and “Lysander returns” instead of an Enter. Bevington notes: “It is not clearly necessary that Lysander exit at this point; neither exit nor reentrance is indicated in the early texts.”14 Taking Lysander offstage during the initial Demetrius-Puck encounter solves an apparent problem (why are the two men not aware of each other?)—but at a price. First, having Lysander groping his way around the stage helps to establish the to-be-imagined fog that is basic to this sequence. Even more suggestive is the potential insight into the basis for all this confusion. The absence of any “real” fog or darkness changes the genesis of the not-seeing (and not-hearing, in Lysander’s case), for the two men are not aware of each other (and are misled by Puck) because of the faulty “seeing” that is at the heart of this comedy— and is inventively displayed here, albeit by means of a theatrical vocabulary that relies more on playgoer participation than special effects. Another suggestive use of mist is found in Arden of Faversham,15 scenes 11–13. Given the many tellings of this story (ably discussed by Lena Orlin),16 a question arises: why in the play (as opposed to the numerous nondramatic versions) does attempt seven on Arden’s life succeed when attempts one through six fail? The older providential reading I was taught when I first read this play linked Arden’s demise to Reede’s

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curse at the beginning of scene 13, but that curse is immediately followed not by Arden’s death but by failed attempt six wherein Arden and Franklin drive off and wound Mosby, Black Will, and Shakebag (a scene to be followed by Arden’s “reconciliation” with Alice). Consider then the staging of scenes 11–12 in an Elizabethan theater. Arden and Franklin enter from door A and are joined by the Ferryman, who either enters behind them from the same door or enters from door B; regardless, they first talk (with such lines as “Fie, what a mist is here!“ and “I am almost stifled with this fog,” 11.5, 31), then “play fog” (as I imagine it, an equivalent to playing night or darkness by means of groping and hesitancy), then exit through door B (“Go before to the boat, and I will follow you,” 11.2–3). The stage direction that begins scene 12 has Will and Shakebag enter at several doors (“Here enters Will at one door and Shakebag at another”); so, assuming the stage has only two doors (I am invoking Occam’s razor here), one of the two must pass the three exiting figures “in the fog” or at least be closely juxtaposed. These two feel their way towards each other, operating by sound (“I pray thee speak still that we may meet by the sound,” 12.4–5), so that they probably do not meet, because “Then Shakebag falls into a ditch” (20.s.d.), at which point the Ferryman enters again (21.s.d.), presumably from door B where he had exited with Arden and Franklin, with “Who’s that that calls for help?” (22) followed by such lines as “Did you ever see such a mist as this?” (35). After the Ferryman exits, Shakebag tells us: “See how the sun hath cleared the foggy mist, / Now we have missed the mark of our intent” (42–43), and then Greene, Mosby, and Alice arrive (presumably from door A) with “What, is the deed done? Is Arden dead?” (45) answered by “What could a blinded man perform in arms? / Saw you not how till now the sky was dark, / That neither horse nor man could be discerned?” (46–48). Admittedly, this episode in the fog could be just another comic-inept blunder typical of a sequence of botched attempts, but, as set up here, Arden and Franklin, though confused, master the fog successfully with the aid of Ferryman, whereas Will and Shakebag, on their own, fail—and one of them has a fall. Moreover, again if only two stage doors are available, which one figures exeunt through and re-enter through can set up some suggestive effects, especially if the fog causes Shakebag (who has the “fall”) to walk right by the three exiting figures, one of whom is his target. What follows is the episode with Reede, then the confrontation with Alice, Mosby, and the two supposed hit men, the fight, Alice’s explanation, Arden’s acceptance of that explanation, and Franklin’s critique. Here is an example of what I term the “stage psychomachia”:17 Arden

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is the chooser, Franklin the voice of suspicion, reason, or clear thinking, and Alice the alternative linked to love or will, as expressed in the line “Content thee, sweet Alice, thou shalt have thy will” (13.130). What now seems to me especially important is that Franklin is first of all left behind for his four-line comment that includes “Poor gentleman, how soon he is bewitched!” (153); and secondly, he does not reappear until after the murder (14.279). Such an absence is not surprising given Franklin’s absence from the sources or alternative versions, but, along with Reede’s curse and Arden’s rejection of Reede, something has changed here, with the previous Arden-Franklin combination that had been impervious to the various murderous attempts now split after Arden’s egregious choice to believe Alice. That split, I am arguing, has been set up by the “fog” sequence, especially Shakebag’s fall into the ditch when operating on his own without the assistance of the Ferryman. In his trust in Alice and his rejection of Franklin, Arden is acting out his version of a “fog” and, like Shakebag, is about to fall into his version of the ditch. As regularly happens in Shakespeare’s plays (here I am thinking of the Gadshill robbery in 1 Henry IV, 2.2, or Brabantio’s accusations in Othello, 1.3), a sequence earlier in the action has set up a case study that displays the forces at work in the main events of the play. What may seem today no more than comic ineptitude may, in the theatrical vocabulary of the 1590s, have glossed a central situation in the play. My final example, the “vapors” scene in Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair,18 is different in that fog or mist is not called for but a verisimilar effect of a similar phenomenon may be involved. This “game,” set up by the denizens of the Fair and targeted at a group of visitors, is defined in a stage direction that describes it as “nonsense: every man to oppose the last man that spoke, whether it concern’d him, or no” (4.4.28.s.d.). Such a game reduces human “understanding, and discourse”—which Grace Wellborn had just termed the requisites for “reasonable creatures” (4.3.36–37)—to “nonsense,” a reduction best seen in the comments of Humphrey Wasp, the guardian of Bartholomew Cokes, the foolish young man helpless in the Fair. Wasp’s vocal participation in this “game” spells out the links between vapors and error-confusion, for, under the catalytic effects of ale and tobacco, his natural perversity metamorphoses into sheer meaninglessness and intellectual anarchy. Initially, Wasp objects “to any thing, whatsoever it is, so long as I do not like it” (31–32). When Knockem and Whit raise the issue of Wasp’s “reason,” he replies: “I have no reason, nor I will hear of no reason, nor I will look for no reason, and he is an ass, that either knows any, or looks for’t from me” (42–44). This “angry man” (48) is here using the word “reason” primarily in the sense of “cause”

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or “motive,” but, given Grace’s definition of “reasonable creatures,” he is also demonstrating the failure of his own rational faculty. The Fair people easily get him to contradict himself again and again, until he states: “I am not i’ the right, nor never was i’ the right, nor never will be i’ the right, while I am in my right mind” (72–74). Because of the colloquial language and the less-than-clear stage business, reading this scene (and this play in general) can be a challenge. For example, the real purpose of the “game” is spelled out briefly at the outset, when Knockem instructs Whit to tell Val Cutting to “continue the vapours for a lift” (4.4.1) or, in other words, to keep the game going as a trick or ruse to cover some other purpose. The truth is that the vapors, a device comparable to the cons at the heart of other Jonson comedies, are staged by the Fair people for the express purpose of fleecing Nordern, Puppy, and especially Wasp, from whom Edgworth steals Cokes’, license after a particularly “noisome vapour” (105) provides the pretext for a fight. In the buildup to this theft (and to the corruption of Dame Purecraft), the exact onstage activity is not clear, but two of the assembled figures (Nordern and Puppy) drink themselves into oblivion while the others drink periodic rounds—as indicated by “They drink again” (4.4.70.s.d) and Nordern’s iterated “I’ll ne mare” (3, 12, 75). Likely but less certain is that the onstage group would have been smoking tobacco and indeed producing a cloud of such “vapors.” Justice Overdo’s earlier tirade in his disguise had been against ale and tobacco, wherein he ranted against “the foam of the one, and the fumes of the other,” with their effects including not only “the diseases of the body” but also the “malady it doth the mind” as manifested in swearing, swaggering, and “the quarreling lesson” (2.6.1–2, 61, 65–66, 73). Similarly, Zeal-of-theLand Busy had identified ale as “a drink of Satan’s” that was “devised to puff us up, and make us swell in this latter age of vanity, as the smoke of tobacco to keep us in mist and error” (3.6.29–32). What I am suggesting is that such “mist and error” is embodied in the “game” in which reason is subverted in the heavy drinking, and in the smoke from the assembled users of tobacco, all combined so as to set up the successful con that deceives Puppy and Nordern (who lose their money), Wasp (who loses the license he is carrying), and Dame Purecraft (who is recruited as a prostitute). In this instance, as opposed to most of my previous examples, a visible mist of tobacco smoke is sustainable at length onstage so as to reinforce the vulnerabilities of visitors to the Fair who cannot “see” the truth of their situation.19 In conclusion, my mist, fog, and vapors scenes do not form a neat pattern or category. In particular, the presence of visible tobacco smoke in Bartholomew Fair (again, likely but not certain) would introduce a

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concrete image of “mist and error” that would correspond to today’s verisimilar expectations for staging the other three scenes, especially the scene of confusion involving Lysander and Demetrius, a segment that (according to our theatrical logic) seems to cry out for some comparable special effect. Hobson’s breaking through his personal “mist” is the most obvious presentation of the psychological dimension of such an effect, whereas any link between Shakebag’s fall and Arden’s fate is not likely to register for today’s playgoers wedded to our current theatrical vocabulary. Each of these scenes deals in its own way with faulty vision so as to display what can get in the way of true sight—and here I find the author of Arden the most inventive. My question remains: to what extent do today’s assumptions about verisimilar mist or fog stand as a barrier between us and a full understanding of the onstage theatrical vocabulary shared by Shakespeare, his players, and his playgoers? When reading and staging Elizabethan and Jacobean plays with verisimilar assumptions in our high-tech environment, are we as interpreters comparable to Franklin, the voice of reason, or to Shakebag, the figure most subject to fog, who tumbles into a ditch?

NOTES 1. For a full account of the evidence, see chapter 4 of my Elizabethan Drama and Modern Interpreters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). For an excellent study of stage illumination in the period, see R. B. Graves, Lighting the Shakespearean Stage, 1567–1642 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999). Productions since 1997 at the reconstructed Globe Theatre in London and since 2001 in the reconstructed Blackfriars Theatre in Staunton, Virginia, have made the experience of such universal lighting available to a wide range of playgoers, so that arguments that appeared novel in the 1980s and earlier may seem self-evident to some readers today. 2. Prologue, 17–18, 23; Chorus to Act 3, 35. Citations from Shakespeare and Edward III are from G. Blakemore Evans, ed., The Riverside Shakespeare, rev. ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997). 3. A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1950), M1017. 4. Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great, ed. J. S. Cunningham, Revels Plays (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1981). 5. Citations from Webster are from The Duchess of Malfi, ed. John Russell Brown, Revels Plays (London: Methuen, 1964) and The White Devil, ed. John Russell Brown, Revels Plays (London: Methuen, 1960). Similarly, from the Fletcher canon comes a reference to a “mist of ignorance” being washed off “with waters / Pure and repentant, from those eyes” (Island Princess, 8:155); and “through the mist of errors, like the Sun, / Through thick and pitchy Clouds,” goodness “breaks out nobly” (The Loyal Subject, 3:119). Citations from the Fletcher canon are taken from Arnold Glover and A. R. Waller eds., The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1905–12). See also 1 The Honest Whore (in Thomas Dekker,

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The Dramatic Works, ed. Fredson Bowers [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953–61], 2:1–131), where Bellafront speaks from her own experience: “Who least trusts, is most wise: / Men’s oaths do cast a mist before our eyes” (3.3.126–27); Sir Giles Goosecap (in The Plays of George Chapman: The Tragedies with Sir Gyles Goosecappe, gen. ed. Allan Holaday [Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1987]), where Clarence announces: “I have chosen love / To blind my Reason with his misty hands” (1.4.9–10); and Chettle’s Hoffman (The Tragedy of Hoffman, ed. Harold Jenkins, Malone Society [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951]), where Lorrique refers to “gross, dull, thick sighted fools, / Whom every mist can blind” (2391–92). Here and elsewhere I have modernized the spelling of old spelling editions. In the King James translation of 2 Peter 2:17, the wicked are described as “wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest; to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever.” 6. Citations from Hymenaei and The Sad Shepherd are from Ben Jonson, ed. C. H. Herford and Percy and Evelyn Simpson, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925–52), 7:232–33, 43. 7. The Triumphs of Truth, ed. David M. Bergeron, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, ed. Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino, 963–76 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 8. Histriomastix, ed. John S. Farmer, Tudor Facsimile Texts (Amersham, 1912). 9. For an analysis of the numerous “vanish” stage directions, see chapter 10 of my Recovering Shakespeare’s Theatrical Vocabulary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 10. Citations from 2 The Iron Age and 2 If You Know Not Me are from The Dramatic Works of Thomas Heywood, ed. R. H. Shepherd, (London: G. Pearson, 1874). 11. The full passage of the prince’s report is: .

A flight of ugly ravens Do croak and hover o’er our soldiers heads And keep in triangles and corner’d squares Right as our forces are embattled, With their approach there came this sudden fog Which now hath hid the airy [floor] of heaven, And made at noon a night unnatural Upon the quaking and dismayed world: In brief, our soldiers have let fall their arms, And stand like metamorphos’d images, Bloodless and pale, one gazing on another. (4.5.28–39)

12. Several plays call for onstage fires, as in Robert Wilson’s The Cobbler’s Prophecy, which climaxes with the burning of the Cabin of Contempt, and John Fletcher’s Bonduca, (in The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher cited in n. 5) where a sacrificial offering is linked to “A smoke from the Altar“ (6:112). 13. Edmond Ironside; or, War Hath Made All Friends, ed. Eleanore Boswell, Malone Society (London: Oxford University Press, 1928). 14. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ed. David Bevington (Toronto and New York: Bantam Books, 1988), 52. 15. Arden of Faversham, ed. M. L. Wine, Revels Plays (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1973). 16. Lena Orlin, Private Matters and Public Culture in Post-Reformation England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), chapter 1.

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17. See chapter 6 of my Elizabethan Drama and the Viewer’s Eye (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977). 18. Bartholomew Fair, ed. E. A. Horsman, Revels Plays (London: Methuen, 1960). 19. For a link between tobacco smoke and a mist, see Dekker’s If This be not a Good Play, the Devil is in it (in Dramatic Works, ed. Bowers, 3:113–223), where a mariner’s description of a ship in a storm includes: “I think the Devil is sucking Tobacco, here’s such a Mist” (2.1.164–65). See also the description in Monsieur D’Olive (in The Plays of George Chapman: The Comedies, gen. ed. Allan Holaday [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970]) of a tirade against tobacco in which the speaker Said t’was a pagan plant, a profane weed And a most sinful smoke, that had no warrant Out of the word; invented sure by Satan In these our latter days, to cast a mist Before men’s eyes, that they might not behold The grossness of old superstition Which is as t’were deriv’d into the church From the foul sink of Romish popery (2.2.200–207)

Enter three Turks and a Moor: Signifying the “Other” in Early Modern English Drama Virginia Mason Vaughan

WHEN

PLAYWRIGHT JOHN WEBSTER SCRIPTED MONUMENTS OF

Honor, a pageant to celebrate the installation of a new Lord Mayor from the Merchant Tailors’ Company in 1624, he included in his procession “two beasts, the Lyon and Cammell proper to the Armes of the Company.” On the camel, he notes, “rides a Turke, such as use to Travaile with Caravans,” and on the lion appears “a Moore or wild Numidian.”1 Webster’s published description assumes that his readers have a definite image of what such a Turk or a Moor would look like. That image depended, no doubt, partly on the reader’s previous experience at public pageants and processions and at London’s public theaters. For a reader in 2009, the challenge of visualizing Webster’s Turk and Moor—and understanding what messages they were intended to convey—is more difficult. If, as the Swiss doctor Thomas Platter reported, Early Modern English audiences attended the theater expecting to find peoples from exotic, faraway places, how can we determine what audiences saw when such characters crossed the stage?2 What kinds of signifiers did the actors rely on to mark their difference, and what effect did those techniques have? European strangers—Dutch, French, Spanish, German, and so on—were readily found on the busy streets of London; their language could be mocked in plays like The Shoemaker’s Holiday or The Merry Wives of Windsor, but they were not likely to be distinguished by costume. However persecuted they were, Jews had been known to Europe for centuries, and on stage they might be signaled, as Shylock is, by a “Jewish gabardine.” But few English people had traveled as far as Turkey, where by culture and religion the population was perceived as antithetical to Christian Europe. So too with the Moors of Africa, whose dark skin color contrasted with the fair skinned of people of northern climes. How, one wonders, were the 119

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least familiar and most exotic of others, African Moors and Ottoman Turks, embodied on the English stage in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries? The scripts that have come down to us frequently include Turks and Moors in speaking roles. Soliman, the eponymous Turkish emperor in The Tragedy of Soliman and Perseda, for example, declares his intention to take the island of Rhodes from the Knights of St. John: For by the holy Alcaron I sweare, Ile call my Souldiers home from Persia, And let the Sophie Breath, and from the Russian broiles Call home my hardy, dauntlesse Ianissaries, And from the other skirts of Christendome Call home my Bassowes and my men of war, And so beleaguer Rhodes by sea and land.3

Such ranting passages suggest the behavior expected of a Turk—rage, bluster, and violence—and the exotic allure of the Turkish court with its janissaries and bassas. But the stage direction, “Enter Solyman, Haleb, Amarath, and Ianesaries” gives no clue as to the actors’ appearance in such roles. Similarly, Eleazar, the Moorish hero of Lust’s Dominion, describes his reception in the streets of Spain. The people cry: There’s the Moor, That’s he that makes a Cuckold of our King, There go’s the Minion of the Spanish Queen; That’s the black Prince of Devils, there go’s hee That on smooth boies, on Masks and Revellings Spends the Revenues of the King of Spain.4

It’s clear from this passage that Eleazar feeds into the stereotype of the devilish, lascivious Moor, but the only suggestion we receive as to his physical appearance is the probability that the actor wears some sort of blackface makeup. But what was the impact of that black makeup, and what other visual cues signaled Eleazar’s otherness to the audience? In order to answer these intriguing questions, my analysis begins with the discourses that circulated while the playwrights were crafting their texts, particularly travel narratives, book illustrations, and artifacts. Early Modern English playwrights had access to a host of travel narratives that described African Moors and exotic Turks and commonly recounted differences in culture, religion, agriculture, or commerce, and occasionally mentioned physical features. Playwrights looking for source material may have pored over such accounts; Shakespeare, for example, turned to Richard Knolles’s General Historie and

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Description of the Turks (1603) in preparation for writing Othello, and his characterization of the Moor of Venice resonates with Leo Africanus’s Description and History of Africa (1600). Travel books and chorographies also frequently included illustrations. While the acting companies were preparing costumes and prosthetics, they might have looked at examples of a longstanding pictorial tradition—engravings that circulated in books—and, though less likely, the paintings, jewelry, and other artifacts collected in noble households.5 I turn next to some speculations about performance practice. Evidence as to what Early Modern English actors looked like is scanty at best, but we can glean some observations about the visual impact of performances from stage directions, costume and property lists (predominantly from Philip Henslowe), descriptions in court masques and pageants, and occasionally the texts themselves. Finally, I consider theatrical tradition, a crucial ingredient in a busy repertory theater’s performance practice—the legerdemain of disguise and impersonation unique to stage performance.

EXOTIC OTHERS IN EARLY MODERN DISCOURSE By the end of the sixteenth century, hosts of travel narratives circulated in England; Richard Hakluyt’s The Principall Navigations, Voyages and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589; 1598–1600) was the most comprehensive. Accounts varied widely: some were translations from Spanish and Portuguese sources; others served as propaganda for the burgeoning English trading companies; still others simply piqued curiosity about other peoples and climes. Sub-Saharan Africans were unfailingly described as black, with occasional references to lip size or hair texture.6 Sometimes the author sought to explain the dark epidermis, usually arguing that the Ethiopians’ black skin was caused by the heat of Africa’s sun. John Davies of Hereford, wrote in Microcosmos (1603): And in the torrid Zone it is so hott That flesh and Bloud (like flaming fire) it fries, And with a Cole-blacke beautie it doth blot, Curling the Haires upon a wyry [wiry] knott.7

Dr. Andrew Borde’s Introduction to the Boke of Knowledge, which circulated in the 1550s, focused on similar descriptive details. There are white Moors and black Moors, he notes, and both are infidels. The black Moors “have gret leppes, and [k]not tyd heare is blacke and

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curled[;] there skine is soft and there is nothing white but their teeth and the white of the eye.”8 Thus, in the opening scene of Othello, when Roderigo refers to the Moor as the “thick-lips,” he is tapping into a racial stereotype that had circulated for several decades. As mentioned earlier, the most universal signifier of Moorishness— and the one most visually recognizable—was black pigmentation. Actors who personified black Moors on the Early Modern English stage often made self-reflexive comments drawing attention to their skin color.9 Frequently they alluded to two longstanding proverbs: that the Ethiopian cannot change his spots or be washed white, and that because of his skin color the black Moor cannot blush. Titus Andronicus’s Aaron is characteristic of 1580s and 90s villainous Moors. Aaron claims: Coal-black is better than another hue In that it scorns to bear another hue; For all the water in the ocean Can never turn the swan’s black legs to white.

(4.2.103–4)10

Or, like Eleazar in Lust’s Dominion, stage Moors boast: “Thanks for my face, / Thanks that I have not wit to blush.”11 Both proverbs called attention to the actor’s blackened complexion and asserted the fiction of the character’s ineluctable blackness. Although Elizabethans generally lumped all Moors together as “blackamoors,” they sometimes acknowledged the lighter-skinned Moors of northern Africa as “tawny Moors.” Shakespeare’s Prince of Morocco is an interesting case in point. His first entrance in The Merchant of Venice is accompanied by the stage direction: “Enter Morochus a tawnie Moore all in white and three or foure followers accordingly, with Portia, Nerissa, and their traine.”12 Whether the stage direction was written by Shakespeare or by a scribe preparing prompt copy, the intent is clear; in contrast to sub-Saharan Africans, the Prince of Morocco should be seen to be a Moor of northern Africa in general, Morocco in particular, and his skin should have a brown tinge rather than Aaron’s coal black. The prince’s white robes and hefty scimitar also signified his status as a follower of Islam, making him doubly other to Shakespeare’s audience. If skin color—tawny or black—was the feature most often noted in Early Modern English descriptions of Africans, the wearing of a turban was seen as characteristic of a Turk. Some engravings of Moors show them turbaned as well, denoting their status as followers of Mohammed; and as Nabil I. Matar notes, “The Muslim head-dress became the most dominant, the most feared, and the most awe-inspiring sym-

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bol of Islam in Renaissance England.”13 The easiest way for an actor to indicate his Turkishness—and his status as a follower of Islam— was to don a turban. More was known about the Ottoman Turks than sub-Saharan Africans because England’s European neighbors had been battling them for centuries, and narratives of Turkish prowess in battle and subsequent atrocities circulated widely. Unlike black Africans, Turks were seldom represented as physically different from Europeans; instead, the emphasis was on their religion. John Speed briefly describes the Turk’s facial features; yet even here the focus is culture, not physical appearance: They are for the most part broad-faced, strong-boned, well proportioned, dull and heavie headed, of grosse understanding, idlely disposed, and yet greedie of wealth, luxurious in their diet, and beastly in their lustfull affections, without distinction of kindred or sexe, base minded, slaves to themselves, and their superiours in their own Country, yet ignorantly proud, and contemptuous of other nations, which they take in foule scorne.14

On the page following this description, Speed also provides his readers with a map bordered by figures of six male Turks on the left, six female Turks on the right. All the males wear full turbans and flowing robes or pantaloons, and the men from Greece, Egypt, and Persia sport handlebar mustaches. Indeed, the elite Turkish military forces, known as janissaries, were recognized partly by their facial hair; Nicholas Nicolay reported in his widely circulated Navigations, Peregrinations and Voyages, made into Turkie (1585) that “to the intent they should seem the more cruel & furious in the aspect of their faces, they do not suffer their beards to grow but above the lips, & let their mustaches grow very long, grosse & thicke.” In addition they “wear a Cemiterre [scimitar], & a dagger with a little hatchet hanging at his girdle, using a long harquebusier which they can handle very well.”15 Over time handlebar mustaches and scimitars came to serve as signifiers not simply for janissaries, but for all Turks. As Matthew Dimmock notes, “The mustache seems to have been specifically associated with the Ottoman ‘turke’ in this period.”16 Thomas Kyd referenced this sign system in The Spanish Tragedy when Hieronimo instructs Balthazar, “You must provide a Turkish cap, / A black mustachio and a fauchion” in order to impersonate the Great Soleiman.17 The “Turkish cap” is a turban, the “fauchion” a broad-edged sword, another version of the Turkish scimitar. Each of Speed’s Turks brandishes such a weapon. The wives on the right side of Speed’s map wear elaborate headdresses with veils attached, and flowing robes.18 Just as pictures

A Turkish Janissary, from Cesare Vecellio, Degli habiti antichi et moderni. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

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showed veils hiding the individual woman’s features from view, many narratives fantasized about the Sultan’s seraglio, where the lascivious Turk kept his women in seclusion. In Philip Massinger’s The Renegado, the Emperor Amurath’s niece Donusa explains: “Our jealous Turks / Never permit their fair wives to be seen / But at the public bagnios or the mosques, / Are even then, veiled and guarded.”19 Although far fewer Turkish women were depicted on the Early Modern English stage than men, it is likely they were intended to be heavily veiled when they did appear. In this illustration of a Turkish woman from Nicholas Nicolay’s Navigations, Peregrinations, and Voyages, made into Turkie, even the top of her face is covered. The engravings of costumed figures Speed uses to ornament his maps may have shaped readers’ impressions more vividly than the words in his text. Such drawings were readily available in books imported from the Continent. For example, Cesare Vecellio’s widely circulated Habiti Antichi et moderni di tutto il Mondo, first published in Venice in 1590, offered engravings of characteristic figures in costume dress, such as a Moorish girl in typical servants’ clothing and a wellto-do Moor in elaborate full-length gown bearing a scimitar (though he had “thick” lips). Richard Knolles’s influential Generall Historie of the Turkes included engraved portraits of Ottoman Emperors from Bajazeth to Amurath, each with a bulbous turban. Such descriptive narratives and lively portraits of Moors and Turks circulated in the bookstalls of St. Pauls, and they contributed to a dramatic shorthand, whereby a turban, a scimitar, or blackface makeup could evoke a host of associations in an English audience.

TEASING OUT THE EVIDENCE But what about the magic of the theater? What evidence can we tease from the scanty records that have survived as to what the audience saw when the text directs, Enter a Moor or Enter three Turks? Philip Henslowe’s papers provide some suggestive clues. In his playhouse inventory of 1598, he lists “The Mores lymes, and Hercolles lymes, and Will. Sommers sewtte.”20 It seems likely that the “lymes” in question were some sort of leggings the actor could quickly don—in Hercules’s case to show his extensive musculature, in the Moor’s case to suggest not only the blackness but also the nakedness of the African’s legs. This would accord with many narrative descriptions of nearly naked black Africans in contrast to the stocking-wearing English. A second item in the inventory is four “Turckes hedes.” The word “heads” was occasionally used as shorthand for headdress, in which

A Turkish woman dressed to leave her home. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

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A portrait of Solyman I from Knolles’s Generall Historie of the Turkes. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

case Henslowe might be referring to a collection of turbans. On the other hand, Henslowe’s editor, R. A. Foakes, notes that these false heads were possibly used in The Battle of Alcazar, “the plot of which calls for dead men’s heads as properties.”21 Like the head introduced in the final scene of Macbeth, these props could be brought on stage; in order to signify “Turkishness,” they probably were adorned with a turban, and perhaps the face was also given a flamboyant Turkish mustache. In this same vein, Henslowe also lists an “owld Mahemetes head,” which may have been used in Mahamet (now lost), first performed on August 14, 1594, and at least six times thereafter.22 The property itself may have been an image of Mohammed. Robert Greene’s Alphonsus of Aragon includes a vignette of Turks idolatrously wor-

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shipping Mohamet’s brazen head. A similar idol is mentioned in the stage directions for a dumb show in A Christian Turned Turk, where, in a pantomime of John Ward’s conversion to Islam, two enter “bearing half-moons, one with a Mahomet’s head following.”23 A “Mores cotte” is the final relevant entry in Henslowe’s diary. It suggests that in addition to body paint and prostheses, costumes were specifically designed to suggest Moorishness or Turkishness. Costumes provided audiences with the visual shorthand they needed to keep track of the multiple characters any particular actor might perform. The extant “plot” of The Battle of Alcazar lists eight roles for the actor Samuel Rowley: a Moorish attendant; Pisano (a Spanish captain); a Messenger; a Moorish Ambassador; a Devil; a Captain of Tangier; Death; and a Portuguese soldier.24 The tawny Moors of northern Africa as well as a Spanish captain would have been swarthy—darkcomplexioned but not coal black—so Rowley likely put some sort of tan-colored makeup on his face for the entire performance. With the proper costume, he could easily move from one of these roles to the other. The Moor was probably signaled by a “More’s coat,” perhaps a long white robe, and a headdress. The Spanish captain would have worn a European costume, Death a black cloak, and the Devil a black visor, perhaps with horns.25 Whether they were enforced or not, England’s sumptuary laws reflected a society obsessed with the physical markers of social status. Whatever the actor wore, his costume signified his role within a highly stratified society, and the social distinctions of dress applied to nonEnglish roles as well. Just as a Spanish noble would be grandly dressed while his servant wore plain clothes, a Moor of high status, such as Muly Hamet in The Battle of Alcazar or Eleazar in Lust’s Dominion, would be dressed accordingly.26 By 1612, when John Webster’s Jacobean tragedy, The White Devil, was first printed, English audiences had seen Richard Burbage’s impersonations of Othello, a noble Moor; when Webster’s Francisco, Duke of Florence, uses black makeup to disguise himself as Mulinassar the Moor, no stage directions call for any change in costume, and no one questions his status. Bracciano praises Mulinassar’s “honorable service ‘gainst the Turk,” assigns him a pension, and calls him “brave Mulinassar.” The Moorish waiting woman Zanche seeks upward mobility by initiating an affair with Mulinassar.27 In Mediterranean Italy, at least in the English imagination, black men could attain aristocratic status. While Muly Hamet, Eleazar, Othello, and Mulinassar were noble, other Moorish figures on the Early Modern English stage came from more modest backgrounds. Christopher Marlowe uses Moorish slaves to draw a chariot in Tamburlaine, Part One (4.2.1sd). Similarly, Scylla,

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dictator of Rome in Thomas Lodge’s Wounds of Civil War, enters in a “chair triumphant of gold, drawn by four Moors before the chariot.”28 Although he rises in status once his mistress Tamora becomes Empress, Aaron first appears in Titus Andronicus as a captive slave. The Moorish waiting women of Jacobean tragedies—Zanche (The White Devil), Kate (Monsieur Thomas), Zanthia (Sophonisba), Fidella (All’s Lost by Lust), among others—were likely costumed in kerchief and simple dress.29 Turks were better known to English audiences than African Moors, and dramatists who wrote about sultans and bassas had a rich pictorial tradition to draw from. Knolles’s engravings are best known to us today, but images of the most famous Ottoman emperors circulated widely throughout Europe. Nicolas de Nicolay’s Navigations, Peregrinations and Voyages included more everyday images, such as “A gentlewoman of the Turks being within her house” or “The janissary going to the wars.”30 It seems that playwrights knew what the term janissary meant, for in several plays stage directions simply instruct the janissaries to enter.31 Selimus, Emperor of the Turks, for example, begins with the stage directions “Enter Bajazet (emperor of Turkey), Mustaffa, Cherseoli, and the janissaries” and again in scene 13 calls for “Bajazet, Mustaffa, and the janissaries” to enter.32 Presumably the Queen’s Company, who performed this play, signified “janissariness” by distinctive headgear; almost certainly the actors donned false mustaches and carried large scimitars. With turbans, robes, and scimitars to signal a Turk’s identity, the actor who performed such roles probably didn’t need much makeup— although he might have donned a false mustache. Black Moors were another matter. In plays of the 1580s, as I have argued elsewhere, actors may have worn black vizards, especially if they did not have a speaking role. But once playwrights began to feature black Moors in major parts and actors needed to speak clearly and be heard, vizards were no longer practical and black makeup became the rule. The makeup itself was performative: when the actor in black makeup pointed to his face and remarked on his darkened complexion—as Aaron does several times in Titus Andronicus —he was drawing the audience’s gaze to his blackened face. Like Cleopatra’s reference to an actor “boying” her greatness, such metatheatrical gestures reminded the audience that they were watching a performance. This metadramatic quality became even more marked in late Jacobean and Caroline plays in which actors playing Europeans assume blackface as a disguise. After King James’s apothecary, John Rumler, developed a concoction of grease and walnut juice to darken the gypsies in Ben Jonson’s masque, The Gypsies Metamophosed, the possibility of “washing the Ethiop white” could be realized on stage.

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Rumler’s ingredients, in contrast to the black paint used in earlier performances, could easily be scrubbed off with water and cloth; as Andrea R. Stevens notes, this new technology perhaps initiated the theatrical convention of “racial change, rather than static racial identity.”33 Richard Brome’s The English Moor, Philip Massinger’s The Parliament of Love, and William Berkeley’s The Lost Lady feature, for example, long-suffering white heroines who adopt Moorish garb and complexion to pursue and tame their philandering men. In quasimiraculous finales, the makeup is washed off and the women return to their former state, often to the relief of their partners. The women, of course, were not really women, but transvestite actors who used white and red makeup to signal their feminine qualities. Thus the visual contrast between black and white—particularly provocative in tragedies such as Lust’s Dominion, Titus Andronicus, and Othello, which all paired a white woman with a black man—was exaggerated. In addition to black makeup, actors performing the role of black Moors may have donned a wig of blackened lamb’s wool in an attempt at verisimilitude. Titus Andronicus’s Aaron refers in 2.2.34–35 to his “fleece of woolly hair that now uncurls / Even as an adder when she doth unroll.” The Revels accounts suggest that by the time Shakespeare wrote his tragedy, the use of such wigs was common practice; they itemize payments in 1571–72 for “Lambeskins for moores” and in 1576–78 for “lambes skynnes.”34 Like hats, false beards, and mustaches, wigs were common properties that could quickly be put on or taken off to mark changes in the actor’s identity. England’s residual sumptuary laws, the wearing of livery, as well as references to badges of office, all suggest that the Elizabethans enjoyed “a habit of mind accustomed to seeing symbolism in physical objects.”35 And, as Farah Karim-Cooper argues, costume and cosmetics were crucial elements in creating theatrical personae quite distinct from the actors themselves. So, too, were items of jewelry and other accoutrements English men and women might carry or wear. “The relationship between the human body and its prosthetic attachments,” she notes, “is ultimately theatrical.”36 Like the Turkish/Moorish scimitar, such items can become tropes in their own right. A case in point is the pearl earring, which glows “like a rich jewel” when it’s suspended from an “Ethiop’s ear” (Romeo and Juliet, 1.5.43). Both women— Juliet and the Ethopian woman—are commodified here, Juliet as a pearl and the Ethopian as the backdrop whose skin sets it off. As Kim F. Hall demonstrates, representations of black Africans, often slaves, wearing pearl collars or earrings circulated throughout Europe in the Early Modern period.37 The pleasing visual contrast of lustrous white against dark black—reiterated in much of the imagery of Shakespeare’s

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Othello—gradually acquired associations not simply of beauty, but also of sensuality and exoticism. Thus when Queen Anne wished Ben Jonson to create a Mask of Blackness, the dramatist attired the blackfaced masquers in cloth of azure and silver, “and, for the front, eare, neck, and wrists, the ornament was of the most choise and orient pearle; best setting off from the black.”38 It is reasonable to assume that black Moors of high status in Jacobean and Caroline plays would have worn at least one pearl earring.

STAGE MOORS AND TURKS By the time Philip Henslowe compiled his diary, dramatists had a host of character types to draw from as they imagined their plays. Moors and Turks, especially, had inhabited early sixteenth-century masques and pageants and were featured in the plays of the 1580s. As a consequence, a dramatist need only write, “Enter three Turks and a Moor” to be understood. Dramas set in exotic locales—northern Africa, the eastern Mediterranean, or the Levant—often included both Moors and Turks. According to An Index of Characters in Early Modern Drama, at least nineteen English plays from the Early Modern period featured both.39 In some cases, such as Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, the Moorish figure was a servant, the Turk a character of higher status. In other cases, Moorishness and Turkishness are conflated, as in Thomas Heywood’s The Fair Maid of the West, Parts I and II. In these adventure dramas, Mullisheg, the King of Fez, is described as having a black complexion; yet his entourage consists of figures from the Turkish court, Bashaw and Alcade. A dramatist who thought “More is more,” Heywood made his heroine Bess’s adventures as fulsome as possible, subjecting her to the threat of forced conversion to Islam as well as a lascivious Moor’s sexual advances. To create such intriguing characters, England’s dramatists had at hand a variety of ways to portray exotic Moors and Turks to the delight of their audience—stage directions in their playtexts did not need to be fulsome. Occasionally, when a play featured a dumb show, the dramatist might add descriptive stage directions to tell the actors what the characters were meant to wear or carry. Such a scene opens George Peele’s Battle of Alcazar, as the Presenter introduces “The Negro” Muly Hamet to the audience: Blacke in his looke, and bloudie in his deeds, And in his shirt staind with a cloud of gore, Presents himselfe with naked sword in hand,

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Accompanied as now you may behold, With devils coted in the shapes of men.

Stage directions instruct Muly and two murderers to bring in his uncle Abdelmunen, draw aside the bed curtains where his two brothers are sleeping, then “smoother the yong princes in the bed. Which done, in sight of the uncle they strangle him in his chaire, and then go forth.”40 As the “negro” Moor, Muly is distinguished from other Moors by his black skin, a marker of his devilry. Even without the Presenter’s pronouncements, Muly’s bloodstained shirt and sword indicate his murderous designs.41 Robert Daborne’s A Christian Turned Turk also uses visual images to convey a message to the audience. The dumb show that concludes scene 8 begins with a catalog of props that signal what to expect: “Enter two Turks, one bearing a turban with a half-moon in it, the other a robe, a sword; a third with a globe in one hand an arrow in the other.” This Turkish costume is intended for Ward to don during the ceremony, an action that will signify his switch from European Christian to Islamic Turk. Ward enters in a Christian habit, mounted on an ass; then the Mufti, or chief priest, pulls him off the ass and dresses him in the Turkish turban and robe, hands him a sword, and makes him swear allegiance on a statue of Mahomet. The ceremony culminates in the priest’s symbolic gesture of offering Ward a cup of wine, which he spurns. Clothes, sword, and discarded wine all serve to represent Ward’s shift in identity. Another source of descriptive stage directions is the plays written by amateur dramatists. Since these writers were not professional playwrights working inside a repertory company for actors they knew, they were more likely to spell out exactly how they wanted their characters and the action to be realized. For example, Jasper Mayne, an Oxford-educated Anglican minister (1604–72), wrote a host of poems and at least two plays. One, the anonymously published tragicomedy The Amorous Warre (1648), was never realized on stage, but the text offers a panoply of exotica. In act 3, scene 2, a party of royals appear “like Amazons; their faces discolour’d to a comely Browne.” They are then entertained by a masque of Moors, figured by several visual clichés.42 The speaker introduces the ensuing entertainment as “A warlike Dance performed by Warlike Moores; / Just in such postures as they adore their gods, / Before they go to battle.” Stage directions follow: Here six Moores dance after the ancient Aethiopian manner. Erect Arrowes stucke round their heads, in their curled haire, instead of Quivers. Their Bowes in their hands, Their upper parts naked. Their neather from

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the wast, to their knees cover’d with hoses of blue Sattin, edged with a deepe silver fringe. Their legs also naked, incircled with rings of gold; the like their Armes. Great pendants of Pearle at their eares. At every close, expressing a cheerefull Adoration of their Gods.43

This detailed visual image suggests Mayne had seen engravings or paintings of African Moors in battle gear. In fact, Mayne’s description is quite close to Vecellio’s image of a “black inhabitant of Zanzibar.” His stage directions underscore several themes: the physical features of black skin and woolly hair; the cultural condition of naked arms and legs; the exotic richness of gold bracelets and pearl earrings; the practice of pagan worship. How he would have imagined a dance in the ancient Ethiopian manner is hard to determine, but he may have been recalling classical descriptions of pagan rituals. Thomas Goff, who wrote dramas for his students to perform at Oxford’s Christ Church College, also exploited what had become a visual shorthand. In The Raging Turk, or, Bajazet the Second (1656), he included janissaries in the cast list, and the initial stage direction indicates the props to be used: “Enter Bassaes, Isaack with a Crown in his hand, Mustapha with a Scepter, Mesithes with a Sword, they Crown Corcutus youngest son to Bajazet.”44 The sword, scepter, and crown are traditional symbols of royalty, to be sure, but when born by turban-wearing actors, they also suggest the might of the Ottoman Empire. More telling are the stage directions for William Percy’s Mahomet and His Heaven (1601), a play written for performance by children that was never printed but has survived in manuscript. By virtue of his family connections and rank, Percy (1574–1648), the third son of Henry Percy, eighth earl of Northumberland, could never be called a professional playwright, but he had definite ideas about the way his play should be performed. His cast list describes Mahomet as “The false Prophet in greene, and greene his Turbant. He the viceregent of Heaven, without Moustach if for Pouls.” Percy aspired to have his play performed by the Children of St. Pauls, and although the boy actors would have regularly donned false beards and mustaches to perform adult roles, he may have thought that the boy playing Mahomet would look silly in the stereotypical Ottoman handlebar mustache. Dervis, “A Mahometaine Fryar,” was to wear a “gowne greene of callour and hoode of the same, both being beset with divers culloured patches, old and not tall of stature.” Chiause, “a Lawyer Mohametaine,” wears a gown of velvet black and a “round cap and coate black, with a gilt Mace hanging down his girdle.” Guavequir and Mongir are “Justicers unto Mahomet,” and appeared “in long black gowns to the foote, faces black, caps black and flat, Red Pendants behind, the one with copper

A Moor of Zanzibar from Cesare Vecellio, Degli hatibi antichi et moderni di tutto il mondo. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

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Flayle with bloody spines, the other Pure.”“ When Mahomet first enters, he bears “an Alcoran and sylver crescent on his Turbant.”45 Percy’s characters bear the traditional signifiers of the Ottoman Empire—turbans, Qu’ran, and crescent moon. The color green was widely believed to be reserved for Mahomet and his prophets in Islamic culture, whereas Dervis’s patched gown suggests the neediness and greediness of mendicant orders. The justicers’ black faces mark their status as black angels who call the deceased to account for their violations of Islamic law.46 Here the similarity to medieval cycle plays —when dark devils would leer from faces painted black—is palpable. Like the anonymous authors of the Corpus Christi plays, Percy exploited a ready-made system of signs to convey his characters’ moral status to the audience.

IMPERSONATIONS The theatrical techniques described here enabled Early Modern English dramatists to use visual shorthand to establish their characters. Just as they did with other generic characters—nurse, ambassador, counselor, herald, sergeant, steward, and so forth—they set up a Moor’s or a Turk’s type from his first appearance by means of a readily understood sign system. As G. K. Hunter contends, in the mad rush of staging plays in a changing repertory, the actors needed to establish the character before the action could be understood. In contrast to the realistic drama of Chekhov and Ibsen, where the decoration of a drawing room could establish character and action, Early Modern plays relied upon characters to create an imaginary environment on a comparatively bare stage.47 When he entered, as Alan C. Dessen attests, the actor established the locale “through dialogue, properties, costume, or distinctive actions.”48 With properties, makeup, and costume, he could also establish the character’s ethnicity. In pageants and masques, the Moorish and Turkish figures represented geographical regions far beyond England’s shores. Like the figures on the frontispiece of contemporary atlases, the individual stood for an entire population. In Richard Flecknoe’s “Allegorical Fiction,” a masque titled The Mariage of Oceanus and Brittania (1654), a dance introduces the four parts of the world: “Asia in Turkish habit, Affrica in Moorish, and all black, America swarthy in a feathered garment; and Europe fair and richly clad. And dauncing first severally their entrance they deliver their riches to Oceanus, who presents them to Brittania.”49 The Moors and Turks who populated masques and Lord Mayors’ pageants were figures of display. Standing or kneeling below an image of

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“Britannia,” they were meant to convey England’s superior culture and religion as well as its colonial ambitions. But in masques and pageants, where they seldom spoke, they had no agency. In contrast, when such figures assumed talking roles in the theater, they could speak of their own experiences and emotions, frequently belying the signals conveyed by their visual appearance. While their appearance might evoke the stereotype, their words and actions could complicate, even subvert, the audience’s initial impression. Shakespeare’s Aaron is an obvious case in point. Black in his face, he spends the first three acts of Titus Andronicus hatching diabolical plans for the slaughter of Tamora’s enemies and relishing their agony. But in act 4 something changes. The arrival of his newly delivered son, the child bearing his hue, turns Aaron into a multidimensional character. Although he still exults in the evil he has perpetrated, by the play’s end he is the only character—except perhaps for Tamora —who values his offspring’s life more than his own. While the most memorable Early Modern English dramas frequently make use of the kind of visual shorthand I have described, they nearly always undercut the expectations they arouse. Christopher Marlowe’s raging Turk, the Emperor Bajazeth, marches on stage to declare himself the scourge of God; yet however much delight audiences take in his downfall, his palpable suffering is likely to win some sympathy when he appears encaged and despairing. In Roderigo’s, Iago’s, and Brabantio’s fulminations in the opening scene of Othello, the audience receives aural references to the visual signifiers of Moorishness— blackness and thick lips—yet when they actually see the character, those signifiers are countered by Othello’s language and demeanor. In sum, however much we who live in multiracial cultures deplore the stereotyping of people of different colors, religions, or cultures, such tropes were essential to Early Modern English drama. These conventional visual signifiers quickly established characters, aroused audience expectations, and set the stage for the contradictions and complexities that only the actor could convey. As the best Early Modern playwrights knew, the actor alone could make the Turk or the Moor more than the subject of a dull narrative or the static image in a painting. Only he could bring the “Other” to life.

NOTES 1. John Webster, Monuments of Honor (London, 1624). 2. He noted that “the English do not much use to travel, but are content ever to learn of foreign matters at home.” Quoted from E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923), 2:365–66.

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3. Anon. The Tragedie of Solimon and Perseda (London, 1599), Sig. C1v. 4. Thomas Dekker, Lust’s Dominion, in The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, ed. Fredson Bowers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), 136. 5. See Kim F. Hall, Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 211–53, for a fascinating account of representations of black Africans in European jewelry, painting, and other artifacts. 6. For an overview of English representations of sub-Saharan Africans in the late sixteenth century, see Alden T. Vaughan and Virginia Mason Vaughan, “Before Othello: Elizabethan Representations of sub-Saharan Africans,” William and Mary Quarterly 54, 3rd series (1997): 10–44. 7. John Davies, Microcosmos (London, 1603), 67. See Mary Floyd-Wilson, “Temperature, Temperance, and Racial Difference in Ben Jonson’s The Masque of Blackness,” English Literary Renaissance 28 (1998): 183–285, for a discussion of climate theory in this period. 8. Andrew Borde, The first boke of the Introduction of knowledge (London, 1555), Sig. M4r. 9. See Virginia Mason Vaughan, Performing Blackness on English Stages, 1500– 1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 10. Titus Andronicus, ed. Jonathan Bate, The Arden Shakespeare, 3rd series (London: Routledge, 1995). 11. Dekker, 4:153. 12. Quoted from the Norton Facsimile of the First Folio of Shakespeare, 2nd ed., Charlton Hinman, (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996), 185. 13. Nabil I. Matar, “Renaissance England and the Turban,” in Images of the Other: Europe and the Muslim World before 1700. Cairo Papers in Social Science 19.2, ed. David R. Blanks (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1997), 39–54. 14. John Speed, A Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World (London, 1631), 35. 15. Nicholas Nicolay, The Navigations, Peregrinations and voyages, made into Turkie (London, 1585), 73a–b. 16. William Percy, Mahomet and His Heaven, ed. Matthew Dimmock (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006), 185. 17. The Spanish Tragedy, ed. J. R. Mulryne (London: A. C. Black, 1989), 107. 18. Speed, 135–36. 19. Quoted from Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England, ed. Daniel J. Vitkus (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 255. 20. Philip Henslowe, Henslowe’s Diary, 2nd ed., ed. R. A. Foakes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 318. 21. Henslowe, 18. 22. See ibid., 23–27. Annals of English Drama, 975–1700, ed. Alfred Harbage (London: Methuen, 1964), lists The Turkish Mahomet and Hiren the Fair Greek in 1588 and suggests that it might have been the Mahomet referenced in Henslowe’s Diary. 23. Quoted from Vitkus, 198. 24. See Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 197–98. On the visual impact of doubling, see also G. K. Hunter, “Flatcaps and Bluecoats: Visual Signals on the Elizabethan Stage,” Essays and Studies 33 (1980): 16–47. 25. For a discussion of the conflation of devilry with blackness, see Vaughan, Performing Blackness, 19–24. 26. See Vaughan, Performing Blackness, 52, for Vecellio’s engraving of a well-to-do Moor.

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27. John Webster, The White Devil, ed. J. R. Mulryne (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1969), 97 (5.1.43–45). 28. Thomas Lodge, The Wounds of Civil War, ed. Joseph W. Houppert (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1969), 43. 29. See Vaughan, Performing Blackness, 113, for Vecellio’s engraving of a Moorish serving woman. 30. Vitkus, picture portfolio. 31. See, for example, Robert Daborne’s A Christian Turned Turk and Philip Massinger’s The Renegado in Vitkus. 32. Quoted from Vitkus, 61 and 100. 33. Andrea R. Stevens, “‘Assisted by a Barber’: The Court Apothecary, Special Effects, and The Gypsies Metamorphosed,” Theatre Notebook 61, no. 1 (2007): 6. 34. Albert Feuillerat, Documents Relating to the Office of the Revels in the Time of Queen Elizabeth (Louvain, 1908), 41. 35. Frederick Kiefer, Shakespeare’s Visual Theatre: Staging the Personified Characters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 12. 36. Farah Karim-Cooper, Cosmetics in Shakespearean and Renaissance Drama (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 72. 37. Hall, 211–53. 38. Ben Jonson, “The Queens Masques. The first, of Blackness,” in Works (London, 1616), 894. 39. See Thomas L. Berger, William C. Bradford, and Sidney L. Sondergard, An Index of Characters in Early Modern Drama Printed Plays, 1500–1660, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 40. George Peele, The Battle of Alcazar, ed. W. W. Greg for the Malone Society, 1907, Sig. A2r–v. 41. For further discussion, see Vaughan, Performing Blackness, 37–43. 42. Hall observes that “Amazons quickly become linked with African and Asian women in early colonialist discourses.” See Hall, 217. 43. Jasper Mayne, The Amorous Warre, A Tragi-Comoedy (Oxford, 1648), 34. 44. Thomas Goff, The Raging Turk, or, Bajazet the Second (London, 1656), Sig. A3r. 45. Percy, 60–63. 46. Percy, 190. 47. See Hunter, 16–47, esp. 28. 48. See Alan C. Dessen, “Stage Directions and the Theater Historian, “ in A Handbook on Early Modern Theatre, ed. Richard Dutton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 524. Dessen’s analysis of the kinds of information we can glean from stage directions—and the many silences that frustrate us—is invaluable for anyone interested in reconstructing the visual impact of Early Modern performances. 49. Richard Flecknoe, The Marriage of Oceanus and Brittania, an Allegoricall Fiction (London, 1594), Sig. D1r.

III Revisioning Performance

Visualizing and Performing Jewishness: Jews and “Shylocks” on Stage from the Restoration to Late Romanticism Fernando Cioni

FOR MANY CENTURIES—AND THIS IS STILL PARTLY THE CASE TO-

day—Shylock stood for “the Jew.” The character of Shylock has undergone radical transformations in its production and reception over the centuries. In this essay I will focus on those actors, performances, and plays that have changed the ways both of staging and of reading the character of the Jew. I will outline how modes of visualizing and performing the Jew have changed over the centuries, especially in shifting contexts of discourse regarding Jews: from Early Modern antiSemitism, to eighteenth-century sympathy, to Romantic and Victorian Orientalism.

JEWS ON STAGE AND THE CONFIGURATION OF SHYLOCK Jews can be traced on the English stage back to the miracle plays, where they were always depicted as wicked, bloodthirsty people guilty of the murder of Jesus Christ. In the Book of the Common Prayer, Jews were stigmatized together with “Turks, infidels, and heretics.” Until the 1580s, Jews were casual and incidental characters. Needless to say, there was no intention to present Jewish life with any pretense to verisimilitude. Stephen Gosson, in The School of Abuse (1579), mentions what is probably the first play, now lost, with a Jew as the main character: “The Iew . . ., showne at the Bull, representing the greedinesse of worldly chusers, and bloody mindes of Usurers.”1 Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta represents a considerable advance in the artistic depiction and treatment of the Jew, even though Barabas maintains some of the stereo141

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typed features of the stage Jew. Shakespeare’s treatment of the Jew in The Merchant of Venice represents the first time a dramatist seems to be interested in providing some verisimilitude to the character. Other references to Jews can be found in Shakespeare’s plays, but most of them are strongly affected by the stereotyped idea of the Jew: Falstaff. You rogue, they were bound, every man of them, or I am a Jew else: an Hebrew Jew. 1 Henry IV 2.4.177 Launce. A Jew would have wept to have seen our parting. The Two Gentlemen of Verona 2.3.1 Launce. Why, I tell thee, I care not, though he burn himself in love. If thou wilt, go with me to the ale-house; if not, thou art an Hebrew, a Jew, and not worth the name of a Christian. The Two Gentlemen of Verona 2.5.41–44 Costard. My sweet ounce of man’s flesh! my incony Jew! Love’s Labour’s Lost 3.1.130 Flute. Most brisky juvenal, and eke most lovely Jew . . . A Midsummer Night’s Dream 3.1.83 Benedick. if I do not love her, I am a Jew. I will go get her picture. Much Ado About Nothing 2.3.346–347 Third Witch. Liver of blaspheming Jew . . . Macbeth 4.1.3 Not dissimilar is the depiction of the Jew in the work of Shakespeare’s contemporaries. In John Marston’s The Malcontent (1604), “Jew” and “poisoner” are used as synonyms:

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Mendoza. Canst thou impyson? Canst thou impoyson? Malevole. Excellently—no Jew, ’pothecary or politician better.2

In John Webster’s The Devil’s Law-case (1610), Romelio, a Christian merchant, disguises himself as “an Italianated Jew” to carry out his plan because he feels safer and freer adopting the garb of a Jew.3 Trivial references to Jews can be found in the works of Greene,4 Massinger,5 Shirley,6 Ford,7 and Dekker.8 Addressing someone as “Jew” was offensive. The age’s stereotyped configuration of the Jew meant that the person was not being addressed as a real individual, but rather as a stock character standing for evil and most of the seven sins in particular, such as greed, wrath, and pride. Two different Jewish characters are depicted in Robert Wilson’s The Three Ladies of London (1581) and in John Fletcher’s The Custom of the Country (1647). In Wilson’s morality play, the characters are named after their roles: the three ladies’ names are Lucre, Love, and Conscience. Lady Lucre is the character who masters and corrupts all men and all things. Her servants “come from Italy, Barbary, Turky, from Iury.”9 Two characters even come from Venice: Usury and the merchant Mercadore. In Turkey Mercadore meets the Jew Gerontus, who lends him two thousand ducats for three months and then another one thousand. Mercadore never gives the money back to Gerontus; once they meet again, Gerontus asks him for his money, but gives Mercadore several more days to procure the sum. Unlike The Merchant of Venice, in this play it is the Jew who is cheated by the Christian, who, pretending to abjure his religion and his country, is released from all his debts according to the Turkish law. Even though Gerontus is a victim and behaves like a good Jew, he is still derided and offended by Mercadore: be hangd, sitten scald drunken Iew.10 it dus me good, dat me haue coossend de Iewe.11 Me be a Turke, no, it will make my Ladie Lucar to smile, When she knowes how me did da scall Iewe beguile.12

In Fletcher’s play, Zabulon, servant to Hippolyta, replies to Rutilio, who has just denied that help and courtesy can be expected from a Jew: We are men, And have, like you, compassion when we find Fit subjects for our bounty.13

Zabulon’s attitude is not dissimilar from Shylock’s in the famous speech, “Hath not a Jew eyes?” (3.1). Both claim to be considered men like the Christians.

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SHYLOCKS AND JEWS ON STAGE FROM THE RESTORATION TO LATE ROMANTICISM Although The Merchant of Venice was available in the four folios and even in the 1653 quarto,14 both the play and the character of the Jew almost disappeared from the stage until the last decade of the seventeenth century.15 The reason for this hiatus can be found both in the new social status of the few newly arrived Jews of England, wicked usurers no more but merchants of high standing; and in the lack of Jewish characters in the works of Corneille, Racine, and Molière, the models and sources for Restoration theater. When John Dryden lost his laureateship and his pension and returned to the theater in 1693, he did not have models or stereotypes to follow when he drafted a new play partly focused on a Jewish hero. Love Triumphant, performed at Drury Lane in January 1694, is a tragicomedy, with the serious part focused on a supposed incestuous love, and the comic part, almost a third of the whole play, on Sancho, an apostate Jew. Sancho, who is serving the King Veramond as colonel, informs his colleague Carlos that he has become rich after his father’s death: Sancho. Good news; Carlos, the old Jew, is dead. Carlos. What Jew ? Sancho. Why, the rich Jew, my father. He’s gone to the bosom of Abraham his father, and I, his Christian son, am left sole heir. Now do I intend to be monstrously in love.16

Sancho, whose name is reminiscent of Don Quixote’s servant, has nothing that could suggest he is an Israelite. As Van Der Ven argues, he does not have “many Jewish traits, either conventional or real,” he is not a moneylender, and he does not speak with that “jewish cant” that characterized the Jewish characters in the following century.17 Vanity and boastfulness are his main traits, making him nearer to the braggart soldier than to the Renaissance stage Jew. Dryden represents his Jew as a fool, rendering him a kind of buffoon. With Sancho the Jew starts to become the ridiculous Jew, a stock character of the eighteenthcentury theater. The eighteenth century opened with the first adaptation of The Merchant of Venice, Granville’s The Jew of Venice.18 Continuing the stage tradition of derision and ridicule of Jewish characters, Shylock and Jessica were turned into comic figures. In Granville’s adaptation, Shylock was performed by Thomas Dogget, who had played Sancho in Dryden’s Love Triumphant. Dogget was one of the leading comic actors of the time, and his choice for the role of Shylock could not but affect the depiction of the Jew. Nicholas Rowe in 1709 lists Shylock among the

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“Master-Pieces of ill Nature, and satirical Snarling” and admits that “tho’ we have seen the Merchant of Venice receiv’d and acted as a comedy, and the part of the Jew perform’d by an excellent Comedian, yet I cannot but think it character was design’d tragically by the author.”19 John Downes, bookkeeper and prompter of the Lincolns-Inn-Fields Theatre, describes Dogget as the only comical actor of his times: “Mr. Dogget, on the stage, he’s very aspectbound, wearing a farce in his face; his thoughts deliberately framing his utterance congruous to his looks. He is the only comick original extant.”20 Granville turns Shylock from a moneylender into a stock jobber, a figure very much despised during the Restoration. It was caricatured by Thomas Shadwell in The Volunteers, or the Stock-Jobbers,21 performed at Drury Lane in mid-November 1692 with Dogget in the leading role. Granville could have been affected in the configuration of his Shylock by the description of the new Jewish merchants at the Royal Exchange made by Edward Ward in his The London Spy (1698–1700): “There, likewise, were the Lord’s Vagabonds, the Jews, who were so accurs’d for their Infidelity that they are generally the Richest People in all Nations where they Dwell. . . . These, says my Friend, are the Hawkes of Mankind, the Spies of the Universe, the only Trade-Politicians, subtle Knaves, and great Merchants.”22 Both Shylock and Jessica are comic characters in the play. Shylock, unlike The Merchant of Venice and other Jewish characters in Renaissance drama, is not a character to despise because of his religion or his being a usurer; but, following Dryden, he is the object of general derision. Granville follows the original text, but what he adds and what he omits turn the play into a sort of travesty. All the tragic elements, mixed up with comic relief, are smoothed down. The eighteenth-century Shylock was adapted in ways different from Shakespeare’s original character. If Shakespeare’s Shylock is a revengeful Jew who never would sit at the same table with the Christians,23 Granville’s Shylock toasts several times with Bassanio and his friends, even proposing his own toast: I have a Mistress, that out-shines ’em all— Commanding yours—and yours tho’ the whole Sex: O may her Charms encrease and multiply; My Money is my Mistress! Here’s to Interest upon Interest. [Drinks].24

Jessica, on her part, tries to make the audience laugh at Shylock, mocking her father in a way not dissimilar from that of Dryden’s Sancho when she speaks of his father:

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Shut Doors after you; fast bind, fast find, These were his last Words: Thus I avoid the Curse of Disobedience: Be thou shut till I Open thee.25

During the second half of the eighteenth century Jewish characters—or allusions to Jews—increasingly populated English drama,26 because of both the reinstallment of The Merchant of Venice on the stage in 1741 and the 1755 Jew Bill.27 The “Jewish” plays continued to depict the Jew as a stock, stereotyped comic character. It was Richard Cumberland in 1794 who presented for the first time a good and honest Jew, Sheva in The Jew. Cumberland, as he had already done with the Irish in The West Indian (1771), and with the Scots in The Fashionable Lover (1772), wanted to rehabilitate the Jew, contributing to the proliferation of nonstereotyped Jews in nineteenth-century British theater.

SHYLOCK ON STAGE FROM MACKLIN TO CHARLES KEAN When Charles Macklin succeeded in persuading the Drury Lane’s manager, Charles Fleetwood, to abandon Granville’s Jew of Venice to stage The Merchant of Venice in 1741,28 he did not know that he was beginning a revaluation of Shylock, a new direction which found its apex in the Romantic debate as to whether Shylock was a villain or a tragic character. The first performance of The Merchant of Venice since the Restoration began a reconsideration of Shylock in particular and Jewish character in general, which, in turn, led to the nineteenth-century tragic configuration and visualization of Shakespeare’s Hebrew. Macklin humanized Shylock, converting him, as Jonathan Bate suggests, “from a pantomime villain to an impassioned and dignified, though still malevolent, creature.”29 An anonymous contemporary theatergoer emphasizes the change: He attempted the character of Shylock and not thinking that a Jew must necessarily be a hyena, he began the part like a cool calculating usurer and Quin said, “Let the fool win himself if he will.” Macklin became impassioned, in proportion as the scene demanded it, and the audience which had been silent, burst into continued shouts of applause. A gentleman in the pit (supposed to be Pope) cried out “This is the Jew that Shakespeare drew,” and Macklin’s Shylock called forth notes of admiration ever after.30

Macklin’s performance of Shylock had the most positive response, and engravings of his Shylock with knife and scales were frequently

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published at the time (see figure 1). The Irish actor was the first to provide Shylock with a historically accurate dress: loose black gown, long wide trousers, a red hat, and a short, red, wispy, pointed beard: “A rather stout man with a coarse yellow face and a nose generously fashioned in all three dimensions, a long double chin, and a mouth so carved by nature that the knife appears have slit him right up to the ears, on one side at least, I thought. He wears a long black gown, long wide trousers, and a red tricorne, after the fashion of Italian Jews, I suppose.”31 In his biography of Macklin,32 Cooke emphasizes that the actor tried to get information on the authentic custom of Early Renaissance Venetian Jews. These “obscure data,” mentioned by Appleton in his biography of Macklin,33 could as a matter of fact be found in Thomas Coryate, who, in Coryats Crudities, describes the Jews of Venice: They are distinguished and discerned from the Christians by their habites on their heads; for some of them doe weare hats and those redde, onely those Iewes that are borne in the Westerne parts of the world, as in Italy, &c. but the easterne Iewes being otherwise called the Levantine Iewes, which are borne on Hierusalem, Alexandria, Constantinople, &c. weare Turbents vpon their heads as the Turkes do: but the difference is this; the Turkes weare white, the Iewes yellow.34

Macklin’s rendition became the standard mode of performing Shakespeare’s Shylock for generations to come; every subsequent Shylock was compared Macklin’s. One of the most celebrated scenes is 3.1, when he is informed of the shipwreck of Antonio’s ships and of Jessica’s flight. The German critic George Christoph Lichtenberg, who saw Macklin as Shylock in the 1770s, gives a vivid description of this scene: “He came on hatless, with disordered hair, some locks a finger long standing on end, as if raised by a breath of wind from the gallows, so distracted was his demeanor. Both his hands are clenched, and his movement abrupt and convulsive. To see a deceiver, who is usually calm and resolute, in such a state of agitation, is terrible.”35 Macklin performed Shylock for fifty years, for a total of 176 performances. His last attempt upon the stage was in the character of Shylock at Covent Garden on May 7, 1789. He was ninety: “He went through the first act, but not being pleased with his own execution, and finding his incapacity increase upon him, and after making repeated but ineffectual efforts to overcome the stupor, which clouded his reason, he was obliged to come forward, and apologize for the interruption that he had given the performance, and to request that Mr. Ryder might be permitted to finish his part.”36 From 1741 to 1800, The Merchant of Venice was performed 316 times, the ninth most popular Shakespearean play for the entire century. In the second half of the century, the play was performed 237

Charles Macklin as Shylock. Courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

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times, ranking first among the comedies. In the eighteenth century, twelve actors performed Shylock on the London Stage, only two appearing more than ten times (Charles Macklin and Toro King). Between 1800 and 1837, sixteen actors performed Shylock, among them only George Frederick Cooke (forty-three), Edmund Kean (thirty), and Charles Kemble (sixteen) more than ten times. Nonetheless, the interest around the play increased considerably, an interest that involved the actors, the critics, and the audience. When Macklin was playing his last Shylocks, John Philip Kemble appeared on the London stage for the first time during the season 1783–84. Toro King, the actor to whom Shylock “belonged,” was temporarily absent from the theater. During the latter half of the season, Kemble tried a few performances with his sister Elizabeth as Portia. After having impersonated Bassanio for a few years, he started performing Shylock regularly every season from 1792 to 1802, during which time he was also the manager of the Drury Lane Theatre. When Kemble joined the Covent Garden Theatre in 1803, he decided to take the role of Antonio, supporting George Frederick Cooke as Shylock. When Cooke went to America, Kemble played Shylock twice with Mrs. Siddons in the season 1810-11. This was nearly his last use of the play. Kemble’s Shylock was the first to be performed with any attempt at historical accuracy: he wore a skullcap, long robe, long black hair, and a short underchin beard.37 George Frederick Cooke played his first Shylock on November 10, 1800, at Covent Garden. According to the anonymous reviewer in Porcupine, his involvement in the character was total, even when he had no lines to speak. [He] came as near to SHAKESPEARE as any of his predecessors, if we except MACKLIN, to whose manner he bears the strongest resemblance. His acting was uncommonly striking, his knowledge of the author complete, but his declamation jars upon the ear, as he is accustomed to give a whole line on one unvaried harsh note; his good sense will not blush to take a friendly hint, which is so well meant. In every scene there was much, very much, to commend; in the great scene with Tubal, every thing. The audience seemed electrified by his excellence in it.38

The illustration shows Cooke in 4.1, where he seems to follow Macklin both in the custom and in the use of knife and scale. According to Cooke’s biographer, William Dunlap, “Nothing [was] so perfectly ‘the Jew that Shakespeare drew’ as the voice, face, manner, and expression of Mr. Cooke.”39 The Monthly Mirror emphasized how Cooke “in voice, feature, and external appearance altogether, was

George Frederick Cooke as Shylock. Image courtesy of V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

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perfectly the Jew of Shakespeare. His general cast of expression conveyed that deep, heart-rooted, diabolical malignity which the poet intended.”40 Cooke tried to humanize Shylock, making the audience sympathize with him. In 3.1 he dwelt on the word “affections,” overcharging the word: “Cooke, when he came to the word “affections” so informed it with human feeling, so contrasted it with the context that it remains as the marked point of his performance.”41 The speech in which Shylock urges his own wrongs, and vindicates his tribe, formed a climax of as well-wrought passion as can be conceived. The amateur will not soon forget his stifled emotion at the word “Passions”— and other fortunate discriminations, which gave value and originality to this part of his performance of Shylock. . . . In the great scene of the third act, he was hailed with shouts of applause: —the break was exquisite— ”Let him look to his bond.”42

As Don B. Wilmeth suggests, this quality of engendering sympathy toward Shylock was increasingly attributed to Cooke. A later reviewer for The Comet (January 4, 1812) wrote that the scene with Tubal was among Cooke’s greatest acting moments because of his ability to convey the conflict of passions arising from the loss of his daughter and the prospect of revenge against Antonio, a moment that “almost overpowered his corporeal faculties.” In the trial scene he also demonstrated pathos and claimed “a large share of sympathy.”43 Nevertheless, Cooke’s Shylock was still a man looking for his revenge. The Times, reviewing the November 27, 1800 performance of The Merchant of Venice, argued that “his savage and inexorable hate against Antonio, is ever in his thoughts, accompanies him in all his actions, bargains and thrifts. The love of gain itself is outweighed by this consideration and even in his utmost misery, abandoned by his own flesh and blood, and robbed of his treasure, the hope of revenge, proves a sweet and certain consolation.”44 Two seasons later, Cooke and the Kembles started to play the leading roles in a series of productions that seem to represent the last examples of a Kemble-school Shylock. It was on January 26, 1814, that a new Shylock started to tread the boards: Edmund Kean. He was twenty-five, and it was his very first appearance on a London stage. If Kemble and Cooke each gave a personal interpretation of Macklin’s standard Shylock, Edmund Kean departed from all former models. William Hazlitt was one of the first to emphasize this: When we first went to see Mr. Kean in Shylock, we expected to see, what we had been used to see, a decrepit old man, bent with age and ugly with mental deformity, grinning with deadly malice, with the venom of his heart

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congealed in the expression of his countenance, sullen, morose, gloomy, inflexible, brooding over one idea, that of his hatred, and fixed on one unalterable purpose, that of his revenge. We were disappointed, because we had taken our idea from other actors, not from the play. . . . It would be too much to say that his body should be made crooked and deformed to answer to his mind, which is bowed down and warped with prejudices and passion. That he has but one idea, is not true; he has more ideas than any other person in the piece: and if he is intense and inveterate in the pursuit of his purpose, he shews the utmost elasticity, vigour, and presence of mind, in the means of attaining it. But so rooted was our habitual impression of the part from seeing it caricatured in the representation, that it was only from a careful perusal of the play itself that we saw our error. The stage is not in general the best place to study our author’s characters in. It is too often filled with traditional common-place conceptions of the part, handed down from sire to son, and suited to the taste of the great vulgar and the small.45

Not only did Kean depart from the previous standard Shylocks, but he also broke the acting tradition established by the Kembles.46 The Kemble school relied on the study of every aspect of a character; but, as Bertram suggests, “Kean’s effects were the spontaneous effusions of real genius; . . . he seized intuitively on those parts of it which suggested themselves to him immediately, and made them live intensely and dominate the whole.”47 Kemble played according to the rules of the classical style of acting, and even though he looked fine and impressive, with his lines spoken beautifully, he made one part appear very like every other. On the contrary, Kean developed a very personal style, suitable to himself, creating his own rules. As Kean’s biographer Giles Playfair suggests, “Kean was extraordinarily methodical. He never made a gesture or a movement which had not been previously thought out.”48 George Henry Lewes underlines this aspect of Kean’s work on the character and the play: “Kean vigilantly and patiently rehearsed every detail, trying the tones until his ear was satisfied, practising looks and gestures until his artistic sense was satisfied; and having once regulated these he never changed them. The consequence was that, when he was sufficiently sober to stand and speak, he could act his part with the precision of a singer who has thoroughly learned his air.”49 John Keats, who considered Kean’s acting revolutionary,50 emphasized his “elegance, gracefulness, and music of elocution”:51 “Surely this intense power of anatomizing the passions of every syllable, of taking to himself the arising of verse, is the means by which he becomes a storm with such fiery decision; and by which with a still deeper charm, he does his spiriting gently. Other actors are continually thinking of their sum-total effect throughout a play. Kean delivers himself up to

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the instant of feeling, without a shadow of a thought about anything else.”52 For Keats there “is an indescribable gusto in his voice, by which we feel that the utterer is thinking of the past and the future while speaking of the instant.”53 His acting is “Shakespearean—he will fully understand what we mean. There is little to be said of the rest.”54 In his second review (1817) of Kean’s performance, William Hazlitt comments on the actor’s revolutionary portrayal, comparing it with previous Shylocks: “His style of acting is, if we may use the expression, more significant, more pregnant with meaning, more varied and alive in every part, than any we have almost ever witnessed. The character never stands still; there is no vacant pause in the action; the eye is never silent. For depth and force of conception, we have seen actors whom we should prefer to Mr. Kean in Shylock; for brilliant and masterly execution, none.”55 He played Shylock fifteen times out of seventeen appearances during his first season at Drury Lane. His Shylock was no longer a villain, but a man of dignity. “For the first time,” writes Toby Lelyveld, “the stage-Jew was taking on human form, and for the first time the audience was able to appreciate it.”56 In his 1814 review to Kean’s Shylock, Hazlitt writes, “Mr. Kean last night made his appearance at DruryLane Theatre in the character of Shylock. For voice, eye, action, and expression, no actor has come out for many years at all equal to him. The applause, from the first scene to the last, was general, loud, and uninterrupted.”57 In the illustration we can easily note the difference between Kean’s depiction of the Jew and those of Macklin and Cooke. He did not alter Shylock’s costume so much as the list for customs in the Oxberry edition of the play suggests: a black gabardine, a crimson vest, and a black hat. Kean’s Shylock is Macklin’s preposterous fiend no more, but a man with human qualities. Kean saw in Shylock the tragedy of a man who had been wronged. In his sympathetic portrayal of Shylock, Kean seemed to follow the changing critical attitude toward The Merchant of Venice and the character of the Jew. August Wilhelm Schlegel, for example, wrote in A Course of Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature that the play was a perfect masterpiece: “The Merchant of Venice is one of Shakspeare’s most perfect works: popular to an extraordinary degree, and calculated to produce the most powerful effect on the stage, and at the same time a wonder of ingenuity and art for the reflecting critic. Shylock, the Jew, is one of the inimitable master pieces of characterization which Shakspeare alone furnishes us with example.”58 Charles Lamb argued that “Shylock in the midst of his savage purpose is a man. His motives, feelings, resentments, have something human in them”;59 Heinrich Heine proposed to “place The Merchant of Venice among Shakespeare’s

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Edmund Kean as Shylock. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

tragedies although he intended it as a comedy.”60 The play, Heine argued, “does not actually represent either Jews or Christians but oppressors and oppressed.”61 Edmund Kean seems to have contributed to this shift in the popular perspective on the play and Shylock. Kean emphasized the tragic aspects of Shylock, throwing light on his tragedy as a man. In particular, he impressed the audience in 3.1 and in 4.1, the trial scene. George Vandenhoff, son of one of Kean’s contemporaries, emphasized the

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ways in which Kean was able to convey “a wonderful mixture of sarcasm and courtesy,”62 as in 3.1, when he replies to Solanio and Salerio. The conclusion of his speech, “I am a Jew,” was always a cue for the most intense applause: it was the natural simplicity with which he gave it, the sort of patient appeal his tone seemed to make to your sympathy against undeserved oppression, that touched the heart and the intellect at once. He hurried you on through the catalogue of Antonio’s atrocities and unprovoked injuries to him, enforcing them with a strong accentuation, and a high pitch of voice; and when he had reached the climax, he came down by a sudden transition to a gentle, suffering tone of simple representation of his oppressor’s manifest un-reason and injustice, on the words: I am a Jew.63

In the Trial scene, notes Kean’s biographer, John Doran: His calm demeanor at first; his confident appeal to justice; his deafness, when appeal is made to him for mercy; his steady joyousness, when the young lawyer recognizes the validity of the bond; his burst of exultation, when his right is confessed; his fiendish eagerness, when whetting the knife;—and then, the sudden collapse of disappointment and terror, with the words, “Is that—the LAW?” . . . Then, his trembling anxiety to recover what he had before refused: his sordid abjectness, as he finds himself foiled, at every turn; his subdued fury; and, at the last, (and it was always the crowning glory of his acting in this play), the withering sneer, hardly concealing the crushed heart, with which he replied to the jibes of Gratiano, as he left the court.64

It was Kean’s energetic performance that led Hazlitt to write that “Shakespear could not easily divest his characters of their entire humanity: his Jew is more than half a Christian. Certainly, our sympathies are much oftener with him than with his enemies. He is honest in his vices; they are hypocrites in their virtues. In all his arguments and replies he has the advantage over them, by taking them on their own ground.”65 Kean’s interpretation of the character of Shylock was typically Romantic, and it allowed the audience to envision Shylock as more of a victim than a villain. His Jew was full of pathos. He was a wicked Shylock, but because of the oppression and the discrimination he suffered, he engendered pity and sympathy. Kean played a vulnerable Shylock by conveying his strong passion to the audience. The prejudice that had characterized the depiction of the Jew for centuries seems to have vanished when, at the end of the trial scene, Shylock appears as a martyr, a tragic hero whose feelings are exalted. Shylock with his sacred tribe

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and his ancient law incarnated the typical Romantic interest in the past and love of the exotic: “His thoughts take wings to the East . . . his voice swells and deepens at the mention of his sacred tribe and ancient law, and he dwells delighted on any digression to distant times and places, as a relief to his vindictive and rooted purposes,”66 writes F. W. Hawkins. Kean performed Shylock more than thirty times between 1814 and 1829, when he appeared for the second consecutive season at Covent Garden. George Henry Lewes, who saw Kean on stage in 1825, wrote that “his Shylock was freer from fault” and that “anything more impressive than the passionate recrimination and wild justice of argument in his ‘Hath a Jew eyes’ has never been seen on our stage.”67 Kean tried to exploit his successful depiction of the Jew both when he appeared at the Drury Lane in 1818 as Barabas in The Jew of Malta and in 1820 as Isaac in George Soane’s The Hebrew, derived from one incident in Scott’s Ivanhoe. Both the performances were a flop. The Jew of Malta, where “his portrayal of Barabbas was inexplicably ineffective,” lasted only eleven performances, wrote Toby Lelyveld.68 The Hebrew, performed only eight times, was harshly criticized by the theatrical journals of the time. The Theatrical Inquisitor wrote that even though “[Kean’s] great power in depicting the agonies of grief was admirably displayed in some portion of the last scene, we cannot term his Hebrew an effort that will fairly swell his reputation.”69 The Merchant of Venice—or better, an echo of Kean’s performance —can be also found in William Turner’s The Grand Canal,70 one of his many paintings and sketches of Venice. The painting was first displayed at the Royal Academy in 1837 with two lines from The Merchant of Venice: “Antonio. Hear me yet, good Shylock; Shylock. I’ll have my bond.” (3.3.3–4). In the lower right corner, we can see Antonio and Shylock, the latter with knife and scale. This figure, especially with those props, are reminiscent of Kean’s portrayal of the Jew. The Blackwood’s Magazine criticized the painting ferociously, defining it an attempt to insult the taste of the audience, and comparing the image of Shylock to that of Punch: “His Shylock, an undoubled portrait of Punch, the common street Punch; and there he is at the side of the picture as looking out of his box, with his very lean and his jointless arms holding the scales, while Antonio’s fate like a clipt guinea, trembles in the scales.”71 But Turner’s static painting could not display the drastic changes of emotion to be found in Kean’s Shylock. In the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the English audiences applauded Kean’s Shylock, but the interest in The Merchant of Venice continued. New generations of actors interpreted the part of Shylock afresh: William Charles Macready,72 Samuel Phelps,73 and Charles Kean, the son of Edmund Kean. Charles was involved in The Merchant

William Turner, the Grand Canal: Scene—A street in Venice (1836–37). Courtesy of the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California.

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of Venice for many years, up until the spectacular production in 1858 at the Princess’s Theatre. He had played Shylock since 1838, when he produced the play at Drury Lane. The promptbook housed at the Folger Shakespeare Library provides interesting information on the performance. The text is that of the Kemble edition (1810), and it is arranged to end with the trial scene.74 On the interleaves, we find seven drawings of the set that anticipates the 1858 production, where Kean gave a historically accurate reproduction of Venice: In the production of The Merchant of Venice it has been my object to combine with the poet’s art a faithful representation of the picturesque city; to render it again palpable to the traveller who has actually gazed upon the seat of its departed glory; and, at the same time, to exhibit it to the student, who has never visited this once. The far-famed place of St. Mark, with its ancient Church, the Rialto and its Bridge, the Canals and Gondolas, the Historic Columns, the Ducal Palace, and the Council Chamber, are successively presented to the spectator. Venice is re-peopled with the past, affording truth to the eye, and reflection to the mind.75

Charles Kean’s production of The Merchant of Venice reflects that historical consciousness which characterized the mid-Victorian theater and produced increasingly spectacular performances of Shakespeare’s plays.76 Charles Kean was more interested in stage effects than in the portrayal of the character. After Macready’s retirement, he became the most famous actor in the Victorian theater, at least until the first appearance of Henry Irving at the Lyceum Theatre in 1871. Despite Kean’s success, he was not a talented actor; he built his fame mostly on his spectacular productions, where he was able to manage large groups of people on stage and to represent history and historical details in a manner never seen before.77 The Merchant of Venice, and in particular the character of Shylock, exercised an increasingly powerful hold on British society until the Victorian age. Shylock became a “must” for the great actors of the nineteenth century: John Philip Kemble, George Frederick Cooke, Edmund Kean, William Charles Macready, Charles Kean, and Henry Irving. The passage from a Romantic Shylock to a Victorian Shylock, from Kean to Irving, represents a major transition in the treatment of the play. Although Kean insisted on representing Shylock as a dogmatic Jew with an awesome and terrifying tone of Hebraic majesty, he initiated a new conception of Shylock as a wronged tragic man, a conception that Irving built upon. From Irving onward, Shylock was connected with the contemporary ambivalent image of the Jew, whether

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as the alien poor immigrant or the moneyed plutocrat. By the end of the century, stage portrayals of Shylock suggested a sort of identification, if not sympathy, with the Jews of Victorian England.

NOTES 1. Stephen Gosson, The School of Abuse (London, 1579); STC 12070, Sig. D2v. 2. John Marston, The Malcontent (London, 1604), 5.1.169–70. 3. “Enter Romelio in the habit of a Jew” (3.2.1). As René Weis suggests, “Romelio’s choice of a Jewish disguise also recognizes the fact that Jews of the period were much in demand as physicians—and therefore also had a notorious reputation as poisoners.” John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi and other plays, ed. René Weis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 410. 4. Robert Greene’s The First Part of Selimus (London, 1592) refers to a Jewish physician, reminiscent of Roderigo Lopez, who will help Selimus in his plot to murder his father Bajazet: Bajazet hath with him a cunning Jew Professing physicke; and so skill’d therein, As if he had pow’r over life and death Withall, a man so stout and resolute That he will venture anything for gold. The Jew with some intoxicated drinke Shall poyson Bajazet and that blind Lord; Then one of Hydraes heads is cleane cut off. (Sig. G2v, STC 12310a)

Abraham the Jew subsequently appears “with a cup” that is poisoned and serves as taster, so that Bajazet, Aga, and Abraham die onstage (Sig. G3v, and G4v–Hr, STC 12310a). 5. See Philip Massinger, The Maid of Honour (London, 1632): “A reprobate Iew, an Atheist, Turke, or Tartar” (2.5, Sig. E4r, STC 17638). 6. See Henry Shirley, The martyrd souldier (London,1638): Clow. Methinks Christians make the bravest Bonefires of any people in the Vniverse; as a Iew burnes pretty-well, but if you marke him, he burnes upward: the fire takes him by the Nose first. 2. Pag. I know some Vintners then are Iewes. Clow. Now as your Iew burnes upward, your French-man burnes downeward like a Candle. (Sig. G2v, STC 22435)

7. See John Ford’s The Chronicle Historie Perkin Warbeck (London, 1634), Sig. K2v (STC 11157): “Your pedigree is publisht, you are knowne / For Osbecks sonne of Turney , a loose runnagate, / A Landloper: your Father was a Iewe, / Turn’d Christian meerely to repayre his miseries. 8. See, for example, Thomas Dekker’s 2 The Honest Whore (London, 1604), Sig.C4r (STC 6506):

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Mat. And an old knaue, there’s more deceit in him then in sixteene Poticaries: it’s a Deuill, thou maist beg, starue, hang, damne; does he send thee so much as a cheefe? Orl. Or so much as a Gammon of Bacon, Hee’ll giue it his Dogs first. Mat. A Iayle, a Iayle. Orl. A Iew, a Iew, sir. Mat. A Dog.

9. Robert Wilson, The Three Ladies of London (London, 1584), Sig. A2v (STC 25784). 10. Ibid., Sig. E3r. 11. Ibid., Sig. F1v. 12. Ibid. 13. John Fletcher, The custom of the country (London,1647) 2.1.347–49. 14. See James Shapiro, Shakespeare and the Jews (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 213. Shapiro suggests that the unusual 1653 quarto, “one of the only three published during the Interregnum,” “was probably intended to capitalize on Readmission interest” (213). 15. With the exception of the two marginal female Jews in Thomas Killigrew, Thomaso; or the Wanderer (1663), who are introduced in 4.2 as “the two rich monsters,” a dwarf and an overgrown giantess, and only mentioned throughout the play. Thomas Killigrew, Comedies and Tragedies (London, 1664), 362. 16. John Dryden, Love Triumphant (London, 1694), 11. 17. The Stage Jews like Isaac Mendoza and Moses in The School for Scandal spoke correct English, whereas actually they always spoke what was called “the Jewish cant.” In point of fact, it was more closely allied to the broken English of a Dutch man, except for a Hebraic difficulty with certain sibilants. The dramatic authors rarely indicated the dialect they intended, or even that it was intended to be dialect,” R. Crompton Rhodes, “The Belle’s Stratagem,” The Review of English Studies 5 (1929): 139. 18. George Granville’s play was performed the first time at the Lincoln’s Inn Field Theatre in 1701. The Jew of Venice was staged forty-two times from 1701 to 1754; see Charles Beecher Hogan, Shakespeare in the Theatre (Oxford: Clarendon, 1957), 1:309–19 and 2:415. 19. Nicholas Rowe, “Some account of the life of Mr. William Shakespeare,” in The Works of William Shakespeare, ed. Nicholas Rowe (London, 1709), xix–xx. 20. John Downes, Roscius Anglicanus (London, 1708), 52. 21. Thomas Shadwell, The Volunteers, or the Stock-Jobbers (London, 1793). 22. Edward Ward, The London Spy, Part 3, January 1699 (London, 1699), 14. 23. “I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following: but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you” (The Merchant of Venice 1.3.30–33). 24. Granville, 12. 25. Ibid., 11. 26. George Colman’s Man and wife, or the Shakespeare Jubilee (1770), where the second act ends with a pageant “exhibiting the characters of Shakespeare,” with the character of Shylock with knife, scale, and bond (reminiscent of David Garrick’s Shakespeare Jubilee that represented Macklin’s portrayal of the Jew) opening the session named “The Comic Muse”; Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Duenna (1775), with the rich Jewish merchant Isaac Mendoza; Charles Macklin, Love-a-la-mode (1779), an afterpiece often performed together with The Merchant of Venice, where the Italian

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Jew, Beau Mordecai, is the suitor to the hand of the wealthy heiress; Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Duenna (1775), with the rich Jewish merchant Isaac Mendoza. 27. On the historical context that led to the Jew Bill, see David S. Katz, Philo-semitism and the Readmission of the Jews to England 1603–1655 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982); and his Jews in the history of England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), in particular 190–283. 28. On pre-Macklin Shylocks, see William Coleman, “Post-Restoration Shylocks Prior to Macklin,” Theatre Survey 8 (1967): 17–36. 29. Jonathan Bate, The Romantics on Shakespeare (Hammondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1989), 180. 30. “Charles Macklin,” Ms. Art File M158.8. n. 10, Folger Shakespeare Library. 31. George Christoph Lichtenberg in a letter, December 2, 1775, in Lichtenberg’s Visits to England as Described in his Letters and Diaries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938), 40. 32. William Cooke, Memoirs of Charles Macklin, Comedian (London, 1824), 94–95. 33. William Worthen Appleton, Charles Macklin: An Actor’s Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), p.46. 34. Thomas Coryat, Coryats Crudities (London 1611), 230–31 (STC 5848). Cecil Roth, in “The Background of Shylock,” The Review of English Studies 9 (1933): 148– 56, based on his History of the Jews in Venice (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1930), gives historical details on Jewish life and customs in Renaissance Venice. 35. Lichtenberg, 40. 36. James Thomas Kirkman, Memoirs of the life of Charles Macklin (London, 1799), 327. 37. One of the few engravings showing Kemble as Shylock is housed at the Hiram Stead Collection of the New York Public Library. 38. Porcupine, December 1, 1800. 39. William Dunlap, Memoirs of the Life of George Frederick Cooke (New York, 1813), 1:156. 40. “Retrospect of New Performers. Mr. Cooke” in The Monthly Mirror 10 (1800): 321. 41. Ms. annotation to “Prompt Merch 35,” 31, The Folger Shakespeare Library. 42. “Retrospect of New Performers. Mr. Cooke,” 321. 43. Don B. Wilmeth, George Frederick Cooke: Machiavel on the Stage (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1980), 139. 44. The Times, November 27, 1800. 45. William Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays (London, 1817), 276–77. 46. George Henry Lewes emphasizes how “critics who had formed their ideal on the Kemble school were shocked at Kean’s want of dignity, and at his fitful elocution, sometimes thrillingly effective, at other times deplorably tame and careless; in their angry protests they went so far as to declare him ‘a mere mountebank.’” On Actors and the Art of Acting (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1875), 14. 47. Bertram Leon Joseph, The Tragic Actor (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959), 264. 48. Giles Playfair, Kean: The Life and Paradox of the Great Actor (London: Reinhardt & Evans, 1950), 94. 49. Lewes, 19. 50. “One of my ambitions is to make as great a revolution in modern dramatic writings as Kean has done in acting.” “Letter to Benjamin Bailey, August 14, 1819,” in The Letters of John Keats, ed. Hyder Edward Rollins (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958), 139.

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51. John Keats, “On Edmund Kean as a Shakespearean Actor,” in The Champion (December 21, 1817), reprinted in Works of John Keats, ed. Buxton Forman (London: Reeves and Tunes, 1883), 3:4. 52. Ibid., 5. 53. Ibid., 4. 54. “On Kean in ‘Richard Duke of York,’” The Champion (December 28, 1817), reprinted in Works of John Keats, 3:11. 55. William Hazlitt, A View of the English Stage (London, 1818), 3. 56. Toby Lelyveld, Shylock on the Stage (London: Routledge & Kegan, 1961), 45. 57. Hazlitt, A View, 1. 58. August Wilhelm Schlegel, A Course of Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature (Philadelphia: Hogan and Thompson, 1833), 315. 59. Charles Lamb, Specimens of English Dramatic Poets Who Lived About the Time of Shakespeare (London: Longman, 1808), 31. 60. Heine on Shakespeare, ed. Ida Benecke (Westminster, UK: Archibald Constable, 1895), 126. 61. Ibid. 62. George Vandenhoff, Leaves from an Actor’s Note-book; with Reminiscences and Chit-chat of the Green-room and the Stage (New York: Appleton, 1860), 24. 63. Ibid. 64. John Doran, Their Majesties’ Servants: Annals of the English Stage, from Thomas Betterton to Edmund Kean (London: H. Allen, 1865), 310–18. 65. William Hazlitt, Criticism and Dramatic Essays of the English Stage (London, 1854), 161–62. 66. F. W. Hawkins, The Life of Edmund Kean (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1869), 129. 67. Lewes, 22–23. 68. Lelyveld, 53. 69. Theatrical Inquisitor 16, no. 93 (1820):162. 70. The painting, oil on canvas, is housed at the Huntington, San Marino, California. Another title for the painting is “Grand Canal, Venice: Shylock.” See C. H. Collins Baker, “Recent acquisitions for the Huntington Art Gallery,” Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 68, no. 397 (1936): 163. 71. The Blackwood’s Magazine, September (1837): 335–36. 72. He appeared for the first time in the character at the Covent Garden in 1823. He then performed Shylock in 1837 (Covent Garden), 1839 (Haymarket), 1841 and 1842 (Drury Lane). Macready did not feel at ease in the character of Shylock. In his journal, he made two annotations, one in 1837 and another in 1841: “Rehearsed Shylock with very few persons, and did not feel all at home in it. I have not got the key to the character, and must sternly and resolutely take the part in hand.” See The Journal of William Charles Macready, ed. J. C. Trewin (London: Longmans, 1967), 143; “I acted Shylock very nervously—not to please myself” (Ibid., 176). Notwithstanding his feelings about the part, Macready’s portrayal of Shylock was universally approved of. 73. He performed Shylock at the Haymarket Theatre on August 28 and 30, 1837. This was his first appearance in London. “He was received throughout with great applause and at the end of the fourth act he was called forward and again received the congratulations of the audience” Theatrical Observer no. 4897 (August 29, 1837): 1. 74. The fifth act was considered an anticlimax after the trial scene. A version of the play made by Richard Valpy for a performance by the boys of Reading School omits almost completely the fifth act. According to the adapter, Shakespeare, induced by the taste of his age, added “this unessential part of the plot into a piece, which is in every

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other respect conducted with a consummate felicity of art and judgement.” “The Advertisement,” in The Merchant of Venice: A comedy, altered from Shakespeare, as it was acted At Reading School, in October 1802 for the benefit of the Literary Fund (Reading, 1802), i. 75. Charles Kean, preface to Shakespeare’s Play of The Merchant of Venice as arranged for representation at the Princess’s Theatre, with historical and explanatory notes (London: John K. Chapman and Co., 1858), vi–vii. 76. See Michael Booth, Victorian Spectacular Theatre (London: Routledge, 1981). 77. On Charles Kean’s representation of history, see Richard W. Schoch, Shakespeare’s Victorian Stage: Performing History in the Theatre of Charles Kean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Dramatic Illusion and Sympathetic Curiosity in Romantic Drama Lilla Maria Crisafulli

BETWEEN THE SECOND HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, AND

the first half of the nineteenth century a large number of playwrights and critics opened up a wide-ranging theoretical debate on the art of acting. “Dramatic Illusion” and “sympathetic curiosity” seemed to be the two key concepts that, in one way or another, all the acting manuals (and those of the Romantic period in particular) needed to come to terms with. It was believed that dramatic illusion was required to produce a successful play (especially so in tragedy and tragicomedy), and that the interest of the audience was primarily due to the process of identification that took place between the single spectator and the actor-character on stage. The convincing actor—who was, preferably, the star of the moment, from Charles Macklin or David Garrick to Sarah Siddons, John Philip Kemble, Edmund Kean, and Eliza O’Neill—conveying the deeds, the emotions, and the actions of the character embodied, placed members of the audience in the comfortable or uncomfortable situation of feeling as the character felt, acting within their imaginations as the actor pretended to act on the illusionistic space of the stage. In other words, the dramatic exhibition was meant to arouse in the spectator a response that, in producing aesthetic pleasure, also paved the way for self-improvement (and this was the second outcome the Romantics asked their drama to bring about). Such a process of “change-via-identification” was set in motion by what was called “sympathetic curiosity,” a natural sentiment or sensation that dwells in every heart and that bonds together human beings in any given society. Not by chance, Adam Smith coined an apt definition of the notion in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), where he defines sympathy as “our fellow-feeling with any passion whatever” and implies an imaginative act of identification with somebody else’s “grief and joy”:1 “As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation. . . . 164

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It is by the imagination only that we can form any conception of what are his [“our brother’s”] sensations.”2 Worthy of mention in this regard are two acting manuals: one of them by the actor and playwright Aaron Hill (1685–1750), Essay on the Art of Acting (1746); and the other by the botanist, but also actor and playwright, John Hill (c. 1706–1775), The Actor: a Treatise on the Art of Playing (1750).3 Both texts encourage naturalness in acting and highlight the importance of the expressiveness of the actor’s gesture and posture in order to communicate the character’s passions and state of mind. John Hill focuses on three qualities that a good actor should possess: “understanding” (to understand every single line the character speaks and to accompany it with the appropriate gesture and facial expression); “sensibility” (the capacity “to feel” the character, interiorizing his/her emotions and expressing his/her passions); and “fire” (this has to do with the actor’s temperament and his ability to involve the audience through the power of his acting).4 Aaron Hill, instead, analyzes human passions, only some of which he regards as stageable.5 According to Aaron Hill, however, an actor will be able to express a passion only insofar as he can experience it as his own, and, in consequence, embody it on stage through convincing gestures and expressions. Besides theorizing the arousal and unfolding of the passions in the actor’s body language, Aaron Hill offers his readers a gallery of pictures, each of which describes the correct posture for a given passion. John Hill and Aaron Hill apply to actorial practice the theory of humors and the passions that had been developed in science, art, and philosophy since the seventeenth century, starting with works such as Thomas Wright’s The Passions of the Mind (1604), Cartesio’s Le passioni dell’anima (1649), and Charles Le Brun’s Conferenza sopra l’espressione generale e particolare (lecture delivered at the Académie Royale in 1668, published in 1698 and translated into English in 1701). In the eighteenth century, the surgeon James Parsons lectured on physiognomy and pathognomy at the Royal Society in London and published his studies in 1747 under the title of Human Physiognomy Explained. In the same year Samuel Foote published his dissertation Treatise on the Passions. Finally, the Swiss clergyman and poet Johann Kaspar Lavater offered a relevant contribution to the debate on human passions with an essay on physiognomy published in Germany between 1775 and 1778. Lavater’s work, translated in English in 1789 with the title Essays on Physiognomy, enjoyed extraordinary success both in France and in England. In England the productive relationship between passions and actorial practice did not end with John and Aaron Hill, but on the contrary found new fertile ground in the late eighteenth century and was fur-

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ther implemented in the Romantic age. Actors and theater managers such as Charles Macklin, David Garrick, and Henry Siddons opened up exciting new perspectives to British drama professionals. Charles Macklin, actor and drama school teacher, was among the first to reform acting, introducing that “naturalness” that David Garrick went on to establish in his theater. In his essay The Art and Duty of an Actor, Macklin, while underlining the importance for an actor of respecting the playwright’s original intentions, also stresses the necessity of observing and studying the unique way in which each individual reveals his/her inner passions. Such a scrutiny turns eventually into true philosophical knowledge that permits the actor to enter into an intimate understanding of the character, allowing him to offer the audience a convincing interpretation of the character he represents.6 The extraordinary Romantic actress Sarah Siddons only occasionally theorized acting, and when she did so, as in her essay “Remarks on the Character of Lady Macbeth,” she was primarily concerned with her own tragic interpretation of the Shakespearean heroine. But her son Henry Siddons devoted a large amount of time and energy to the study of human passions and their reproduction in theater. He published a manual on acting entitled Practical Illustrations of Rhetorical Gesture and Action in 1807 and, thanks to its commercial success, decided to republish it in 1822 with a series of illustrations referring to the postures needed to express single passions. The treatise was inspired by James Parsons’s Human Physiognomy Explained, but it was also an adaptation for the theatre of Johann Jakob Engel’s Ideen zu einer Mimik (1785). In his manual Siddons’s aim is to show actors the significance of dramatic gestures and facial expressions to stage and convey the onset and subsequent appearance of the passions in a given character.7 If Henry Siddons emphasizes the relevance of body language as an exterior clue to the interior psychological battle that animates the character’s soul and mind, no less significant is the role played by the imagination that sustains the actor in his ability to embody the so-called “physiological gestures,” that is to say those natural corporeal gestures that spontaneously accompany human emotions and feelings.8 Siddons advises actors to search for naturalness, since every forced interpretation, rather than appeal to the audience’s interest and curiosity, would make the passions performed on the stage “hideous and unpleasant to the eye and to the imagination.”9 At this point, it becomes quite clear how central to theatrical theory and practice in the second half of the eighteenth century was the classifying and staging of human passions, and how this interest was revived in the Romantic age. The major role played by the passions in the theater and drama of the time is further demonstrated by the Scottish playwright Joanna Baillie. In the introduction to the first volume

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of her collection, A Series of Plays: in which it is attempted to delineate the stronger passions of the mind (1798), Baillie explains her own dramaturgical perspective and dramatic plan through the role that the exhibition of a passion can play in the successful representation of credible characters in theater and drama. In her “Introductory Discourse,“ Baillie states her intention to describe the manifestation of a single passion in a given character and the way in which its development and its effects determine the existential choices and final destiny of the character him/herself. According to Baillie, there is a further aspect to consider in performance: this has to do with the very way through which the passions are manifested, namely by the symbiosis that takes place between the mind and the body of a human being who undergoes extraordinary trials under the effects of powerful sentiments. Whatever agitates his/her soul, writes Baillie, finds an echo in his/her appearance, facial expression, gestures, language, and finally actions. Such a process, which will be disclosed to the spectator’s eyes along a chain of cause and effect, is due to the encounter of “sympathetic curiosity” with “the influence of the stronger passions”: There is, perhaps, no employment which the human mind will with so much avidity pursue, as the discovery of concealed passion, as the tracing the varieties and progress of a perturbed soul. It is to this sympathetic curiosity of our nature, exercised upon mankind in great and trying occasions, and under the influence of the stronger passions, when the grand, the generous, and the terrible attract our attention far more than the base and depraved, that the high and powerfully tragic of every composition, is addressed.10

In discussing Baillie’s dramatic theory, we should not forget her family background, in which science and aesthetics were closely related (her brother and uncle were both physicians and both interested in physiognomy and the relationship of causality and its manifestations).11 At the same time, we should also be aware of the influence that a well-established philosophical tradition exercised on her critical views. To Baillie, the practical aims of the acting school manuals of her time went hand in hand with a more sophisticated philosophical theory that derived from Aristotle via Spinoza and Locke, through the thought of Rousseau and the speculation of Hume, finally reaching the realm of Scottish Utilitarianism. According to this tradition, each of us exists insofar as he/she lives and acts under the gaze of others, and we are all attracted by the fate of the others, since we mirror in those destinies our own fortune and calamities and thereby exorcise our apprehensions and fears.12 This interest toward others is set in motion by the sentiment defined as “sympathetic curiosity,” which holds together one person with another and which is thus at the origin of the social

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bond of our civilized life. It is such a “sympathetic curiosity” that makes us interested in other people’s lives and causes us to feel other people’s needs and pains. According to Baillie, the theatrical fallout of these thoughts is quite evident: the spectator will be interested in detecting particularly the behavior of those characters who undergo extraordinary trials and endure unusual and dominant distresses. Moreover, while we sympathize with and pity the sufferers, thanks to a process of self-identification motivated by self-love, we experience a catharsis that frees us, at least temporarily, of our own anxieties. This imaginative act of identification turns inevitably into a process of selfimprovement, so much so that Baillie can state that “in examining others, we know ourselves . . . we cannot well exercise this disposition without becoming more just, more merciful, more compassionate.”13 If suffering and feeling for other people’s grief or joy, therefore, expanded the power of the understanding and the delicacy of the soul of the individual, eventually this “morally reformed” human being would leave the pure dominion of the aesthetics of sensibility to arrive at a new poetical as well as a more political awareness. To Shelley, in fact, The connexion of scenic exhibition with the improvement or corruption of the manners of men, has been universally recognized, in other words, the presence or absence of poetry in its most perfect and universal form, has been found to be connected with good and evil in conduct or habit. The corruption which has been imputed to the drama as an effect begins, when the poetry employed in its constitution ends: I appeal to the history of manners whether the periods of the growth of the one and the decline of the other have not corresponded with an exactness equal to any example of moral cause and effect.14

Percy Bysshe Shelley had evidently derived his dramaturgy from Baillie and applied this understanding rather skillfully in the execution of the character of Beatrice Cenci, a sweet and innocent girl turned into a parricide by paternal violence. The audience—placed in the situation of pitying a sinful young woman whose nature had been twisted by wrongs and abuse—is called upon to judge Beatrice, the evolution of her thoughts, the result of her actions. While Beatrice undergoes a tragic transformation, shown forth by a strikingly expressive body language and by a fragmented verbal language, the spectators experience a peak of sympathy, a sharing of social responsibility. This is why Shelley, in his introduction to his play The Cenci, affirms: The highest moral purpose aimed at in the highest species of the drama, is the teaching the human heart, through its sympathies and antipathies, the knowledge of itself; in proposition to the possession of which knowledge,

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every human being is wise, just, sincere, tolerant and kind. . . . It is in the restless and anatomizing casuistry with which men seek the justification of Beatrice, yet feel that has done what needs justification; it is in the superstitious horror with which they contemplate alike her wrongs and their revenge, that the dramatic character of what she did and suffered, consists.15

For the Romantic poets and playwrights such as Baillie, Coleridge, or Shelley, “dramatic illusion” and “sympathetic curiosity” worked mutually, exercising their influence on the audience while joining forces in the endeavor to improve what was believed to be the degraded condition of the contemporary British theater. The debate on the theater and drama, however, as we have seen, seemed to rise to a higher level of theoretical speculation when it had to deal with mimesis in drama, or with the “naturalness” of dramatic illusion, or even with the discordance between idealized vision and actual representation. Inevitably, the original blend of practice and theory—and the combination of different views concerning the dramatic “machinery” of the theater—manifested certain fractures once it came under scrutiny, proving to be of a heterogeneous and even conflicting nature. Dramatic illusion, for instance, received a variety of definitions and claims once it left the sphere of the acting school and entered the arena of aesthetic speculation. It would be sufficient to quote S. T. Coleridge and Charles Lamb in order to understand to what extent the Romantics problematized theatrical representation. Charles Lamb is often mentioned as exemplifying an antipathy toward the stage, even if, we must not forget, theater was for him “the most delightful of recreations,”16 and one of the reasons why he loved to live in London (see the essay “My First Play,” where he recorded the pleasure derived from staged performances). According to Lamb, however, “theatre is limited in its capacity to bring an idealized vision to the level of reality”; and Lamb especially acknowledged this problem in the staging of Shakespeare’s plays. Praising Shakespeare’s heroes for their intellectual power rather than their physical action, he regarded contemporary productions as excessively vehement representations of corporeal heroes that distracted from the psychological intensity of the characters that Shakespeare had conceived. In the essay “On the Tragedies of Shakespeare, Considered with Reference to their Fitness for Stage Representation” (1818), Lamb wrote: It may seem a paradox, but I cannot help being of opinion that the plays of Shakspeare are less calculated for performance on stage, than those of almost any other dramatist whatever. . . . There is so much in them, which

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comes not under the province of acting, with which eye, and tone, and gesture, have nothing to do. The glory of the scenic act is to personate passion, and the turns of passion; and the more coarse and palpable the passion is, the more hold upon the eye and ears of the spectators the performer obviously possesses. For this reason, scolding scenes, scenes where two persons talk themselves into a fit of fury, and then in a surprising manner talk themselves out of it again, have always been the most popular upon our stage. And the reason is plain, because the spectators are here most palpably appealed to, they are the proper judges in this war of words, they are the legitimate ring that should be formed round such “intellectual prize-fighters.” . . . But in all the best dramas, and in Shakspeare above all, how obvious it is, that the form of speaking, whether it be in soliloquy or dialogue, is only a medium, and often a highly artificial one, for putting the reader or spectator into possession of that knowledge of inner structure and workings of mind in a character, which he could otherwise never have arrived at in that form of composition by any gift short of intuition.17

To Charles Lamb, no good performer or even great actor could ever replace the pleasure of the solitary reader of a dramatic text. No exhibition in a public playhouse could ever compete with the intellectual acquisition gained by the “theater of the mind” of the individual placed directly with and within the text: I have heard much of the wonders which Garrick performed in this part; but as I never saw him, I must have leave to doubt whether the representation of such a character came within the province of his art. Those who tell me of him, speak of his eye, of the magic of his eye, and of his commanding voice: physical properties, vastly desirable in an actor, and without which he can never insinuate meaning into an auditory,—but what have they to do with Hamlet? What they have to do with intellect?18

It seems that Lamb’s dilemma here has mainly to do with the actor’s physicality on the stage—which, rather than facilitating the understanding and the transparency of the dramatic text, constitutes a barrier, interposing his body and performance between the meaning of the play and the audience’s reception thereof. A radically different view is upheld by Coleridge, even if there are areas of overlap between the two critics. In the fragment of an unfinished essay entitled “Desultory Remarks on the Stage, and the Present State of the Higher Drama,” Coleridge draws a distinction between illusion and delusion, associating the former with the degree of the “suspension of disbelief”—and therefore of “pleasure”—that a good play in performance could give the audience in a theater house. Coleridge declares:

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The most important and dignified species of this genus is, doubtless, the STAGE (res theatralis histrionica), which . . . may be characterized . . . as a combination of several, or of all the fine arts to an harmonious whole having a distinct end of its own, . . . that, namely, of imitating reality (objects, actions, or passions) under a semblance of reality. Thus, Claude imitates a landscape at sunset,19 but only as a picture; while a forest-scene is not presented to the audience as a picture, but as a forest: and tho’ in the full sense of the word we are no more deceived by the one than by the other, yet are our feelings very differently affected, and the pleasure derived from the one is not composed of the same elements as that afforded by the other, even on the supposition that the quantum of both were equal. In the former, it is a condition of all genuine delight, that we should not be deluded (See Adam Smith’s Posthumous Essays).20 In the latter . . . its very purpose is to produce as much illusion as its nature permits. These and all other stage presentations are to produce a sort of temporary half-faith, which the spectator encourages in himself and supports by a voluntary contribution on his own part, because he knows that it is at all times in his power to see the thing as it really is.21

The other term, “delusion,” is instead related to the human mind deceived by sleep or dream in that state of “half-waking, half-sleeping,” to the point, Coleridge adds, that it may “confound the reasoning power, that we actually do pass a positive judgment for the reality of what we see and hear.”22 Going back to the meaning of “dramatic illusion,” we must remember that for Coleridge it is strictly related to the play as performed on the stage. And it is precisely this drama in performance that gives the genre its peculiarly delightful flavor, being “a combination of several, or of all the fine arts” and because “objects, actions, or passions” contribute to give us “a semblance of reality.” Such an “illusionistic” view of the stage is, however, extended in another of Coleridge’s notes, “The Drama Generally, and Public Taste” where the principle of “illusionistic naturalness” is applied not only to drama but to all the arts (such as paintings or music), but in which the truly triumphant principle, distinguishing drama from these other arts, lies in language and its ability to convey the beauty of nature and to excite the force of the imagination: But let us now consider what the drama should be. And first, it is not a copy, but an imitation, of nature. This is the universal principle of the fine arts. . . . This applies in due degrees . . . from a clump of trees to the Paradise Lost or Othello. It would be easy to apply it to painting and even, though with greater abstraction of thought, and by more subtle yet equally just analogies—to music. But this belongs to others; suffice it that one great principle is common to all the fine arts, a principle which probably is the condition of all consciousness. . . . I mean that ever-varying balance, or bal-

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ancing, of images, notions, or feelings, conceived as in opposition to each other;—in short, the perception of identity and contrariety; the least degree of which constitutes likeness, the greatest absolute difference; but the infinite gradations between these two form all the play and all the interest of our intellectual and moral being. We may divide a dramatic poet’s characteristics before we enter into the component merits of any one work, and with reference only to those things which are to be the materials of all, into language, passion, and character; always bearing in mind that these must act and react on each other,—the language inspired by the passion, and the language and the passion modified and differenced by the character.23

What Coleridge seems to have in mind is the necessity in drama of creating a perfect balance between the language spoken by the character and the passions which that language has to arouse and convey convincingly: passions that, as a result, define the character. From such a perspective, language plays a relevant role in shaping the character and his or her passions, and in visualizing what was not possible to seize even from nature: that is to say, the inner reality of the character and the workings of his or her mind. There follows, Coleridge concludes, a further distinction. If, despite everything, verbal or spoken language in itself can claim no superiority compared to the language of “nature,” since it is still “a purely arbitrary mode of recalling the object,” it achieves a reality effect on the audience once it becomes performed language: “The sound sun, or the figures s, u, n, are purely arbitrary modes of recalling the object, and for visual mere objects they are not only sufficient, but have infinite advantages from their very nothingness per se. But the language of nature is a subordinate Logos, that was in the beginning, and was with the thing it represented, and was the thing it represented.”24 Dramatic language has the unique power to bridge together the arbitrary sign and the natural world within the magical sphere of the staging of a world entrusted to the oral word, be it mental—when read silently—or physically perceptible, when represented in a theater house. In the latter case, however, the reader, becoming spectator, relies not only on his own mental or imaginative powers, but delegates them to the verbal and body language of the actor. The actor, if he or she is a good and skillful performer, presents in words and gestures, in silence and motion, a form of reality to the senses of the audience, thus supplying “a species of actual experience.” As Coleridge writes with particular reference to Shakespeare: Now the language of Shakspeare, in his Lear for instance, is a something intermediate between these two; or rather it is the former blended with the

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latter,—the arbitrary, not merely recalling the cold notion of the thing, but expressing the reality of it, and, as arbitrary language is an heirloom of the human race, being itself a part of that which it manifests. What shall I deduce from the preceding positions? Even this,—the appropriate, the never to be too much valued advantage of the theatre, if only the actors were what we know they have been, a delightful, yet most effectual remedy for this dead palsy of the public mind. What would appear mad or ludicrous in a book, when presented to the senses under the form of reality, and with the truth of nature, supplies a species of actual experience. This is indeed the special privilege of a great actor over a great poet.25

Coleridge’s perspective plainly reverses Charles Lamb’s argument regarding the incapacity of the stage to convey intellectual meaning by “physical properties.” As we have seen, for Coleridge it is precisely the performance of the play that, far from being (in Lamb’s terms) “a highly artificial medium,” gives audible and visual shape to the passions and actions of the characters. Or to turn Lamb’s critical remarks against him, it is exactly “that form of speaking”—the actor’s personification of the character—that puts “the reader or spectator into possession of the true knowledge of inner structure and workings of mind in a character,” and that supplies him with “a species of actual experience.” Dramatic language, figurative as it may be, becomes truer to nature and more faithful to life thanks to the body language and the spoken words put on show on the stage; and from there, the character’s passions and workings of mind, taking off on the wing of “sympathetic curiosity,” capture the spectator’s eye and ear, shaping his/her imaginative powers. The combination of language—seen as the verbal medium able to create the illusionistic world of abstract ideas but also of flesh and passions—and “sympathetic curiosity,” the sentiment that drives the human being to view and feel that illusionistic world as a reality, had already been eloquently expressed by Edmund Burke, in the fifth part of his Enquiry on the Beautiful and the Sublime (1757). In Section VII, entitled “How WORDS influence the passions,” Burke discusses the role played by figurative language in exercising an influence on the passions and in arousing them in the reader/spectator’s mind: Now, as words affect, not by any original power, but by representation, it might be supposed, that their influence over the passions should be but light; yet it is quite otherwise; for we find by experience that eloquence and poetry are as capable, nay indeed much more capable of making deep and lively impressions than any other arts, and even than nature itself in very many cases. . . . First, that we take an extraordinary part in the passions of others, and that we are easily affected and brought into sympathy by any

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token which are shewn of them; and there are no tokens which can express all the circumstances of most passions so fully as words; so that if a person speaks upon any object, he can not only convey the subject to you, but likewise the manner in which he is himself affected by it.26

What is particularly interesting in this passage is that Burke is mainly referring to figurative and poetic language empowered to convey “living words,” so much so as to quote the line “A universe of Death” from Milton’s Paradise Lost as an example of how words can represent ideas of “a very affecting nature,”27 even when they “seldom occur in reality” or “never really occurred in any shape” (such as famine, war or death); but these words, Burke says, still “affect the mind more than the sensible image does.”28 Despite this emphasis on the poetic, this passage is in fact an excellent description of the way dramatic language becomes a vehicle for emotional attitude through the actor’s performance of “the manner in which he is himself affected by it.” According to Burke, in fact, words not only “signify” reality and stimulate the imagination of the listener, but also transport us—as readers or spectators—into the passional universe of the speaker. This psychological and emotional journey within the character’s mind as well as toward the reader’s or spectator’s moral and social consciousness was precisely the one undertaken by Joanna Baillie who, blending the language of dramatic illusion with the binding social force of “sympathtic curiosity,” created anew a dramatic genre: the theater of the passions, or what has been defined “closet drama” or “mental drama.” Indeed, drama was for the Scottish playwright the genre that allows the deepest insight into human psychology, the study of which is the domain of the dramatic writer and, according to Baillie, constitutes “the centre and the strength of the battle,”29 since the characters “speak directly for themselves.”30 From this derives the emotional realism of drama as a source of direct exploration of human nature and the “language of the agitated soul,”31 namely the passions.32 Baillie’s theater, however, is also a successful, and eminently modern, attempt to stage the complexity of psychic life. To Joanna Baillie, the concept of sympathetic curiosity is preliminary to “almost every species of moral writings, but particularly the Dramatic,”33 and is a sort of universal disposition of man towards his fellow human beings. This tendency, Baillie argues, goes hand in hand with the instinctive need all men share for self-knowledge and self-improvement—“in examining others, we know ourselves.”34 Michael Gamer notes, “Baillie argues for supernatural and psychological spectacle as a potential tool for moral and intellectual instruction, basing its claims in a theory of learning through spectating, operating by a mechanism she calls ‘sym-

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pathetick curiosity.’”35 Bailie defines the latter in these terms: “This sympathetick curiosity of our nature . . . is universal. . . . It is our best and most powerful instructor. From it we are taught the proprieties and decencies of ordinary life, and are prepared for distressing and difficult situations. In examining others we know ourselves. . . . We cannot well exercise this disposition without becoming more just, more merciful, more compassionate.”36 Baillie’s concept of “sympathetick curiosity,” fully theorized in her introductory discourse, is coherently embodied in her plays, especially in tragedies such as De Monfort and Orra, or in tragicomedy such as Witchcraft or Family Legend, where, very much like Coleridge in Remorse (1813), Baillie explores the psyche entrapped by gothic fears or nocturnal terrors to demonstrate that evil is not a supernatural dimension but a very human one. Its forge is not hell but the human mind: like Milton’s Lucifer, or Blake’s London, Baillie’s evil resides in the human mind that is able to transform hell into heaven and heaven into hell. Baillie’s characters, therefore, project onto the outer world the shadows of their inner self, and no supernatural entity haunts them except the frailty of their own minds. Michael Gamer usefully points out that Baillie goes beyond her predecessors (such as Ann Radcliffe) “in making the mind the sole source of gothic effects, rather than having her characters misinterpret ambiguous stimuli outside of themselves. Her usual stage practice is to provide recognizably gothic settings and effects but to withhold actual supernatural representations.”37 To conclude, we might briefly consider Orra and De Monfort.38 In Orra (1812), the passion under scrutiny is fear, associated with the violence whereby the young and sensitive heroine is locked up in order to convince her to marry a man she does not love. The old and scary castle in which she is confined and the daily persecution she has to suffer will finally conquer her reason: sadly and ironically, precisely at the moment when her true lover comes to rescue her, disguised as a huntsman dressed all in black, Orra’s self-induced terror shakes forever her weakened mind. Terror thus shocks her into folly, as we read in the final scene: Orra.

Orra.

I’ll tell thee how it is: A hideous burst hath been: the damn’d and the holy The living and the dead, together are In horrid neighbourship—’Tis but thin vapour, Floating around thee, makes the wav’ring bound. Pooh! Blow it off, and see the uncurtain’d reach. See! From all points they come; earth casts them up! In grave-clothes swath’d are those but new in death; And there be some half bone, half cased in shreds

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Of that which flesh hath been; and there be some With wicker’d ribs, through which the darkness scowls. Back, back!—They close upon us.—Oh! The void Of hollow unball’d sockets staring grimly, And lipless jaws that move and clatter round us In mockery of speech!—Back, back, I say! Back, back! (5.2.259)

In De Monfort (1798), Ballie’s tragedy on hatred, it is the scene of the dark wood that best exemplifies De Monfort’s weak and superstitious mind. De Monfort enters “with a strong expression of disquiet, mixed with fear, upon his face” (BP, 1.377): De Monfort. How hollow groans the earth beneath my tread! Is there an echo here? Methinks it sounds As tho’ some heavy footstep follow’d me. I will advance no farther. . . . Things horrid, bloody, terrible, do pass, As tho’ they pass’d not; nor impress the mind With the fix’d clearness of reality. [An owl is heard screaming near him.] [Starting.] What sound is that? [Listens, and the owl cries again,] It is the screech owl’s cry. Foul bird of night! what spirit guides thee here? Art thou instinctive drawn to scenes of horrour? I’ve heard of this. [Pauses and listens.] How those fall’n leaves so rustle on the path, De Monfort. With whisp’ring noise, as tho’ the earth around me Did utter secret things! The distant river, too, bears to mine ear A dismal wailing. O mysterious night! Thou art not silent; many tongues hast thou. (BP, 1:377–78)

The wood—as De Monfort’s archrival, Rezenvelt, demonstrates, entering the same forest only a few minutes later with a cheerful and serene attitude—responds to De Monfort’s disquiet. In other words, the “gothic” lies not in the wood itself, which becomes the mental stage of De Monfort’s own anxiety and fear, but lies in his perturbation or passion: his uncontrollable hatred for Rezenvelt. The gothic is inscribed in his mind as much as in his fragmented language and in the illusionary sensual perceptions that drive De Monfort to commit a

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murder and then to die from guilt. Such a journey into a troubled mind effectively puts on display, and on stage, Baillie’s groundbreaking skill in reconciling the twin demands of dramatic illusion and sympathetic curiosity.

NOTES 1. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), ed. K. Haakonssen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 13. 2. Ibid., 11. 3. Aaron Hill, The Art of Acting: Part I. (London: J. Osborn, 1746); John Hill, The Actor: A Treatise on the Art of Playing (London, 1750). See also “An Essay on the Art of Acting,” in The Works of the Late Aaron Hill: Consisting of Letters on various Subjects and of Original Poems, Moral and Facetious. With an Essay on the Art of Acting (London, 1754). On Aaron Hill’s acting theories, see T. Cole and H. K. Chinoy, eds., Actors on Acting: The Theories, Techniques, and Practices of the World’s Great Actors, Told in their Own Words (New York: Crown, 1949). See also J. R. Roach, The Player’s Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1985), 100–114. 4. Cole and Chinoy, Actors on Acting, 123. 5. Hill, 9. 6. See Cole and Chinoy, 121. 7. Henry Siddons, Practical Illustrations of Rhetorical Gesture and Action, Embellished with Numerous Engravings (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1968), 193–94. 8. Ibid., 44. 9. Ibid., 121. 10. Joanna Baillie, “Introductory Discourse,” in The Dramatic and Poetical Works of Joanna Baillie, complete in one volume, 2nd ed. (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1851), 4. 11. Her uncle, Dr. William Hunter, was interested in the analysis of neural mechanisms and their interconnections with the emotions, while her brother, Dr. Matthew Baillie, devoted a large part of his research to human behaviour and to social processes. 12. Among other possible allusions, one can discern Rousseau and his “Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men” and David Hume’s “A Treatise of Human Nature,” in particular “On the passions.” 13. Baillie, 2. 14. Percy Bysshe Shelley, “A Defence of Poetry,” in Percy Bysshe Shelley: Poems and Prose, ed. Timothy Webb, (London: Everyman, J. M. Dent, 1995), 259. 15. Percy Bysshe Shelley, preface to The Cenci, in P. B. Shelley Poetical Works, ed. Thomas Hutchinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 276. 16. Charles Lamb, “My First Play,” in Charles Lamb and Elia, ed. J. E. Morpuro (Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press, 1993), 221. 17. Originally published in 1812 in The Reflector, no. 4, as “Theatralia No. I—On Garrick, and Acting; and the Plays of Shakspeare, considered with reference to their fitness for Stage Representation.” In 1818 the essay was reprinted in Lamb’s Works without the original final proposal to eventually “extend this enquiry to the Comedies,” since that was going to be the last issue of the magazine. The text reproduced here is the 1818 version (London: C. and J. Ollier, 1818). 18. Charles Lamb, “On Garrick, and Acting; and the Plays of Shakspeare.”

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19. Claude Lorrain (1600–1682), French painter, one of the greatest masters of ideal landscape painting. 20. Adam Smith, Essays on Philosophical Subjects, ed. by Dugald Stewart. (Dublin, 1795). 21. First published in 1836 by H. N. Coleridge in The Literary Remains of S. T. Coleridge as a part of the section entitled “The Progress of Drama.” The fragment is from Additional MS. 34, 225, f. 56 (1805 watermark), and the heading given to the fragment (“Desultory Remarks on the Stage, and the Present State of the Higher Drama”) suggests that Coleridge probably intended to develop it into an essay. See Thomas M. Raysor, “Coleridge’s Manuscript Lectures,” Modern Philology 22, no. 1 (August, 1924): 17–25, esp. 19. 22. S. T. Coleridge, “Dramatic Illusion: Desultory Remarks on the Stage, and the Present State of the Higher Drama.” 23. S. T. Coleridge, “The Drama Generally, and Public Taste,” first published in 1836 by H. N. Coleridge in Literary Remains, and included in 1849 in Notes and Lectures upon Shakespeare and Some of the Old Poets and Dramatists, with other Literary Remains, ed. H. N. Coleridge (London: William Pickering, 1849). For details on H. N. Coleridge’s editing and interpolation of the manuscript fragments, see Raysor, 20. 24. S. T. Coleridge, “The Drama Generally.” 25. Ibid. 26. Edmund Burke, in the fifth part of his Enquiry on the Beautiful and the Sublime, ed. Adam Phillips (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 158. 27. The reference is Milton’s description of the journey of sorrow and loss that the fallen angels make towards Hell: O’er many a dark and dreary vale / They pass’d, and many a region dolorous; / O’er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp; / Rock, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens and shades of death, / A universe of death.” See Burke, 216. 28. Ibid., 158–59. 29. Baillie, 6. 30. Ibid., 7. 31. Ibid., 3. 32. On Baillie’s use of the gothic, see also Franca Dellarosa, “‘Ye will discern mist and mysteries at last’: The Gothic Laid Bare in Joanna Baillie’s Witchcraft,” in Poetic and Dramatic Forms in British Romanticism, ed. Franca Dellarosa (Roma-Bari: Laterza-University Press online), 99–114 (www.universitypressonline.it). 33. Baillie, 1. 34. Ibid., 4. 35. Michael Gamer, “National Supernaturalism: Joanna Baillie, Germany, and the Gothic Drama.” Theatre Survey 38, no. 2 (1997): 49–88. 36. Baillie, 4. 37. Michael Gamer, Romanticism and the Gothic: Genre, Reception, and CanonFormation. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 138.

IV Actors’ Bodies

The Early Modern Physical Theater Jacquelyn Bessell

WORKING

AT THE NEW GLOBE IN LONDON AND THE RECONstructed Blackfriars in Staunton, Virginia, has taught me that performance is a holistic activity and the actor’s voice a physical instrument. To remain theatrically “alive” on an exposed, reconstructed Early Modern stage, the actor must draw as much on somatic1 storytelling techniques as on good diction and a grounding in rhetoric. The techniques required of actors performing at the Globe and Blackfriars reconstructions include a high level of skill and specificity in physical storytelling. Though the two spaces are very different in many respects, especially in scale, they have inherent similarities, not least of which are the playing conditions imposed by universal lighting. This element alone requires great technical precision in creating the physical lives of characters on stage. We believe that similar performance conditions were to be found in the original playhouses; so we might also wish to speculate about a corresponding level of visual complexity in the original performances of these plays. The choreographer and movement specialist Dymphna Callery describes physical theater in language that could function as a compelling artistic manifesto for the reconstructed Globe and Blackfriars theaters:

Physical theatre acknowledges the relationship between the stage and spectator in a way that, for example, film does not—and cannot even though film can represent reality—and that fourth-wall naturalistic theatre does not because its very nature is to pretend that the audience is not there. . . . In physical theatre the two-way current between stage and spectator does not operate merely at the level of suspense and empathy, but embraces the visual and visceral. Watching becomes a sensory experience, the magical and illusory qualities of the experience are paramount.2

Callery describes a potent atmospheric performance environment of the kind found on Bankside today, and very likely in the same approximate location four hundred years ago. Moreover, a look at the resumés of actors performing at the Globe since the late 1990s will confirm that 181

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actors with a physical theater background perform most effectively in this space, one not suited to the typical skill set of the kind of movie or TV stars we see making appearances at larger regional theaters in Britain and America.3 It is unfortunate, perhaps, for the purposes of this essay, that the quote from Callery’s book does not include the text as part of this performance equation. Shakespeare’s text is the medium through which passes the “two-way current” she describes. Perhaps because Shakespeare’s language itself is heightened and potent, we imagine that to create physicality and gesture operating on the same scale as the rhetoric would be to over-egg the pudding. If we adjust our thinking and pay more attention to the connection between physicality and language, we find it easier to imagine how strong physical choices might be necessary to underpin the mighty iamb. Sian Williams, a dancer, choreographer, and actor who has been involved with productions at the Globe over the past eleven seasons, has had time to consider the connection between text and physical storytelling. She has collaborated many times with the director Tim Carroll, whose rehearsal processes include extensive, thorough, and detailed work on scansion, rhythm, rhetoric, and other elements of verse speaking. These collaborations have refined her perceptions about the relationship between verbal and physical storytelling, as she explains: At the Globe, the rapport between actors and audience is sensitized by the environment—open air, audience sharing the same light, actors moving amongst the audience—[and] the communication of intention is clarified by the body when the actor is “in tune”; when they are not, the lines of communication break down. This physicality includes stylization— heightening our physical expression to drive home the intention or feeling—and the orchestration of movement with meter. . . . I am of the opinion that it is most effective to use Shakespeare’s language as a score and choreograph or extemporize movement within the strict boundaries of the language phrase; this is liberating. When a scene is protracted in order to indulge in a visual treat we may be in danger of losing control of what propels an audience to stay involved. Equally, the suppression of physical expression can dilute the power of the play; I think it would be a mistake to assume that movement must always be kept to the minimum, treating speech with reverence, isolating it from the body as a whole.4

Training and technique are required to achieve this liberation through language. Productions at the reconstructed Globe since 1999 have shown that somatic, contemporary actor-training techniques work effectively in partnership with experiments with original stage practices. Supported by a team of coaches in movement, voice, and verse, actors

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at the reconstructed Globe sought strength and clarity in gestures that resonated with the text and pursued a holistic approach to verse speaking that often resulted in a compelling visual spectacle, as well as a treat for the ear and the imagination. I first became interested in physical theater while serving as head of research at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. From 1999 through 2002, I watched and worked with several successive companies of actors as they negotiated the technical and physical demands of that unique and difficult space.5 The artistic director at that time, Mark Rylance, instituted an unorthodox hierarchy in the creative teams supporting each production: the director would be referred to as the “Master of Play,” and actors enjoyed support from a “Master of Movement” (choreographer), “Master of Voice” (vocal coach), and “Master of Verse” (text coach).6 That the actors were able to perform confidently for very long runs of demanding shows and repertories (typically eight shows a week from May through the end of September) was in large part thanks to the continuing efforts of the Masters of Movement, Voice, and Verse respectively, in their efforts to keep the actors’ minds, bodies, and voices conditioned and working at peak capacity. Over the course of four seasons, from 1999 through 2002, a total of six movement specialists (excluding fight choreographers) supported the work of the acting companies at the Globe, compared with two voice coaches and one verse specialist. Each production rehearsed for a minimum of six weeks; the support work in voice, verse, and movement continued throughout the rehearsal period and into the run, until the end of the season. Whether this investment in the ensemble’s continued training and professional development represented an experiment in “original practices”—replicating in some way the apprentice system of Shakespeare’s era—or rather a financial and strategic commitment to the artist at forefront of the organization—the results were positive, and plain to see—as well as hear. Certain approaches or methods common to many actor-training programs proved useful to practitioners experimenting with the more technical storytelling demands of the reconstructed Globe in its first few seasons. Directors such as Mike Alfreds and Katherine Hunter responded to the Globe space by emphasizing physical storytelling techniques with their respective ensembles. In 1999, Ms. Hunter worked with Marcello Magni (who, like Ms. Hunter, was one of the cofounders of the U.K.’s best-known physical theater company, Théâtre de Complicité), and an ensemble of actors with impressive physical theater skills, to devise a production of The Comedy of Errors, rehearsed in a collaborative and somatic way. Elaborate and acrobatic physical routines, extensive and imaginative use of puppets, “animated clothing”

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and other props, combined with a choral approach to storytelling, developed over the course of full-company rehearsals, resulting in a production that physically expanded, rather than merely served, the text. Ms. Hunter’s celebrated performance as the eponymous antihero of Richard III in 2003 showed a similar attention to physical detail. Mike Alfreds’s productions of Cymbeline (2001) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2002) varied radically in terms of cast size (six actors for Cymbeline, and fourteen for MND) but shared a common, systematic and thorough approach to rehearsals, combining twentieth century actortraining techniques that fused Stanislavski-based text work with physical approaches to the text; these physical approaches included Laban technique (described below) and animal work.7 Both productions shared a desire to match the muscularity of Shakespeare’s language with a physical rigor and clarity in storytelling. These productions, and others that have followed in the same vein, impressed upon me the importance of what we might call expansive physical storytelling with Shakespeare. In my own work as a director and acting teacher, using the more intimate Blackfriars reconstruction, I continue to investigate ways in which the actors’ bodies can respond to and amplify the shifting dynamics in Shakespeare’s narratives. Working within the parameters presented by the Blackfriars space in this way naturally invites us to speculate about the performance style favored by the first companies of players in the original Globe and Blackfriars, but we do so with caution, understanding that in analyzing performance, the most compelling evidence is that of our own eyes. As such, we need to continue investigating the reconstructed spaces, with actors drawing on contemporary approaches to performance. That is, theater practitioners working at the new Globe and new Blackfriars must continue to do as Mark Rylance, Katherine Hunter, Mike Alfreds, Sian Williams and others since the late 1990s have done—and ask how, without the help of contemporary stage lighting and other recognizable technical supports, can the performances achieve shape, change pace and tempo, pull and switch focus, and guide the audience’s eyes as well as ears? It would be unfair to imply that scholars of the Early Modern drama share a common disinterest in physical storytelling techniques. In The Shakespearean Stage, Andrew Gurr suggests that a series of stock gestures was a helpful tool for an Early Modern actor with an entire repertory of plays to perform and with a finite memory with which to do that. Gurr points to evidence of theatrical gestures recognizable to Early Modern audiences and shows how portraits from the time used certain poses to indicate certain emotional qualities or states. He also indicates that differences in acting styles may have existed between the

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boy companies and the adult professionals, with the latter espousing a more naturalistic and less expansive physical language than the former.8 For many practical reasons relating to access and facilities, the rehearsal processes of contemporary companies working in the reconstructed Early Modern theaters have received comparatively little scholarly attention compared with the products of those processes, the public performances. The remainder of this essay shows how certain contemporary actortraining techniques may be applied to physicalize the text. The performance context to bear in mind throughout is the universally-lit, reconstructed Early Modern stage. I have discovered that it is difficult to articulate a cumulative, somewhat intuitive set of processes in the form of an essay, and readers will notice that on occasion, this essay asks them to put themselves in an imagined rehearsal room—in the shoes of the actor, so to speak.

GESTURE Gestural language underpins the work of many physical theater companies whose devised work is not necessarily dependent on an existing text. Companies such as Théâtre de Complicité and Théâtre de la Jeune Lune,9 whose work has influenced mainstream theaters in Britain and America (including the reconstructed Globe), were formed by graduates of the École Jacques LeCoq in Paris. LeCoq’s insights into the gestural mode of communication remind us that our physical connection to meaning is elemental and instinctive. LeCoq perceives a language of gesture born out of the necessity to express the most basic human needs and emotions with the greatest economy of effort. This language is universal and immediate, which is why it survives in theatrical performance: When we go to the theatre to see a performance in a foreign language, we understand and recognize this language of gesture consisting of movements, of music and of sounds. We are responding to a language that is universal. It is the same for all physical gestures that tend towards that economy of movement needed for the completion of any given action. The body learns by adapting itself to the effort required by a given gesture. When repeated, any gesture becomes selective, eliminating whatever is superfluous. These dynamics of gesture and movement appear as universal because they are organically inscribed within our bodies and belong to the laws of gravity. Gradually, they are shaped, transposed, deviated, hidden or opposed by education or by tactical or diplomatic considerations which are peculiar to each individual, to each country or to each historical period.10

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Though LeCoq’s notion of an organic universal language of gesture suggests a timeless quality that invites us to make connections between performers today and their Early Modern counterparts, we may have to concede that the historically separated socialization processes he also describes might leave us with fewer gestural legacies than we might wish for. While scholars cannot necessarily unearth the Early Modern physical theater’s language of gesture through LeCoq’s theory, his approach offers actors today a valuable and practical specificity of gestural communication. Collaborations with performers of different nationalities are made possible for companies like Théâtre de Complicité and Théâtre de la Jeune Lune through this somatic approach to storytelling. Peter Brook’s extensive record of work with international, multilingual companies must depend to an extent on similar universal, nonverbal forms. We may not all use mime as our principal currency, but the emergence of “physical theater” as a recognized field of creative research owes much to the widespread dissemination of LeCoq’s methods. Gesture is very much lingua franca for American theater practitioners like Anne Bogart and Tina Landau. Their “Viewpoints” methodology is arguably the most pervasive to have emerged in recent decades. Bogart and Landau identify “Gesture” as one of the Viewpoints, and ask theater artists to investigate gestures as creative building blocks in composition and rehearsal. In their Viewpoints book, Bogart and Landau define and subdivide the notion of Gesture, identifying both Behavioral Gestures (those part of recognizable everyday human life) and Expressive Gestures (those making explicit those feelings or meanings otherwise implicit).11 Bogart and Landau typically encourage actors to explore the importance of Gesture in an experiential manner. The Viewpoints approach works by combining a number of components, each reflecting on and informing the other. For instance, if we consider two of the other Viewpoints, “Tempo” and “Duration,” we understand that any common gesture can reasonably be performed at a tempo either slow or fast. Likewise, we can expand or contract the duration of the gesture. Further, we can perform a fast-tempo gesture for an extended duration, or a slow-tempo gesture for a short duration, and so on. Participants with little or no theater training will recognize that, for instance, the gesture of raising a hand to someone’s face changes its meaning when performed very slowly (a caress, perhaps?) when compared to the same motion or gesture performed at speed (a slap, perhaps?). Such an approach avoids the language of psychologically based intention common to many other popular methods of actor training, and relies on meaning to be communicated by external, technical means

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alone. For some, part of the appeal of Viewpoints lies in its gentle philosophical opposition to psychologically based training, in that it offers performers a way to outwardly express emotional gestures without relying on inwardly generated emotion.12 The Viewpoints are so frequently used today in contemporary, devised physical theater that we might overlook their usefulness in approaching Early Modern texts. This is a shame, because none of the components contained in the approach are culturally or historically exclusive. In fact, so many actor-training programs use the Viewpoints methodology in their movement classes that it is inevitable that actors bring this work to their professional endeavors, one way or another. My directing work at the Blackfriars, especially my production of Love’s Labour’s Lost (2007), made extensive use of Viewpoints technique. The choreographer for that production, Doreen Bechtol, has worked closely with Bogart’s SITI Company over the past few years. Ms. Bechtol’s facility with the Viewpoints approach, and the actors‘ familiarity with the vocabulary of Viewpoints, meant that seemingly complex and nuanced choreography could be achieved in a very short space of time. As the American Shakespeare Center typically allows only three and a half weeks of rehearsal for each production in its Summer/Fall season, the benefits of this kind of shorthand are obvious. As scholars and practitioners collaborate to reimagine the Early Modern theater through reconstructions like the Globe and Blackfriars, we might remind ourselves that actors continue by necessity to draw on what they know to be effective tools, regardless of what performance tradition those tools come from.

GESTURES EMBEDDED IN THE TEXT: WHEN WORDS FALL SHORT For many scholars, the embedded stage directions and patterns of punctuation in Early Modern texts hold the key to visualizing the body and performance language of the players in Shakespeare’s company and others; and theories on how to read these clues vary depending on whose book you read. Countless references exist to various gaits, postures, and gestures, and these are valuable to anyone involved in close textual study with an interest in performance. Maurice Charney and others have recognized instances of important gestural language in various scholarly editions of the plays, but another more fluid category of embedded stage directions exists, pointing to those rare moments when the text becomes secondary to the actor’s physical choice.13 In Antony and Cleopatra, Antony’s “The nobleness of life / Is to do thus”14

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(1.1, 38–39, italics mine) and many other moments like this demand gestural choices of the actor that dictate, rather than clarify or strengthen, meaning. Appendix 1 of this essay contains a few selected excerpts of this kind, with a brief description of some possible gestural choices. Open-ended textual moments like these are, and were, finalized in the moment of performance. We can say that the thought is finished only in the synergy of spoken word and action. Gesture-dependent moments present actors and directors with the opportunity for whimsical choices that may or may not have anything to do with the text. As a result, these moments are awkward for scholars, as personal performance style, popular cultural resonance, and pure inspiration can sometimes play as great a role in storytelling in the moment as the text itself. What is of course fascinating is the idea that the same was true four hundred years ago. Audiences today still recognize and rely on gestures to communicate what and when words cannot. Though finding the right gesture to physically underscore or amplify the line you speak is crucial in a space like the Globe, it is equally vital to find the right gesture with which to listen when others on the stage are speaking. The sightlines are such that no single position on the stage allows an actor to be seen by all sections of the audience at the same time. From time to time, each section of the Globe audience must rely on its own ears and on the visible reactions of nonspeaking or listening actors in order to follow the story. The task of engaging the audience without speaking is made easier for these actors because their reactions from the stage find a natural connection with the visible audience. Gestures can be stock, universal, personal, political, or emotional in nature, but they must hold and convey meaning for the performer and the audience. I would argue that the same must have held true for performers and audiences in the Early Modern theater.

LABAN EFFORT ACTIONS We could say that a gesture is a physical “event,” an action that punctuates the text rather than underscoring it in a sustained way. To speak of sustained physical energy is to use language brought to our attention by Rudolf Laban (1879–1958), whose theories and practices have influenced how dance, voice, and movement are taught in many conservatories today. Inspired perhaps by the pleasing specificity of ballet choreography in notation, Rudolf Laban developed a system of notation for the way in which the body and voice travel through space and time.

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A complete detailing of Laban technique can be found in his own Mastery of Movement,15 so I will limit myself here to a description of the eight “effort actions” Laban identified, which are most commonly used by actors and dancers from otherwise diverse training and performance backgrounds. In the passage that follows, the reader may detect the difficulty I have in translating the work of the rehearsal room to the page. The work I describe happens through the body, and the results are easier to see and hear than they are to articulate in a scholarly manner. Effort actions are made of three components,16 each containing two opposing polarities. The three components are space (we distinguish between direct and indirect actions); weight (we distinguish between strong and light actions); and time (we distinguish between sudden and sustained actions). To distinguish between direct and indirect actions, we can say in general terms that direct actions have an “I make things happen” intentional quality. Indirect actions reflect an “I respond to outside stimuli” quality to them. Actors experimenting with the weight component sometimes use the idea of working against resistance (strong effort needed, as in walking through water or sand) or working against no resistance (light effort needed, as in walking normally). The component of time contrasts to the sudden effort, an on/off impulse, with the sustained effort, which is continuous. When we combine these three pairs of components, a total of eight combinations emerge, described as Float, Punch, Glide, Slash, Dab, Wring, Flick, and Press: Float = Indirect, Light, Sustained Wring = Indirect, Strong, Sustained Glide = Direct, Light, Sustained Press = Direct, Strong, Sustained

Flick = Indirect, Light, Sudden Slash = Indirect, Strong, Sudden Dab = Direct, Light, Sudden Punch = Direct, Strong, Sudden

Laban effort actions are particularly effective in changing habitual physical rhythms and patterns of movement or speech. Orchestrating a performance using the effort actions also allows an actor to move quickly between tangible manifestations of emotion. Since the effort actions connect the physical and vocal elements of performance, they have proved a popular tool in many actor training programs. Shifts in dynamics may be negotiated quickly, without fundamental changes to intention or motivation. Appendix 2 demonstrates how an actor playing Othello might use Laban effort actions to orchestrate different performance choices for a particular speech. If a performer chooses effort actions that are indirect, and share a quality that is responsive, rather than pro-active,

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Othello’s language seems to respond physically and violently to his situation, but without strategy or premeditation. If, on the other hand, the performer uses direct effort actions of corresponding weight and time, the result is that the language seems to respond to the situation with focus and agency. Put bluntly, punching is controlled, whereas slashing is not. The point is not which represents a better set of performance choices, but that very different choices can be achieved in the moment of performance, as a result of thinking about a maximum of eight things. Such a narrow technical focus is a considerable advantage to performers, who might need to negotiate and deliver complex shifts in thought and emotion without losing momentum in midflow, so to speak. The scope of the effort action needs to be considered. In rehearsal or in the classroom, we will often engage our whole bodies and the fullest extent of our voices as we experiment with each effort action. Rarely in performance do we go to such extremes. More often, the performer internalizes the effort actions s/he uses, using them to give color and richness to movement and the voice. It should be noted that the extent to which an actor externalizes or internalizes the effort action dictates how “theatrical” the action appears. Put another way, a more externalized effort action might be needed if the action is to “read” in a space of the Globe’s size, whereas an intimate space like the Blackfriars might require the same action to be internalized. This, like everything else I address here, is a choice made by the actor, and is both negotiable and flexible. Using aspects of Laban theory to physicalize the text creates opportunities for audiences in any theater, but especially one using universal lighting, to engage with the story on an immediate and fundamental level. This keeps the physical communication between actor and audience fluid and meaningful.

EMOTIONAL/PHYSICAL SUBTEXT: HEAD, HEART, GUTS, AND GROIN At this point, we can make a transition away from the text to thinking about subtext. Subtext is a term more associated with contemporary plays than with those from the Early Modern period, and contemporary acting exercises often use commonplace physical metaphors to help actors connect their voices and bodies to the text and subtext of the scene. Practitioners like Scott Kaiser and others have published exercises for actors in various forms of spoken subtext,17 specifically the

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subtext of Shakespeare’s plays. In doing so, Kaiser connects the language of contemporary acting technique directly to the language of Shakespeare. Appendix 3 examines one of Kaiser’s exercises in detail, one he calls “head, heart, guts, and groin.” The physical storytelling in this instance relies not so much on conventional gesture as on a conventional understanding of the body’s relationship to the emotional state. We commonly refer to the idea of the head saying one thing while the heart says another. We also understand what we mean by “gut instinct” or persons “thinking with their groin” rather than with their head. These common physical metaphors provide a useful platform for actors seeking to differentiate between specific moments in a passage of text. Actors connecting to “head” impulses connect perhaps to the intellectual, rational, imaginative, or reasonable impulses they perceive in the language. Connecting to “heart” might be connecting to a notion of the integrity or honesty in what we say, or perhaps to the love or emotional content of the language. When we access the “guts,” we connect to our appetites, ambition, aggression, or anger. “Groin” of course connects with sexual imagery, but it might also be useful to an actor dealing with manipulation of language (certain kinds of wit, perhaps, come from the groin as much as from the head). “Groin” may also be the seat of our survival or animal instincts, and this might be what is suggested to us in the language. This work is important because it straddles the perceived divide between the traditions of somatic versus psychological storytelling techniques.18 Even more significantly, Kaiser’s roots in the Stanislavski tradition might seem directly at odds with certain elements of physical theater—which can generally be said to challenge naturalism as a theatrical form—were it not for the fact that these two traditions can find common ground in Shakespeare’s visceral language, with its strong emotional subtext. Kaiser proposes an essentially somatic, technical approach to navigating the complex emotional territory of Shakespeare’s language. Understanding this connection is exciting. An equivalent, playable connection might ultimately be found between, say, Early Modern humoral theories and a kind of “Shakespearean subtext.” However tantalizing that prospect might be, the approach offers for now another useful shorthand for practitioners working on verse plays in reconstructed Early Modern theaters, where the text is communicated by the actor’s physical instrument alone. In particular, shifting between head, heart, guts, and groin can help an actor trying to distinguish between a character’s conflicting internal emotions and motivations at speed. Very often, actors can get caught

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up in the idea of the conflict itself as they try, in the same scene of Othello described in Appedix 2, to play both Othello’s love for Desdemona and his sense of her betrayal of him at the same time. In those instances, the resulting effect for the audience is one of muddied emotion, a performance that is blocked, without momentum. If an audience is to understand the theatrical idea of an internal, ongoing struggle, the performer might find it best to deliver a rapid succession of radically changing actions or impulses. Each impulse is in fact distinct, and the sense of dilemma is created by the speed with which an actor moves from one action to the next. Switching quickly from, say, heart to guts, can define and shape the spoken text while connecting the actor’s body to the shifts in the character’s emotions at the same time. The story thus becomes clear to the eye and to the ear. This kind of exercise works particularly well when combined with Laban technique. I have found that actors in my classes and in my productions at the Blackfriars have no difficulty orchestrating performances of challenging texts with complex dynamic shifts when they focus on the Laban effort actions and connect to either head, heart, gut, or groin. Indeed, many Laban practitioners will argue for a necessary association between the “strong” effort actions and the actor’s physical core; likewise, a connection between the “weaker” effort actions and the upper body may be useful for many. We might easily imagine “wringing” to have more of a connection to “guts” than to “head,” for example. Likewise, “floating” would seem to some a natural effort action to stem from “heart,” but not from “guts.” How an actor interprets the effort action, or the relationship between it and the moment in the text, will be key in choosing how the effort action is combined with the head-, heart-, guts-, or groin-led subtext of the moment in question. Appendix 4 illustrates how the effort actions were connected with head, heart, guts, and groin to orchestrate a particular performance by Seattle-based actor Patrick Bentley. Mr. Bentley played the title role in an Masters of Fine Arts showcase production of King Lear that I directed, which was performed at the American Shakespeare Center’s Blackfriars Playhouse in March 2008. All of the student actors involved in the production were familiar with the particular challenges of the Blackfriars space, many of which seemed best addressed by using techniques described in this essay. In the difficult scene in which the “mad” Lear encounters the recently blinded Gloucester, Lear enters in the middle of a dialogue with himself, with the audience, or perhaps with both by turns. One of the many acting challenges of this scene lies in the rapid succession of visions Lear articulates as fragmented phrases.

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In instances like these, when the text does not offer a coherent train of thought, we must delve into the subtext, and pay close attention to shifting dynamics in the language, to find a playable solution. For this reason, Mr. Bentley orchestrated his performance of this scene using the Laban effort actions in combination with the head, heart, guts, and groin exercise described above. In his M.F.A. thesis paper, he describes this process of orchestration: Lear here displays a mental state ranging from manic to anxious to completely lucid in quick succession. For instance, soon after entering, Lear sees, or thinks he sees, a mouse. After trying to catch the mouse, without interval or explanation, Lear boastfully challenges someone (Edgar? Gloucester? The audience? The mouse?) to a duel. . . . I chose to employ mostly indirect and sustained Laban effort actions and to speak from the head and heart for the entire speech up until “There’s my gauntlet” to suggest the mad king’s calm delight at finding the creature, but to switch rapidly to a direct effort action and to speak from the gut for the gallant challenge that follows. I carefully mapped the entire sequence of Lear’s lunacy in this fashion, in an effort to produce a compelling and tactically specific performance.19

The script excerpt reprinted in Appendix 4 represents Mr. Bentley’s chosen orchestration, together with a series of findings in rehearsal for the part. It cannot of course show choices made or modified in the moment of performance to incorporate information or responses from the visible Blackfriars audience or from his scene partners. These important elements cannot be assessed prior to the performance experience; orchestrating the basic tenor of one’s performance in advance, and focusing primarily on the Laban effort actions and head/heart/guts/ groin components, can help an actor negotiate a challenging scene in a technical way. Working with these different somatic approaches offers the actor and director a diverse and exciting range of staging possibilities, without recourse to “high” production values like sophisticated lighting instruments or an adjustable musical soundtrack to underscore the action on stage. This is useful in any theatrical context; but in the reconstructed Early Modern theaters, such reliance on the actor’s physical instrument alone is essential. We can effect dynamic changes in pace, tempo, rhythm, shape, and spatial relationships to clarify the story we want to tell. We can use these simple techniques in orchestrated combinations to respond not only to dynamic shifts within the text but to dynamic shifts in theatrical dimension (from the meteorological storm to that in Lear’s mind, for example), physically establishing and then

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breaking conventions to present a nuanced story full of playable theatrical metaphor and resonance.

CREATING THE INNER/OTHER STORM Combining these techniques helped the same King Lear company of student actors to visualize in a playable sense the time-honored metaphor of the storm in Lear’s mind. First we created the aural and visual staging elements of the storm—in our case, very loud thunder sheets and other percussive effects producing high volume from inside the tiring-house and elsewhere backstage, and a heightened level of physicality in the performers onstage. Everyone on stage began using strong and sustained Laban effort actions (pressing, wringing) to communicate the idea of moving against the resistance of wind and rain. To show changes in the direction of the wind, or the effect of sudden events like lightning bolts, sections of movement involving sustained effort actions had to be punctuated with ones that were sudden (slashing, punching). This kind of physical activity underscored the text of the scenes in the storm, and the same effort actions provided the foundation for the lines spoken by Robert Bowen Smith and Andrew Blasenak (the actors playing the Fool and Kent), whose characters were physically and visibly affected by the storm. Mr. Bentley’s Lear, by contrast, remained motionless as he whispered the “Blow winds . . .” speech from a kneeling position down stage center. He used the same range of effort actions “in miniature”— massive effort exerted at almost zero volume, with little exterior movement to detract from the cacophony in his mind. As Lear spoke these lines, the Fool and Kent seemed to be separated from Lear by an invisible bubble, as they strained silently against the elements of the storm in their effort to reach him. Too, the sound effects backstage cut out dramatically for Lear’s lines, except for one very high, sustained note on the bowed psaltery. The thunder sheets and drums came in equally quickly to underscore the sections of text spoken (in our case, yelled) by either Kent or the Fool. Careening rapidly and without transition time between the quiet agony of Lear’s inner monologue and the external, physically expansive chaos of the storm on the heath provided a strong, contrapuntal storm theme. In the intimate Blackfriars space, the whispered text rang clearly and produced a tangible shudder among the audience on several occasions. I doubt whether the same technique would prove effective in the outdoor space at the Globe, but we found it a great alternative to the tiresome prospect of several ac-

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tors screeching over loud, sustained sound effects emanating from the tiring-house.

EXPERIMENTS FOR THE FUTURE When we consider the scholarly significance of the reconstructed Globe and Blackfriars, it is hardly surprising that in embracing the reinvention of the spaces themselves, we are tempted to reinvent our thinking about how performances are created in those spaces. In casting aside our contemporary regard for technical innovations in set design and lighting, we should think twice about casting aside with them the contemporary approaches to actor training favored by performers in these reconstructed theaters. If this generation of physical theater artists continues to use the reconstructed Globe as its very public laboratory, the quest to visualize the conditions of Early Modern performances will doubtless include more academic inquiry into the aspect of physical storytelling. By contrast, the American Shakespeare Center’s reconstructed Blackfriars showcased the work of more actors with physical theater backgrounds when it opened in 2001 than it does today. The A.S.C. productions most celebrated in academic circles are those in the Actor’s Renaissance Season, an ongoing experiment in mounting a series of plays, each with no director and one week of rehearsals. The idea of “process” seems strangely anachronistic at the Blackfriars, which puts it at odds with its older, richer sister, the Globe. As this essay suggests, it takes time and considerable human resources to achieve nuanced and detailed physical storytelling. One could argue that a contemporary acting company’s collective training—with the shared technical vocabulary or shorthand born out of that training—is the modern equivalent of the Early Modern players’ apprenticeships and clearly delineated typecasting system, as described by Tiffany Stern and others.20 As the Globe’s second artistic directorate embraces ever more elaborate visual elements in staging the plays, and actors with physical theater training find more and more work there, we can expect to find the stylistic differences between the two reconstructed theaters to become increasingly evident. We should also anticipate the scholarly emphasis on the auditory experience of Early Modern playgoers to be balanced with an equal emphasis on the visual.



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APPENDIX 1. GESTURES DEFINING TEXTUAL MEANING Boyet, from Love’s Labour’s Lost: “Action and accent did they teach him there. / “Thus thou must speak,” and “Thus thy body bear.” (5.2.99–100) Boyet is presumably lampooning the efforts of Berowne and his associates as they coach Moth. “Thus” in both instances requires a clear physical choice, but the text leaves that choice up to the actor playing Boyet. What is interesting here is the question of how Boyet’s physical choices might dictate Moth’s, once the latter appears on stage to perform his part before the Princess and other ladies. Conventional continuity would require the two actors to confer with each other; some collaboration in choosing appropriate vocal tone and gait would be helpful. Alternatively, a negative judgment on Moth’s performance as part of the “Muscovites” entertainments might depend on Boyet’s demonstration being radically different from Moth’s later efforts. Antony, from Antony and Cleopatra: “Here is my space” (1.1.36); “The nobleness of life / Is to do thus” (1.1.38–39); and “Were we before our armies, and to fight / I should do thus.” (2.2.26–27) In the first instance—“Here is my space”—the actor playing Antony has the choice to mark his territory in the geographic or erotic sense, depending on whether “here” refers to Egypt or to Cleopatra’s body. From the same speech: “The nobleness of life / Is to do thus” has excited editors since Pope, who began a tradition of visualizing this moment as an embrace between the lovers. Richard Madelaine and others have documented various more or less acrobatic responses to this line in recent productions.21 What Antony chooses as a gesture here may or may not be echoed in the later line, “Were we before our armies, and to fight / I should do thus.” I rather like the idea of Antony embracing Caesar in a cheeky reprise of his earlier clinch with Cleopatra, but the text does not dictate this. What is important to remember is how this moment can define our idea of Antony’s relationship with Caesar at this point in the play. Polonius, from Hamlet: “Take this from this if this be otherwise.” (2.2.157). Editors have long insisted on Polonius pointing first to his head, then to his shoulders, to make sense of this line. Though this gestural reading is certainly persuasive, playable, and clear, the possibilities do not end there. Polonius might point to a badge of office, indicating his willingness to lose it if proved wrong. Gestures toward the heart and trunk

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might be just as appropriate as those to head and shoulders. What is wonderful about this line is that it makes absolutely no sense on the page without a gestural choice of some kind. King Lear, from King Lear (Conflated Text): “And as a stranger to my heart and me / Hold thee, from this, for ever.” (1.1.115–116) Editors often become silent directors during the early “table work” phase of rehearsals. Various editors have noted that “this” might not require a gesture (that is, it may refer to “this time”), but R. A. Foakes22 agrees with Jay L. Halio23 that “this” could mark a gesture towards Lear’s heart. Foakes also allows the possibility of Lear pointing out the map of the kingdom or the coronet in this moment. I think all three gestures have equal merit, and a nongestural choice misses a very dramatic opportunity.

APPENDIX 2. LABAN EFFORT ACTIONS The passage that follows demonstrates how Laban effort actions might be used to orchestrate different performance choices for a given text. In the first instance, I have suggested an orchestration that amplifies and underscores certain emotional qualities in the text. In the second instance, the orchestration uses opposing effort actions and offers a quite different reading of the text. Othello, from Othello (3.3.388–95) By the world, I think my wife be honest, and think she is not. I think that thou art just, and think thou art not. I’ll have some proof. My name, that was as fresh As Dian’s visage, is now begrimed and black As mine own face. If there be cords, or knives, Poison, or fire, or suffocating streams, I’ll not endure it. Would I were satisfied! Version 1: Indirect Effort Actions [Wring] [Flick] [Flick] [Slash] [Float]

By the world, I think my wife be honest, and think she is not. I think that thou art just, and think thou art not. I’ll have some proof. My name, that was as fresh As Dian’s visage, [Wring] is now begrimed and black As mine own face.

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[Slash]

If there be cords, or knives, Poison, or fire, or suffocating streams, I’ll not endure it. Would I were satisfied!

Version 2: Direct effort actions [Press] [Dab] [Punch] [Press] [Glide]

By the world, I think my wife be honest, and think she is not. I think that thou art just, and think thou art not. I’ll have some proof. My name, that was as fresh As Dian’s visage, [Press] is now begrimed and black As mine own face. [Punch] If there be cords, or knives, Poison, or fire, or suffocating streams, I’ll not endure it. Would I were satisfied!

APPENDIX 3. HEAD, HEART, GUTS, AND GROIN If we break the same Othello speech into measures once more, and make the following choices in terms of head, heart, guts, and groin, we find we can point up the antithetical ideas in the verse and give a strong sense of the conflict within Othello’s psyche, in an orchestrated fashion —rather than relying on inspiration or “real” emotional connection in the moment. Inspiration or actual felt emotion is often difficult to marry with the structure of the verse; clarity can sometimes be the unintended casualty. Using switches between head, heart, guts, and groin in an orchestrated fashion, the speech might run thus: [Guts] By the world, [Heart] I think my wife be honest, [Groin] and think she is not. [Head] I think that thou art just, [Groin] and think thou art not. [Guts] I’ll have some proof. [Heart] My name, that was as fresh As Dian’s visage, [Groin] is now begrimed and black As mine own face. [Head] If there be cords, or knives, [Heart] Poison, or fire, or suffocating streams, I’ll not endure it. [Guts] Would I were satisfied!

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Different orchestrations will, of course, provide different readings of the same text. What is exciting is that these shifts can be orchestrated in the moment of performance.

APPENDIX 4. ORCHESTRATING USING LABAN EFFORT ACTIONS AND “HEAD, HEART, GUTS, AND GROIN” The text that follows represents orchestrated performance choices made by Patrick Bentley (playing Lear) over the course of rehearsals for an M.F.A. showcase production of King Lear, which I directed, performed at the American Shakespeare Center’s Blackfriars Playhouse in March 2008. In this format, I have broken the actor’s performance script into speech measures and inserted the relevant combination of head/heart/guts/groin and Laban effort action in brackets immediately prior to the spoken line of text. The performance script was taken from the Folio version of the text (corresponding to 4.5.84–104 in the Norton Shakespeare). Lear.

[Heart /Float] [Head/Float]

No, they cannot touch me for crying. I am the King himself. Edgar. O thou side-piercing-sight! Lear. [Head/Dab] Nature’s above art, in that respect. [Heart/Glide] Look, look, a Mouse! Peace, peace, this piece of toasted cheese will do’t. [Guts/Punch] There’s my gauntlet. I’ll prove it on a giant. [Guts/Press] Give the word. Edgar. Sweet marjoram. Lear. [Heart/Float] Pass. Gloucester. I know that voice. Lear. [Guts/Punch] Ha! [Head/Float] Goneril with a white beard? [Guts/Slash] They flattered me like a dog. To say “ay” and “no” to everything that I said [Groin/Slash] “ay”and “no” to, was no good divinity. [Heart/Float] When the rain came to wet me once, and the wind to make me chatter; [Guts/Punch] when the thunder would not peace at my bidding, there I found ’em, there I smelt ’em out. [Guts/Press] Go to, they are not men of their words. [Heart/Float] They told me I was everything; ’tis a lie, I am not ague-proof. Gloucester. The trick of that voice I do well remember. Is’t not the King?

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NOTES 1. I discovered this word shortly after beginning work on this essay, and I love it. I should apologize for using it eight times over the course of the essay. 2. Dymphna Callery, Through the Body: A Practical Guide to Physical Theatre (London: Nick Hern and Routledge, 2001), 5. 3. The contracts offered at Shakespeare’s Globe in London are in fact categorized as West End contracts, as the Globe is not publicly funded. Founding and former members of physical theaters such as Théâtre de Complicité, Told by an Idiot, Shared Experience, and others routinely find work at the Globe. Few of them work regularly at other West End theaters, which often rely on the box office appeal of TV celebrities or movie stars from an entirely different performance tradition. 4. Sian Williams, email message to author, September 2008. 5. I documented the progress of each company of actors in a series of Globe Research Bulletins, which may be found on the Shakespeare’s Globe website, http://www .globelink.org/research/researchbulletins/. 6. This title was later amended to “Master of the Words.” 7. For details of Mike Alfreds’s rehearsal process for this production, see the Globe Research Bulletin on the 2001 production of Cymbeline: http://www.globelink.org/ docs/Cymbeline_Bulletin_Final_Collated.pdf. 8. See Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearean Stage 1574–1642, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 95–103. Also reprinted in Gurr’s chapter on styles of acting is a chart from John Bulwer’s Chirologia, or the Naturall Language of the Hand (1644), which offers visual information about how certain emotional states may have been communicated with the hands, to enhance an orator’s delivery. 9. The list of smaller physical theater companies whose work has influenced that of larger mainstream theater in Britain and America includes Told By An Idiot, Volcano, The Kosh, Boilerhouse, and many others. 10. Jacques LeCoq and David Bradby, Theatre of Movement and Gesture (London: Taylor and Francis Routledge, 2006), 8. http://proxy.mbc.edu:2048/login?url=http:// www.netlibrary.com/urlapi.asp?action=summary&v=1&bookid=171338. 11. Anne Bogart and Tina Landau, The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition (New York: Theater Communications Group, 2005), 49. 12. Michael Chekhov’s approach to actor training, though very much rooted in the Stanislavski tradition, features the key concept of the “psychological gesture,” which in many respects links the psychological and somatic impulses of the actor to the text. A thorough analysis of his important work is outside the bounds of this essay, but I urge readers with an interest in the psychological gesture to see Michael Chekhov’s To The Actor (London: Routledge, 2002). See also his Lessons for the Professional Actor, ed. Deirdre Hurst du Prey (New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1985). 13. See Maurice Charney, Style in Hamlet (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969). 14. All quotations from Shakespeare’s plays are taken from The Norton Shakespeare: Based on the Oxford Edition, eds. Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard, and Katharine Eisaman Maus (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), unless otherwise noted. 15. Rudolf von Laban, The Mastery of Movement (London: Macdonald and Evans, 1960). 16. Flow is a fourth element in Laban notation, related to the continuity of actions, but a full analysis of flow is not necessary to the purposes of this paper. 17. Scott Kaiser, Mastering Shakespeare (New York: Allworth Press, 2003), 97–139.

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18. Again, the work of Michael Chekhov might also be described in similar terms. See note 13. 19. Patrick Bentley, “Lear’s Shadow: Playing the Role of King Lear in the Tragedy of King Lear” (Master of Fine Arts thesis, Mary Baldwin College, 2008), 9. 20. See Tiffany Stern, Making Shakespeare: From Page to Stage (London: Routledge, 2004), and Rehearsal from Shakespeare to Sheridan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 21. Antony and Cleopatra, ed. Richard Madelaine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), gloss to 1.1.38–39. 22. King Lear, ed. R. A. Foakes, The Arden Shakespeare, 3rd series (London: 1997), gloss to 1.1.117. 23. The Tragedy of King Lear, ed. Jay L. Halio (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), gloss to 1.1.110.

The Animal Within: The Study and Application of Animal Characteristics as Part of an Actor’s Preparation for a Role Anna Northam The physical organizations of great actors all share one characteristic: an “animal” physiology manifested in its energy, responsiveness, flexibility, and grace. Joseph R. Roach, The Player’s Passion1

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mal Studies”—an oftentimes-slighted technique—is a relatively recent addition to the curriculum, as Dame Judi Dench observes from her days at the Central School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art. When she attended the drama school in 1954, the weekly visits to London Zoo were yet to be introduced; however, by the time I started my training in 1993, visits to the zoo were a fixture of the course, and for good reason.2 Essentially, when animal physiology is used to help create or develop a character, specific attributes drawn from the most appropriate animal assist the actor’s physical, mental, and vocal embodiment of that character. Once an actor embraces the basic premise of the philosophy, an awareness of the similarity between humans and animals frees the body and mind to make more exciting textually supported character choices and yet remain entirely naturalistic. In The Player’s Passion, Roach comments that the famous nineteenth-century critic, George Henry Lewes’ “favorite performers spring from the pages of his criticism as if from the center ring at the circus.3 ‘Rachel was the panther of the stage; with a panther’s terrible beauty and undulating grace she moved and stood, glared and sprang’ (On Actors, 35). Edmund Kean was a lion (159). Lemaître burned with the ‘great energy of animal passion’ (89).” Lewes must have felt assured that actors in the sixteenth century used animal physiology as part of 202

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their acting technique as Roach continues: “Shakespeare probably failed as an actor, Lewes speculates, because he lacked ‘weighty animalism’ (101).” I would argue that audiences much earlier than those of the sixteenth century enjoyed watching actors with animal-like physicality in performance, but whether these actors knowingly used animal physiology to create a part is another matter. The opportunity for an actor to use animal physiology in the works of Shakespeare is immense, but we must first understand the reasons for such an exercise. Animals, with their physical idiosyncrasies, instinctual responses, and split-second reactions, are worthy of extensive research, since humans have a complexity of emotions and can react in vastly different ways to the same situation merely through a change in mood or circumstance. If actors are open to exploring multiple animals for different moments in the text, they will discover new and enlivening dimensions to their characters and ultimately the physical, mental, and vocal journey of those characters. The most obvious link between humans and the animal world is through our direct ancestor, the ape; however, we can draw physical and mental comparisons between humans and other species of animals that are far less obvious than the ape, but no less embedded in the human psyche. In our theatrical heritage, for example, the relationship between animals and humans is already blurred, which is hardly surprising, since we talk about such similarities on a daily basis: Kicks like a mule Slippery as a snake Bark worse than bite Strike like a cobra Catty or feline-like Eyes like a hawk Running around like a headless chicken Mad as a bucket of frogs Monkey around Like a dog on heat ting in the tail She purred/ he barked Etc.

Although this list may read like a catalog of animal anecdotes, are we merely being poetic when we make comments such as “she has eyes like a hawk”? Can we further the visual rendering and not simply assume she, the hawk, will “clock your every move”? What does her physicality reveal? How does she move her face, her eyes, her shoul-

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ders? Moreover, what does a “bucket of frogs” look like, and what are the physical attributes of a “headless chicken”? If being as “mad as a bucket of frogs” merely describes the behavior or the exploits of someone lacking thought or foresight—for example, sitting with the opposition at a soccer match dressed in the rival team’s football jersey—then the depiction of a mass of frogs entangled in a confined space, struggling to reach the surface, is somehow wasted. However, the anecdote often stretches further than the vague idiosyncrasies of the lackadaisical. To watch the physical oddity of a mass of frogs with expressionless faces slip and slide over one another with assiduous energy, oblivious to the outside world, is to capture the genuine eccentric, or, at least, one whose physical demeanor and actions transgress normal convention. One of the most frequently observed animal/human similarities is that of the dog. How many times have you seen a dog walking alongside its owner and noted a remarkable resemblance? Do humans eventually mimic their pets, or are we for some reason drawn to the look and the physical features of certain animals? Audiences have accepted these similes for centuries, along with the opposite convention of animals with human voices, physiques, and mannerisms in books, plays, and films; however, the actual study and application of animal behavior to create physical, mental, and vocal traits of a human being for a realistic characterization is just as logical. This is especially true when playwrights such as Ben Jonson take an animal analogy to extremes by naming his characters almost allegorically, as seen in his Volpone. Voltore (“vulture”), Corvino (“crow”), and Corbaccio (“raven”) are the three covetous carrion birds who are destined to lose their “feathers” to Volpone, the cunning “fox” and master of disguise, only to be duped by his deceptive servant, Mosca (“fly”), who buzzes around his avaricious master, highlighting the play’s themes. Although the characters are still human and their names merely symbolic, the characters’ actions throughout the play reflect the traits of their associated animals. In this case, actors might choose to embody the physicality of these animals in both movement and interaction to help punctuate the main themes, rather than leaving the audience to interpret their relationships by the character names alone. Modern society conditions us to behave like human beings; nevertheless, during moments of heightened emotion, or times when we forget ourselves, we become more like our true selves than the person we have constructed over time in response to various social stimuli. In a moment of forgetfulness, our animal instinct kicks in—and a mother protecting her child, for example, has the ferocity of a lion.

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SHAKESPEARE’S ANIMALS In the works of Shakespeare,4 the text often calls for the actor to portray a vast array of heightened human emotions, unattainable if we rely on our modern sensibility of what is deemed appropriate behavior as our only point of reference. Actors will, of course, cast aside these inhibiting constraints and use their skill, from personal experience or from learned techniques, to reach the required emotion. Since Shakespeare attaches great importance to animal imagery in his plays, and, since his use of this imagery is present in some cases as an embedded stage direction it would be remiss to overlook the acting possibilities that accompany Shakespeare’s use of animal language. This would negate his mastery of rhetoric and his perception of human nature. Shakespeare’s comedy Much Ado About Nothing contains one of his more obvious physical stage directions. In Act 3, scene 1, Hero enlists the help of her collaborator, Ursula, to gull her cousin, Beatrice, into realizing her love for Benedick with the power of suggestion. Knowing that she is the subject of their conversation, Beatrice attempts to “steal” (7) closer to the two matchmakers in order to eavesdrop. Beatrice cues the start of the “gulling” once in sight of the women, at which point Hero comments on her clumsy attempt to move closer, “Now begin, / For look where Beatrice like a lapwing runs /5 Close by the ground, to hear our conference” (23–25). The actor first needs to examine the movement of a lapwing to understand the meaning of the line, then adapt it to the context of the text. As lapwings are birds that run in a rather comedic crouch position—its beak leading the way, bent double and wings tucked tight to the side—Shakespeare provides the actor with a clear image of how to move across the stage. If the actor can duplicate the lapwing’s run—perhaps a speedy dash with small steps, body bent at the waist and knees, back straight, head up, eyes forward, and arms close to the body—then the audience shares in the visual joke (and benefits from a subliminal introduction to the lapwing, if previously unfamiliar with the bird). In other moments, it is fundamental to observe Shakespeare’s use of animal imagery to describe a character (regardless of whether the actor is on or off stage), as the information gives the actor clues to both physical and vocal qualities upon which to act. In Coriolanus, the protagonist’s comparison to a dragon by Tullus Aufidius, “Fights dragonlike, and does achieve as soon / As draw his sword” (4.7.23–24), and again by Menenius Agrippa, “This Martius [Coriolanus] is grown from man to dragon. He has wings, he’s more than a creeping thing” (5.4.10– 11), is endorsed by Coriolanus’s own comparison to the beast:

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Believe’t not lightly—though I go alone, Like to a lonely dragon that his fen Makes feared and talked of more than seen, your son Will or exceed the common or be caught With cautelous baits and practice. (4.1.30–34)

Coriolanus is a warrior on and off the battlefield; therefore, the dragonlike quality spoken about by Aufidius and Agrippa provides a useful reference if the actor wishes to physically develop the part. Not only is the dragon a reptile—malleable enough for any human physique to embody and symbolic enough for hypothetical interpretation—but also, as a fire-breathing mystical creature of legends, its reputation precedes it, supplying the actor with an entire dragon history from which to build his strength and character both inside and out.

PREPARING THE BODY While Shakespeare’s imagery allows the body a playground of physical possibilities, the voice is integral to the character and just as important to explore as its physicality. The confluence of body and voice in acting is fundamental and they should be considered equally while gathering material from animals in preparation for a role. We are born great impersonators; from the earliest age, we mimic to learn, and many of our words for animal noises have basis in mimicry of their sounds. Our laugh goes through several changes before we settle on one; and, even later in life, if we spend time with someone with a distinctive laugh, we may briefly alter ours to resemble theirs. The same can happen with accents. We often learn to speak with the accent of our parents and teachers, then adjust it to fit in with our peers; yet even as adults with a strong sense of identity, we can unintentionally mimic certain aspects of another’s accent before realizing our error. For an actor, the Russian proverb “To live with wolves, you must howl like a wolf” is a useful phrase to remember when a difficult moment arises in a text.6 For example, the sound of ultimate loss is in many ways primeval; therefore, an exploration of a more animalistic sound gives the actor playing King Lear, as he enters with his daughter Cordelia dead in his arms, greater range with the repetition of “howl” in his lines “Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones” (5.3.231). In the play, references to wolves and dogs abound, and even Lear associates himself with the wolf: “and choose / To be a comrade with the wolf and owl” (2.4.373–74). Gloucester also picks up the im-

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age of the wolf when he confronts Regan for her neglect of Lear: “If wolves had at thy gate howl’d that stern time, / Thou shouldst have said ‘Good porter, turn the key; / All cruels I’ll subscribe” (3.7.61–63). Although the howl of the wind plays an important part in Lear’s journey before his entrance with Cordelia’s body in 5.3, the howl of the wolf is a haunting, haunted, and lonely sound, and it echoes his own loss in this moment. This is especially salient as Lear’s antithetical and accusative “O, you are men of stone” distances him even further from the less vocal men around him. As Lear enters on this line, which directly follows the exit of Edmund, to maintain the pace and energy of the scene, a howl from the actor playing Lear offstage would cover Edmund’s exit and his own entrance, as well as assisting the actor in meeting the required emotion for the start of such a line. The value of vocal work in the study of animals for a role is clearly illustrated at times like these when a character is devoid of prior warning about a situation—especially when the actor lacks pertinent or, indeed, any lines to play with—yet is required to vocalize an emotion such as grief, anger, joy, terror, amazement, or shock. An appropriate noise for such occasions can be an obstacle for many theater actors who return to the stage nightly, particularly if the emotion called for is immediate or without a trigger. If the actor, however, chooses an animal on which to base the sound, the responsibility for a truthful vocalization—which relies heavily on the actor reaching the specific moment in the same emotional state each night—is replaced by easy access to a rehearsed cognitive connection. The sound will be just as truthful, as the actor chooses the animal through the rehearsal process with the character and moment in mind; but the pressure to arrive at the same heightened point every night is alleviated. As I look back on past productions—particularly those experienced as a young actor playing older characters—I believe this method of cognition would have been an invaluable tool. One particular moment (a mere twenty years ago) saw me playing a young newlywed about to lose her husband to jail and possible death. The scene itself was short, and the arrest of my husband by four burly guards as we walked carefree in the park sprang out of nowhere. The director required a long, drawn-out, bloodcurdling cry of utter terror and desperation; but without any lines, trying to reach such a height of spontaneous emotional intensity proved a challenge. It helped to add some blocking— several guards restrain me as I fight to reach my husband—since the voice intensifies when the body has something against which to push; however, for me, the moment was forced, unsatisfactory, and harder to accomplish each night, which is where the gorilla could have helped. Although a gorilla’s scream is primitive,7 it possesses human qualities,

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and its vocal introduction in rehearsal would have assisted the moment for a number of reasons. The animal imagery could have served the moment in two key ways. An understanding that the ferocity of the gorilla’s scream directly connects to its visual weight and strength would have enabled me to use my physical movement to drive and support the vocalization and energy of the moment as I tried to reach my captive husband. The abrupt impact of my thwarted, headlong charge (straight into the guards’ restraints) would have then kick-started the sound of the scream. The second option would have played without physical strength or movement, as a cognitive recall of a moment found through the rehearsal process (possibly by playing out the first scenario), which allows the memory to replay and deliver a heightened emotional state of being without requiring physical support from other actors. Dramatically, the former scenario may be more effective; however, without added blocking or, indeed, without any connection to the gorilla’s physical might, an isolated figure emanating such a shocking noise would certainly be an uncomfortable, yet powerful, visual and auditory choice.

HAMLET’S ANIMAL IMAGERY To further the idea of using multiple animals to help create a role and open up the possibilities for such isolated moments in the text, we must appreciate the extent of animal imagery in Shakespeare’s plays and acknowledge his grasp of the correlation between the human and animal world. The passage below, taken from Hamlet (First Folio),8 has strong animal potential if approached as an exercise. Even without the textual support of embedded stage directions, the connection to and application of animal physiology can initiate physical, vocal, and psychological possibilities for the actor playing Hamlet. In this instance, the exercise came about because of personal difficulties in blocking and intention that arose when rehearsing the scene. As a result, rehearsals dedicated to animal studies freed my body and mind from approaching the scene solely from a human perspective—especially since the language suggests Hamlet as the predator and Claudius as the unwitting victim. Interspersed within this monologue are various animals I chose for their particular physical and instinctual characteristics, which relate to specific moments in the text and show the variety and number of options available to an actor. The descriptions given to the animals are from personal analysis, not from any expert knowledge or deeper understanding of animal physiology other than visual observa-

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tion. These examples are merely suggestions, meant to provoke the imagination to explore alternatives rather than to be definitive concepts, and as such illustrate one of many interpretations the scene has to offer. Enter Hamlet [Bloodhound] Sees Claudius [Alsatian] [Panther] Now might I do it pat, now he is praying, 1 [Panther] And now I’ll do’t, and so he goes to Heaven, And so am I reveng’d [Hawk] that would be scann’d, [Owl] A Villain kills my Father, and for that I his sole Son, do this same Villain send 5 [Snake] To heaven. [Gorilla] Oh this is hyre and Sallery, not Revenge. [Wolf] He took my Father grossly, full of bread, With all his Crimes broad blown, as flush as May, [Panther] And how his Audit stands, who knows, save Heaven 10 But in our circumstance and course of thought ’Tis heavy with him and am I then reveng’d, To take him in the purging of his Sole, When he is fit and season’d for his passage? [Gorilla] No. 15 [Snake] Up Sword, and know thou a more horrid hent [Wolf] When he is drunk asleep or in his Rage, Or in th’ incestuous pleasure of his bed, At gaming, swearing, or about some acte That ha’s no rellish of Salvation in’t, 20 Then trip him, that his heels may kick at Heaven, And that his Sole may be as damn’d and black As Hell, whereto it goes. [Snake] My Mother stays, [Hyena] This Physicke but prolongs thy sickly days. [ Exit.] (2.2.1411–32)

Before Hamlet speaks, the actor needs to enter the scene or playing space. Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, has sent for him, and he is on his way to her chamber. Based on events immediately preceding this scene, the energy with which Hamlet enters the space is that of a young bloodhound. The Bloodhound The young bloodhound is an unstoppable entity that will chase a moving object regardless of external obstacles. Without proper training, his rumbustious nature means that he has a tendency to knock down any-

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thing that lies in the way.9 When he latches on to a scent, his tracking instinct is relentless. His breathing pattern connects to his sense of smell and is, therefore, rapid when following a scent. Hamlet the Bloodhound With eyes wide and focused straight ahead, Hamlet tracks his mother. He is excited, focused, driven, and unstoppable. His breath is quick but deep. Hamlet enters the space unaware that his stepfather, Claudius, is present. Claudius is on his knees praying and remains absorbed in his prayer until Hamlet exits. The moment Hamlet catches sight of Claudius, the Alsatian briefly takes over from the bloodhound. The Alsatian marks the change that occurs in the moment Hamlet sees his stepfather. The Alsatian The Alsatian has keen senses and is physically strong. He is noble in stature and alert to his surroundings. Hamlet the Alsatian Hamlet takes stock of the situation he has uncovered and, for a moment, looks squarely at Claudius with his head fixed and erect, a stiff, set jaw, and unwavering eyes. His breath is held. The panther quickly replaces the Alsatian as Hamlet begins to speak. From this moment on, the words tumble out in a freefall of thoughts and emotions; and as such, the shift from one animal to the next mirrors Hamlet’s unpredictable stream of consciousness. Here, for the first time in the play, Claudius is alone and vulnerable. The language Hamlet uses in the scene evokes an image of a hunt. Hamlet becomes the predator and stalks Claudius who, exposed like a sitting duck, is fair game. The Panther The panther is a hunter. With his prey in sight, he hides, unwavering, frozen in concentration, with his eyes fixed intensely on the kill. Any movement is decisive, smooth, and graceful. He is a silent predator. His mouth is deceptively large and wide in comparison with his small head; and, when fully open, his teeth and powerful jaw overwhelm the fea-

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tures of his face. The growl, which comes from the throat when his mouth is closed, is similar to that of a smooth-running engine. Hamlet the Panther Without taking his eyes off Claudius, Hamlet’s body becomes alive with the physicality of a panther that has just caught sight of his prey. He is smooth and slow in motion, deliberate in action. Hamlet’s voice flows fluidly on one pitch, detached and unemotional—like a long, sustained growl from the throat. The assertive declaration “And now I’ll do’t” (2) allows the actor to portray another feline characteristic. When panthers are ready to pounce, they sit back onto their haunches to obtain greater leverage. The actor can use this subtle movement after “now he is praying” to demonstrate that Hamlet is prepared to kill Claudius and ready to act. The gesture is slight, even psychological for the actor rather than physical—the duration of half a breath—but punctuates how close Hamlet is to committing murder. The shift to the hawk after “And so am I reveng’d” (3) marks a complete change in direction (if “scann’d” is taken to mean that Hamlet senses a discrepancy in his own rationale). Hamlet realizes that to kill Claudius now, while praying, will send him to heaven, not hell; therefore, for the actor, the speed in which this new thought takes over—especially as the shift occurs mid-verse line—calls for a species of bird who is spatially attentive, with almost mechanical head movements. The Hawk The hawk is an instinctive bird with lightning-fast reactions, jerky head movements, and razor-sharp eyes. Hamlet the Hawk To achieve a movement that depicts an immediate and powerful change of thought, two slight, quick (birdlike) jerks of the head in different directions take the focus away from Claudius and back to Hamlet. To connect the breath to the move, the actor takes a sharp, silent intake of breath on the first jerk and holds the breath on the second. It may seem this is micromanaging the moment, but the sudden movement and intake of breath draw the audience’s attention to the conflict within Hamlet while just momentary in duration, and it allows the scene to continue without a pause.

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The reasons for the owl—another bird of prey—to replace the hawk are twofold. First, the owl has a capacity to rotate his head in order to see behind him: and this slow and steady movement gives a picture of intense thought and awareness. Second, through visual characteristics, the owl has a reputation of his own—he is wise and old, which suits the image Hamlet presents when he pauses to reassess the situation. The Owl An animal noted for his head and facial features, the wise old owl is markedly cerebral. He uses his eyes and ears to catch prey and, once he decides to descend on his victim, shows no mercy. Hamlet the Owl The main characteristic of the owl is central to this movement. Hamlet slowly turns his head as he gives tongue to his thoughts while he works through the repercussions of his murderous intention. At this point, another slight energy change reveals to the audience Hamlet’s amended view of his initial intent. If “Heaven” (2) is the word that triggers the reexamination, then “to heaven” (6) closes the case. The advantage of a change of animal here punctuates Hamlet’s moment of clarity; yet for the actor, the physical alteration to the hooded cobra is as subtle and understated as that to the hawk. The Hooded Cobra The snake is another animal whose name precedes him. The snake looks slippery and is silent as he glides over the ground—as smooth as a fish through water. With a skeletal structure that allows him to twist, wrap, and knot, he appears to move effortlessly. Graceful and dangerous, the hooded cobra often draws back before striking. Hamlet the Hooded Cobra Hamlet’s shift to the hooded cobra cuts short the cerebral wisdom of the owl, as he sees the danger of his instinct to kill Claudius and draws his head back in recognition on the line. The timbre of his voice is slow, smooth, and svelte, and the tone—informed. With the need to find a movement that uses the entire body—heart and soul—for the next energy change, the gorilla, it could be argued, is one of the most unsubtle animals in his body language, and therefore fits the context in this version of the scene. The repulsion at the idea of

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Claudius going to heaven through Hamlet’s own hand, and the subtlety of the physical moves up to this point, permit the actor playing Hamlet an indulgent movement to raise the stakes and gather the momentum for the rest of the scene. The Gorilla The gorilla is a hefty mammal with an unpredictable disposition. The charge and retreat of the gorilla is sudden and terrifying, with arms flaying and the full force of his body weight behind the action. Hamlet the Gorilla With the possibility of a small break in the speech after “To heaven,” due to the short verse line, the gorilla in Hamlet has time to become “wound up”—like a child about to burst with pent-up emotion. On the next line, he explodes on the “Oh” with a retreat away from Claudius, throwing his arms up and away from his body in a moment of utter frustration. By the end of the line, Hamlet’s stance is fierce, his energy forward, ready to attack, with his legs and arms bent and swaying in preparation for lunging toward the praying King. With thirteen lines that we can dedicate to the wolf, we can imagine the scene lending itself to this particular predator on the prowl, as the tone of the speech evokes an image of an unrelenting hunt with a remorseless energy. The Wolf The wolf is a pack animal and protects his pack members from external hostility or danger. A tall and skinny predator with a long muzzle and powerful jaw, the wolf has the stamina to travel long distances in search of food. Hamlet the Wolf Hamlet, doggedly determined to reconcile his thoughts with his next move, prowls around the unwitting Claudius. With head held low, strong lower limbs, and his upper body giving in to the forward energy of the head, his eyes remain piercingly focused on the King. His breath is slow and deep, and his thoughts glide out as if from the subconscious into the open, to realize and resolve. The gorilla and snake interrupt the flow of the wolf to mark two energy shifts in Hamlet’s thought process. This time, the gorilla is phys-

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ically more controlled, yet potentially just as dangerous; and vocally, the snake is a magnified version of his former appearance, as slippery in attitude as in his reputation. Although the snake, emerging one last time, wants to conclude the scene with the assertion “My mother stays” spoken in a dubious slippery tone, the hyena in Hamlet has the last word. The Hyena A hunter and scavenger, the hyena has a call that sounds like a spinechilling laugh. With a thickset head and upper body, the hyena hunts and dwells in large packs. It has no qualms about scrounging the leftover kill of other animals. Its vocal range is vast, and it has a propensity to exercise it. Hamlet the Hyena Hamlet, the “laughing hyena,” takes delight in this final threat to the King’s life. Hamlet embodies the psyche of the hyena, and with a satisfied grin evocative of an animal that sits back and feeds from the work of others, Hamlet concludes his stream of consciousness and transitions back to the bloodhound that will continue to his mother’s chamber. The vast array of animal traits a human can exhibit from one moment to another furnishes an actor preparing for a role—be it for the stage, screen, or audible media—and who is open to the idea of Animal Studies—with a research facility of myriad possibilities. This exercise merely scratches the surface of such potential. As Shakespeare went to such lengths to use animal imagery to describe his characters, then perhaps the actors he knew and for whom he wrote used his imagery as specific character direction. The knowledge of how these players learned, rehearsed, and spoke their lines is for many actors intriguing; and if, like me, they wonder how many of our “new” acting techniques are merely reincarnations of older established methods, then Animal Studies should, quite rightly, be part of any drama training. The application of animal physiology in Shakespeare’s plays may well move us closer to the musings of sixteenth century players, so that while we get to taste a technique of the past, we can expand and develop the technique for the future. The study of animals, when rehearsing a play by Shakespeare, therefore, is invaluable, if Shakespeare’s imagery is to be kept alive. Fundamentally, humans are animals—a fact that led Shakespeare to become a master of animal allegory. For that reason, the study and application of animal character-

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istics is a basic consideration when working with his scripts, and surely one that Shakespeare would fully expect and encourage.

NOTES 1. Joseph Roach, The Player’s Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993). 2. Dame Judi Dench interview, Part 2. “Parkinson,” http://uk.youtube.com/ watch?v=ZiUJFncdDJY, BBC Worldwide, August 8, 2007. 3. George Henry Lewes, 1817–78, was a famous nineteenth-century drama critic and English philospher. After several career changes, including medicine and the theater, he became a literary and theater critic. 4. Quotations from Shakespeare’s plays are taken from The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt (New York: Norton, 1996). 5. All animals cited in quotations are italicized for the author’s emphasis. 6. “S volkami zhit’, po-volch’i vyt’.” 7. The “scream” of the gorilla referred to in this section can be heard on the Diane Fossey Gorilla Fund website, http://www.gorillafund.org/gorilla_fun/gorilla_sounds _flash.php, Gorillafund.org 8. The Applause First Folio of Shakespeare in Modern Type, ed. Neil Freeman (Vancouver: Folio Scripts, 2001), 760. 9. The use of the masculine throughout these examples is for continuity and ease rather than favoring a gender; however, occasionally, in the study of a particular species, a characteristic present in one gender offers an entirely different interpretation than that of the other.

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Contributors JACQUELYN BESSELL served for three years as head of research at Shakespeare’s Globe in London, and she is currently Lecturer and Fellow at the University of Birmingham’s Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon. She also has ten years of professional directing experience. FERNANDO CIONI is Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Florence. He has recently edited four collections of Shakespeare’s plays in Italian (Tragedies, Romantic Comedies. Problem Plays, and Romances and Histories) and, with Keir Elam, A Civil Conversation: Anglo-Italian Literary and Cultural Exchange in the Renaissance. His current projects include The New Variorum Edition of “The Taming of the Shrew,” a monograph on The Merchant of Venice: A Cultural History, and a bilingual edition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. LILLA MARIA CRISAFULLI is Professor of English Literature at the University of Bologna and editor of La Questione Romantica. She has extensively published articles and books on P. B. Shelley, Mary Shelley, and Romantic women poets. Among her recent publications are a book essay, “Theatre and Theatricality in British Romantic Constructions of Italy” (2005); an essay on “Shelley’s The Cenci“ (2004); and an article, “Letitia Elizabeth Landon’s Castruccio Castrucani: Gender Through History” (2004). ALAN C. DESSEN is Peter G. Phialas Professor Emeritus of English at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His previous books include Elizabethan Stage Conventions and Modern Interpreters (1984) and Recovering Shakespeare’s Theatrical Vocabulary (1995). With Leslie Thomson, he compiled A Dictionary of Stage Directions in English Drama, 1580–1642 (1999). KEIR DOUGLAS ELAM is Professor of English Literature at the University of Bologna. He is the author of The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama and Shakespeare’s Universe of Discourse. He is the general editor of a bilingual edition of Shakespeare and editor of Hamlet in that series. He has recently completed an edition of Twelfth Night for the Arden Shakespeare, 3rd series. SUNHEE KIM GERTZ is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in English at Clark University. Her publications include the co-edited volume, Semiotic Rotations: Modes of Meanings in the Cultural World and the following monographs: Echoes and Reflections: Memory and Memorials in Ovid and Marie de France; Chaucer to Shakespeare, 1337–1580; and Poetic Prologues: Medieval Conversations with the Literary Past. ANDREAS HÖFELE is Professor of English Literature at the University of Munich, where he has also served as Dean of Humanities. He is currently president of the Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft (The German Shakespeare Society). Among his

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publications are Renaissance Go-betweens: Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe (2005), with Werner von Koppenfels. ANN NORTHAM received her undergraduate training from the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. She has recently completed the double M. Litt. And M.F.A program at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia. She has performed with actors from the London stage in Measure for Measure and in Hamlet. She has over a decade of experience in professional stage and film work. ANN THOMPSON is Professor of English Literature at King’s College London, where she served as head of the School of Humanities. She is the author of Shakespeare’s Chaucer and co-author of Shakespeare, Meaning and Metaphor; she co-edited Women Reading Shakespeare, 1660–1900 with Sasha Roberts. She edited The Taming of the Shrew for the New Cambridge Shakespeare and co-edited Hamlet for the third series of the Arden Shakespeare, for which she is also a general editor. VIRGINIA MASON VAUGHAN is Professor of English at Clark University. She is the co-editor of The Tempest for the third Arden series; the co-author of Shakespeare’s Caliban: A Cultural History; and the author of Othello: A Contextual History. Her most recent monograph is Performing Blackness on English Stages, 1500–1800.

Index Acting: animal studies, 202–15; body language, 15–16, 166, 207–14; “dramatic illusion,” 164, 169–74; facial expressions, 166; gestures, 15–16, 166, 185–88; Laban technique, 188–90, 192, 197–99; manuals, 164–66; movement, 205, 208–14; physicality, 183–90, 204; subtext, 190–95; “sympathetic curiosity,” 164, 167–69, 173–75; theories of, 165–67, 188–94, 202–15 Africanus, [John] Leo, 121 Alfreds, Mike, 183, 184 Alleyn, Edward, 49 Arden of Faversham, 112–13, 116 Aretino, 66 Ariosto, 66 Baillie, Joanna, 20, 166–68, 174–77 Barber, Richard, 29 Battle of Alcazar. See Peele, George Beale, Simon Russell, 90 Bear Garden Theatre, 48–49 Bearbaiting, 19, 46–59; anthropomorphism, 53–54; imagery of, 54–55; and Puritanism, 52–53; venues, 48 Beaumont, Francis, 95 Bentley, Patrick, 192–95 Berkeley, William, 130 Bertram, Paul, 103 Bevington, David, 15–17, 112 Blackfriars Theatre (Staunton, Virginia), 21, 181, 187, 192–95 Bogart, Anne, 186 Borde, Andrew, 121–22 Bothwell, James. 34 Brome, Richard, 130 Brook, Peter, 186 Brown, John Russell, 14–15 Brownstein, Oscar Lee, 48 Bruster, Douglas, 67

Burbage, Richard, 20–21, 67, 97, 128 Burke, Edmund, 173–74 Callery, Dymphna, 181–82 Carson, Neil, 68 Cecil, Robert, 79 Chambers, E. K., 48 Chandos, Sir John, 37–38; Herald of, 26, 30–39, 43 n. 29 Chapman, George, 72, 73, 118 n. 19 Charles VI, King of France, 25–26, 30 Charney, Maurice, 187 Chekhov, Michael, 200 n. 12 Chrétien de Troyes, 33, 34 Christiansen, Broder, 50 Coleridge, Samuel T., 169–73 Constable, Henry, 80 Cooke, George Frederick, 149–51 Coryate, Thomas, 147 Costumes, 15, 73, 94–96, 99, 122–25, 128–30, 135; earrings, 130–31; mustaches, 122; wigs, 130 Curtain Theater, 48 Daborne, Robert, 128, 132 Davidson, Clifford, 28 Davies, Sir John of Hereford, 121 Dekker, Thomas, 72–73, 76, 118 n. 19, 119 Descartes, René, 59 n. 50 Dessen, Alan C., 18, 20, 94, 98–100, 135, 138 n. 48 DeWitt, Johannes, 27 Dickey, Stephen, 55 Dimmock, Matthew, 123 Downes, John, 145 Drama: closet, 20, 174–77; gothic, 175–77; medieval, 13, 19, 28, 42 n. 15 Dryden, John, 144 Duncan-Jones, Katherine, 78 Edmond Ironside, 109 Edward, the Black Prince, 17, 19, 25–45;

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INDEX

Edward, the Black Prince (continued) in Anonimalle Chroincle, 28; and Arthurian Legend, 30–32, 33–36, 40–41; Battle of Crécy, 25–26, 30, 34; Battle of Nájera, 30, 36; Battle of Poitiers, 28, 30, 35, 43 n. 25; mottos (ich dene and houmout), 35–40; tomb, 39–41 Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, 79 Edward III, 109 Edward III, King of England, 25–27, 29–30, 33 Elam, Keir, 19, 28–29 Elizabeth I, Queen of England, 79 Engel, Johann Jakob, 166 Feltham, Owen, 12 Field, John, 47 Field, Nathan, 47 Flecknoe, Richard, 135–36 Fletcher, John, 108–9, 129, 143. See also Shakespeare, William: Two Noble Kinsmen Foakes, R. A., 127 Foote, Samuel, 165 Foucault, Michel, 57 Frye, Roland Mushat, 16–17 Fumerton, Patricia, 86 Garrick, David, 166 Gamer, Michael, 174, 175 Gascoigne, George, 66 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 33 Globe Theater: in early modern London, 46–48; restoration of, 21, 90, 97, 181–84, 188, 194 Goff, Thomas, 133 Goldsmith, Oliver, 53 Gosson, Stephen, 141 Granville, George, 144, 145 Green, David, 34–35, 44 n. 44 Greenblatt, Stephen, 96 Greene, Robert, 127–28, 159 n. 4 Gurr, Andrew, 12, 48, 49, 184–85 Hakluyt, Richard, 121 Hall, Kim F., 130–31 Hawkes, Terence, 52, 53 Hazlitt, William, 153, 155 Heine, Heinrich, 153–54

Henslowe, Philip, 18, 22 n. 16, 68, 72, 94, 125, 127–28 Heywood, Thomas: Apology for Actors, 13, 14, 84–85; Fair Maid of the West I and II, 131; If You Know Not Me, 110; Warning for Fair Women, 73–74 Hibbard, George, 95–97 Hill, Aaron, 165 Hill, John, 165 Hilliard, Nicholas, 78–82, 83, 86, 87 Holderness, Graham, 102 Hollar, Wenceslaus, 46–47, 50 Hope Theater, 49 Hunter, G. K., 135 Hunter, Katherine, 183, 184 intermediality, 51–52 intertextuality, 50–51 Irving, Henry, 95, 158 Jenkins, Harold, 96, 97 Jews: representations of, 119, 141–63 Jews’ Tragedy, 96 Joan, Queen of England, 29–30, 32–33 John II, King of France, 30, 35 Jones, Ann Rosalind, 15 Jonson, Benjamin, 12, 76, 107–8, 114–15, 129–31, 204 Kaiser, Scott, 190–92 Kantorowicz, Ernst. H., 29 Karim-Cooper, Farah, 130 Kean, Charles, 156–58 Kean, Edmund, 151–56, 202 Keats, John, 152–53 Kemble, John Philip, 149 Kenilworth Castle entertainment, 52–53 Kliman, Bernice W., 103 Knolles, Richard, 120–21, 125, 127, 129 Kyd, Thomas, 98, 123 Laban, Rudolf, 188–90, 192, 197–99 Lamb, Charles, 153, 169–70, 173 Landau, Tina, 186 Langer, Suzanne, 71 Lavater, Johannes Kaspar, 165 LeBrun, Charles, 165 LeCoq, Jacques, 185–86 Lewes, George Henry, 152, 156, 161 n. 46, 202–3 Lichtenberg, George Christoph, 147

INDEX

Lichtenstin, Ulrich Von, 29 limning, the art of, 72, 77–78, 81–83, 85 Lodge, Thomas, 129 Lotman, Yuri, 50 Loughrey, Bryan, 102 Lust’s Dominion, 120, 128, 130 Macklin, Charles, 146–49, 166 Macready, William Charles, 156, 16 n. 72 makeup, 122, 128–30 Marin, Louis, 86 Marlowe, Christopher, 18–20, 107, 128, 131, 136, 141 Marston, John, 75–76, 83, 86, 109, 129, 142–43 Massinger, Philip, 125, 130 Matar, Nabil I., 122–23 Mayne, Jasper, 132–33 Melville, Sir James, 79 Middleton, Thomas, 96, 108 miniatures, 67–68, 77–82, 86–87, 102; as jewels, 67, 72, 79, 80, 83, 85 Moors: representations of, 20, 120–22, 125, 128–31, 132–36 Nicolay, Nicholas, 123, 125, 126, 129 Nunn, Trevor, 100–101 Oliver, Isaac, 79 Olivier, Sir Laurence, 46, 91 Orlin, Lena, 112 Ormrod, W. M., 27 Orrell, John, 48 Ovid, 51, 71 painters as dramatic character, 75–76 painting: as dramatic theme, 63–72, 75–78, 82–85; language of, 63 Parsons, James, 165, 166 passions, theories of, 165–70, 174 Peele, George, 127, 128, 131–32 Peirce, Charles S., 25–26, 32 Percy, William, 133–34 Phelps, Samuel, 156, 162 n. 73 Platter, Thomas, 14, 119 portraiture: Elizabethan, 67, 73, 78–80; language about, 85, 102 Potter, Lois, 66 properties, 15, 67–72, 77–82, 99–103, 125–27; books, 99–101; scimitars, 123; skulls, 102–3

235

Raimondi, Marcantonio, 66 Reynolds, Roger E., 28 Roach, Joseph R., 202–3 Romano, Giulio, 66 Rose Theater, 18, 49. See also Henslowe, Philip Rowe, Nicholas, 102, 144–45 Rowley, William, 129 Rylance, Mark, 97, 183, 184 Sauerberg, Marie-Louise, 45 n. 55 scenic design, 16–17, 71, 207 Schlegel, August Wilhelm, 153 Scott-Warren, Jason, 53 Selimus, Emperor of the Turks, 129 Shakespeare, William, works of: Antony and Cleopatra, 129, 187, 196; As You Like It, 78, 82, 97; Comedy of Errors, 107; Coriolanus, 205–6; Cymbeline, 107, 184; Hamlet, 15, 19–20, 50, 84, 90–105, 196–97, 208–15; dumb show in, 84–85, 91, 92, 98–99; on film, 91–93; Ghost in, 92, 94–96; illustrations, 91, 95, 102; Ophelia in, 91, 93, 96–97; portraits in, 63, 67–70, 76, 77, 82–83, 101–2; stage directions, 92–99, 102–3; textual variants, 92–103; 1 Henry IV, 114, 142; 2 Henry IV, 94; Henry V, 11, 19, 25–26, 46, 106, 111; 2 Henry VI, 54–56; 3 Henry VI, 55; Julius Caesar, 94, 97; King Lear, 11–12, 17, 93, 94, 192–95, 197, 199, 206–7; Lover’s Complaint, 82, Love’s Labours Lost. 77, 142, 187, 196; Macbeth, 16, 56–57, 106, 107, 142, 166; Measure for Measure, 16; Merchant of Venice, 20, 63, 66–67, 70–72, 77, 82, 98, 122, 141–63 (see also Shylock); Merry Wives, 119; Midsummer Night’s Dream, 51, 98, 106, 111–12, 116, 142, 184; Much Ado, 17, 77, 142, 205; Othello, 94, 106, 114, 128, 130, 131, 136, 189–90, 197–99; Rape of Lucrece, 107; Richard II, 19; Richard III, 56, 96, 184; Romeo and Juliet, 16, 50, 130; Sonnets, 12; Taming of the Shrew, 63, 65–66; Timon of Athens, 64, 65, 75, 76, 84; Titus Andronicus, 15, 17, 129, 130, 136; Troilus and Cressida, 51, 96; Twelfth

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INDEX

Shakespeare, William, works of (continued) Night, 63–64, 67, 69, 72, 80, 85–87, 107; Two Gentlemen of Verona, 63–65, 68, 69, 77, 142; Two Noble Kinsmen, 64, 66, 68–70, 72, 80 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 168–69 Shylock: in Restoration, 144; in eighteenth century, 144–49; as human, 146–51; as martyr, 155–56 Siddons, Sarah, 166 Sidney, Sir Philip, 11, 19, 63 Smith, Adam, 164 Soliman and Perseda, 120 Speed, John, 123 Stage effects: blocking, 16–17, 71, 207; dumb shows, 84–85, 91, 92, 98–99, 131–32; entrances, 93–94, 96–97, 112, 113, 122, 129, 132, 135; mists and fog, 107–16; night-darkness, 106, pictures on stage, 63–68, 73–74, 101–2; tobacco smoke, 115, 118 n. 19; universal lighting, 181, 185 Stallybrass, Peter, 15 Stanislavski, Constantin, 184 Strong, Roy, 83 Stubbes, Philip, 52 Swan Theater. See DeWitt, Johannes

Taylor, Neil, 64, 83 Teague, Frances, 68 Theatre, The, 48 Thompson, Ann, 64, 83 Thomson, Leslie, 94, 98–100 Tourneur, Cyril, 95 Turks: as janissaries, 123, 124, 129; representations of, 20, 120–28, 133, 136 Turner, William, 156, 157 Vandenhoff, George, 154–55 Vecellio, Cesare, 124, 125, 134 Webster, John, 21, 119, 143; Duchess of Malfi, 107; White Devil, 74, 107, 128 Wells, Stanley, 112 Wickham, Glynne, 48 Williams, Sian, 182–84 Wilmeth, Don B., 151 Wilson, Robert, 72, 143 Wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll, 73, 80– 81 Wit of a Woman, 75 Woudhuysen, Henry, 78 Wright, Thomas, 165 Young, Alan R., 91, 95

Taylor, Gary, 112 Taylor, John, 13

Zinzerling, Justus, 49