The Art of Picturing in Early Modern English Literature 9780367425197, 9780367853266

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The Art of Picturing in Early Modern English Literature

Written by an international group of highly regarded scholars and rooted in the field of intermedial approaches to literary studies, this volume explores the complex aesthetic process of “picturing” in early modern English literature. The essays in this volume offer a comprehensive and varied picture of the relationship between the visual and the verbal in the early modern period, while also contributing to the understanding of the literary context in which Shakespeare wrote. Using different methodological approaches and taking into account a great variety of texts, including Elizabethan sonnet sequences, metaphysical poetry, famous as well as anonymous plays and court masques, the book opens new perspectives on the literary modes of “picturing” and on the relationship between this creative act and the tense artistic, religious and political background of early modern Europe. The first section explores different modes of looking at works of art and their relation with technological innovations and religious controversies, while the chapters in the second part highlight the multifaceted connections between European visual arts and English literary production. The third section explores the functions performed by portraits on the page and the stage, delving into the complex question of the relationship between visual and verbal representation. Finally, the chapters in the fourth section reappraise early modern reflections on the relationship between word and image and on their respective power in light of early-seventeenth-century visual culture, with particular reference to the masque genre. Camilla Caporicci is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Padova, Adjunct Professor at the University of Perugia, and a former Humboldt fellow at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität. Among her many publications are The Dark Lady: La rivoluzione Shakespeariana nei Sonetti alla Dama Bruna (2013), the edited volume Sicut Lilium inter Spinas: Literature and Religion in the Renaissance (2018) and the Introduction and Notes to the Bompiani edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (2019). Armelle Sabatier is Lecturer at the University of Paris Panthéon Assas. She is the author of Shakespeare and Visual Culture. A Dictionary (Bloomsbury, 2016). She has published varied articles on the interrelation of visual arts and early modern drama, and on the representation of color on the Elizabethan stage.

Routledge Studies in Shakespeare

32 Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies Edited by Dennis Austin Britton & Melissa Walter 33 Shakespeare and Indian Cinemas ‘Local Habitations’ Edited by Poonam Trivedi and Paromita Chakravarti 34 Shakespeare and Asia Edited by Jonathan Locke Hart 35 Francis Bacon’s Contribution to Shakespeare A New ATTRIBUTION Method Barry R. Clarke 36 Shakespeare’s Props Memory and Cognition Sophie Duncan 37 Limited Shakespeare The Reason of Finitude Julián Jiménez Heffernan 38 Spectrums of Shakespearean Crossdressing The Art of Performing Women Courtney Bailey Parker 39 The Art of Picturing in Early Modern English Literature Edited by Camilla Caporicci and Armelle Sabatier

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The Art of Picturing in Early Modern English Literature Edited by Camilla Caporicci and Armelle Sabatier

First published 2020 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business © 2020 Taylor & Francis The right of Camilla Caporicci and Armelle Sabatier to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-42519-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-85326-6 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

Contents

List of Figures List of Editors and Contributors Acknowledgments Introduction

vii ix xiii 1

C A M I L L A C A P O R I C C I A N D A R M E L L E S A B AT I E R

PART I

To Look or Not to Look at Pictures?

17

1 An Edifying Pictura Loquens: Alberico Gentili’s Commentatio and His Defense of Drama in Elizabethan Oxford

19

C R I S T I A N O R AG N I

2 Looking At and Through Pictures in Donne’s Lyrics

33

JA M E S A. K NA PP

3 “A painted devil”: The Matter and Making of Images in Macbeth

50

C H L O E P O RT E R

4 Mirrors, Pictures, Optics, Shakespeare

66

B .J . S O KO L

PART II

Confluences: English Texts and European Paintings

85

5 Over the Edge: Shakespeare, Judith, and the Virtuous Use of Female Indiscretion and Deception

87

RO C C O C O RO N AT O

vi Contents 6 “Be her sense but as a monument”: Lost Icons and Substitutive Figures in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline

101

F I A M M E T TA D I O N I S I O

7 The Notion of Picturing in Early Modern Literature: The Case of the Miniaturist Isaac Oliver (c. 1585–1617)

123

R A P H A Ë L L E C O S TA D E B E AU R E G A R D

PART III

Portraits on the Page and the Stage

139

8 “Take this picture which I heere present thee”: The Art of Portraiture in the Elizabethan Sonnet Sequences

141

CA M I LL A CA POR ICCI

9 Narrative Portraiture

163

C AT H E R I N E B E L S E Y

10 Picturing in Little or in Stone? Miniature versus Monument in The History of the Tryall of Chevalry (Anonymous, 1605)

179

A R M E L L E S A B AT I E R

11 Performing Portraits: The Portrait as Prop and Its Performative Dimension in Early Modern English Drama

197

EMANUEL STELZER

PART IV

The Power of the Visual and the Verbal

213

12 Prospero’s Rainbow: Political Miracles in The Tempest

215

RO S A N N A C A M E R L I N G O

13 “Picture is the invention of heaven”: Ben Jonson and the Paradox of the Visual

230

KEIR ELAM

Index

245

Figures

4.1 Detail from Titian, Venus with a Mirror, courtesy of the National Gallery, Washington D.C 70 4.2 Detail from Las Meninas, courtesy of the Prado Museum, Madrid 71 4.3 A closer detail of Velázquez, Las Meninas 72 5.1 Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Beheading Holofernes (Naples, Museo di Capodimonte) 90 5.2 Cristofano Allori, Judith with the Head of Holofernes (Florence, Gli Uffizi) 93 5.3 Caravaggio, Judith Beheading Holofernes (Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica) 97 6.1 Antonio Allegri, Camera di San Paolo, Northern wall, Monastery of San Paolo, Parma, 1518–19.  Courtesy of Polo Museale dell’Emilia Romagna 116 6.2 Francesco Mazzola, Stufetta di Diana e Atteone, Western wall, Rocca Sanvitale, Fontanellato, 1524.  Courtesy of Comune di Fontanellato 116 7.1 Isaac Oliver (1596–1600), Unknown Lady, formerly called Frances Howard, Victoria & Albert Museum (P. 12–1971). Vellum stuck to plain card, circular, 130 mm, 1/8 in. diam 125 7.2 Isaac Oliver (c. 1615), Lucy Harington, Countess of Bedford, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (3902). Vellum stuck onto card, circular, 127 mm, 5 in. diam 125 7.3 Isaac Oliver (c. 1615), La Mise au tombeau/The Entombment, Musée d’Angers (France) 133 9.1 Daniel Mytens, Alethea, Countess of Arundel, c.1618, at the entrance to her gallery hung with portraits inherited from the Elizabethan collector, Lord Lumley. © National Portrait Gallery, London 164 9.2 Woodcut from the title page of The Spanish Tragedy, 1615.  © Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo 171

viii Figures 10.1 Gerard Johnson, Tomb of Sir Thomas (d.1592) and Lady Sondes, Throwley, Kent. In the background, tomb of Sir Michael Sondes (d.1617) and his wife Mary Fynch. Photograph by courtesy of ­Julian P. Guffogg 191 11.1 Unknown artist, Elizabeth (‘Bess’) Ralegh (née Throckmorton), Lady Ralegh as Cleopatra, NPG Z3915, oil on panel, early seventeenth century © National Portrait Gallery, London 204 11.2 Anonymous, Illustration to William Sampson’s The vow breaker. Or, The faire maide of Clifton. In Notinghamshire as it hath beene diuers times acted by severall companies with great applause (London: John Norton, 1636, A2 r.). Courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library 206 13.1 Emblem from Gilles Corrozet, Hecatonographie (Paris, 1543). By courtesy of the Archiginnasio Library, Bologna 238 13.2 Frontispiece to the 1616 Folio edition of The Works of Benjamin Jonson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Ben_Jonson_folios, ­accessed July 1, 2018) 241

Editors and Contributors

Editors Camilla Caporicci is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Padova, an Adjunct Professor at the University of Perugia, and a former Humboldt fellow at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. She is currently working on a research project on the use of the Song of Songs in Renaissance love poetry, funded through the MSCA (Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions) Seal of Excellence @ UniPD initiative. She is the editor of the volume Sicut Lilium inter Spinas: Literature and Religion in the Renaissance (2018), author of the The Dark Lady: La rivoluzione Shakespeariana nei Sonetti alla Dama Bruna (2013) and of the Introduction and Notes to the most recent Bompiani edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (2019). A contributor to the World Shakespeare Bibliography, she has published several articles and book chapters on Shakespeare’s work, Elizabethan and Jacobean poetry, including some devoted to the relationship between early modern literature and the visual arts. Armelle Sabatier is Lecturer in English at the University of Paris Panthéon Assas. She is a member of the research center for English and American Literature at the University of Paris Sorbonne (VALE). She is the author of Shakespeare and Visual Culture. A Dictionary (Bloomsbury, 2016). She has published varied articles on the interrelation of visual arts and early modern drama, and her recent work focuses on the representation of color on the Elizabethan stage and poetry. Currently, she is also coediting (with Géraldine George, Yvonne-Marie Rogez and Claire Wrobel) a volume on the Dark Sides of the Law: Perspectives on Law, Literature and Justice in Common Law Countries, to be published with Michel Houdiard in Paris.

Contributors Catherine Belsey  is Visiting Professor at the University of Derby and Professor Emeritus at Swansea University. Her books on the early

x  Editors and Contributors modern period include Shakespeare in Theory and Practice (Edinburgh U. P., 2008), Why Shakespeare? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) and The Subject of Tragedy (Methuen, 1985). She has discussed examples of visual culture in Culture and the Real (Routledge, 2005) and Shakespeare and the Loss of Eden (Palgrave, 1999), as well as Tales of the Troubled Dead: Ghost Stories in Cultural History (Edinburgh U. P., 2019). Rosanna Camerlingo is Professor of English Literature at the University of Perugia. She earned a PhD in Comparative Literature from the New York University and was twice fellow of the Italian Academy at Columbia University. She teaches and studies European Renaissance with an emphasis on the relationship between literature, religion, political thinking and philosophy. She has written extensively on the relationship between Shakespeare, Marlowe, Bruno and Machiavelli. Her publications include Teatro e Teologia. Marlowe, Bruno e i Puritani (Liguori, 1999) and Crimini e Peccati: la confessione al tempo di Amleto (Storia e Letteratura, 2015). She is now working on a biography of Alberico Gentili, an Italian refugee, a regius professor of civil law at Oxford and the author of the first modern treatise of international law. Rocco Coronato is Full Professor of English Literature at the University of Padua, Italy. His research interests include the influence of classical and early modern European sources on English writers from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, and the application of complexity theory and the digital humanities to literary interpretation. His articles have appeared on Connotations, The Ben Jonson Journal, New Comparison and The Shakespeare Yearbook. His monographs include Shakespeare, Caravaggio, and the Indistinct Regard (Routledge, 2017); Jonson Versus Bakhtin: Carnival and the Grotesque (Rodopi, 2003) and Shakespeare’s Neighbors: Theory Matters in the Bard and His Contemporaries (University Press of America, 2001). His work in progress deals with Shakespeare, graph theory and complexity theory. Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard is Emeritus Professor, Université de Toulouse II Jean Jaurès. Her main publications as a single author are Nicholas Hilliard et l’imaginaire élisabéthain Paris: CNRS (1992); Silent Elizabethans – The Language of Colour of Two Miniaturists, Montpellier: CERRA (2000). She has also published on cinema: Le Cinéma et ses objets – Objects in Film, Poitiers: La Licorne (1997); Cinéma et Couleur – Film and Colour, Paris: Michel Houdiard (2009). Fiammetta Dionisio is Cultore della Materia in English literature at the University of Roma Tre, where she is conducting her postdoctoral studies on Shakespeare and the European Renaissance. In 2016–2017,

Editors and Contributors  xi as a research fellow at Roma Tre University, she carried out a project on Shakespeare and the visual arts. Her PhD in Comparative Cultures and Literatures, earned in 2015 with the European Label at the University of Roma Tre, is also the result of her time as a visiting scholar at the University of Aberystwyth. She is the author of New Women. Ansie di degenerazione e profezie di rinascita nell’Inghilterra fin de siècle (2017), which focuses on the interface between literature and science in late Victorian women writers. Her research interests include Renaissance studies, late Victorian literature, feminism, gender studies, literature and science, and literature and the visual arts. Keir Elam is Professor of English Literature at the University of Bologna. His most recent book is Shakespeare’s Pictures: Visual Objects in the Drama (Arden Shakespeare, Bloomsbury, 2017). His other publications include The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama (revised edition 2002); La grande festa del linguaggio: Shakespeare e la lingua inglese (Il Mulino, 1986) and Shakespeare’s Universe of Discourse: Language-­games in the Comedies (Cambridge University Press, 1984). He is the editor of Twelfth Night for The Arden Shakespeare (Third series, 2008) and has edited other Shakespearian plays, including Hamlet (Rizzoli BUR, 2006). Together with Lilla Maria Crisafulli, he edited Women’s Romantic Theatre and Drama: History, Agency, and Performativity (Ashgate, 2010). He has published several articles on Samuel Beckett and on contemporary British drama. James A. Knapp  is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the English Department at Loyola University Chicago. He is the author of Illustrating the Past in Early Modern England (Routledge, 2003) and Image Ethics in Shakespeare and Spenser (Palgrave, 2011), and editor of Shakespeare and the Power of the Face (Routledge, 2015). His work has appeared in Shakespeare Quarterly, ELH, Criticism, and Poetics Today as well as other journals and a variety of essay collections. Currently, he is completing a book on early modern attitudes toward the immaterial. Chloe Porter is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Sussex. Her research explores interactions between literary, visual and material cultures in the early modern period. Her first monograph, Making and Unmaking in Early Modern English Drama: Spectators, Aesthetics, and Incompletion (Manchester University Press, 2013), investigates the significance of unfinished images for dramatists including Shakespeare, Greene and Lyly. She is also a coeditor (with Katie L. Walter and Margaret Healy) of Prosthesis in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Routledge, 2018). She has published on subjects including idolatry, spectatorship and portraiture in early modern literature.

xii  Editors and Contributors Cristiano Ragni was awarded a PhD in Comparative Literature by the University of Perugia and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Turin, Italy. His research focuses on the connections between political thinking, religion and drama in the Elizabethan Age, with specific reference to Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare and Neo-Latin academic theater. He is also interested in the influence of Niccolò Machiavelli, Giordano Bruno and Alberico Gentili on early modern English literature and culture. He is the author of an Italian translation of Christopher Marlowe’s The Massacre at Paris (2017) and his monograph La Nazione e il Teatro. Alberico Gentili, Shakespeare e l’Inghilterra elisabettiana is forthcoming. Currently being responsible for the YWES section on Marlowe, he has delivered papers at conferences in Italy, England, Ireland, France and Germany, and has published numerous articles in both national and international journals. B. J. Sokol is Professor Emeritus of the University of London and Senior Research Associate at University College London. He has published over fifty chapters and journal articles as well as several highly influential books, including Shakespeare’s Artists (Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2018); Shakespeare and Tolerance (Cambridge, 2008); with Mary Sokol, Shakespeare, Law and Marriage (Cambridge, 2006); with Mary Sokol, Shakespeare’s Legal Language (London, 2004); A Brave New World of Knowledge: Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Early Modern Epistemology (London, 2003) and Art and Illusion in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale (Manchester, 1994). Emanuel Stelzer is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of ­Verona and an adjunct lecturer at the University of Bergamo. After completing a PhD in “Studi Umanistici Interculturali” at the University of Bergamo in cotutelle with Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Università della Valle d’Aosta for one year. He is the author of Portraits in Early Modern English Drama: Visual Culture, Play-Texts, and Performances (Routledge, 2019), and has published articles in Critical Survey, Notes and ­Queries, Early Theatre and The Journal of English and Germanic Philology. His main research areas are early modern English literature and drama, textual studies, visual culture studies and cultural geography. He is also responsible for the YWES section on Shakespeare’s problem plays and has published an Italian translation of Philip Massinger’s The Picture (Rome, 2017).

Acknowledgments

The editors would like to thank those who have helped and supported us with the preparation of this volume. We are very grateful for the encouragement and excellent advice we received from Professor Michele Marrapodi, who believed in our project. We are also greatly indebted to Professor Ladan Niayesh, who patiently read many pages of this book. Her critical scrutiny and impressive knowledge have opened up new perspectives. Special thanks go also to Dr. Grace Allen, for her advice and friendship. This work has been made possible thanks also to the warm support we received from the Routledge editorial team, particularly from the Senior Editor Michelle Salyga, whose patience and invaluable guidance, especially in the first stages of our project, were essential to the good outcome of our venture, and from the Editorial Assistant Bryony Reece and the Project Manager Karthikeyan Subramaniam, who were accurate and helpful to the last day. Last but not least, we are extremely grateful to all the contributors of this volume, excellent scholars who honored us with their trust. Nothing would have been possible without them.

Introduction Camilla Caporicci and Armelle Sabatier

“A society suffering from severe visual anorexia”1 (Collinson 1988, 119). This statement by Patrick Collinson, who sought to reassess Höltgen’s theory on the impact of iconoclasm on Elizabethan culture, paved the way to a form of iconoclasm among scholars undertaking the complex and broad subject of the interrelations between visual arts and literature in early modern England. Although historians such as Tessa Watt (1991)2 or, more recently, William Dyrness (2004) have questioned this incomplete portrayal of English Renaissance visual culture, Collinson’s derogatory assumption – sustained by other negative adjectives such as “iconophobic” (Collinson 1988, 99) or “anti-visual” (Diehl 1997, 2) – has deeply influenced a substantial range of studies in art history on the Elizabethan period, as well as intermedial approaches to Shakespeare’s and his contemporaries’ works. Convinced that post-Reformation England was an era of destruction rather than production of visual artifacts, many scholars inferred that dramatists belonging to what is seen as the first golden age of English drama evolved in a society where pictures had nearly disappeared, following the religious turmoil and iconoclastic outbursts which occurred sporadically from the 1530s until the 1640s. In addition to this historical argument, a negative value judgment of the quality of Tudor and Stuart art contributed to the idea of a visually poor English Renaissance. This is an opinion strictly related to the somewhat anachronistic creation of an unbalanced paragone between Renaissance England and Renaissance Italy in twentieth-century critical theories. The fact that early modern English pictorial art and sculpture did not always follow the rules and principles laid down by the Italian Quattro and Cinquecento artists and art theorists, considered by many as the golden standard, the quintessence of visual artistry, paved the way for unjustified preconceptions on Elizabethan pictures. English sculpture has been described as “decadent” (Fairchild 1931, 56), and, even worse, as “mediocre and monotonous” (Whinney 1964, 6), while Lucy Gent disregards the refinement of Elizabethan pictorial art, claiming that “the highly distinctive English genius of a Gower or a Segar portrait . . . seems so remote from French or Italian art” (Gent 1981, 2).

2  Camilla Caporicci and Armelle Sabatier No wonder that, in the face of this alleged visual paucity, the vitality and creativity of the rising English secular drama, conveniently uniting word and image, have long been regarded as a surrogate to actual pictures. Similarly, Elizabethan poets seem to have experienced the same frustration when striving to apply the famous Horatian motto ut pictura poesis to their refined poetical works. Although Lucy Gent does not deny the numerous allusions to pictures in English Renaissance poetry and literature, she contends that any relation between a poem, or even a play, and an actual painting or sculpture produced in early modern England is nearly nonexistent: “The snag is that the obvious clues in the literature do not lead to actual pictures, or at least to any that have survived; the poet’s descriptions cannot be related to their pictorial counterparts.” Whenever poets or playwrights dare to praise artistry in a work of art, it can only be a pure figment of their imagination: “the poets praise a degree of artistry in their pictures which it turns out to be impossible to match in the works of art they had around them” (Gent 1981, 1). Assumptions such as these on the visual poverty of Renaissance England have been complicated and, to some extent, challenged by the recent interest in material culture and studies. This has exposed the complex nature of early modern visual culture while setting forth an amazing range and variety of pictures, enhanced by richly illustrated monographs by British art historians and curators.3 Of course, there is no denying that iconoclasm in Tudor England erased an irreplaceable Catholic visual culture. Indeed, a precious number of religious paintings, statues and stained-glass windows were smashed to pieces or whitewashed in English churches, leaving a blank in the history of English art. Furthermore, the influence of Puritans and Puritanism (­although a minority among Protestants) on Shakespeare’s contemporaries’ perception of visual artifacts and innovations cannot be underrated, as shown by some of the contributions of this volume. Nonetheless, Catherine Belsey invites scholars to take a more balanced approach than their predecessors by considering the fact that, in the Renaissance, not every picture was created for religious purposes: “not all pictures are icons, inviting the worship the Reformation deemed so dangerous to the true faith; what was banned was devotional imagery, especially in churches as places of worship, and not visual representation itself” (Belsey 2012, 181). Elizabethan art, she argues, thrived in aristocratic (but also developing middle-class) households, which delighted not only in paintings but in several kinds of visual artifacts: “the post-Reformation aristocracy also lavished wealth on . . . tapestries, carved mantelpieces, plaster ceilings, paintings, pictorial bedhangings, and embroidered cushions” (Belsey 2012, 182). Traversed and characterized by opposite tensions, English Renaissance visual culture can thus be defined, to some extent, as sustained by a paradoxical movement made of “continuities and discontinuities, innovation and destruction” (Hamling and Williams 2007, 4),

Introduction  3 fueling ambivalent responses toward pictures, sources of both suspicion and fascination within Elizabethan society. As regards the supposed poverty of English visual culture and production, this is also a debatable assumption. Turning the pages of Tara Hamling’s richly illustrated study of religious pictures adorning English Protestant households (2010), or Tarnya Cooper’s study of urban elite portraiture (2012), or Elizabeth Goldring’s work on Robert Dudley, one of the main patrons of Elizabethan art (2014), one can hardly understand the meaning of “visual anorexia,” the disease that Elizabethan culture was diagnosed with. Similarly, the 2019 exhibition of “Elizabethan Treasures. Miniatures by Hilliard and Oliver” at the National Portrait Gallery in London (February 21st – May 19th) brilliantly challenged this prevailing idea of an alleged pictorial “vacuum” supposedly created by Tudor iconoclasm. As Chloe Porter writes, Late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century drama did not step into a void created by the destruction of visual culture during the Reformation; nor do plays re-appropriate for a theatrical context types of visual experience eradicated as a result of religious change. (Porter 2009, 12) In fact, as various studies have shown, painting was neither an absent nor a negligible art in Renaissance England, and if it is true that historical and religious painting could perhaps not compete with the great Italian production, English artists excelled in the art of portraiture, both full-scale and miniature. This last form of art, which a significant number of scholars, including some contributors to this volume, have investigated at length, was, in fact, perceived by Renaissance artists and authors themselves as the most refined and specifically “English” artistic expression of Tudor England (Caporicci 2017). So much so that Edward Norgate, playing down Vasari’s praise of the Italian limner Giulio Clovio, could proudly assert, in the first half of the seventeenth century, that the English “are incomparably the best Lymners in Europe,” (1919, 20) and Henry Constable, in his sonnet dedicated to Hilliard (c. 1590), affirmed that Michelangelo himself would agree on the limner’s supremacy over his countryman Raphael (1812, 509). On the other hand, Tudor churches were not completely stripped of all images: Elizabethan aristocrats and the rising middle class ordered an impressive amount of funerary monuments, effigies or wall monuments to preserve their names and achievements in the eye of posterity. This form of art has also received scholarly attention. Nigel Llewellyn’s innovative approach on funerary sculpture has highlighted the anthropological and social role of Elizabethan sculpture while displaying the impressive range of aesthetic features and fashions craved by Shakespeare’s contemporaries (1991; 2000). Peter Sherlock (2008) has investigated the rich heritage

4  Camilla Caporicci and Armelle Sabatier of funerary monuments in early modern England, adding analyses of stained-glass windows in churches. Likewise, while emblems have been studied at length,4 the art of tapestries, also considered as pictures, has received attention by Rebecca Olson (2013) and Nathalie Rivère de Carles (2013). The wealth and diversity of the approaches to pictures destroyed or produced, admired or looked on with suspicion, bear witness to the liveliness of the debate on the visual culture of early modern England. At the same time, the growing interest in the study of actual pictures as well as artistic trends and techniques intersects with the long-standing fascination that verbal pictures, images made of words, have exerted over many generations of scholars. The multifaceted, interdisciplinary subject of early modern literature and visual arts has been explored for more than a century. If one takes for instance the year 2017, exactly one century after Sir Lionel Cust’s study of Shakespeare’s “scanty allusions” to the pictorial arts (Cust 1917), the growth of scholars’ interest in intermedial studies in Renaissance England appears evident. The variety of approaches shown in works published in this year – by Michele Marrapodi in his edited volume Shakespeare and the Visual Arts: The Italian Influence (Routledge), Keir Elam in Shakespeare’s Pictures: Visual Objects in the Drama (Bloomsbury), Rocco Coronato in Shakespeare, Caravaggio, and the Indistinct Regard (Routledge), John H. Astington in Stage and Picture in the English Renaissance (Cambridge University Press), B. J. Sokol in Shakespeare’s Artists (Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, published in January 2018), or, to include a book published in 2019 (but based on a 2017 doctoral dissertation), Emanuel Stelzer in Portraits in Early Modern English Drama (Routledge) – testify to the vitality of such a subject while opening innovative perspectives on the nexus between the visual and the verbal in early modern poetry and drama. It is out of a will to explore a variety of approaches currently available to scholars looking at the interrelation between early modern English literary and visual culture that the present volume originates. The title, The Art of Picturing in Early Modern English Literature, invariably brings to mind what the French literary critic Philippe Hamon has ironically termed “l’increvable ut pictura poesis,” the “die-hard” leitmotif that has haunted literature for more than twenty centuries (Hamon 2001, 246). Horace’s “as is painting so is poetry” (Ars Poetica), an aesthetic analogy already found in Simonides of Ceos’s suggestion that painting was a silent poem while poetry was a speaking picture, was at the base of a theory of poetical writing that deeply influenced Renaissance thinking. It was revisited and theorized in England by many intellectuals and ­poets, most famously by Sir Philip Sidney in his Defence of Poesie (1595): ­“Poesy therefore is an art of imitation, for so Aristotle termeth it in his word μιμησιζ, that is to say, a representing, counterfetting, or

Introduction  5 figuring foorth: to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture: with this end, to teach and delight” (Sidney 1966, 25). But what does it mean to picture something with words? The act of picturing within a literary text can be first interpreted as the verbal depiction and/or dramatization of such works of art as miniatures, large-scale portraits, statues, tapestries and emblems, but its full meaning is far wider than this. According to Liliane Louvel, a leading scholar in intermedial critical theory, a literary text can be said to be “pictorial” with varying degrees, starting with allusions to visual artists – real or mythological – progressing to literary tropes such as hypotyposis or “tableaux vivants,” and finishing with ekphrasis, the highest expression of “pictorialization” in a text (Louvel 2002, 15–44),5 and one whose use in Shakespeare’s and his contemporaries’ works has been tirelessly explored by critics, though not to exhaustion yet, as shown by some of our contributors. At the same time, the art of picturing in an Elizabethan text encompasses the use of varied literary techniques, rhetorical devices and tropes necessary to create a verbal, speaking picture – a process that necessarily calls into question the much-debated nexus between visual and verbal representation. The creation of “speaking pictures” in early modern literature has given rise to an impressive number of studies and critical theories over the past decades. In particular, ekphrasis has been studied through two main viewpoints: the iconoclastic context and the paragone between the visual and the verbal. The Italian term paragone originally referred to an artistic debate which divided Italian artists for nearly a century – a debate initiated by Leon Battista Alberti, who, in his De Pictura (1435), claimed the superiority of the art of painting over sculpture. This comparative approach in the field of visual arts was taken up by critical theory and literary scholars, distorting the interrelation between literature and visual arts into a mere confrontation. Under the sway of such literary critics as W.J.T. Mitchell (1986) and James Heffernan (1993), the ut pictura poesis motto was, in fact, interpreted as a “struggle,” a “domination” of words over picture. This system of binary oppositions, influenced by structuralism in the 1970s and 1980s, barred any reflection on the complex nexus between word and image (Belsey 2012, 191), on what Ernest Gilman has termed “interart studies” (Gilman 1989). Even though the Italian paragone debates were known and reworded in Elizabethan England, as shown in some chapters of the present volume, and the struggle between the pen and the pencil was fleshed out in English history with such professional rivalries as that between the dramatist Ben Jonson and the visual artist Inigo Jones in the early seventeenth century, intermedial studies cannot rely exclusively on a set of oppositions. As Gilman writes, “the language of description and analysis must enter into the symbiotic relationship with the picture, a dialectic of mutual illumination and correction” (Gilman

6  Camilla Caporicci and Armelle Sabatier 1989, 12). Scholars are called to investigate the potential meanings of the prefix “-inter,” which invites the reader to focus on the passage, the transposition from one art to another, as well as on the synergic interrelations between the arts. This is perhaps even more true when examining the nexus between the visual and the verbal as it is expressed in drama, a literary genre investigated by most of the contributors to this volume. Although the phrase ut pictura theatrum, used by Emmanuelle Hénin (2003) and by Marguerite Tassi in the introduction to her influential book The Scandal of Images (2005, 15), was never theorized in the Renaissance as was the ut pictura poesis, the deep interrelation between visual arts and drama was perceived and reflected on since the classical age. In his Poetics, Aristotle established comparisons between tragedy and the art of painting. In the section devoted to the portrayal of moral character in tragedy, he advised future dramatists to follow the example of portrait painters: “Since tragedy is a representation of people who are better than we are, poets should copy good portrait-painters who portray a person’s features and offer a good likeness but nonetheless make him look handsomer than he is” (Aristotle [c335BC] 2013, 36]. He also drew parallels between the constitutive elements of a tragedy, the plot and the moral character, and the two main elements of a painting, design and color: So the story is the foundation and as it were the soul of tragedy, while moral character is secondary. (The like holds for painting: if someone were to apply the most beautiful colours to a surface at random, he would give less pleasure than if he had sketched a portrait in black and white). (Aristotle [c335BC] 2013, 25) On the other hand, the connection between the two arts was harshly criticized by Plato, who rejected the visual and therefore deceiving nature of dramatic art in the Republic (Book X) – an accusation that was destined to persist and influence Renaissance reflections on drama. In England, the visual nature of pictorial art and dramatic performance was constantly challenged and attacked by Puritans, more surprisingly by former playwrights Stephen Gosson (Plays Confuted in Five Actions, 1582) and Anthony Munday (A Second and Third Blast of Retrait from Plaies and Theaters, 1580). These attacks encouraged brilliant responses by poets such as Thomas Nashe, who started theorizing the rising secular drama in some passages of his Pierce Pennilesse (1592) in an attempt to defend the genre of drama. They also fueled several animated controversies, which embroiled even the University of Oxford (a subject investigated by Cristiano Ragni in the first chapter to this volume). On the other hand, while this perspective is still capable of yielding innovative

Introduction  7 results, other approaches are needed in order to reveal the complexity and peculiarity of the interrelation between visual and verbal elements on the English stage. The specific nature of the dramatic art, an art in which the verbal quality of the text becomes incarnate in the solid three-dimensionality of the stage, endows the pictures shown or created in dramatic performances with a material dimension denied to purely literary texts: Shakespeare’s pictures inhabit the border territory between the material and the imaginary. They are likewise situated at the confines between the literary and the theatrical, between the text and the stage. In the domain of the text, the reference to a picture is a verbal event, apparently no different in kind from an allusion, say, to features of the landscape. In performance, however, the picture takes on potentially a quite different, non-verbal, dimension, becoming part of the visible world of bodies, of objects and of costumes, its material and semantic neighbours. This makes the status of the picture in drama quite different from that of images described or alluded to in purely literary texts, which can never aspire to concrete manifestation in real space and time. (Elam 2017, 15) This quotation encapsulates the different processes through which pictorial art is transposed, translated into a dramatic text and onto the stage. Not surprisingly, then, the rising interest in the materiality and the artistic practices of English pictorial art provides invaluable contributions to our understanding of the presence and function of paintings as theatrical property. In order to tackle the varied issues informing the current scholarly debate as well as present innovative readings in the field of intermedial studies, this volume provides a multifaceted exploration of the complex nexus between visual and verbal picturing in early modern English literature. Making use of diverse methodological approaches, the essays in this collection offer new perspectives on the literary modes of picturing, taking into account a variety of less-studied works and shedding light onto scarcely explored connections between this creative act and the context in which the examined texts developed. While some chapters propose original and enlightening readings of world-famous Shakespearean texts, the volume as a whole diverges from the “Bard-centered” production of recent years by considering works by a number of other authors, including Elizabethan “minor” sonnet sequences, anonymous plays and court masques. Thus, this collection intends to widen the gaze and present a more comprehensive and varied picture of the relationship between the visual and the verbal in the early modern period, while also contributing to the understanding of the literary context in which

8  Camilla Caporicci and Armelle Sabatier Shakespeare wrote. On the other hand, the attention devoted to the relationship between the literary creation and use of pictures and the artistic, religious and political background of early modern England and Europe fosters a deeper understanding of the many-sided dynamics at work in the process of incorporation of visual elements within a literary text. The first section, which opens the volume by establishing the close relationship between the act of visual and verbal picturing and the historical context of Renaissance England, explores the influence that religious controversies and technical advances exercised over different modes of seeing and looking at pictures. Cristiano Ragni starts the debate on the Renaissance concept of “speaking pictures” by examining the controversies around the ambivalent nature of drama, accused by Puritans of bringing to life a series of dynamized verbal pictures, which split the academic community at Oxford University in the 1590s. Ragni’s study, which investigates the theoretical framework of the controversy over drama by showing how Puritans’ criticism specifically condemned the latter’s visual nature, relies on the intellectual exchanges involving the English theologian John Rainolds, who vilified the dangerous power of images, the playwright William Gager and the Italian jurist Alberico Gentili, who celebrated instead the genre of drama as a true “speaking picture,” capable of educating the audience precisely by virtue of its markedly visual quality. A different perspective on the impact of theological concerns over the status of images is offered by James Knapp, who explores the way in which shifting attitudes toward images, at the intersection between law and theology, informed their employment by poets. In particular, Knapp investigates the role and function of images in John Donne’s poetry, shedding light on the poet’s complex attitude toward images and pictures, two forms of visual creation that were distinguished in Elizabethan England, and reappraising the subtle difference between looking at and looking through pictures, modes of vision that oppose the materiality of the object to the message it conveys. This dichotomy of the picture, at the root of Reformation debates over idolatry and iconoclasm, paves the way for a reflection on the nature and legitimacy of representation itself (particularly representation of the divine), which emerges as crucial in Donne’s “The Crosse.” Moving from the page to the stage, the concept of idolatry is considered from yet another standpoint by Chloe Porter, who interrogates the complex construction of verbal picturing in Shakespeare’s Macbeth and particularly in Lady Macbeth’s description of Duncan’s corpse. Porter discusses Lady Macbeth’s idolatrous conceptualization of the royal blood as a pigment she can use in a diabolical act of picture making, thus controlling its symbolic significance, while also highlighting the connection between her discourse and Nicholas Hilliard’s treatise on miniature making, The Art of Limning (c. 1598) and Richard Haydocke’s 1598 English translation

Introduction  9 of Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo’s Trattato dell’ Arte, della pitura, scoltura et architettura (1584). Her analysis of the use of colors in English pictorial art and Shakespeare’s verbal picturing proposes an innovative and challenging reading of this play’s visual character. Finally, B. J. Sokol provides another perspective on the complexity of modes of visions in the Renaissance by bringing to the fore original readings on optics and by demonstrating how certain technical advances in the use and understanding of mirror imaging impacted in a seemingly prescient manner on some Shakespearian passages and images. By discussing the wellknown analogy between pictorial art and mirror reflections originally established in Plato’s Republic, and reviewing a now discredited theory, once promoted by David Hockney, Sokol shows how this (ironically) narrow definition of artistic verisimilitude was called into question by Renaissance artists and writers, who highlighted the imperfections of the images created by actual mirrors as well as the optical effects of linear perspective and of binocular versus monocular vision. Through a brilliant study of the act of “winking” in some Shakespearean plays, Sokol reveals the implications of Shakespeare’s awareness of the distortions possibly arising from perspective images and of his peculiar representation of binocular vision as a source of diverging impressions. The chapters in the second section explore the connection, or confluence, between English literary production and European visual arts through a comparison between texts and actual paintings – a “conventional” approach methodologically reassessed by various scholars, including Rocco Coronato (2017). Despite the adaptations of literary strategies to the changing perceptions on visual arts in Elizabethan England, early modern literary productions constantly integrated and refashioned Continental European artistic movements, testifying to the intense circulation of ideas at the time. The first two chapters analyze the confluence of literary and artistic techniques used to portray feminine figures in English dramatic texts and Continental art. Focusing on the visual constructions and pictorial representations of the biblical character of Judith, Coronato explores the way in which this figure’s appearances in Renaissance and Baroque painting, more precisely in some works by Caravaggio, Cristofano Allori and Artemisia Gentileschi, can foster a novel reading of passages in Love’s Labour’s Lost and Cymbeline. By analyzing the characters of the Princess of France and Innogen through the lenses of the Judith paradigm, Coronato reveals how the iconographic tradition based on this ambivalent biblical heroine sheds new light on Shakespeare’s representation of female agency as an act of cutting and counterbiting, while unveiling his fascination with “indiscretion.” Offering another perspective on the relationship between the Shakespearean figure of Innogen and Italian visual arts, Fiammetta Dionisio reappraises the well-known ekphrastic description of the woman’s richly ornamented chamber, which presents the audience with an

10  Camilla Caporicci and Armelle Sabatier amazing wealth and diversity of pictures. Supported by a comparison with Correggio’s Camera di San Paolo in Parma and Parmigianino’s Stufetta di Diana e Atteone in Fontanellato, Dionisio’s study highlights the link between the juxtaposition of figures composing Innogen’s chamber and the debate surrounding the holy icons that raged in Europe between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, focusing on the way in which the amnesia of the cult of the Virgin imposed by the Reformed Church was matched by a reclaiming of the Diana cult. Moving from Continental to English painting, Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard draws connections between the pictorial techniques of the miniaturist Isaac Oliver and the visual devices experimented with in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra and in some Jacobean court masques. By thoroughly investigating the motif of the veil in two miniature portraits by Isaac Oliver, Lucy Harington, Countess of Bedford, (c. 1605–1615) and Frances Howard, Countess of Essex (c. 1606), she highlights the relationship between this specific aesthetic feature and both the clouds represented in some of Inigo Jones’s watercolors for lady masquers and the transparent and aerial elements that characterize some pivotal scenes of Antony and Cleopatra. The chapter closes with the study of the interaction between Isaac Oliver’s Cabinet Miniature called The Entombment (c. 1615) and Cleopatra’s “monumental end” (Bowers 1983). The chapters gathered in the third section explore the multifaceted functions performed by portraits on the page and the stage, delving into the complex question of the relationship between visual and verbal representation in the perspective of the ut pictura poesis tradition. This discussion starts with Camilla Caporicci who, in a close analysis of many Elizabethan sonnet sequences, including such less-studied texts as Robert Tofte’s Laura and Alba and the anonymous Zepheria, investigates the way in which English poets contributed to the European tradition of sonnets devoted to portraits. By distinguishing poems treating the portrait as an actual picture and poems in which the language of painting is used to denote the poet’s own attempt to refigure the beloved, Caporicci reveals the variety of approaches to the visual element employed by Elizabethan poets, who used the reference to the pictorial art as a means to play with the Petrarchan topoi and to reflect on the paragone between the arts, and especially on the poietic and mimetic power of poetry. After this chapter devoted to lyric poetry, the discussion turns to drama. Offering an innovative perspective on the nature and function of portraits in early modern culture, Catherine Belsey explores the genre of “narrative portraiture” as it appears in the painting and drama of the period. Starting her analysis with the “painter scene” as featured in the fourth addition to Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, and proceeding with an enlightening comparison between a variety of existing paintings and dramatic scenes taken from different plays, Belsey reveals how, by virtue of a series of specific features and techniques,

Introduction  11 early modern portraits were capable not only to capture their subject on a given moment but also to tell or invite recognition of a story. This convention, allowing storytelling to rely on visual culture, was vastly exploited by the dramatists of the period, who, as Belsey demonstrates, invoked narrative portraiture in order to provide information, sharpen an observation or intensify emotion. The relationship between pictures and drama is at the center of Armelle Sabatier’s chapter, devoted to the seldom studied anonymous play The History of The Trial of Chevalry (1605). By examining the different types of pictures presented on stage, mainly miniature portraits and a funerary effigy, Sabatier argues that the original paragone between painting and sculpture dramatized in this play is not intended as a confrontation between the two visual arts, or even between these pictures and dramatic art. By integrating miniature portraits within the theatrical text and performance, the anonymous author sought to reveal the subtle passage from one art to another, taking the interrelation between pictures and dramatic art to its limit in the final “statue scene” when the plasticity of the actor’s body is used as the main material to create a theatrical picture in stone. The section closes with Emanuel Stelzer’s chapter, which sheds a different light upon the presence of pictures on stage by examining the performativity of portraits used as stage properties in early modern drama. He opens his discussion with a contemporary production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (2018), in which the director used A3 posters not on stage but in the audience. This modern creation of theatrical pictures, which were not originally included in Shakespeare’s script, draws the attention to the materiality of pictures on the early modern stage, and more precisely their size. Relying on a series of criteria for identifying whether a miniature or a full-scale portrait was used in early modern plays, ­Stelzer is able to demonstrate that sizable portraits were not an anomaly in English playhouses, while considering the effects produced by different formats of pictures. Finally, the performative function of the portrait as prop is confirmed by an investigation of The Devil’s Lawcase, a seldom-studied play by John Webster in which a portrait is at the center of a complex twine of metatheatrical dynamics orienting the audience’s gaze as well as their responses to the play’s pivotal scenes. The final section explores early modern reflections on the relationship between word and image and on their respective power in light of the early-seventeenth-century visual culture, with particular reference to the masque genre, advancing the discourse on the competition between sister arts while also considering the political implications of the masque-related use of the visual element. Delving into the complex question of the role of visual art in seventeenth-century political theory and practice, Rosanna Camerlingo shows how the famous pageant staged by Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest gives birth to a ­“vision” that combines the artistic intent with a political one by integrating the

12  Camilla Caporicci and Armelle Sabatier aesthetics of court masques within the dramatic action. This colorful masque picturing an ideal and harmonious world, a potent political tool meant to celebrate Prospero’s power as well as to subjugate, control and renew the mind of prince Ferdinand, is, in fact, an allusion to the political practices and propaganda of King James, associated to the magician. However, the inverted structure of this masque, in which the threatening anti-masque represented by Caliban’s plot closes rather than opening the spectacle, reveals not only the unsubstantial nature of the ethereal vision but also the secrets of Prospero’s art, his arcana imperii, thus making the transcendental foundation of his power collapse. The section, and the whole volume, closes with Keir Elam’s innovative reading of Ben Jonson’s paradoxical attitude to the act and art of picturing. While his works are replete with references to pictures and visual artists, and were partly built on his close collaboration with architects and painters such as Inigo Jones, Elam brings to the fore the author’s desire to appropriate and, simultaneously, overcome iconography in his own mixed-media artistic endeavors. Beyond the featuring of pictures as morally dubious objects of consumption in such comedies as Volpone and The Alchemist, Jonson’s interpretation of the classical ut pictura poesis debate in his Discoveries exposes his claim of the superiority of poetry over painting. This judgment, linked to the author’s perception of the binary opposition between body – the external appearance which is the object of painting – and soul – domain of poetry – finds expression in the author’s interpretation of such mixed-media forms as the impresa and the masque. In fact, through an analysis of some of Johnson’s poems, ekphrastic descriptions of the set, stage directions and prefaces to court masques, Elam shows how the author’s paradoxical attitude toward the pictorial reaches its climax in the competition he established with Inigo Jones in the designing of masques, a medium that, subtly intermingling word and image, could easily become a field of battle between visual and verbal element. Elam’s investigation of the competition between pen and pencil concludes the volume’s exploration of the art of picturing in Renaissance English literature – an exploration that offers innovative perspectives on such long-established issues as the paragone between the arts or the impact of iconoclasm on the perception and creation of pictures, but also takes new directions in the study of the connections between texts and paintings and of the plurality of functions performed by the visual element within poetic and dramatic works. The picture of the relationship between the literary and visual cultures of early modern England emerging from the volume is a multifaceted and complex one – a picture that reflects the complexities of an age crucial to the country’s cultural development, traversed by opposite tensions, rich in contradictions as well as beauty.

Introduction  13

Notes 1 Patrick Collinson initially explained this theory in From Iconoclasm to Iconophobia: The Cultural Impact of the Second English Reformation. Reading: University of Reading, 1986, 22–25. 2 Tessa Watt was one of the first scholars to challenge Collinson’s statement: “Collinson has exaggerated the ‘visual anorexia’ of English culture in this period, and overstated the extent to which people were cut off from traditional Christian imagery” (1991, 69). 3 To name but a few: Tarnya Cooper, Karen Hearn and Elizabeth Goldring. 4 See for instance Margery Corbett and R.W Lightbown, The Comely Frontispiece: The Emblematic Title-Page in England 1550–1660. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979; Michael Bath, Speaking Pictures: English Emblem Books and Renaissance Culture. Longman Medieval and Renaissance Library. London: Longman, 1994; John Manning, The Emblem. London: Reaktion, 2002. 5 Liliane Louvel resumes this theoretical framework in Le Tiers pictural. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2010, a work that has been recently translated into English: The Pictorial Third: An Essay Into Intermedial Criticism. London: Routledge, 2018.

References Astington, John H. 2017. Stage and Picture in the English Renaissance: The Mirror up to Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Aristotle. 2013. Poetics. Translated by Anthony Kenny. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Belsey, Catherine. 2012. “Invocation of the Visual Image: Ekphrasis in Lucrece and Beyond.” Shakespeare Quarterly 63: 175–98. Bowers, John M. 1983. “‘I am marble constant’: Cleopatra’s Monumental End.” Huntington Library Quarterly 46: 283–97. Caporicci, Camilla. 2017. “‘Wear this jewel for me, ʼtis my picture’: The Miniature in Shakespeare’s Work.” In Shakespeare and the Visual Arts: The Italian Influence, edited by Michele Marrapodi, 159–77. London: Routledge. Collinson, Patrick. 1988. The Birthpangs of Protestant England. Religious and Cultural Change in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. New York: Saint Martin’s Press. Constable, Henry. 1812. To Mr Hilliard Upon Occasion Of a Picture He Made of My Ladie Rich. In The Harleian Miscallany vol. 9, edited by Thomas Park. London: printed for White and Cochrane, John Murray and John Harding. Cooper, Tarnya. 2012. Citizen Portrait: Portrait Painting and the Urban Elite of Tudor and Jacobean England and Wales. New Haven: Yale University Press. Coronato, Rocco. 2017. Shakespeare, Caravaggio, and the Indistinct Regard. New York: Routledge. Cust, Lionel. 1917. “Painting, Sculpture and Engraving.” In Shakespeare’s England: An Account of the Life and Manners of his Age, edited by W. Raleigh, S. Lee and C. Onions. Vol. 2, 1–14. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Diehl, Huston. 1997. Staging Reform, Reforming the Stage: Protestantism and the Popular Theater in Early Modern England. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

14  Camilla Caporicci and Armelle Sabatier Dyrness, William. 2004. Reformed Theology and Visual Culture. The Protestant Imagination from Calvin to Edwards. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Elam, Keir. 2017. Shakespeare’s Pictures: Visual Objects in the Drama. London: Bloomsbury. Fairchild, Arthur. 1931. Shakespeare and the Arts of Design, Architecture, Sculpture and Painting. Columbia: University of Missourri Studies. Gent, Lucy. 1981. Picture and Poetry, 1560–1620: Relations between Literature and the Visual Arts in the English Renaissance. Leamington Spa: James Hall. Gilman, Ernest. 1989. “Interart Studies and the ‘Imperialism’ of Language.” Poetics Today 10 (1): 5–30. Goldring, Elizabeth. 2014. Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and the World of Elizabethan Art. Painting and Patronage at the Court of Elizabeth I. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for the Studies in British Art. New Haven: Yale University Press. Hamling, Tara. 2010. Decorating the ‘Godly’ Household: Religious Art in Post-Reformation Britain. New Haven: Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. Hamling, Tara and Richard L. Williams. 2007. Art Re-formed: Re-Assessing the Impact of the Reformation on the Visual Arts. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Hamon, Philippe. 2001. Imageries, littérature et image au XIXe siècle. Paris: José Corti. Haydocke, Richard. 1969. A Tracte Containing the Artes of Curious Paintinges (1598), translation of Paolo Lomazzo, Trattato dell’ Arte della Pittura, Scoltura et Architettura. Milan. 1585. Repr. New York: Da Capo Press. Heffernan, John. 1993. Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from ­Homer to Ashberry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hénin, Emmanuelle. 2003. Ut Pictura Theatrum: théâtre et peinture de la Renaissance italienne au classicisme français. Paris: Honoré Champion. Llewellyn, Nigel. 1991. The Art of Death. London: Reaktion Books. Llewellyn, Nigel. 2000. Funeral Monuments in Post-Reformation England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Louvel, Liliane. 2002. Texte/Image. Images à lire, textes à voir. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes. Marrapodi, Michele, ed. 2017. Shakespeare and the Visual Arts: The Italian Influence. London: Routledge. Mitchell, W.J.T. 1986. Iconology: Image, Text and Ideology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Norgate, Edward. 1919. Miniatura or The Art of Limning. Edited from the Manuscript in the Bodleian Library and Collated with other Manuscripts by Martin Hardie. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Olson, Rebecca. 2013. Arras Hanging: The Textile that Determined Early Modern Literature and Drama. Newark: University of Delaware Press. Porter, Chloe. 2009. “Idolatry, Iconoclasm and Agency: Visual Experience in Works by Lyly and Shakespeare.” Literature and History 18: 1–15.

Introduction  15 Rivère de Carles, Nathalie. 2013. “Performing Materiality: Curtains on the Early Modern Stage.” In Shakespeare’s Theatres and the Effects of Performance, edited by Farah Karim-Cooper and Tiffany Stern, 51–69. London: Bloomsbury. Sherlock, Peter. 2008. Monuments and Memory in Early Modern England. Farhnam: Ashgate. Sidney, Philip. 1966. A Defence of Poesy. Edited by J. A. Van Dorsten. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sokol, B. J. 2018. Shakespeare’s Artists: The Painters, Sculptors, Poets and Musicians in his Plays and Poems. London: Bloomsbury. Stelzer, Emanuel. 2019. Portraits in Early Modern English Drama: Visual Culture, Play-Texts, and Performances. Abingdon: Routledge. Tassi, Marguerite. 2005. The Scandal of Images. Iconoclasm, Eroticism and Painting in Early Modern English Drama. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press. Watt, Tessa. 1991. Cheap Print and Popular Piety 1550–1640, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Whinney, Margaret. 1964. Sculpture in Britain 1530–1830. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

Part I

To Look or Not to Look at Pictures?

1 An Edifying Pictura Loquens Alberico Gentili’s Commentatio and His Defense of Drama in Elizabethan Oxford Cristiano Ragni In early modern England, when playgoing became more and more part of the daily life, a heated controversy over the morality of drama broke out. This was mainly fueled by Calvinist extremists, the Puritans, who condemned plays for their supposed “empiety” and “evil.” Resulting from the fierce iconoclasm of the radical exponents of the Reformed Church, these attacks ended up condemning drama especially because it brought to life dynamized verbal pictures, whose powerful impact on the audience the most alert among them did not fail to acknowledge and denounce (O’Connell 2000). The aim of this chapter is to investigate the theoretical framework of the controversy over drama, by showing how Puritan criticism specifically condemned the dangers implicit in the latter’s visual nature. Particularly, the focus will be on the controversy that took place at Oxford University at the beginning of the 1590s. This involved well-known personalities of the cultural world of the time, namely, John Rainolds, professor of Greek at Corpus Christi College and one of the most eminent theologians of his time; William Gager, the most famous academic playwright, and Alberico Gentili, regius professor of civil law and who is today considered one of the fathers of modern international law. As is known, the Puritan faction had been raging against the increasingly successful London playhouses since the 1560s.1 Between the 1580s and 1590s, in particular, personalities such as Stephen Gosson or Philip Stubbes – just to name the most famous couple – engaged in relentlessly repeated attacks, which pointed out how all plays were “sucked out of the Devills teates, to nourish us in ydolatry heathenrie and sinne” (­Stubbes 1585, Lv). While the denigrating campaign against public theaters has always been on the spotlight, the heated controversy over the legitimacy of academic drama taking place at the same time within the walls of Oxford or Cambridge has caught much less attention.2 A thorough analysis of the Oxford controversy, however, is crucial to understand not only the importance of both public and academic drama as privileged means

20  Cristiano Ragni of communication of the Elizabethan age but also the political interests ­lying behind such apparently literary querelles (Camerlingo 2016, ­123–38; Ragni 2018, 159–75). As the Puritan faction took more and more control of Oxford University over the years, John Rainolds, professor and theologian, never missed a chance to give vent to his particularly strict views on drama. Despite working mainly on theological issues, playgoing seems to have been one of his favorite targets, as he invariably called it into question while drawing derogative parallels with other more honest habits. In his De Romanae Ecclesiae Idolatria (1596), just to name one of his most famous treatises, he thundered against both playgoing and drama vehemently (Binns 1990, 328–31; Feingold 2012; Blank 2017, 513–47). Within this extremely knowledgeable dissertation on idolatry and the distinction between the concepts of imago and simulacrum – the former being the representation of something existing in nature and the latter the representation of something inexistent – Rainolds argued that all Papists were idolatrous, because of their cults of the saints and the Eucharist. While questioning the value of these representations and the implicit danger of confusing them with reality, he claimed that the Catholic tradition of painting angels was no less idolatrous than the Egyptian fashion of picturing their gods with animal heads. These considerations gave Rainolds the opportunity to delve even deeper in his critical reading of the value of mimesis itself and inevitably to deal with the most famous mimetic art of his time: drama. By focusing on the specific case of the representation of God in religious plays, the theologian strongly advocated how this was a proof of the dangerous spreading of idolatry even among Protestants. According to him, not only did the actors playing God end up being identified with the Lord himself in a blasphemous way, but the Scriptures too were often transformed into immorally humorous stories on the stage: “Isn’t it true that who played God was called God? Also, God was allowed to enter neither the theatre, nor the temple (as a matter of fact, they turn their temples in theatres and God’s sacred Word in funny stories”) (Rainolds 1596, CC3r).3 In this regard, Marguerite Tassi (2005, 24) wrote, The player’s most dangerous quality for the Protestant iconoclasts lay in this shadowy business of imitation, or the act of impersonation. This act of identity transformation was regarded as nothing short of a scandal, a religious sacrilege, since the impersonator engaged in an act of falsehood that denies his God-given identity and drew spectators into admiring a falsehood. At the same time, the actor was a carnal personhood, which could be so compelling spectators were led to attribute the shadow with a life of its own or, in the iconoclasts’ term, to treat the representation as an idol.

Drama in Elizabethan Oxford  21 Unsurprisingly, this accusation against the value of theatrical mimesis would be one of Rainolds’s standpoints when he started to oppose first Gager and later Gentili over the legitimacy of academic drama. In the following pages, it will be shown how it did not take him long to move from the condemnation of specific religious plays to that of academic ones, and eventually to an attack on drama as a whole. Despite Rainolds’s frequent raging against plays and playgoing, between the 1580s and the 1590s one of the finest examples of lively academic drama flourished in his own university. If public drama could thrive in London because of the protection of Queen Elizabeth I and the aristocracy, how was it possible for the academic one to do so in the smaller ambience of the university, where Puritanism had been acquiring more and more power? The answer lies in the fact that academic stage plays respected most of the restrictions that even strict Puritans such as Rainolds could not help granting. First, these plays were mainly staged for free in front of a selected audience of students and faculty. Second, they were mostly written and acted out in Latin, with a patent educational aim, namely, to improve students’ appreciation of Plautus and Seneca, as well as their memory and writing style. As William Gager – the leading academic playwright of the time – put it (as quoted in Young 1916, 614), We . . . doe it to recreate owre selves, owre House, and the better parte of the Vniversytye, with some learned Poeme or other; to practise owre own style eyther in prose or verse; to be well acquaynted with Seneca or Plautus; honestly to embowlden our yuthe; to trye their voyces, and confirme their memoryes; to frame their speech; to conforme them to convenient action, to trye what mettel is in every one, and of what disposition thay are of; wherby never any one amongst us, that I knowe, was made the worse, many have bynmuche the better . . . The educational value was, indeed, the reason why the university board used to allow such plays to be staged regularly. “The surviving documents,” Blank (2017, 519) argues, “indicate that the official university position was clear: despite considerable discussion and debate over drama, academic drama’s educational value made it a clearly permissible activity.” This said, then, why did what can be defined as an “open war” over drama break out in Elizabethan Oxford? Because John Rainolds, influential as he was, felt insulted – probably not without reason – by the abovementioned Gager. On the occasion of the Polish Palatine Count Jan Lanski’s 1592 visit to Oxford, Gager was appointed to take care of the stage performances. A few days before this visit, Rainolds expressed his firm disapproval of the

22  Cristiano Ragni arranged theatrical productions in a letter to Oxford Vice-Chancellor Thomas Thornton, and his absence during the celebrations was a visible reminder of his displeasure to the whole audience. On February 6, Gager’s adaptation of Seneca’s Hyppolitus was staged. The playwright, however, had added a few scenes in his own hand and introduced the character of the theater critic Momus, who defended the legitimacy of stage plays by highlighting their educational purpose. As Momus’s defense ironically touched on the same arguments that Rainolds had recently discussed in his letter to Thornton, it was inevitable for the theologian to feel outraged (Tucker Brooke 1951, 401–31; Panizza 1981, 57–61). Despite Gager’s letter of apology – now gone missing, where he must have denied the association between Momus and the theologian – Rainolds angrily replied with a long letter in which he brushed away all the playwright’s arguments in defense of the goodness of academic drama. He rejected, for instance, the cases found in Roman law and presumably quoted by Gager to demonstrate the century-old legitimacy of free theatrical staging. On the contrary, Rainolds (1599, 4) firmly argued that, whether on payment or not, acting had always been a shameful occupation: To the first reason then . . . that Stage-players are infamous all by the civill law, you answere that they are not all, but onely such as play for gaine sake . . . By which kinde of reasoning one might conclude likewise that sith by the scripture a woman taking mony for prostituting her body to men is infamous: therefore she is not so, who doth it freely, much lesse, who give the mony to haue her louers companie; whom yet the Scriptures counteth most infamous of all. Unsurprisingly, Rainolds grounded his claim on the Scriptures, by quoting the well-known passage from Deuteronomy on the promiscuous use of clothes to prove the immorality of all plays: “A woman shall not wear man’s clothing, nor shall a man put on a woman’s clothing; for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 22:5). Just like other theater enemies, Rainolds vehemently condemned the widespread practice of theatrical cross-dressing. Excluding that it could ever be legitimate for a man to wear women’s clothes and vice versa, he merely saw in it a likely source of sin and incitement toward unnatural and sodomitical acts, especially in the case of boy-actors “feigning love” onstage (Rainolds 1599, 10–18).4 What the real focus of Rainolds’s tirade was, however, emerged right after this passage. His aim was, indeed, to attack the mimesis and the persuasive power of words – the two elements representing the essence itself of drama. Harking back on and expanding what he had already hinted at in his De Romanae Ecclesiae Idolatria, Rainolds underlined

Drama in Elizabethan Oxford  23 the dangers implicit in playing morally dubious parts. Imitation – he claimed – could lead both actors and audience to identify with the fictitious characters so much to make them acquire those wrong behaviors: Now, within the compasse hereof doth the playing of sundry parts in Comedies fall, as of cozening varlets, base parasites, and the rest . . . of sundry parts in tragedies, as of ambitious, cruell, blasphemous, godless caitiffs . . . in a word, of all such parts . . . The foole doth commit wickednesse in pastime; and the scriptures teacheth they are no better than madde men . . . For the care of making a shew to doe such feastes, and to doe them as liuely as the beasts themselues in whom the vices raigne, worketh in the actors a marueilous imperfection of being like the persons whose qualities they expresse and imitate: chiefly when earnest and much meditation of sundry daies and weeks . . . shall . . . engraue the things in their minde with a penne of iron, or with the point of a diamond. (Rainolds 1599, 19–20) In so doing, however, Rainolds also implicitly acknowledged that the great power of drama consisted precisely in bringing what were already alluring verbal pictures to life, thus intensifying their grip on the audience through the acting skills of the actors. The resulting visual effect of this powerful mixture of words and action could prove so persuasive, that even an irreproachable Puritan like himself could not be able to resist. As Michael O’Connell (2000, 35) put it, “Seeing the ‘lively action and representation’ that the players create and hearing speech directly, carrying the very emphasis and emotive expressiveness that they have in life – these are what so potently affect the emotions, whether the spectator wills it or not.” The exchange of letters between Rainolds and Gager continued for a long time, and the former’s tone became angrier and angrier. Possibly, this was also due to the fact that Queen Elizabeth herself, visiting Oxford later that year and informed of the ongoing controversy, reproached the theologian for his “obstinate preciseness” (Plummer 1887, xxvii). In the likely attempt to support a by-then disheartened and surrendered Gager, in July 1593 Regius Professor Alberico Gentili intervened in the controversy. Why would a Professor of Civil Law step out against the influent theologian John Rainolds on such an extravagant topic as drama? The answer is simple. Apart from his friendship with Gager, earlier in 1593 Gentili had published an interesting and today quite a neglected work, Commentatio ad Legem III Codicis de professoribus et medicis. Here, while commenting on a section of the Roman Code of Justinian which dealt with the commodities offered to teachers and doctors, but not to poets and actors, he had articulated an overall defense of poetry – a concept which was synonymous at the time of today’s “literature” – and

24  Cristiano Ragni made specific reference to drama and the profession of actors. 5 This, along with the fact that Rainolds had always opposed him in the Oxford academic life because of his Italian origins, must have led Gentili to intervene (Panizza 1981, 64–76; Minnucci 2016, 129–46). I have discussed elsewhere the unmistakable references to the ongoing clash between law and theology emerging between the lines of this apparently literary querelle between the two (Ragni 2018, 159–75). In this chapter therefore I would like to focus on the content of Gentili’s work and show how the very ideas he expressed in defense of poetry and drama diametrically opposed Rainolds’s fierce iconoclasm. At the very beginning of his Commentatio, Gentili stressed how drama was a branch of poetry, which he significantly praised as a pictura loquens, “a speaking picture” (Gentili 1999, 72–73). From its onset Gentili’s work therefore put in evidence the intrinsic visual nature of drama. Differently from Rainolds and the other Puritans, however, he shed on it a clearly positive light. In so doing, he also showed his likely tribute to Philip Sidney – England’s first poet, who had gravitated in Gentili’s same high circles – and in particular to his The Defence of Poesy. Sidney’s definition of poetry as a “speaking picture” is the same, ancient concept that can be found in Gentili’s own defense (Tassi 2005, 26–27). In their respective works, both intellectuals actually aimed at defending those aspects which represented for them the essence itself of poetry and its diverse branches, namely, verisimilitude, the ultimate educational aim and imitation. As for verisimilitude, Gentili praised it as poetry’s virtue par excellence, thus firmly opposing those who had accused poets of being false. It was verisimilitude, the jurist argued, that helped poets and playwrights to trigger the audience’s amazement and eventually stimulate their emotions. Especially in the case of the latter, he maintained, verisimilitude allowed them to attain what neither historians nor philosophers were able to do: by exploiting precisely the much-despised visual nature of their art, playwrights were able to recreate realistic episodes of daily life, as well as fill out the voids of official history. What’s more, to dismiss what was the Puritans’ negative appreciations of poetry in general, Gentili underlined how learned and estimated personalities in the fields of philosophy, law and even theology had always borrowed phrases and structures from poetic language. Following up on this reasoning, he concluded the first part of the Commentatio by granting poetry an acknowledgement yet unattained – that of teaching everybody how to speak properly: [Poetry] is neither entire truth nor entire falsehood. For it is a fault to use in a poem that which is in any way “true,” either simply, or according to opinion, or beyond all refutation, or, contrariwise, to use what is not true, but is openly and commonly false. For in that

Drama in Elizabethan Oxford  25 falsehood there is neither verisimilitude nor wonderment, the two virtues of a poem . . . Everybody learns how to speak from the poet . . . (Gentili 1999, 72–73)6 Gentili, then, centered the second part of his work on the educational aim of poetry. In this regard, he demonstrated once again his unmistakable affinity with other famous intellectuals of his age, such as the already-mentioned Philip Sidney but also his friend Giordano Bruno.7 The jurist defined poetry as “an instrument of active civil philosophy,” by means of which people could tell good and evil apart, thanks to the examples of “fictitious actions and deeds”: For poetry, like rhetoric, is an instrument of active civil philosophy. For through poets and poems it makes the morals of the citizens good. And just as rhetoric fulfills this function with words through orators, so does poetry through poets with invented deeds and fictitious actions. As Scaliger, and more clearly the learned Zabarella, explained. This, it is clear, is the end of true poetry. (Gentili 1999, 90–91)8 In Gentili’s Commentatio, poetry stands out as a first rank educational instrument, while its “fictitious actions and deeds” assure that people are entertained at the same time. Again, Gentili aligns himself with what Sidney had written: the poet – one can read in his The Defence of P ­ oesy – “doth not only show the way, but giveth so sweet a prospect into the way, as will entice any man to enter into it” (Sidney 1997, 39–40). At this point, with useful references to Aristotle, Horace, and Lucretius, Gentili came to praise poetry’s healing power. Reevaluating the same visual nature of poetry, and of drama in particular, which the Puritans had been condemning for decades, Gentili highlighted instead the poets’, playwrights’ and actors’ ability to inspire the audience positively with the stories told in their works or brought on stage. Tackling the audience’s emotions, Gentili wrote, they became just like doctors, who eventually managed to cure their “patients” of their vices (Gentili 1999, 90–93): Poets wish both to profit and to delight. As Horace says, this is the condition of poetry in which it excels other ­disciplines – that it profits and cures with pleasure, not like a clumsy doctor: But just as when heales try to give loathsome bitter medicine to boys, they first smear around the lips of the goblets with the sweet and golden liquid of honey.

26  Cristiano Ragni As Lucretius wrote, poets are doctors. They certainly cure through the emotions in a powerful way.9 In his likening poets and doctors, Gentili’s first – although fleeting  – ­reference to the dubious concept of “mendacium officiosum,” that is, “official falsehood,” can be detected. As focusing more on this would take us far from this chapter’s topic, suffice it to say that the ancient concept of the occasional usefulness of lies unmistakably – and d ­ angerously  – links Gentili’s ideas to Niccolò Machiavelli’s political theories. It is this affinity, as discussed elsewhere, that proves how Rainolds’s attacks against the Italian jurist had more to do with the latter’s political views, emerging between the lines of his Commentatio, than with his defense of academic plays (Panizza 1969, 476–83; Camerlingo 2013, 103–20; Ragni 2016, 35–53; 2018, 159–73). In the third and last part of his Commentatio, Gentili brushed away all the main accusations usually brought up against drama by the Puritans once and for all, and expressed his strong appreciation of the positive benefits of its visual nature. In particular, he dismissed the traditional argument of the supposed immorality of paying to see plays staged in public theaters. First, Gentili underlined that academic plays – being staged for free in the enclosed environment of university halls – could not be touched by such accusations. Most importantly, though, he strongly claimed (1999, 102–5) that payment had nothing to do with the legitimacy of drama in general, just as it did not with the respectability of doctors, lawyers and soldiers being paid for their services: Here the question is, what does the reward paid to any practitioner of an art do to dishonour it? For payment does not seem to me to contribute anything to proving the honourableness or dishonourableness of any art. For the payment lies outside the art. And doctors, and lawyers, and soldiers, and theologians receive payment, and we do not say that their arts are dishounarable.10 Before concluding that poets and actors were not usually granted commodities because these were only bestowed upon “teachers of the arts” (Gentili 1999, 116–17),11 however, Gentili turned once more to the visual nature of drama. Particularly, he focused on the concept of imitation. Opposing what Rainolds had claimed about the negative influence of morally wrong parts in the plays, Gentili highlighted instead the educational and positive aim of such practice. By showing the ridiculousness of human vices – he wrote – one could actually divert the audience from indulging in them. Gentili recurred once more to the similitude between playwrights and doctors, and to the abovementioned “mendacium officiosum.” Just as doctors could sometimes tell white lies to their patients so as to cure

Drama in Elizabethan Oxford  27 them properly, he argued (1999, 112–13), playwrights were also allowed to make use of morally debatable plays to cure the audience’s vices: For with what modesty can a man perform a woman’s part, a free man a slave’s, a sober man a drunkard’s, an honest man a vile man’s part, a man a beast’s? But in sport, sometimes for the sake of ­utility, these things can be done, as Plato himself in the same place ­admits . . . It serves the purpose of curing the vices of a depraved nature, and of mankind. Just as doctors, and some others, do not shun a serviceable lie, as I have explained elsewhere. And yet lying is the most disgraceful thing of all. And so these doctors will not here draw back from their indecorous imitations. Hippocrates writes that bodily diseases are cured by shows.12 Not only did Gentili dare to oppose Rainolds’s ideas on the dangers underlying the visual nature of drama, then, but he also did it by referring to the dubious concept which aligned him with the most notorious political thinker of the Italian Cinquecento. This alone would justify Rainolds’s vehemency in the letters he would exchange with the regius professor after his stepping into the controversy, where he would repeatedly accuse him of being nothing less than an “empious” Machiavellian (Markowicz 1977; Panizza 1981, 51; Minnucci 2016, 129–46). On top of that, however, was also the poor image of theologians which emerged from Gentili’s Commentatio. Setting aside the diplomacy that usually distinguished him, Gentili quoted the famous passage from Deuteronomy on the promiscuous use of clothes and demonstrated how this could not be referred to drama at all. Moreover, contrarily to what was the Puritan practice, the jurist even appealed to a less strict interpretation of the Scriptures, just like other moderate intellectuals had been trying to do in order to put an end to the bloody wars of religion between Catholics and Protestants which were devastating Europe at the time: But Augustine in the second book of his Soliloquies disputes about this, and feels that the prohibition of God is thus to be interpreted: that no one should fall into some inexcusable foulness. For no one would prefer to die of cold than to don a woman’s garment. Nor will people lose the chance to help their country, if they can do so clad in women’s clothes. (Gentili 1999, 114–15)13 By clearly showing how something much more important than academic drama was at stake, Gentili concluded the abovementioned paragraph by stating that if theologians were certainly authoritative when it came to religion, their opinions were much less so in the fields of morality

28  Cristiano Ragni and, even less, politics: “And I indeed, as I am greatly influenced by the authority of the theologians in matters of religion, so am I not greatly influenced by them in matters of morals or politics” (Gentili 1999, 112– 13).14 Again, not only Gentili’s defense of the “mendacium officiosum” but also this final stroke against the indiscriminate views of the Puritan theologians create an unmistakable connection between the Oxford controversy over the legitimacy of drama and the abovementioned fight for supremacy between law and theology in the making of modern Europe. Rainolds’s vehemency in his correspondence with Gentili which would follow his intervention in the controversy, as well as the publication of the former’s own famous pamphlet Th’Overthrow of Stage-Playes in 1599, however, proved that theology was not willing to give up on its authority yet. To conclude, in this chapter I aim to underscore the relevance of a fairly neglected controversy over academic drama such as the Oxford one between Rainolds, Gager and Gentili. In particular, I discuss Rainolds’s, but generally Puritan, opposition to the powerful impact of the dynamized verbal pictures created by playwrights on the stage. Having written treatises against Catholic idols, where he drew inevitable parallels with drama, Rainolds ended up condemning the concept of mimesis itself with a fierceness yet unseen in previous attacks against actors and plays in early modern England. In his works, he criticized both the academic and the public plays precisely on the basis of their visual nature and of the supposed dangers these images represented for the audience. In this regard, I also show how Alberico Gentili’s Commentatio too stressed the relevance of this visual nature, but in a clearly positive light. The jurist carried out his personal defense by praising poetry, and drama in particular, as a pictura loquens, a speaking picture. By aligning himself with Philip Sidney’s The Defence of Poesy, Gentili concluded how drama, thanks to its dynamized verbal pictures, ultimately proved to be the perfect means to educate the audience and not something to be condemned indiscriminately.

Notes 1 The critical literature on the Puritan opposition to public drama in the Elizabethan Age is very wide. In this regard, see, among many others, Heinemann (1980), Barish (1981), Levine (1994), Orgel (1996), Lake (2002) and Pollard (2004, x–xxvii). 2 On the controversy over academic drama that broke out in Oxford and Cambridge in the Elizabethan Age, see Schelling (1908, 51–92), Boas (1914), Fraser (1971), Binns (1990, 120–40), Nelson (1989), Pollard (2004, 170–86), Shenk (2008, 19–44) and Norland (2009). 3 “. . . nonne qui Deum egit, vocabatur Deus? Aut, si Deus ibi non est introductus in theatrum, seu templum; (nam isti templa sua in theatra vertunt, & sanctum Dei verbum in ludica fabulas transformant) . . .” (trans. Cristiano Ragni). See also O’Connell (2000, 14–35).

Drama in Elizabethan Oxford  29 4 “Now, the prohibiton of men to be attired as women, women as men, belongeth to the morall, not the ceremonial law . . . so that, were this difference of attire ceremonial, then Christian men and women might each continually weare the other’s raylment lawfully . . . And hereof it followeth that if a man might saue his life, or benefit many, by putting on womans railment, yet ought he not to do it because it is evill. . . . And greater reason is it you should condemne all stage-plaies, wherein young men are trained to play such womens parts . . . can wise men be perswaded that there is no wantonnesse in the players parts when experience showeth (as wise men haue observed) that men are made adulterers and enemies of all chastitie by coming to such plaies? . . . That an effeminate stage-plaier, while hee faineth loue, imprinteth wounds of loue?” In this regard, see also Binns (1974, 95–120) and Jardine (1983, 14–17). 5 Differently from other works by Gentili, only few studies have been dedicated to his Commentatio over the years. See Binns (1972, 224–72; 1999, 59–65), Di Simone (2010, 379–410) and Warren (2010, 146–62). 6 “[Poesis] nec veritas tota, nec tota falsitas est. Quod enim in poemate verum ullo modo, vel simpliciter, vel secundum opinionem, vel ex non refutabili, vel aliter non est, sed falsum aperte, et vulgo est, utique vitiosum est. Nam in mendacio hoc non est neque verisimilitudo, neque admiratio, duae virtutes poematis . . . a poeta loqui oratores discunt, et aliiomnes . . .”. 7 On the relations between Gentili and Sidney, see Jardine and Grafton (1990, 63–64). On the relations between Gentili and Bruno on matters of poetry, see Mignini (2004, 103–23) and Ordine (2003, 210–22). 8 “Est poetica, quemadmodum rhetorica, instrumentum activae philosophiae civilis: nam per poetas, et poemata more civium bonos facit. Et sicut verbis per oratores hoc praesta rhetorica: ita poetica per poetas factis fictis et fictis actionibus. Ut ista Scaliger, et luculentius explicavit doctissimus Zabarella. Hic videlicet verae poeticae finis est.” 9 “Et prodesse volunt, et delectare poetae. | Ut inquit Horatius. Quae est poeticae condicio praestantior reliquis disciplinis, quod prodest, et medetur cum voluptate, non quasi medicus inelegans, | Sed veluti pueris absinthia taetra medentes | Cum dare conantur, prius oras pocula circum | Contingunt mellis dulci flavoque liquore. | Ut Lucretius cecinit. Poetae medici sunt. Medentur perturbationibus valde, et valide.” In this regard, see also Prosperi (2004). 10 “Hic tamen quaestio est, quid faciat merces artifici attributa, ut artem infamet. Neque enim facere quidquam videtur quaestus ad artis honestatem, vel inhonestatem adprobandam, nam ea extra artem est. Et medici, et iurisconsulti, et milites, et theologi mercedem capiunt: quorum artes non dicimus inhonestas.” 11 “. . . artium doctoribus . . . .” 12 “Quo enim cum pudore vir aget partes mulieris, liber servi, sobrius ebrii, honestus impuri, homo etiam belluae? Sed ioci tamen, et utilitatis caussa fieri isthaec aliquantisper posse, et ipse ibidem fatetur Plato. . . . Ea est naturae depravatae, et medendis hominum vitiis. Sicut autem medici nec a mendacio refugiunt officioso, neca alii ulli: quod alias explicavi. Et mendacium res omnium turpissima est tamen: ita hic medici isti ab his indecoris imitationibus non subtrahent se. Et morbos corporis per spectaculacurari, scribit Hippocrates.” 13 “Sed Augustinus in secundo Soliloquorum de re ipsa disputat, atque prohibitionem dei sic accipiendam sentit, ne in quasdam inexcusabiles turpitudines tandem decidatur. Nec enim frigore emori malit quis, quam foeminam vestem induat. Nec patriae liberandae relinquent occasionem, qui id effigere possunt vestibus induti foeminis.” 14 “Ego vero ut theologorum auctoritate in re religionis valde moveor, ita in re morali, aut politica non valde.”

30  Cristiano Ragni

References Barish, Jonas. 1981. The Antitheatrical Prejudice. Berkeley: University of California Press. Binns, James W. 1972. “Alberico Gentili in Defence of Poetry and Acting.” Studies in the Renaissance XIX: 224–72. Binns, James W. 1974. “Women or Transvestites on the Elizabethan Stage? An Oxford Controversy.” Sixteenth Century Journal 5 (2): 95–120. Binns, James W. 1990. Intellectual Culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. Leeds: Francis Cairns Publications. Binns, James W., ed. 1999. Latin Treatises on Poetry from Renaissance England. Signet Mountain, TN: Summertown Texts. Blank, David. 2017. “Actors, Orators, and the Boundaries of Drama in Elizabethan Universities.” Renaissance Quarterly 70: 513–47. Boas, Frederick S. 1914. University Drama in the Tudor Age. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Camerlingo, Rosanna. 2013. “Henry V and the Just War: Shakespeare, Gentili, and Machiavelli.” In Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England, edited by Alessandro Arienzo and Alessandra Petrina, 103–20. Farnham: Ashgate. Camerlingo, Rosanna. 2016. “Machiavelli a Oxford. Guerra e Teatro da Gentili a Shakespeare.” Rinascimento II (56): 123–38. Di Simone, Maria Rita. 2010. “Alberico Gentili e la controversia sul teatro.” In Alberico Gentili. (San Ginesio 1552- Londra 1608). Atti dei Convegni nel quarto centenario della morte. S. Ginesio, 11–12–13 settembre 2008. Oxford e Londra, 5–6 giugno 2008. Napoli, 6 novembre 2007, 394–410. Milano: Giuffrè Editore. Feingold, Mordechai. 2012. “Rainolds, John.” In The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http:// www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.lib.gla.ac.uk/view/article/23029, accessed 22/07/2017. Fraser, Russel A. 1971. The War against Poetry. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gentili, Alberico. 1999. “Commentatio ad Legem III Codicis de Professoribus et Medicis.” In Latin Treatises on Poetry from Renaissance England, edited by James W. Binns, 59–134. Signal Mountain – Tennessee: Sommertown, The Library of Renaissance Humanism. Heinemann, Margot. 1980. Puritanism and Theater. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jardine, Lisa. 1983. Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare. Brighton: Harvest Press. Jardine, Lisa, and Grafton, Anthony. 1990. “‘Studied for Action’: How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy.” Past and Present 129 (1): 30–78. Lake, Peter. 2002. The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and Players in Post-Reformation England. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Levine, Linda. 1994. Men in Women’s Clothing: Anti-theatricality and Effeminization, 1579–1642. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Drama in Elizabethan Oxford  31 Markowicz, Leon, ed. 1977. Latin Correspondence by Alberico Gentili and John Rainolds on Academic Drama. Salzburg: Inst. f. Engl. Sprache u. Literatur, Univ. Salzburg. Mignini, Filippo. 2004. “Temi teologico-politici nell’incontro tra Alberico Gentili e Giordano Bruno.” In La Mente di Giordano Bruno, edited by Fabrizio Meroi, 103–23. Firenze: Olschki. Minnucci, Giovanni. 2016. «Silete Theologi in Munere Alieno». Alberico Gentili tra Diritto, Teologia e Religione. Milano: Monduzzi. Nelson Alan H., ed. 1989. Records of Early Modern Drama: Cambridge. Toronto: Toronto University Press. Norland, Howard B. 2009. Neoclassical Tragedy in Elizabethan England. Cranbury: Rosemont Publishing. Ordine, Nuccio. 2003. La Soglia dell’Ombra. Letteratura, Filosofia e Pittura in Giordano Bruno. Venezia: Marsilio. Orgel, Stephen. 1996. Impersonations. The Performance of Gender in Shakespeare’s England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Panizza, Diego. 1969. “Machiavelli e Gentili.” Il pensiero politico II: 476–83. Panizza, Diego. 1981. Alberico Gentili, giurista ideologo nell’Inghilterra elisabettiana. Padova: La Garangola. Plummer, Charles, ed. 1887. Elizabethan Oxford, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Pollard, Tanya, ed. 2004. Shakespeare’s Theater. A Sourcebook. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Prosperi, Valentina. 2004. “Di soavi licor gli orli del vaso”: La fortuna di Lucrezia dall’Umanesimo al Rinascimento. Torino: Nino Aragni Editore. O’Connell, Michael. 2000. The Idolatrous Eye: Iconoclasm and Theater in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ragni, Cristiano. 2016. “Marlowe’s ‘damnable opinions’. Bruno, Machiavelli, and Gentili in The Massacre at Paris.” InVerbis. Lingue Culture Letterature VI (2): 35–53. Ragni, Cristiano. 2018. “‘Necessitas Facit Licitum Quod in Lege Illicitum Est’. Alberico Gentili, the Puritans, and the Oxford Controversy over Drama.” In Cultural Encounters. Tensions and Polarities of Transmission from the Late Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, edited by Désirée Cappa, James Christie, Lorenza Gay, Hannah Gentili, and Finn Schulze-Feldmann, 159–73. Wilmington: Vernon Press. Rainolds, John. 1596. Johannis Rainoldi de Romane Ecclesiae idolatria. Oxonia: Josephus Barnesium. Rainolds, John. 1599. Th’Overthrow of Stage-Playes. Oxford: John Lichfield. Schelling, F. E. 1908. Elizabethan Drama 1558–1642. v. II. Boston and New York: Archibald Constable & Co. Shenk, Linda. 2008. “Gown before Crown. Scholarly Abjection and Academic Entertainment under Elizabeth I.” In Early Modern Academic Drama, edited by J. Walker and P. D. Streufert, 19–44. Farnham: Ashgate. Sidney, Philip. 1997. A Defence of Poetry. Edited by Jan Van Dorsten. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stubbes, Philip. 1985. The Anatomy of Abuse. London: Richard Iohnes. Tassi, Marguerite. 2005. The Scandal of Images. Iconoclasm, Eroticism, and Painting in Early Modern Drama. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press.

32  Cristiano Ragni Tucker Brooke, C. F. 1951. “The Life and Times of William Gager (1552– 1622).” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 95: 401–31. Young, Karl. 1916. “William Gager’s Defence of Academic Drama.” Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters XVIII (2): 593–638. Warren, Christopher. 2010. “Gentili, the Poets, and the Laws of War.” In The Roman Foundations of the Law of Nations: Alberico Gentili and the Justice of Empire, edited by Benedict Kingsbury and Benjamin Straumann, 146–62. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2 Looking At and Through Pictures in Donne’s Lyrics James A. Knapp

In a letter to William Cecil dated February 26, 1568, Nicholas White recounts a memorable encounter with Mary Queen of Scots soon after she was imprisoned at Tutbury Castle, including a curious exchange about the status of painting in sixteenth-century England: I asked hir Grace sence the Wether did cutt of all Exercises abrode, howe she passed the Tyme within: She sayd, that all that Day she wrought with hir Nydill, and that the Diversitie of the Colors made the Worke seme lesse tedious, and contynued so long at it till veray Payn made hir to give over; and with that layd hir Hand upon hir left Syde and complayned of an old Grief newely increased there. Upon this Occasion she entred into a prety disputable Comparison betwene Karving, Painting, and working with the Nydill, affirming Painting in her awne Opinion for the moste comendable Qualitie: I annswered hir Grace, I coulde Skill of neither of theme, but that I have redd, Pictura to be veritas falsa: With this she closed up hir Talke, and bydding me farewell, retyred into hir Prevay-Chamber. (Haynes 1740, 510) While we might assume that the Catholic Queen’s impromptu disquisition on the arts was one of a number of topics reserved for maintaining polite conversation, the Protestant White’s response, prompting the Queen to end the interview abruptly, provides an interesting glimpse into the complex English attitude toward images during the Reformation. The exchange is remarkable for the way in which it may be seen to obliquely reference the confessional divide in sixteenth-century England on the value of the visual arts, visual representation, and images more generally. Protestant suspicion of images waxed and waned in England throughout the early modern period, beginning with the violent iconoclasm of the 1540s and extending through the Laudian reforms of the following century. While the Edwardian period of image-breaking was brief, the episode and the theological arguments that led to it had a profound effect on the way images were perceived in the years following. Theological concerns over the status of images were closely connected

34  James A. Knapp with the role images played in the legal and political realms as well, and I will argue that shifting attitudes toward images – concerning their proper subjects, use, and value – informs the way poets deployed them as a kind of shorthand for the paradoxes surrounding representation, specifically the relationship between the representational object and the object of representation. In what follows, I examine how the image functions at the intersection of law and theology in several of John Donne’s lyrics. But before getting to Donne, I would like to return for a moment to the conversation at Tutbury with which I began.

I. Law, Pictura, Image Nicholas White was a Protestant lawyer of the English pale in Ireland, a confidant of Cecil’s, who collected intelligence on behalf of Queen Elizabeth. Considering the confessional divide between himself and the Scottish Queen, it seems likely that he hoped to signal his Protestant conformity in his part of the dialog. White’s response to Mary’s apparently lengthy speech on the merits of painting draws on a legal aphorism on the nature of images commonly attributed to Epictetus: Quid est ­Pictura? Veritas Falsa, “What is an image? A false truth” (Goodrich 1996, 95).1 Hardly an appropriate response to the Queen’s praise of the art of painting, the reference to Epictetus signals White’s awareness of the danger of images, a danger he specifically associates with Mary Queen of Scots herself later in the same letter. Mary’s powers of persuasion were a source of concern for those around Elizabeth, and White seems to specifically identify them with the sight of her physical presence when he goes on to write that if I . . . might give advise, there shulde veray few Subjects in this Land have Accesse to, or Conferens with this Lady . . . Myn awne Affection by seeing the Quenes Majestie our Souverain is dowbled, and therby I gesse what Sight might worke in others. (Haynes 1740, 510–11) White’s letter to Cecil thus suggests the complicated way in which visual images, both painted and living, were associated with identity and representation in the period. White’s use of the Latin term pictura, defined by Thomas Elyot in his dictionary of 1538 as “an image peynted,” invokes an important, if often confused distinction between the painted “picture,” a visible, mediated copy and “image,” an invisible, immediate original or prototype (Elyot 1538, Sig. R5v). Further, as Peter Goodrich has shown, the ancient aphorism to which White alludes was explicitly connected to the legal definition of the subject by the immensely influential sixteenth-century legal humanist Andrea Alciatio (Alciati) in his De Notitia Dignitatem.

Pictures in Donne’s Lyrics  35 Goodrich argues that the concept of pictura as “false truth” has a long history dating to ancient legal tradition: The significance of this concept of the image is embedded in a complex tradition of doctrinal writing upon the question of signs, representations, and personality. At its strongest, the legal definition of the person (ius personarum) is determined by the theory of images as the form of human appearance, of human presence. The legal person is a mask (persona) and that mask is governed in its ­representation – so also in its rights and capacities – by the law of the image (ius imaginum) and the drama of masks. It is, first, a law of the imago, of lineage, of the succession of the paternal form through each generation, symbolized in the household by the pride of place given to the painted death-mask – the effigy – of the ancestral father. It was also, in more mundane terms, a question of the likeness, of imitation, through which the image gave a face to things and so semblance to inchoate matter. In these terms, the legal subject itself is in one respect to be understood or recognized as a visual fiction drawn upon the natural person . . . (Goodrich 1996, 95) When considered in the context of its legal use, pictura is about the relationship between material images (the objects of sense) and images withheld from sense by virtue of their immateriality. Goodrich points to the material trappings of legal culture – “gold rings, rods, coifs, seals, rolls, banquets and dramatics,” to make the point that the elusive and conceptual law required a material form to have force, and further that The form of such “painted law” is borrowed directly from the traditions of the western church and particularly from the doctrinally central role of iconography as well as of miracles, sacraments and further signs of the presence of the Other, of God, within the temporal world. (Goodrich 1996, 96–97) At the heart of the tradition Goodrich describes, one in which the definition of the image emerges from an intertwining of law and theology, is the second commandment. At moments when controversies over images were most pitched, the commandment’s notoriously broad wording created as much confusion as clarification, influencing attitudes toward not only religious images but the status of images in general. At first glance, the prohibition against images appears to be categorical: “Thou shalt make thee no graven image, neither any similitude of things that are in heaven above, neither that are in the earth beneath, nor that are in the waters under the earth” (Exodus 20:4). 2 The following verse beginning

36  James A. Knapp “Thou shalt not bow down to them, neither serve them . . .” was routinely cited as clarification that the prohibition was not as absolute as it may at first sound. Calvin famously rejected the literal interpretation of the verse as superstition, writing, “And yet I am not gripped by the superstition of thinking absolutely no images permissible,” insisting that his concern was over the use rather than the creation of images: “But because sculpture and painting are gifts of God, I seek a pure and legitimate use of each” ([1960] 2006, vol. 1, 112). He does go on to say that it is forbidden to represent the image of God and that almost all religious images should be prohibited because they have no value in teaching, lead to idolatry, and only give pleasure, ultimately rejecting the idea that images were the books of the illiterate.3 Margaret Aston ([1988] 2003, 396) cites Edmund Bonner’s argument about the importance of terminology to image debates in his Profitable and necessarye doctrine (published in 1555 after Mary I returned England to the Roman Church): “‘You must understand, that between an image (which is a name of reverence) and an idol (which always with the good is abominable) there is a very notable, and great difference.’” Aston notes that the “essence of the distinction lay in the nature of the ­prototypes – so unless one denied the existence of Christ, the Virgin, or St. John the Baptist, one could not deny the validity of their images.” Jennifer Waldron has shown how reformers finessed this point by emphasizing the positive power of the living image of the human body above the representation of bodies in art: As created by God in his own image, and as consecrated to his Holy Spirit, human figures were imagined as divinely licensed to replace idols . . . . Human bodies are not ‘to be worshipped’ . . . , yet in the absence of sacred objects and of the divinely ordained hierarchy of the Catholic Church, they become a conduit for God’s self-­ manifestation in the world. (2013, 33) The distinction between image and picture became a touch point in English debates over church ceremony and ornament, and especially in disputes over the administration of the sacraments. In his dispute with the Catholic John Harding, John Jewel highlights the distinction, arguing that Harding misinterprets the Church Fathers Gregory of Nazianzen, Chrysostome and Augustine. Responding to Harding’s reference to Chrysostome’s account of the relation of Christ’s embodiment of the law, Jewel emphasizes the living body over any representation: In like sorte Chrysostome expoundeth . . . The Lawe had a Shadowe of good thinges to come, but not the Image of the thinges, that is to say, not the trueth it selfe. He calleth the Gospel the trueth it selfe,

Pictures in Donne’s Lyrics  37 not in respecte of Christes Secrete Beinge in the Sacrament, vnto which fantasie M. Harding driueth al this longe talke, but onely in respecte of Christes Incarnation, as it is plaine by that immediatly foloweth: Donec enim quis velut in pictura circunducat colores, Vmbra quaedam est: cùm verò flores ipsos colorum induxerit, & imposuerit, tunc Imago efficitur. A picture, vntil the Painter lay on his colours, is but a Shadowe: but the freashe colours being laide on, it is an Image. (1565, Sig. Rr3v; emphasis original) Jewel’s aim is to discredit the real presence in favor of the reformed position of a symbolic presence: Out of these Fathers woordes M. Hardinge reasoneth in this wise: The Brightnes of the Gospel is but a Figure, in Comparison of that Brightnes, that is to come: Ergo, Christes Bodie is secretely hidden vnder the outwarde Formes, and Accidentes of the Sacrament. (Sig. Rr3v) For Harding, the image, which is truth, is actually in the Eucharist, though “secretely hidden.” Jewel points out that in al these woordes [of the Church Fathers] there is no manner mention, neither of Secresie, nor of Presence, nor of Absence, nor of Formes, nor of Elementes, nor of Accidentes, nor, in expresse woordes, of any Sacramente. Nazianzene, notwithstandinge he mai seeme to touche the Sacrament of Christes Bodie, yet in deede he speaketh onely of the Spiritual Foode of the knowledge of God, and not of the Sacrament. (Sigs. Rr3v-Rr4r) In reframing the debate over the Eucharist as a figurative supper, Jewel highlights the representational and pedagogical nature of both the Eucharist and Christ himself. Jewel quotes Nazianzen’s conclusion omitted by Harding: “What is this Drinke, and what is this Pleasure? Of our parte, it is to Learne: of Christes parte, it is to Teache. For Doctrine euen vnto him, that teacheth, is a kinde of meate” (Sig. Rr4r). Here the knowledge one gains in contemplating the figurality of the Lord’s Supper relies on its ability to spur one’s recognition of the lack of equality between picture and image, copy and prototype, to see the truth in a false truth. This was also the primary concern for those worried about idolatry in the reformed church. In his 1581 A Godlye and fruitefull sermon against idolatrie, the Vicar Peter White disputes the “papist” argument that they “placed their images in the Churche onely to represent and put menne in memorye

38  James A. Knapp and not to bee worshypped of the people.” He identifies four faulty “branches” of the Roman argument: (1) that “the second commandment doth not forbid the making and having of images in religion, but the worship of them only,” which he claims they back up with a “pretended” translation of the Vulgate; (2) that Augustine and other Church fathers prohibited the breaking of images on the premise that they “thought some good might come [of them]”; (3) that “Idolum & Simulachrum so far differ from that which is called image or similitude” and (4) that the Roodloft is “no monument of idolatry,” despite its obvious connection to the rood from which it takes its name. (Sig. B3r). As for the first, White attacks the conclusions of the Second Council of Nicaea, which he quotes and then translates as follows: We doe with all care & diligence decree that holy Images worthy of worship be made after the manner & fashion of the worshipful & holy Crosse that giveth life, with colours & wainscot or any other matter conveniently prepared to be placed & had in the holy temples of god. (Sig. B4r) White points out that this provides evidence of a fault – that the images were, indeed, intended to be worshipped, a fact signaled by the very term used in the second commandment’s prohibition against images, “worship.” White thus invokes the distinction between dulia and latria that Protestants viewed as a source of church corruption, a failure to properly interpret the second commandment and the views of the early Church Fathers. Protestants and Catholics agreed on the meaning of latria as the worship reserved for God alone, but Protestants viewed the introduction of dulia, extreme respect or veneration (of Angels and Saints, for example), as an innovation. The humanist Elyot defines the latter as “The servyce of a bondeman or slave” (Sig. G1r), an etymology that would serve Reformers in their argument that worship of anything but God is idolatrous servitude.4 It is specifically the council’s justification of the religious use of images that White is most keen to reject, the argument that “Truly the honor done unto the image reboundeth unto the thing that the image doeth represente, and hee that worshippeth an image worshippeth in the image, whatsoever is by the image represented” (1581, b4r). The distinction here is the central question in the sixteenth-century debates over idolatry and iconoclasm: is it possible to look through an image to that which it represents or does one always look at the image in its materiality in some respect, necessarily corrupting any spiritual understanding? Without the distinction between picture and image, defined explicitly as copy and prototype respectively, the terms of the debate become confused.

Pictures in Donne’s Lyrics  39 The vicar Peter White points out that the fine distinctions Catholics established between images and idols collapse on examination: . . . they condemne images, maters in religion for Heretikes: but now between Idolum, Simulachrum, Similitudinem, or Imaginem, there is great difference, for Idolum and simulacrum, do ever signify the Idols & false Gods of the Gentiles, and are not to be applied unto the images of Christians, this is as skillfull and learned distinction as the rest, and of like truth . . . Loe here is the difference of Idolus as a greeke word et Similitudo or Imago a Latin word, signifying the self and the same thing, for simulacrum a Grammer Boye having learned the seconde parte of Grammer, can tel you that similitudo commeth from similes that signifieth like, so doeth simulacrum come from simulatum, that signifieth to liken, so simulacrum and similitude are both one, and signifieth a likenesse or Image, as imago: Loe here is their great learning that so boldlye and rashly talke they know not what . . . . (B4r) It is for this reason that the softening of iconoclastic rhetoric after the Edwardian image breaking was aimed at the issue of use. Aston ([1988] 2003, 322) points to an important revision to the Homily Against Peril of Idolatry possibly made at the direction of Queen Elizabeth I. In an early version of the homily, likely written by Jewel and representing the official position of the English church on the matter of idolatry, we find the prohibition “that neither the material church or temple ought to have any images in it (for it is taken the ground of the argument) neither that any true Christian ought to have any ado with filthy and dead images.” This line is replaced in the revised edition with “that we should not worship images, and that we should not have images in the temple, for fear and occasion of worshipping them, though they be of themselves things indifferent.” The revision highlights a shift from what amounted to a categorical rejection of image making to one in which proper use was the primary concern. Even so, the reverence for images cultivated in the medieval church had been shaken. 5 The lawyer Nicholas White’s suspicion of painted pictures as veritas falsa suggests that while intense debates over representation had their source in high stakes theological disputes, they also spilled over into the wider conversation about the relationship between pictures of things and the things themselves, likenesses and essences, ultimately extending to all forms of visual representation.6 It is difficult to ignore the context of White’s remarks about images, especially considering his reference to the visual appearance of the two monarchs who happened to have a claim to the English throne at the moment of his writing. The relation of image to truth was particularly important when two competing living

40  James A. Knapp images of authority were available – White’s “affection is doubled” on seeing Queen Elizabeth, and for this very reason he is concerned that the people should not have the sight of Mary Queen of Scots. The issue is prompted, however, by the seemingly harmless talk of painting, pictura, which White “has read” is veritas falsa.

II. Looking At and Through Pictures with Donne I now turn to some of John Donne’s lyrics, the work of a poet who would have been, like Nicholas White, familiar with the legal humanism circulating at the Inns of Court at the end of the sixteenth century, likely including the work of Alciati on the legal role of images as they relate to persons. In addition, Donne was, in Ernest Gilman’s description, “A man split between the Roman and Reformed church . . . [who] seemed to have absorbed both sides of the iconoclastic controversy into the language of his little world” (1986, 136). Donne’s position on the image controversies has long been a subject of commentary, but attention to the influence of legal language in Donne’s poetry has only recently begun to garner significant attention from scholars of law and literature.7 Here I’d like to focus specifically on the way Donne refers to pictures as conceptual tools for representing persons in their particularity, in the process signaling an engagement with the theological as well as juridical status of the image. In particular, I am interested in Donne’s articulation of the problem of the picture as veritas falsa, the image as paradox, that which provides access to identity while simultaneously lacking identicalness – the image is not what it represents. In “Witchcraft by a Picture,” Donne explicitly evokes the picture as a kind of false truth. The poem opens with a seemingly accurate picture of the speaker in the eye of the beloved, a powerful image capable of producing pity: I fix mine eye on thine, and there Pity my picture burning in thine eye, My picture drowned in a transparent tear, When I look lower I espy;

(lines 1–4)8

The speaker’s picture is imperiled in the poetic image, suggesting the speaker too is in danger. But the image figured in the beloved’s eyes as the speaker’s “picture” “burning” and “drowning” is undercut by the conditional clause introduced in the next line: “Hadst thou the wicked skill / By pictures made and marred, to kill” (lines 5–6). If witchcraft were a real skill and not a projection of the superstitious, the poem’s addressee could literally kill with pictures: “How many ways mighst thou perform thy will?” (line 7).9 Luckily for Donne’s speaker, the image

Pictures in Donne’s Lyrics  41 reflected in the lover’s eye, like the art of pictura mistrusted by Nicholas White, is a false truth, true in that it resembles his appearance but false in that it fails to capture the truth of his dynamic living self, a point the speaker makes clear in foregrounding the living image of the weeping lover. This composite image, which includes the picture of the speaker in the eye of the beloved, identifies truth with the living rather than the mimetic image. The speaker’s image contained in the eyes of the weeping lover, presumably wronged by the speaker or simply sad at his impending departure, is, nonetheless, only one possible copy of the speaker’s true image, a fact confirmed by the speaker’s decision to leave, thus removing his image from the beloved’s eyes. The poem’s next turn constitutes a rejection of the power of pictorial representation to alter one’s true image: “My picture vanished, vanish fears, / That I can be endamaged by that art” (lines 10–11). The fleeting nature of the mimetic image – the art of picturing – here in the form of a reflection, renders it harmless because it is mutable, and therefore insubstantial. The picture that the lover “retain[s]” is an immaterial image of the innocent speaker, a “picture . . . from all malice free” (lines 13, 14). This unseen picture, available only in the heart of the addressee, will represent the speaker truly, a product of the lover’s reflection on the speaker’s true image rather than the speaker’s image falsely reflected in her tearstained eye.10 While the poem is perhaps a prime example of Donne’s less than admirable habit of cleverly rationalizing bad behavior in matters of the heart – it seems clear that it is the speaker who is at fault here – his use of pictures that function in a complex, and complimentary relationship to individual identity drives the poem’s conceit and evokes the legal concept of the image as both the imperfect representation of truth and evidence of the truth’s elusive immateriality at the same time that it reluctantly accepts the image as the only path to knowledge of that elusive truth. In the elegy that begins, “Here take my picture,” Donne similarly invokes a material picture – a portrait miniature – only to undermine its ability to convey truth. The speaker ironically invites the beloved to rely on the constancy of the painted image as a bulwark against the ravages of time the speaker’s impending travels will inevitably visit on his physical body, while he asymmetrically retains the beloved’s true image in his heart: Here take my picture, though I bid farewell; Thine, in my heart, where my soul dwells, shall dwell. ’Tis like me now, but I dead, ’twill be more When we are shadows both, than ’twas before. When weather-beaten I come back; my hand, Perhaps with rude oars torn, or sun-beams tanned, My face and breast of haircloth, and my head

42  James A. Knapp With care’s rash sudden hoariness o’erspread, My body a sack of bones, broken within, And powder’s blue stains scattered on my skin; (lines 1–10) Donne’s conceit here is complex: the “picture” provides a kind of stasis that is ostensibly indexed to the speaker’s inner self – that unchanging singularity most often associated with the soul – but this is soon revealed to be a kind of fiction. The outward appearance of the speaker is explicitly changeable, unlike the image in the picture; the unchanging image in the picture is like the immutable soul of the speaker, which can be reached only through such an inadequate comparison. The comfort of the picture is thus the comfort of a stasis that is materially impossible, thereby revealing the false truth of such pictures compared to the idealized and immaterial image of the beloved that “dwells” in the speaker’s “heart,” “where my soul dwells.” In an important sense, then, rather than providing comfort, the elegy widens the gap between speaker and lover, for whom self-­reflection is the only path to comfort. The speaker imagines the beloved questioning her own image when faced with the returned, broken body of the lover: “Do his hurts reach me? doth my worth decay?” (line 14). If Donne asks his addressee to look through his picture to see his true self within, he simultaneously emphasizes both the picture’s status as visual simulacrum, a “likeness” tied to the moment (“’Tis like me now”), as well as its status as a conduit to his unchanging identity inaccessible to vision. What the beloved will “see” in the pre-time-ravaged picture of the Elegy’s speaker is paradoxically the mind or soul of the lover who chose her, a mind in no way reduced despite the outward appearance of the living lover returned “a sack of bones, broken within” (line 9). It is the picture that will “say what I was,” thus prompting the beloved to find comfort in the fact that “his hurts [don’t] reach me” (line 14). Finally, the speaker expresses confidence that the beloved will see that her “worth” does not “decay” with the body of the speaker who should love her no less being weathered by time and in whom she should see a man worthy of her love. The speaker’s confidence is in the growth of the beloved’s love from an attraction to outward appearance – admiring “him that was fair and delicate,” the “milk, which in love’s childish state / Did nurse it” – to a love of true substance, a love “grown strong enough / To feed on that, which to disused tastes seems tough” (lines 17–20). The poem thus praises the addressee for seeing the speaker in his image rather than in the picture that serves as his initial gift and the basis of the poem’s conceit. Put slightly differently, the image of the speaker is withheld in both of the cases that the beloved views the portrait: the availability of the speaker’s image after the ravages of time and travel stresses its immateriality, its unchangeable status that was also signaled but not represented in the portrait miniature he leaves behind in the poem’s first line.

Pictures in Donne’s Lyrics  43 The dynamic interrelation of images, pictures, bodies, and selves, playfully explored through Donne’s manipulation of picture poem conventions mirrors the much more serious struggle over the nature of representation in Reformation England. As we have seen in the polemics of Jewel and Harding, the relationship between prototype and copy was at the heart of the debate over not only images but representation itself. The key target of Protestants like Jewel and White was the Second Council of Nicaea, which remains the locus of disagreement over the interpretation of the second commandment to this day. The Catholic phenomenologist Jean-Luc Marion has recently attempted to defend the council’s interpretation by performing a phenomenological analysis of the different modes of perception imagined in the council’s deliberations. His analysis focuses specifically on the distinction between the idol that clearly invites idolatry and thus appropriately hails the iconoclast, and the icon, which resists the logic of mimesis, denying of the logic of the likeness that leads to idolatry. Marion begins by accepting the premise of the iconoclasts: that the visible has no power to reach the divine, which is by nature beyond or inaccessible to the visible: If, with respect to an image, it was a matter of demanding that it render visible the holiness of the Holy, would that not instead demand iconoclasm? . . . The Holy, that protegé of immense separation, evades all comprehension, with respect to both mind and meaning. “Neither flesh, nor blood, nor human will” (John 1:13) is able to force into visibility “that which eye has not seen, nor ear has heard, nor has entered into the heart of man” (Isaiah 64:4 = 1 Corinthians 2:9), precisely because it is what “God has prepared for those who love him” (ibid.) But how can God himself prepare the invisible for visibility to every spectacle of its own glory? . . . The Holy is never seen [s’aperçoit] since only the visible is seen, according to the measure of the sight granted to our reach. And yet every spectacle reaches visibility only by submitting itself to the conditions of possibility of objects of visual experience, that is to say an intuition, intelligible or sensible; in either case, the intuition itself is proportionate to the consciousness that receives it and is thus defined by finitude. (1994, 66–67) The gap here seems unbridgeable: the visible picture will always be false in contrast to the inaccessible truth of the divine. But Marion turns to what he calls the “inspired audacity” of the Second Council’s “theoretical decision” for a solution: since the image, understood according to its usual logic, leads to an iconoclastic dilemma, the holiness of the Holy thus demands, in

44  James A. Knapp order that we receive there the revelation in visibility, that we construct a theoretical model absolutely other than that which leads to the idol – the model of the icon. (68) The Second Council’s distinction between icon and idol relies, according to Marion, on a specific understanding of the icon as a “type” (τύπος) rather than a form of mimetic representation. In the case of the mimetic image, the fidelity of the copy is judged according to its likeness to the original. Because the special case of the divine is categorically withheld from such a comparison, in order to avoid the charge of the iconoclasts the icon must relate to its object in a different mode. Marion focuses on the “mode of fidelity of the icon” advocated by the Council as “a ‘manner of approaching,’ which it is not necessary . . . to understand as a comparison, even less a similarity” (69). The distinction of the icon as a type capable of offering an approach to the invisible, a kind of “approximation,” results from its status as a type like the “type par excellence”: the cross. The Cross indeed accomplishes first and perfectly the trait that distinguishes a type from, for example, an image: it does not reproduce its original according to degrees of similitude but rather refers itself paradoxically to a prototype more indicated than shown. (70) Though this explication relies on precisely the kind of linguistic distinctions reformers like the vicar Peter White found so unconvincing, it is clear that early modern poets and theologians alike were open to the idea that visual representations could be judged according to a range of modes of fidelity to their objects. Donne’s poem “The Crosse” is instructive here. Long recognized as an occasional piece representing Donne’s contribution to debates spurred by the so-called Millenary Petition of 1603, the poem is directly concerned with the controversies over images reignited by the Reformation.11 This particular controversy, initiated by Puritan ministers and quickly rejected by James I at the Hampton Court Conference in 1604 was specifically aimed at the sign of the cross made in the baptism ceremony, but extended more generally to the image of the cross in devotional practice. Donne engages with the theological debate in the opening lines: Since Christ embrac’d the Crosse it selfe, dare I His image, th’image of his Crosse deny? (lines 1–2) The lines layer the different levels of image and prototype, while also referencing the related concept of the idol that the image would become

Pictures in Donne’s Lyrics  45 should the speaker “deny” the image of the cross by focusing solely on its material representation. Christ’s “self” is “His image” here, the only one capable of embracing the actual cross represented by the ceremonial sign. At lines 7–8 he asks, Who from the picture would avert his eye, How would he flye his paines, who there did dye? To deny the “picture” is here to deny the image, Christ who died for the viewer, a fact viscerally evident in His “paines.” The equivalence of Christ as both image of God and God is mirrored in the cross as image of and access to Christ. The matter is then considered one of law: From mee, no Pulpit, nor misgrounded law, Nor scandal taken, shall this Crosse withdraw, It shall not, for it cannot; for, the losse Of this Crosse, were to mee another Crosse. (lines 9–12) Donne identifies the “misgrounding” of the law against the sign of the cross to be a matter of misinterpretation on the part of those promulgating the prohibition, from the “Pulpit.” This is a clever inversion of the Reformation debate over images in religion, for as we have just seen in the exchange between Jewel and Harding, the Reformed position was that it was precisely the scriptural law (in this case the second commandment) and its earliest interpretation in the Apostolic Church that was corrupted (misinterpreted) at the Second Council of Nicaea. And as others like the reformed vicar Peter White argued, the problem with the distinction was that it was overly subtle; against claims that idols differed from icons, likenesses from simulacra, the most fervent sixteenth-­ century iconoclasts argued that all forms of visual representation are a kind of “likeness,” and as such all should be forbidden in the Church. But, as Marion points out, the distinction reached at the council, while difficult, is based on a special case in the type of the cross: The Cross does not offer any spectacle or image of Christ; it does not resemble it any more than it differs from it; simply, it should not be regarded according to any register of either similitude or dissimilitude . . . . Christ, on the Cross, holds no more than a typical relation, outside of similitude or dissimilitude, with himself (1994, 70) The kinds of images that are acceptable in this theological context, those that are necessary, in fact, are those that resist mimetic logic while still granting sensuous access to that which cannot be experienced through the senses.

46  James A. Knapp The lack of visual access to the divine was a source of considerable anxiety for Donne, and not easily overcome by the call to seek comfort in scripture alone. Donne frequently seeks confirmation of God’s truth in visual or material terms. In the Holy Sonnet “What if this present were the world’s last night,” he writes, “Mark in my heart, O soul, where thou dost dwell, / The picture of Christ crucified,” conjuring a visceral image, and concluding that “This beauteous form assures a piteous mind” (lines 2–3,14). To return to “The Crosse,” to deny the outward sign would be “to mee another Crosse” (line 12). The important distinction then, is that between approximation and representation of the divine. While the latter is prohibited, the former is necessary as it reaffirms the truth of Christ’s incarnation. For Catholics, to make an image of the human Christ is not to make a likeness of God, because Christ exceeds His humanity. Extending the prohibition of images of the divine to the cross is even more egregious. As Donne suggests, the effect of the misinterpretation (and corruption) of the law is to deny the truth of Christ’s very identity and role as the visible guarantor of salvation, without which the speaker is condemned to bear “another crosse.” The following section of the poem (lines 17–24), as Barbara Lewalski has commented, consists of a dizzying array of images of the cross, all found in the patterns of Earthly experience: “Swimme, and at every stroake, thou art the Crosse” and so on (Lewalski, 255–56). Taking issue with Louis Martz’s understanding of the poem as a part of a larger culture of meditation, Lewalski argues that the poem “. . . is not intended as a meditation on the passion or Christ’s cross itself, but rather . . . it is an analysis and didactic interpretation of an abstract symbolic figure” (1977, 255).12 There is certainly a case to be made for reading the poem in the emblem tradition, as Lewalski argues, but this does not necessitate denying the poem’s reliance on the figure of the cross in theological debates over representation. Limiting our understanding of the poem to its analysis of “an abstract symbolic figure,” downplays the poem’s extremely careful layering of levels of pictorial, visual, and conceptual representation. Indeed, as we have seen in the Second Council’s defense of religious imagery, it is the cross that underwrites the legality of visual representation because it “opens up” in Marion’s terms “an access of the invisible to the visible” (1994, 68). This, I would argue, is not simply a matter of symbolic abstraction, as Donne’s consistent emphasis on the materiality of the cross imagery attests.13 While Donne concludes that it is not possible to live materially without the cross, it is in the movement to the spiritual that the picture’s role becomes dynamic: “Materiall Crosses then, good physicke be, / but yet spiritual have chief dignity” (lines 25–26). In a striking sequence, the poem shifts from the material to the immaterial, though I would argue this is not, for Donne, a shift to the abstract. The spiritual crosses “cure much better” (line 28), “For when that Crosse ungrudg’d, unto

Pictures in Donne’s Lyrics  47 you stickes, / Then are you to your selfe, a Crucifixe” (lines 31–32), culminating in the remarkable lines, Let Crosses, soe, take what hid Christ in thee, And be his image, or not his, but hee. (lines 35–36) Through an experience of the cross, one can “take what [is] hid” within oneself, that is “be” Christ’s image, an idea Donne immediately corrects. Sensing that the image of Christ could be taken to mean simply his material likeness, the speaker clarifies that is it not his image but “hee.” The layering suggests the equivalence of image and self, but also the sense in which material images must be looked through rather than at, in order to reveal the images hidden within them. Urged to “take what hid Christ in thee,” the addressee is urged to see in the cross, the image of Christ himself, not only the material picture (the word made flesh), but that of Christ which is hidden within one’s own self. Clearly this is not the kind of visual experience on can have with a mimetic image, a fact confirmed in Donne’s subsequent comparison as Christ’s act of hiding himself within all is comprehensible only when one imagines the process of revealing that hiddenness. The experience is likened to the representational work of the sculptor: “As perchance, Carvers do not faces make: / But that away, which hid them there do take” (lines 33–34). The process of stripping away the material to reveal the true image is the cross the speaker bears, an affliction that the poem’s final lines figure as one borne with patience: Then doth the Cross of Christ work fruitfully Within our hearts, when we love harmlessly That Cross’s pictures much, and with more care That Cross’s children, which our crosses are. (lines 61–64) To look at the picture is to witness a false truth that appears to substitute the copy for the prototype, but to look through the picture is to approach the image that the picture conceals, which is paradoxically only available in the form that constitutes the image’s aesthetic force. As an image of Christ, the poem’s addressee must acknowledge the invisible nature of the divinity hidden within. Without access to that invisible truth, false truth must be one’s guide.

Notes 1 Goodrich’s source is Alciatus, De Notitia Dignitatem 1651, 190. 2 This is the Geneva translation. See also Deuteronomy 4: 15–18.

48  James A. Knapp 3 This position is attributed to Gregory the Great. Margaret Aston ([1988] 2003) observes that the argument for the image as a tool for teaching the illiterate resurfaced in the 1540s as conservative churchmen softened the language of the Edwardian reforms of the late 1530s. 4 Elyot’s definition of latria is, “The honour and servyce, wherewith god onely is worshypped” (Sig. M1r). An additional term, “hyperdulia,” was reserved specifically for the veneration of the Virgin Mary. On the debates over the distinction, see Aston ([1988] 2003, 240–41). 5 See Hurley (2005), chapter 4, esp. 138–39. 6 This is not to say that images were shunned in early modern England due to the rise of iconoclasm but quite the opposite that they were interrogated more intensely as a result. For an elaboration of this point see my Image Ethics in Shakespeare and Spenser. 7 See Strain (2018) and Kneidel (2014). 8 All references to Donne’s poetry are to John Donne: The Complete English Poems, ed. A. J. Smith. 9 It is possible that Donne’s conceit here is to take the idea of witchcraft seriously, heightening the sense of relief the speaker feels when he recognizes that the beloved does not have “the wicked skill.” 10 Christopher Stokes (2014, 214–16) reads the movement from picture to tear as a movement from distance to intimacy, signaled by an attendant move from vision to taste. My reading emphasizes the other side of the argument that Stokes makes, as Donne’s need to escape the image is due in part to his anxiety about the distance between image and self (just as the tasted tear suggests the comfort of mingling intimacy). 11 On the connection to the Millenary Petition, see Smith’s headnote to the poem in the Penguin edition of Donne’s poems (1971, 646). Paul M. Oliver (1997, 67–73) offers background on the Reformation controversy over the sign of the cross in baptism and its culmination in the Millenary Petition. Also see Frontain (1994, 35–36). 12 Martz (1962, 71–72) groups this passage with the meditative tradition that encouraged the devout to see the life of Christ in everything. 13 Oliver (1997, 67–80) argues that the poem is not really concerned with material cross images, as is evident in the shift to the spiritual after lines 25–26. My argument stresses Donne’s reluctant commitment to face the material if only for spiritual ends.

References Alciatus. 1651. De Notitia Dignitatem. Paris: Cramoisy. Aston, Margaret. [1988] 2003. England’s Iconoclasts. Volume I. Laws Against Images. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Calvin, Jean. [1960] 2006. Institutes of the Christian Tradition. 2 vols. Edited by John T. McNeill. Translated by Ford Lewis Battles. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press. Donne, John. [1971] 1996. John Donne: The Complete English Poems. Edited by A. J. Smith. New York: Penguin. Elyot, Thomas. 1538. The Dictionary of Sir Thomas Elyot Knight. London. Frontain, Raymond-Jean. 1994. “Donne’s Emblematic Imagination: Vision and Reformation of the Self in ‘The Crosse’.” PAPA: Publications of the Arkansas Philosophical Association 20: 27–51.

Pictures in Donne’s Lyrics  49 Gilman, Ernest. 1986. Iconoclasm and Poetry in the English Reformation: Down Went Dagon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Goodrich, Peter. 1996. Law in the Courts of Love: Literature and Other Minor Jurisprudences. New York: Routledge. Haynes, Samuel. 1740. A Collection of State Papers, Relating to Affairs in the Reigns of King Henry VIII, King Edward VI, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth, Transcribed from Original letters and Other Authentick Memorials, Left by William Cecill Lord Burghley. Vol. 1: 1542–1570. London: William Bowyer. Hurley, Ann Hollinshead. 2005. John Donne’s Poetry and Early Modern Visual Culture. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press. Jewel, John. 1565. A replie vnto M. Hardinges ansvveare. London. Knapp, James. 2011. Image Ethics in Shakespeare and Spenser. New York: Palgrave. Kneidel, Gregory. 2014. “Legal Evidence, Betryal, and the Case of John Donne’s ‘The Perfume’.” Modern Philology 112: 130–53. Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer. 1977. Protestant Poetics and the Seventeenth-­ Century Religious Lyric. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Marion, Jean-Luc. 2004. The Crossing of the Visible. Translated by James K. A. Smith. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Martz, Louis. 1962. The Poetry of Meditation. Revised edition. New Haven: Yale University Press. Oliver, Paul M. 1997. Donne’s Religious Writing: A Discourse of Feigned Devotion. New York: Longman. Stokes, Christopher. 2014. “‘We Prove Mysterious by This Love’: John Donne and the Intimacy of Flesh.” In The Return to Theory in Early Modern English Studies, vol. II., edited by Paul Cefalu, Gary Kuchar and Bryan Reynolds, 207–34. New York: Palgrave. Strain, Virginia. 2018. Legal Reform in English Renaissance Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Waldron, Jennifer. 2013. Reformations of the Body. New York: Palgrave. White, Peter. 1581. A Godlye and fruitefull Sermon against Idolatrie. London.

3 “A painted devil” The Matter and Making of Images in Macbeth Chloe Porter

Scholars often note that Macbeth, “that most visual of plays,” is preoccupied with the problems that attend symbolic interpretation in “an uncertain visible world” (Astington 2017, 158; Diehl 1983, 191). In particular, a number of critics argue that the play’s central characters fail repeatedly to extract stable meaning from the “fatal” visions and “horrible” sights that plague them (Shakespeare 2016, 2.1.36; 4.1.121; Clark 2007, 237–38; Diehl 1983, 191; Gent 1983, 422). Amidst this critical emphasis on vision in the play, the making and matter of images receive little attention. This omission might seem justified: Macbeth does not call for paintings, statues, tapestries or other art objects to appear onstage, and none of the characters are visual artists. And yet allusions to image-making play a significant role in Shakespeare’s depiction of a world in which the stability of symbolic interpretation has collapsed. For example, following Duncan’s murder, Macbeth is overwhelmed with fear and guilt, and refuses to return to the scene of his crime in order to “smear” the dead king’s “sleepy grooms” with “blood” and place their daggers so as to incriminate them (2.2.52–53). Lady Macbeth therefore takes on this role, chastising her husband: Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead Are but as pictures; ‘tis the eye of childhood That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed, I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal, For it must seem their guilt. (2.2.55–59) In this speech, allusions to paint and painting contribute to Lady Macbeth’s refusal to “indulge in symbolic interpretation at all” (Clark 2007, 237). In order to diminish the horrifying significance of the scene she is to encounter, Lady Macbeth insists that a dead king’s body is no more than “a painted devil” of the sort found in pre-Reformation English churches and invoked in stories of “imaginary creatures” frightening only to children (Hamling 2010, 28; Clark and Mason, eds. 2015, 2.2.55–56n). In

Matter and Making of Images in Macbeth  51 addition, Lady Macbeth alludes to paint so as to gloss over her fear that when she visits Duncan’s body, it might “bleed” in a divine sign of her guilt, an allusion to the belief that “the corpses of the murdered bled afresh in the presence of the murderer” (2.2.58; Clark and Mason, eds. 2015, 2.2.56n). In response to this possibility, Lady Macbeth chooses to treat Duncan’s blood as paint with which she may “gild” the grooms, a pun on the fact that “old gold” paint could be “red” and therefore resemble blood (Clark and Mason, eds. 2015, 2.2.57–58n; Swift 2012, 177). As Daniel Swift (2012, 206) argues, Lady Macbeth here indulges in an “absolute literalism,” in which “guilt” is interchangeable with “gilt,” to be washed away with ease and “a little water” (2.2.70). Famously, this refusal to understand the significance of Duncan’s blood later haunts Lady Macbeth, as she attempts repeatedly to wash a ‘spot” of blood from her hands while sleepwalking with “a heart . . . sorely charged” ­(5.1.31–46). References to paint and painting thus play a central role in one of the most well-known instances in the play in which a character ignores ­“potential meanings in the things they see, imposing their own wilful desires on to the visible world” (Diehl 1983, 193; Clark 2007, 237). As it is a brief speech in a play in which there are no paintings or painters, however, the “painted devil” speech is rarely considered in detail in relation to the context of the visual arts in early modern England. Indeed, critics assume that in these painting allusions Shakespeare dismisses the visual arts as a cosmetic, superficial mode of artifice that acts as a barrier to meaning. For example, Howard Felperin (1977, 129) states that Lady Macbeth is over-invested in “sheer theatrical appearance” when she treats Duncan’s blood as “something as superficial and removeable as the Elizabethan equivalent of ketchup and greasepaint.” Similarly, Swift (2012, 206) finds the “literalism” of Lady Macbeth’s allusions to painting symptomatic of her immersion in “the visible” and “tangible” world at the expense of engagement with “true” meaning that operates “at the limits of the visible.” These critical perspectives underestimate the extent to which meaning is visible and tangible in early modern thought. In the context of the early modern visual arts in particular, meaning is constituted in the matter and processes that make images, as matter reflects “the vitality of the world and its substances,” and visual practices “extend” the work of “sacred creation” (Anderson et al. 2014, 9). In this view, Lady Macbeth’s error is to assume that the visible world is superficial, and to misunderstand the extent to which ­image-making practices and the matter of images may be “pregnant with meaning” (Anderson et al. 2014, 9). By neglecting the visual contexts for this speech, scholars thus overlook how far Lady Macbeth’s refusal to understand the nature of “guilt” is also a failure to comprehend the workings of “gilt.” In order to address this neglect, this essay traces the complexities of Shakespeare’s engagement with visual contexts in the “painted devil”

52  Chloe Porter speech as this pertains to his exploration of vision as a central theme in Macbeth. I contend that the meaning of this speech turns on the gap between Lady Macbeth’s assumptions about visual representation and guidance on paint and painting that circulates in early modern English writings on this subject. The essay therefore tests Lady Macbeth’s blood-painting as painting-practice alongside evidence from texts such as Nicholas Hilliard’s The Art of Limning (c. 1598–1603?) and Richard Haydocke’s 1598 English translation of Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo’s Trattato dell’ Arte, della pitura, scoltura et architettura (1584). There is an absurdity in comparing Lady Macbeth’s methods for the reorganization of a murder scene with treatises on “the Noble arte of Painting,” not least because these treatises were not written primarily as practical guides for would-be painters (Haydocke 1598, A1v). The absurd “literalism” of Lady Macbeth’s attitude to paint invites this approach, however: a comparison between Lady Macbeth’s behavior and early modern painterly ideals exposes the extent to which she inverts and corrupts such ideals. Through this examination of Lady Macbeth’s error-strewn, distorted approach to painting, the essay also explores the coincidence in Macbeth between Shakespeare’s preoccupation with the instability of vision and the playwright’s investigation into the risks and limitations that attend acts of visual representation. Taking into account the visual nature of theater itself, the concluding section of the essay sets Lady Macbeth’s blood-painting alongside the treatment of painting in Philip Massinger’s The Picture (1629) so as to consider the implications of image-making onstage for early modern drama and its audiences. To begin my test of Lady Macbeth’s approach to painting-in-blood, then, I turn now to her attitude to the removal of paint from paintings. When Lady Macbeth describes the transference of blood between Duncan and the incriminated grooms as the movement of paint between “pictures,” she assumes that removing paint from one surface in order to apply it to another is a desirable means by which to conceal a fault (2.2.57). Lady Macbeth’s enthusiasm for the removal of paint is in keeping with what Frances E. Dolan (2005, 77) identifies as a “contempt” for painting that “would seem to ally” this character “with iconoclasm.” Certainly, Macduff’s subsequent allusion to Duncan’s corpse as an “anointed temple,” “broke ope” by “most sacrilegious murder” encourages us to imagine the corpse as a desecrated sacred structure (2.3.62–63). Dolan’s reading of Lady Macbeth is thus persuasive, but it is also fruitful to consider Lady Macbeth’s iconoclastic contempt as an ill-conceived inversion of early modern advice on painting practice. Hilliard’s treatise on “limning” – the painting of portrait miniatures – is an important point of reference here, as although it was not published until the twentieth century, this text “provides insight into the way in which artistry and visual representation were conceived and practiced by artists” (Hilliard 1981, 35; Bermingham 2000, 22). Hilliard

Matter and Making of Images in Macbeth  53 (1981, 97) discusses the removal of paint in his detailed account of the use of “carnation” color, that is “flesh” or “blush” color (Oxford English Dictionary; OED). Hilliard reflects what Kimberly Poitevin (2011, 66) describes as the developing “mythology of white naturalness” in which “whiteness” is the “‘default’ position for race,” as he advises that in painting faces the limner should avoid the darkening of carnation colors: the face made never so little too red or too brown in limning is never to be amended . . . the botching or mending will be perceived where one hath taken away any colour on the face, for the carnation will never be of the same colour again, nor will join so smooth where any other colour hath been laid. (Hilliard 1981, 97) For Hilliard, it is impossible to remove “red” or “brown” paint in such a way as to cover up an error without detection. Indeed, such an action reveals an error in the painting. Viewed in light of Hilliard’s advice on the removal of paint and the correction of errors in limning, Lady Macbeth’s belief that she can transfer paint with ease in order to cover her husband’s crime is as erroneous as her belief that she can transfer and erase guilt. In other words, Lady Macbeth’s mistaken interpretation of painting practice matches her refusal to interpret the symbolic meaning of the bloodstain. Significantly, Shakespeare draws attention to the errors of Lady Macbeth’s assumptions about the transference and removal of paint through Macbeth’s subsequent comments on blood and guilt. Immediately following the “painted devil” speech, Lady Macbeth exits to carry out the plan to incriminate the grooms, leaving Macbeth alone and horrified by the spectacle of his bloody hands: What hands are here? Ha, they pluck out mine eyes! Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red. (2.2.62–66) Where Lady Macbeth’s belief that paint is easily removed and managed reflects her failure to recognize the symbolic resonance of Duncan’s blood, Macbeth expresses the overwhelming significance of the blood through a horrifying fantasy in which the colors that muddy his hand run out of control to discolor entire oceans. Macbeth expands on his wife’s painterly terminology in this speech, since “incarnadine” is “the French name of a pigment,” that is, carnation color: the appearance of the word in this speech constitutes its earliest known usage in English

54  Chloe Porter as a verb meaning “to redden,” or “to dye or tinge with incarnadine” (Ransom 1947, 183; Swift 2012, 200–1; OED). John Crowe Ransom (1947, 183) argues that the Latinate term “multitudinous” prompts us to “stop and reflect” on the “Latin meaning” of incarnadine, “to paint with blood.” And yet Shakespeare’s use of “incarnadine” to indicate a dark, bloody red is significantly unusual in the context of the early modern English visual arts. For visual artists and writers in England in this period, “carnation” is most usually a “fair” and pale “flesh colour,” made from mixing “ceruse” (white lead) with reds such as “vermilion” (Hilliard 1981, 97; Peacham 1612, 98; 1573, B4v). Macbeth’s fantasy of discoloration thus refers to an overworked, corrupted shade of carnation of the sort described by Hilliard in his account of the careful application and management of this color. As noted above, Hilliard (1981, 97) warns that it is impossible to correct a painting in which the carnation has become “too red” or “too brown” without drawing attention to the error. Shakespeare’s use of “incarnadine” precisely reflects this sense that an excess of carnation color is “too red,” may irretrievably ruin natural appearances (in this case the color of the seas), and, most importantly, draws attention to a fault. In this unusual use of “incarnadine” as a verb, Shakespeare recognizes the active, lively nature of colors and their potential to behave in ways that exceed the control of image-makers and viewers. Macbeth’s fears about the movement of blood, color and guilt in this way highlight a further limitation in Lady Macbeth’s approach to blood painting, as she rejects the liveliness of her pigments. In order to explain this point, it is useful to place the Macbeths’ attitudes to colors alongside evidence from Haydocke’s translation of Lomazzo. Haydocke (1598, Ll4r) refers to colors in lively terms while discussing the need to use “generall grounds” or “Primings” to manage the absorption of color. In particular, primings must be used with care when painting on “walls, clothes, and the like,” as these surfaces have “seuerall imperfections”: So that many of the matters to be coloured, doe either receive hurt from the malignant nature of some colours, or else hurt and blemish them by some euill quality in them remaining, and therefore both the one or the other are to be corrected or prepared by the skill of the workman. (1598, Ll4r) Here, colors are active bodies, and it is not inevitable that they will behave as the painter wishes: “skill” is required for the management of “malignant . . . colours.” Like Haydocke’s colors that retain some “euill quality,” blood in Macbeth retains knowledge of Duncan’s murder; it is a “filthy witness,” that “will have blood . . . blood will have blood” (2.2.50; 3.4.124). In this view, the liveliness of colors matches the

Matter and Making of Images in Macbeth  55 liveliness of blood, and color thus has the capacity to signal blood’s symbolic agency. Shakespeare exploits this capacity in Macbeth’s horror that his guilt runs as deeply as blood that may “incarnadine” the “seas.” In contrast, in the “painted devil” speech, Shakespeare shows Lady Macbeth to be invested in paint as a superficial, harmless, inert substance that she may control with ease. Hence the possibility that Duncan’s body and blood might actively signal her guilt intensifies Lady Macbeth’s engagement with his blood as paint with which to “gild” the “grooms” (2.2.58). Swift (2012, 206) observes that a problem in Lady Macbeth’s approach here is that “gilding . . . is not quite the same as guilt.” To this reading, it is now possible to add that Lady Macbeth’s error is also in her failure to realize what guilt and gilt paint may have in common, in that paint is part of the living world that also generates guilt. In this view, Lady Macbeth’s approach to blood-painting is idolatrous, since it entails misrecognition of the liveliness of both blood and paint as products of a divinely created world. The idolatry of the “painted devil” speech complicates Dolan’s claim (2005, 77) that Lady Macbeth’s faulty approach to image-making is iconoclastic, and “echoes . . . conventional critiques of Catholic idolatry.” Just as Lady Macbeth’s approach to painting inverts guidance on this subject, so her idolatry distorts theological accounts of idols well-known in early modern England. For example, Lady Macbeth’s comparison between the “sleeping,” the “dead” and “pictures” implies that all three are harmless because they are lifeless and “don’t move” (2.2.56–57; Clark and Mason, eds. 2015, 2.2.55n). According to classical and biblical precedents, however, a “dead” picture is an idol and therefore not an image or “eikon” that “is always sensible” and participates in “the sensible world that is an image of the intelligible God” (Besançon 2000, 28). Psalm 115, for example, explains, 4 Their idoles (are) siluer and golde, (euen) the worke of mens hands. 5 They haue a mouth and speake not: thei haue eyes and see not. 6 Thei haue eares and heare not: thei haue noses and smell not. 7 Thei hau hands and touche not: they haue fete and walke not: nether make they a sounde with their throte. (Geneva Bible1561, f. 231r) Similarly, a 1574 homily “against the Peril of Idolatry” (34–37) states that an idol is “the picture of a dead image with no soul” and quotes Psalm 115 in order to assert that idols “be dead . . . and therefore they cannot be fytte similtudes of the living God.” When Lady Macbeth imagines that Duncan’s corpse and the sleeping grooms are harmless because they are indistinct from “pictures,” she configures the sleeping, the dead and pictures as idols. Furthermore, the assumption that a “dead” picture is harmless, and fearful only to “the eye of childhood” inverts the early modern English Calvinist view that idolatry is

56  Chloe Porter profoundly harmful, and that avoiding it is the cornerstone of life as “one of the children of God” (Perkins 1601, 1). In a Calvinist worldview, idolatry is rejected in favor of the worship of signs of God in the visible world: Lady Macbeth engages with idols in place of the visible world (Clark 2007, 165; Porter 2013 10). In the “painted devil” speech, Shakespeare therefore situates Lady Macbeth’s detachment from acts of interpretation in her idolatrous rejection of the lively constitution of true images. Importantly, Lady Macbeth’s idolatry also destabilizes the extent to which her attitude to images can be understood as iconoclastic (Dolan 2005, 77). From the beginnings of the Reformation in England in the 1530s, iconoclasts destroyed images in places of worship on the basis that they are idols (Phillips 1973, 61–100). Lady Macbeth, in contrast, desecrates Duncan’s “anointed” body in order to construct a false image in which the king’s grooms are his murderers: in other words, she uses iconoclasm to set up an idol (2.3.63). At this point, Shakespeare’s treatment of image-making in the early stages of Macbeth coincides with the play’s exploration of the instability of vision. Lady Macbeth’s production of an idol through corrupted, idolatrous practice indicates a correlation between the source and production of an image and its integrity. Significantly, in Macbeth, Shakespeare is “interested” in the relationship between the viewing of spectacle and the way that it appears, or “the way things seen take their character from the psychological disposition and feelings of the person to whom they appear” (Tuck Rozett 1988, 132; Clark 2007, 257). That Lady Macbeth’s idolatrous activities as a painter-in-blood produce diabolically false spectacle thus echoes the play’s sense that the instability of vision is attributable to the instability of the viewer. A further, final test of Lady Macbeth as painter alongside early modern sources on painting shows that the disposition of the painter is central to Shakespeare’s exploration of image-making, in the same way that the disposition of the viewer informs his treatment of vision. In particular, as a painter-in-blood, Lady Macbeth inverts the divine disposition of the ideal painter as described in Neoplatonic theories of painting. In this view, painting imitates a divine “idea” derived directly from God, and the painter’s “ideas” can be formed “through contemplation, in harmony with or directly from the world of forms” (Blunt 1962, 143; Ackerman 1967, 317). This theory invests heavily in the mind of the visual artist as a point of connection with divinity, and therefore as a source of the divine truth of images as works which partake in the “sensible” world (Besançon 2000, 28). Lomazzo’s treatise is Neoplatonic, and Haydocke’s translation retains the source text’s sense of the divinity of the mind of the painter, although with the language of divinity tempered “in deference to . . . Protestant readers” (Thorne 2000, 69–70). A brief reading of Lady Macbeth’s disposition and behaviour as a painter against examples outlined by Haydocke indicates the extent to which the unstable visual world of Macbeth includes

Matter and Making of Images in Macbeth  57 the distortion of early modern European models for the disposition of the ideal painter. Haydocke’s translation of Lomazzo’s account of the disposition of the painter in his discussion of “proportion” provides a useful example. Haydocke states that proportion can only be understood by those that “are naturally inclined thereunto, by reason of a good temperature, joynd with the apt disposition of the partes thereof”: These men … will be able vppon the sudden to discerne any disproportion, as a thing repugnant to their nature: vnto which perfectione on the contrairie side they can never attaine, whose judgements are corrupted, through the distemperature of their organicall partes. I speak of such who not knowing the vertue of proportion, affect nothing else but the vain surface of garish colours, wroughte after their own humour, who prove only dawbers of images and walles. (Haydocke 1598, C2v) In line with Lomazzo, whose Neoplatonism is inflected with humoral theory, Haydocke here explains the inclination of a painter in terms of the orderliness of temperature and the balance of humors (Sammern 2015, 121–22). The “corrupt” painter, in this view, cannot hope to discern proportion accurately due to their “distemperature,” a term that in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries could indicate disordered humors, “inclemency, unwholesomeness,” and “disturbance of mind or temper” (OED). Lady Macbeth resembles these unwholesome “dawbers” since, as is often noted, she prepares herself for murder by inviting “spirits” to “take” her “milk for gall,” that is yellow bile, associated with anger (1.5.38–46; Adelman 1992, 135; Lindemann 2010, 19). Lady Macbeth thus produces a false image when her temper is altered to suit murderous purposes. This correlation between temperament and falsity in visual representations again distorts the ideals set out by Haydocke. Discussing proportion, Haydocke (1598, C1v) shows that the “natural” inclination of the painter to reproduce “the beauty of proportion” assures the divinity of painting, since (following Vitruvius), all proportion follows the contours of man’s body, which “was the first patterne of all Artificiall things,” and because “piety, reuerance and religion are stirred up in men’s minds by means of this sutable comeliness of apte proportion.” Lady Macbeth’s distemperate production of an idol thus inverts Haydocke’s ideal of the piety and godliness that naturally attends painting by visual artists who are suited in body and mind to this practice. Significantly, other plays on the early modern stage refer to the ideal model of the temperate painter that Lady Macbeth inverts. For example, in The History of the Tryall of Cheualry, which was first performed between 1599 and 1604, Katharina, daughter of the King of France,

58  Chloe Porter commissions a painter to paint a portrait of the Earl of Pembrooke, with whom she is in love. Katharina’s questions, as the painter prepares to work, recall Haydocke’s commentary on the ideal disposition of the painter: Katharina: But are thy colours fresh? thy pensill smoothe? Thy hand vnwauering? and thy head dislodg’d Of all vnquiet harsh incumbrances? For thou must draw proportion of those parts, Whose worth to tell, my toung wants vtterance. (1605, B2r) As in Haydocke’s account, the accurate rendering of the “proportions” of a beautiful male figure here depends on the soundness of the mind of the painter. Once again, Lady Macbeth inverts this ideal, as, rather than painting with a head “dislodg’d / Of all unquiet incumbrances,” she describes her bloody activity as painting in order to distract herself from the horror of her task, and from fearful thoughts that might “make” her “mad” (2.2.37). Moreover, unlike the “well prepared” painter that Katharina employs, Lady Macbeth works with blood, a “filthy witness,” rather than fresh or pure colors, and with hands and daggers rather than a “smooth” pencil (2.2.50). Katharina’s anxiety about the freshness of colors and the smoothness of the painter’s “pensill” calls attention to the significance of the condition of pigments and tools in the practice of the ideal, godly painter. In this emphasis Katharina particularly resembles Hilliard, who is “fastidious” about “cleanliness,” and “the purity of colours,” which he connects with color’s capacity to indicate “the ʻtrueʼ properties of the world” (Thornton and Cain, eds.1981, 41; Leonhard 2015, 165). For example, Hilliard (1981, 73, 89, 93) warns against the use of “ill-­smelling colours” and advises that limners should use the “five . . . principal colours” which are “of perfection in themselves, not participating with any other” and cannot “be made of any other mixed colours.” Where Hilliard emphasizes the importance of the purity of colors, Haydocke (1598, B4r) recommends correspondence between the type of color used and the “colour of the thing” depicted, “whether it be artificiall or naturall”: hence he calls for “a blewe garment” to be painted with “artificiall blewe” and “the greene colour of a tree with the like greene.” The use of blood as paint would doubtless horrify Hilliard and Haydocke but notably presents an extreme example of correspondence between colors and the subject, since Lady Macbeth uses blood as paint to portray blood. At the same time, by treating blood as paint, Lady Macbeth undoes the correspondence between her subject and her pigment. As Bettina Bildhauer (2006, 21) explains, blood functions as a sign of divine truth when it is

Matter and Making of Images in Macbeth  59 seen to flow from the body: in medieval culture, in particular, bleeding authenticates the real presence of Christ’s body. Shakespeare emphasizes that Duncan’s flowing blood is a sign of divine truth in the allusion to the possibility that his corpse might “bleed” in Lady Macbeth’s presence (2.2.58). If the bleeding body evidences true presence, however, then when Lady Macbeth uses Duncan’s flowing blood as paint, removing it from his body to be reapplied elsewhere, she intervenes in the symbolic structure of the blood, obliterating its capacity to signal truth. The blood here becomes a bloodstain, a truly unreliable, “filthy witness,” spread far from the point of origin that assures its meaning (2.2.50). Since Lady Macbeth’s painting activities detach blood from its meaning, her work as a painter-in-blood can be characterized as “superficial,” but not because of superficiality inherent to paint or painting, which, as noted above, possess vitality in early modern idealizing accounts (Felperin 1977, 129). Indeed, seen in light of early modern writings on painting, Lady Macbeth’s superficial use of color is symptomatic of her “distemperature” as a painter. For example, Haydocke (1598, C2v) treats superficiality as a marker of the disorderly, corrupted painter when he criticizes “dawbers” who use “garish” colors. According to the OED, the verb to “daub” is not used as a term for clumsy painting until 1630, and, prior to this, the term indicates concealment, as in the sense “to plaster, close up, cover over . . . smear.” Lady Macbeth is a “dawber” in this sense, as she smears blood on the faces of Duncan’s grooms in order to conceal her husband’s guilt. Moreover, Lady Macbeth’s daubing of color is “garish,” in the early modern sense of ‘showy,” “glaring” or “adorned to excess” (OED). Macbeth articulates this sense of grotesque garishness when, following the discovery of Duncan’s corpse, he refers to the dead king’s “silver skin laced with his golden blood” (2.3.109). Figuring Duncan as an ornate, glittering object, like the “siluer and golde” idols described in Psalm 115, Macbeth recognizes that he and his wife have generated a scene of visual excess (1561, f. 231r). Lady Macbeth has daubed blood as if it were glittering paint on top of a preexisting visual representation, since Duncan and his grooms are “pictures” before she paints them, and since the scene of Duncan’s death is already a terrifying spectacle, so much so that Macbeth declares, “Look on’t again I dare not” (2.2.54–57). In terms of early modern theories of painting, Lady Macbeth’s garishly superficial daubing precisely fits her disordered disposition as a painter. In almost every respect, Lady Macbeth therefore inverts the ideal of the temperate painter whose natural inclination leads them to produce lifelike, pious, unequivocally “true” images, using the purest pigments. In this way, Shakespeare’s figuring of Lady Macbeth as a painter shows that the disposition of the image-maker shapes the image, just as the playwright’s exploration of vision considers that the mind of the viewer shapes the viewed. Clarke (2007, 257) emphasizes that Shakespeare’s

60  Chloe Porter exploration of this model of vision in Macbeth is political, as the drama, misogynistically, links the “femininity and childishness” of Macbeth’s vision to abuses of sovereignty. To this analysis, we might now add that if feminine modes of seeing generate political chaos in Macbeth, then a female character’s disordered, idolatrous engagements with image-­making play a role in that chaos. Indeed, Lady Macbeth’s act of blood-painting exemplifies social and political disruption: demanding that “spirits / . . . unsex” her, she displaces her husband as the would-be painter of the grooms, defaces a divinely anointed body, rejects the meaning and integrity of visual signs and produces a spectacle that, according to Macduff, resembles “a new Gorgon” and can “destroy . . . sight” (1.5.39; 2.3.66– 67). If Macbeth’s faulty vision demonstrates the significance of clarity of sight for early modern notions of political stability, then Lady Macbeth’s bloody inversion of Neoplatonic models of painting similarly indicates the importance of integrity in image-making processes for that stability. What might Shakespeare’s exploration of the disposition of viewers and image-makers in Macbeth mean for early modern drama as a highly visual mode of representation? The concluding stage of this essay addresses this question via a brief comparison between Macbeth and Massinger’s The Picture. This comparison is useful because, like Shakespeare’s play, The Picture explores the inversion of early modern theories of painting. Unlike Macbeth, however, The Picture revolves around a “real” visual representation that appears onstage, in the form of a magical portrait miniature. In Massinger’s play, a jealous husband, Mathias, uses this portrait, “limde to the life” of his wife, Sophia, to monitor her fidelity while he is away at war: the picture will supposedly inform him of Sophia’s behavior by changing color (Massinger 1976, 1.1.167). Mathias procures the picture from his “friend,” the “generall scholler” Baptista, who instructs him, Carry it still about you and as oft As you desire to know how shee’s affected With curious eyes peruse it. While it keepes The figure it now has intire, and perfit, She is not onely innocent in fact But vnattempted: but if once it varie From the true forme, and what’s now white, and red Incline to yellow, rest most confident Shees with all violence courted but vnconquerd. But if it turne all blacke ‘tis an assurance The fort by composition, or surprize Is forc‘d or with her free consent surrenderd. (1.1.174–85) This magical portrait inverts ideals promoted in early modern writings on painting in a number of ways. First, the discoloration that Hilliard

Matter and Making of Images in Macbeth  61 avoids so scrupulously is at the heart of the function of Mathias’s magical image. As Sophia’s supposed guilt registers in the alteration of the appearance of her skin from “white” and “red” to “yellow” and “black,” Massinger refers to the darkening of idealized “carnation” colors as a sign of guilt in the same manner as does Shakespeare when Macbeth claims that his hands will “the multitudinous seas / ­incarnadine” (2.2.65). Second, as the portrait’s colors will change in tandem with Sophia’s thoughts, feeling and actions, Massinger presents a corrupted model of the correspondence between colors and the subject that Haydocke recommends. Finally, Massinger here exploits the idea that the disposition of the painter shapes the integrity of the image, since Baptista is an “inchanter” who makes the miniature “with more than humane skill,” and “diuelish art” (1.1.167; 5.2.5). Massinger thus shows that a practitioner of diabolical “art” produces a “cheating” picture that leads Mathias astray, prompting him to “vnmanly doubts,” while ­Sophia ­remains constant, despite temptations that register in the picture, turning it “yellow,” with “lines / Of a dark colour” (5.3.96–174; 4.1.32– 34). As in Macbeth, the distortion of painterly ideals accompanies an emphasis on the extent to which a viewer’s “weake condition” may limit their capacity to adequately interpret what they see (5.3.183). Despite these similarities to Shakespeare’s play, however, The Picture presents a very different outlook on visual experience. As noted above, Lady Macbeth’s diabolical painting practices contribute to Shakespeare’s exploration of the collapse of acts of symbolic interpretation in an unstable visual world. The Picture, by contrast, endorses certain types of visual experience as sources of stable knowledge. For example, Massinger contrasts the devilry of the portrait of Sophia with the integrity and substantiality of lived experience, as Sophia tells Mathias, The truth is We did not deal like you in speculations On cheating pictures; we knew shadowes were No substances and actuall performance The best assurance. (5.3.94–98) Massinger distinguishes “pictures” from experiences in the external world, described in notably theatrical terms as “actuall performance.” In this emphasis that live performance is “best assurance,” the play avoids correlation between theater as a visual medium and the misleading properties of the diabolical image. The picture, in turn, is disposed of successfully: Baptista agrees to “abiure / The practise of my art,” and Mathias surrenders the “cursed picture . . . / To a consuming fire” (5.3.213–15). Unlike Lady Macbeth, plagued by the sight and “smell” of blood in the final stages of Macbeth (5.2.44), Mathias and Baptista cleanse themselves of a false image with relative ease. The Picture thus

62  Chloe Porter explores the inversion of painterly ideals in order to present an optimistic account of the integrity of theatrical performance and the potential for drama to distinguish itself from modes of idolatry. The more positive outlook on visual representation with which The Picture concludes is, in part, attributable to the fact that this play is a tragicomedy, and so ends in “peace,” where Macbeth ends with Macbeth’s death at the hands of Macduff, who mockingly invites his opponent to live as the spectacle of tyranny, “as our rarer monsters are / Painted upon a pole” (5.3.224; 5.7.55–56). The more violent, disordered interpretation of visuality in Macbeth as compared with The Picture is also, however, dependent on the extent to which art objects and image-making processes are shown or described onstage in each play. In The Picture, Massinger may distinguish between theater as a visual medium and the devilish portrait, in part, because the latter is a tangible, visible object that can be burnt onstage, or appear to be burnt, or at least be considered as available for future destruction beyond the events of the play. In other words, Massinger locates the dangers of painting in an object that is reassuringly vulnerable and disposable. In Macbeth, the absence of a specific object that can stand for the abuse of image-making means that the problems attendant on Lady Macbeth’s blood-painting cannot be purged from the play-world. Furthermore, although Massinger depicts a tangible, visible object in his play, he is ambiguous about its making: Baptista, for example, claims that in “drawing” the image “each line, and linament” has been “punctually observed,” yet Sophia later states that “she neuer sat to be drawne” (1.1.168; 5.3.3). Baptista may have spied on Sophia in secret, or by magical means, or, in a further example of a grotesque appropriation of Neoplatonism, conjured an image of her in his mind without reference to the original. Furthermore, Baptista never explains the nature of the magical pigments used to make this color-changing image. In contrast, Shakespeare combines the absence of visual objects in his play with paradoxically specific detail about the paints, tools and methods used: Lady Macbeth paints with blood that resembles gilt paint and overworked carnation colors, and smears it with her hands, although, importantly, the audience never sees her conduct this process. Shakespeare thus combines specificity about pigments and practices with the avoidance of the depiction of visual processes onstage. This combination of specificity and evasion in allusions to the visual arts produces a beguiling outlook on the relationship between symbolic meaning and the construction of illusion. As noted above, Lady Macbeth’s painting in blood constitutes an obliteration of the symbolic meaning of Duncan’s flowing blood, since the blood is separated from its source. It is worth noting here that Shakespeare’s audience never sees Duncan’s bleeding body onstage. The corpse is instead described in aestheticizing ways that draw attention to the illusory nature of the scene of the king’s

Matter and Making of Images in Macbeth  63 death, as in Macbeth’s account of Duncan’s golden blood and silver skin. We might also note here Macduff’s comparison of Duncan’s body to “the great doom’s image,” a reference that may be to “the spectacular mystery-play scene of the bleeding Christ of the Last Judgement,” as well as to wall paintings of the Last Judgement found in English churches prior to the Reformation (2.3.73; O’ Connell 2013, 188; Duffy 2005, 187; Hamling 2010, 28). Shakespeare thus invokes the divine truth that Duncan’s flowing blood signals, while calling attention to its unavailability by figuring the dead king as theatrical spectacle. Importantly, the conditions of performance on the early modern stage amplify that tension between truth and illusion. Plays in this period rarely show bloodshed in performance because of the difficulty of stain removal and the expense of clothing used in performance, “especially the ornate costume often worn in tragedies focusing on affairs of state” (Munro 2013, 80–81). In addition, stage blood could be composed of a range of substances in the early modern period: it may often have been paint, or sometimes the blood of sheep and other animals, or pigments used as cosmetics (Stevens 2013, 52; Munro 2013, 79–80). Where Lady Macbeth rejects the symbolic meaning embodied in Duncan’s flowing blood, Shakespeare discourages his audience from investing in the integrity and meaning of the blood that they see, which is always detached from source; alluded to in theatrical and painterly terms, at once natural and artificial, and which may or may not be animal blood or cosmetic paint. To watch Macbeth was thus to experience the absence of “best assurance” (Massinger 1976, 5.3.98) of the meaning of spectacle in the early modern theater. Against this unstable visual backdrop, Lady Macbeth’s erroneous engagements with image-making might start to seem reasonable. After all, despite the idolatry of Lady Macbeth’s overreaching desire to control blood as paint and its symbolic significance, her approach is in many ways merely an absurd extension of early modern visual artists’ desire to achieve “perfection” in their art through the management of unruly pigments (Hilliard 1981, 75). Such a desire to control and fix symbolic meaning might similarly appeal to Shakespeare’s audiences, absorbed by a play that alludes to visible signs of stable truth while showing only that they cannot be seen onstage.

References Ackerman, Gerald M. 1967. “Lomazzo’s Treatise on Painting.” The Art Bulletin 49 (4): 317–26. Adelman, Janet. 1992. Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies of Maternal Origin in Shakespeare’s Plays, Hamlet to The Tempest. New York: Routledge. Anderson, Christy, Anne Dunlop and Pamela H. Smith. 2014. “Introduction.” In The Matter of Art: Materials, Practices, cultural logics, c. 1250–1750, edited by Christy Anderson, Anne Dunlop and Pamela H. Smith, 1–15. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

64  Chloe Porter Astington, John H. 2017. Stage and Picture in the English Renaissance: The Mirror up to Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bermingham, Ann. 2000. Learning to Draw: Studies in the Cultural History of a Polite and Useful Art. New Haven: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, Yale University Press. Besançon, Alain. 2000. The Forbidden Image: An Intellectual History of Iconoclasm. Translated by Marie Todd. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. The Bible and Holy Scriptvres conteyned in the Olde and Newe Testaments. 1561. Geneva. Bildhauer, Bettina. 2006. Medieval Blood. Religion and Culture in the Middle Ages. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Blunt, Anthony. 1962. Artistic Theory in Italy, 1450–1600. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clark, Stuart. 2007. Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clark, Sandra and Pamela Mason, eds. 2015. William Shakespeare, Macbeth. The Arden Shakespeare. London: Bloomsbury. Diehl, Huston. 1983. “Horrid Image, Sorry Sight, Fatal Vision: The Visual Rhetoric of Macbeth.” Shakespeare Studies 16: 191–203. Dolan, Frances E. 2005. Whores of Babylon: Catholicism, Gender, and Seventeenth-­C entury Print Culture. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Duffy, Eamon. 2005. The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional religion in England 1400–1580, 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press. Felperin, Howard. 1977. Shakespearean Representation: Mimesis and Modernity in Eliazabethan Tragedy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Gent, Lucy. 1983. “The Self-Cozening Eye.” The Review of English Studies 34 (136): 419–28. Hamling, Tara. 2010. Decorating the “Godly” Household: Religious Art in Post-Reformation Britain. New Haven: Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. Haydocke, Richard. 1598. A Tracte containing the Artes of Curious Paintinge, Carvinge and Buildinge. Oxford: Ioseph Barnes. Hilliard, Nicholas. 1981. A Treatise Concerning The Arte of Limning. Edited by R. K. R. Thornton and T. G. S. Cain. Ashington: Mid Northumberland Arts Group. The History of the Tryall of Cheualry. 1605. London: Simon Stafford for Nathaniel Butter. Leonhard, Karin. 2015. “Painted Gems. The Color Worlds of Portrait Miniature Painting in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth- Century. Britain.” In Early Modern Color Worlds, edited by Tawrin Baker, Sven Dupré, Sachiko Kusukawa and Karin Leonhard, 140–69. Leiden: Brill. Lindemann, Mary. 2010. Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Massinger, Philip. 1976. The Picture. Vol 3 of The Plays and Poems of Philip Massinger. Edited by Philip Edwards and Colin Gibson. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Munro, Lucy. 2013. “ʻThey eat each other’s armsʼ: Stage Blood and Body Parts.” In Shakespeare’s Theatres and the Effects of Performance, edited by Farah Karim-Cooper and Tiffany Stern, 73–93. London: Arden Shakespeare.

Matter and Making of Images in Macbeth  65 O’Connell, Michael. 2013. “Blood begetting blood: Shakespeare and the Mysteries.” In Medieval Shakespeare: Pasts and Presents, edited by Ruth Morse, Helen Cooper and Peter Holland, 17–89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Peacham, Henry. 1612. The Gentleman’s Exercise. London: Iohn Browne. Perkins, William. 1601. A Warning against the Idolatrie of the last times. Cambridge: J. Legat. Phillips, John. 1973. The Reformation of Images: Destruction of Art in England, 1535–1660. Berkeley: University of California Press. Poitevin, Kimberly. 2011. “Inventing Whiteness: Cosmetics, Race, and Women in Early Modern England.” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 11 (1): 59–89. Porter, Chloe. 2013. Making and Unmaking in Early Modern English Drama: Spectators, Aesthetics and Incompletion. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Ransom, John Crowe. 1947. “On Shakespeare’s Language.” The Sewanee Review 55 (2): 181–98. Rozett, Martha Tuck. 1988. “ʻHow now Horatio, You Tremble and Look Paleʼ: Verbal Cues and the Supernatural in Shakespeare’s Tragedies.” Theatre Survey 29: 128–38. Sammern, Romana. 2015. “Red, White and Black: Colors of Beauty, Tints of Health and Cosmetic Materials in Early Modern English Art Writing.” In Early Modern Color Worlds, edited by Tawrin Baker, Sven Dupré, Sachiko Kusukawa and Karin Leonhard, 109–39. Leiden: Brill. The Second Tome of Homilies. 1574. London: Richard Iugge. Shakespeare, William. 2016. Macbeth. In The Norton Shakespeare, edited by Stephen Greenblatt et al., 3rd ed. New York: W. W. Norton. Stevens, Andrea. 2013. “Cosmetic Transformations.” In Shakespeare’s Theatres and The Effects of Performance, edited by Farah Karim-Cooper and Tiffany Stern, 94–117. The Arden Shakespeare Library London: Bloomsbury. Swift, Daniel. 2012. Shakespeare’s Common Prayers: The Book of Common Prayer and the Elizabethan Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thorne, Alison. 2000. Vision and Rhetoric in Shakespeare: Looking Through Language. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. A Very Proper Treatise, Wherein Is Briefly Sett for the Arte of Limming. 1573. London: Richard Tottill.

4 Mirrors, Pictures, Optics, Shakespeare B.J. Sokol

What is depiction? What should it be, either practically or ideally? Should it be an attempt at the production of an exact likeness, even one that is illusorily real seeming? The “poor birds” described in Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis 601–2 are starved because of such deceptiveness and in the same poem frustrated Venus condemns the anti-sexual Adonis as a “lifeless picture, cold and senseless stone, / Well painted idol, image dull and dead, / Statue contenting but the eye alone” (211–14). However, also in the same poem, a painter depicting a horse is said to attempt to “surpass the life” (289). Likewise, life is said to surpass an artwork which itself “outwork[s] nature” when Enobarbus in Antony and Cleopatra describes Cleopatra in her barge by alluding to the famous Venus of Appelles: “O’er-picturing that Venus where we see / The fancy outwork nature” (2.2.207–8).1 In fact, Shakespeare’s age saw a very significant extension of a long conversation bearing on such matters. As often, turning back to Plato may ground our understanding. Theaetetus in Plato’s Sophist 239d proposes the similarity of “images in water or in mirrors” with “images made by the draftsman or the sculptor, or any things of that sort.” This sort of connection is exaggerated to absurdity in Plato’s Republic X 596e where Socrates claims that the sorts of images made by visual artists can be produced effortlessly and, indeed, instantly if “you should choose to take a mirror and carry it about everywhere.” That remark, mocking visual artistry, is surely intentionally and scornfully ironic because there are a number of differences – some self-evident and some more subtle – between contrived artistic depictions and mechanical reflections. The present essay will delve into those distinctions and then discuss how they relate to Shakespearian themes and practices. One unexpected distinction between mirror imaging and painterly depiction emerges if we consider how two or more mirrors placed so that they re-reflect one another’s images will produce an array of multiple or even infinitely regressing images. Such effects, remarked on from antiquity (Grabes 1982, 113), were closely analyzed by Leonardo da Vinci (see Pedretti 1977, 1:136). Yet when renaissance painters began to depict reflections in mirrors as parts of their scenes (on which see Yiu 2005, 187–88),

Mirrors, Pictures, Optics, Shakespeare  67 those effects were not reproduced. That is, unlike mirrors, such paintings did not exhibit multiple re-reflections of the mirror images seen within them. Thus the mirror images depicted in, for instance, Van Eyck’s 1434 Arnolfini Portrait, Parmigianino’s 1524 Self-Portrait in a ­Convex Mirror, and Titian’s 1555 Venus with a Mirror are not multiplied by being re-reflected, proving that such paintings are wholly unlike mirror images. A more obvious distinction arises between the images appearing in Plato’s sardonically mooted mirror that you may “carry about everywhere” and representational paintings because such a portable mirror will present continually changing images as its location, its orientation and the scenes it reflects alter or develop through time. On the contrary, representational painting can display only one static scene (observed or imaginary) as seen from a fixed perspective. Putting deficits the other way around, because a mirror can reflect only immediate scenes, it cannot record or preserve the images seen previously in it. In Renaissance paragone debates, the inability of painted or sculpted images to convey motion or change was sometimes held to be a deficit, a commonplace that was multiply echoed by Shakespeare. 2 However, for Leonardo the durability and persistence through time of painted images signified their excellence (da Vinci 1970, 1:76–77). The Elizabethan musician and autobiographer Thomas Whythorne described a painting’s ability to retain a fixed image as a positive advantage because it could record its subject’s past demeanor and appearance. This, said Whythorne, made his own several portraits far more useful for contemplative self-appraisal than mirror images: “the glass showeth but the disposition of the face for the time present, and not as it was in time past” (Whythorne 1962, 115–16). Revealing another distinction between mirror imaging and painting, Leonardo described a fascinating experiment showing that (unlike paintings) mirrored surfaces may present wholly different images to differently situated viewers (da Vinci 1970, 1:201). Leonardo was far from unique in taking note of such surprising and often misleading phenomena; optical illusions and confusions due to cunning uses of mirrors were a topic of great fascination from classical times onward (see Smith 2015, 64–65), and especially in the late Renaissance (Grabes 1982, passim; Melchoir-Bonnet 2014, 129). I have elsewhere considered one particular Renaissance visual artwork that was arranged to portray how mirror reflections may render objects visible from some vantage points that are invisible from others. In that article I then went on to investigate how scenic form in several Shakespearian dramatic “mirrors” held “as ‘twere . . . up to nature” serve parallel functions.3 In those discussions, I analyzed only images seen in perfectly flat and perfectly reflective – that is, idealized – plane mirrors. Such ­mirrors ­behave just as if they were transparent windows opening onto

68  B.J. Sokol a (so-called virtual) space that is located (to all appearances) behind the plane containing the mirror’s surface. I also simplified those former discussions by considering viewers looking into mirrors using only one eye, as if their other eye were kept shut. Now I intend to go beyond those limitations or simplifications in order to delineate several varied relations between mirror images and artistic representations. I will thus consider reflections in less-than-ideal mirrors and consider binocular aspects of mirror vision.

Picture Perfect and Mirror Imperfect In the second quarto version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet the prince’s wild parody of Osric’s courtly diction includes, “But in the verity of extolment, I take him to be a soul of great article, and his infusion of such dearth and rareness as, to make true diction of him, his semblable is his mirror, and who else would trace him his umbrage, nothing more” (Wells and Taylor 1989 Hamlet AN10–14; Thompson and Taylor 2016 5.2.101–5). At the core of this fustian is “his semblable is his mirror,” meaning that the only thing like him is an exact copy of him (e.g. that “he is one of a kind”). Here “his mirror” means a perfect replica of him, wholly indistinguishable from himself. However, Hamlet implies something very different about mirror-­ imaging when he advises Elsinor’s visiting players to “hold as ‘twere the mirror up to nature” (3.2.22). For although Hamlet urges the actors to employ tact in delivery, to “use all gently” and not “o’erstep . . . the modesty of nature” (yet be “not too tame neither”), this does not mean that he holds the aim of playing to be mere verisimilitude or the avoidance of thrasonical strutting and bellowing. Hamlet hopes that the players will not present a distracting pastime but rather a lively artistic mirroring of motives and interactions that will prompt viewers to reflect on the human situations portrayed. That alone can serve his wish for the play to become, as he says, “the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king” (2.2.606–7).4 Conversely, Leonardo da Vinci (1970, 1:20) demanded that artists supply their full conscious attention – which he called their “reason” – when making art. Thus, he inverted Socrates’s equation of the art-maker with a mirror: The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies every thing placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence. Thus, painters must go beyond mechanically acquired technique, and their aim should be to penetrate the lively existence of their subjects. In another notebook entry (1:97), Leonardo showed himself not adverse to

Mirrors, Pictures, Optics, Shakespeare  69 uses of optical aids in the production of linear perspective but added a caveat: There are some who would look at the objects of nature through glass [per vetri] or transparent paper veils and make tracings on the transparent surface; and they then adjust their outlines, adding here and there to conform to the laws of proportion . . . These practices may be praiseworthy in whoever knows how to represent the laws of nature by his imagination and only resorts to them in order to save trouble . . . but they are reprehensible in whoever cannot portray without them nor use his own mind in analyses, because through such laziness he destroys his own intelligence, and he will never be able to produce anything good without such contrivance. So Leonardo allowed painters optical aids for convenience alone, but rejected dependence on them as a replacement for the thoughtful artistic process. Discussions of visual artists’ technical uses of actual mirrors became particularly lively following the painter David Hockney’s 2000–2001 exposition (in an article, film and book, made with a scientific collaborator Charles M. Falco) of a theory that from the early Renaissance onward painters used concave mirrors (and later convex lenses) to project images of well-lit subjects onto panels in order to trace their outlines and thus produce highly accurate linear perspective renderings. Many now judge the Hockney-Falco thesis implausible, for several reasons. 5 One main objection is that investigations of material culture indicate that the earlier Renaissance lacked the ability to manufacture the colorless glass needed to produce accurate and bright concave mirrors, and lacked also the technology needed to “silver” concave surfaces.6 However, by Shakespeare’s time advances in technology allowed the manufacture of nearly flat glass mirrors of reasonable reflective quality (flat mirrors would not have allowed for Hockney’s projections). But such superior planar mirrors were both expensive and necessarily very small at that time, so it is likely that the mirrors known to most Elizabethans were far from ideal.7 Their familiarity with the nonideal qualities of available mirrors would have alerted Elizabethans to the vehicle of a metaphor for seeing with faulty worldly vision in Corinthians 1 13:12, “For now we se through a glasse darkely: but then shal we se face to face” (in the Geneva Bible translation). It is interesting that the anti-transcendental tenor of this biblical metaphor runs contrary to the early modern trend noted by critics wherein “the mirror was a prevalent image of transcendence” (Bell 2008, 231; see also Grabes 1982, 132). A similar bifurcation between figurative allusions to mirroring and the operations of actual mirrors pertains when we consider the nearly one hundred “mirror passages” in Shakespeare’s work.8 Thus actual

70  B.J. Sokol looking glasses are mentioned (some multiply) in at least eighteen Shakespeare plays and in Shakespeare’s Sonnets 3, 22, 62, 77 and 103 (and maybe 126). Actual mirrors serve as physical props in Richard II, King Lear and, most probably, Hamlet and Macbeth as well.9 But even more often Shakespeare referred to mirroring figuratively, frequently in accorded with typical usages in which mirror gazing stood for meditative or contemplative activity. According to Sara Schechner (2005, 158), Renaissance writers often overlooked the imperfections of actual mirrors because “the goal of reflection, of speculation, was not mimetic but transformative” (see also Grabes 1982, 118–21). Maurice Hunt’s Shakespeare’s Speculative Art (2011) examines this aspect in relation to Shakespeare. Schechner adds (2005, 158) that another response to the typical imperfections of mirrors was that “Artists, poets, and philosophers also associated the mirror’s image with hallucinations, magic, death, and divination . . . suggest[ing] the murky or surreal character of the image created by medieval and Renaissance mirrors.” And, indeed, overall the very numerous references to mirrors in Renaissance culture were remarkably polyvalent.10 That wide variety embraced some unexpected aspects. One was that when a renaissance representational artwork portrayed an actual mirror within its scene, and also a reflection in that mirror, the effects of that mirror’s imperfections were often shown prominently (Figure 4.1). One purpose of this was practical. Artists needed to indicate just which portions of their panels depicted reflections of scenes, rather than scenes seen directly, thus reproducing typical faults of nonideal mirror images – such

Figure 4.1  D  etail from Titian, Venus with a Mirror, courtesy of the National Gallery, Washington D.C.

Mirrors, Pictures, Optics, Shakespeare  71 as being “tinted by the colour of the reflective surface,” blurred by the local texture of the surface or “disfigured and distorted by the curvature or irregularities of the surface” (see Miller 1998, 84). In his brilliant study of artistic depictions of reflections, Jonathan Miller, furthermore, discusses various other ways that painters could indicate that parts of their work depict a reflected rather than direct vision (86–8, 99–102). Miller also considers a configuration in which a painting of an interior depicts an image seen within a frame that is hung on a wall. He wonders how, if that painting fails to supply contextual signs of mirroring (as for instance the duplication of something near the mirror), we as viewers of the depicted frame can ascertain if a mirror image is seen within it, or if a painted image placed within that frame hangs on that wall. Miller points out (76–78) that just such a situation arises in Velázquez’s extraordinarily complex painting Las Meninas (Figure 4.2). This much-discussed work shows Velázquez in his studio painting the Spanish royal children and shows behind the painter and his subjects a framed mirror hung on a wall which is, as Miller says, “literally crowded with picture frames.” Miller supposes that in this painting “Velázquez felt it necessary to ʻbrush inʼ the sheen which we can see quite clearly on the mirror” so that we may understand that we see reflected images of

Figure 4.2  Detail from Las Meninas, courtesy of the Prado Museum, Madrid.

72  B.J. Sokol the King and the Queen in the mirror, and not a framed portrait of them instead. (This “flare” of light on the mirror, as Miller calls it, which we can see in Figure 4.3, tells us that the real-life royal parents are standing outside of the picture space near to where we, the painting’s viewers, are situated.) However, Velázquez’s representations of the King and Queen’s mirror images are also severely out of focus (Figure 4.3), and this presents a subtle and deliberate optical paradox. For just beside his framed mirror (which should operate just as if it were a window into a virtual space located behind the wall on which it is hung), Velázquez depicts an aperture into an actual space behind that wall. Thus we see through an open doorway in the wall and down a corridor receding behind it a courtier standing at a distance from the wall roughly equivalent to the distance behind the mirror-wall plane of the reflected image of the King and Queen. Yet, as Miller points out in a side note (78), the reflected images of the royal couple are out of focus while the courtier in the corridor is in focus. This represents an impossible situation in which the eyes of the same viewer have different depths of focus when looking at two objects at the same distance away (although one object is situated in actual space and the other in virtual mirror space, that should make no difference).

Figure 4.3  A closer detail of Velázquez, Las Meninas.

Mirrors, Pictures, Optics, Shakespeare  73 Miller continues that Velázquez’s presentation of this optical impossibility indicates that “instead of reflecting what they represent paintings depict it and, as such, we are required to exercise a different type of perceptual effort from the one we bring to the recognition of a [mirror] reflection” (79–80). Miller then connects this with Richard Wollheim’s idea that “looking at a representational painting engages not one but two types of visual activity.” These activities are on one hand to “recognize what [the painting] depicts” and on the other to “see the paint by means of which the depiction is achieved.” This dual requirement on viewers of artworks applies as well when the viewers are visual artists who are evaluating their own works-inprogress. In the earlier Renaissance both Leonardo and Alberti suggested that artists view their own paintings through flat mirrors in order to judge them;11 a plausible explanation for this is that the poor quality of the sorts of mirrors that were then available would have defamiliarized painted images by increasing their blurriness, giving more scope for what Gombrich calls “the beholder’s share” in the transaction between an artwork and its viewer. Gombrich also describes the contrary displeasure inflicted on the viewers of waxwork-like depictions that manifest an excessive and offensive “realism.” Such overly verisimilitudinous depictions, Gombrich states, may appear not only “cheap and vulgar” but actually so “odious” as to cause painful distaste and revulsion (1963, 40).12 A stipulation that a representational artwork should reveal its artifice in order to make its beholders aware of its identity as art has been variously satisfied in varied media. Elizabethan theater practices included many conventional gestures that made playgoers aware that they were encountering an artwork, and not merely viewing a slice of real life placed on stage. Those conventions included five-act structures, choruses, soliloquies, speeches in verse, sketchily indicated locations, choreographic blocking, emblematic properties and scant scenery. Such theatrical tactics produced what was called, centuries later, “alienation effects.” They were not, in my opinion, merely forced on playwrights by the technical limitations of Elizabethan theaters, nor employed to suit the sophisticated tastes of coteries. Rather, they were used to remind all audiences, at least on a visceral level, that play going is an active process involving awareness of, assessment of and even questioning of deliberately crafted points of view. Thus, Elizabethan theater art invited a variety of self-aware imaginative responses and could provoke a broad range of interpretive appreciations.

Artistic Double Vision and Mirror Images Let us consider another profound distinction between mirror images and graphic depictions. Although a properly placed viewer of a graphic portrayal that uses linear perspective may gain some limited sense of

74  B.J. Sokol spatial depth (especially if they cover one eye), all viewers of reflections in plane mirrors, standing in any position, will see images having all the characteristics of three-dimensionality. Those characteristics include variations of shapes perceived and of areas of visibility according to changing viewing positions. This is because mirror reflections appear through the mirror just as if they inhabit a “virtual” space extending behind the plane containing the mirror. The general rule, which I have discussed at length elsewhere, is that “images in plane mirrors appear to be the same size as their objects and also appear to lie the same distance from the reflecting surface as their objects” (Sokol 2019).13 To that discussion I now wish to add the crucial remark that viewers into plane mirrors who use both of their eyes will see there what the Renaissance called the “relief” (that is, the shape “in the round”) of relatively nearby objects, and will also be able to judge the distance between themselves and such objects. This ability to perceive depth arises because any person with both eyes open who looks out into space, or more strikingly looks into the virtual space behind a mirror, possesses not just one, but two, vantage points. That is, each of their differently placed eyes occupies a somewhat different position, allowing for stereopsis, or stereoscopic vision. It is very strange that stereoscopic vision, which is the simplest among several means whereby humans judge the distance from themselves of visible objects, was never fully described scientifically until Charles Wheatstone did so in 1838. Wheatstone (1838, 379) identified as “one of the earliest facts which drew my attention” to the “effect of binocular perspective” a setup involving a mirror image which is viewed first through one eye, then the other, and finally through both eyes together whereupon the scene viewed “instantly starts into relief.” He then remarked that “It is curious, that an effect like this, which must have been seen thousands of times, should never have attracted sufficient attention to have been made the subject of philosophic observation.” However, Wheatstone (372) also mentioned that Leonardo da Vinci did approach that discovery. If we look a bit further than Wheatstone’s paper did into how Leonardo exercised his excellent visual awareness in this regard, we may note that Leonardo, indeed, grasps a crucial difference between a three-dimensional mirror image and a two-dimensional painting employing linear perspective: Painters often fall into despair of imitating nature when they see their pictures fail in that relief and vividness which objects have that are seen in a mirror; while they allege that they have colours which for brightness or depth far exceed the strength of light and shade in the reflections in the mirror, thus displaying their own ignorance rather than the real cause, because they do not know it. It is impossible that painted objects should appear in such relief as to resemble

Mirrors, Pictures, Optics, Shakespeare  75 those reflected in the mirror, although both are seen on a flat surface, unless they are seen with only one eye. (da Vinci 1970, 1:232)14 Here and in allied places Leonardo offers more insight than even some modern commentators do concerning how our two eyes – not positioned identically – each receive a different impression of a scene.15 However, Leonardo carried his analysis of this only to the point of noting that each of our eyes can see places that are obscured when viewed by the other eye (1971, 1:121–2). Wheatstone (1838, 372–3) explained Leonardo falling short of a fuller understanding by noting that unfortunately the object chosen for Leonardo’s geometrical analysis had excessive symmetry (it was spherical). Therefore, Leonardo failed to realize that when viewing less symmetrical shapes a person’s two eyes will receive impressions that differ in such a way as to produce the perception of depth. In the chapter devoted to “Catoprics” (mirroring) in his classic 1604 optical treatise Paralipomena to Witelo, Johannes Kepler’s Proposition 8 began a discussion of binocular vision with, “since to each animal a pair of eyes is given by nature, with a certain distance between them, by this support that the sense of vision is most rightly used to judge the distances of Visibles” ([1604] 2000, 79–80). However, Kepler’s succeeding propositions 9–14 somewhat spoil his insight into stereoscopic vision by claiming the possibility of distance perception by single eyes. Later in the same work, in a chapter devoted to astronomical and binocular parallax, Kepler again asserted that “Nature gave two eyes to animals, not just, as is commonly believed, to assist with a loss, but for grasping the distance of visible things by the eyes.” Next he demonstrated just how the spacing of the two eyes “by about a breadth of one palm” allows for distance estimation by parallax, and that “when one eye is closed . . . there is no longer any distinguishing between distance.” However, he again asserted that “There still remains for a single long accustomed eye a slight ability to distinguish distances that are very close” (321–3). Here it seems that Kepler missed out on applying fully his own pioneering understanding that the precise boundary between the mechanical processing of light rays in the eye and the mental processing of the patterns presented by those rays lies at the retina at the back of each eye. Instead, Kepler attributed to mechanism (a turning inward of eyes or a scanning process by a moving single eye) that which is now understood to be almost entirely in the preserve of organism, the extraction of meaning from concurrent nonmatching projections on two retinas (so that “stereopsis is [almost entirely] the result of central nervous system processing” according to Julesz, 1964, 358). Because in this case Kepler failed to adhere to his own distinctions, he overlooked a crucial correlative to his own great discoveries. This is that the nervous impulses triggered by light rays do not supply all the inputs

76  B.J. Sokol to an animal’s visual system. On the contrary, mental processing creates vision; sight is not something that the mind simply receives. However, it is clear that when Kepler asserted that “seeing is receiving” (77), he was referring only to the mechanical part of a larger process. As we now understand it (thanks to Kepler’s division of mechanism from organism) the visual system relies heavily on non-optical elements. These include, for instance, short-term and long-term memory (the first when we scan a scene using differing focal lengths or directions of glance, the second when we employ surmises based on remembered perceptions to fill in optically uncertain portions of a scene). Mind is also engaged when we resolve physical optical artifacts to our satisfaction (or, more rarely, take note of them), as for example when assigning meanings to such peculiarities of the visual realm as highlighting, shadowing and “aerial” or color perspective. In fact it may be truer to say “believing is seeing” than to say “seeing is believing” (or that in any total sense “seeing is receiving”). Kepler’s groundbreaking insights into the strictly delimited mechanical portion of visual processing are crucial to appreciating this. Francis Bacon, among others, noted an anomalous visual effect that presents a kind of inverse to the notion that binocular vision improves perception: We see more exquisitely with One Eye Shut, than with Both Open. The Cause is, for that the Spirits Visuall vnite themselues more, and so become Stronger. For you may see, by looking in a Glasse, that when you shut one Eye, the Pupill of the other Eye, that is Open, Dilateth. (Bacon 1627, 231) Wheatstone (380–1) connected this remark with “how the perspective effect of a picture is enhanced by looking at it with only one eye,” where the picture, of course, uses linear perspective. Wheatstone added that Bacon’s explanation for this is incorrect, and it is, indeed, instructively incorrect in permitting a notion of “vital spirits” to forestall a closer approach to understanding the incompatibility of linear perspective rendering with stereoscopic vision. This forestalling seems to me to reveal a fatal intolerance of uncertainty in Bacon, and thus a great dissimilarity of temperament rendering it impossible that Shakespeare could have been Bacon in disguise, as some have alleged.

Applications in Shakespeare The accurate description in a simile in Richard II 2.2.16–20 of extraordinarily exaggerated uses of linear perspective in the Renaissance’s (relatively rare) anamorphic paintings, such as Holbein’s Ambassadors

Mirrors, Pictures, Optics, Shakespeare  77 or Scrots’s portrait of Edward VI, indicates that Shakespeare was well aware of the extreme distortions that may arise from perspective images unless they are seen from one privileged viewpoint.16 The dizzying impact of linear perspective is also well described in the ekphrasis presented by Edgar on Dover cliff in the Folio King Lear 4.5.11–24. It was also known that when aiming a gun or drawing perspective images it is useful to close one eye in order to aim carefully or assess a scene without confusions due to binocular parallax. Accordingly, in Shakespeare’s time, the verb “to wink” had, among other meanings, the now “obsolete” (OED 1.4) one: “To close one eye, as in aiming at a target.” Although other meanings of “to wink” (such as “to overlook a fault” or “to sleep”) may also pertain when Shakespeare’s Sonnet 43 begins, “When most I winke then doe mine eyes best see,” the obsolete meaning indicating how one may “best see” (monocularly) better fits the equivocal tone of this painful love poem than the others. Others among Shakespeare’s more than forty uses of the verb “to wink” have similar monocular implications.17 Indeed, references to binocular or to monocular vision abound in Shakespeare’s works.18 Even more peculiar is that, in apparent contrast with his peers, Shakespeare repeatedly represents the two eyes of one person seeing entirely different scenes or experiencing different effects. To conclude our discussion we will consider three striking examples of this motif.19 One example arises in Hamlet 1.2.8–14 when the newly crowned Claudius describes marrying the widow of his recently deceased brother, King Hamlet: . . . our sometime sister, now our queen, Th’ imperial jointress of this warlike state, Have we as ‘twere with a defeated joy, With one auspicious and one dropping eye, With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage, In equal scale weighing delight and dole, Taken to wife. Claudius alleges that despite his two eyes disagreeing, 20 his supposed ambivalence, his advisors supported this marriage to prevent the state from seeming weak to its enemies, or “disjoint and out of frame” (1.2.8– 16). But, in reality, both of Claudius’s eyes look in only one direction, which is ambition. In fact, he himself caused his “late dear brother’s death” and thereby instigated young Fortinbras’s threats to Denmark. His description of Denmark as “disjoint and out of frame” is, as will emerge, ironically proleptic. Claudius’s double vision, known to Shakespeare’s time as a “commutation of vision” (Kepler [1604] 2000, 232), is not actually the consequence of his situation as claimed but rather the disguising of his will.

78  B.J. Sokol The motif of two eyes seeing differently pertains more genuinely when Shakespeare’s Cressida, forced into self-division by circumstances, attempts to find a new vision of herself and her life. Thus, in soliloquy she decides that she must accept the Grecian Diomedes as her new lover and must reluctantly abandon her former lover Troilus: Troilus, farewell. One eye yet looks on thee, But with my heart the other eye doth see. Ah, poor our sex! This fault in us I find: The error of our eye directs our mind. What error leads must err. O then conclude: Minds swayed by eyes are full of turpitude. (5.2.109–14) These, Cressida’s last words in the play, are overheard and commented on by three male spies or eavesdroppers. I have considered elsewhere how the diversity of their viewpoints has a paradoxical optical aspect (Sokol 2019), and will here comment on how Cressida’s dilemma of having two viewpoints at once is overlooked by each of the eavesdropping men in different ways. All three men misapprehend the plight of a woman who has been simply handed over in warfare and who, as a captive in an enemy camp, may or may not choose to stay alive. Scabrous Thersites simply ­labels Cressida a “whore,” Ulysses’s comment is more equivocal but not ­entirely different, but Troilus, the betrayed lover, more radically refuses to acknowledge Cressida’s complex inner life by alleging that his Cressida was actually not even “here but now.” Splitting Cressida into two women, one absent and angelic and the other present and diabolical, Troilus exclaims to Ulysses, “Think: we had mothers” (5.2.118–32). ­Ulysses’s reply, “What has she done, Prince, that can soil our mothers?” (136), provoked a sensitive 1993 reading by the psychoanalyst Angela Sheppard. This shows that an excessive possessiveness (probably rooted in infancy) has distorted Troilus’s perceptions, and the perceptions of many critics as well. Cressida’s true situation, Sheppard explains, is not that of a promiscuous woman but rather of a woman taking responsibility for her fate and so becoming (hatefully to some) a woman “separate, alive, and with another” (143). Here, as is often the case in Shakespeare’s work, imagery drawn from the material realm (here optical) prompts deep reflections on meaning and value (see Sokol 2003). Thus, when Shakespeare’s Cressida encounters opposed emotional viewpoints, she bravely faces the challenge of resolving two visions into one, of achieving an as-it-were stereoscopic self-vision embracing a third dimension of her whole experience. Similar enigmas and challenges arise in many Shakespearian plays and poems, sometimes with happy outcomes and sometimes with tragicomic

Mirrors, Pictures, Optics, Shakespeare  79 or tragic ones. Hence Shakespeare’s work not only manifests Keats’s famous “negative capability” in which “a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason” but also suggests that contradictions may be bridged if a binocular sort of internal vision, based on imagination, is free to range widely enough and deeply enough. A motif of binocular divergence arises again when Paulina in The Winter’s Tale reportedly displays “one eye declined for the loss of her husband, another elevated that the oracle was fulfilled” (5.2.74–75). This description arises when information vital to the conclusion of the play is presented in the form of a courtier’s report of an offstage scene. It is odd to encounter such reportage of a culminating event of a play, although the staging of court gossip typifies initiating “establishing” scenes such as those that begin King Lear and The Winter’s Tale. So, fulfilling eager requests for court news, “the Lady Paulina’s steward” (the play’s “third gentleman”) pompously recounts witnessing the offstage recognition of the lost Perdita and confirms also that Antigonus, “that carried hence” the infant Perdita “was torn to pieces with a bear” (5.2.1–111). We may realize at the back of our minds that this information – although fulfilling the oracle that “King Leontes shall not have an heir / Till his lost child be found”21 – still does not release him from the celibacy reinforced by his vow “Never to marry” until his “first queen’s again in breath” (5.1.70–83). However that may be, it is surely surprising that the crucial recognition of Perdita occurs offstage and is, moreover, recounted in a manner that verges on the ludicrous. I refer here particularly to the third gentleman’s emblem-like description of Paulina’s two eyes visibly pointing in different directions – an exceedingly mannered ekphrasis evoking only an absurd image if we attempt visualization. This, his account of Paulina’s cockeyed appearance, is the apogee of something deliberately off-kilter. Absurdities, including the displacement offstage of the discovery of Perdita, the overall stilted reportage occupying the first two-thirds of scene 5.222 and the use there of an “establishing” convention typically used to kick-start a play and not to round one off, all disrupt verisimilitude and therefore provide distancing or “alienation” effects as described above. I suggest that Shakespeare’s purpose in inserting such obtrusive artificialities into both the structure and language of 5.2 is to supply a kind of antidote-in-advance to the incredulity that spectators might otherwise experience when encountering the play’s next and last scene containing the notorious onstage coming to life of the statue of Hermione. Thus, having been inoculated with a dose of alienation, spectators may countenance, and may even be relaxed about, Hermione’s apparent resurrection under the aegis of a false artwork and falsified magic. Indeed, they have been warned by the third gentleman in 5.2.109–10

80  B.J. Sokol that “Every wink of an eye some new grace will be born” (note that this prediction deploys a monocular metaphor peculiar to his limited perspective). In short, by the time they meet “new grace” in the play’s outrageously structured statue scene Shakespeare’s spectators’ capacities to offer a “beholders’ share” have been put on high alert. They are thus primed to take seriously a patently artificial meta-theatrical trick that proffers a double vision of present joys mixed with past sorrows and of old losses mixed with new gains – that is, they are readied to adopt a binocular stance. In consequence, we may experience what is probably the most fantastical portion of any Shakespeare play as profoundly psychologically realistic and directly emotionally accessible.

Notes 1 The abbreviations of Shakespeare’s titles in the following notes and all Shakespeare’s quotations and lineation in this essay will be from Wells and Taylor (1989) except that mentions of First Folio plays by “tln” refer to the line numbering in Shakespeare ([1623] 1968) or where the first second quarto Hamlet is quoted from Thompson and Taylor (2016). 2 Shakespeare echoes these common paragone objections in VEN, 211–13; MV 1.2.69-70; HAM 2.2.483-85 and COR 1.3.9-13. 3 See Sokol (2019), “An image of Vanitas: geometrical optics and Shakespearian points of view.” 4 Kastan (1987) takes a differing view of this, finding in Hamlet reluctance to mirroring. 5 Dupré (2005a) concludes that “The material evidence flatly contradicts the Hockney-Falco thesis” so that “the painterly use of image projection becomes extremely unlikely” (131). An absence of documentary evidence of painters using optical projection before 1550, and of conceptual understanding on which that might have been based, are discussed in Camerota (2005), Schechner (2005), Yiu (2005) and Smith (2005, 163–64). David Hockney himself seems to have tacitly accepted these views, judging from the quite different Renaissance-like methods he apparently uses in his mostly recently exhibited portrait work. 6 See Schechner (2005) on glass and silvering; Ilardi (2007, 199) demurs. See Dupré (2005b) on how Leonardo’s concave mirror grinding efforts were intended only to produce burning glasses. 7 Ilardi (2007, 75–76) details how even small good mirrors were expensive and Schechner (2005, 153–58), shows in detail why the best mirrors of the age were far from accurate. 8 Hunt (2011, 2) locates more than eighty; Grabes (1982, 204), finds “at least seventy.” 9 R2 4.1.255-66; LRF 5.3.236; HAM 3.4.18-20; MAC stage direction tln 1557–58. 10 Grabes (1982) locates hundreds of references and details dozens of significances. Bell (2008, 230), even asserts that the English word “mirror” did not convey its “modern meaning” denoting a physical looking-glass until about 1325, and that prior to that it indicated only a pattern, exemplar or example. However, the OED finds “mirror” indicating a reflecting mirror from about 1225.

Mirrors, Pictures, Optics, Shakespeare  81 11 Da Vinci (1970, 1:320); Alberti (1973, 83). See Gombrich (1963, 37–41) on an experiment showing artistic improvement when images are deliberately distorted. 12 See Sokol (1994, 11–15). I should add that in addition to appearing “odious” to some, overly “realistic” mirroring in art might provide immersive distractions quelling any contact with reality. An example of such addictive mind-candy would be a soap-opera-like dramatic series. 13 However, the depth perceived in a mirror image is inverted, so that when an object moves closer to the mirror-plane, say by going north, its reflection will move closer to the same plane by going south. 14 The editor’s original (1883) footnote to this, which is retained in the 1970 third edition, comments with some optimism that “Leonardo was evidently familiar with the law of optics on which the construction of the stereoscope depends.” 15 Thus, da Vinci (1970, 1:320) advises painters that “you should take the mirror for your guide – that is a flat mirror – because objects appear in many respects as in a painting,” specifying “on its surface” [my italics]. However, Yiu (2005, 204) wrongly attributes to Leonardo a “fundamental idea . . . that both the painting and the mirror are plane surfaces on which virtual representations of reality appear.” Bell (2008, 231–32), likewise, mistakenly claims that in mirror images early modern “man could see the three dimensional world reduced to a … two dimensional form.” As noted, Leonardo states that this is the case only if the mirror is viewed “with one eye.” 16 See Sabatier (2016, 177–78). Kemp (1989, 219) quotes Leonardo: “it is impossible that your perspective will not seem incorrect, with all the false proofs and discordant proportions that can be imagined in a pitiful work, if the person who is looking at the perspective does not view it from the exact distance and height and direction of your eye, or rather from the viewpoint at which you placed yourself when you constructed the perspective.” Kemp (290n) claims this particularly concerns anamorphosis, but it is generally true. 17 We will presently consider WT 5.2.109. “To wink” relates to holding a weapon in H5 2.1.6-7, and the four punning uses of “to wink” in H5 5.2.297-303 rotate through various meanings, including to take aim or consider with care, as well. 18 Gruesome instances arise in 1H6 1.6.61-2 and LRF 4.2.39-40 where one of a person’s two eyes cannot see anything, having been destroyed. In TN 2.5.131-34, Malvolio excitedly interprets “M.O.A.I.” in the forged letter, noting that “‘I’ comes behind,” and Fabian then “Ay, an you had any eye behind you might see more detraction at your heels than fortunes before.” Here he twice puns on “I” while indicating that Malvolio’s monocular vision of a prosperous future lacks a second eye discerning that he will be tripped up. Portia is also satiric when she chides Bassanio after he swears by her “fair eyes” that he will never again “break an oath”: “Mark you but that? / In both my eyes he doubly sees himself, / In each eye one. Swear by your double self, / And there’s an oath of credit” (MV 5.1.242-46). In JC 1.2.88-91, Brutus boasts, “Set honour in one eye and death I’ th’ other, / And I will look on both indifferently; / For let the gods so speed me as I love / The name of honour more than I fear death.” The optics of one eye seeing itself or seeing another eye are referenced in JC 1.2.54-60 and TRO 3.3.100106. There are also references to the hundred-eyed Argus being hoodwinked or purblind in LLL 3.1.194, MV 5.1.230 and TRO 1.2.28. 19 Another, simpler than the three discussed below, appears in WIV 2.2.175-84.

82  B.J. Sokol 20 Editors note a seeming allusion here to the English proverb “To laugh with one eye and weep with the other” (Tilley 1950, E248). Jenkins (1982, 434) mentions also a Scottish proverb about “a false man.” 21 Thus, Paulina reinterprets WT 3.2.134-5 in 5.1.39-40. 22 In the last third of 5.2 Shakespeare cunningly interposes a soliloquy by the rogue Autolycus followed by Autolycus’s mock-humble address to the newly ennobled Shepherd and Clown to undercut through parody the courtliness of the refined gentlemen just seen. This injection of humor eases a transition between the nervous ambitiousness implicit in the gentlemen’s speech in scene 5.2 (see Sokol 1994, 71–73) and the repentant tones in 5.3.

References Alberti, Leon Battista. 1973. On Painting. Translated by John R. Spencer. New Haven: Yale University Press. Bacon, Francis. 1627. Sylua syluarum: or A naturall historie In ten centuries. London. Bell, Ilona. 2008. “Mirror Tropes and Renaissance Poetry.” In Renaissance Tropologies, edited by Jeanne Shami, 229–53. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Camerota, Filippo. 2005. “Looking for an Artificial Eye: On the Borderline between Painting and Topography.” Early Science and Medicine 10: 263–85. da Vinci, Leonardo. 1970. The Literary Works. Edited by Jean Paul Richter and Irma A. Richter, 3rd ed., 2 vols. London: Phaidon. Dupré, Sven. 2005a. “Introduction the Hockney-Falco Thesis: Constraints and Opportunities.” Early Science and Medicine 10: 125–36. Dupré, Sven. 2005b. “Optic, Picture and Evidence: Leonardo’s Drawings of Mirrors and Machinery.” Early Science and Medicine 10: 211–36. Gombrich, E. H. 1963. Meditations on a Hobby Horse. London: Phaidon. Grabes, Herbert. 1982. The Mutable Glass: Mirror Imagery in Titles and Texts of the Middle Ages and English Renaissance. Translated by Gordon Collier. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hunt, Maurice. 2011. Shakespeare’s Speculative Art. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Ilardi, Vincent. 2007. Renaissance Vision from Spectacles to Telescopes. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society Press. Jenkins, Harold, ed. 1982. Hamlet. London: Methuen. Second Arden Shakespeare. Julesz, Bela. 1964, “Binocular Depth Perception without Familiarity Cues.” Science 145: 356–62. Kastan, David Scott. 1987. “‘His semblable is his mirror’: Hamlet and the Imitation of Revenge.” Shakespeare Studies 19: 111–24. Kemp, Martin, ed. 1989. Leonardo on Painting. New Haven: Yale University Press. Kepler, Johannes. [1604] 2000. Optics. Translated by William H. Donahue. Santa Fe NM: Green Lion Press. Melchoir-Bonnet, Sabine. 2014. The Mirror: A History. Translated by Katharine H. Jewett. London: Routledge. Miller, Jonathan. 1998. On Reflection. London: National Gallery Publications.

Mirrors, Pictures, Optics, Shakespeare  83 Pedretti, Carlo. 1977. The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci, Commentary. 2 vols. Oxford: Phaidon. Plato. 1948. Collected Dialogues. Edited by Francis Macdonald Cornford. Oxford: Clarendon. Sabatier, Armelle. 2016. Shakespeare and Visual Culture. London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare. Schechner, Sara J. 2005. “Between Knowing and Doing: Mirrors and Their Imperfections in the Renaissance.” Early Science and Medicine 10: 137–62. Shakespeare, William. 1968. The First Folio. Facsimile of 1623 prepared by Charlton Hinman. New York: W. W. Norton. Sheppard, Angela. 1993. “Soiled Mother or Soul of Woman?: A Response to Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida.” In The Undiscover’d Country, edited by B. J. Sokol, 130–49. London: Free Association Books. Smith, A. Mark. 2005. “Reflections on the Hockney-Falco Thesis: Optical Theory and Artistic Practice in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries.” Early Science and Medicine 10: 163–85. Smith, A. Mark. 2015. From Sight to Light: The Passage from Ancient to Modern Optics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sokol, B. J. 1994. Art and Illusion in The Winter’s Tale. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Sokol, B. J. 2003. A Brave New World of Knowledge: Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Early Modern Epistemology. London: Associated University Presses. Sokol, B. J. 2019. “An Image of Vanitas: Geometrical Optics and Shakespearian Points of View.” Memoria di Shakespeare. A Journal of Shakespearean Studies 6. Thompson, Ann, and Neil Taylor, eds. 2016. Hamlet, Revised Edition. Second Quarto, Third Arden ed. London: Bloomsbury. Tilley, Morris Palmer. 1950. A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Wells, Stanley, and Gary Taylor, eds. 1989. William Shakespeare: The Complete Works. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Electronic edition. Wheatstone, Charles. 1838. “Contributions to the Physiology of Vision. On some ­ ision.” PhilRemarkable, and Hitherto Unobserved, Phenomena of Binocular V osophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 128: 371–94. http:// rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org. Whythorne, Thomas. 1962. Autobiography. London: Oxford University Press. Yiu, Yvonne. 2005. “The Mirror and Painting in Early Renaissance Texts.” Early Science and Medicine 10: 187–210.

Part II

Confluences English Texts and European Paintings

5 Over the Edge Shakespeare, Judith, and the Virtuous Use of Female Indiscretion and Deception Rocco Coronato “Who Is’t Can Read a Woman?” (Cymbeline 5.5.48) Alongside having a daughter named Judith, Shakespeare could find everywhere the name of the pious Jewish widow who thanks to both her cosmetic and verbal ruses was able to gain access to the tent of ­Holofernes, the Assyrian general who had defeated her people, and beheaded him without besmirching her honor.1 The name was highly popular in that period: after the defeat of the Invincible Armada, Elizabeth herself was called a Judith for her courage (Campbell 2009). More to the point (a decisive word here), Love’s Labour’s Lost (henceforth LLL, Shakespeare 1998) stars the pedantic Holofernes, perhaps a borrowing from Tubal Holofernes, Gargantua’s schoolmaster, or rather more likely from an interlude performed before Elizabeth in 1556. In the final show, the Shakespearean Holofernes plays the beheader Judas Maccabeus: a marginal note in the Geneva Bible (The Bible and Holy Scriptures 1560, 414v) similarly linked the display of Holofernes’s head at Judith 14:1 to 2 Maccabees 15:31, when Judas Maccabeus shows the head of Nicanor, another foreign oppressor. LLL also alludes to two Biblical male victims of strong-willed women, Samson and Solomon, despite the “very good wit” of the latter (1.2.68), and features a femme forte, the Princess of France, whose wit is as keen as a razor’s edge (5.2.256–57). In Cymbeline (henceforth CYM, Shakespeare 2017), Innogen, wrongly believing herself to have lost her husband after having woken up next to a headless trunk, turns into a seeming widow who resolves on lifelong fidelity and never abandons chastity, though perhaps having dispensed in the past with the other two attributes of the virtuous woman, obedience and silence (Kehler 2009, 45). Among the several translations of the Bible, scholars usually emphasize Shakespeare’s varying debt to the Geneva Bible (1560), arguing that he evidently kept an edition at home, and to the Bishops’ Bible (1568), a lavish folio that in 1571 had been appointed to be read in churches and which Shakespeare often seems to recall from his memory (Shaheen 1993, 86; Groves 2007, 20; Hamlin 2013, 9). The Bishops’ Bible contained an image of the sword-brandishing Judith laying Holofernes’s

88  Rocco Coronato head in a basket propped by her servant. The story of Judith was arguably one of those Bible narratives that, with their flexibility, could easily hand over their forms and practices to secular culture through what Shuger (1994,  5) called “mythic transformations.” My reading here rather centers on the dynamic notion of allusion, when “the alluding text may be consonant with the evoked text’s original meanings or it may subvert them by distorting their form and changing its context” (Marx 2000, 13). I will here consider whether the biblical Judith, compared with some related pictorial representations in the early modern period, may enlighten by contrast some puzzling points in LLL and CYM. Three Italian painters admirably embody the different versions of Judith: active (Artemisia Gentileschi), alluring (Cristofano Allori), and hesitant (Caravaggio). The comparison with these Judiths unveils Shakespeare’s fascination with indiscretion, in sharp opposition to the prevalent early modern imagery of discernment as a metaphorical act of cutting.

The Clear-Cut Judith The status of the Book of Judith was already uncertain among the Church Fathers. In the Praefatio to the book, Jerome said he had translated it with a single night’s work (lucubratiuncula), according to sense rather than verbatim (Migne 1844–55 29, Col. 39A). In De Civitate Dei XXVI and in De Doctrina Christiana VIII.13 Augustine mentions it with other noncanonical books that have neither connection with the previous history nor among themselves (Migne 1844–55 41, Col 0583; 34, Col 0041). While the book of Judith was eventually retained by Catholics among the canonical ones, it was deemed apocryphal by Protestants. The Thirty-Nine Articles (2011, 675) listed it among those which “the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners, but yet it doth not apply them to establish any Doctrine.” Luther simply called it a good tragedy; yet, due to popular demand, the book was hastily inserted with other apocrypha in the Lutheran Bible. Despite being noncanonical, this short Biblical story enjoyed an immensely popular canon in the Middle Ages and was still hugely present in the Renaissance as a typological figure. Almost completely absent were any references to the meaning of her name (“woman from Judea,” “Jewess”) or to Bethulia as the transliteration of the Hebrew word for “virgin”: the meaning of the “praised one” provided instead the general key (Campbell 2009). Jerome proposed Judith as an example of chastity offered in imitation also to men: she overcame what could not be overcome and illustrated that while the best thing is keeping virginity both in the mind and in the flesh, were this impossible one should opt for spiritual virginity. In medieval typology, Judith came thus to embody the virtues of decorum, humility and chastity, and turned into an antetype of Mary and the Church as an “instrument of divine will and savior of her people” who prevails “over the devil and sin itself”; she also embodied

Female Indiscretion and Deception  89 Justice as a justification for tyrannicide (Ciletti and Lähnemann 2010, 46, 56–57). Many medieval and Renaissance retellings of this “melodrama of the bedroom” even assumed an epic form (Stocker 1998, 72). Judith represented a perfect union between vita activa and vita contemplativa and quickly became an example of universal virtues, which may help the true godly “the more freely give their mind to spiritual exercise” (Becon [1552] 1844, 529). Her wearing sackcloth and casting dust on her head was a reminder that mortals are “but grounde, earthe, and dust” (Bonner 1555, 341), and that the fasting observed by Judith might let the “mind banquet though the body pine” as the Princess promises to do after the end of the play, shutting her “woeful self up in a mourning house, / Raining the tears of lamentation” (LLL 1.1.25, 5.2.802–3). Judith enshrined the virtues of the univira, the chaste widow who honors celibacy and does many good deeds of mercy (Becon [1550] 1844, 520). According to Ambrose’s De viduis (Migne 1844–55 16, 260B), by holding up Holofernes’s head Judith also caused the souls of her people to rise (“Suspenso enim Holophernis capite, . . . suorum erexit animos”). Judith as a clear-cut symbol of virtue and purity offered to universal emulation appears in a great deal of medieval and Renaissance art, where she is commonly represented with the sword and the head, often devoid of a narrative setting. In works of popular theology such as the Biblia Pauperum and the Speculum Humanae Salvationis, two scenes gain special attention: the binding of Achior and the beheading of Holofernes, which are respectively read as the antetypes of Christ’s flagellation and of Mary’s suppression of the devil. Some biblical illuminations featured a vignette of the beheading, which often opened the text within the tent-shaped A for Artaxerses the first word of the book (Ciletti and Lähnemann 2010, 52, 54). The active, pious, virtuous Judith was vividly captured in High Renaissance works such as Donatello’s statue in Florence (1453–57) and the paintings by Botticelli (1475), Mantegna (1495), Michelangelo (1508– 11, detail of the Sistine Chapel), and obviously appealed also to female painters, such as Lavinia Fontana (1575). The image of the victorious Judith holding in one hand Holofernes’s head and in the other his sword also appeared in popular prints like the one made by Jan Collaert after Marten de Vos (c. 1541), and on the frontispiece of Hans Sachs’s 1564 tragedy Wie Judith dem Thirannen Holofernos das Haupt abschlug vor der Stat Bethulia. Seeing the permanence of this visually explicit heroine, it is hardly surprising that in an England visited by Protestant iconoclasm Sidney ([1965] 1973, 125) still quotes her as a “notable example” of how “figuring forth good things” is beneficial, one of those religious figures that, at least in the private homes, could be still used to edify and inspire. Her popularity also extended to the domestic sphere in sculptures, paintings, and furniture, such as cassoni (marriage chests). Together with other active Biblical women like Jael, who killed Sisera, the commander of the Canaanite army, by infixing a nail in his head while he was sleeping (Judges 4:17–22, 5:6, 24–27), she ranked among the stories most

90  Rocco Coronato frequently chosen by seventeenth-century embroiderers, which probably speaks volumes about their domestic bliss (DeJean 2003, 145). Such excellent women also showed how, once the emergency had passed, they could quietly resume their domestic lives (Wiesner 1993, 11). Some Judiths, however, seemed less prone to returning to their usual lives. Judith as a proactive woman famously stars in three related paintings made by Artemisia Gentileschi, who probably took herself as the model. In 1611, Artemisia had been the notorious victim of a rape by his father’s fellow painter Agostino Tassi, who after the trial, escaped punishment (Cohen 2000). According to the proceedings of the trial, Artemisia did threaten Agostino with a knife and tried to stab him (Garrard 1989, Appendix B, 416). Probably in 1613 Artemisia painted in Florence a first version of the theme where an elegantly dressed ­Judith looks askance, propping the heavy sword on her shoulder, and her servant holds a basket with Holofernes’s head and a bloody cloth (the same grouping occurs in a painting by Orazio, 1608–9). In 1617, Artemisia painted the Capodimonte Judith (Figure 5.1), a famously graphic description of the heroine who, materially assisted by her servant, beheads Holofernes in a triumph of gushing blood and physical force. Critics

Figure 5.1  A rtemisia Gentileschi, Judith Beheading Holofernes (Naples, Museo di Capodimonte).

Female Indiscretion and Deception  91 have invoked the influence of Caravaggio and read the brutality of the action and the strong companionship between the two women as a surrogate for the retribution that Artemisia had been denied in fact: Garrard (1989, 312) observes, for instance, the significant progression of the movement from Tarquinia’s knee to Lucrece’s lap and to Holofernes’s body (cfr. Wiesner 1993, 155). Yet the painting may also signal the moment of independence from another man, her father, whose workshop she had left in 1613 (Baldassari 2016, 134). A second version, less Caravaggesque and more attuned to Florentine theatrical taste, was probably made in Rome after her return from Florence (c. 1620–21); in the Rome painting, blood drips and flows over the bedsheet, while in the Florence painting it follows geometric, almost parabolic forms, possibly under the influence of the study on parabolae authored by Galileo, whom Artemisia had met (Topper and Gillis 1996). While it is generally true that Shakespearean heroines are supposed to stay virtuous under duress and to articulate their excellence with verbal mastery, there are some uncanny resonances between the chaste, active ­Judith and the Princess of France and Innogen. The Princess is a “continent of beauty” and an enemy of “short-lived pride” (LLL 4.1.108, 15) who remains extramural, first because of the King’s choice to leave her “lodged” in his heart, though confined “in the field,” away from “his forbidden games” (2.1.173, 85, 26), and then because of her own renouncing admittance to the court. Innogen also remains a “­temple / Of virtue,” whose “walls” of “dear honour” are held “firm” by the heavens (CYM 5.5.220–21, 2.1.61–62). She exhorts her husband to “forbearance” in his “lawful pleasure,” with “pudency”; before sleeping she prays the gods for protection from “the tempters of the night” (2.5.9–11;  2.2.9, 10). Both women liberally preach on honour, grace and decency (LLL 4.1.30–35, CYM 1.6.6–9), to the point of displaying brutal frankness as Innogen does with the demented Cloten, “being so verbal” (CYM 2.3.106). Yet, there is a more intriguing, ambivalent dimension to the Judith story, and it is the apparent oxymoron of virtuous deception. Judith was also praised for her skill at crossing enemy lines without being sullied: thanks to the fortitudo that befits virtuous widows, said Ambrose, she exited the walls (“extra murum processit,” Migne 1844–55 16, Col. 259A) and refrained from eating and drinking with the idolatrous Holofernes. In the early modern period, the Judith mythos showed great “adaptability to circumstances and to even conflicting purposes” (Ciletti and Lähnemann 2010, 58–59), blending the traditional praise for her reclusive life of ascetic piety and her spurning of visitors, but also her active role as an exemplary in the “Querelle des Femmes.” Her equivocal morality was apparent in her being paired with Eve and Delilah among the cunning women: the most ambivalent reverberations emanate from Judith the virtuous deceiver.

92  Rocco Coronato

Judith and Ambivalence Both the Septuagint (10:10) and the Vulgate (“ex labiis caritatis meae,” 9:13) refer to the deceit of Judith’s lips. The Vulgate also refers to the snare (laqueus) of his eyes in hers, a detail present in all the editions I have considered (Septuagint, Vulgate, Wyclyffe, Coverdale, Matthew, Bishops, Douai-Reims and King James), except the Geneva Bible, which instead at Judith 9:10 refers to the topic of the powerful taken down by a humble woman found in the Septuagint (9:13): “smite by the deceit of the lippes the seruant with the prince, and the prince with the servant: abate their height by the hand of a woman” (The Bible and Holy Scriptures 1560, 412v). A notorious example of ambivalence in the Geneva Bible (Judith 12:14, 414r) is Judith’s amphibologic reply to the invitation to enter Holofernes’s tent: “Who am I now, that I shulde gainesay my lord?” meaning, in fact, Yahweh instead of Holofernes. Much ambivalence rested on the physical and verbal cosmetics used by Judith. Since Plato, cosmetics had been a common derogatory term for language and the image; classical authors often likened excessive ornamentation to an excessively beautified woman or courtesan (Lichtenstein 1987, 78 ff.). Yet Aquinas (Summa Theologica II, ii, Question 169, Article 2) had implied that cosmetics (fucatio) does not entail per se mortal sin, but only when done out of lust or in contempt of God. As Ambrose notes in De virginibus (Migne 1844–55 16, Col 0213B, 0213C), Judith bedecked herself in order to be liked by the adulterous Holofernes, but that was done out of faith, not out of love, and she managed to defend both her modesty (pudorem) and her country; on a more practical note, had she preferred faith, once her country had been lost she would have lost her modesty as well. Judith’s decision to use self-adornment, perhaps “walled about with diamonds” (LLL 5.2.3), was explained in the twelfth-century Glossa Ordinaria, a collection of glosses often printed in the margins of the Vulgate, by way of ecclesiastical allegories (Ciletti and Lähnemann 2010, 50). In the Renaissance appropriations of Judith, her beauty and apparent sexual conniving remain “in fact a coverup for her wit and become her very means of serving God” (Nash 1997, 392); on this point, Protestants and Catholics hardly differed. The Elizabethan “Homily against Excess of Apparel” recalls that both Esther and Judith put on “the glittering shew of apparel . . . not as delighting in them, nor seeking vain voluptuous pleasure by them; but . . . of pure necessity by God’s dispensation, using this vanity to overcome the vain eyes of God’s enemy” (The Two Books of Homilies 1869, 318). Armed with such verbal deceit, Judith came to be praised as a cunning deceiver. Judith’s speech to Holofernes is routinely quoted in passages that illustrate the sin of pride, commonly blamed on Holofernes, who was a classical example of how a man may besot “his sences with excesse

Female Indiscretion and Deception  93 of wine and good cheare” (Beard 1632, 285), but especially on women like Judith who with their looks have “caste / dyuers wyse men ben almost depryued from theyr wyt,” and Judith “dyde soo moche by her fayre speche” (Brant 1509, U4r). In his praise of the excellence of women, Cornelius Agrippa (1542, sigg. Eiv, Diiir) contends that Judith beheaded Holofernes “by her flattering,” yet the Bible praises her, for “the iniquitie of the woman is reputed farre better, than a mans wel doing.” Art made this enticing Judith come out alive in the flesh. Especially in Germany (Watanabe-O’Kelly 2014): in the Lutheran translation, the canopy in which Holofernes’s head is wrapped was rendered as “Decke,” which can mean ceiling but also blanket; this probably caused the eroticization of the figure in artists like Hans Baldung-Grien (1525), Lucas Cranach the Elder (1530) and Hans Sebald Beham (1547). Barthel Beham (1525) even depicted a Judith who rides Holofernes’s corpse with the sword pointing down toward his genitals (Ciletti and Lähnemann 2010, 56). A smirking, half-naked Judith also appeared in a 1575 ­A nglo-Netherlandish panel. 2

Figure 5.2  Cristofano Allori, Judith with the Head of Holofernes (Florence, Gli Uffizi).

94  Rocco Coronato Italian artists, for once, were relatively chaster and instead focused on Judith’s gaze – the snare of her eyes. The sensual, dangerous Judith of the Italian Renaissance and Baroque often gazes at the viewer as an example of fascinatio, the strong ligation caused by vision. According to the then still prevalent intromission theory, which claimed that the eyes emitted rays, images are still thought to be capable of infusing their virtues in the spectator. A mental image of the lover is created and incorporated in the lover’s body, similarly to the act of painting, when the painter is inspired by his model and by his imagination. Judith thus becomes an application of the “fatal power of ocular rays”, one of those Biblical dangerous women often depicted “while they display parts of their body and broodingly stare the spectator into the eye, immediately before or after committing a violent act” (Weststeijn 2010, 151–52, 157). Among the several examples are the Judiths created by Jacopo Ligozzi (1601), Rubens (1616), Cristofano Allori (1615–17, Figure 5.2) and Elisabetta Sirani (1658). In fact, Shakespeare’s two heroines renounce both kinds of deceit, both physical and verbal makeup. The Princess hates “painted rhetoric” (LLL 4.3.235). While Innogen is praised by Iachimo, her would-be Italian rapist, as an “object, which / takes prisoner the wild motion of mine eye,” the wonderful artefacts such as the “jewels / Of rich and exquisite form” that he promises to send her in a trunk are means of corruption; they recall that female beauty may “[l]ook through a casement to allure false hearts / And be false with them” (CYM 1.6.101–2, 188–89; 2.4.34–35). Innogen resorts to crossdressing, in fact, to move away from a “course / Pretty and full of view” (3.4.146–47). The female agency of Judith has been shifted to disguise and especially verbal counterbiting: something has been literally cut out. Judith and her sword were conventional elements of her iconography and returned in all the editions of the Book of Judith. A difference concerns the sword, though: in the Vulgate (9:12), Judith asks that Holofernes’s pride may be cut down with his own sword, a symmetric detail of contrappasso that returns in all editions except the Geneva Bible. The Princess of France is punningly hailed as “the head lady,” recognizable “by the rest that have no heads” (LLL 4.1.43, 44–45). This might be an obscene allusion to their lost maidenheads, yet it also elicits a profound link between speaking, cutting and emasculation.

Cutting Discrimination and Indiscretion Renaissance men were supposed to be apt at using swords and words – and words as swords. The link was Biblical and proverbial: “Words are piercing like swords” (Psal. 57.5, 59.8), a pun also present in Marlowe (Tamburlaine Part One 1.1.74). In LLL and CYM men apparently still have the edge. In LLL, a play obsessed with the excremental that

Female Indiscretion and Deception  95 needs to be cut (Parker 1993), the King’s academy hopes to achieve that honor that may bate time’s “scythe’s keen edge” (LLL 1.1.6). Manliness is similarly expressed in CYM through “the arbitrement of swords”; Belarius’s body is “marked / With Roman swords,” the law-giver Malmutius was “mangled” by the sword of Caesar, and nearly every body is “a passable carcass” and a “throughfare for steel” (1.4.50–51, 3.3.56–57, 3.1.55–56, 1.2.8, 9). A similar image is penetration, evoked by Cloten by way of music and fingering (2.3.11–15). Yet those male edges have been dulled. Longaville’s “sharp wit” is matched “with too blunt a will,” and man’s formerly sharp wit merely “carves” a capon, a love-letter (LLL 2.1.49, 4.156–57). For Armado, the braggart who had at first threatened to draw his “sword against the humour of affection” (1.2.58–59), female seduction dulls the edges of man’s weapons: Cupid’s “butt,” an unbarbed arrow used for short-range target practice (with an obscene allusion to buttocks), has become “too hard for Hercules’ club, and therefore too much odds for a Spaniard’s rapier” (1.2.168–70). Cutting conveyed the image of backbiting, but it also represented metaphorically a major component of conscience during the Renaissance. At the turn of the seventeenth century, notes David Hillman (1996, 75), there ensued a “remarkable proliferation of words denoting the idea of separation,” all insisting on the idea of discrimination or “discretion” (from Latin cernere), based on the Indo-European root *[s]ker, “to cut,” and hence “critic.” The Princess of France and her ladies are sharp critics: endowed with “a nimble tongue,” they display a wit consisting of “pair-taunt-like,” “mock for mock,” “sport by sport o’erthrown” (LLL 5.2.731, 66–67, 140, 153). Despite theirs having been initially threatened with the loss of their tongue, theirs remains keen like “the razor’s edge invisible” (5.2.257). The men themselves admit to being penetrated by the points of female wit (“Thrust thy sharp wit quite through my ignorance, / Cut me to pieces with thy keen conceit”): women cut out all kinds of “excrement,” not only Armado’s mustachio but also overblown love letters (5.2.398–99, 5.1.96). In short, cutting underscores most dealings between men and women, with images of bloodletting (“incision / Would let her out in saucers”) and of lovemaking, but also of emasculation, the erasure of the male edges with the help of the female non-penis, the “non-point” (4.3.94– 95, 2.1.189). Cutting and reduction, though played out in a melancholy note of longing, return in CYM. If Innogen, who disguised as Fidele cuts “roots in characters,” had been allowed to see her husband leave in exile, like a good perspective painter she would have looked at him “till the diminution / Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle,” following him “till he had melted from / The smallness of a gnat to air” (CYM 1.3.18–19, 20–21), the same transformation eventually undergone by Holofernes.

96  Rocco Coronato The Princess “pierced and pricked a pretty pleasing pricket” (LLL 4.2.56). This marks the female triumph over the prick (a slang term for the penis), which stands for many things at once: a target, a bull’s eye, the pricket (prick it), and the buck in its second year killed by the Princess (4.2.12). “Pierced” was probably pronounced “pursed,” thus referring to either the vagina (like the thicket) or the scrotum; the “sorel” (a buck in its fourth year) might refer to a sore penis. The final punishment of Holofernes, who corrects Nathaniel on the caesuras in the poem, or the proper art of cutting metrical lines, also insists on piercing, made jocularly to coincide in sound with person, “quasi pierce-one” (4.2.81). Perhaps the element of circumcision present in the Biblical story of Simeon, Judith’s ancestor and the founder of her tribe, who together with Levi had used the sword against Shechem, the Canaanite who had defiled their sister Dinah by raping her (Genesis 34:13), may underscore these obsessive references to cutting. In Shakespeare’s age, circumcision transcended into the cutting of more flesh than simply the foreskin and ultimately importing the death of the newly circumcised, and it was obsessively referred to the threat of conversion posed first by Jews and then by the sprawling power of Ottomans (Vitkus 2003, 77–93). What remains outside of this discrimination is a headless trunk – or a body about to lose his head. In the Borghese David with the Head of Goliath (1609–10), Caravaggio famously portrayed himself in the victim. The gesture of showing the head probably related both to the rise of new devotional practices insisting on meditation and inward contemplation and to the seventeenth-century scientific emphasis on direct observation of nature (Fried 2010, 99). The identification between male painter and victim was quite common: following a tradition of self-­ portraiture perhaps akin to self-pity in poets (Shearman 1979, 9), several painters depicted themselves in the effigies of Holofernes (Veronese, Palma il Vecchio and Allori) or John the Baptist (Titian, Salome, 1515). According to some contemporary witnesses, Allori depicted al vivo Mazzafirra, his lover, as Judith, himself as Holofernes and Mazzafirra’s mother as the servant (Shearman 1979, 3). In Bernardino Luini’s Salomé (1527), the head of the Baptist is depicted with open, blankly staring eyes and mouth slightly agape, the physiognomical characteristics of decapitation, as can be seen also in Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Judith with the Head of Holofernes (c. 1530). Yet, in Judith Beheading Holofernes (1599, Figure 5.3), Caravaggio cast distaste and repulsion on the face of the virtuous killer and almost elicited empathy for the villain who is being nearly villainously butchered. In this painting, typologically readable as the triumph of the Church and humilitas over evil and pride (Oberli 2004, 223), Holofernes tries to give a last desperate look back at the girl while his head is being severed: her face bespeaks an indistinct emotion, halfway between fatigue, pain and distaste.

Female Indiscretion and Deception  97

Figure 5.3  Caravaggio, Judith Beheading Holofernes (Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica).

In The Boke named the Gouernour (1531), Sir Thomas Elyot identifies the last three branches of prudence as election, experience and modesty, often confused with discretion. Elyot lamented that the Latin discretio, which “in Latine signifieth Separation,” had been confused with modesty, while it pointed instead to election, the deliberative ability to distinguish the good from the bad and to make choices based on that distinction; then he defined moral election as the determination, after careful deliberation, of “what it is to be effectually folowed or pursued, reiectyinge the residue” (Elyot [1907] 1973, I. 25, 105, 106, quoted in Miller 2006, 455, 456). But can the residue be really rejected in Shakespeare? Cloten turns into an indistinct piece of earth, a “clotpoll,” a head made of a clod of earth, whose excrement, the “tail,” is “[m]ore perilous than the head” (CYM 4.2.183–84, 4.2.143, 144), nearly reminiscent by contrast of the dismemberment of Orpheus by the Thracian women in Ovid, when his head is thrown into the River Hebrus and, to quote Golding’s translation, flows downstream and utters “certeine lamentable noyse as though it still yit spake” (Ovid’s Metamorphoses II.56). Cloten’s headless trunk, the residue of decapitation, recalls how brainless he had already been while alive: “Not Hercules / Could have knocked out his brains, for he had none” (4.2.113–14). After cutting, there remains in the Shakespearean heroines nothing of the virtuous application of beheading commonly associated to Judith. The Princess of France has outruled the King by using “sport,”

98  Rocco Coronato especially the one that little knows itself and thus cannot practice discrimination: “That sport best pleases that doth least know how” (LLL 5.2.514). The indistinction of Cloten’s headless stock similarly enables Innogen’s nearly grotesque mistaking it for her own “headless man,” Posthumus (CYM 4.2.307). Not unlike Caravaggio’s Judith, the unwitty female discerner almost turns her gaze away from the task at hand. In the general emphasis on misperception, deception and blindness so typical of CYM (Lewis 1991; Lander 2008), Innogen similarly realizes, on waking up next to the headless trunk, that “[o]ur very eyes / Are sometimes like our judgements, blind” and that she is “nothing” (4.2.300–1, 4.2.367). And as the Jailer reminds Posthumus, it is an infinite mockery that “a man should have the best use of eyes to see the way of blindness,” desperately staring out and backward like Caravaggio’s Holofernes: losing one’s head, in all senses, recognizes the “rare instinct” (5.4.159–60, 5.5.380). Compared with the other editions of the Bible, the Geneva Bible featured two important variants in the story of Judith: the absence of reference to the snare in her eyes and to the prayer that she may cut down Holofernes’s pride with his own sword. In Shakespeare, the visual emphasis of the artistic Judith, especially vibrant in her European representations, seems coupled with a Protestant emphasis on the word and the need to circumcise it properly. Yet the result, or the residue, is not revenge and redemption, but indistinction as the best representation of the modern mind, circumcised and cut out by women with the ambivalent mix of emotions displayed on the face of Caravaggio’s Judith. Liminal Judith has truly crossed all lines and, going completely extramural, now ponders that apparent enemy of conscience that Hamlet forcibly summons before death: “Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well” (Shakespeare 2006, 5.2.8).

Notes 1 A first version of this paper was presented at the Conference “The Bible in the Renaissance,” held in Jerusalem under the auspices of the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies and the Hebrew University on May 21–25, 2017. I warmly thank our excellent organizer Yaakov Mascetti for his warm hospitality and excellent scientific organization, as well as all the speakers for the unique mood of shared learning and friendship. 2 findingsshakespeare.co.uk/shakespeare-100-objects-number-100-fine-­ picture [last accessed March 2018].

References Agrippa von Nettesheim, Heinrich Cornelius. 1542. A Treatise of the Nobilitie and Excellencye of Vvoman Kynde, Translated out of Latine into Englysshe by Dauid Clapam. London. Baldassari, Francesca. 2016. Artemisia Gentileschi e il suo tempo. Milan: Skira.

Female Indiscretion and Deception  99 Beard, Thomas. 1632. The Theatre of Gods Judgements Is Represented the Admirable Justice of God against all Notorious Sinners. London. Becon, Thomas. [1550] 1844. The Principles of Christian Religion. London. Becon, Thomas. [1552] 1844. A Fruitful Treatise of Fasting. London. The Bible and Holy Scriptures Conteyned in the Olde and Newe Testament. Translated According to the Ebreu and Greke, and conferred with the best translationas in diuers languages. 1560. Geneva. Bonner, Edmund. 1555. A Profitable and Necessary Doctrine: London. Brant, Sebastian. 1509. The shyppe of fooles. London. Campbell, Mike. 2009. “Judith”. Behind the Name: The Etymology and History of First Names, http://behindthename.com/name/judith/ 2009. Ciletti, Elena, and Henrike Lähnemann. 2010. “Judith in the Christian Tradition.” In The Sword of Judith. Judith Studies Across the Disciplines, edited by Kevin R. Brime, Elena Ciletti and Henrike Lähnemann, 41–65. Cambridge: OpenBook Publishers. Cohen, Elizabeth S. 2000. “The Trials of Artemisia Gentileschi: A Rape as History.” The Sixteenth Century Journal 31 (1): 47–75. DeJean, Joan. 2003. “Violent Women and Violence Against Women: Representing the ‘Strong’ Woman in Early Modern France.” Signs 29 (1): 117–47. Elyot, Sir Thomas. [1907] 1973. The Boke named the Gouernor. London: J.M. Dent. Fried, Michael. 2010. The Moment of Caravaggio. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Garrard, Mary. 1989. Artemisia Gentileschi: The Image of the Female Hero in Baroque Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Groves, Beatrice. 2007. Texts and Traditions: Religion in Shakespeare, 1592– 1604. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hamlin, William H. 2013. The Bible in Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hillman, David. 1996. “Puttenham, Shakespeare, and the Abuse of Rhetoric.” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 36 (1): 73–90. “An Homily against Excess of Apparel”. 1869. In The Two Books of Homilies Appointed to be Read in Churches. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kehler, Dorothea. 2009. Shakespeare’s Widows. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Lander, Bonnie. 2008. “Interpreting the Person: Tradition, Conflict, and Cymbeline’s Imogen.” Shakespeare Quarterly 59 (2): 156–84. Lewis, Cynthia. 1991. “’With Simular Proof Enough’: Modes of Misperception in Cymbeline.” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 31 (2): 343–64. Lichtenstein, Jacqueline. 1987. “Making Up Representation: The Risk of Femininity.” Representations 20: 77–87. Marx, Steven. 2000. Shakespeare and the Bible. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Migne, Jean-Paul, ed. 1844–55, Patrologiae Cursus Completus sive Bibliotheca Universalis, integra, uniformis, commoda, orgonomica, monium SS. Patrum, doctorum scriptorumque ecclesiasticorum. . . . , 221 voll. Paris. Miller, Jacqueline T. 2006. “Ladies of the Oddest Passion: Early Modern Women and the Arts of Discretion.” Modern Philology 103 (4): 453–73. Nash, Jerry C. 1997. “Renaissance Misogyny, Biblical Femminism, and Hélisenne de Crenne’s Epistres Familières et invectives.” Renassaince Quarterly 50 (2): 379–410.

100  Rocco Coronato Oberli, Matthias. 2004. “Aspetti di un’estetica dell’orribile nella pittura barocca.” In Estetica barocca, edited by S. Schütze, 223–40. Rome: Campisano Editore. Ovid’s Metamorphoses Translated by Arthur Golding. 2002. Edited by Madeleine Forey. London: Penguin. Parker, Patricia. 1993. “Preposterous Reversals: Love’s Labour’s Lost.” ­Modern Language Quarterly 54: 435–82. Shaheen, Naseeb. 1993. Biblical References in Shakespeare’s Comedies. Newark: University of Delaware Press. Shakespeare, William. 1998. Love’s Labour’s Lost. Edited by H.R. W ­ oudhusyen. The Arden Shakespeare. London: Bloomsbury. Shakespeare, William. 2006. Hamlet. Edited by Ann Thompson and Neil ­Taylor. London: Thomson. Shakespeare, William. 2017. Cymbeline, Edited by Valerie Wayne. The Arden Shakespeare. London: Bloomsbury. Shearman, John. 1979. “Cristofano Allori’s Judith.” The Burlington Magazine 121.910: 2–10. Shuger, Debra. 1994. The Renaissance Bible: Scholarship, Sacrifice, and Subjectivity. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sidney, Philip. [1965] 1973. An Apology for Poetry or The Defence of Poesy. Edited by Geoffrey Shepherd. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Stocker, Margarita. 1998. Judith Sexual Warrior: Women and Power in Western Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press. Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion. 2011. In The Book of Common Prayer: the Texts of 1549, 1559, and 1662. Edited by Brian Cummings. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Topper, David, and Cynthia Gillis. 1996. “Trajectories of Blood: Artemisia Gentileschi and Galileo’s Parabolic Path.” Woman’s Art Journal 17 (1):10–13. Vitkus, Daniel. 2003. Turning Turk: English Theatre and the Multicultural Mediterranean, 1570–1630. New York: Palgrave. Watanabe-O’Kelly, Helen. 2014. “The Eroticization of Judith in Early Modern German Art.” In Gender Matters. Discourses of Violence in Early Modern Literature and the Arts, edited by Mara Wade, 81–101. Amsterdam-New York: Rodopi. Weststeijn, Thijs. 2010. “Seeing and the Transfer of Spirits in Early Modern Art Theory.” In Renaissance Theories of Vision, edited by John S. Hendrix and Charles H. Carman, 149–69. Aldershot: Ashgate. Wiesner, Merry E. 1993. Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

6 “Be her sense but as a monument” Lost Icons and Substitutive Figures in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline Fiammetta Dionisio Shakespeare’s sources for Imogen’s bedroom scene in Cymbeline offer no precise description of the chamber where the heroine is robbed of her bracelet. In contrast to Giovanni Boccaccio’s novella Bernabò da Genova and its English adaptation Frederik of Jennen, Shakespeare provides a detailed picture of the room’s interior, its furniture, and its decoration by means of an elaborate ekphrasis:1 it was hang’d With tapestry of silk and silver, the story Proud Cleopatra, when she met her Roman, And Cydnus swell’d above the banks, or for The press of boats, or pride. . . . The chimney Is south the camber, and the chimney-piece, Chaste Dian, bathing: never saw I figures So likely to report themselves; the cutter Was as another Nature, dumb; outwent her, Motion and breath left out. . . . The roof o’ th’ chamber With golden cherubins is fretted. Her andirons (I had forgot them) were two winking Cupids Of silver, each on one foot standing, nicely Depending on their brands. (Shakespeare 2007, 2.4.67–91) Enshrined among the ornaments of the princess’ chamber and surrounded by golden cherubs and silver cupids are two conflicting representations of femininity. The tapestries depict the seductive Queen of Egypt in triumph on her luxurious barge on the Cydnus, while the chaste lunar goddess in the act of bathing is sculpted on the chimneypiece. The image of a passionate Cleopatra thus contrasts with that of an entirely different type of female, resolute in both mind and body. The present

102  Fiammetta Dionisio chapter investigates the reasons that led Shakespeare to represent the princess’s chamber through such an unexpected pairing – and one that is emphasized by other contrasts that pervade the room. While focusing on the unusual connotations that characterize this chamber, the present investigation will be supported by continual reference to the visual arts produced in early modern Europe. They will provide us not only with a series of examples of how contemporary artists gave shape to the concepts that Shakespeare himself deals with but also hints regarding the cultural climate that determined the use of such a specific iconographic program. Given the importance of the debate on the visual arts that raged in Europe between the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, the present analysis will touch on some of the implications of a controversy that inevitably also affected the world of the theater. Indeed, the chapter also suggests that the ekphrasis nestled in Shakespeare’s late play can be interpreted as an attempt to recover, through the medium of performance, a part of European culture that had hitherto been perceived as lost. What might appear surprising in Shakespeare’s representation of Imogen’s bedroom is the precision of the description of the interior decoration, a precision that might almost seem paradoxical, if we consider that Cymbeline was written in an age, which, as is well known, was marked by a post-Reformation iconoclasm. The latter can be seen as part of a wider attack on a Catholic doctrine that centered on church ceremonial, on the belief that buying indulgences meant purgatorial remission and on the cult of the saints with particular reference to the cult of the Virgin. Indeed, as Tara Hamling suggests, the principal targets were religious images, and specifically “[t]he popular devotional icons of God, the Virgin, saints and imagery associated with Christ’s Passion.” These icons “were considered particularly offensive from a reformist perspective because the excessive worshipful behaviour they attracted indicated that believers confused the image with the heavenly prototype for which it stood” (Hamling 2010, 38). In the same period, however, a contrasting position on holy icons was proclaimed in Rome, the center of the Counter-Reformation. Here, the most acclaimed artists of the day were invited to take part in the resurgence of Catholic Church by producing magnificent works. It is against this background that, in early modern Europe, the visual medium employed by Church fathers to disseminate their doctrine became the object of intense dispute. While important representatives of papal authority, such as Archbishop Gabriele Paleotti, declared that sacred images were “necessary to the Christian people” ([1582] 1960, 125), because of their distinctive ability to “move the souls of observers” (227, translation mine), elsewhere, as Eamon Duffy ­observes, “[i]conoclasm was the central sacrament of the reform” (1992, 480). In England, the reforming preacher William Perkins warned of the extreme danger of holy icons, given that “[s]o soon as the mind frames unto itself any form of god […] an idol is set up in the mind” (Warnings

Icons and Figures in Cymbeline  103 against the Idolatry of the Last Times, quoted in Aston 1988, 453). Whether considered a necessary devotional tool or a dangerous means of perdition, Catholics and Protestants saw an undeniable power enshrined in sacred images. This power was connected to the emotive domain of the faithful, which, according to the different doctrines, had to be either restrained or nurtured. Condemned in primis by Protestant rulers such as Henry VIII and Edward VI, temporarily recovered by the Catholic Mary Tudor, and again forbidden by the Protestant Elizabeth I, sacred icons continued to be the object of heated debate in the reign of James I. However, notwithstanding the general ban on holy images in public places of worship, recent historical studies on the role of icons in Protestantism have demonstrated that the Jacobean period witnessed a slight shift in attitude regarding the visual arts. Hamling (2010, 5, 19) has claimed that “iconoclasm is only one part of the story of the impact of the Reformation on the visual arts in Britain” and has brought to the fore “the complex processes of survival, censorship, assimilation, modification and innovation which resulted in the emergence of a specifically Protestant visual culture.” “The particular form of Protestant culture that emerged in England and Scotland,” she remarks, “is especially evident after the union of the two crowns under James VI and I in 1603.” To be more precise, “[a] fashion in both countries for religious scenes in domestic decoration gained pace during the first decades of the seventeenth century and reached a peak in the period 1620–40.” Hamling also remarks that one of the patterns to note “in relation to craft production is that while stories from the Old Testament were common throughout 1560–1660, New Testament subject matter before 1600 is rare and most examples date from 1610–40. This trend,” she adds, “can perhaps be explained as a gradual subsidence of fears about the danger of idolatry and an emerging consensus about what imagery was deemed acceptable.” The “gradual subsidence of fears” about images connected to Catholicism is evident also in the fact that, even though he was educated in Protestant Scotland, James I attempted at restoring the image of his mother, the Catholic Mary Stuart. Indeed, as Jayne Lewis suggests, under her descendant, “Mary was . . . rehabilitated in pro-Stuart propaganda as the wronged and sainted mother of the line” (2005, 46). The fact that Shakespeare dedicated an extensive ekphrasis to the description of the beautiful interior of the heroine’s bedchamber in a play written during the reign of James I might suggest the author was acquainted with a post-Reformation practice of redecorating domestic interiors. Indeed, it may reflect early recognition on Shakespeare’s part of a cultural change that would grow substantially in the following decades. However, compared to the elaborate decorations Hamling describes as adorning the houses of the Jacobean gentry and middle classes, which typically centered on Old Testament scenes with almost exclusively male subjects, something different is found in Imogen’s chamber. Here the

104  Fiammetta Dionisio cherubs, a typical element of Judeo-Christian imagery, figure unexpectedly in an iconographical program that otherwise appears to revolve entirely around mythological and historical female figures. This may partly depend on the fact, also underlined by Hamling, that “elite patrons generally preferred figures and scenes from classical mythology as the subject for decoration in their houses” (2010, 11). Nevertheless, it does not account for the element of ambiguity evoked by the complexity of the iconographical program of Imogen’s chamber, where several contrasting, as well as heterogeneous, elements harmoniously coexist. In her extensive study of the interior decorations of the British gentry and middle classes, Hamling also dedicates a specific section to bedroom embellishments that increase our understanding of the cultural underpinning of such complex iconography. Even though she advises the reader that “[i]n general there is less surface decoration extant in rooms used as bedchambers than in other formal rooms in the early modern interior,” Hamling manages to provide us with a reasonable number of examples of ladies’ beds and bedrooms that are still present in situ. In particular, she focuses on the decoration of the so-called Queen’s State Bedroom at Burton Agnes Hall in Yorkshire, which dates back to about 1610, as well as some bed decorations in England and Scotland dating from the 1550s to the 1620s. However unusual, these samples are sufficient for H ­ amling to make a series of considerations regarding features that the chambers of a number of early modern noblewomen had in common. Among these rare examples, the aforementioned Queen’s State Bedroom, which belonged to Elizabeth Throckmorton, who married Henry Griffith in 1584, is particularly significant. In the decorations adorning this space, it is possible to observe the coexistence of antithetical elements that, as in Imogen’s chamber, charge the entire room with a sense of ambiguity. As Hamling points out, “Elizabeth’s bedchamber contains a programme of carved imagery relating to her gender, including biblical figures as exemplars of feminine virtues and allegorical personifications of those virtues considered desirable in a woman.” However, she also adds that “[w]ithin the narrow frieze above the overmantel smaller carved figures represent the three vices . . . as the antitheses to the virtues.” The iconographical program of the bedchamber is further complicated by the two separate pediments where we find the carved Old Testament figure of Judith and St. Barbara respectively. Symbolizing chastity, the latter belongs to the New Testament and thus introduces an element of contested imagery. The ambivalence epitomized in the ornamental design of the Queen’s State Bedroom finds a parallel, in Hamling’s analysis, in the striking “combination of spiritual and sexual meanings” that characterize a 1618 wooden bedstead in Falkland Palace in Fife, Scotland, where an allegorical representation of the virtues coexists with some rather unexpected satyrs. Hamling stresses how “[t]hese traditional symbols of male virility

Icons and Figures in Cymbeline  105 are depicted tugging their beards, a rather crude suggestive gesture alluding to sexual desire” (2010, 166, 169). The use of satyrs and other hybrid figures from ancient mythology is the object of an essay by Sasha Roberts dedicated to the bed decoration of the Elizabethan and Jacobean gentry. Here these motifs are considered appropriate to marriage bed ornamentations because the “[u]ninhibited sexual passion, virility and fertility in excess” they conveyed are interpreted as “a legitimate erotic incitement.” Indeed, they function as a coveted allusion to the act of procreation, to which the bridal bed is destined in the cultural imaginary of the early modern period (1995, 339, 340). Other scholars, however, have focused on the element of anxiety and uncertainty that accompanies the institution of marriage, which the ambiguity of bedroom decorations might significantly indicate. Catherine Belsey has examined the continual, almost obsessive juxtaposition of the matrimonial bond with the ill-fated story of Adam and Eve in the literature of the time, a theme that also runs through Shakespeare’s plays and that was considered particularly appropriate for bed decorations. She considers it symptomatic of “a precariousness in the early modern account of marriage, an instability in the cultural meaning of the institution itself,” which is suggested by “[t]he marriage furniture, the sermons, and the secular texts together” (Belsey 1999, 59, 81). This view is confirmed by the fact that other early modern bedroom decorations are concerned with the issue of marital infidelity, as exemplified by the biblical story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. “The image of Joseph fleeing the bed of a ­seductress” dominates the plasterwork overmantel of the 1620s in a first-floor chamber in Ludstone Hall in Claverley, Shropshire, which, ­according to Hamling, “might have originally have served as a bedroom” (2010, 172). Consequently, it should not be overlooked that while hearing the description of Imogen’s chamber in Cymbeline, some contemporary noblewomen might well have recognized in the bedroom’s ambiguous decoration the contrasting elements that characterized their own private spaces. Indeed, in the light of the aforementioned examples, the complexity of the iconographical program of the heroine’s chamber does not appear to be an isolated case as regards bedrooms in early modern Britain. It is also possible that, in a play concerned with the value of the matrimonial bond to such an extent that the hero allows a stranger to put his wife’s fidelity to the test, the bedroom decoration functions as a warning. Such emblems, where the chaste Diana is paired with the lustful Cleopatra, and the andiron cupids in the fireplace contrast with the golden cherubs adorning the ceiling, might well have provided a warning for newly married couples on the dangers of carnal love. This is the point made by R.S. Edgecombe, who claims that “Shakespeare is writing with an eye at the play as a whole and using his emblems ad hoc.” According to Edgecombe, not only the winking cupids but also the indirect allusion

106  Fiammetta Dionisio to Actaeon’s punishment in the Diana myth, as well as Cleopatra’s reception of Antony, all hint at “the start of a narrative in which physical love will issue in betrayal and death” (2001, 17). These considerations lead us to speculate that the decoration of Imogen’s boudoir, in addition to drawing our attention to the post-­ Reformation custom of luxuriously decorating private spaces, might also reveal feelings of uncertainty and an unsettled state of mind, which, according to some scholars, characterized early modern men and women. As well as betraying those anxieties connected to the institution of marriage, however, our attention now turns to how such ambiguity might have been connected to an unconfessable longing, that is, for New Testament images linked to the old Catholic rituals. Bryan Mangrum and Giuseppe Scavizzi have focused on the “the ambivalent feeling of the modern man, who looks at the destruction of images that took place in Europe in the sixteenth century with mixed feelings of relief and nostalgia.” To be more specific, Mangrum and Scavizzi suggest that on the one hand, Protestants benefited from the elimination of certain sacred icons and superstitions; on the other, the destruction of art during the sixteenth century represented a loss: a loss in the ability of the Christian mind to generate and sustain a world of symbols which before had made communal life as well as individual life richer from an imaginative and from an emotional point of view. ([1991] 1998, 4, 5) In Cymbeline, these contrasting “feelings of relief and nostalgia” at the removal of sacred icons may be epitomized in Shakespeare’s description of Imogen’s chamber, the decoration of which might partly have been perceived as dangerously overwrought by the most observant among Protestants. In fact, the dramatist seems to betray an unexpressed sense of release from the danger of idolatry when describing the admirable figures sculpted on the chimney. The implication that their “cutter was as another Nature” (2.4.85) might covertly equate them with the beautiful Catholic artworks that Protestants referred to as “carved and painted idols” (Andreas von Karlstad, On the Removal of Images, quoted in Mangrum and Scavizzi, 1998, 21). However, the most potentially disquieting figure in the bedroom is the heroine herself. When Iachimo whispers “be her sense but as a monument / Thus in a chapel lying” (2.2.32–33), Imogen’s sleeping body appears to be compared implicitly to the type of funerary statue that had generally been destroyed or removed from British churches. Indeed, what many Protestant preachers judged particularly dangerous for the believer were the life-size three-­dimensional sculptures, rather than two-dimensional paintings or bas-reliefs. As Hamling points out, they “were condemned

Icons and Figures in Cymbeline  107 by early ­reformers for their realistic appearance and seemingly magical movements which deceived worshippers into belief that they were animated” (2010, 49). Confirmation of the dangerous potency of the carved sculptures with which the heroine is associated is given a few lines later, when her supposedly deceiving nature is denounced by the deluded Posthumus: “Let there be no honour / Where there is beauty: truth, where semblance” (2.4.108–9). On the other hand, such a detailed description of the heroine’s chamber and of her magnificent sleeping body could not but betray a deeply felt nostalgia on the part of the dramatist. In effect, it is as though, in such a private space distinguished by outstanding decoration, Shakespeare covertly projected not only a preoccupation with the dangers of idolatry but also a desire to regain the “world of symbols” that were formerly linked to the lost Catholic tradition. “Among things to be forgotten,” Maria Del Sapio Garbero remarks in a perceptive essay on Shakespeare’s last plays, “were images, signs, and narratives connected to the Marian cult . . . whose enforced erasing must have felt as particularly depriving for the eye and the soul, let alone the imagination revolving around the maternal figure.” Del Sapio Garbero suggests that when such a cult was “turned into a field of dilapidation authorized by law,” it “also became the field of many forms of heresy.” She argues that the “heretical” visual art connected to the eradicated Marian cult “remained as a trace in Shakespeare’s fable-like representation of the maternal in The Winter’s Tale and in Pericles” (Del Sapio Garbero 2015, 3, 5, 7). In the latter case the dramatist drew on Catholic imagery linked to that stage in the Virgin’s life known as the dormitio – in which, according to apocryphal narratives of Mary’s life prior to her Assumption, her sacred body was deemed worthy of defying corporal corruption and was admitted to heaven by virtue of its purity. The fact that in Imogen’s bedroom the female figures surrounding the heroine’s sleeping body are covered by a ceiling fretted with cherubs may betray the artist’s unconfessed desire to recover other elements of an otherwise erased imagery. Indeed, the very fact that the chaste heroine – whose body is overcome by a sleep that is “ape of death” (2.2.31) – is described as lying on her bed might recall the image of The Death of the Virgin (1462) as represented by Mantegna, where Mary is ­portrayed on her deathbed surrounded by the apostles. Moreover, as she is depicted as both resembling a lily and a funerary monument, Imogen might also r­ ecall those paintings of the Assumption described in Del Sapio Garbero’s study, such as Raphael’s Assumption (1502–03) and ­Giulio Romano’s Madonna of Monteluce (1505–25), where the Virgin is seen having risen from her flowery tomb to the wonder of the apostles. Furthermore, in a play that is obsessively concerned with the “stain” (2.4.139–140) of women’s sexuality – a stain interestingly epitomized by “a mole cinque-spotted” on the heroine’s “left breast” (2.2.37–38) – ­another, in this case “compensatory,” image that comes to mind is that of

108  Fiammetta Dionisio the Immaculate Conception. Although only established as official Catholic dogma in 1854, this precept was also the object of fervent debate in Renaissance Italy. This was attested by a flourishing in the visual arts of a subject known as the “Dispute on the Immaculate Conception,” where the sinless birth of the Virgin was often linked to the other controversial issue regarding Mary, that is, her own virginity. However, in Reformation England, anybody apprehended with one of these icons would have been charged with heresy which itself explains why a new set of mediums, including traditional religious figures, soon started to circulate in Protestant countries where the cult of the Virgin had been displaced. On closer inspection, in fact, the iconography of the Immaculate Conception in early modern Europe did not lend itself exclusively to traditional Catholic doctrine. As Urszula Szulakowska observes, at Shakespeare’s time, traditional religious imagery had become an essential symbol in the visual expression of Western esotericism. “Already in the 12th century Western alchemists from the outset were incorporating Christian eschatology into their writings,” and from the fourteenth century iconography regarding the Virgin Mary was appropriated by the Spiritual Franciscans to serve as an allegory of the alchemical process. In particular, the Immaculate Conception was exploited as “a rhetorical device enabling them to ignore [the scholastics’] objections […] to the contentions that the metals changed species in the process of transmutation” (Szulakowska 2017, 16, 21). According to alchemists operating already in the twelfth century, the Virgin symbolized the “female” phase of the opus, also known as the albedo, and represented by the alchemic element of mercury. For this reason she was all-powerful in guiding the initiate to a state of unprecedented purification in the journey toward sacred wisdom.2 However, it was above all during the Renaissance, “when Catholic images were being trashed by the Protestant Reformers,” that “traditional iconography continued to play a significant role in the illustrated treatises of the Lutheran alchemists” (22). As Szulakowska suggests, the revival of sumptuously engraved books on alchemy in Northern Europe should also be seen as a consequence of iconoclastic laws imposed during the Reformation. In effect, “[t]he awe-inspiring alchemical illustrations with their aura of the sacred may have offered some degree of psychological compensation for the brutal severance with the devotional tradition that had once sustained the medieval Christian” (22). As we have seen, when Cymbeline was written, scenes from the Old Testament were again being used to decorate domestic interiors, although representing the Virgin was still quite an unusual practice. This lack would have been partly alleviated by the enchanting illustrations of the alchemical treatises (and the various ways in which Lutheran alchemists appropriated the imagery of Mary clearly bear witness to this). Szulakowska points out that in the iconographic field, “[t]wo specific types of Marian imagery were adopted: that of the

Icons and Figures in Cymbeline  109 Apocalyptic Woman . . . and that of the Immaculate Conception, a type derived from the Apocalyptic Mary” (2017, 22, 3). Associated with the Virgin Mary by Catholic theologians, the Apocalyptic Woman is described in the Book of Revelation as clothed with the sun with a twelvestar crown on her head and the moon at her feet; she holds a baby in her arms and a dragon lurks nearby. In the relative iconography of the Immaculate Conception, the dragon is transformed into a serpent and the moon is reduced to a crescent. In alchemic iconography, however, the crescent moon was not ­attributed exclusively to the Virgin Mary. It was also the key symbol associated with another female figure, who, along with the Virgin, was often referred to in North European esoteric treatises. During the Renaissance, the chaste Diana had become object of considerable interest to occultists, especially as a result of Ovid’s Metamorphoses being generally interpreted as an alchemical allegory. Like the Virgin, the goddess of the hunt symbolized the albedo stage; in addition, by virtue of her cult overlapping with that of the Egyptian goddess Isis, she also symbolized all three stages of the alchemic process that are epitomized by the changing faces of the moon, the heavenly body associated with both deities. In Concerning Isis and Osiris – which was one of the most important sources for Western alchemical narratives – the moon goddess Isis is not only addressed as the female principle in Nature but also as the custodian of the highest alchemic wisdom – features that, by extension, are associated with the “alchemic Diana.” This divinity was of particular interest in early modern England. Indeed, during the sixteenth century, Elizabeth I had ingeniously assimilated both the Marian cult and an alchemic reading of Diana into her public persona. It was during her reign that the icon of the Virgin was partly recovered by means of the Queen’s own efforts to create a powerful myth of herself (Hackett 1995), through which she was repeatedly referred to and celebrated by artists and poets as Diana or Cynthia. Her virginal body, often adorned in portraits with a crescent moon,3 was also associated with an imminent era of renewal. Even though Cymbeline was written a few years after the death of the Virgin Queen, the constant references to the goddess suggest the survival of this cult of Elizabeth/Diana into the reign of James I, where, notwithstanding the diffusion of traditional religious imagery in the decoration of new domestic interiors, representations of Mary were still generally banned. Like the “alchemic Virgin,” to a certain extent the image of the flawless Diana allowed Protestants to fill the void left by severance from images of the Virgin imposed by the Reformation; it offered them a virtuous female figure, whose unassailable body subconsciously recalled that of Mary. As in the alchemical treatises of the Lutherans, this recovery is achieved in the decoration of Imogen’s chamber in a sublimated form, which appears to be permeated by esoteric visual elements. The highly

110  Fiammetta Dionisio intellectualized figure of Diana, caught between Renaissance magic and philosophical Hermeticism, allows for an indirect replacement of the image of a virginal, redeeming woman, who, like the Virgin Mary and her alchemical counterpart, guides man on his path toward transcendence. While keeping in mind the associations established between the figure of the “alchemic Diana” and that of the “alchemic Virgin,” we will now discuss the implications raised by such an allusion in the overall interpretation of the iconographical program of Imogen’s bedroom. With reference to prominent studies into the sources that Shakespeare drew upon in the construction of his plays, the present analysis is corroborated by a discussion of the literary and artistic works produced by Shakespeare’s contemporaries. In some cases they will be of assistance in contextualizing Imogen’s bedroom, viewing it as a genuine product of early modern British culture; in other cases they will provide insight into particular pieces that might have supplied the playwright with potential models. Literary criticism has provided significant interpretations of the iconography of Imogen’s bedchamber in recent decades. Edgecombe’s general reading of the room’s design as a warning against the perils of physical love does not prevent him from perceiving more enlightening meanings. Starting with the observation that the cherubs decorating the ceiling appear as an isolated Judeo-Christian element “in a play that otherwise tries conscientiously to observe its pagan framework,” he takes this curious embellishment as evidence that the entire bedroom should be “read . . . as a microcosm.” Here, “a ceiling gold and angelic in token of the permanence and immutability of agape” appears to dominate “a lower zone where hangings are fashioned in part from silver thread and where the chimney-piece represents the goddess of the mutable moon (frequently coupled with silver in the plays).” “To a Jacobean mind steeped in the imagery of ‘degree, priority and place,’” he adds, “the spatial graduation downward, and the transition from gold to silver, would have represented the inferior relation of the sublunary world to the empyrean.” On the “ground level” of the ideal strata he outlines, Edgecombe locates the fireplace andirons, which lead him to conclude that “[n]ot only does the metal [they are made of] contrast with the gold ceiling, but so too do their cupids with the cherubim, a contrast ironized by the visual similarities of representations” (Edgecombe 2001, 17). Edgecombe is not alone in his attempt to identify the program concealed behind the decoration of Imogen’s bedroom. In a wide-ranging study aimed at reconstructing the iconography of the entire play, Peggy Muñoz Simonds interprets several elements of the room in the light of the Neoplatonic theories on beauty. She also suggests that “the bedchamber was actually designed to represent a Renaissance Temple of the Graces and therefore is a suitable resting place for Beauty, or the third Grace, in the form of Princess Imogen” (1992, 96). Alongside the heroine, who occupies a central position in the temple, Muñoz Simonds assumes the other

Icons and Figures in Cymbeline  111 Graces – Chastity and Love – are represented by the figures of Diana and Cleopatra-Venus respectively. If Imogen’s chamber has been interpreted as a temple dedicated to the three Graces, as well as a microcosm where different levels are symbolized by gold, silver and the cherubs’ metal, it is also possible to construe the threefold program of the room in the light of another t­ heory – i.e., that pertaining to alchemy. On this basis, the goddess of the hunt can be envisaged as an “alchemic Diana,” whose role in Lutheran alchemical books overlapped with that of the “alchemic Virgin,” offering Protestants a valid substitute for the absent icon of Mary. It was indeed by means of a threefold process that the adepts of this “art” believed in the transmutation of base metal from silver into salt, or ­“alchemic gold,” which we can see exemplified in the material constituting the fireplace andirons, the tapestry on the wall, and the cherubs adorning the ceiling. Moreover, the iconographical design of the entire chamber seems to be charged with additional contrasting values, while, at the same time, the harmonious coexistence of conflicting trends is suggested by several details. First of all, Diana appears to be markedly differentiated from ­Cleopatra, offering Shakespeare’s audience an initial pairing of alchemic opposites. In this regard, some considerations concerning the sources used by the dramatist in another play provide us with the reason why he might have decided to have his heroine’s chamber adorned in such a distinctive way. Indeed, while listening to the description of a tapestry depicting Cleopatra in Imogen’s chamber, the audience would have recalled another Shakespearian passage that had been heard at the Globe a few years earlier. In Antony and Cleopatra (1606–7), Enobarbus delivers a description of the queen’s triumph on the Cydnus. His account of the first meeting between the Egyptian queen and Mark Antony, which represents one of the most elaborate ekphrases in English poetry, offers another, extremely visual, representation of the heroine. Here, the beauty of the depicted woman appears so great that she is deemed “O’er-­ picturing that Venus where we see / The fancy outwork nature” (Shakespeare 2015, 2.2.210–11). With Plutarch’s Parallel Lives of the Greeks and Romans, accessible to the English public through Thomas North’s 1579 translation, Shakespeare already had access to a comparison between Cleopatra and Venus. However, Venus is not the only divinity that the Egyptian queen is associated with in the play. While delving into issues raised in his analysis of Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, Michael Lloyd (1959, 88–94) pointed out that the playwright must not only have been familiar with Plutarch’s Lives but also with Concerning Isis and Osiris, which had been translated into English by Philemon Holland in 1603. The latter treatise, which represents a comprehensive analysis of the ancient mystery cult of the moon goddess Isis, is a text that Shakespeare must have referred to when he portrayed the multifaceted

112  Fiammetta Dionisio queen of Egypt. Shakespeare’s Cleopatra is such a complex figure that literary criticism has also envisaged, in her features, a veiled reference to the Wisdom figure as it is “personified in the sapiential books of Alexandrian Judaism (such as . . . the Ecclesiastes)” (Sacerdoti 1990, 79, translation mine). Indeed, as Sacerdoti writes, these books “had developed the figure of a female demiurge in the effort of assimilating the one of Isis” (79). Another work he must have consulted is Apuleius’s The Golden Ass, available through William Adlington’s 1566 translation (Lloyd 1959, 88–94). Here Isis identifies herself not only with Venus but also with other goddesses of the Greek and Roman pantheon, including Diana herself. Shakespeare must have realized that one of the very sources he had consulted for an earlier work provided a clear indication of Isis’s identification with Diana. Moreover, not only in Apuleius’s time but also in Renaissance Europe, Diana was often associated with the Egyptian moon goddess; indeed, their cults had largely been superimposed since ancient times. Consequently, in Shakespeare’s time Diana was not only the goddess of chastity and Cleopatra not just the lustful Egyptian queen who seduced Antony. On the contrary, they had a common identity, as both could be associated with a complex mythological figure that had particular resonance in the early modern period, and on whom several alchemic myths were based. It follows that the opposition between Diana and Cleopatra that dominates Imogen’s room must have been anything but accidental. Indeed, when interpreted in the light of such Isis-like features, the apparently distinct female figures that adorn the chamber can be seen as simply two aspects of a single, complex archetype of femininity. This, like the Egyptian queen gifted with “infinite variety” (2.2.246), comprises “alchemically” even the most disparate elements. As we have seen, it was in Shakespeare’s England in particular, that Diana, who also possessed esoteric connotations, epitomized such an archetype. She was indeed an “alchemic Diana,” who, like the “alchemic Virgin,” was thought capable of guiding initiates on the path toward coincidentia oppositorum. It might thus have been unsurprising for a Jacobean audience to see her associated with an historical figure that might have otherwise been dismissed as her opposite. This ambiguous contrast between Diana and Cleopatra, which culminates in a seemingly paradoxical superimposition of the two figures, can be extended to other details of Imogen’s room. Indeed, the chamber is characterized by different pairings of alchemic opposites. The element of fire, associated here with the chimney, is in contrast to the water in which the deity and her nymphs, sculpted on the decoration of the hood, are bathing. Cleopatra’s passionate encounter with Antony, evocative of fire, is tempered by the swollen waters of the Cydnus, where their meeting takes place. At the same time, as queen of Egypt – from whose dark soil alchemy seems to have derived its name – Cleopatra is

Icons and Figures in Cymbeline  113 also associated with the earth as opposed to the element of air, which is suggested by the cherubs on the ceiling. Finally, even the andirons, the two cupids gracefully “depending on their brands,” epitomize a further pairing of alchemic opposites. As Claudia Corti remarks, they represent Venus’s sons Eros and Anteros, “one of them standing for the spiritual, the other for the physical form of love” (2002, 82, translation mine). Although much has been written on the precise position and possible meanings of the cupids that decorate the chimney’s firedogs, a general consensus has never been reached. Among the scholars who have taken part in the debate, there are also those, like Corti, who suggest that the fireplace sculptures described in this passage “did actually exist when the drama was written (and can still be seen) at Knole Castle, in Kent.” Indeed, “they were created by the Florentine artist Nicolò Roccatagliata based on a drawing of one of Alciato’s emblems.” “If Shakespeare knew about them remains matter of speculation,” she concludes. However, “he must have certainly been familiar with their emblematic source” (Corti 2002, 82, translation mine). If the andirons represented in Cymbeline’s ekphrasis really did exist at the time when the drama was written, we can speculate that other elements of Imogen’s room might also have been recognized by some of the more refined members of Shakespeare’s audience – either at the Globe or particularly at the Blackfriars, where the play was probably performed. In fact, the tapestries that decorate Imogen’s room recall a series of Flemish hangings described by Ebeltie Hartkamp. “In the Northern Netherlands,” she observes, “tapestries with subjects such as . . . Cleopatra . . . were woven by weavers such as Spiering, Van Mander I and De Cracht.” In particular, François Spiering of Delft created “a set of twelve tapestries” that in 1583 were bought by “Sir Walter Raleigh, the English seafarer and courtier of Queen Elizabeth.” Having “a dreamlike atmosphere, rendered in late-mannerist style,” some of these tapestries became so fashionable in England that another series was produced and “presented in 1613 to Elizabeth Stuart, the bride of Frederick V, the Elector Palatine” (Hartkamp 2002, 29, 26). Muñoz Simonds (1992), for her part, links Imogen’s tapestry to a set of eight panels representing the History of Cleopatra created by the famous Dutch weaver Catherine van den Eynde, which apparently had been sold in 1607 for 4,147 livres. The purchase of these works has been confirmed by Muñoz Simonds’s research into an inventory of British royal furnishing dating back to 1565. Indeed, it reveals that “5 peeces of hangings of Cleopatra 9 foote” were collected in the Standing Wardrobe at St. James Palace; that “Eight peeces of Good Tapestry of the Story of Cleopatra Lined with Canvas” were stored in the Hampton Court Wardrobe; and that “9 peeces of Cleopatra” were kept in the Windsor Wardrobe. This led the critic to suggest that “Shakespeare, as a member of the King’s Men, may well have seen an early example of one or more of these pieces at the court

114  Fiammetta Dionisio of James I.” Moreover, Muñoz Simonds recalls the Elizabethan habit of using tapestries temporarily “for the production of masques during the Christmas Revels at the Inns of Court.” It is on this basis that she suggests that “such a costly tapestry might even have been borrowed by the acting company to serve as a symbolic backcloth for the bedroom scene in Cymbeline, whether performed at Blackfriars or the Globe” (Muñoz Simonds 1992, 97). Another existing artwork that has been associated with Shakespeare’s ekphrases is the statue of Ariadne in the Vatican Museums. As we have seen, in Act 2, Iachimo does not limit himself to a description of Imogen’s bedroom, but, as he enters the chamber, he abandons himself to a detailed picture of the sleeping heroine: “Cyterea, / How bravely thou becom’st thy bed! Fresh lily! /And whither than the sheets! That I might touch!” (2.2.14–16). “Since the image of a beautiful sleeping woman was a popular iconographic figure of Nature during the Renaissance,” Muñoz Simonds suggests, “a Jacobean audience would automatically imagine her sleeping in a pose like that of the famous Hellenistic sculpture of a sleeping goddess resembling either Venus-Cleopatra or Ariadne” (Muñoz Simonds 1992, 120). As in the case of Imogen, the history of Ariadne, which was rediscovered in the early sixteenth century, is curiously intertwined with the role played by a bracelet, the snake-shaped jewel on the statue’s left arm, which led to its mistaken identification with Cleopatra. Like the heroine of Shakespeare’s play, who is believed dead when she is not, and is later found by the Roman General Lucius, the ancient statue had been thought to be that of the dead Cleopatra rather than the sleeping Cretan princess whom Theseus abandoned on the Isle of Naxos, and whose body was eventually discovered by Dionysus. The newly found statue, in turn, had been purchased by Pope Julius II in 1512 and then displayed in the Belvedere Courtyard at the Vatican, where it was located over a grotto and used as a fountain. As we are informed by B.R. Smith (“Sermons in Stones,” quoted in Muñoz Simonds, 120), engravings such as that representing “the dead Cleopatra” had become in Shakespeare’s time “the imaginative property of all Europeans,” as they were included in Antoine Lafrery’s Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae (1575) and in Giovanni Battista de’Cavalieri’s Antiquarium Statuarum Urbis Romae (1561?-94). Being a series of engravings including in the first case “several plates of antique sculpture among its view of classic ruins” and in the latter “[a]n anthology of more than fifty prints devoted to classical statues . . . in the early 1560s” which amounted to “two hundred plates in 1594” (“Sermons in Stones,” quoted in Muñoz Simonds, 120–21), these collections allowed for the wide circulation of an important cultural heritage. It was only at the end of the eighteenth century that the real identity of the statue was revealed and when, following the discovery of a sarcophagus that represented a gigantomachy, it was moved onto its

Icons and Figures in Cymbeline  115 monumental base. Whether Shakespeare had this particular statue in mind when he had Iachimo describing Imogen’s sleeping body “but as a monument” we are unable to tell. However, as Muñoz Simonds suggests, his “comparison of the sleeping woman to a funerary sculpture is apt for the Vatican sleeping Ariadne about to be awakened by Dionysus could very well have been carved originally for just such a purpose.” Furthermore, she adds, “the figure of Ariadne sleeping was a not uncommon figure of promised resurrection on Roman marble sarcophagi.” Muñoz Simonds also links the figure of the sleeping Imogen to a subject that was particularly popular in Shakespeare’s own time. “Renaissance artists, especially the Venetians, did numerous paintings of sleeping women like Ariadne, who – without their knowledge – are being looked at by voyeurs” (1995, 122, 123). Muñoz Simonds is certainly referring here to the series of paintings that were destined to decorate the “Camerini d’Alabastro” in the building connecting the Este Castle and the Ducal Palace in Ferrara, which Alfonso I d’Este commissioned from prominent Venetian Masters. Indeed, his studiolo was meant to include Giovanni Bellini’s The Feast of the Gods (1514, completed by Titian in 1529), Titian’s Worship of Venus (1518–19), Bacchus and Ariadne (1520–23) and The Bacchanal of the Andrians (1523–26). In the latter painting, the sleeping Ariadne is even depicted in the very same pose as the sculpture displayed in the Belvedere Courtyard. Leaving aside the figure of Ariadne, the final focus in our study returns to the Diana myth, which provided a typical early modern subject for the visual arts in several European courts. As we are informed by Agnès Lafont, the “[c]ultural transvestitio of myth is best illustrated by the parallel ways in which the mythological portrait functions in the French and ­­English courts” (2013, 41). In fact, the goddess was splendidly represented in Shakespeare’s time in the courts of Fontainebleau, Anet, in the gardens of Nonsuch Palace, as well as in Hardwick Hall’s High Great Chamber.4 However, as the present investigation is primarily concerned with the decoration of private rooms, what is most pertinent to our discussion of the complex program of Imogen’s bedchamber is the fact that when Cymbeline was written, a beautiful image of Diana was at the center of the iconographical design of the rooms of two Italian noblewomen. One of them, we suggest, might have served as a source of inspiration for Shakespeare’s description of Imogen’s chamber. The two rooms in question are the Camera di San Paolo (Figure 6.1), decorated in 1518–19 by Antonio Allegri, more commonly known as Correggio, in Parma’s Monastery of San Paolo, and the Stufetta di Diana e Atteone (Figure  6.2), painted in 1524 by Girolamo Francesco Mazzola, also known as Parmigianino, in Fontanellato’s Rocca Sanvitale (a fortress located in the countryside near Parma). The Camera was the bedchamber of the intrepid Abbess Giovanna da Piacenza (1479–1524) (Panofsky, 1961), and was also the model for the decoration of the Stufetta. The latter was the private

Figure 6.1  A ntonio Allegri, Camera di San Paolo, Northern wall, Monastery of San Paolo, Parma, 1518–19.  Courtesy of Polo Museale dell’Emilia Romagna.

Figure 6.2  F  rancesco Mazzola, Stufetta di Diana e Atteone, Western wall, Rocca Sanvitale, Fontanellato, 1524. Courtesy of Comune di Fontanellato.

Icons and Figures in Cymbeline  117 mysteries room (Citati 1992, 101) of Paola Gonzaga (1504–1550), art pa­ aleazzo Sanvitale (Di Giampaolo tron and wife of the condottiero Gian G and Fadda 2002, 52). The similarity between Imogen’s room and the two Italian chambers is striking. The ceilings of all three are decorated with putti or angels, and in each of them, all figures revolve around the central image of Diana, who, in the Camera, is also depicted in triumph on the chimney hood. Both the Italian chambers have bare stretches of wall, once evidently covered by tapestries that unfortunately have been lost. The things that were depicted on these missing wall hangings remain a matter of speculation; however, even without any written testimony regarding the design of the tapestries, we can claim that, as with Imogen’s chamber, the intention behind both the Camera and the Stufetta seems to have been to convey a mysterious sense of harmony based on the coexistence of contrasting elements. In this regard, observations made by Michele Frazzi and Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco, among others, are crucial to our understanding of whether the frescoes in the rooms were the result of a predetermined iconographical design. The two critics, in fact, consider the decoration of these enigmatic rooms as the result of a precise design based on alchemic wisdom. In particular, Frazzi points out that the Camera “must be understood as an adaptation of opposites,” and the lunettes in the chamber “must be ‘read’ in pairs, each pair consisting in a lunette and its spatial opposite.” He also maintains that the principal role of Diana, around whom all the contrasting pairs revolve, is “to constantly seek out good and to serve as guide toward good in the same way in which the female element – in the alchemic myth – serves as guide toward the spirit” (2004, 28, 32, 115). Like Imogen’s chamber, where the image of the chaste Diana coexists with the portrayal of the sensual Cleopatra, and the cupids that adorn the andirons embody two contrasting forms of love, the chamber painted by Allegri is a celebration of the divine union of a series of opposites, created under the guidance of the goddess. Many years before Frazzi’s study, Fagiolo dell’Arco had carried out a similar analysis of the Stufetta ([1969] 2016). In his view, in this room it is Actaeon’s metamorphosis that allegorically represents the three stages of the opus: first, the chaotic moment of the nigredo, where the hunter, still unaware of the journey he is going to undertake, chances on Diana’s fountain; then, the albedo stage, when he is turned into a nymph, thus representing the feminine principle in nature; and finally the citrinitas, or rubedo stage, which, by transforming the hunter into a stag that will be devoured by his own dogs, reverses the roles, virtually upturning the subject. The stages of the opus epitomized in the hunter’s metamorphosis are achieved, in the Stufetta, under the attentive supervision of the chaste Diana, whose representation, just like in Imogen’s room, faces another figure that, like Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, is evocative of earth and fertility. Indeed, in front of the hunting goddess’ image, the visitor of Fontanellato can admire a picture of Demeter, the deity of the Greek

118  Fiammetta Dionisio pantheon who presided over the harvest and the fecundity of the soil. Finally, even though the figure of Actaeon is not explicitly mentioned in Shakespeare’s description of Imogen’s chamber, his ghost, which is openly evoked throughout the play, seems to lurk also in the background of the bath of Diana decorating the heroine’s chimneypiece. Indeed, contemporary iconography of the goddess’s bath typically included the figure of the hunter, whose metamorphosing body often appeared in the surrounding woods. His figure, along with the one of the goddess, was also frequently alluded to in the early modern representations of the alchemic cosmos, where Diana stood for the female element and the hunter’s metamorphosis for the transmutation of the matter inside the alembic (Fagiolo dell’Arco, [1969] 2016, 32). One of these illustrations was etched by the Swiss engraver Matthäus Merian in 1618, just a few years after Cymbeline’s composition. A comparison between the decoration of the chimneypiece in Imogen’s room and the one in the Camera di San Paolo has already been provided in Muñoz Simonds’s iconographical reconstruction of the chamber. Here, she suggests that the image of virginal Diana was in fact very rarely employed to decorate Renaissance chimneypieces . . . [as] Diana and her fountain are antithetical to fire and heath, elements of passion that are more appropriately symbolized by Venus, Mars, Vulcan, or Cupid. The hood decoration in the Camera di San Paolo is therefore “one notable exception to this rule in Renaissance art,” although she warns that “Shakespeare would not have known this particular work.” Muñoz Simonds therefore limits herself to considering it “not as a possible source for the decorative details of Imogen’s bedchamber but rather to illustrate the high level of sophisticated thought and symbolism that often went into the designing of Renaissance chambers for the wealthy” (2010, ­101–2). In fact, research into the movements of Allegri’s drawings confirms that they had to await Charles I’s purchase of the Gonzaga Collection in 1627–28 before they arrived on English soil (Popham 1957, 137–38); this would make it impossible for Shakespeare to know about the Camera. However, what I would claim as Shakespeare’s potential source for the decoration of Imogen’s chamber is not the one painted by Allegri, but the one by Mazzola the following decade – which, as mentioned above, was based on the model of the Camera. What might have facilitated Shakespeare’s acquaintance with the Stufetta is that some of Mazzola’s drawings – probably collected in a small volume – had arrived at James I’s court after the death of their previous owner Alessandro Vittoria, which occurred in 1608 (Popham 1953, 47; Luzio 1913, 42). As reported in Vasari’s Lives, these sketches, along with some prints, had originally been stolen from a trunk by Antonio

Icons and Figures in Cymbeline  119 da Trento, with the result that, as David Ekserdjian infers, “various of his drawings were consequently available to printmakers” (2006, 223). Anthony Wells-Cole has dedicated a book to the influence of continental prints in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, where he demonstrates that “when Elizabeth I came to the throne of England, prints had become ‘the standard medium for passing visual information and artistic themes across geographical distances’.” He also dedicates a specific section of his work to the influence of Italian prints on British culture where he states that even though “the association of Italy with papism minimised the impact of the growing output of reproductive prints . . . prints and printed books sustained her influence on the visual arts, which was transmitted [also] through French and Flemish channels” (1997, 4, 7). We might therefore hypothesize that seeing a print of some drawings or frescoes by Mazzola partly inspired Shakespeare to create the curious iconography of Imogen’s chamber. Moreover, in Shakespeare’s time, a written description of the Stufetta was also available, as Anton Francesco Doni had dedicated the fourth section of his Ville (1566) to the Rocca Sanvitale (Di Giampaolo and Fadda 2002, 52). Doni, a defrocked priest, was one of the leaders of a circle of libertine thinkers whose works were popular in Europe. Among his acquaintances were Pietro Aretino, author of the Lust Sonnets, which were notorious throughout Europe, and Bernardino Ochino, a fervent Spiritual Franciscan who was charged with heresy. During his long peregrinations, in 1563 Ochino attempted to seek the protection of Michelangelo Florio, an admirer of his Dialogues and the father of Shakespeare’s contemporary John (Yates 2010, 19). In the climate of “cultural mobility” (Greenblatt, 2010) that characterized early modern Europe, the dissemination of works from Doni’s cultural milieu may also account for the possible circulation of the Ville among an English audience, which possibly included Shakespeare himself. Thus, while Boccaccio did not provide Shakespeare with a detailed description of the heroine’s chamber, there were a number of other sources available, including not only literature but also painting, sculpture and the art of tapestry, where he might have found much inspiration. However, the way he drew on and elaborated these sources, especially those from the visual arts, was influenced by the complex manner in which they were regarded in early modern British culture. In investigating the representation of Imogen’s room in light of the culture in which it was conceived, that is, in the midst of the controversy over sacred images, the present analysis has taken into consideration not only post-­Reformation iconoclasm but also the Jacobean rediscovery of decorating domestic interiors and of partly reintroducing traditional religious imaginary. What was still excluded, however, was the image of the Virgin, which, along with the figure of God and the saints, remained part of the disputed iconography. The sense of nostalgia for the lost cult of Mary, which

120  Fiammetta Dionisio was certainly felt by many Protestants, brought my attention to the revival of illustrated alchemical treatises in northern countries, where an iconography that centered on the “alchemic Virgin” and the “alchemic Diana” had a crucial role. Indeed, these figures undoubtedly provided Protestants with a form of psychological compensation following the severance of the emotional element once provided by visual arts linked to the Marian tradition. This is one of the reasons why, in early modern Britain in particular, the eradication imposed by the Reformed Church was accompanied by reclaiming the cult of Diana, who, during Shakespeare’s lifetime, became tinged with esotericism. This highly intellectualized figure, which finds an interesting parallel in the iconography of the “alchemic Virgin,” represented the safest way for Protestants to recover a moiety of the traditional imagery that had been lost. Like the chambers decorated by Allegri and Mazzola, dominated by the figure of the alchemic goddess, Imogen’s chamber can also be considered an “alchemic camera.” However, the curious elements that comprise Shakespeare’s version should not only be read in light of the concept of coincientia oppositorum but also with reference to the central figure of an all-embracing goddess, a valid substitute for the contested image of the Virgin.

Notes 1 This chapter is the result of a period of study as a research fellow at the University of Roma Tre on the project “Shakespeare, the Antique and the Visual Arts.” I am grateful to my postdoctoral mentor Maria Del Sapio Garbero for her essential advice and support, which dates back to the time when I was an undergraduate. I would like also to record my gratitude to Adele Breda (Department of Medieval Arts of the Vatican Museum), for her tireless assistance and for transmitting to me her love of the visual arts. I am also grateful to Peter Douglas (University of Roma Tre), as his generous help in the latter phase of my work has been more precious than he might think. 2 This stage, which was conceived to counter the previous, chaotic phase of the nigredo, was a prelude to the final moment of the alchemic process (the citrinitas or rubedo), where the lapis was accomplished, and the initiate ­experienced the highest form of wisdom, corresponding to the principle known as coincidentia oppositorum. 3 See The Rainbow Portrait (c. 1600–1603), attributed to Marcus Gheeraertes the Younger, and Nicholas Hilliard’s miniature Queen Elizabeth as Cynthia (c. 1600). 4 In the High Great Chamber, a plasterwork representing “Diana and her retinue of nymphs . . . on the north side” is curiously coupled with “the episode of Venus chastising Cupid on one side of the bay window,” which makes “the garden of Venus become . . . the wood of Diana.” “In this two-­dimensional landscape formula,” according to Lafont, “the wealth of allusions . . . to the entwined discourses of love and chastity idealizes the chaste woman if it stands for a sort of Edenic garden but also, in an emblematic manner, excludes female corporeality to lay the emphasis on the hunt as a predatory mode of power” (2013, 49–50).

Icons and Figures in Cymbeline  121

References Aston, Margaret. 1988. England’s Iconoclasts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Belsey, Catherine. 1999. Shakespeare and the Loss of Eden: The Construction of Family Values in Early Modern Culture. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Citati, Pietro. 1992. Ritratti di donne. Milano: Rizzoli. Corti, Claudia. 2002. Shakespeare e gli emblemi. Roma: Bulzoni. Del Sapio Garbero, Maria. 2015. “‘Be Stone No More:’ Maternity and Heretical Visual Art in Shakespeare’s Late Plays.” In Actes des congrès de la Société Française Shakespeare, no. 33. doi: 10.4000/shakespeare.3493. Di Giampaolo, Mario and Elisabetta Fadda. 2002. Parmigianino. Santarcangelo di Romagna: Keybook. Duffy, Eamon. 1992. The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580. New Haven: Yale University Press. Edgecombe, R.S. 2001. “Imogen’s Andirons.” A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews 14 (3): 16–19. Ekserdjian, David. 2006. Parmigianino. New Haven: Yale University Press. Fagiolo dell’Arco, Maurizio. [1969] 2016. Parmigianino, “peritissimo alchimista”. Milano: Abscondita. Frazzi, Michele. 2004. Correggio: The Alchemic Camera. Milano: Silvana Editoriale. Greenblatt, Stephen. 2010. Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto. New York: Cambridge University Press. Hackett, Helen. 1995. Virgin Mother, Maiden Queen: Elizabeth I and the Cult of the Virgin Mary. London: Macmillan. Hamling, Tara. 2010. Decorating the ‘Godly’ Household: Religious Art in Post-Reformation Britain. New Haven: Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. Hartkamp, Ebeltie. 2002. “Flemish Tapestry Weavers and Designers in the Northern Netherlands: Questions of Identity.” In Flemish Tapestry Weavers Abroad: Emigration and the Founding of Manufactories in Europe, edited by Guy Delmarcel, 15–41. Leuven: Leuven University Press. Lafont, Agnès. 2013. “Political Uses of Erotic Power in an Elizabethan Mythological Programme.” In Shakespeare’s Erotic Mythology and Ovidian Renaissance Culture, edited by Agnès Lafont, 41–57. Farnham: Ashgate. Lewis, Jayne. 2005. “The Reputations of Mary Queen of Scots.” Études écossaises 10: 41–55. Lloyd, Michael. 1959. “Cleopatra as Isis.” Shakespeare Survey 12: 88–94. Luzio, Alessandro, 1913, La galleria dei Gonzaga venduta all’Inghilterra nel 1627–28. Milano: Cogliati. Mangrum, B. D., and Giuseppe Scavizzi, eds. [1991] 1998. A Reformation Debate: Karlstadt, Emser and Eck on Sacred Images. Toronto: Center for Reformation and Renaissance Studies. Muñoz Simonds, Peggy. 1992. Myth, Emblem and Music in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline: An Iconographic Reconstruction. Newark: University of Delaware Press. Paleotti, Gabriele. [1582] 1960. Discorso intorno alle immagini sacre e profane. Bari: Laterza.

122  Fiammetta Dionisio Panofsky, Erwin. 1961. The Iconography of Correggio’s Camera di San Paolo. London: Warburg Institute. Popham, A. E. 1953. The Drawings of Parmigianino. New York: Beechurst Press. Popham, A. E. 1957. Correggio’s Drawings. London: Oxford University Press. Roberts, Sasha. 1995. “Lying among the Classics.” In Albion’s Classicism: The Visual Arts in Britain, 1550–1660, edited by Lucy Gent, 325–58. New Haven: Yale University Press. Sacerdoti, Gilberto. 1990. Nuovo cielo, nuova terra. La rivoluzione copernicana di Antonio e Cleopatra di Shakespeare. Bologna: Il Mulino. Shakespeare, William. 2007. Cymbeline. Edited by J.M. Nosworthy. London: Arden Shakespeare. Shakespeare, William. 2015. Antony and Cleopatra. Edited by John Wilders. London: Arden Shakespeare. Szulakowska, Urszula. 2017. The Alchemical Virgin Mary in the Religious and Political Context of the Renaissance. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Wells-Cole, Anthony. 1997. Art and Decoration in Elizabethan and Jacobean England: The Influence of Continental Prints, 1558–1625. New Haven: P. Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press. Yates, F. A. [1932] 2010. John Florio: The Life of an Italian in Shakespeare’s England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

7 The Notion of Picturing in Early Modern Literature The Case of the Miniaturist Isaac Oliver (c. 1585–1617) Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard Introduction While to the common observer, the early modern English court portrait miniatures are dominated by the carefully calligraphic style which Nicholas Hilliard evolved during his career as court “limner” of Queen Elizabeth I and James I (Costa de Beauregard 1991), at the turn of the century, the contemporaries became divided on the subject, when Isaac Oliver’s own style was understood as altogether different in manner by the more knowledgeable courtiers. A study of Isaac Oliver’s court portrait miniatures reveals a concern for the notion of boundary, of delineation of form in the rendering of the sitter’s presence which will be discussed in relation to the greater interest in the visual arts of the period (Sabatier 2017). The specific date of 1605 will be used as a pivotal moment, since it is the year when Isaac Oliver was appointed “painter for the art of Limning” to Queen Anne (Edmond 1983, 150). Two literary texts will be referred to that provide a significant context for the miniatures under study. On the one hand, the contemporary Jacobean “masques” or “tableaux” of mythological scenes, and Inigo Jones’s watercolors for their costumes and settings (Jones-Davies 1967), are relevant because they show a preference for veils as a symbolic topos, implying the transparency of materials and the choice of colors depicting light. On the other hand, Shakespeare’s contemporary tragedy, Antony and Cleopatra (1607), is also relevant since the text is rife with references to transparent veils which are mostly transposed into the motif of clouds. They provide our observation of Oliver’s work with ample proof of a forever rising interest in a visual culture (Sabatier 2017, 220–22) for audiences whose traditional entertainment still was essentially aural in drama as well as in attendance to sermons (Gurr 1992, 99–103). Moreover, such texts and spectacles show a tension between the Neoplatonic view of images as unreliable illusions, and the Aristotelian conception of the unity of body and soul (or psyche) as the form and essence of any living being. Though this is contradicted by the Christian separation between body and soul, the increasingly realistic efficiency of portrait painting seems to express the unity between the two rather than their separation. The painter’s craft, his knowledge of optics (Dulac 2015), of the art of coloring, in particular, shows this tension in visual

124  Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard arts between the interaction with the material world of ordinary experience and a strong attraction for the spiritual, as will be argued below. Such philosophical issues belong to the cultural debate of the time, as has by now been well documented (Parry 1981, 1985). Among the great wealth of works signed by Isaac Oliver with the signature IO, there are two miniature portraits: Lucy Harington, Countess of Bedford, (c. 1605–1615) and Frances Howard, Countess of Essex (c. 1606), which will allow us to focus on the motif of the veil, since it appears as a prominent form of expression in these beautiful portraits. A seemingly relevant moment in Antony and Cleopatra is Enobarbus’s description of Cleopatra’s barge pageant on the Cydnus (2.2.190–219). Another climactic scene of Antony and Cleopatra, which takes place at Cleopatra’s monument (Act 5), expresses the prominent tension of the period between the temporal and the spiritual. The dialectics of death (body) and elevation (soul) echo the dramaturgy of Death versus Life in paintings of a major Christian scene, the death of Christ and His implied Resurrection. A major but little-known cabinet miniature by Isaac Oliver, The Entombment (c. 1605–1615) is devoted to this topic, and a parallel between the scene in Shakespeare’s tragedy and Isaac Oliver’s painting will be another means of exploring the notion of picturing in early modern literature.

Two Portraits of Jacobean Ladies by Isaac Oliver The two miniature portraits called Frances Howard, Countess of Essex (c. 1606, Figure 7.1) and Lucy Harington, Countess of Bedford (c. 1615, Figure 7.2) (V&A Catalogue 1983, n° 271, 274) were painted by Isaac Oliver after his career as a miniature portrait painter had been well established among courtiers. They are characterised by their delicate color scheme, their use of chiaroscuro blurring contours, as well as by a special frame format, the tondo. Isaac Oliver’s two Self-portraits (c. 1590–1595) – a form of self-­ advertising – already use the continental chiaroscuro palette, which implied at the time a radical innovation for miniature portraits in the use of colors, and differed from Nicholas Hilliard’s preference for pure colors and linear contour, as well as calligraphy (V&A Catalogue 1983, n°133, 134). Roy Strong actually suggested that Isaac Oliver was already well versed in continental painting even before being entered as Hilliard’s pupil for the specific training of portrait miniaturist (V&A Catalogue 1983, 97, 115–16). The choice of a circular frame for both portrait miniatures had precedents in Godefroy le Batave’s portrait miniatures in Commentaires de la guerre gallique (1519–1520), which transposed the classical medal from Antiquity into portrait miniatures of dead heroes, a practice well established in Holbein’s miniatures and used accordingly by Hilliard for his Self-­ Portrait (1577) (Costa de Beauregard 1991, 90). The circular frame for both

Figure 7.1  I saac Oliver (1596–1600), Unknown Lady, formerly called Frances Howard, Victoria & Albert Museum (P. 12–1971). Vellum stuck to plain card, circular, 130 mm, 1/8 in. diam.

Figure 7.2  Isaac Oliver (c. 1615), Lucy Harington, Countess of Bedford, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (3902). Vellum stuck onto card, circular, 127 mm, 5 in. diam.

126  Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard portrait miniatures also suggests a contemporary familiarity with Italy where Oliver stayed in 1596 (Edmond 1983, 113–14) and with Leicester’s English collection of Italian paintings (Goldring 2014). In both miniatures, the use of a tondo echoes Raphael’s Neoplatonic classicism often quoted as an epitome of the Renaissance ideal of Beauty (Damisch 1972, 16) – for example Raphael’s Madonna of the Chair in a tondo, in which all the gestures of the figures echo by their curved linearity the circular frame which embodies perfection. As for the Urbino painter’s Sistine Madonna (1512–1514), it uses open curtains resembling dark clouds, presumably painted after a stage-property in a civic pageant (Damisch 1972, 106), and revealing a sky with light clouds. The double use of a frame within the frame, curtains and clouds, is echoed by another frame for the figure of the Madonna, that is, a large brown veil seemingly billowing with some soft breeze, which she also uses to hold the Holy Child on her forearm (Damisch 1972, 96–98). We move from stage curtains to stage-property to actor’s costume, both participating in a dramaturgy of apparition, that is, the topos of celestial vision. Moreover, both curtains and clouds are shaped to suggest an oval mandorla, while the motif of the veil echoes the cloud motif in a literal manner, since both are visualizations of the presence of an invisible element, air – that is, Aristotle’s “ether” – and, more specifically, its wind, as will be discussed below. Moreover, the oval frame within the rectangular frame in which the Virgin appears is a geometrical construct which transposes the basic circular frame. Both Hilliard and Oliver’s portrait miniatures use predominantly oval frames (Costa de Beauregard 1991, 149–86) which are signifiers for the circular frame which it derives from. To revert to the two miniature portraits called Frances Howard, Countess of Essex (c. 1606) and Lucy Harington, Countess of Bedford, (c. 1615) (V&A Catalogue 1983, n° 271, 274), the importance of the veil must be emphasized. The shape of both ladies’ veils is a vehicle for the visualization of the ideal circle of beauty in the design for a real garment worn by the sitters. It is held tightly on an invisible wire that underlines the heart shaped semicircle on either side of the figure, its delicate sharppointed center underscoring the symmetry of the face though it is seen from a three-quarter angle. One is reminded of the probably posthumous oil portrait called The Rainbow Portrait (c. 1600–1605), which was painted at the same period, in which Queen Elizabeth I is wearing such a veil arranged in semicircles on either side of her face. Moreover, she holds in her right hand a rainbow-like semicircle, which is an ­emblem – it has a motto Non sine Sole Iris (no rainbow without the sun) underneath – and might refer to a stage-property in some kind of pageant, maybe Elizabeth’s visit to Robert Cecil in December 1602 (Strong 1977, 50–52). Her cloak is ornamented with the emblems of Fame: eyes and ears, as well as half-open lips. This portrait is attributed to Marcus

Picturing in Early Modern Literature  127 Gheeraerts, a member of a family of London artists with whom Isaac Oliver was closely connected (Edmond 1983, 160). To Mary Edmond, the France Howard miniature actually shows us a lady in a kind of “déshabillé” connoting intimacy: The lady is in an elaborate form of undress, without ruff, or jewels in her hair, but with a wired cap from which fall gauze draperies. An embroidered mantle is caught up to her corsage with a jeweled brooch. (Edmond 1983, 113) She is wearing puffed up sleeves which denote the late Elizabethan fashion, while in the Lucy Harington, Countess of Bedford miniature the costume is different, showing a change in fashion. The low-cut dress is embroidered with flowers and the sleeves are no longer given the remarkable volume they have in the earlier miniature. There is no ruff or jewels in the lady’s hair, to echo Mary Edmond’s above quoted remark about the France Howard miniature, but this time it is clear that the lady is fully dressed, maybe for a Masque, since, writes Mary Edmond, “the work is thought to date to c. 1605, the year of . . . The Masque of Blackness, for the Countess was one of the principal participants in these spectacles” (Edmond 1983, 156). However, if it shows an evolution in the lady’s attire, toward more freedom in the loose arrangement of the veil folds, yet the preparatory drawing is very close to the Frances Howard miniature. The similarity between the characters’ kinetics in the miniature portraits and pageants also deserves our attention (Damisch 1972, 212), though transposed in the more sophisticated field of Jacobean court masques. In both portraits, the gesture is the same, with a difference, however. While both point to their breast, Frances Howard’s right hand is on her left breast (it may have meant her heart, as it were?), while Lucy Harington points to her right breast with her left hand, a detail which also appears in the preparatory sketch (Composition Sketch for Lucy Harington, Countess of Bedford, Countess of Bedford, c. 1615, V&A Catalogue n°275). The gesture of exhibiting a beautiful hand adds to their gaze which is steadily addressed to the viewer – a posture often called alvif, which relates to the presence of the sitter in front of the painter and to her presence/absence later, in front of us viewers. Interestingly, it is the Frances Howard gesture which is repeated in several other oval miniature portraits of Anne of Denmark (V&A Catalogue n° 243, 244) attributed to the Hilliard Studio, and Isaac Oliver’s own portrait miniature of Anne of Denmark (V&A catalogue n° 255). The gesture would mainly be a means of expressing one’s “courtly grace,” and it is described as typical of Isaac Oliver’s elegant style: “the Queen is placed before a crimson velvet curtain wearing a yellow and brown dress, with her hand extended in a typical Oliver pose” (Strong and Murrell 1983, 153, n° 255).

128  Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard In the Lucy Harington, Countess of Bedford portrait as well as in Inigo Jones’s drawing for costumes of lady masquers (Jones-Davies, 99, 105, or 97), the veil is worn to suggest the ether by its loose folds, a proof of the close connection between Inigo Jones and Isaac Oliver (Finsten 1981, 26–27) which is found in their works. Isaac Oliver’s Masquer in Ben Jonson’s ‘Masque of Queens’ (1609, V&A catalogue n° 227), in an oval frame, is very similar to a drawing by the architect Inigo Jones: Head-dress, probably for Anne of Denmark in Samuel Daniel’s Tethys’ Festival (1610, V&A catalogue n°228).1 In the Frances Howard portrait, one notices a more sophisticated and personal use of the motif of the veil, which is worn like a closely enveloping scarf. On closer scrutiny, one distinguishes a first enveloping veil which is used as a sort of scarf – an alias for the more ancient shawl? – covering the lady’s head and shoulders and low-cut dress. She is also seen to wear a draped mantle, which provides the delicate complexion of the face and diaphanous hand with the full reflection of light from its white satin. This draws our attention to the variety of materials that provide frames within the frame and visualize the act of gazing at her figure as if one had to cross so many thresholds to access a mysterious figure, which is characteristic of the above quoted Rainbow Portrait. The background is dark, and the striped organdie muslin thus captures the light from the top left, underlining the sophisticated loops of the transparent material, as well as the shine of the jewel fixing its sharp-pointed dip on the tightly curled hair. The necklace is also made of loops and jewels, repeating as it were the lovely curls and even the white lace encircling the curls, which is barely visible underneath the veil. The complexity of the ornaments and their many loops and semicircles, wrapped up in the circular folds of the veil, creates a world in which abstract geometry cohabits with some vaporous ether, since both accuracy of design and transparency of material express the presence of the invisible, mainly the presence of light. One discovers here a trademark of Isaac Oliver’s hand, mainly that color is used to express the intensity of light not by polychromy as in Hilliard’s works, but by the encounter of light and darkness on contours (Costa de Beauregard 2000, 123–52). Since the sleeves and the hair style are contemporary to the last years of the sixteenth century, one cannot but formulate the idea that Oliver’s work is creating a new style in which the use of chiaroscuro suggests the ever-present concern for the reality of the sitter’s soul as well as her bodily presence (Yates 1947). To return to the later Lucy Harington portrait, in which the sleeves and the hair style look distinctly different, even “modern,” the loose veil frames a slimmer silhouette which is now given a greater sense of movement by the parallel arms which curve to enhance the beautiful hands while suggesting a suspended gesture in the performance of a highly

Picturing in Early Modern Literature  129 ritualized mask dance. The palette of the second portrait is dominated by the blue floral design of the dress, while the first portrait is in warmer softer tones of gray and the richly embroidered beige colored sleeves echo the pale blond hair. The uniformly dark background from which the two nearly white faces emerge into a middle-ground, and the framing which keeps the lower part of the body off-frame, dramatize the very nature of our visual experience, caught in the tension between a sudden appearance from nowhere and an equally sudden disappearance into the void of absence (Costa de Beauregard 2003). To revert to the iconic details in Inigo Jones’s designs, one discovers not only veils suggesting Aristotle’s ether and its wind but a significant emphasis on clouds. Clouds are traditionally used in Italian paintings (Damisch 1972, 104–6) and they support figures in Inigo Jones’s settings (Jones-Davies 86, 87), while they are also indicated in Ben Jonson’s productions. The use of clouds shows an interest in mechanical devices for court masques, which were also used in civic pageants of the same Jacobean period (Orgel 1975, 74). Bergeron describes a figure of Mercury descending from heaven in a cloud in the festivities of Chester in 1610 (Bergeron 1971, 271). The close description of Inigo Jones’s designs and sets for Salmacida Spolia (1640) shows that clouds belonged to the iconography of masques as much as to the iconography of emblem books, from Alciati’s to Cesare Ripa’s. This is an exemplary passage: from the highest part of the heavens came forth a cloud . . . in which were eight persons . . . representing the spheres; this joining with two other clouds which appeared at that instant full of music, covered all the upper part of the scene . . . beyond all these, a heaven opened full of deities . . . (Gordon, as quoted in Orgel 1980, 8) Among the four traditional elements, Inigo Jones’s watercolors for masquers’ costumes value those which appear and disappear, like Shakespeare’s Ariel in The Tempest (1611): fire, air and water rather than earth. His drawing for Artemisia in Masque of Queens (1609) (Jones-Davies 1967, 48), Candace (Jones-Davies 1967, 105) or Chloris in Chloridia (1631) show ladies wearing a transparent veil which is attached to their headgear and frames their silhouette with a faintly colored “cloud,” in order to suggest the skies, that is, fire, air and water, as for example the Lady Masquer in the Masque of Lords, (1603) (Jones-Davies 1967, color plate between p. 66 and 67; Simpson and Bell 1924, n° 424). This same preference appears to characterize also the famous Shakespearean scene of Cleopatra’s death. When the queen stages her own death, it is the elements of fire and air which she uses as metaphors of her own

130  Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard disappearance and metamorphosis into an eternal symbol. Cleopatra tells her attendants, “Give me my robe, put on my crown, I have/Immortal longings in me. . . . I am fire, and air; my other elements / I give to baser life” (Shakespeare 1954, 5.2.279–80, 288–89).

Picturing in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra (1607) The mysterious nature of images caught between appearance and disappearance is a major theme of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra (1607). The tragedy opens with Philo’s uncomprehending discovery that the image of the Antony he knows has vanished. The play thus opens on a visual event, the vanishing of an image that was believed to signify an identity. This gives us a cue for two major visual mise-en-abyme shows in the play, Cleopatra’s conquest of Antony by her appearance on the river Cydnus, and the staging of Antony’s apotheosis by Cleopatra in her Monument. These tableaux or “speaking pictures” of fickle Fortune (Doebler 1974, 155) are what we remember forever, while the shorter scenes and ellipses we must reconstruct when necessary. As Leo Salingar writes, Antony is mostly present as an image seen by the other characters, while he refers to himself as an image of armored Hercules, and his officers lament the departure of the god to signify Antony’s loss of heroic qualities (Salingar 1999, 19). Cleopatra herself is careful to look like a painting as she appears on her barge. While the play does rely on the tradition of the emblem book in several scenes, the description by Enobarbus of what he remembers of Cleopatra’s barge is in a very different key, which recalls Polyphilus’s account of what he remembers of the picture of Cupid in his dream in Colonna’s widely influential Hypnerotomachia (Godwin 2005). When crossing in a “superb and fair-oared hexireme,” as he shared Cupid’s travel to Venus’s island of Cytherea, he writes, Vaunting his wide-open wings, the divine child was not driven by the rude winds of Ulysses’ bag, but by the obliging and dewy breath of Astraeus’s daughters and of rosy Aurora. Polia and I found ourselves of one mind, burning and driven with impatience to reach […] the much desired island. (Godwin 2005, 290) While Colonna’s narrator reminisces visions he had in a dream, among which Venus and Cupid play a major part (apart from Polia, of course), it is significant that Enobarbus, in his talk to other Roman soldiers, is describing a “civic pageant” which is very much like a picture signifying Cleopatra as Voluptas (Geoffroy 2014), a picture not unlike a dream or a vision. The shifting in the enunciation from the present of the dialogue on stage, to a past which is no longer real, in addition to

Picturing in Early Modern Literature  131 the distance between Rome and Egypt which entails a representation of a character who is an object constructed by hearsay, that is, Fame, contributes to a dramaturgy of appearance which is itself a construction by Cleopatra imagining herself as a picture of Isis. Just as curtains are used to frame clouds framing a vision of the Virgin, the shifting out from one enunciator to another, Enobarbus and Cleopatra herself, gives the picture a halo hovering between reality and unreality, appearance and disappearance. It can be argued that the tension between appearance and disappearance is a major characteristic of the visual culture of the period, and finds its expression in the major trope of French mannerism, the je-ne-sais-quoi of Castiglione’s courtier (Jankélévitch, I, 14) which is achieved in Isaac Oliver’s special use of stippling rather than Hilliard’s too visible hatching in the portraits discussed above. Already in his early portrait miniature in three-quarter length of an Unknown Lady, 1587 (V&A Catalogue 1983, n° 137) “the hatching of the features is barely visible, the modelling of the minute head is deftly indicated with a few well-placed hatches and stipples” (Murrell 1983, 43–44). Indeed, Cleopatra’s own understanding of allegorical images is underscored in the play. She carefully uses theatricality to address her returning Roman lover, and the picture of Enobarbus’s ekphrasis has been a careful painterly composition of her own. The embedding of pictures is therefore even more complex than has been suggested above: Cleopatra’s own imagining of herself in a picture and producing the show in which she is the main star, is embedded in Enobarbus’s description to the Romans when he acted as a commentator in a civic pageant. As already suggested, the complex play of the “show within the show” in the display of the picture is similar to the dialectics of the veil or the cloud in a picture, since it plays on a delay in the final revelation as if curtains and veils were being lifted one after the other. The picture itself deserves a close reading since changes from Plutarch’s source text (Ridley [1954] 1971, 246–47) have been made. Plutarch’s list of music instruments is shortened to flutes. Only the details of the colors of the barge are kept, beaten gold, purple sails, silver oars; Plutarch’s allusion to perfume, which comes much later, is now opposed to the wharves “pestered with innumerable multitudes” and becomes a quality of the wind which is shared by the water. By completing Plutarch’s description of the barge with a reference to the elements, the lines express Cleopatra’s desire, with qualifiers such as “the water . . . amorous of their strokes” or “burn’d on the water” and verbs of action such as “kept stroke” and “they beat” – a climax reached with the hypallage “winds were love-sick” and the simile “as amorous of their strokes,” suggesting the strokes of a lover (2.2.192-205). The text is clearly the triumph of poetry as it turns the barge into an emblem of Cleopatra’s own body (verbs of action) and soul (qualifiers of elements).

132  Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard While she stages her picture as Isis in the modality of a vision or daydream, with a play on visuals as a dramaturgy of appearance/disappearance, the main theme of this picture is in harmony with Antony’s own use of the imagery of air and clouds to depict his own self-portrait. A near quotation from Hamlet is heard in Antony’s use of the cloud simile to express his self-analysis: “Sometime we see a cloud that’s dragonish . . . mock our eye with air” (4.14.2-14) in a dialogue with Eros. The simile is also consistent with the protean image of Hercules as an unstable emblem of either public identity or anonymity, in modern terms, and either immortality or mortality, in Renaissance terms. To return briefly to Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia, the picture of Cleopatra on her barge suggests the representation of movement by the description of amorous cupids blowing wind in her sails, which recalls the dreamer imagining wind in Cupid’s wings: And behold! Without my noticing it, the divine Cupid had appeared before us in the form of a lovely child, his beautiful naked body uncovered . . . the divine helmsman unfolded and spread his light wings, then summoned gentle and sweet-breathed Zephyrus and ­offered his sacred pinions to the wind. (Godwin 2005, 274, 278) Changes are also noticeable in Plutarch’s description of her person: while the historian gives us information telling us she was dressed like Venus, the poet uses a parallel with paintings and a hyperbole: “over-picturing that Venus where we see / The fancy outwork nature” (2, 2, 200). The hyperbole lies in the multiplication of images as well as the emphasis of paralipsis: “it beggar’d all description” (2,2, 198). The iconography of Venus and Cupid is heightened by the light wind, and “divers-colour’d’ fans,” giving unity to the picture and reality in a time-space which is framed like a picture in movement. The description of Cleopatra’s handmaids echoes the late sixteenth century mannerist taste for elongated silhouettes – advocated by Dürer – “made their bends adorning” (2,2, 208), while an evocation of more intimate perceptions is achieved by the lexical field of touch: “silken,” “swell,” “touches” and “hands,” as well as the perfume which is now “strange.”(2, 2, 209–10).

Isaac Oliver’s Entombment (ca. 1615) versus Cleopatra’s Monument in Antony and Cleopatra In this section, I would like to suggest that, while Isaac Oliver’s Cabinet Miniature called The Entombment (Figure 7.3) relies on an iconography which “re-interprets the earlier work in the light of his visit (s?) to

Picturing in Early Modern Literature  133 Italy” (Strong 1983, 116, n°181), this very iconography sheds lights to a degree on Cleopatra’s own Monument scene as a displacement or secularization of the Christian topos. Already in King Lear, the gesturing of Lear as a melancholy father carrying his daughter Cordelia’s dead body is a displacement into the melodramatic mode of the catholic icon of the Mater Dolorosa. In The Entombment, High Renaissance classicism and the influence of Raphael blend with the more contemporary Mannerist aesthetics in a typically English manner (Maquerlot 1995, 9, 26). Isaac Oliver’s use of chiaroscuro, a technique which has already been observed in the circular miniatures discussed above, is appropriate in the special case of the body of Christ here, both for the rendering of the actual presence of the dead body and for the expression of the supernatural. It might be argued that, in this case, color could become a metaphor of light and the promise of life with the oncoming Resurrection. Such is, indeed, the ambivalence of Cleopatra’s ritual elevation of Antony’s dead, or dying, body, between actual presence and apotheosis. Moreover, the secular significance of funeral edifices is a clear instance of an acculturation of religious ceremonies, and “nowhere was the trope of poem-as-­monument more ingeniously developed than in the theater, where dramatists regularly exploited the iconic potential of tombs and monuments in a reflexive celebration of their own art” (Neill 308). While Oliver’s miniature uses architecture to dramatize the transportation of Christ’s body from the Cross to the Tomb, in Antony and Cleopatra, Cleopatra herself authors a poetic monument for Antony in her elegy which might well read as an epitaph on her own Monument.

Figure 7.3   Isaac Oliver (c. 1615), La Mise au tombeau/The Entombment, Musée d’Angers (France).

134  Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard The architecture in Isaac Oliver’s Entombment is given a significant role in the dramaturgy of the scene, since space is both closed and open, not only to our left as the tomb gapes open in darkness but also to the top right of the composition where a semicircular archway opens on a distant landscape. We can see three blue mountains in aerial perspective, from brown to light blue, presumably referring to the Golgotha. A patch of slightly tinted pale sky opens above them, suggesting the future apotheosis in the distant heavens. By means of this open space, a beam of full celestial light reaches the body of Christ in the middle ground of the picture, while the “chorus” is nearer to us in a darkened foreground. It would seem that the mystery of incarnation is being transposed from flesh color to a vivid whiteness which connotes the invisible soul made perceptible by the presence of light. The two feet’s posture contributes to the paradoxical significance of the scene, one is raised in full light, while the other is lowered down and already, as it were, in the shadow of earth and the tomb. As a foil to this mystic paleness of the Christ figure, vivid colors are used for the “chorus” figures, among which red and blue for the Virgin Mary, as well as green and ochre – usually connoting the middle-ground – for the standing figures, in particular a young woman delicately touching Christ’s left hand. The disciples carrying the body also wear garments which are painted with vivid colors, green boots, and green sleeves, contrasting with the ochre-colored coats. The disciple to the left gesturing toward them is wearing a red coat and a blue scarf, the colors matching those given to the Virgin on our right. The chiaroscuro technique appears with the backlighting effect created by the distant sky as well as with the penumbra of the foreground, in which darkness and light meet and make colors visible (Haydocke, 98). Echoes of Italian paintings of religious subjects in Isaac Oliver’s Entombment are clearly visible in his knowledge of the chiaroscuro concept and technique. These can be highlighted by another of his unexplained miniatures called Madonna and Child in Glory (c. 1610–17, V&A Catalogue n° 179), in which the Virgin and Child, wrapped in an opaque shawl, appear in backlighting against a “mandorla” of clouds, dark in the foreground and billowing toward full light in the background. The parallel between this transposition in a visual dramaturgy of light of the texts from the apostles and the climactic intensity of Cleopatra’s elevation of Antony’s body to her Monument in Antony and Cleopatra documents the study of visual culture in early modern England in several ways. The presence of the human body coalesces the tension between the material and the celestial, which underlies artistic productions in paintings as well as stage performances of the time. To put the matter differently, the meaning of the presence of a historical character on the stage, comparable in this to the meaning of the sense of presence in a portrait, connotes the visual enactment of a paradox: the actual presence

Picturing in Early Modern Literature  135 under our eyes of the unity between the material and the spiritual (Damisch 1972, 98). Alberti expresses this view regarding portrait painting: Painting contains a divine force which not only makes absent men present . . . but moreover makes the dead seem almost alive. . . . painting is most useful to that piety which joins us to the gods and keeps our souls full of religion. (Alberti [1966] 1976, 63) The “entombment,” so to speak, of Antony in Shakespeare’s tragedy, gathers a new significance when one examines the semantics of Cleopatra’s own eulogy and epitaph. The theatricality of her self-eulogy “is emphasized by words such as ‘show’, ‘play’, ‘act’, ‘perform’ which draw attention to the scene as an exhibition of the monumentalizing power of art” (Neill 1997, 323). As to Antony himself, he is the Hercules of Cleopatra’s dream visions as she restores his heroic dimension in her confidences and lament to Dolabella (5.2.82): “His legs bestrid the ocean: his rear’d arm . . . .” The first five lines strike a note of apotheosis which echoes an iconography of baroque skies suggesting a world beyond the limits of the visible, a world of boundless space: “ocean,” “world,” “spheres,” create an image of cosmic dimensions. She then turns to a psychological portrait of him in which the soul or “pneuma” of the hero bears equally extraordinary proportions: “For his bounty / There was no winter in’t; and autumn ’twas / That grew the more by reaping” (5.2.86–87). Lifting his body with mechanical devices to the heights of her Monument enacts on the stage the apotheosis of the hero. The unity of the present body and the invisible soul belongs, of course, to the baroque aesthetics of skies in cupolas (Damisch 1972, 240–44). Turning now to Oliver’s Entombment (c. 1615), we might notice that the painting suggests the mystery of the Incarnation of the divine essence in its paradoxical nature as a visual experience. In Oliver’s cabinet miniature, the body of Christ is carried forward by four disciples, in a central group, and we see the Holy body in some sort of flight as it does not touch the earth, a suspended gesture which appears as it were premonitory of the oncoming Resurrection. The motif of the veil is repeated in the women’s veils, and in Christ’s own white cloth reflecting the luminous transparency of the flesh.

Conclusion As far as these reflexions show, visual culture in the 1590s–1610s remains strongly attached to the debate known as ut pictura poesis, or paragone (Sabatier 2017, 76), and a painting like The Entombment refers to the descriptions of the scene by witnesses – the apostles – while in Antony and Cleopatra, the references to paintings abound, inviting

136  Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard the spectator to imagine visual scenes. Oliver’s two circular portrait miniatures find an echo in Inigo Jones’s use of veils in costumes, and clouds in the settings for poems telling us about Ideas and mythological figures. The sophisticated wearing of the veil by the lady masquers Lucy Harington, Countess of Bedford, (c. 1605–1615) and Frances Howard, Countess of Essex (c. 1606), and its rendering by Isaac Oliver in chiaroscuro, establish a continuity in space between an ether made nearly visible and the appearance of the sitter’s figure. The parallel with Shakespeare’s two major scenes in his Antony and Cleopatra has shown how the text itself develops a dramaturgy of perspective created by the mise-en-­abyme of emblematic scenes by literary devices such as the telling of a memory of a scene which was meant as a picture in a dream, or, as far as Cleopatra herself is concerned, the staging of an apotheosis. Isaac Oliver’s later Entombment shows how the use of aerial perspective creates a similar dramatization of an ur-scene, since it creates an illusion of material space within the limits of the frame. When examining the art of picturing in early modern literature in the light of a parallel with Isaac Oliver’s works, picturing appears as the art of dramatizing the advent of a visual experience for the viewer. It is by such a visual experience that the presence/absence of the sitter is rendered in the portraits, in the form of an encounter, while in Shakespeare’s play, it is the nature of visual experience which is dramatized by an apotheosis. The references to Raphael and Neoplatonic classicism in this paper remain appropriate despite the enlarged discussion of Mannerism, since it is argued here that early modern English miniatures testify to the cohabitation of High Renaissance and Mannerist aesthetics in English taste during the 1580–1620 period.

Note 1 Other miniatures of ladies with an Inigo Jones veil by Isaac Oliver are V&A Catalogue 1983, n° 223: Lady Masquer, (c. 1605); n°225: Anne of Denmark in a Costume for the Masque of Beauty (1608) or Love Freed (1611). See also Lucy Harington, Countess of Bedford as a Power of Juno in Ben Jonson’s Masque Hymenaei, 1606. Oil on canvas, attributed to John de Critz, cat. V&A Catalogue 1983, n° XXII, col.

References Alberti, Leon Battista, Della Pittura (1435–6), Spencer, John R., tr. and ed. (1966) 1976. On Painting, New Haven: Yale University Press. Bergeron, David M. 1971. English Civic Pageantry 1558–1642. London: Edward Arnold. Bergeron, David M., ed. [1985] 2011. Pageantry in the Shakespearean Theatre. Athens: The University of Georgia Press. Costa de Beauregard, Raphaëlle. 1991. Nicholas Hilliard et l’imaginaire élisabéthain. Paris, CNRS.

Picturing in Early Modern Literature  137 Costa de Beauregard, Raphaëlle. 2000. Silent Elizabethans. Montpellier: CERRA, Collection Astraea. Costa de Beauregard, Raphaëlle. 2003. “La beauté dans l’œuvre d’Isaac Oliver.” In La beauté et ses monstres dans l’Europe baroque 16e-18e siècles, edited by Line Cottegnies, Tony Gheeraert and Gisèle Venet, 135–46. Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle. Damisch, Hubert. 1972. Théorie du nuage- Pour une histoire de la peinture. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Doebler, John. 1974. Shakespeare’s Speaking Pictures – Studies in Iconic Imagery. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Dulac, Anne-Valérie. 2015. “The Colour of Lustre: Limning by the Life.” E-rea [En ligne] 12 (2) accessed 25 January 2017. URL: http://erea.revues.org/4402. Edmond, Mary. 1980. “Limners and Picture-Makers: New Light on the Lives of Miniaturists and Large-Scale Portrait-Painters Working in London in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.” Walpole Society 47: 60–242. Edmond, Mary. 1983. Hilliard & Oliver – The Lives and Works of Two Great Miniaturists. London: Robert Hale. Finsten, Jill. 1981. Isaac Oliver – Art at the Courts of Elizabeth I and James I. (Phd. 1979, Harvard University). New York: Garland Publishing. Geoffroy, Anne. 2014. “From Transmission to Transgression: The Venetian Paradigm in Robert Greene’s Royall Exchange.” In Transmission and ­Transgression – Cultural Challenges in Early Modern England, edited by Sophie Chiari and Hélène Palma, 119–28. Aix-en-Provence: Presses Universitaires de Provence. Godwin, Joscelyn. 2005. Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili – The Strife of Love in a Dream (Venice, 1499). Translated from the Italian. New York: Thames & Hudson. Goldring, Elizabeth. 2014. Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and The World of Elizabethan Art. London: Paul Mellon Center and New Haven: Yale University Press. Gombrich, Ernst Hans. 1945. “Botticelli’s Mythologies: A Study in the Neoplatonic Symbolism of His Circle.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 8: 7–60. Gordon, D. J. 1980. The Renaissance Imagination: Essays and lectures. Edited by Stephen Orgel. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gurr, Andrew. 1992. The Shakespearean Stage, 1574–1642. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haydocke Richard [1598] 1969. A Tracte Containing the Artes of Curious Painting. London, Coll. The English Experience. Amsterdam: Da Capo Press. Translated from the Italian treatise by Paolo Giovanni Lomazzo, 1584. Trattato dell’arte della pittura. Hilliard, Nicholas. ca. 1600. A Treatise Concerning the Art of Limning. Thornton, R.K.R. &. Cain, T.G.S. (Dirs.), Manchester: Carcanet Press, (1981) 1992. Jankélévitch, Vladimir. 1980. Le Je-ne-sais-quoi et le Presque-rien. 3 vols. Paris: Edts. Du Seuil. Jones-Davies, M. T. 1967. Inigo Jones, Ben Jonson et le masque. Paris: Didier. Maquerlot, Jean-Pierre. 1995. Shakespeare and the Mannerist Tradition – A Reading of Five Problem Plays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

138  Raphaëlle Costa de Beauregard Murrell, Jim. 1983. The Way Howe to Lymne – Tudor Miniatures Observed. London: Victoria and Albert Museum. Neill, Michael. 1997. Issues of Death – Mortality and Identity in English Renaissance Tragedy. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Orgel, Stephen. 1975. The Illusion of Power-Political Theater in the English Renaissance. Berkeley: University of California Press. Parry, Graham. 1981. The Golden Age Restored. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Ridley, M. R., ed. [1954] 1971. William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra. The Arden Shakespeare. London: Methuen. Sabatier, Armelle. 2017. Shakespeare and Visual Culture – A Dictionary. London: Bloomsbury. Salingar, Leo. 1999. “Uses of Rhetoric: Antony and Cleopatra.” Cahiers ­Elisabéthains – Late Medieval and Renaissance English Studies 55: 17–26. Shakespeare, William. [1954] 1971. Antony and Cleopatra. Edited by M. R. Ridley. The Arden Shakespeare. London: Methuen. Simpson, Percy and C. F. Bell.1924. Designs by Inigo Jones for Masques and Plays at Court. Oxford: Walpole and Malone Societies. Strong, Roy and Jim Murrell. 1983. Artists of the Tudor Court: The Portrait Miniature Rediscovered – 1520–1620, Catalogue of the Exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum, 9 July–6 November 1983. London: Thames & Hudson, and V&A. Called V&A catalogue 1983 in this paper. Strong, Roy. 1977. The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry. London: Thames & Hudson. Yates, Frances A. 1947. “Queen Elizabeth as Astraea.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 10: 27201382.

Part III

Portraits on the Page and the Stage

8 “Take this picture which I heere present thee” The Art of Portraiture in the Elizabethan Sonnet Sequences Camilla Caporicci As every essay on English Renaissance literature seems somewhat incomplete if it does not include at least one reference to William Shakespeare (a practice that I mock just as much as I secretly love), this chapter, whose aim is to concentrate on sonnet sequences other than Shakespeare’s Sonnets, will open with a quotation from the Bard. “Mine eye hath played the painter, and hath steeled / Thy beauty’s form in table of my heart” (Shakespeare [1609] 2005, 24.1-2). In this way, Shakespeare gives visual form to his creative act, articulating the traditional Petrarchan topos of the beloved’s image as contained in the poet’s heart through the employment of the specific language of painting. The deep meaning of the poet’s use of this language, which appears in several sonnets, is far from easy to grasp. As I have shown in an essay dedicated to the paragone between sonnets and portraits in Shakespeare’s work (Caporicci 2015), the use of the language of visual portrayal emerges in these sonnets as part of a deep meditation on the possibility of poetry to refigure the real – a ­meditation related to the concept of art as representation. Original as it is, Shakespeare’s complex treatment of the relationship between pictures and sonnets represents a most refined example of metapoetic reflection, yet it does not come out of nothing. A long tradition of sonnets devoted to portraits, or employing the language of painting, characterizes Shakespeare’s age, revealing the deep connection that ­Renaissance authors established between visual and verbal forms of representation. It is this tradition that the present essay will explore.

Sonnets and Portraits: At the Origin of a Match “Ma certo il mio Simon fu in paradiso  / (onde questa gentil donna si parte),  / ivi la vide, et la ritrasse in carte / per far fede qua giu del suo bel viso” [But surely my Simone has been in Paradise / (from where this gentle lady came) / he saw her there, and portrayed her on paper, / to give us proof here of her beautiful face] (Petrarca 1996, 77.5-8). Thus, Francesco Petrarca, one of the “three crowns” of Italian literature and father of what can probably be described as the most influential poetic tradition of Renaissance Europe, pays tribute to Simone Martini, the famous

142  Camilla Caporicci Sienese painter he had met at the papal court in Avignon, attributing to him a portrait of his beloved Laura. This portrait, probably a miniature (it is said to be drawn “in carte”) and possibly corresponding to that image which, in the Secretum, Saint Augustine accuses Petrarch of carrying always with him, has never been found. Indeed, its very existence has sometimes been called into question. But whether Laura’s golden locks had been actually immortalized by the skillful hand of the artist whose fair Madonne still enchant us for their grace and beauty, or whether sonnets 77 and 78 are to be considered the invention of a poet who loved to fictionalize his life for the sake of posterity, Petrarch’s verses established a relationship between sonnets and portraits that was destined to persist for centuries, reaching its climax in the Renaissance. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries witnessed both the exceptional flourishing of the Petrarchan tradition and an unprecedented evolution and diffusion of the art of portraiture – a combination that led to what Édouard Pommier (2003) has named the “glory of the portrait”: an age in which poetic celebration engaged with its immediate visual counterpart, the portrait. Naturally enough, this phenomenon bloomed in Italy, birthplace of the Petrarchan tradition and cradle of Renaissance art. Here, the classical notion of the connection between painting and poetry, perfectly crystallized in such well-known expressions as Simonides of Ceos’s “Painting is silent poetry, and poetry painting that speaks” and the Horatian ut pictura poesis, was elaborated by several intellectuals. The paragone between painting and poetry fostered a reflection on the specific nature and merits of the two artistic media, and it often turned out as a demonstration of the supremacy of one of the two. The painter, argued Leonardo da Vinci in his Trattato della pittura ([c. 1540, codex Urbinate] 2019), has the merit of showing things to the eye as they really are and all at one time, which the poet cannot do: for this reason, the poet remains behind the painter for what concerns the representation of corporeal things. On the other hand, the poet, as advocated by such authors as Benedetto Varchi and Ludovico Dolce, can portray not only those qualities apparent to the eye but the inner truth of the people he describes – a distinction that could easily lead to the affirmation of the superiority of poetry, especially when considered in light of the Neoplatonic hierarchy of material and spiritual planes. This reflection was not confined to the theoretical level expressed in Renaissance treatises, but informed the poetry of the period, acquiring a specific relevance in connection with the particular relationship established between portraits and sonnets. Both devoted to the representation and celebration of a (supposedly) worthy subject, portraits and sonnets shared similar artistic intentions and aesthetic principles. A symbol of power, the portrait was an expression of the excellence of the sitter, whose memory was entrusted to the painter’s hands. On the other hand, the sonnet was also, at least in its explicit intentions, a form of eulogistic

Portraiture in Elizabethan Sonnet Sequences  143 representation of the addressee – a monument destined to preserve the image of the beloved and give it immortal life. At the same time, the essentially celebrative aesthetics at the base of both sonnet writing and most Renaissance paintings, especially when devoted to the representation of feminine beauty, enhanced the connection between the two artistic forms. Because of this, poets looked at coeval portraits as the most immediate visual counterparts to their lyrics, which fact is reflected in the exceptionally high number of Italian sonnets dealing with portraits (Bolzoni 2008, 2010). Springing from a most artistically refined cultural milieu, many of these sonnets were devoted to actual, existing portraits. This is for instance the case of the sonnets that Giovanni Della Casa and Pietro Aretino dedicate to Titian’s portraits of Elisabetta Quirini, Francesco Maria della Rovere and Eleonora Gonzaga; Bernardo Bellincioni’s sonnet on Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine, a painting of Ludovico Sforza’s mistress, Cecilia Gallerani; or Pietro Bembo’s sonnets on the portrait sent to him by his beloved Maria Savorgnan. In other cases, the portrait described is not identifiable, yet the rich artistic culture of Renaissance Italy is usually perceivable behind the reference. The celebration of an artwork was not, however, the poet’s main objective. Far from limiting themselves to the description of the portrait, poets took advantage of the possibility offered by the encounter with the visual image to articulate a series of topoi, both classical and Petrarchan, and to reflect on the relationship between visual and verbal representation, calling into question their own mimetic power. As an object, the portrait was often functional to the expression of Petrarchan themes, a pretext to lament the lady’s absence or itemize the traditional canon of beauties. At the same time, however, it was also a challenging object. The series of motives that recur in the celebration of the beloved’s picture are indicative of the ambivalent attitude with which poets looked at these works of art, perceived as a source of both delight and disappointment. The portrait is so lifelike that it beguiles the senses, yet it lacks the power of speech and breath, leading the poet/lover to wish for a replication of the Pygmalion myth; the portrait is kinder than the woman it represents, as it does not shun the poet, yet it is incapable of showing her highest beauty, that of the soul. The same tension between admiration and condemnation informs the poet’s comparison between the portrait and his own form of representation. On the one hand, painting is acknowledged as superior to poetry because of its higher mimetic power. As Giovanni della Casa writes, he is unable to portray his beloved’s visage as well as Titian does, not (or at least not only) because of a personal defect but because of the very nature of his (verbal) art: “Deh chi ’l bel volto in breve carta ha chiuso? / (Cui lo mio stil ritrarre indarno prova, / né in ciò me sol, ma l’arte inseme, accuso)” [Who closed in a little paper the beautiful visage? / (Which my pen tries to portray vainly / And I for this accuse not

144  Camilla Caporicci only myself but also my art)] (Della Casa [1558] 2003, 34.9-11). On the other hand, however, the limits of painting are also highlighted through a comparison with poetry. A painted portrait might be more powerful in terms of visual mimesis, but it is capable to represent the outward appearance only. Moreover, it is less durable than a poetic one: being made of perishable materials, it cannot guarantee to the subject the immortality promised by the poet. A source of inspiration and reflection, the portrait emerges thus as a significant element within the imagery of the sonnet tradition, while the language of painting becomes an instrument to express the poet’s attempt at recreating his beloved’s image. This said about Renaissance Italy, we may turn our gaze toward English soil. Do we find the same dynamics at work in English poetry? As Leonard Barkan writes, the connections between pictures and poetry are particularly relevant in those contexts where the practices of verbal and visual arts are experientially interrelated, say, when Petrarch writes sonnets about Simone Martini or Michelangelo composes poems about sculpture or Titian gets advertised by Lodovico Dolce. Yet Anglo-American scholars, at least, are steeped in a literary Renaissance – that of Elizabethan England  – where such interrelations are the exception rather than the rule. (Barkan 1995, 330) “Ekphrasis,” Barkan continues, is passed on in an inheritance more from Homer, Ovid, and Petrarch than from Zeuxis, the Domus Aurea, and Botticelli. It is not a visual figure so much as a figure of speech, and like all tropes it is a lie. . . the larger lie is that these pictures have a prior existence independent of the poet. (332) This statement appears to find some confirmation when considering English sonnets devoted to portraits. The level of rhetorical elaboration, as well as the employment of specifically verbal figures, was marked in Italian sonnets, yet the presence of an exceptionally rich visual culture was clearly detectable behind the poetry dealing with portraits. Names of living artists were made, actual paintings were referred to, part of a courtly game in which sonnets and portraits were deeply interrelated. The figure of speech sprang from a specific visual figure; the ekphrastic movement was not, or at least not always and not entirely, “a lie.” With few exceptions, such as Henry Constable’s and John Donne’s poems praising Nicholas Hilliard,1 we very rarely encounter the names of living painters in the English sonnets of the period. Of course, this could be attributed to a cultural environment in which the cult of the personality

Portraiture in Elizabethan Sonnet Sequences  145 of the artist, as well as the acknowledgment of his individual worth, was far less pronounced than in Italy. However, the general impression one gets when reading the many sonnets devoted to the beloved’s portrait is that the references to the paintings are inspired more by a desire to broaden the field of rhetorical possibilities than by the presence of actual objects. This does not mean, however, that these poems do not tell us anything about the relationship between the verbal and the visual in Renaissance England, nor does it imply that poets were not familiar with the form of art referred to in their works. On the one hand, we must not forget that, if English historical and religious painting could perhaps not compete with the great Italian production, English artists excelled in the art of portraiture, both full-scale and miniature. This form of art was, in fact, perceived by English artists and authors themselves as the most refined and specifically “English” among artistic expressions (Caporicci 2017) – so much so that Edward Norgate ([c. 1648–50] 1919, 20), playing down Vasari’s praise of the Italian limner Giulio Clovio, could proudly assert that the English “are incomparably the best Lymners in Europe,” and that, in 1712, Richard Steele could write that, as “no nation in the world delights so much in having their own, or friends’ or relations’ pictures,” the art of portrait or “face-painting is nowhere so well performed than in England” (Steele [1712] 1837, 337–38). The poets who employed the portrait motif were then referring to a form of representation very much in vogue, and with which they were probably well acquainted. Moreover, the way in which these poets articulate a series of topoi and reflections on the portrait reveal both the influence of the Petrarchan code on their interpretation of the pictorial concept and the presence of a specific visual culture.

The Portrait as Image: Playing with the Petrarchan topoi Many of the sonnets devoted to the beloved’s portrait use the reference to the visual element mainly as a “variation on the theme”: an occasion to articulate the Petrarchan topoi in a different way, experimenting with new extended metaphors and rhetorical games. Full of elaborate and sometimes far-fetched conceits, these poems employ the portrait motif to praise the perfection of the lady, celebrate her power, lament her cruelty or express the poet’s sufferance. In some cases, the trick is rather simple. In Bartholomew Griffin’s Fidessa (1596), for instance, the picture of the cruel lady appears in a metaphorical glass, namely, the suffering visage of the poet himself: “He that would fain Fidessa’s image see, / My face, of force, may be his looking-glass! / There is she portrayed, and her cruelty!” (Griffin [1596] 1904, 33.1-3). Here, the reference to the visual image is no more than a pretext to formulate, in a somewhat fanciful manner, the traditional topos of the woman’s cruelty  and the

146  Camilla Caporicci related suffering of the poet. No serious reflection on the visual nature of the representation appears to form the origin of the poem: in fact, the picture itself is not referred to as an actual image but as a metaphorical signifier of a psychological condition. A similar discourse can be made for several other poems, which play with the portrait motif to express a series of well-known Petrarchan topoi. Suffice it to think of the instructions that Robert Tofte ([1597] 1904, part III, XIII) and Giles Fletcher ([1593] 1904, 10) impart to not-better-specified “Painters,” who are invited to follow the pattern of their ladies’ beauty in order to portray, in an emblematic way, two typically Petrarchan emotions: Disdain and Love. Even the already mentioned sonnet by Henry Constable, which stands out as particularly interesting as it is one of the few English sonnets explicitly in praise of a specific painter and artwork – the miniature of Penelope Devereux, Lady Rich, painted by Nicholas Hilliard (c. 1590) – concludes with a clever conceit aimed at celebrating the portrait’s model. After praising the prince of English limners, Nicholas Hilliard, through a daring as well as witty comparison with the Italian Raphael – Michelangelo himself, if asked in private, would agree on the limner’s supremacy over his countryman – Constable goes on to affirm, in accordance with a typical Petrarchan concept, that Hilliard’s artistry is, in fact, not his own but entirely derived from the preciousness of the sitter, who enriches the valuable stones employed by the miniaturist, making “the jewel which you paint seem Rich” (Constable [c. 1590] 1812, 509, line 14). In other instances, the same use of the visual element as a means to support the celebrative intention of Petrarchan poetry acquires further significance, reflecting some of the tensions characteristic of the period’s culture in the peculiar articulation of specific topoi. This is for instance the case of Tofte’s treatment of a recurring motif in the European tradition of sonnets devoted to portraits: that of the “fatal” lady who, combining the lyrical topos of the wounding eyes with the classical myth of Medusa, resists the artist’s attempt to immortalize her by overwhelming him with her terrible power. Some ladies, such as Fletcher’s Licia, set the portrait on fire with their eyes (Fletcher [1593] 1904, 15); others, like Isabella d’Este in the sonnet Tebaldeo addresses to the sculptor Giancristoforo Romano, turn into stone those who dare to encounter their gaze (Tebaldeo [c. 1498] 1992, 251); others still, and this is Tofte’s case, blind them with their splendor: For whilst he giues his minde attentiuely, And studieth to match Nature with his Art, Marking her Feature with a watchfull eye, To portray forth most liuely euery part: Such brightnes comes from her, such glistring rayes, As he’s struck blinde, and darkned goes his wayes.

Portraiture in Elizabethan Sonnet Sequences  147 This is the cause, that who in hand doth take, In curious wise her pearlesse Counterfate, Hoping himselfe immortall so to make, Doth fall into like dangerous estate: Thinking to shadow her, he shadowed is, And so his eyes, and purpose he doth misse. (Tofte [1598] 1880, Part I, 23.7-18) At the base of this conceit there is once again a eulogistic intent, yet something more might be said about this passage. The blindness that hits the painter who strives to portray the lady’s features comes not simply as an accidental consequence of the woman’s bright beauty but, it would seem, almost as a punishment – a punishment for his pride. The sin is threefold: a sin against Nature, which the painter vainly attempts to equal; a sin against the Petrarchan lady, who should be the only one to be made immortal through art (while the poet craves immortality for himself); and a sin against the divinity incarnated in the heavenly woman, which he dares to investigate and portray. In this last sense, this passage may be said to reflect the iconoclastic anxiety that, sprang from a religious matrix, resonates in the cultural universe of an entire age. It is the attempt to possess the full knowledge of a divine being in all its parts, and to replicate its shape and image, thus overturning the hierarchy between creator and creature, that causes the painter to lose his sight in a sort of bitterly ironic contrappasso. By playing on the polysemy of the verb “to shadow,” meaning both “to trace” and “to obscure,” Tofte gives the painter who intended “To shadow forth her Luster” (23.4) his proper punishment: “Thinking to shadow her, he shadowed is.” The traditional Petrarchan topos acquires thus a darker shade, as the poetic reflection on the act of portraying takes on some of the uneasiness linked to the coeval debate over the creation of images and the representation of the divine. The poem just analyzed is not the only text written by Tofte in which the Petrarchan declination of the picture motif is tinged with an iconoclastic undertone. In the following poem, the beloved is compared to a particular kind of image: Unto an Image may I right compare My Mistress, since so cruel She’s to me: Which standeth for a sign or shadow fair; To which the simple ignorant bow with knee: And though with eyes, mouth, ears, and feet it show; Yet doth it neither see, talk, hear, or go. So plays my Choice when I appear in sight: Nor see, nor speak, nor hear, nor stay She will. So as an Idol, She resembleth right; Blind, mute, deaf, moveless, senseless standing still.

148  Camilla Caporicci Then am not I worse than a lifeless block; To worship such a painted coloured stock. (Tofte [1597] 1904, 31) Though aimed at expressing the topos of the stonehearted beloved, the poet’s peculiar articulation of this motif and his terminological choice clearly invites a reading that takes into account the iconoclastic debate of Renaissance England. Drained of life because of her motionless coldness, the poet’s mistress becomes a dead “Image” that stands “for a sign or shadow” of the living woman, a dull “Idol.” An “Image” and an “Idol” then, two words deeply charged with religious significance and equally used in treatises and sermons against idolatry. As we read in the Homily against peril of idolatry, and superfluous decking of churches, “although in common speech we use to call the likeness or similitude of men or other things images, and not idols: yet the Scriptures use the said two words (idols and images) indifferently for one thing always” ([1563] 1852, 160). An idol very reminiscent of those described in Psalm 115:4-7: Their idoles (are) siluer and golde, (euen) the worke of mens hands. Thei haue a mouth and speake not: thei haue eyes and se not. Thei haue eares and eare not: thei haue noses and smell not. Thei haue hands and touche not: they haue fete and walke not: nether make thei a sounde with their throte. (Geneva Bible 1560) This idol is, in the poem’s last verse, defiantly reduced to a “painted coloured stock.” The image evoked is multifaceted, and again, deeply charged with iconoclastic undertones. The pleonastic use of “painted coloured” could well echo the Puritans’ criticism of cosmetics as well as painted images, while also probably alluding to the colors of rhetoric used in the Petrarchan tradition to “paint” and embellish the lady – a tradition evoked also through the paratactic decomposition of the female body, mocking the poetic blazon. On the other hand, the polysemous word “stock,” which may indicate a block of wood or a senseless person, is also, interestingly enough, a term “applied contemptuously to an idol or a sacred image” (Oxford English Dictionary; OED). In particular, we may think of a painted wooden sculpture, perhaps even a statue similar to those of the Virgin Mary so recently removed from English churches – an image in front of which people “bow with knee” and that the poet “worships.” But the people who bow to it are “simple ignorants,” the lover who worships it a “lifeless block”: the poet who adores (and perhaps even created, with its rhetorical colors) the painted image, becomes similar to it in its senseless dullness. As the Psalm warned: “Thei that make them are like unto them: so are all that trust in them”

Portraiture in Elizabethan Sonnet Sequences  149 (Geneva Bible 1560, Psalm 115:8). In line with the official standpoint, the tone the poet reserves to those who idolize the image is unmistakably derogatory. Is this iconoclastic stand to be taken seriously? Through his particular use of the image motif, Tofte plays with the traditional accusation religious men, and particularly Puritans, addressed to both worshippers of images and sonnet-writing poets. Indeed, petrarchan, poets were accused of spending all their art in the celebration of a merely human being, and of turning their ladies into idols – an accusation we see reflected in several poems of the period, including Shakespeare’s famous sonnet 105: “Let not my love be called idolatry, / Nor my belovèd as an idol show” (Shakespeare [1609] 2005, 105.1-2). By articulating the idea of the idolatrous nature of Petrarchan love from a specifically visual standpoint, that is, by referring to the beloved as an actual object-idol, the poet appears to reinforce Puritans’ accusations, condemning his lady and the passion proved toward her through a language and a logic pertaining to a most widespread and pressing religious issue. On the other hand, however, the fact that this admission comes within a properly Petrarchan sonnet sequence, and that the motivation at the base of the poet’s angry comparison between his lady and a “painted coloured stock” is her indifference toward him, casts a shadow on the seriousness of the poet’s intent. In fact, in his intention we might perhaps even detect a certain degree of irony, targeted precisely at those Puritans who despised the love of the sonneteers so fiercely that, as Giles Fletcher lamented in the prefatory letter to his Licia, they “hath quite debarred us of honest recreation” (Fletcher [1593] 1904, 27). Tofte’s somewhat irreverent spirit emerges in another poem dealing with the painted representation of his beloved: To the picture of his mistris. Here, it is the poet’s impatience toward the disdainful chastity of the ideal lady that finds expression in a particular declination of the portrait motif. As Alba is away, Tofte looks for a replacement and finds it in his “cruell Mistresse COVNTERFAITE”: it is “to her PICTVRE,” the poet declares, that he will present his verse. However, presenting his verse is not the only thing the poet would like to do with this portrait: Here may I touch, kisse, talke, doe what I please Without Controle, Frowne, Anger, or Disdaine To breake ones minde in griefe yet tis some e[ase] And boldly speake without replie againe. Ah that I were Pigmalion in this place, That Venus, me (as him she did) would grace. (Tofte [1598] 1880, 17.19-24) The inanimate nature of the portrait, which was typically highlighted as a negative aspect in the comparison with the living original, becomes

150  Camilla Caporicci here an almost desirable quality. While the dull indifference of the lady, which had transformed her into an idol in the previous poem, was a source of sorrow and rage for the poet, in this text the passivity of the painted image emerges as a somewhat positive attribute in that it allows him to satisfy on it that burning desire frustrated by the scornful beloved. The picture becomes thus a sort of fetish, and quite an erotic one: the amorous revenge that the poets takes on the image is made not only of bold words but also of sexually charged actions such as touching, kissing and a not-better-specified “what I please,” an expression that, with its powerful allusiveness, opens to the reader’s mind an infinity of (erotic) possibilities. To these acts, the painted lady can offer no resistance: she has no control over her lover’s behavior, nor is she able to express her refusal in the traditional Petrarchan way (nor in any other way, for that matter). The poet’s phantasy emerges thus, first of all, as a phantasy of control and possession: a phantasy that finds in the Ovidian myth of Pygmalion an appealing classical archetype. This story, the reference to which was commonly found in Renaissance poems dealing with the portrait motif, allows room for such an interpretation. Fruit of Pygmalion’s artistic endeavor, the statue, later to become a woman, is forged in accordance with her creator’s dream and, as such, she is entirely subject to his desire. It is this kind of happy conclusion that Tofte has in mind when he expresses his hope for a reiteration of the myth. Instead of wishing for his lady to come back, the poet dreams of a vivification of her artistic copy: a copy that, unlike the original, will passively accept his love. Thus, the objectification of the woman implicit in the process of representation offers itself as a base for the poet’s phantasy of possession: the lady he cannot touch turns into a more than seizable object. The portrait of the lady can be an actual object, as in most of the cases examined so far, but it can also consist in an inner image. In particular, various poets (including, as we have seen, Shakespeare himself) express through the specific language of painting the topos of the beloved’s picture contained in the lover’s heart, employing it either in accordance with the eulogistic Petrarchan intention, or as an element of divergence from it. John Davies, in one of his Ten Sonnets, to Philomel, affirms that, in order to behold his lady’s image day and night, he has drawn “Her lively Picture” in his heart, “But shee, like Phillips Son, scorning that I / Should portray her, wanting Apelles Art, / Commaunded Love (who nought dare hir deny) / To burne the Picture which was in my Hart” (­Davies [n.d.]1975a, 7.3-8). The erudite reference to the hard-toplease Alexander the Great and to his preference for Apelles – a reference that the poet could have found not only in such classical authors as Lucian, Ovid and Pliny but also in several Renaissance treatises and poems – is put at the service of the formulaic statement of the poet’s artistic insufficiency, which is here explicitly associated to the art of portraiture. At the same time, the portrait motif becomes a pretext to

Portraiture in Elizabethan Sonnet Sequences  151 express the lyrical theme of the poet’s burning heart, which acquires an ambiguously religious and anti-iconoclastic undertone in the moment in which, in the final couplet, the image of the lady is said to resist fire because of her saintly nature: “Love could not burne the Saint, it was divine, / And therefore fir’d my hart, the Saints poor shrine” (7.13-14). On the other hand, Giles Fletcher plays with the portrait-in-the-heart motif challenging the supposed spiritual nature of the pure love traditionally expressed in Petrarchan sonnets. Seeing a picture of herself all naked, Licia blushingly exclaims: “How could the Painter know so much by me … It is not like, he naked me hath seen”! The poet, implying a knowledge of his lady that goes far beyond propriety, answers in a mockingly humble tone: “I showed my heart, wherein you printed were; / You, naked you, as here you painted are,” and concludes, turning the traditional Petrarchan invocation into a naughty threat: “Then take my heart, and place it with your own! / So shall you naked never more be known” (Fletcher [1593] 1904, VI). The last example we will analyze is the conclusion of the first of Tofte’s examined poems, in which the poet had highlighted the impossibility, for an ambitious Painter aiming to make himself immortal, to portray the blinding lady. After underscoring the Painter’s inability, the poet appropriates the portraying act through a movement that goes from the outside to the inside, from the external, physical object, to the internal, metaphorical one: “That, she were drawne in midst of Hart it were / Far better, (and (my selfe) haue plaste her so)” (Tofte [1598] 1880, Part I, 23.19-20). The poet takes thus the painter’s place in the creation of the woman’s image, which he describes through a convergence of the terminology proper to the art of portraiture and a particularly corporeal interpretation of the Petrarchan topos: “My Hart’s the Boord, where limnde you may her see; / My Teares the Oyle, my Blood the Colours bee” (23.23-24). Since the language used to present this image appears at least partially technical, one might wonder what kind of portrait the poet is referring to. The word “limned” suggests a miniature portrait, as the verb “to limn” was used in sixteenth-century England primarily (though not exclusively) to indicate the art of miniature drawing. This interpretation, which suggests an association between sonnets and miniatures that, as we shall see in the next section, is frequent in the sonnet sequences of the period, finds further support in the fact that a miniature would suit well the supposed size of a portrait drawn on a man’s heart, as well as the private and sentimental nature of such an image. On the other hand, however, the reference to the “Oyle” appears to challenge such a hypothesis: as Nicholas Hilliard makes quite clear in his unpublished treatise of about 1600, limning was a water-based art, different from and contrasted to oil painting. The poet might have used the verb “to limn” as a general synonym for “painting”; or he might have known that, even though the majority of miniatures were painted in

152  Camilla Caporicci watercolors, some of them were done using oil-painting; or perhaps, he simply did not care too much for the consistency of the terminology employed to describe a portrait whose function was essentially metaphorical. Be that as it may, the relationship that this little painting establishes with the portrait that the painter (vainly) attempts in the poem’s first part reflects in some sense that existing between miniatures and fullscale portraits. The intimate, private picture, hidden within the poet’s breast, counters the public display to which the ambitious painter would have destined his portrait, transforming the act of representation in one of private devotion, a work of art into a love token.

The Portrait as Language: Picturing with Words The debate on the relationship between the art of painting and that of poetry, and on their respective nature and merits, was not ignored by English authors. Equally, the Horatian concept of the ut pictura poesis, a dictum so frequently repeated that, as Joel Elias Spingarn (1920, 42) wrote, can be considered “almost the keynote of Renaissance criticism,” did not pass unacknowledged. In his famous Defence of Poesy, Philip Sidney, the great initiator of the Elizabeth Sonnet Vogue, defines poetry as an “art of imitation, for so Aristotle termeth it in the word mimesis – that is to say, a representing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth – to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture” (Sidney [1595] 2008, 217). This idea of poetry as a picture – an idea that, as Leonard Barkan (1995, 327) writes, “stands as the emblem of a kind of utopian poetics, a dream that poetry can do just about anything” – assumes a peculiar significance when referred to a particular kind of poetry, that is, the celebrative one. If writing poetry is painting, then is not composing a sonnet to describe and praise the beauty of a woman quite similar to drawing her portrait? As I have already noted (Caporicci 2015), Renaissance poets perceived and reflected on the association between painting and poetry: an association essentially founded on the idea that any truthful and effective representation of reality must be based on a visual kind of imagination. Interested in highlighting their artistic and poietic role through a meta-­ poetical kind of discourse, these poets used the language of painting in their sonnet sequences, more or less explicitly linking their verbal celebration of the beloved to the visual, specifically painted, representation of her. This phenomenon reflects first of all the poets’ will to equate their form of representation to that based on the visual mimesis in order to emphasize their own power to truthfully represent the r­ eality – a method that perfectly exemplifies what Roland Barthes (1974, 55) describes as the easiest and most common way to create a sense of realism.2 The assumption on which this equation is based would seem an implicit admission of the mimetic supremacy of painting over poetry. After all, does not a painted portrait immediately “resemble” a woman much more than a bunch of black letters? Nevertheless, the relationship Elizabethan

Portraiture in Elizabethan Sonnet Sequences  153 poets establish between verbal and visual portrayal is not often one of competition, and even when it is, the competition does not always result in the victory of the latter. In many cases, poets employ the reference to the art of portraiture to express their inability, or rather the inability of all kinds of art, be it verbal or visual, to represent truthfully the perfection of the beloved. The primary intent is a eulogistic one: the main point is not a theoretical discussion of the actual mimetic possibilities of poetry and painting, but rather an elaborate articulation of the traditional topos of the lady’s excellence and of the related inadequacy of her poet/lover’s capacity. This is clear in some of Tofte’s poems. In The Conclusion of the Second Part of Laura, the poet introduces the equation between poetry and painting by comparing himself to the Greek Apelles, a painter whose name was often invoked in the Renaissance as the epitome of artistic excellency, who drew “Venus’ matchless shape… / But how to finish it, he never knew” (Tofte [1597] 1904, lines 17–18). The reference is not to the famous Venus Anadyomene but to the Venus of Kos, which, as Pliny the Elder recounts in his Naturalis Historia (XXXV.92), was left unfinished when Apelles, and which remained as such because no other artist was good enough to complete it. In Tofte’s sonnet, however, the failure is attributed to Apelles himself. This incorrect interpretation of the source (assuming that Pliny was actually his direct source) allows the poet to arm himself with the great painter’s illustrious precedent in order to declare the insufficiency of his own skill: “My pencil, for thy picture is too weak /… / Not painted, scarce I thee have shadowed here: / This task ’s for such as have in skill no peer” (lines 20–24). It is evident that the intention is purely celebrative, and that the humility so ceremoniously exhibited by the poet reflects the traditionally Petrarchan attitude toward the lady and not, as the comparison with Apelles makes fairly clear, his awareness of an actual artistic weakness. A similar dynamic is found in The conclusion of the last Part. By comparing himself to a famous classical painter who was incapable of depicting his subject to perfection, the poet justifies his inability to portray his beloved while implicitly glorifying himself through the comparison. In this case, the painter is Timanthes: when he saw he could not paint With lively colours, to his lasting fame, Such works he took in hand; and found too faint His cunning: seeking for to hide the same, He over them a subtil Shadow drew; so that his faults, or none, or few, could view. (Tofte [1597] 1904, vv. 1–6) The reference is probably to the famous Sacrifice of Iphigenia, in which Agamemnon’s visage is hidden under a veil because, again according to

154  Camilla Caporicci Pliny (Naturalis Historia XXXV.73), the painter had found it impossible to give visual representation to the extreme pain of the victim’s father. Distorting the source once again – that is, attributing Timanthes’s decision to his limited skill and not to a precise artistic intention – the poet stresses the painter’s defective capacity, thus introducing the parallel with himself. Using terms ambiguously pertaining to the semantic fields of both writing and painting, the poet affirms that he would like to “blaze” his lady’s beauty, meaning both “to proclaim” and “to describe pictorially” or “depict in colours” (as in “blazon”) but, wanting the skill to do it, he can produce only a “shadow” of her. Finally, in a poem contained in Alba, the poet calls into question the most famous classical representatives of sculpture (Praxitiles and Myron), painting (Apelles) and poetry (Homer), just to affirm that his lady’s beauty would overcome them all. Even if they could be able to “shadow” her shape, the lady’s radiant excellence, according to a motif already employed by Tofte, will overwhelm and darken their intelligence, thus preventing them from completing the portrait. Plastic, visual and verbal arts are equally defeated, and the poet, though declaring himself ready to explore every artistic medium, is forbidden any form of representation: “Deare ALBA I by thee am still forbid, / By Statue, Image, Picture, or by Verse, / To shew the Vertues rare within thee hid” (Tofte [1598] 1880, Part II, 57.19–21). In other cases, despite the explicit statement of the equal inability of poetry and painting in portraying the beloved, the somewhat superior power of verse is alluded to through the paradox of an art that affirms its incapacity to praise while actually doing so. Edmund Spenser, for instance, asks himself what pen or pencil can express his lady’s angelic face. The implicit answer, of course, is none: though the painter “colours could devize at will… Yet many wondrous things there are beside” (Spenser [1595] 2014, 17.5–8), things that no visual representation could ever be able to picture. These things, which “cannot expresséd be by any art” (17.12), are, in fact, described by the poet – “The sweet eyeglaunces, that like arrows glide, / The charming smiles, that rob sense from the heart: / The lovely pleasance and the lofty pride” (17.9–11) – who implicitly reveals, thus, the superior power of his celebrative verses. A similar dynamic is found in John Davies’s Elegies of love. In this deeply Neoplatonic poem, the limit of painting emerges as a direct consequence of its essentially visual nature: in accordance with the hierarchical opposition of material and spiritual planes, the painter’s endeavor appears unable to express the lady’s most authentic beauty because necessarily limited to her physical appearance, “those outward forms” in which “all fools are wise” (Davies [n.d.]1975b, 3.20). What is truly precious is instead a series of spiritual qualities that “Eie never saw, the Pensill never drew” (3.23) – “invisible” qualities such as the beauty of her mind, the quickness of her soul, her clear imagination and lively wit, which the poet, though affirming that pen could never describe them, proceeds to

Portraiture in Elizabethan Sonnet Sequences  155 illustrate with remarkable poetic enthusiasm. What pencil could not draw, the poet’s pen has, in fact, depicted. Among the poets who express the difficulty of representing the beloved through the language of portraiture, the anonymous author of Zepheria deserves particular attention. Originally published at the height of the sonnet vogue, in 1594, this lyric sequence, composed of a dedicatory poem and forty “canzons,” mostly sonnets, presents an exceptionally high number of references to the art of painting (so much so that one might even be tempted to hypothesize some specific knowledge of painting on the unknown author’s part). “Whereas the inadequacy of writing is continually acknowledged,” Andrew Stott (1994, 341) writes, in Zepheria “the capacity of painting to offer up beauty in its abundance is given as a solution. Painterly metaphor is used to associate the description of the beloved with close verisimilitude, a degree of mimesis not available to writing.” This is a sharable observation. The appropriation of conventions and codes proper to the art of portraiture is clearly functional to the creation of a sense of realism, as visual mimesis presents itself as more accessible and self-evident than the poetic one. On the other hand, the relationship that the poet establishes between painting and poetry on an explicit level is not one of rivalry, nor does the visual art appear to be always evoked as a superior term of comparison. In the majority of the sonnets, the interrelation between the two arts is, in fact, used to express the difficulty inherent in the representation of the beloved. The language employed to activate the connection between visual and verbal forms of representation is that of painting, and particularly of limning. Why limning? Probably because the miniature was the closest pictorial equivalent of the Elizabethan sonnet. The affinity between Renaissance miniatures and Petrarchan sonnets has already been object of study. As Julius Walter Lever (1956, 103) writes, sonnets and miniatures came into being “because a new, personal attitude to experience demanded expression.” Answering the need for a form of art that could express a private and intimate dimension yet do so in a highly ornamental and artistically elaborated style, both sonnets and miniatures were based on what Patricia Fumerton (1986) convincingly calls a “game of secrecy,” founded on the “publication” of a supposedly private content. Moreover, as I highlighted in a recent essay on the miniature in Shakespeare’s work (Caporicci 2017), the “picture in little” was the perfect pictorial counterpart of the sonnet also because it was based on a similar celebrative aesthetics. The jewel-like images painted with gold, silver, and gemstones, often enclosed in actual, wearable jewels, gave visual substance to the flattering, idealizing picture verbally drawn by the sonnet poet with no less precious metaphorical materials. “Limning their ʻtrue,ʼ private loves in patterned lines and ʻlyvely collors,ʼ with metaphorical flowers and gems, the sonneteers, one might say, are

156  Camilla Caporicci miniaturists at heart” (Fumerton 1986, 87). Perceiving this affinity, several poets employed the specific language of limning when writing about portraits. Besides Tofte, whose employment of the verb “to limn” we have already considered, terms referring to the art of miniature painting are used, among others, by Michael Drayton (Ideas Mirrour [1594] 1961, sonnet 46) and, as we are about to see, by Samuel Daniel and the anonymous author of Zepheria. Constantly engaged in attempting a portrait of his beloved, the Zepheria poet employs the language of limning to give material substance to his representational effort. Instead of imagining a writer tracing black letters on a piece of paper, the reader is brought to visualize not only the painted picture of the lady but the poet himself, in the guise of a painter, in the act of depicting her. Though be thou limned in these discoloured lines, (Delicious Model of my spirit’s portrait!) Though be thou sable pencilled, these designs Shadow not beauty, but a sorrow’s extract! When I emprise, though in my love’s affections, The silver lustre of thy brow to unmask! Though hath my Muse hyperbolized trajections; Yet stands it, aye, deficient to such task. My slubb’ring pencil casts too gross a matter, The beauty’s pure divinity to blaze! For when my smoothed tongue hath sought to flatter, Thy Worth hath dearthed his words, for thy true praise! Then though my pencil glance here on thine eyes; Sweet! think thy Fair, it doth but portionise! (Zepheria 1594, 2) The two sematic fields that dominate the sonnet, that of poetry writing and that of limning, find expression in a series of accurately chosen terms. The “portrait” of the lady, who stands like a “model,” is “limned” in the in the poet’s “lines,” a term that might simultaneously refer to a painter’s traits and a writer’s verses. Attention is also devoted to the materials and methods through which this portrait is depicted. The lady is “sable penciled,” a definition that evokes a precise kind of artistic work: the term “sable” indicates a fine brush made of the sable’s hair (OED), particularly suitable for such refined works as miniatures, which, combined with the verb “to pencil,” suggesting a meticulous and ornamentally detailed kind of drawing, highlights the careful and delicate nature of the poet/painter’s operation. But though his “pencil” – again, a term that refers to a small paintbrush made with fine hair tapered to a point, especially apt for delicate work (OED) – glances on the beloved’s eyes, the poet’s art falls short of his task, which is to “blaze” – meaning once

Portraiture in Elizabethan Sonnet Sequences  157 again “to proclaim,” to “emblazon,” and “to describe pictorially” – his lady’s beauty. His lines are “discoloured,” the image of the woman deprived of her natural hue, changed to a duller shade. Why so? Of course, it is the divine nature of this beauty that makes any faithful reproduction impossible, a concept expressed through terms that appear, once again, carefully chosen, suggesting an essentially Neoplatonic kind of argument. The luminous character of the woman (her silver brow) cannot be “shadowed” – a term in which the meaning “to represent by a shadow or imperfect image” (OED) coexists with the chromatic and luministic sense “to darken.” Similarly, the pureness of her beauty’s divinity, naturally evoking an idea of candor and lightness, is opposed to the “gross matter” cast by a pencil defined as “slubbering,” that is, “staining,” “soiling,” but also “darkening.” The act of artistic representation, the pictorial one as well as its poetic equivalent, appears thus not as a reproduction but rather as a degradation, and even a desecration, of the lady’s divine image. The difficulty encountered by the poet in his attempt to depict the beloved is expressed through the language of painting in several other sonnets. In sonnet 23, for instance, the poet doubts that he could ever portray the unmatchable sweetness of Zepheria’s coral-colored lips, while in sonnet 18 he affirms that, should he “pencil” her, he would win no glory from it. This is because, the poet affirms playing a double-­ mirror game, painting a portrait of his mistress’s image would be like copying something written by another: “Even such as him befalls, whose pen doth copy / The sweet invention of another’s quill” (18.3–4). The physical appearance of the woman is treated as a work of art in itself, making the visual image that the poet/painter could draw emerge as doubly second-hand. On the other hand, the equivalence established between painting and poetry, pencil and pen, plays on the paradox of a poet who, while writing a sonnet, sets himself on the painting side of the paragone. This identification of the poet’s artistic effort with a painterly one dominates the entire sonnet 18, and is conveyed, once again, through a fairly technical terminology. To express the limited nature of his artistic skill, the poet affirms that his Muse “yet never journeyed to the Indes, / Thy Fair to purple in Alchermyan dye” (18.5–6). The reference is to the alkermes: the dried bodies of a particular kind of scale insects (Kermes ilicis and Kermes vermilio) used in the past as a source of red dye – a rare and exotic material that, in the poet’s subtly polemical metaphorical discourse, probably corresponds to the extravagant and high-sounding conceits of rival poets. The colors with which the poet/painter can depict the lady’s portrait are once again called into question in sonnet 17, where he, implicitly equating the most typically Petrarchan “chromatic” similitudes to colors used in painting, asks himself how he shall embellish his love “in a right depaint” since spring is over and roses and lilies are no longer available as terms of comparison. The solution appears

158  Camilla Caporicci to be a “portrait” painted with other colors/similitudes. The poet steps inside, and describes the luminous and many-colored beauty of Zepheria through an architectural metaphor not uncommon in Petrarchan poetry, which turns the lady’s visage into a precious building and, consequently, the poet’s description into a properly ekphrastic passage: The gold ceiling of thy brow’s rich frame Designs the proud pomp of thy face’s architecture. Crystal transparent casements to the same, Are thine eyes’ sun, which do the world depure; Whose silvery canopy, gold-wire fringes. Thy brow, the bowling place for CUPID’s eye. Love’s true-love knots, and lily-lozenges, Thy cheeks, depainted in an immortal dye. (17.5–12) In the final couplet, the poet himself refers to this description as the outcome of limning, while smartly articulating the request for the lady’s future presence as a promise of another, superior portrait: “If well, thou limned art, now, by face imagery; / Judge, how, by life, I then should pencil thee.” As we have seen, in Zepheria the relationship between painting and poetry is usually not one of competition. In one sonnet, however, the scale seems to tip in favor of the latter. This happens in sonnet 14, a poem that presents the same miniature-in-the-heart topos we have already encountered in the previous section, confirming, by the way, our idea that, because of their size, precious nature and private dimension, miniatures were probably perceived as the best pictorial equivalent of the metaphorical image enshrined in the poet’s heart. Suffering from his beloved’s absence, the Zepheria poet finds some relief in the portrait of his lady’s grace that reigns within his heart. To the rhetorical question “shall it [the heart] ever portray other semblance?” he answers vigorously: No! never shall that face so fair depainted Within the love-limned tablet of mine heart, Emblemished be! defaced! or unsainted! Till death shall blot it with his pencil dart. (14.8–12) The preciousness of the little picture painted by/for love is highlighted through the metaphorical transformation of the poet’s heart into a “tablet,” a technical word used in the sixteenth century to indicate a locket or a pendant that opened to show a picture inside, commonly used to hold a miniature. This heart enshrines the beautiful picture of the divine lady and protects it from what could be read as a sort of violent

Portraiture in Elizabethan Sonnet Sequences  159 iconoclastic attempt to destroy it, deface it, and strip it of its sanctity. As in Tofte’s case, the terminology with which the poet refers to the image reflects the iconoclastic anxiety of the period. Regardless of the author’s faith (which, in this specific case, is entirely out of our knowledge), the iconoclastic debate and the material destruction of a patrimony of religious images leaves a trace in the poetic language and imagery chosen by the poet, who appears to resent and perhaps even fear the loss of these images’ beauty and status, and who appropriates the concept of a holy picture in order to reassert its untouchable saintliness. The problem of the portrait’s durability comes then into play. If the lady’s picture is drawn within his heart, the poet will not be able to save it from death, which, anthropomorphized, will maliciously stain it with his “pencil dart.” In this sense, the frailty of the metaphorical material of the portrait (the poet’s heart) reflects the equal fragility of the actual painting materials, all subject to time’s destructive power. Not so with poetry. In the final couplet, we shift from a visual (though metaphorical) miniature portrait to a poetic one: Yet, then, in these limned lines ennobled more, Thou shalt survive, richer accomplished than before! (14.13–14) The poet appropriates the language of painting, but he does so to assert the superiority of his own artistic medium: the lines are no longer the pencil’s traits but the verses of the sonnet itself, as the demonstrative adjective (these limned lines) highlights, and it is in these lines, in this portrait, that the lady will survive after the destruction of the visual image. Not just this: through the verbal, poetic medium, her figure will stand out more noble and better depicted than in the painted portrait. The poetic portrait appears therefore as doubly superior to the visual one: it is more apt to fulfill its eternizing, time-defeating task, and it possesses a higher mimetic and celebrative power. A similar confidence in his art’s power is expressed, once again in the language of limning, by Samuel Daniel. True, the poet admits that Petrarch’s Laura is probably “better limnèd” (Daniel [1594] 1904, XXXVIII.13) than his Delia (but after all, who could compete with Petrarch?), yet his lines are good enough to give his beloved immortal life. In an exceptionally beautiful, bittersweet sonnet, Daniel contrasts the fleeting loveliness of his lady to his picture of her, a monument in which she will live forever: When Winter snows upon thy golden hairs, And frost of Age hath nipped thy flowers near; When dark shall seem thy day, that never clears, And all lies withered that was held so dear:

160  Camilla Caporicci Then take this picture which I here present thee! Limned with a pencil, not all unworthy, Here, see the gifts that God and Nature lent thee! Here read thy Self! and what I suffered for thee! This may remain thy lasting monument, Which, happily, posterity may cherish: These colours, with thy fading, are not spent; These may remain, when thou and I shall perish. If they remain, then thou shalt live thereby! They will remain, and so thou canst not dye! (XXXVII) The motif of the fading of the lady’s beauty, traditionally articulated as a threatening invite to the carpe diem, acquires here a delicate and deeply melancholic touch. Aware of the inevitable passage of time, the poet tenderly evokes the golden locks, the flower of his beloved, her day of youth – a luministic and chromatically charged impressionistic description that paves the way to the visual character of the gift the poet offers her: a picture “limned” by himself, which, with a smiling understatement, he defines “not all unworthy.” The double nature of this picture, metaphorically visual and substantially verbal, is reflected in the terms used to refer to it. While the demonstrative “this” fosters an immediate identification of the picture with the sonnet itself, the verbs referring to its fruition suggest a significant convergence of image and word: in the picture, the lady will “see” her beauty, but she will also “read” herself. It is in the paradox of this picture, drawn in the black ink of written words yet able to preserve the lady’s colors, that lies that promise of eternity which stands at the heart of all forms of celebrative art, be it visual or verbal – in fact, of every art.

Conclusion Expression of an age that witnessed the flowering of both lyrical poetry and the art of portraiture, English poems devoted to portraits reflect a variety of approaches to the visual element. In those texts treating the portrait as an actual picture, a portrait generated by an action (not necessarily, though frequently, a painter’s) distinct from the poet’s writing, the image is mostly employed as a means to play with the Petrarchan topoi – a game in which it is not uncommon to discover traces of the iconoclastic anxiety permeating the Elizabethan period. On the other hand, in the poems in which the language of painting is used to denote the poet’s own attempt to refigure the beloved, the reference to the art of portraiture becomes an occasion to reflect on the paragone between the arts, and especially on the poietic and mimetic power of poetry. Eager to highlight their role as creators, poets found in the idiom of painting, and

Portraiture in Elizabethan Sonnet Sequences  161 especially of limning, a means to stress the verisimilitude of their representational effort while lending visual and material substance to their artistic act – an act that, despite all difficulties, emerges as ultimately capable of bestowing immortal life on the beloved’s perfect image.

Notes 1 The poems I am referring to are Constable’s To Mr Hilliard Upon Occasion of a Picture He Made of My Ladie Rich and Donne’s The Storm, in which we read that “A hand or eye / By Hilliard drawn is worth a history / By a worse painter made” (Donne 2014, lines 3–5). 2 In S/Z, Barthes discusses the way in which writers use conventions and codes borrowed from the visual arts in order to describe things, as it is easier to create a sense of “realism” by representing other modes of representation than it is to represent the “real”: “Thus, realism (badly named, at any rate often badly interpreted) consists not in copying the real but in copying a (depicted) copy of the real: this famous reality, as though suffering from a fearfulness which keeps it from being touched directly, is set farther away, postponed, or at least captured through the pictorial matrix in which it has been steeped before being put into words: code upon code, known as realism” (Barthes 1974, 55).

References Barkan, Leonard. 1995. “Making Pictures Speak: Renaissance Art, Elizabethan Literature, Modern Scholarship.” Renaissance Quarterly 48 (2): 326–51. Barthes, Roland. 1974. S/Z. Translated by Richard Miller. New York: Farran, Straus and Giroux. Bolzoni, Lina. 2008. Poesia e ritratto nel Rinascimento. Bari: Laterza. Bolzoni, Lina. 2010. Il cuore di cristallo. Ragionamenti d’amore, poesia e ritratto nel Rinascimento Torino: Giulio Einaudi Editore. Caporicci, Camilla. 2015. “‘Your Painted Counterfeit.’ The paragone between portraits and sonnets in Shakespeare’s work.” Actes des congrès de la Société française Shakespeare [En ligne] 33. Caporicci, Camilla. 2017. “‘Wear this jewel for me, ʼtis my picture’: The Miniature in Shakespeare’s Work.” In Shakespeare and the Visual Arts: The Italian Influence, edited by Michele Marrapodi, 159–177. London: Routledge. Constable, Henry. [c. 1590] 1812. To Mr Hilliard Upon Occasion of a Picture He Made of My Ladie Rich. In The Harleian Miscallany vol. 9, edited by Thomas Park. London: printed for White and Cochrane, John Murray and John Harding. Daniel, Samuel. [1594] 1904. Delia. In Elizabethan Sonnets, edited by Sidney Lee. Vol. II. Westminster: Archibald Constable. Davies, John. [n.d.] 1975a. Ten Sonnets, to Philomel. In The Poems of Sir John Davies, edited by Robert Krueger. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Davies, John. [n.d.] 1975b. Elegies of Love. In The Poems of Sir John Davies, edited by Robert Krueger. Oxford: Clarendon Press. da Vinci, Leonardo. [c. 1540, codex Urbinate] 2019. Trattato della pittura. ­Firenze: Giunti.

162  Camilla Caporicci Della Casa, Giovanni. [1558] 2003. Rime. Edited by Stefano Carrai. Torino: Einaudi. Donne, John. 2014. The Storm. In The Poems of John Donne: Volume One, edited by Robin Robbins. New York: Routledge. Drayton, Michael. [1594] 1961. Ideas Mirrour. In The Works of Michael Drayton, Vol. I, edited by J. William Hebel. Oxford: Shakespeare Head Press. Fletcher, Giles. [1593] 1904. Licia. Or, Poems of Love in Honour of the admirable and singular virtues of his Lady. To the imitation of the best Latin Poets, and others. In Elizabethan Sonnets, edited by Sidney Lee. Vol. II. Westminster: Archibald Constable. Fumerton, Patricia. 1986. “‘Secret’ Arts: Elizabethan Miniatures and Sonnets.” Representations 15: 57–97. Griffin, Bartholomew. [1596] 1904. Fidessa. In Elizabethan Sonnets, edited by Sidney Lee. Vol. II. Westminster: Archibald Constable. An Homily against peril of idolatry, and superfluous decking of Churches. [1563] 1852. In Certain Sermons, or Homilies, appointed to be read in Churches in the time of the late Queen Elizabeth of famous memory, 159–95. London: The Prayer-Book and Homily Society. Lever, Julius Walter. 1956. The Elizabethan Love Sonnet. London: Methuen. Norgate, Edward. [c. 1648–50] 1919. Miniatura or The Art of Limning. Edited from the Manuscript in the Bodleian Library and Collated with other Manuscripts by Martin Hardie. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Petrarca, Francesco. 1996. Canzoniere. Edited by Marco Santagata. Milano: Mondadori. Pommier, Édouard. 2003. Il ritratto. Storia e teorie dal Rinascimento all’Età dei Lumi. Translated by Michela Scolaro. Torino: Einaudi. Shakespeare, William. [1609] 2005. Sonnets and “A Lover’s Complaint. In The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, edited by John Jowett, William Montgomery, Gary Taylor and Stanley Wells. Oxford: Clarendon. Sidney, Philip. [1595] 2008. The Defence of Poesy. In Sir Philip Sidney. The Major Works, edited by Katherine Duncan-Jones. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Spenser, Edmund. [1595] 2014. Amoretti and Epithalamion. In Edmund Spenser’s Poetry, edited by Andrew D. Hadfield and Anne Lake Prescott. Fourth Edition. New York: Norton. Spingarn, Joel Elias. 1920. A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance. New York: Columbia University Press. Steele, Richard. [1712] 1837. The Spectator, Issue 555, 4 December 1712. In The Works of Joseph Addison, Vol. II, 337–38. New York: Harper & Brothers. Stott, Andrew. 1994. “From Voi Che to Che Vuoi?: The Gaze, Desire, and the Law in the Zepheria Sonnet Sequence.” Criticism 36 (3): 329–58. Tebaldeo, Antonio. [c. 1498] 1992. Rime. Edited by Tania Basile and Jean Jacques Marchand. Ferrara: Panini. Tofte, Robert. [1597] 1904. Laura, The Toys of a Traveller: or The Feast of Fancy. In Elizabethan Sonnets, edited by Sidney Lee. Vol. II. Westminster: Archibald Constable. Tofte, Robert. [1598] 1880. Alba. The Month’s Minde of a Melancholy Lover. Edited by Rev. Alexander B. Grosart. Manchester: printed by Charles E. Simms. Zepheria [1594] 1904. In Elizabethan Sonnets, edited by Sidney Lee. Vol. II. Westminster: Archibald Constable.

9 Narrative Portraiture Catherine Belsey

Graphic Histories After inviting compliments on his parlor and its costly furniture, Middleton and Dekker’s Sir Alexander Wengrave goes on to boast about his galleries. His guests, he assures them, will find the pictures most impressive (The Roaring Girl, 1.2.6–32). In the course of the early modern period, long galleries, designed for indoor walking in bad weather, had gradually turned into show places (Figure 9.1). Always prestigious, and at first hung with painted cloths or tapestries, they went on to display portraits of the family, as well as important friends, patrons and role models (Girouard 1980, 100–2; Orlin 2007, 226–42). His own portrait collection, Sir Alexander affirms, is crammed into the space: “Within one square a thousand heads are laid / So close that all of heads the room seems made” (19–20). Critical excitement over the likelihood that with these words he points at the audience in the galleries of the Fortune Theatre should not distract us from his characterization of the portraits as “Stories of men and women” (17). Stories, he calls them: histories, narratives. How does this square with the genre he seems to be indicating? Every picture tells a story – with the possible exception of portraiture. Thanks, in particular, to its descendant, the photograph, we are inclined to think of a portrait as capturing a likeness on a given occasion, or while the subject takes time out, posed and still for the duration. Modern viewers expect to confront the image of a self at a specific moment, fixed in time past, however recent. Shearer West proposes that, although we may see “individuals who are now dead or are older than and different from the way they were represented,” portraits “seem to transport us into an actual moment that existed in the past when the artist and sitter encountered each other in a real time and place.” This “occasionality,” she argues, is at odds with biography (West 2004, 41, 50–51). Early modern viewers would certainly recognize the option of a frozen moment, the occasion perhaps marked by an inscription giving the date and the age of the subject at the time. “Look you, sir, such a one I was this present,” asserts Olivia (Twelfth Night, 1.5.228), unveiling

164  Catherine Belsey

Figure 9.1  Daniel Mytens, Alethea, Countess of Arundel, c.1618, at the entrance to her gallery hung with portraits inherited from the Elizabethan collector, Lord Lumley. © National Portrait Gallery, London.

the “picture” of her face. What we see is Olivia as she is now but the tense of the verb registers the temporality of the form. And yet the era might alternatively allow an image of the sitter to invite recognition of a narrative. The genre, in other words, could also capture time passing; portraiture was able to tell a story. And the drama of the period takes advantage of this convention, invoking narrative portraiture to provide information, sharpen an observation or intensify emotion. The fourth Addition to The Spanish Tragedy offers an example of storytelling’s reliance on visual culture. First printed in an expanded version of Thomas Kyd’s play in 1602, but possibly two or three years older, the “Painter scene” has been treated as a dramatization of madness, perhaps because it conflicts with modern expectations of portraiture.

Narrative Portraiture  165 Conversely, it can be seen to demonstrate Hieronimo’s familiarity with the practices of the early modern period. He asks the painter Bazardo for a picture: “I’d have you paint me in my gallery, in your oil colors matted, and draw me five years younger than I am.” The request sounds plausible as the kind of instruction that might be given to any portrait artist at the time. And as Hieronimo continues to specify his requirements, he relies on early modern habits of depiction. Traditionally enough, he wants to be shown with the symbols of his office, “like the Marshal of Spain.” He opts for a family group, it turns out: “my wife Isabella standing by me, with a speaking look to my son Horatio” to suggest “God bless thee,” and Hieronimo’s hand on Horatio’s head, indicating paternal endorsement of his heredity (lines 115–22). So far, so conventional. What survives of family portraiture tends to proclaim both the status of figures and the relationship between them. In 1527–28, Hans Holbein had depicted the More family, probably to celebrate Sir Thomas’s fiftieth birthday. The painting is lost, but in the pen-and-ink study that remains, Sir Thomas, as Lord Chancellor, wears the chain of office that indicates royal service. While the women of the household (and the Fool) are ranged around the men in informal exchanges, the dynasty forms a line at the center: the old judge, Sir John More, his eminent son, and Sir Thomas’s own son, John (Kupferstich­ kabinett, Basel). Genealogy mattered. The portrait of the Cobham family in 1567 shows the heir seated immediately below his father (Longleat House). Bazardo is to include Isabella blessing their son. And, indeed, mothers, too, could authorize lineage, sometimes in their own right. In 1559, Hans Eworth portrayed Mary Neville, Lady Dacre, with her twentyyear-old son, Gregory Fiennes. The young man’s title, forfeited in 1541 on the execution of his father, had been restored in 1558, and he is dressed in the gown lined with ermine that only the nobility were permitted to wear. His mother, shown slightly further back, holds, even so, a signet ring that indicates dynastic power. If she can be credited with a speaking look, it probably tells of her unremitting efforts to recover the lands and honors of the young Lord Dacre (National Portrait Gallery). Genealogy comes to converge with affection. Nearer the date of the Addition to The Spanish Tragedy, in 1596 Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger painted the pregnant Barbara, Lady Sidney, with her children. At the center of the portrait stands the young heir, William, still in petticoats but already wearing a sword, with his mother’s approving hand on his shoulder (Penshurst Place). That same year, Gheeraerts also depicted Anne, Lady Pope, with her three Wentworth children. Lord Wentworth’s widow had recently remarried and was expecting a baby. Once again, his mother has her hand on the shoulder of little Thomas, as yet unbreeched but already the fourth Baron Wentworth (National Portrait Gallery).

166  Catherine Belsey Most of these portraits depict a single moment but the temporality of Bazardo’s painting will challenge modern expectation. Yet it too remains in line with contemporary practice. While painters conventionally flattered their subjects (cf. The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 4.4.184), Hieronimo’s command to take five years off his age owes nothing to personal vanity. Instead, he wants the work to show Horatio alive. It was not uncommon for early modern portraits to include people now dead. The Cobham picture includes William’s sister, Elizabeth Brooke, who died two years earlier but is shown here as she was in life. A family portrait commissioned by Henry VII as early as the first decade of the sixteenth century depicts the king and Elizabeth of York united by an angel, each at a prie-dieu. Behind the king kneel three sons, while his wife heads a line of four daughters, in a grouping that evokes monumental brasses of the period. The queen herself died in 1503, the earliest likely date of the picture. Only one of the princes was still alive at this time and two of the princesses. As far as parenthood is concerned, the portrait tells the story of what had been achieved, but not what was now the case (Royal Collection). Hieronimo, too, wants his picture to tell his story, but in this instance commemorating disaster. His family has been torn apart by Horatio’s murder and the agonized father wants that represented too: “paint me a youth, run through and through with villains’ swords, hanging upon this tree” (128–30). We have now moved out of the gallery he originally named as the setting, and into an outside space, where Hieronimo himself will carry a sword ready for action and a torch to indicate that it is night. Perhaps, then, he wants an episodic portrait, in the manner of Sir Henry Unton’s, made in 1596. This was another memorial, commissioned by Unton’s widow, here in celebration of a life. The picture centers on Sir Henry’s image at the height of success and happiness, flanked by the figures of Fame on the one hand and Death on the other. Surrounding the portrait bust is his biography. He is shown first as a baby in the arms of his mother, then at Oriel College, Oxford, on the grand tour, on campaign in the Netherlands, as ambassador to France, presiding over a banquet, dying in his bed and finally recumbent on his monument (National Portrait Gallery). History, the past revived in the record, was evidently not at odds with portraiture. Indeed, in the 1590s the still Catholic More family commissioned the artist Rowland Lockey not only to make a copy of the Holbein portrait but also, in a separate version, to bring it up to date. There Sir John, Sir Thomas and John, reproduced from the original, still form a dynastic line, but the dead have now moved to the left to make space for the next two generations of Mores in Elizabethan dress, facing resolutely forward and holding missals. The image tells a story of religious resistance sustained across the generations (National Portrait Gallery).

Narrative Portraiture  167 Occasionality, then, was not always the main project. In The Family of Henry VII, three of the children had died before reaching the age at which they are depicted. Moreover, images of Henry VIII and Elizabeth were usually stylized as timeless to convey an ideal authority at the expense of actual vulnerability. Here personal likeness was not the point, either, and in Hieronimo’s portrait, at least one figure will owe more to convention than to individual resemblance. “Canst thou draw a murderer?” asks Hieronimo. And the painter assures him that he has “the pattern of the most notorious villains that ever lived in Spain” (131–32). But Hieronimo wants more: “let their beards be of Judas his own color, and let their eyebrows jutty over” (134–35). Type-characters help viewers follow the story. We know from medieval illumination, as well as from tapestry, most opulent of sixteenth-century English art forms, that graphic storytelling was no modern invention and that signifiers of vice and virtue were repeated from tale to tale. When Duncan insists that there is, after all, “no art / To find the mind’s construction in the face” (Macbeth, 1.4.11–12), he defies a long tradition of physiognomy, recently revived in print (Baumbach 2008, 28–42). The red hair and beard of Judas denoted wickedness; brows should ideally be high. Lucrece knows how to read the faces of the Greeks in the painting that tells the story of Troy, recognizing the “blunt rage” of Ajax and the slyness of Ulysses (Lucrece, 1394–1400). This picture, too, is episodic, although Lucrece does not examine it in sequence (1499): Nestor makes a speech, the Trojans march out joyfully to confront the foe, while Hecuba laments over the body of Priam, even as Sinon arrives to persuade him to admit the Trojan horse that will cause his death. Remarkably, the painter manages to conceal Sinon’s perjury: he doesn’t look guilty (1506–12). This sleight of hand, it seems, takes exceptional skill. More commonly, looks reveal a disposition, generic rather than particular: “What a mental power / This eye shoots forth! How big imagination / Moves in this lip,” exclaims the Poet in praise of the portrait to be presented to the hero by the Painter in Timon of Athens. And the impression does not depend only on facial features: “How this grace / Speaks his own standing!” (1.1.30–33). Villainy would speak just as loudly: “these pencill’d figures are / Even such as they give out,” comments Timon (1.1.162–63). Cutpurses, Sir Alexander Wengrave reminds his guests, are portrayed with a “hanging villainous look.” Bodies, too, signify. Paintings of Richard III were altered or recreated in the course of the sixteenth century, deforming the king’s shape to match Tudor histories of his wicked conduct (Tulloch 2009). In this light, can we make anything of the portrait of Claudius, “like a mildew’d ear / Blasting his wholesome brother,” a (barren) moor in contrast to a (fertile) mountain (Hamlet, 3.4.64–67)? The biblical passage Hamlet cites here repeatedly calls the seven blasted ears of corn in Pharaoh’s dream “thin,” indicating famine (Genesis 41:6, 7, 23, 27). Caesar

168  Catherine Belsey notably distrusts thin men (Julius Caesar, 1.2.191–200) and even now we are not immune to the psychological reading of physiology. How would it affect our perception of his part in the story if Claudius turned out to have been played by John Sincler, the slightly built actor who was also the First Beadle (“you starved bloodhound,” “you thin thing,” 2 Henry IV, 5.4.27, 30), as well as Slender, Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Gurr 2004, 241) and, conceivably, Cassius?

Heroic Analogues In addition to telling stories, portraits might invoke them. There is nothing out of the way in Hieronimo’s demand for the painter to invest his image with epic meaning by analogy with a familiar narrative: “Draw me like old Priam of Troy, crying ‘The house is a-fire’” (152–53). Lucrece sees her own image in Hecuba’s. Several portraits of the queen with a sieve in the late 1570s and early 1580s invoke the tale of Tuccia, the Vestal Virgin who proved her chastity by carrying water in a sieve (Strong 1987, 94–107). Reenacting the moment that initiated the Troy story itself, the queen takes on the role of Paris in Elizabeth and the Three Goddesses, the portrait of 1569 attributed to Hans Eworth. But instead of judging between them, she overwhelms all three. The painting isolates this moment but, in case the viewer needs an explanation, a Latin inscription tells the tale it depicts: “Powerful Juno, keen-minded Pallas; beauty shines in the rosy face of Venus. Elizabeth joined them: Juno fled, Pallas was struck dumb and Venus blushed for shame” (Royal Collection).1 Evidently, the monarch already subsumes the qualities of majesty, wisdom and love but, where a modern spectator might look to the pose of the figure for the expression of an inner truth, the Elizabethan portrait signifies by reference to fables. The goddesses the queen outdoes were familiar above all from the stories recounted by Ovid and Virgil, as these were internalized by generations of schoolboys (and a handful of their sisters). Since there could be no human models for these divinities, in portraits that convey their meanings by allusion to myth the artist’s imagination is put to the test and the fancy is free to outwork nature (Antony and Cleopatra, 2.2.211). While we see Cleopatra “o’erpicturing” only Venus (2.2.210), Old Hamlet’s portrait, like Elizabeth’s, combines the features of a whole succession of fabled deities: “Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself, / An eye like Mars to threaten and command, / A station like the herald Mercury” (Hamlet, 3.4.56–58). What was more, anamorphosis allowed for the simultaneous invocation of contrasting tales: “Though he [Antony] be painted one way like a Gorgon,” the Egyptian queen insists, “The other way’s a Mars” (Antony and Cleopatra, 2.5.116–17). In her eyes, from one angle the image of Antony, newly married to Octavia, now evokes the story of Medusa,

Narrative Portraiture  169 whose gaze turned viewers to stone; from the other, he still appears as the warrior god who mastered Venus. While heroic comparison refers to familiar tales, allegory brings story­telling inside portraiture. Another narrative dominates the pictorial space in the image of Henry VII and his family to display the record from the king’s point of view. Above the heads of the royal couple and their children, St George on a huge charger does battle with a flying dragon. The saint wears the red cross of England, while a princess kneels on the grass below the combat, holding a lamb on a lead. Fanciful castles in the background prompt the wish that Edmund Spenser had seen this picture when he embarked on Book 1 of The Faerie Queene, although, of course, the narrative was familiar from The Golden Legend. Taken together, the two parts of the picture combine to tell the tale of the Tudor rescue of the realm from Richard III. In short, there was no contradiction between history, myth and portraiture. In The Allegory of the Tudor Succession, painted in 1572, Lucas de Heere remakes an image of the family of Henry VIII. The original, probably painted c. 1545, shows the king enthroned, his hand on the shoulder of the young Prince Edward. Beside him sits Jane Seymour, now long superseded as queen but there as Edward’s mother. Pillars decorated in gold filigree isolate Mary to the king’s right and Elizabeth on his left. Behind them in turn are the court Fools, shown outside the palace (Royal Collection). In the new Elizabethan version, Henry VIII is shown once again with his children ranged on either side of him. He hands the sword of state to the boy king Edward VI, who kneels to receive it. Mary is accompanied by her husband, Philip of Spain, while Elizabeth, now queen, stands in the foreground on his left. Behind Mary and Philip is Mars, god of war, while the queen points to her contrasting companions, Peace and Plenty (National Museum of Wales).2 Four successive monarchs share the pictorial space. Meanwhile, heroic portraits of eminent citizens were widely collected by cities and corporations, as well as by colleges and the church (Tittler 2012, 33–37), as prompts to remember their histories. Such works encouraged the imitation of virtuous practices (Aston 1995, 201–3). When the Dean of St Paul’s shows two merchants with a knight and his wife round his gallery in Thomas Heywood’s If You Know not Me You Know Nobody (1606), he singles out images of benefactors, some long dead. These exemplary figures, including two women, performed services to the realm or founded almshouses and schools. As the Dean tells their stories, his hearers are moved to emulate such virtue and leave their own good deeds on record. Historical analogues might also channel – and vindicate – aspiration. The 15 potentates depicted in Jack of Newbury’s parlor in the late 1590s represent role models for Jack himself and the friends he invites to view them. These portraits too span a history, this time of the sitters’ rise from

170  Catherine Belsey humble origins. The picture of the emperor Valentinian, for instance, includes an image of his father pursuing his lowly trade of rope-making. In some cases, the story is so detailed that Jack has to explain. Lamusius, King of Lombardy, is shown as a naked child, walking through water and clutching the point of a spear. His mother, a common strumpet, had thrown her new-born baby into a stinking ditch. But when King Agilmond, riding by, put out an exploratory lance, he found that the resolute infant would not let go. So the king had him fostered and, fulfilling this early promise of strength and fortitude, Lamusius went on to reach the very top. There is nothing, Jack assures his servants, that wisdom and hard work can’t achieve (Lawlis 1961, 52–55). In these cases, the portraits, like Hieronimo’s, embrace their subject’s history. The main emphasis of Bazardo’s picture is to be on tragedy, however, not heroism, good citizenship or social mobility: Hieronimo wants his grievance put on show, possibly in the manner of the painting commissioned by the parents of the murdered Lord Darnley, with its inset narrative (Royal Collection; Kyd 2014, xxix–xxxi). Perhaps coincidentally, Hamlet too imagines revenge as a proper subject for painting, noting the resemblance between his story and that of Laertes: “For by the image of my cause I see / The portraiture of his” (5.2.77–78).

Emblematic Weather Hieronimo asks to be depicted as if awakened by a violent noise, distractedly threading his way through alleys with drawn sword to the scene of the crime, where the body of a man sways in the wind. We did not have to wait two centuries for the Gothic: Hieronimo’s feelings run riot in his account of the settings that will do justice to the moment. “Let the clouds scowl, make the moon dark, the stars extinct, the winds blowing, the bells tolling, the owl shrieking, the toads croaking, the minutes jarring, and the clock striking twelve” (143–71). Although Hieronimo’s list is unusually detailed, bad weather, at least, was not unexpected in narrative portraiture. Behind the authoritative figure of Elizabeth I in The Armada Portrait a panel depicts the storms that wrecked a substantial number of Spanish galleons. Under a lowering sky, the ships are tossed back and forth by dark and turbulent waves. In the direction Elizabeth faces, by contrast, English fire ships attack the fleet in better weather (The Queen’s House, Greenwich). This was history as depicted by the victors but a similar motif appears emblematically in The Ditchley Portrait of the queen in 1592. While lightning bisects a dark sky behind the monarch, the golden-haired queen faces clearing weather as sunlight disperses the clouds (National Portrait Gallery). Stranger, however, than either of these images is the portrait of Sir John Luttrell, originally painted in 1550 (Courtauld Institute) and copied for his grateful nephew and heir in 1591 (National Trust, Dunster

Narrative Portraiture  171

Figure 9.2  W  oodcut from the title page of The Spanish Tragedy, 1615.  © Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo.

Castle). In the later version, now in better condition, the movement from darkness to light is very evident. Sir John strides through a dark sea topless, portrayed as a Triton, while an inscription on an outcrop proclaims, “More then the rock amydys the raging seas / The constant hert no danger dreddys nor fearys.” Behind him a ship founders by night under a tempestuous sky; in front of him, from above a cloud, Peace, high-lit in heaven, places a soothing hand on Sir John’s raised arm, while Venus curbs the wrath of Mars. The painting celebrates Sir John’s role in a sea battle against the Scots in a war brought to an end by the Treaty of Boulogne (Yates 1967). Evidently, Hieronimo could expect Bazardo to manage the threatening weather, but he also asks for sound effects that would surely tax the powers of painting as mute poetry. He wants to hear the owls shriek, the toads croak and the clock strike midnight. Do Hieronimo’s exorbitant demands indicate madness? Perhaps. “O Lord, sir, I cannot make a picture sing,” insists the Painter in John Marston’s parody of the fourth Addition (Antonio and Mellida 1599, 5.1.37). “Canst paint a doleful cry?” (125) Hieronimo asks. And yet even that is not beyond the power of the speech scroll. And although The Spanish Tragedy is fiction, in due course something like Hieronimo’s commission would be executed, not in oils, as he requested, but as a woodcut for the 1615 edition of the play, where the title page obeys some, at least, of Hieronimo’s instructions (Figure 9.2). The distracted father carries a torch and a drawn sword as he bears down on the arbor where Horatio’s body is suspended; behind him Bel-Imperia, recoiling from the violence, calls for help, while Lorenzo, disguised by a mask, cries “Stop her mouth.”

172  Catherine Belsey As John Astington (2017, 185) points out, the woodcut does not illustrate a scene from the drama. Instead, it reverses the events of the murder in 2.4 and Hieronimo’s discovery of the body in 2.5 to include both episodes in a single image. In this respect it draws on Hieronimo’s instructions to the painter, incorporating details named only there, while abridging the original text in the speech ribbons. The woodcut, widely reproduced by modern editors, encapsulates the violence and disorder at the heart of the play, as well as the anguish of a father who discovers the dead body of his son. Rather than simply putting madness on show, the Painter scene surely captures with some subtlety the condition of a mind struggling against collapse.

Lacrimae rerum Narrative portraiture and the role of portraits in storytelling have the supreme authority of Virgil’s Aeneid and make their entrance from the epic into English drama by way of Dido, Queen of Carthage. If Hieronimo hopes his picture will bring closure to a story that, he also asserts, can have no end, Marlowe’s Dido wants portraits to begin the narrative of her romance with Aeneas. When she woos him by showing him images of her suitors (3.1.139–65), she appropriates for her own purposes a tradition familiar since at least the beginning of the century. A portrait of Henry VII in 1505 probably constituted part of a marriage negotiation; Henry VIII sought wives all over Europe on the strength of their representation by Holbein. Many foreigners, it seems, have courted the queen of Carthage: “Some came in person, others sent their Legats,” Dido claims. Does this conversation take place in her gallery? Perhaps. “See where the pictures of my suiters hang,” she urges, and goes on to detail their capabilities and standing. “Yet none obtained me, I am free from all, / And yet . . .” The episode initiates a tradition. When Portia itemizes her suitors in The Merchant of Venice 1.2, no pictures are mentioned, yet she conducts the audience through “a kind of discursive long gallery,” as Keir Elam (2017, 158) persuasively puts it. Here the list culminates in Bassanio, carefully introduced not by Portia but by her attendant Nerissa. In this respect, the play recapitulates a scene from Two Gentlemen of Verona (1.2), where Julia’s waiting woman wittily dismisses a succession of the heroine’s admirers, only to grow coy when their exchanges reach Proteus. But the Trojan refugees, largely indifferent at this stage to Dido’s ­romantic enticements, concentrate their attention on some of the ­sitters, seeing in them occasions to remind one another of their own tragic history. “I saw this man at Troy, ere Troy was sackt,” affirms ­Marlowe’s Achates. “I this in Greece when Paris stole faire Helen,” adds Aeneas (141–42). Whether they recognize a personal likeness or heraldic insignia

Narrative Portraiture  173 is not specified. Instead, in those two lines the speakers rehearse for the audience the main events in the story of the Iliad. And if Dido is adapting the cultural convention of the courtship portrait as a mode of seduction, the play itself is rewriting an episode of the Aeneid that already goes to show what portraiture could do for storytelling (I.453–93). As he awaits rescue by the queen in Carthage in her new temple to Juno, Virgil’s shipwrecked Aeneas is arrested by images from the Trojan War. Identifying heroes on both sides of the conflict, the Greek Agamemnon and Menelaus, Achilles, and his own king Priam, the Trojan weeps. The graphic history of the long war is told episodically: Troilus is pulled from his chariot; the Trojan women appeal in vain to Athena; Hector is dragged round the walls of the city. Aeneas sees himself in combat, too, and Priam stretching out his unarmed hands. In 40 lines of verse that describe these images and the response they evoke, Virgil authorizes his Roman epic with a vivid recapitulation of Homer’s Greek model and, at the same time, provides a context for the hero who founded his own city. The story of this encounter with the pictures of his friends and foes, and the tears of Aeneas, would have been familiar in detail to any early modern boy who had completed a grammar school education, and to some of his sisters. Here an account of narrative portraiture both depicts intense feeling and offers to provoke the emotion of Virgil’s audience, while rehearsing a history that illuminates the main theme of the poem. Able to do so much work in such a context, the classical example must have seemed to vindicate Lucrece’s contemplation of the Troy painting as she seeks an analogue for her own woes, the contrasting portraits Hamlet sets such store by and Hieronimo’s commission for the image of his own sad tale. Aeneas weeps. This passage is the context of Virgil’s lacrimae rerum, tears of pity for sorrows that pierce the heart. The provocation to tears is ambiguous. On the one hand, portraiture brings the dead to life, recovers the past (in all its sadness). On the other, making their subjects live is exactly what images cannot achieve. Is there something elegiac in the genre itself? Virgil captures the paradox when he records how the hero sighs as he feeds his soul on the empty pictures: Aeneas devours the insubstantial imagery but there is nothing there to allay his hunger. As portraits slip from marriage overtures to love tokens, that paradox only deepens. The faithless Proteus asks Silvia for her picture: “to that I’ll sigh and weep,” he protests. And yet, he acknowledges, this icon is no more than a shadow, the proper object for a rejected lover who is himself a mere shadow (Two Gentlemen of Verona, 4.2.116–22). Portia’s portrait is the prize for the right choice and Bassanio praises the painter’s skill: “What demi-god / Hath come so near creation?” Even so, the shadow limps behind the substance (The Merchant of Venice, 3.2.115– 29). Sonnet 16 brings out the inadequacy of art, whether it takes the form of images or words. (In Shakespeare’s works, the sister arts do not

174  Catherine Belsey generally compete with one another [Belsey 2012].) Only bloodlines can preserve the friend, accomplishing what neither the artist’s pencil nor his own verse can, the poet tells the young man. There are maidens ready to bear him “living flowers,” Much liker than your painted counterfeit: So should the lines of life that life repair, Which this time’s pencil or my pupil pen Neither in inward worth nor outward fair Can make you live yourself in eyes of men. (lines 8–12) Art, however lifelike, cannot give life itself, and in this light, Claudius is able to invoke portraiture as a byword for unreality: “Laertes, was your father dear to you? / Or are you like the painting of a sorrow, / A face without a heart?” (Hamlet, 4.7.107–9). Empty, insubstantial, mere shadows, portraits distance us even as they bring the sitter before us. The image, static, fixed, “embalmed” (Barthes 1982, 14), is another form, paradoxically, of still life, or nature morte. Perhaps that, as well as the transience of earthly prowess, accounts for the anamorphic skull that falls across the foreground of The Ambassadors (1533, National Gallery). If so, the subject of a portrait is already history: “such a one I was this present,” as Olivia affirms of her “picture.” Then why not see portraiture as a fit place to recount that history, to tell stories? And why not continue to include dead people among the living, as remained the practice well into the seventeenth century in provincial English painting? The story of a death forms the subject of an extraordinary portrait made by the local painter John Souch for a Chester merchant, Sir Thomas Aston (Manchester Art Gallery). Lady Aston in white lace lies dead in her bed with her eyes closed, her face pale against white sheets and pillows. The bed is hung with black velvet curtains and beside it an empty cradle, also draped in black, records the double loss experienced by Sir Thomas and his three-year-old son, the two of them all that remains of the nuclear family. The widower and the little boy are in black; Sir Thomas, who wears mourning jewelry, has one hand on the skull above the cradle and the other on a cross-staff, both measuring instrument and cross. A cosmological globe and a broken lute form the only relief against a black wall behind them, where a Latin inscription indicates the exact moment of the portrait: “The griefs of death surround me in the year of grief September 30, 1635, aged 35.” The inscription continues: “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear not; I will be consoled.” And inset in the bottom right-hand corner, outlined against the velvet bed curtain, is a smaller image of the living Lady Aston, facing the viewer with her head leaning

Narrative Portraiture  175 on her hand. She too wears black. What is the chronology of this story? Are we to suppose her in heaven? Surely her black dress and her melancholy pose preclude this option. Instead, the picture, so precisely situated in 1635, also goes back in time to show her as she was, herself in mourning, perhaps for two other dead children, and perpetuated here as resigned to death. Little Thomas points to a Latin inscription on the cross-staff: “the seas can be defined; the earth can be measured; grief is immeasurable.” Did father and child find comfort in this picture, or only the story of an inconsolable loss? From the viewer, the painting invites pity, lacrimae rerum for sorrows that pierce the heart. Images of the dead point to what cannot be recovered, even while they commemorate what once lived. Perhaps, then, Hieronimo was right to choose portraiture as a means to represent his tragic story, and Hamlet did well to contrast pictures of the living and the dead in order to tell the tale of two marriages.

The End of the Story? In 1623, Prince Charles, heir to the throne, went to Madrid with the Duke of Buckingham, in the hope of arranging a strategic marriage to the Infanta. Reversing the conventional role of portraiture in marriage negotiations, Charles came back without a bride but with pictures instead, among them Titian’s portrait of Charles V of Spain. Buckingham was already an established collector; now Prince Charles followed suit and the Italian Renaissance decisively reached the English court. Once on the throne, in 1632 Charles appointed as court painter the Flemish Anthony van Dyck, an artist fully familiar with the international tradition and greatly influenced by Titian. In conjunction with his French wife, Henrietta Maria, the king amassed a spectacular collection of European works, including portraits. Narrative portraiture declined accordingly among the elite but, although episodic painting was now superseded, storytelling had not entirely disappeared from the genre. Van Dyck’s portraits have been described as “a mixture of icon and anecdote,” where the transcendent serenity of the sovereign is thrown into relief by the bustling activity in the background (Shawe-Taylor 2018, 131). Charles I in the Hunting Field, for instance, shows the monarch standing, relaxed and authoritative, while behind him a groom calms a horse that has evidently been driven hard in the chase (c. 1636, Musée du Louvre). St George was back, too. Peter Paul Rubens portrayed him on the banks of an idealized River Thames, handing the princess the girdle she will use to lead the defeated dragon to the city. Behind her, ladies-in-waiting eye the beast fearfully – and with good reason, since the foreground is strewn with grisly human remains. To the left of this Landscape with St George and the Dragon (1630–35, Royal Collection), the poor variously implore pity or throw

176  Catherine Belsey up their hands in celebration of the victory. As the rescuer of a grateful populace, the saint is portrayed with the features of Charles I. But the princess does not resemble Henrietta Maria: instead, she is once again England. The Greate Peece, Van Dyck’s first major commission on his ap­ olbein’s pointment to the court in 1632, was designed to complement H Whitehall Mural of 1537, which survives only as a later drawing. The differences between the two indicate what had changed – and what hadn’t. At the center of Holbein’s mural is a substantial stone plinth, delineating in Latin the virtues of Henry VIII. The monarch himself stands tall to the viewer’s left, where authority conventionally belongs, facing the spectator with the swagger that came to define his image for posterity. Behind him stands his father, who died in 1509, and opposite Henry VII, his wife Elizabeth of York, dead since 1503. It is thought that the painting was commissioned to celebrate the long-awaited birth of a male heir, Prince Edward; if so, Edward’s mother, Jane Seymour, opposite Henry VIII, was also dead by the time the work was complete. Although the prince himself is not represented, this picture tells the story of the Tudor line from its inception in the dynastic union of Yorkists and Lancastrians up to and including the triumphant present. By contrast, Van Dyck’s portrait of Charles I and Henrietta Maria with Prince Charles and Princess Mary (Royal Collection) captures a moment in the history of a nuclear royal family. The queen, in sumptuous gold satin, holds the baby Princess Mary; her gaze is turned toward her husband. The monarch’s arm shelters – without touching – Prince Charles in velvet petticoats, while little dogs play at their feet. The royal couple are seated, the queen a devoted wife and mother. In all this, a concern with individuality, as well as attention to the fall of rich fabrics, mark the influence of the European Renaissance in general and Titian in particular. And yet the dynastic story is not forgotten. The king stares out at the viewer, inviting submission, as, indeed, does the future Charles II, whose infant finger points to his father’s loins. While there is no plinth, a massive pillar directly behind the monarch asserts that the Stuarts are here to stay. Just perceptible behind the crown that rests on a table beside the king are Westminster Hall and the Houses of Parliament. While the work depicts a moment, it has no specific location indoors or out. Inevitably, the king sits to the viewer’s left, his head a little higher than the queen’s. If the painting remains necessarily unaware of the historical ironies we perceive with hindsight, and although there are no dead people here, the concern with lineage implicitly acknowledges the inevitability of succession. The Stuart title lives because it lives on after the death of the individual holder and the picture draws attention to the genealogical story. Meanwhile in the drama, narrative portraiture seems to have been too precious a resource to surrender, as William Hemings was to demonstrate

Narrative Portraiture  177 in The Fatal Contract as late as 1638–39. Queen Fredigond, the villain of this sensational play, keeps behind a curtain a representation drawn by an Italian of her brother’s murder. The work also includes a group portrait of the family she holds responsible and shows the story of the wicked queen’s successive acts of vengeance: a baby hanged by the heels, a woman with her hands cut off, another with her tongue cut out, a grandmother blinded. “Is’t not a brave sight?” “How does this like thee?” she asks, as she stabs the piece, “To execute men in picture, is’t not rare?” (1.2). Fredigond, it seems, triumphantly mutilates the portrait Hieronimo could only dream of. Her description places before the audience the story so far, and the queen’s bloodthirsty part in it, with a vividness no other device could excel. If early modern portraiture found it hard to surrender storytelling, storytelling, it seems, was even more reluctant do without narrative portraiture.

Notes 1 George Peele made a parallel point in his play The Arraignment of Paris (1580s), where the Trojan prince hands the golden apple to the queen, who subdues and reconciles the warring goddesses. 2 This image in turn was reconstituted in a painting of the 1590s to show an older Elizabeth (Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection).

References Astington, John H. 2017. Stage and Picture in the English Renaissance: The Mirror Up to Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Aston, Margaret. 1995. “Gods, Saints, and Reformers: Portraiture and Protestant England.” In Albion’s Classicism: The Visual Arts in Britain, 1550– 1660, edited by Lucy Gent, 181–220. New Haven: Yale University Press. Barthes, Roland. 1982. Camera Lucida. London: Cape. Baumbach, Sibylle. 2008. Shakespeare and the Art of Physiognomy. Penrith: Humanities Ebooks. Belsey, Catherine. 2012. “Invocation of the Visual Image: Ekphrasis in Lucrece and Beyond.” Shakespeare Quarterly 63: 175–98. Elam, Keir. 2017. Shakespeare’s Pictures: Visual Objects in the Drama. London: Bloomsbury. Girouard, Mark. 1980. Life in the English Country House. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Gurr, Andrew. 2004. The Shakespeare Company, 1594–1642. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hemings, William. 1653. The Fatal Contract, A French Tragedy. London: J. M. Heywood, Thomas. 1935. If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody. Edited by Madeleine Doran. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kyd, Thomas. 2014. The Spanish Tragedy. Edited by Michael Neill. New York: Norton. Lawlis, Merritt E., ed. 1961. The Novels of Thomas Deloney. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

178  Catherine Belsey Marlowe, Christopher. 1987. The Complete Works. Vol. 1. Edited by Roma Gill. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Marston, John. 1991. Antonio and Mellida. Edited by W. Reavley Gair. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Middleton, Thomas and Thomas Dekker. 1987. The Roaring Girl. Edited by Paul A. Mulholland. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Orlin, Lena Cowen. 2007. Locating Privacy in Tudor London. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shakespeare, William. 2011. The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works. Edited by Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson and David Scott Kastan. London: Bloomsbury. Shawe-Taylor, Desmond. 2018. “The ‘Act and Power of a Face’: Van Dyck’s Royal Portraits.” In Charles I King and Collector, 126–31. London: Royal Academy of Arts. Strong, Roy. 1987. Gloriana: The Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I. London: Thames and Hudson. Tittler, Robert. 2012. Portraits, Painters, and Publics in Provincial England, 1540–1640. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tulloch, Isabel. “Richard III: A Study in Medical Misrepresentation.” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 102: 315–23. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih. gov/pmc/articles/PMC2726816/ West, Shearer. 2004. Portraiture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Yates, Frances. 1967. “The Allegorical Portraits of Sir John Luttrell.” In Essays in the History of Art: Presented to Rudolf Wittkower, edited by Douglas Fraser, Howard Hibberd and Milton J. Levine, 149–60. London: Phaidon.

10 Picturing in Little or in Stone? Miniature versus Monument in The History of the Tryall of Chevalry (Anonymous, 1605) Armelle Sabatier MADAM:  if

your heart be so obdurate, Vouchsafe me yet your picture for my love, The picture that is hanging in your chamber: To that I’ll speak, to that I’ll sigh and weep; For since the substance of your perfect self Is else devoted, I am but a shadow; And to your shadow will I make true love. (William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona 4.2.116–22)

Dazzled by Silvia’s beauty, his best friend’s lover, Proteus begs the young lady to give him her portrait so as to cherish and show unlimited devotion to a lifeless picture. The portrait of the foolish, idolatrous lover drawn by Shakespeare in one his early comedies, The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1590), ironically foreshadows the character of Katharina, as featured in the anonymous play, The History of the Tryall of Chevalry. With the Life and Death of Cavaliero Dicke Bowyer, published in 1605. Like Proteus, the daughter of the King of France, falls madly in love with Pembroke, Ferdinand’s best friend, the son of the King of Navarre, who desperately attempts to win over her affection. However, mesmerized by Pembroke’s beauty – who refuses to betray Ferdinand – Katharina commissions a miniature portrait of the young man. Refusing any potential marriage with Ferdinand, she prefers to contemplate the shadow of a substance that will stand out of reach: “Give me his picture: Image far more kind / Then is the substance, whence thou art deriv’d” (sig.B4r). The portrait that has been drawn on stage by a painter, before the audience, turns into a substitute that Katharina intends to embrace (“Thee will I therefore hold within mine armes, /As some small comfort to increasing harmes”). Although the art of picturing is primarily connected with the triangular relationship between Ferdinand, Pembroke and Katharina, the opposition between shallowness and truth is mirrored in the second royal love affair between Philip and Bellamira who is disfigured after being poisoned by Burbon when she refuses to marry him.

180  Armelle Sabatier The unfolding of the imbroglio of these two royal love affairs hinges on a series of pictures, drawn, cut or performed to the life, leading to the final picturesque wedding of the King of France’s daughter with the King of Navarre’s son. The use of different materials to create pictures on stage in this play, whether they be the painter’s pigments, the sculptor/mason’s stone or the actor’s body, testifies to the author’s fascination for the diversity of visual arts in Elizabethan England. Far from being merely a “critique of painting, and [a] defense of dramatic characterization and action as the more authentic, ‘lively’ art” (Tassi 2005, 171), this anonymous play explores and discusses the technicalities and practicalities inherent in the artistic and dramatic creation of “pictures,” which are mostly staged “in the making.” The presence of a painter and a mason/sculptor in this play is reminiscent of the Italian artistic debate of the paragone (comparison) which, by opposing painting and sculpture, aimed at bringing to the fore the qualities of each art. The dialectics of the paragone, of comparing and opposing, also underlie the literary debate of ut pictura theatrum1 which is bodied forth when pictures come to life within the theatrical space.

“Cross loves” (sig.A4v) The dating and authorship of this anonymous play have given rise to different conjectures, leaning toward 1600 as its first performance, and favoring Henry Chettle as its main author (Jones 1926). Frederic Jones has also suggested the earlier date of 1596 (Jones 1932), which sheds a different light on the context of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost according to Gillian Woods (2013, 79). Patricia Cahill (2008, 139) indicates that it could have been cowritten with Thomas Heywood. This play was performed by the Earl of Derby’s Men, as indicated by the directions given on the cover (“As it hath bin lately acted by the Right Honourable the Earle of Darby his servants”) probably in public theaters, in London and in provinces (Tassi 2005, 170). This play opens with a battlescene between Lewes, the King of France and Navar; however, this incipient war is halted by their respective daughters, Katharina (of France) and Bellamira (of Navarre) who, as they stand on each side of the stage, beg their families to avoid war, while the two sons, Philip (France) and Ferdinand (Navarre), confess their love for their enemies’ daughters. This double Romeo and Juliet scenario of “star-crossed lovers” is suspended by the two kings’ decision to make a three-month truce, allowing time for their children to see if they can be happy with their future match. This initial “cross love” (sig.A4v) dramatic plot is further complicated by third elements, namely, Pembroke, Ferdinand’s best friend and the jealous and ambitious Burbon. According to C.R. Baskervill (1912, 197), the main source of the plot was primarily inspired by Sir Philip

Miniature vs. Monument  181 Sidney’s Arcadia (1590). The story of Bellamira and Philip is reminiscent of the narrative of Argalus and Parthenia (Book 1, chapters 5 to 7), while Katharina’s character was modeled on Helen, Queen of Corinth, also depicted in Book 1 (chapters 10 and 11). The original material for the pictures produced on stage is to be found in Sidney’s narrative of Helen’s frustrated love for Amphialus. The motif of the picture is first summoned in the context of mourning and in an atmosphere of death. The character of Palladius finds Amphialus’s armor on his journey through a valley and meets Helen, seated in a coach “drawn with four milke white horses, furnished all in black” (42). In this carriage, more akin to a hearse, the beautiful Helen is absorbed by the sorrowful contemplation of a miniature portrait while her two servants look affected by this image of suffering: “their eies being infected with their mistress weeping” (42). The description of this static scene by Palladius who watches these women through the “frame” of the coach relies on a picture-within-­ picture in the narrative, anticipating Helen’s embedded narrative in chapter 11. This chapter provided the material for the triangular relationship as Helen madly falls in love with Amphialus, Philoxenus’s best friend, who wooes the Queen of Corinth. Although Amphialus remains faithful to his best friend by rejecting Helen, the two friends die while fighting. The picture held by Helen triggers off the tragic ending of this story insofar as Philoxenus grows aware of Helen’s feeling for his best friend when he sees her contemplating a portrait of Amphialus. In the original version, Helen obtained a miniature of Amphialus but did not commission it as Katharina does in the play. Although it cannot be denied that the original idea of setting a picture at the very heart of the imbroglio between the three characters was suggested by Sidney’s narrative, the author of The Tryall of Chevalry reshaped and remodeled this story line by multiplying the types of pictures shown or described on stage, focusing on the creative process of making a picture, a dimension left unexplored by Sidney in the above-quoted passages. Following the Philoxenus–Amphialus scenario, Ferdinand, who fails to win over the hard-hearted Katharina, sends his best friend, Pembroke, to convince the King of France’s daughter of his sincere love for her. Raptured by Pembroke’s fair speeches, Katharina is so “dazzled” by his beauty that she asks a painter to draw a portrait of the young man. Before the arrival of the model, Katharina carefully prepares the background of the painting by asking Bowyer to check that the “tent” where Pembroke and Ferdinand are to meet the King of France, is “ready furnished” (sig. B2r). This attention to the details of the objects adorning the stage that are to be reproduced in the background of the future picture, exposes the affinities between drama and pictorial art by blurring the lines between the setting of the tent and the frame of the picture to be painted. Bowyer introduces Katharina to the painter by signaling his colorful presence: “If you can judge of colours (Madam), this

182  Armelle Sabatier is he. / Paynter, stand forth.” The assimilation of the painter to “colours” could either describe a multicolored costume or refer to clothes covered in paint. This element clearly sets forth the artist as a master of colors. Katharina then discusses some of the technical aspects of the painter’s “cunning Arte” (sig.B2): But are thy colours fresh, thy pencill smoothe Thy hand unwavering and thy head dislodged Of all unquiet harsh incumbrances. For thou must draw proportion of those parts Whose worth to tell, my tongue wants utterance (sig.B2) The references to “colours,” the “pencil” and “proportion” are evocative of the Italian disegno e colore artistic controversy, which originated in sixteenth-century Italy among other types of paragone. As John Dixon Hunt has shown in his study devoted to the comparison between poetry and painting in Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens, the varied forms of paragone, whether between visual arts and literature, or between painting and sculpture, were known in late sixteenth-century England (1988, 47). Even though English artists were not involved in debating about the merits of visual arts, Elizabethans were familiar with the Italian artistic controversies through the translation of some key Italian treatises. Nevertheless, only two were available in English, namely, Baldassare Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano, translated into The Book of the Courtier by Sir Thomas Hoby in 1561, and Giampolo Lomazzo’s Trattato della Pittura (1584), translated by Richard Haydocke in 1598 into A Tracte Containing the Artes of Curious Paintings (1598). The translation of Lomazzo’s treatise prompted the writing of one of the main English treatises on painting in Elizabethan England, 2 namely, Nicholas Hilliard’s The Arte of Limning (circa 1600). When requested by Richard Haydocke to write an English treatise on painting as indicated by the subtitle of the treatise, Nicholas Hilliard did not resume the Italian logic of comparing two elements to set out a hierarchy. The Italian and English definitions of the art of painting differ on some points, especially when it comes to the two main elements of a painting, disegno/design and colore/color. The disegno e colore debate revealed two opposed practices and traditions of painting in different Italian regions, opposing the colorful Venetian paintings to the Florentine use of drawing as preparatory work. This artistic rivalry could not be transposed to the English conception and practices of pictorial art. Although Lomazzo defines pictorial art as a combination of proportion and colors in the first pages of his treatise, 3 his approach of colors in the third book reveals his viewpoint in the disegno e colore controversy. In Haydocke’s translation, Lomazzo clearly favors design /disegno when demonstrating that colors should be used

Miniature vs. Monument  183 to add “life,” hence verisimilitude, to the initial drawing: “It is manifest, that all those thinges which are first proportionably drawne, and then artificially coloured, will bear the true and naturall resemblance of the Life, by expressing all the actions and gestures thereof” (Lomazzo [1584] 1598, 93). Conversely, for Nicholas Hilliard, the beauty of a face can be rendered on the canvas by combining three elements, “the faire and beautiful couler or complection,” “the good proportion” and the “grace in countenance, by which the afections apeare” (Hilliard 1600, 54–6). In The Tryall of Chevalry, Katharina’s “miniature” treatise on painting, echoing more Lomazzo’s words than Hilliard’s phrasing, is ironically undermined by her status as a boy actor whose script fails to rival with the painter’s skill: “my tongue wants utterance.” This implicit comparison between dramatic writing and pictorial art implies that the actor is a “dumb picture” unable to voice Pembroke’s “worth”; or, at least, it applies to Katharina, who, as a lover of shadows, fails to appreciate substance. The next direction given by Katharina as a patronness is to paint the model “to the life”: “Him (whilst we are in conference) thou shalt marke, / And to the life set downe his counterfet” (sig. B2 r.). The phrase “to the life,” usually describing “a lifelike representation of or resemblance to the original,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), is literally visualized onstage as the painter draws the portrait of Pembroke “in live,” more precisely when Katharina speaks with Pembroke. However, this exercise of imitation seems all the more confusing as Bowyer and Katharina disagree on the colors of Pembroke’s clothes. Bowyer’s description of the “white scarf” on a hat and “an orange tawny feather up on his arme” matches Ferdinand’s clothes, while Katharina rectifies Bowyer’s mistake by indicating that Pembroke’s “plume is Azure, /A little intermixt with spotlesse white” (B2v). Bowyer’s cunning reply that the two men are “birds of the same feathers” (“Orange tawny and Azure, all’s one, all is but feather, there is no difference I am sure but in colour”) adumbrates the final twist of the play when Katharina falls in love with Ferdinand’s picture in alabaster. When the two young men enter the stage to attend Lewes’s banquet, Katharina shows the model to the painter, asking him to draw the picture of Pembroke under her eyes and in public: “Worke on (sweet Paynter) to inrich mine eye / With that, which els procures my tragedy” (sig. B3v). Hence, the painter is turned into a silent spectator drawing on the canvas a character that the audience can see conversing with Katharina. This scene sets forth painters’ practice of starting their work in the presence of the model, as recalled by Nicholas Hilliard in his treatise. The presence of the easel on stage – probably with a board to signify the future picture – sets a new frame and perspective, redirecting the gaze of the public in two directions – on the one hand, Katharina and Pembroke, talking and moving on stage in the foreground, and, on the other hand,

184  Armelle Sabatier the painter in silent action in the background. The opposition between substance and shadow is visualized on stage as the substantial Pembroke is literally present on stage thanks to the actor’s body while his future shadow is being created by the painter at the back, and in silence. The materials used by the painter, the canvas and the pigments, work as a synecdoche of the future picture. The connection between the genre of tragedy and painting alluded to by Katharina, echoes the words of Helen of Corinth in Sidney’s Arcadia, when this character cries over her dead Amphialus: “though my hart be nothing but a stage for Tragedies” ([1590] 1891, 1654). Furthermore, the interrelation between painting and dramatic art is reminiscent of the comparison drawn by Aristotle between the genre of tragedy and pictorial art in his Poetics: “Since tragedy is a representation of people who are better than we are, poets should copy good portrait-painters” (Aristotle [c335BC] 2013, 36]. Despite Katharina’s attempt to convince Pembroke of her feelings and to signify her refusal of marrying Ferdinand, the young woman remains alone onstage, with the picture finalized by the artist: Give me his picture: Image far more kind, Then is the substance, whence thou art deriv’d! Which way soever I divert my selfe Thou seemst to follow with a loving eye Thee will I therefore hold within mine armes, As some small comfort to increasing harmes (sig. B4r) Katharina’s spite over Pembroke’s hard-heartedness echoes Venus’s anger at Adonis’ coldness in Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis (1593): “Fie, lifeless picture, cold and senseless stone, /Well-painted idol, image dull and dead” (211–2). The animation of the picture which seems to be looking at Katharina (“Thou seemst to follow with a loving eye”) is also reminiscent of Bassanio’s amazement when discovering Portia’s miniature portrait in 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?” (The Merchant of Venice 3.2.115–18). The illusions created by the painter in The Merchant of Venice and The Tryall of Chevalry make the beholder believe that the eyes of the painted character in the picture “have life” and can look at the beholder standing outside the frame. This illusory animation of a picture was defended by painters such as Nicholas Hilliard, who advised the future painter to “observe the eys in his pictures, making them so like one to another, as nature doeth, giving life to his worke, for the eye is the life of the picture” (1600, 58). To achieve such an illusion, Hilliard added a white speck to capture “the reflection of the light” (1600, 58).

Miniature vs. Monument  185 Katharina carries on with her critique of the painter’s creation, failing to notice that Ferdinand has entered the stage again: KATHARINA:  Thous

shald done well indeed, in every part Thou shewst complete and cunning workmanship: His eye, his lip, his cheeke are rightly fram’d; But one thing thou hast grosly over-slipt. Where is this stubborne unrelenting heart, That lurkes in secret as his master doth, Disdayning to regard or pity me? PAYNTER:  Madam, his heart must be imagined By the description of the outward parts. (sig. B4 v) Pictorial art is perceived as a deceitful (“cunning”) shallow art only capturing surfaces and reproducing the right proportions of the face as listed by Katharina (“His eye, his lip, his cheeke are rightly fram’d”). The true “life” of the sitter, that is Pembroke’s coldness and hard-­heartedness, according to Katharina, is not made visible on the picture. This disjunction between “the outward parts,” which signal the boundaries of pictorial art, and the secret thoughts hidden in the sitter’s heart, calls to mind the rivalry between the eye and the heart to draw the true picture of the youth in Shakespeare’s sonnets 46 and 47. This initial triangular “cross love” is paralleled with the second couple, Philip and Bellamira. Their union is threatened by the jealous Burbon whose proposal was rejected by Navarre, who decided to marry his daughter to Philip. So as to avenge his honour, Burbon manages to enter Bellamira’s tent at night and discovers her sleeping: “What do I see? The majesty of heaven, / Sit a mayden slumber on the earth? / What is my Bellamira turnd a goddesse / Within the table of her glorious face!” (sig.D). The background of this scene is similar to the “picture scene” when Pembroke’s beauty was painted surrounded by the lavish furniture of a tent. This connection between these two scenes is further enhanced by the direct reference to pictorial art. According to the OED, a “table” can refer to a picture: “A board or other flat surface on which a picture is painted; the picture itself” (3). The comparison of a sleeping beauty to a work of art calls to mind the ekphrasis of the sleeping Lucrece in Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece (386–92) and the sleeping Imogen in Cymbeline (2.2.31–3). Like Tarquin, 5 Burbon desecrates Bellamira’s beauty by poisoning her face, hence destroying her identity encapsulated by her name, literally meaning “the beautiful view”: “I will blot out that beauty with this juice” (sig.D2). This iconoclastic action of “disfiguring” the icon of beauty is regarded by Burbon as the only way to heal his sight and his sick love for Bellamira: “Thus, thus [sic.] I wipe away my passions: / Thus doe I heale the torments of my love: / Thus doe I ransome

186  Armelle Sabatier my inthralled eye.” When discovering Bellamira’s “spotted,” “disfigured” face, covered with leprosy (sig.D3r), Philip, Katharina’s brother, turns out to be the inverted image of his sister, when he decides to marry Bellamira despite her new appearance: “I doe affect, not superficially / My love extendeth further then the skin / The inward Bellamira tis I seeke /And unto her will Philip be espoused” (sig.D3v).

Picturing the Dead Doting on and defacing paintings pave the way for new tragedies. Following the scenario set out by Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, Ferdinand/Philoxenus is convinced that the picture of Pembroke is evidence of his best friend’s betrayal and decides to get revenge. The former best friends fight over the stage, and, wounding each other, both fall as dead (sig. E3). The two bodies are moved away from the stage by two secondary characters, a forrester and a fisherman. Hence, when Katharina enters the stage, she infers that Pembroke is dead as she cannot see his body. In the meantime, Bellamira has decided to run away to avoid imposing her new monstrosity on Philip by proceeding with the marriage ceremony. In a symmetrical move with his sister, Philip grieves Bellamira’s absence, still enamored with her inward beauty (“and she did gild over her imperfections o’re / With virtue, which no soule calumnious breath / Could ever soyle, true vertues dye is such, /That malice cannot stayne, nor envy tuch” sig.Fr.). Nevertheless, Pembroke was saved by the forrester and wishes to erect a funeral monument to his best friend who is reported dead. Pembroke commissioned a monument to the forrester (“Where is the Tombe I wild you to erect?”): FORRESTER:  See,

as valiant knight, proporriond [sic.] and set up, As well as my poore skill would suffer mee: And here is picture hangs. PEMBROKE:  You have done well: Your hand I see’s a perfect Architect In sorrowes building: once more let suffice I quite your painfull travell but with thanks. (sig. F3r) This passage brings to the fore the polysemy of the term “picture” in Elizabethan English, which could also allude to a statue. However, in the absence of any stage directions describing the type of stage property shown on stage, the interpretation of “here is picture hangs” remains problematic in terms of staging. Pembroke ordered the forrester “to erect” a tomb, a verb meaning to build or construct a monument according to the OED (III, 8). Tombs as stage property were part of theater companies’ properties as can be seen in Henslowe’s inventory (March 1598): “Item 1 rock, 1 cage, 1 tomb, 1 Hell-mouth. /Item, 1 tomb of Guido, 1 tomb of Dido,

Miniature vs. Monument  187 1 bedstead” (Gurr 1995, 123). However, this type of tomb property was horizontal and not vertical as suggested by the verb “hang.” Nevertheless, the OED indicates that the first meaning of the verb “to erect,” now obsolete, is “to direct upwards, to lift up,” which implies a vertical tomb, and hence more an effigy than a sarcophagus type of tomb. Alternatively, this vertical picture could be a wall monument. The visual artist is described as an “architect,” a synonym for “mason,” and not “sculptor,” a term which did not exist in Elizabethan English.6 Furthermore, Katherine Esdaile has shown that the divisions between sculpture and architecture were inoperative in Elizabethan England: “It was long before the functions of sculptor and architect were really differentiated. Colt, Christmas, Stone, Bernard Johnson . . . are among these who in the XVIth century combined the function of both” (1927, 95). The Marblers’ Company was fused with the Masons’ Company in 1596, hence blurring the boundaries between the two arts.7 However, the preservation of his friend’s memory is not completed as the monument is still empty (“empty Monument of my lost friend”). After discussing the design of a monumental picture, Pembroke, who is disguised, meets Katharina and decides to make her believe that both men are dead, and that the “fayre monument” set on stage contains Ferdinand’s dead body. He first shows her a picture of Ferdinand dying: Looke on his picture, in the armes of death, When he was ready to give up the ghost, I causde [sic.] it to be drawne: if at that time, In the extremity of bitter pangs, He lookt so lovely, had so fresh a colour, So quick a moving eye, so red a lip, What was his beauty when he was in health? (sig.F4 r) This picture is undoubtedly a painting, probably a miniature portrait and was “drawne,” capturing Ferdinand’s last breath. The presence of this second picture in this scene could refer to the sculptors’ practice of having a portrait of the dead drawn before carving the face of the effigy on stone8. Pembroke’s ekphrastic description of the features drawn on the portrait is all the more ironical as he misinterprets the signs of life, like Romeo in Romeo and Juliet (“Beauty’s ensign yet / Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks” 5.3.94–95) – the “fresh colour” of the face and the redness of the lips are evidence that Ferdinand is coming back to life after being wounded. This misinterpretation alters Katharina’s vision, who becomes fascinated with this new picture: KATHARINE:  Oh

take it not away: since I have lost The substance, suffer me to keep the shaddow.

188  Armelle Sabatier Me thinks, so long as this is in my hand, I claspe my Ferdinand betweene mine armes: So long as I behold this lively forme, So long am I resfreshed by his smiles: So long, methinks, I heare him speake to me. Knew I the Paynter drew his counterfeyt I would reward him with a mynt of gold. PEMBROKE:

If such a pleasure you receyve by this, I tell you, Madam, I shall shortly have His whole proportion cut in Alablaster [sic.] Armd as he was when he encountred here Which kneeling, shall be set his tombe. (sig. G1 r). The contemplation of the portrait of a supposedly dead Ferdinand is reminiscent of Sidney’s narrative of Helen grieving over the picture of Amphialus (Bk1, cha.10). Pembroke’s invitation to scrutinize a portrait of Ferdinand depicted as dying, ready to “give up the ghost,” alters Katharina’s perception and conception of pictorial art. The term “picture” referring to Pembroke’s portrait in the early scenes, has turned into a “shadow,” to allude to Ferdinand’s painting. In Elizabethan English, shadow could be synonymous with either a reflection, a ghost, an actor or a portrait. This semantic progression from picture to shadow is undoubtedly evocative of Plato’s theories on pictorial art in the Republic all the more so as characters play on the opposition between substance and shadow. However, by setting forth the immateriality of this picture, Katharina starts fashioning her new role as a widow – her first elegy, structured around the anaphora of “so long,” adumbrates her metamorphosis into a picture of alabaster. While Katharina was taken by the painter’s trick of perspective of “moving eyes” in the first picture, this shadow is even more delusive as the young lady is deeply convinced that the picture is alive (“this lively forme”) and that she can hear its voice (“I heare him speake to me”). Pembroke takes a step further in the construction of Ferdinand’s monumental picture when he invites Katharina to grieve over the future effigy, that is to be made of alabaster. This subtle passage from painting to sculpture does not echo the Italian paragone controversy – the two visual arts are not shown as rivals but as complementary. This progress from a two-dimensional picture to a three-­ dimensional image foreshadows the future staging of Pembroke’s picture which is to be performed in the three-dimensional space of the stage.

Animating Pictures Ferdinand, who was saved by the fisherman, comes back to the world of the living, describing his return as a resurrection: “Thou art recovered

Miniature vs. Monument  189 of thy mortall wounds; / With the new life thy body is revivde [sic.], / Revive the ancient passions of thy mind” (sig.G4v). He meets Pembroke, still in disguise, who has decided to guard the future empty tomb for his friend. This scene calls to mind the biblical narratives of Christ’s resurrection when soldiers guarded Christ’s tomb, which turned out to be empty as He was revived in a new body. Furthermore, the staging of Ferdinand’s revival through the actor’s physical presence on stage is evocative of Thomas Nashe’s definition of drama and acting as an art of resurrection: “First, for the subject of them (for the most part) it is borrowed out of our English Chronicles, wherein our forefathers valiant acts, (that have lain long buried in rusty brass and worrm-eaten books) are revived, and they themselves raised from the Grave of Oblivion, and brought to pleade their aged Honours in open presence” (Nashe [1592] 1978, 113). After fighting next to the monument, the former best friends discover each other’s identities – Pembroke tells Ferdinand that Katharina has fallen in love with his picture: PEMBROKE:  She

likewise hath bin here; her flinty heart, So much before inclind to cruelty, Now waxeth tender: she no sooner saw Thy picture here, but by heavens providence, Or how I know not, she so doats on it, As I supposde she would a dyed for love. FERDINAND:  Has then my shaddow and supposed death Brought that to passe my living substance could not (sig.H1v) Despite Ferdinand’s remark on Katharina’s persistent idolatry for dead shadows, Pembroke suggests that she has been experiencing a new metamorphosis when looking at Ferdinand’s pictures in paint and in stone – by becoming more “tender,” her heart of stone (“flinty heart”) is gradually taking on the softness of wax, a material that can be easily molded. The progressive transformation of this cruel donna de petra (stony lady) calls to mind the initial stages of the metamorphosis of Pygmalion’s statue in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Book X), a myth exploring the animation of a work of art. Still suspended between the inanimate realm of minerality and the world of the living, the ivory of the statue begins to alter under Pygmalion’s touch: “All hardnesse, yeelded underneathe his fingars, as wee see /A peece of wax made soft ageinst the Sunne, or drawen too bee /In divers shapes by chaufing betweene ones handes” (lines 309–11 Golding [1567] 1961, 207). However, Katharina has taken on the role of Pygmalion, doting on lifeless pictures that she embraces or deck with flowers: I told her, and no more then truth I told, A cunning carver had cut out thys shape

190  Armelle Sabatier And whole proportion in white Alablaster, Which I intended here should set up She earnestly entreated she might have A sight of it, and dayly be permitted To deck thy tombe and statue with sweet flowers (sig. H1 v) Although the action of bringing flowers on a tomb partakes of rituals to remember the dead, this gesture also echoes Pygmalion’s devotion to his statue – Pygmalion is said to bring “flowers of thousand sorts” (line 283) to the statue, and also puts rings and chains on the statue “And on her fingars put me rings, and cheynes about her necke” (line 286 Golding, [1567] 1961, 206). In order to complete Katharina’s metamorphosis, Pembroke decides to invert shadows and substance by asking Ferdinand to play the role of his own effigy in alabaster: “Instead of thy resemblance cut in stone, / Kneele here thy selfe, and heare her pitious mone” (sig.Hv) – the substance looks like the shadow. Acting as a stage director with an actor and as a sculptor in his studio with his model, Pembroke gives directions to Ferdinand to look like a statue: PEMBROKE:  Soft,

there’s a cushe: nay, you must be bare, And hold your hands up, as the maner is FERDINAND:  What if I held a booke, as if I prayed? PEMBROKE:  ‘Twere best of all, and now I think upon’t, Here is a booke: so, keepe your countenance, You must imagine now you are transfform’d. Yonder she comes, in any case stir not. (sig. Hv) The presence of the cushion is evocative of the traditional ornamentation on Elizabethan funerary monuments, a feature already used on medieval tombs. The gestures of kneeling and holding up hands as if in prayer are typical of the Elizabethan style of funerary effigies. While kneeling effigies were already known in France in early sixteenth century as testified by Louis XII and Anne de Bretagne’s royal tomb in Saint Denis basilica (1515–1531), this new style was adapted to English taste at the end of the century: “After about 1570, and probably through the influence of the Netherlanders, they become increasingly common, sometimes on free-standing tombs” (Whinney 1964, 45). Margaret Whinney quotes the example of the kneeling effigies adorning the tomb of Sir Thomas Sondes (died in 1592) and his first wife Cycille in Throwley, Kent (Figure 10.1). This type of effigy could also be integrated in wall monuments as has been shown by Jean Wilson (1995, 3). The verticality of this type of effigies stands in sharp contrast with the earlier gothic practice in the late fifteenth century of representing

Miniature vs. Monument  191

Figure 10.1  G erard Johnson, Tomb of Sir Thomas (d.1592) and Lady Sondes, Throwley, Kent. In the background, tomb of Sir Michael Sondes (d.1617) and his wife Mary Fynch. Photograph by courtesy of ­Julian P. Guffogg.

the dead lying on the tomb or as decomposing corpses. Erwin Panofsky interprets this change in style and posture as the “animation of statues” (1965, 87). The first monument in the foreground of the photograph testifies to the late Elizabethan taste for painted statues, a technique that was interpreted as adding life to sculpted effigies. The later monument in the background reveals the change in taste in Jacobean England when the fashion of painted statues disappeared while patrons demanded effigies respecting the natural color of the stone. Pembroke’s directions in The Tryall of Chevalry to help Ferdinand, the actor playing a statue within the embedded drama of his false death, strikingly recall the position and attitude of the effigy of Sir Thomas Sondes – kneeling in prayer, with his hands up and surrounded by the same objects, namely, the cushion and the prayer book. To a certain extent, the resemblance between this scene and these sculpted effigies illustrates Jean Wilson’s argument on the affinities between sculpture and Elizabethan drama. In The Shakespeare Legacy, she contends that the positions and the gestures of funerary effigies facing each other as in conversation, as on the tomb of Lady Saville (d.1617, Saint Nicholas Hurst, Berkshire), reproduced the actors’ gestures on stage, comparing Elizabethan monuments to “frozen drama” (1995, 90): “These are frozen, eternal dumb-shows, and their settings are often suggestive of what we know of theatre practice of the period” (1995, 82). The creation of an effigy made of alabaster within the theatrical space where The Tryall of Chevalry was performed takes the idea of “frozen drama” suspended in stone a step further when Katharina enters the

192  Armelle Sabatier stage – the latter wishes to “redeem” her faults by paying homage to the effigy of Ferdinand: PEMBROKE:  How say you, KATHARINA:  As like, as if

Madam, ist not very like him it were himselfe indeed. And would to god my prayers might be heard That as the Image of Pigmalion once, Life might descend into this senceles stone: But that was fayned, as my desire is fond, Relentlesse death withholds my Ferdinand And no intreaty may recover him. (sig.H2 r)

While strengthening Katharina’s delusory idolatry for dead shadows, the reference to the myth of Pygmalion and his animated statue brings to the fore her incipient metamorphosis as she wishes the effigy had “life,” instead of commissioning a picture “to the life,” that is a copy, as she did in the early scenes. This reversal of gender roles sounds all the more comical as Pygmalion was regarded as the embodiment of lust, vice and idolatry in the Renaissance. Two years prior the supposed first performance of the play, John Marston lampooned this myth in his mock-epyllion, The Metamorphosis of Pigmalions Image (1598), exposing the perversion of worshipping inanimate objects. Facing the three-dimensional fake copy of Ferdinand, “carved”/performed in proportion to the real substantial Ferdinand, Katharina manages to put a ring to the statue, an action she could hardly perform with a flat two-­ dimensional miniature portrait: Receive these sweets, thy temples be adorned With this fresh garland; thy white Ivory hand Boast of this Ring, which it thou wert alive Should bind our faythes up in a nuptiall knot: But for thou canst not be revivd agayne Ile dwell with thee in death: and as my spirit Mounts to the happy mansion of thy spirit: So to accompany thy shaddow here Ile turne my body to a shaddow too; And kneeling thus, confront thy silent lookes With my sad looks. (sig H2 r) The gesture of putting a ring to a statue that comes to life is evocative of the story of the statue of Venus and the ring, deeply rooted in medieval culture. Paul Baum contends that this narrative first appeared in twelfth century and could be connected to the Virgin miracle (1919,  524).

Miniature vs. Monument  193 Theodore Ziolkowksi suggests that this episode was retold by Robert Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy (1621): One more I will relate out of Florilegus, ad annum 1058, an honest historian of our nation, because he telleth it so confidently, as a thing in those days talked of all over Europe. A young gentleman of Rome, the same day that he was married, after dinner with the bride and his friends went a-walking into the fields, and towards evening to the tennis-court to recreate himself; whilst he played he put his ring upon the finger of Venus’ statua, which was thereby, made in brass. . . . In the night, when he should come to perform those nuptial rites, Venus steps between him and his wife (unseen or felt of her), and told her that she was his wife, that he had betrothed himself unto her by that ring which he put upon her finger. (Ziolkowksi 1977, 47) The monument is completed when Katharina kneels next to the statue of Pembroke, facing her husband-to-be. She takes the same position as Lady Sondes, kneeling in prayer and gazing at her husband eternally. The union of the living and the dead in this marriage/funeral ceremony resumes one key element of Elizabethan monuments where “the living are represented alongside the dead” (Belsey 1999, 95). By kneeling next to Ferdinand and standing still, “turning her body to a shaddow,” Katharina exposes the affinities between drama and pictorial art, two visual arts originating out of a shadow. Nevertheless, Pembroke gives life to the shadows on stage when he reminds Katharina that the effigy is the substance of Ferdinand (“Nay, muse, not, Madam, tis no senceless Image, /But the true essence of your wished love”) and proceeds with the marriage ceremony. Hence, the picture limned to the life becomes alive. By reversing the opposition between shadow and substance and glorifying the “liveliness” of the actor’s body, The Tryall of Chevalry dramatises the paragone between dead, lifeless pictures and the lively body of the actor. The superiority of the liveliness of drama as suggested by the animation of pictures in the Tryall of Chevalry, adumbrates a treatise on dramatic art, written by Thomas Heywood, one potential coauthor to this play. In An Apology for Actors, published in 1612, Heywood compares paintings to “a dumbe oratory” unable to create the illusion of life, whereas drama can give life to shadows thanks to the actor’s body: Oratory is a kind of speaking picture, therefore may some say, it is not sufficient to discourse to the eares of princes the fame of these conquerors. Painting likewie, is a dumbe oratory, therefore may we not as well as by some curious Pigmalion, drawe their conquests to worke the like love in Princes towards these Worthyes by shewing them their pictures drawne to the life….A description is only a

194  Armelle Sabatier shadow received by the eare but not perceived by the eye: so liveley portrature is meerely a forme seene by the eye, but can neither shew action, passion, motion, or any other gesture, to moove the spirits of the beholder to admiration: but see a soldier shap’d like a souldier, walke, speake, act like a souldier to see a Hector all besmere in blood, trampling upon the bulkes of Kinges. (sig. B3) In his remarkable study of the impact of iconoclasm on early modern drama, Michael O’Connel sets forth the common features between dramatic art and the art of picturing: The common denomination on both sides of the Reformation divide is the human body, the body as depicted in art and the body as employed on stage. Between the eye and the image, whether painted, sculpted or realized kinetically on stage, intervened both a new rigor toward representation and an emphasis on language and text. At issue was where the eye could be legitimately directed (O’Connel 2000, 33). To a certain extent, The Tryall of Chevalry explores the “common denomination” between the stage and the canvas, putting the human body into different perspectives in its perpetual reversal of substance and shadow and its manipulation of absent and present bodies and surrogates. Beneath the surface of this tragicomedy lies a criticism of human sight, slightly tinged with a touch of iconoclasm. However terrifying Burbon’s gesture of disfiguring Bellamira might appear, this iconoclastic action makes her inward virtues more visible. Likewise, Katharina’s sight is healed through the fake monumentalization of her body, a necessary step to see the “true essence.” Furthermore, this seldom studied play is of paramount importance to capture the aesthetics of animated statues in early Jacobean drama. In her visionary study of the staging of funerary monuments on the early modern stage, Catherine Belsey (1999, 118–20) mentions The Trial of Chevalry as a possible source of inspiration for the statue scene in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale (1611), especially for the staging of Hermione’s statue as a funerary effigy. This study, which has highlighted some connections with earlier work by Shakespeare, is to be closed by taking this argument further. In Shakespeare’s Pictures, Keir Elam considers Hermione as “self-commissioner, creator and material of her statue, namely her own self – a precocious and literal form of ‘body art’” (2017, 23). I would argue that the author of The Triall of Chevalry is more “precocious” in his experimentation of “body art” than Shakespeare is in his statue scene. Hermione’s effigy is presented in a nearly completed state – the color of the statue is not dry yet (5.3.47–48) – while the process of creating a picture of stone in The

Miniature vs. Monument  195 Tryall of Chevalry is literally visualized under the public eye thanks to the plasticity of the actor’s body, hence anticipating the aesthetics of nineteenth-century tableaux vivants.

Notes 1 This phrase is fully explained in the introduction to the volume. 2 The first English treatise on painting was published anonymously in 1573 in London, under the title A Very Proper Treatise, wherein is briefly sett for the the arte of limning. 3 “Painting is an arte, which with proportionable line, and colours answerable to the life, by observing the Perspective light, doeth so imitate the nature of corporall thinges, that it is onely representeth the thicknesse and roundnesse thereof upon a flat, but also their actions and gestures, expressing moreover divers affections and passions of the minde” (Lomazzo [1584] 1598, 13). 4 Frederic Jones has shown other echoes between this play and Sidney’s Arcadia. 5 Burbon is compared to Tarquin later on in the play: “A Tarquin, an incestuous Tereus / And our poore Child the wronged Philomell” (sig.F2r). 6 According to the OED, the term sculptor was first used in 1634. Elizabethan sculptors were referred to in different ways: “English craftsmen were divided into guilds and companies in accordance with the materials they used; masons originally worked in stone, alabasterers and marblers explain themselves; but the names carver, lapidary, image-maker, stone-­cutter, tomb-maker were indifferently used to describe what we should call a sculptor” (Katherine Esdaile, English Church Monuments. London: B.T ­Batsford. 1946, 44). 7 Eric Mercer contends that carvers were a dying breed in the late sixteenth-­ century England: “By 1591, the Southwark marblers had completely succumbed to or closed with the native demand for massive architectural tombs with family figures upon them” (1962, 232). 8 The practice of using portraits as preparatory work for the carving of the stone effigy emerged in the late fourteenth century, the best-known example in England being the carving of the effigy for King Edward III (d.1377).

References Anonymous. 1605. The History of the Tryall of Chevalry. With the Life and Death of cavaliero Dicke Bowyer. London, Printed by Simon Stafford. Edition The Tudor Facsimile Texts. Reproduced in facsimile 1912. Edited by John S. Farmer. Aristotle. Poetics. Translated by Anthony Kenny. 2013. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Baskervill, C.R. 1912. “Sidney’s ‘Arcadia’ and The Tryall of Chevalry”. Modern Philology 10 (2): 197–201. Baum, Paul F. 1919. “The Young Man Betrothed to a Statue”. PMLA 34: 523–79. Belsey, Catherine. 1999. Shakespeare and the Loss of Eden. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Burton, Robert. [1621] 1978. The Anatomy of Melancholy. Edited by Holbrook Jackson. London: Dent and Sons.

196  Armelle Sabatier Cahill, Patricia A. 2008. Unto the Breach: Martial Formations, Historical Trauma and the Early Modern Stage. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dixon Hunt, John. 1988. “Shakespeare and the Paragone: A Reading of Timon of Athens”. In Images of Shakespeare, edited by Habicht Werner, 47–63. Newark: University of Delaware Press. Elam, Keir. 2017. Shakespeare’s Pictures: Visual Objects in the Drama, ­London: Bloomsbury. Esdaile, Katherine1927. English Monumental Sculpture since the Renaissance. London: The Macmillan Co. Esdaile, Katherine. 1946. English Church Monuments. London: B.T Batsford. Gurr, Andrew. 1995. The Shakespearean Stage 1574–1642. Cambridge: ­Cambridge University Press. Heywood, Thomas. 1612. An Apology for Actors. London. Hilliard, Nicholas. 1992. A Treatise Concerning the Arte of Limning. Edited by Robert Thornton and Thomas Cain. Manchester: Mid Northumberland Arts Group and Carcanet New Press. Jones, Frederic L. 1926. “The Trial of Chevalry, a Chettle Play”. Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 41 (2): 304–24. Jones, Frederic L. 1932. “Another Source of the Trial of Chevalry”. Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 47 (3): 688–70. Lomazzo, Giovanni.1585. Trattato dell’ Arte della Pittura, Scoltura et Architettura. Translated by Richard Haydocke.1598. A Tracte Containing the Artes of Curious Paintinges. 1969. Reproduced in New York: Da Capo Press. Mercer, Eric.1962. English Art, 1553–1625. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Nashe, Thomas. 1978. Pierce Penniless. In The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works. Edited by J. B. Steane. Harmondsworth. Ovid. 1961. The XV Bookes of P. Ovidius Naso, Entytled Metamorphoses. 1567. Translated by Arthur Golding. Edited by W.D Rouse. London: Centaur Press. O’ Connell, Michael.2000. The Idolatrous Eye. Iconoclasm and Theater in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Panofsky, Erwin. 1964. Tomb Sculpture, its Changing Aspects from Ancient Egypt to Bernini. New York: Abrams. Shakespeare, William. 2013. Complete Works. Revised Edition. The Arden Shakespeare. London: Bloomsbury. Sidney, Philip. 1891. The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia. The Original Quarto Edition. Facsimile edited by H. Oskar Sommer. London: Kegan Paul. Tassi, Marguerite. 2005. The Scandal of Images. Iconoclasm, Eroticism and Painting in Early Modern English Drama. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press. Whinney, Margaret. 1964. Sculpture in Britain 1530–1830. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Wilson, Jean. 1995. Shakespeare Legacy. Godalming: Sutton Publishing Book. Woods, Gillian. 2013. Shakespeare’s Unreformed Fictions, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ziolkowksi, Theodore. 1977. Disenchanted Images: A Literary Iconology. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

11 Performing Portraits The Portrait as Prop and Its Performative Dimension in Early Modern English Drama Emanuel Stelzer This essay aims to discuss the performativity of portraits used as props in early modern English drama. There are more than 75 plays from the Elizabethan period up to the closure of the playhouses in 1642 that feature the use of a portrait on stage (see Wassersug 2015; Stelzer 2019). Portraits are a particular type of prop because they can produce a special type of metatheater that can foreground as well as interrogate the concepts of mimesis and representation. As Keir Elam notes, “The material inclusion of a painting . . . often entails the construction of an entire scene or episode, sometimes solo scenes, which place the character alone onstage with his or her picture(s)” (2017, 6). At the outset of my analysis, I discuss the difference between written messages and iconic objects as regards semiotic communication and meaning-making practices affecting the actor–spectator transaction. In order to achieve this, I examine the actors’ use of written texts and posters and the spectators’ markedly different reactions to each type of prop in the staging of the “forum scene” (3.2) in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in Nicholas Hytner’s 2018 production at the Bridge Theatre, London. Next, I consider which effects could be produced in the early modern English playhouses by different formats of pictures. I would like to challenge traditional views which maintain that the manipulation of sizable portraits was an anomaly on the early modern stage and, thus, I list here some criteria for identifying when a miniature was not used in these plays. Finally, I concentrate on the use of portraits in John Webster’s The Devil’s Law-Case (1623) to test my arguments.

Pictures as Props: Beyond Representation The term “performativity” probably requires disambiguation. In the last few decades, it has acquired so many and often contradictory definitions by different critical strands that its ubiquity can make us forget that the adjective “performative” was coined by John Austin only in 1955 (f. 41). We have learned that speech acts can “do” rather than simply “denote” things. Subsequently, we have read that social, religious, sexual and gender identities are also performed, both individually and publicly. Theater

198  Emanuel Stelzer studies have then reclaimed the term (see, for a general overview, Hamera and Madison 2006). If words can “do” things and selves can be performed, it is possible to wonder whether theatrical props can be endowed with an agency of their own. Andrew Sofer defines a prop as “a discrete, material, inanimate object that is visibly manipulated by an actor in the course of performance” (2003, 11). What about portraits? Can they do something without being manipulated? Portraits presuppose a spectatorship: they require to be looked at, and their subject implicates the viewer’s gaze in a game of mnemonic recognition or deception (see Pommier 1998; Nancy 2000; Mitchell 2004). When a sizable portrait is shown on stage, it is not necessary for an actor to point at it. It hangs there to be seen, just as the eyes of the painted face look out at the spectators as visual vectors. This can be contrasted with the intimacy and gnoseological difficulty created by the showing of a miniature, generally invisible to the spectators. The friction between pictures and words on the stage can be particularly creative (see Thorne 2000; Meek 2009): while Renaissance literature was filled with the motifs of the paragone of the arts and of ut pictura poesis, of mottos such as “poetry is a speaking picture, painting a silent poetry,” and rhetorical disquisitions on the possibility of ­ekphrasis (the description of a visual object in a verbal medium) to reach enargeia (“a certain power to lead the things shown before the senses”1), these theories became embodied on the stage when portraits were used as props. It is fruitful to study theater’s interconnections with the visual culture in which it is immersed, especially once it is reassessed as a “visual art” (Kernodle 1944). There have been numerous studies investigating the relationships between early modern theater and the architectural forms, paintings, sculptures, textiles, and so on that characterized that period and influenced one’s epistemological stance (see Fairchild 1937; Wells-Cole 1997; Tassi 2005; Porter 2011 and 2014; Olson 2013; Sillars 2015; Wassersug 2015; Sabatier 2016; Marrapodi 2017; Elam 2017). Even if a small number of scholars still seem to sustain Patrick Collinson’s misleading view that post-Reformation Britain was iconophobic and “suffer[ing] from several visual anorexia” (Collinson 1988, 119; see also Collinson 1986), there is general consensus that, on the contrary, its early modern visual culture was rich, though complex and embattled. It was a cultural context in which strategies of visibility and spectacle were deeply imbricated with ways of expressing subjectivity and theater could catalyze those issues – for example, by performing portraits.

Not Looking at Written Words The “forum scene” (3.2) in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar does not call for the use of portraits, so it may seem strange that I have decided to analyze it to exemplify the different signifying modes and effects which words

Performing Portraits  199 and pictures can have on an audience. However, its staging in Nicholas Hytner’s 2018 production at the Bridge Theatre in London made a brilliant use of both pictures and written texts. The structure of this particular theater must be taken into account: the Bridge Theatre has a pit furnished with demountable stage blocks. In the aforesaid production, a team of theater hands told the standing spectators to move when necessary, giving them props such as caps, flyers and photos, and trying to orchestrate their reactions. In his review, Peter Kirwan (2018) notes, “The production was interested in collective affect, taking the careful control of the orations scene and extending it across the whole play. At times, this was beautifully incisive of populism.” At the beginning of the scene, the audience was given A3 posters of Caesar which were brandished in his remembrance. The effect was quite powerful: many faces of Caesar were held against his murderers. When Brutus delivered his monologue, supporters of his faction handed the spectators flyers which were supposed to explain the necessity of Caesar’s death: the spectators were seemingly invited to replace the posters with those sheets of paper. Interestingly, no spectator seemed interested in reading those flyers, which of course were illegible to the viewers in the galleries (where I was sitting). Fortunately for the actor playing Brutus (Ben Whishaw), his speech proved so interesting that the audience paid attention to his words instead of reading the text they had been given. However, most of the spectators, uninstructed by the stage hands, did not drop the posters: many had in one hand this superfluous text and in the other a clearly visible picture. Then, it was Antony’s turn to go to the rostrum and, while he recited his famous lines, the flyers disappeared, and there was a reemergence of the posters, asking for justice. Only when the body of Julius Caesar was carried on stage on a stretcher (which occurred at a later stage than in most performances of the play) were the posters dropped – and again, without the intervention of the stage hands. The sheer physical presence of the body made that pictorial representation pleonastic. It is important to ponder whether these dynamics were a constant in all the performances of this production. It seems that there were variations. For example, Kirwan informs us that, during Brutus’s speech, “[t]he crowd were expected to change their allegiance as suddenly as the new branding could be passed around; and with Brutus holding the microphone, no opportunity was allowed for dissenting voice.” In the case of the performance which I attended, there may not have been room for a dissenting voice, but the pictures complicated the orators’ monologic orientation. In most performances of the play, Brutus’s speech relies on oral rhetoric alone, whereas Mark Antony’s exploits three material objects to captivate the audience: Caesar’s corpse, his mantle, and his will written on a parchment scroll. The use of both pamphlets and pictures complicated this division between pure orality and a rhetoric of both words and props.

200  Emanuel Stelzer These variations prove that auditory, visual and kinesthetic stimuli can be combined in directing the spectator’s attention, but, as in the case of these posters and flyers, the spectator’s reception should not be conceived “as some mechanical operation which has been strictly predetermined by the performance and its producers, but rather as a task which the spectator carries out in conditions of relative independence, . . . in conditions of ‘controlled creative autonomy’” (De Marinis 1987, 101). If it is true that, from a physiological point of view, auditory stimuli are processed faster than visual stimuli, it has also been demonstrated that “in multisensory integration, stimuli from one modality can modulate the perception of stimuli from a different modality” (Rakova 2003, 55). Thus, in the multimodal world of the Wooden O, sounds and images modify and enhance each other’s perception. As Keir Elam insightfully notes, actors can harness the transactional potential of a portrait, using it “to create a relationship not only between two characters but between the character-actor and the audience” (2010, 68; see also Elam 2017, 56–118). Portraits are a special kind of props, since their very nature makes them, through metonymy, direct substitutes for, or, indirectly, deictic indications of a person. The tension between likeness and narrative that their presence can bring about in a play can often be ignored on the page. As already hinted, the use of those pictures and flyers is not scripted in the text we have of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Conversely, in those many early modern plays which feature a staged portrait, the effects of this prop regain their potential when performed (see Cooper and Stern 2013). Nevertheless, the semiotic functions expressed by a portrait are only one level of the question. Sofer indicates that the “impact [of a prop] is mediated both by the gestures of the individual actor who handles the object, and by the horizon of interpretation available to historically situated spectators at a given time” (2003, 61): the pragmatic uses of portraits should always be taken into account.

Touching Portraits Portraits may have numerous functions that might seem atemporal. They are exchanged by lovers; they can be instrumental for arranged marriages; they can trigger admiration, obsession, jealousy, and treason; they mock through caricature or beautify what is ugly. However, when analyzing the use of portraits as props in early modern drama, it is imperative to consider the cultural uses and effects that were attached to pictures in that historical period. For instance, portraits of good rulers could instill virtue in the beholder, as Richard Haydocke explained: “For it is strange to consider, what effects of piety, reverence and religion are stirred up in mens mindes by meanes of this suitable comelinesse of apter proportion” (1598, 95). Women were invited to look on beautiful

Performing Portraits  201 pictures during sexual intercourse and/or pregnancy, so that their children could also be beautiful. Portraits were also believed to have potentially negative effects: for example, the sight of something ugly could engender monsters. Thus, portraits had not simply transactional functions: they were also transformative objects, mainly because “spectatorship was itself a form of bodily contact” (Lin 2012, 57). The playing companies made much of this set of beliefs, also because they could address issues and accusations which affected both drama and painting. By staging a portrait, actors and playwrights could reflect and play with the antitheatricalists’ protestations concerning the ocular infection and humoral alteration that pictures and plays alike could enact. But what kind of portraits did they use? Unfortunately, no portrait known to have been staged in the early modern English theaters has survived. In order to investigate what they really looked like and what their effects may have been on the audience, it is necessary to embark on a study based on scant data and elusive information. This is daunting because the effects that the spectators experience when looking at actors looking at a miniature or at a sizable portrait are very different in terms of proxemics and kinesics. Sometimes theatrical companies and directors find assistance through stage tradition, which is the case of the pictures in Hamlet’s closet scene (see Clary 2003). There were centuries in which only miniatures were used, and centuries in which large portraits or a combination of the two types were fashionable. When it comes to productions of less wellknown plays, it is often up to the directors and designers to make a decision on which to use. For example, in 2015, the Royal Shakespeare Company staged John Ford’s Love’s Sacrifice (1633), a play that has been performed extremely rarely. In the play, there is an interesting “picture scene.” The Duke of Pavy has a beautiful wife, Bianca, and as beautiful a sister, Fiormonda. Fiormonda falls in love with the Duke’s favorite, Fernando, but he is instead enraptured by Bianca’s charms. The devilish D’Avolos, secretary to the duke, suspects Fernando, and shows him the pictures of the two women. The youth cannot help but extol the superiority of Bianca and thus D’Avolos understands his true feelings. What type of pictures are they, though? The stage direction reads, “Enter D’Avolos with two Pictures” – it is the same indication provided for the portrait scene in Shakespeare and Fletcher’s The Two Noble Kinsmen 4.2: “Enter EMILIA alone, with two pictures.” D’Avolos says, “I have here two pictures, newly drawn” (Ford 2002, 2.2.42). He passes the portraits to Fernando one at a time: they are clearly of the same format. Of Fiormonda’s he repeats that “it now newly came from the picture-drawer’s; the oil yet green” (2.2.68–69), and he even adds that “Michael Angelo himself needed not blush to own the workmanship” (2.2.71–72). D’Avolos even names the painter: (the fictional) Alphonso Frinulzio, who lives “[b]y the castle’s farther bridge, near

202  Emanuel Stelzer Galeazzo’s statue” (2.2.115). Bianca’s is also a fine picture because “the artsman hath strove to set forth each limb in exquisitest proportion, not missing a hair” (2.2.82–83). The picture is both called a “counterfeit” (2.2.87) and a “portraiture” (2.2.92). These descriptions are extremely tantalizing. The boasted comparison to Michelangelo’s works, the provenance from a normal picture-drawer, and the fact that the oil is still green (i.e., fresh) would evoke a fairly large format: an easel painting or an oil portrait on canvas. However, the reference to “each limb” being depicted would suggest courtly limning. A related issue is that if these women’s portraits were visible, they would have to bear a likeness to the boy actors playing Bianca and Fiormonda. I favor the “sizable format” hypothesis since the connections to limning could well be simply evoked in the spectators’ minds, whereas all the other indications suggest two reasonably large portraits. A. T. Moore, however, argues that the two pictures were miniatures because the play was staged at the Phoenix, whose repertory “made use of many small properties” (Ford 2002, 99). The RSC’s sumptuous production instead staged A3-format, traditional oil paintings. Thanks to the thrust stage of the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, the spectators could easily look at the pictures unless they were sitting in the back. We should remember that at the Phoenix, as in the other private playhouses, the richest spectators would sit on benches around the stage (or, in the case of some gallants, on stools directly on the stage), while the less well-to-do theatergoers would be farther back or in the galleries, in contrast with the usual disposition in the public theaters. It is at least plausible that these privileged members of the audience would have paid attention to the quality of these artistic artifacts. Generally, however, there are hints in the play-texts that help us reconstruct the size and formats of the pictures. Previous studies often suggest that miniatures were more likely to be used because of practical reasons: it may be cheaper to acquire a small picture; its smallness makes its manipulation easier and thwarts attempts at testing the resemblance between the actor and the face of the person portrayed. Still, we need to take into account the fact that painters and actors lived in the same streets of London and that these were the same companies who scrupulously bought and used minute props such as needles, toothpicks and dice. Is it possible, then, that in the case of pictures, players forced the spectators to use only their imagination and ears? To insist that Hamlet may just “mime” (Richardson 2011, 119) the presence of a miniature in the palm of his hand amounts to say that no handkerchief is needed in Othello. A necessary condition of staged portraits was their capacity of “being portable and transportable” (Elam 2010, 67). I argue that as long as a picture could be easily handled, it could be used on stage. Players did use miniatures in many cases, of course: out of the 76 plays which

Performing Portraits  203 I considered in my previous study (Stelzer 2019), I was able to identify 19 which, without doubt, staged miniatures. However, it is important to notice that, very probably, those staged objects were not “real” miniatures at all. Miniatures, so fashionable at court and among the aristocracy, were actual jewels to all intents and purposes: not only were they cased in gold and gems, but the pigments used by the painters were obtained from the most precious stones and materials, and their prices could be as spectacular as the objects themselves (see Fumerton 1986). For example, in 1616, Hilliard earned £35 for “a table of His Ma[jesty’] s picture garnished with diamonds” (Exchequer Declared Accounts; Public Record Office A.O. 1/390/53). Because of this, actors would probably use “fake” miniatures: simple cards on which the silhouette of a man or a woman would be drawn and colored. Exceptions could be represented by Caroline courtly drama: this type of plays could have used real creations of the limners as, for instance, Arviragus and Philicia (c. 1636) by Lodowick Carlell (who was married to Joan Palmer, an accomplished portrait painter), and the scandalous staging of Walter Montague’s The Shepherd’s Paradise (1633), performed by Queen Henrietta Maria and her ladies. An interesting visual document of an actual miniature used as a prop is to be found in a portrait of a gentlewoman dressed as Cleopatra by an unknown British artist (Figure 11.1). Yasmin Arshad (2011) has shown that this portrait possibly depicts Lady Anne Clifford as she was dressed in a household production of Samuel Daniel’s closet drama The Tragedy of Cleopatra. It has recently been put forward that private performances of similar texts were not simply readings, but actual theatrical shows. These plays are, indeed, stageable and especially those written for the Wilton circle could “dra[w] on clothes and objects from the house itself” (Arshad 2011, 34). In this case, we see a woman dressed up as the queen of Egypt and the costume looks like one used in Jones and Jonson’s Masque of Queens. She holds in one hand the asp, while sporting as a locket a miniature of a man in Roman robes: Antony. We are not sure if this is really Lady Clifford, but if it is, she may have actually used the miniature of her husband, Richard Sackville, the Earl of Dorset. It is, indeed, safer to state that Clifford may have simply “struck the pose” of Cleopatra’s final moments and let “professional players or . . . the sons of gentlemen” (Arshad 2011, 35) speak her lines, but the detail of the miniature remains interesting. Previous scholarship has not sufficiently stressed so far that Daniel’s play does not feature the use of Antony’s picture, but that its presence in Cleopatra’s hands could be fruitfully exploited. Antony is depicted in Roman dress and this style may have been influenced by the fashion at the Stuart court of having one’s portrait á l’antique, best represented by Isaac Oliver’s miniature of Prince Henry as a Roman general (c. 1610, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge). The actor playing Cleopatra (whoever he or she was) may have wielded

204  Emanuel Stelzer

Figure 11.1  Unknown artist, Elizabeth (‘Bess’) Ralegh (née Throckmorton), Lady Ralegh as Cleopatra, NPG Z3915, oil on panel, early seventeenth century © National Portrait Gallery, London.

a similar miniature for a coterie performance. The use of such a prop would have been particularly significant because the action of Daniel’s play takes place after Antony’s death. Cleopatra would have worn this memento of her deceased lover on her breast, fittingly announcing the impending Liebestod. As we have seen in the case of the pictures in Love’s Sacrifice, sometimes the information which can be gathered from the play-text is simply insufficient. Of the 76 plays in the aforementioned corpus, I labelled 20 as “undefinable” in size (thus, more than a quarter of the total). Despite this lack of material evidence, there are often hints in the dialogue that can resolve many doubts. Miniatures are easily spotted when they are contained in a casket (The Merchant of Venice), in a ring (The Atheist’s Tragedy), or in other jewels (Women Pleased); when they are worn (as the mutual gifts between the king and Gaveston in Marlowe’s ­Edward II) or called “jewels.” Sizable portraits are less easily identifiable, but there are

Performing Portraits  205 clues. For instance, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Silvia’s portrait is not a miniature because Proteus asks for “[t]he picture that is hanging in your chamber” (Shakespeare [1986] 2005, 4.2.118). Similarly, in Blurt, Master Constable, we hear the courtesan Imperia tell her servant to “hang this counterfeit at my bed’s feet” (Cleary 1995). Crispiano’s portrait in Webster’s The Devil’s Law-Case “[h]angs in [Leonora’s] inner closet” (Webster 1975, 3.3.347; see below). In Fair Em, one of the Shakespeare Apocrypha, William the Conqueror falls in love with Blanch’s picture drawn on a tilting shield. Another clue is a reference to the material, in particular when we hear that a picture is made of wood, which implies that the prop was definitely not a miniature (miniatures were limned on paper and playing cards). Again in Blurt, Master Constable, we hear the courtesan’s servant say of his mistress that the “wodden picture [he] sent her hath set her on fire” (3.1 which refutes Tassi’s view that we are dealing with a miniature – see Tassi 2005: 105). When a portrait is called a “table,” this generally means that we are dealing with a picture painted on a board: Bess, Heywood’s Fair Maid of the West (Part 1) will never relinquish her most cherished possession, her lover’s “poor table” (Heywood 1967, 3.4.61). Nero in Thomas May’s Julia Agrippina admires the “lovely table” of Acte, a freedwoman, soon to become his mistress (May 1914, 38). When spectators are meant to recognize real figures, their likenesses need to be big enough to be perceived. This is the case of the two plays featuring the picture of Richard Tarlton, the greatest of Elizabethan clowns (Robert Wilson’s The Three Lords and Three Ladies of London and William Percy’s The Cuckqueans and the Cuckolds Errant), Jonson’s caricature in Dekker’s Satiromastix, and possibly Marston’s own picture in his Antonio and Mellida. Finally, one can expect big pictures if they are to be stabbed and defaced (The Noble Spanish Soldier, The Traitor, The Fatal Contract, Thibaldus) or poisoned (The White Devil). However, the clearest visual evidence we have as regards a staged portrait is the illustration which follows the frontispiece of William Sampson’s The Vow Breaker (published in 1636; Figure 11.2). It is interesting to note that the blatantly large format of this portrait has been disputed exactly because of the view that sizable pictures were rarely shown on stage. Wassersug (2015, 221) states: “There is no reason to presume that it would have been any larger than a cabinet miniature” and that it was “inflated” in the illustration to highlight its significance in the plot. Still, the portrait in the illustration is clearly large. Note the frame and the nail by which it hangs; the old man (Bateman’s father) kneels in front of it. The fact that the picture hangs in mid-air is simply due to the need of simultaneously portraying different locales and to foreground the symmetry between Bateman’s and Anne’s fathers. Bateman’s ghost is also shown and bears an evident likeness to his picture, especially the hair

206  Emanuel Stelzer

Figure 11.2  A  nonymous, Illustration to William Sampson’s The vow breaker. Or, The faire maide of Clifton. In Notinghamshire as it hath beene diuers times acted by severall companies with great applause (London: John Norton, 1636, A2 r.). Courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

and moustache. 2 Old Bateman had been clear about his intentions, as he had said when finding his son’s body: “I’ll have thy picture hung up in my chamber / And, when I want thee, I will weep to that” (Griffin 2009, 2.4.134–35). To recapitulate, in many plays, textual and paratextual information indicates the presence of a hanging portrait or of one that was designed to be visible to the audience. It is thus more of a modern conception that sizable pictures were very rarely used on the early modern stage. It is, indeed, quite surprising3 to see how often contemporary productions decide not to use a portrait on stage, even when it is indicated in the text. Generally, the main reasons for this choice are technical and financial: obtaining a painting nowadays is not always easy and may be expensive.

Performing Portraits  207 However, these reasons are hardly valid: photography is of course accessible to anyone. Thus, the 2018 production of Webster’s tragicomedy The Devil Law-Case by Willing Suspension Productions (Boston University)4 cut the actors’ lines concerning the picture that should appear in 3.3, but in a later scene (4.2) made use of an A4, framed photograph of judge Crispiano, which was perfectly visible to the spectators in the first rows. It is to this play that we can now turn to in order to exemplify what has been said so far.

“That the eyes of all / Here present, may be fixed upon this”: Orienting Gazes While John Webster’s most famous “picture scene” is undoubtedly ­Isabella’s murder by means of a poisoned portrait of her husband, Duke Bracciano, in The White Devil (premiered in 1612), he used, as I have just mentioned, another sizable picture approximately five years later, in The Devil’s Law-Case (c. 1617, published in 1623). It is unlikely that the portrait staged in The White Devil was the same picture used in The Devil’s Law-Case, although both were performed by Queen Anne’s Men: we know that many of the company’s costumes, scripts and props were destroyed in 1617 when apprentices attacked the Red Bull.5 In The Devil’s Law-Case, the art of painting is an essential element in various passages. In 1.1, characters quip on the uses of portraiture. Leonora misunderstands Contarino, a young nobleman, when he goes to her and asks for her picture: he actually means her daughter, Jolenta (a child is often described as someone’s copy). All the same, she proves to be keenly interested in painting: If ever I would have mine drawn to th’life, I would have a painter steal it, at such a time I were devoutly kneeling at my prayers; There is then a heavenly beauty in’t, the soul Moves in the superficies. (Webster 1975, 1.1.159–63) Later, a portrait is brought on stage twice (3.3 and 4.2) and plays a central role on both occasions. Leonora, a Neapolitan lady, claims that it is the picture of a man with whom she has had a child. It usually “hangs in [her] inner closet” (3.3.347) and when her servant brings it to her, the portrait inspires her to revenge: So, hang it up. I was enjoin’d by the party ought [i.e., who owned] that picture, Forty years since, ever when I was vex’d,

208  Emanuel Stelzer To look upon that. What was his meaning in’t, I know not, but methinks upon the sudden It has furnish’d me with mischief, such a plot, As never mother dream’d of. (3.3.352–58) Leonora wants to revenge herself on her son, the avid and haughty merchant Romelio (who is also a would-be murderer and has impregnated a nun). She will slander herself, claiming that Romelio is a bastard with no rights to her money (this is the “devil’s law-case” of the title), and using the portrait as proof, claiming that its subject is Romelio’s real father. At the trial scene (4.3), the judge Crispiano appeals to the other characters: “I do first entreat, that the eyes of all / Here present, may be fixed upon this [i.e., the picture]” (4.3.474–75). These words have a clear metatheatrical function: first, the actors are called to be spectators themselves, and second, the actual audience is asked to be involved in the drama by judging the portrait’s likeness. The spectators are not the only ones who must become involved: Crispiano had previously exclaimed “I am made a party” (4.3.453). He reveals that he is the person portrayed: “Behold, I am the shadow of this shadow, / Age has made me so” (4.3.479–80). He also refers to painters’ deceptive potential: “I was such a summer fruit as this, / At least the painter feigned so: for indeed, / Paintings and epitaphs are both alike, / They flatter us, and say we have been thus” (4.3.481– 84). Thanks to the portrait, he demonstrates Leonora’s falsehood: as her servant acknowledges in an aside addressed to the audience, “You may see truth will out in spite of the devil” (4.3.478). The spectators are called on to interpret this variety of shadows: the picture and its deceitful uses; dramatic illusion vs reality; the transitoriness of life. In similar scenes, the performative function of the portrait as prop (in this case, enabling an anagnorisis) acquires a further dimension. In the early modern playhouses, as argued by Paul Yachnin, “the outward look tended to become the sign of an inward personhood, one which invited the members of the audience to rethink their own personhood and their experience of watching the players” (Dawson and Yachnin 2001, 80). This interrogation of subjectivity is strengthened by the orientation of the spectators’ gaze operated by the portrait. Indeed, one is tempted to wonder whether this preoccupation with the intrinsic visual exchange of theater and with orienting the audience’s gaze may not be ironic in comparison with the emotional insecurity and disorientation regularly experienced by the readers and the spectators of this convoluted tragicomedy. What Joanne Rochester says of Massinger’s use of para- or metadramatic insets can be applied to this scene of Webster’s tragicomedy: “By framing his pivotal scenes of recognition, repentance, seduction or conversion with the responses of onstage spectators, using their reactions to underscore the effect of the scene, Massinger stages reception at the

Performing Portraits  209 same time as performance” (2010, 126). At the Phoenix, where The Devil’s Law-Case was originally produced, the spectators would have judged the quality of the picture and easily recognized whether it represented the actor playing Crispiano: the playhouse was quite smaller than the Blackfriars and members of the audience, more refined than those of the public theaters, would be up to date with the newest artistic fashions. However, Crispiano’s appeal that all should look at the picture would not have been superfluous: his words increase the inherent “perceptual salience” (van Leeuwen 2005, 198) of the prop (i.e., the capacity to attract the viewer’s attention) and self-reflexively disclose the workings of representation on stage and in life.

Conclusion: “Restoring” Staged Portraits Considering the sheer number of plays featuring a portrait, it is possible to suggest that there was an actual tradition of using these props in early modern drama. Indeed, when the playhouses reopened after the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, the use of staged portraits was immediately restored. The most famous instance is represented by the three portraits of Angellica Bianca, the courtesan in Aphra Behn’s very successful The Rover (1677). In this comedy, the effects of the exhibition of the actress’s visibility swing between empoweringly seductive and objectification. While at first the architecture of the Restoration playhouses facilitated the visibility of pictures on stage without altering the actor–spectator relationship that existed before the closure of the theaters, over time, this intimacy was reduced more and more. Melodramas and operas began to be performed in the same theaters, which demanded a pit for the orchestra. Also, the use of perspective scenery and spectacular effects required the action to recede and become distant: actors could no longer be “in constant facial communication” with the spectators (Styan 1986, 204). The stage was raised and, by the end of the seventeenth century, the platform had become much shorter. All these changes altered the material aspects of the presentation of pictures on stage. When the spectators were meant to see a portrait, that object had to be conspicuously large (such as the enormous portraits of Old Hamlet and Claudius in the illustration to Hamlet in Nicholas Rowe’s 1709 edition of Shakespeare’s works). The back wall was no longer a neutral space: it was often the site of spectacular scenery; alternatively, when it was meant to represent the interior of an aristocratic or bourgeois house, pictures hung there simply as decoration, without having anything to do with the dramatic action. With these changes, the Restoration began a gradual process that brought portraits to be often mere decoration rather than performative agents within the dramatic action. Just as theaters lost their immediacy and closeness to the audience, portraits hanging on the back wall began to be merely signals of the locale of a play, as

210  Emanuel Stelzer frequently happens in contemporary productions. Moving these props from the page to the stage can restore their performative potential and their gaze can interrogate us once again.

Notes 1 This is the definition suggested by Dionysios of Halikarnassos, quoted in Webb (2009, 22). 2 In The Vow Breaker, the portrait is used in two scenes (3.3 and 4.3). In the first one, Anne, the titular “vow breaker,” goes to see the father of her ex-­fiancé because his son’s ghost keeps haunting her (Young Bateman committed suicide as a result of her rejection). Anne finds the old man weeping and gazing upon the portrait of his son. The ghost enters, and there is a very intense moment in which Anne cannot distinguish between the two “shadows”: the portrait and the ghost. In 4.3, Old Bateman enters carrying the portrait and kneels down next to Anne’s father, who is in the same position, distraught because his daughter’s body has been found in the river. 3 In the 2017 production of Webster’s The White Devil at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, the Duke’s poisoned portrait was substituted with a necklace, which was used to throttle Isabella, although the actors spoke the lines of the play which clearly refer to a picture. This choice seems frankly incomprehensible: not only is that portrait one of the most readily identifiable props of early modern drama, but it also has a structural relevance for the play. It might be possible that this was a one-night incident: some reviews of the production refer to the poisoning by the portrait. 4 There is an online video of this production: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=W0-0zeMRbHo. 5 It is improbable that the same portrait was staged in The White Devil and The Devil’s Law-Case also because it is unlikely that the same actor played Bracciano and Crispiano: Richard Perkins played Bracciano in The White Devil and, probably, Romelio in The Devil’s Law-Case, and the structure of this play does not allow the doubling of the parts of Romelio and Crispiano.

References Arshad, Yasmin. 2011. “The Enigma of a Portrait: Lady Anne Clifford and Daniel’s Cleopatra.” British Art Journal 11 (3): 30–36. doi: 10.2307/41615415. Austin, John. 1955. “MS Lect. Notes: How to Do Things with Words.” Bodl. Eng. Misc. c. 394. Clary, Frank Nicholas. 2003. “Pictures in the Closet: Properties and Stage Business in Hamlet 3.4.” In Stage Directions in Hamlet: New Essays and New Directions, edited by Hardin L. Aasand, 170–88. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. Cleary, Chris, ed. 1995. Blurt, Master Constable. http://www.tech.org/~cleary/ blurt.html. Collinson, Patrick. 1986. From Iconoclasm to Iconophobia: The Cultural Impact of the Second English Reformation. Reading: University of Reading. Collinson, Patrick. 1988. The Birthpangs of Protestant England. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Cooper, Farah Karim, and Tiffany Stern, eds. 2013. Shakespeare’s Theatres and the Effects of Performance. London: Bloomsbury.

Performing Portraits  211 Dawson, Anthony B., and Paul Yachnin. 2001. The Culture of Playgoing in Shakespeare’s England: A Collaborative Debate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. De Marinis, Marco. 1987. “Dramaturgy of the Spectator.” Drama Review 31 (2): 100–14. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1145819. Elam, Keir. 2010. “‘Most truly limned and living in your face’: Looking at Pictures in Shakespeare.” In Speaking Pictures: The Visual/Verbal Nexus of Dramatic Performance, edited by Jacquelyn Bessell, Fernando Cioni, and Virginia Mason Vaughan, 63–89. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. Elam, Keir. 2017. Shakespeare’s Pictures: Visual Objects in Drama. London: Bloomsbury. Fairchild, Arthur H. R. 1937. Shakespeare and the Arts of Design (Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting). Columbia: The Artcraft Press. Ford, John. 2002. Love’s Sacrifice. Edited by A. T. Moore. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Fumerton, Patricia. 1986. “‘Secret’ Arts: Elizabethan Miniatures and Sonnets.” Representations 15: 57–97. Griffin, Patricia A. 2009. A Critical Edition of William Sampson’s The Vow Breaker (1636). PhD diss., Sheffield Hallam University. Hamera, Judith A., and D. Soyini Madison, eds. 2006. The Sage Handbook of Performance Studies. London: Sage. Haydocke, Richard. 1598. Tracte Containing the Artes of Curious Paintinge Carvinge Buildinge. London. Heywood, Thomas. 1967. The Fair Maid of the West, Parts I and II. Edited by Robert Kean Turner. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Kernodle, George R. 1944. From Art to Theatre: Form and Convention in the Renaissance. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Kirwan, Peter. 2018. “Julius Caesar @ The Bridge Theatre.” The Bardathon, March 4. http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/bardathon/2018/03/04/ julius-caesar-bridge-theatre/. Lin, Erika T. 2012. Shakespeare and the Materiality of Performance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Marrapodi, Michele, ed. 2017. Shakespeare and the Visual Arts: The Italian Influence. London: Routledge. May, Thomas. 1914. The Tragedy of Julia Agrippina, Empresse of Rome. Edited by F. Ernst Schmid. Louvain: Uystpruyst. Meek, Richard. 2009. Narrating the Visual in Shakespeare. Farnham: Ashgate. Mitchell, W. J. T. 2004. What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nancy, Jean-Luc. 2000. Le Regard du portrait. Paris: Galilée. Olson, Rebecca. 2013. Arras Hanging: The Textile that Determined Early Modern Literature and Drama. Lanham: University of Delaware Press. Pommier, Edouard. 1998. Théories du portrait. De la Renaissance aux Lumières. Paris: Gallimard. Porter, Chloe. 2011. “Shakespeare and Early Modern Visual Culture.” Literature Compass 8: 543–53. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-4113.2011.00813.x. Porter, Chloe. 2014. Making and Unmaking in Early Modern English Drama. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

212  Emanuel Stelzer Rakova, Marina. 2003. The Extent of the Literal: Metaphor, Polysemy and Theories of Concepts. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Richardson, Catherine. 2011. Shakespeare and Material Culture. Oxford: ­Oxford University Press. Rochester, Joanne. 2010. Staging Spectatorship in the Plays of Philip Massinger. Farnham: Ashgate. Sabatier, Armelle. 2016. Shakespeare and Visual Culture. London: Bloomsbury Methuen. Shakespeare, William. [1986] 2005. The Two Gentlemen of Verona. In The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, edited by John Jowett, William Montgomery, Gary Taylor and Stanley Wells. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Sillars, Stuart. 2015. Shakespeare and the Visual Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sofer, Andrew. 2003. The Stage Life of Props. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Stelzer, Emanuel. 2019. Portraits in Early Modern English Drama: Visual ­C ulture, Play-Texts, and Performances. Abingdon: Routledge. Styan, J. L. 1986. Restoration Comedy in Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tassi, Marguerite A. 2005. The Scandal of Images. Iconoclasm, Eroticism and Painting in Early Modern English Drama. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press. Thorne, Alison. 2000. Vision and Rhetoric in Shakespeare: Looking Through Language. London: Macmillan. van Leeuwen, Theo. 2005. Introducing Social Semiotics. Abingdon: Routledge. Wassersug, Yolana. 2015. “My picture I enjoin thee to keep”: The Function of Portraits in English Drama, 1558–1642. PhD diss., University of Birmingham. Webb, Ruth. 2009. Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice. Farnham: Ashgate. Webster, John. 1975. Three Plays. Edited by David Gunby. London: Penguin. Wells-Cole, Anthony. 1997. Art and Decoration in Elizabethan and Jacobean England: The Influence of Continental Prints, 1558–1625. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Part IV

The Power of the Visual and the Verbal

12 Prospero’s Rainbow Political Miracles in The Tempest Rosanna Camerlingo

In Act IV of The Tempest, Prospero puts onstage his final and decisive spectacle. It is meant to celebrate the marriage between Miranda and Ferdinand. A political marriage, of course, that is the end of Prospero’s political project. The masque is the last of a series of dazzling visual displays and prodigious illusions that Prospero has created with the help of Ariel in the brief time of the play. The spectacle, as has often been noted, is made of the stuff of the magnificent masque designer’s art, frequently performed at James’s court. It is “Shakespeare’s most elaborate stage spectacle” (Gilman 1980, 214). The Tempest was performed at court, on November 1, 1611, by the King’s Men in front of James I and was in line with those masques set up in the Great Hall of Whitehall Palace by Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones, meant to entertain and to celebrate the King (Orgel 1975). Unlike those masques, however, Prospero’s wedding celebration proceeds, as has been remarked (Gilman 1980, 215), in an inverted way from the canonical sequence. Typically, in the Jonsonian structure of the contemporary masque, the anti-masque comes first to threaten the King’s order. Then, the luminous masque that celebrates the King and asserts his order needs just to appear for the dark threat to retire and disappear. Its mere manifestation is sufficient for the kingly order to be reestablished. The light of royal reason makes the dark disorder fade away. The Neoplatonic hierarchy, reflecting the hierarchical order of the King and of his court, is respected, the luminous good prevails over the dark evil. On the contrary, Prospero’s masque proceeds from light to darkness; from the gorgeous, colorful representation of nature’s abundance to Caliban’s obscure conspiracy. The dialogue between the “many-colour’d messenger” Iris and the “most bounteous lady” Ceres, the display of the wonderful colors and infinite richness of nature’s goods and the harmonious dance between the “sunburned sicklemen” and the “fresh nymphs” are brusquely interrupted by Prospero’s sudden remembrance of Caliban’s plot: “I had forgot that foul conspiracy of the beast Caliban” (Shakespeare 1987, 4.1.139–40).1 Here, it is the imposing representation of the King’s order that vanishes, “with strange, hollow, and confused noise,” in the moment a “foul conspiracy,” incarnated in Caliban’s deformed body, enters

216  Rosanna Camerlingo his mind: the spirits summoned up are suddenly made disappear: “Well done! avoid; no more!” (4.1.142). “These our actors,” Prospero explains to a “dismayed” Ferdinand, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. (4.1.148–58) For the audience accustomed to James’s masques, this “inverted masque,” writes Gilman, first asserts, but then partially denies or shadows, the imperial power of the imagination conventionally celebrated in the Stuart masque. Prospero’s undermined masque becomes a delicately subversive maneuver staged in the enemy camp and hinting at the bedazzled, insulated self-regard of such entertainments. (Gilman 1980, 220) Indeed, the audience of James’s court might have been as dismayed as Ferdinand because of the sudden transition from illusion to disillusion. To be sure, the masque, Gilman continues, is a “delicately subversive maneuver staged in the enemy camp” (Gilman 1980, 220). But what Shakespeare is doing is not just undermining the vanity of these entertainments, the ephemeral existence of the ingenious machines built for the brief time of the performance, or the imperial power of imagination. Here, Prospero reveals to his designated heir Ferdinand not only the unsubstantial nature of his vision but the secrets of his potent Art and the unfounded nature of his power. He is revealing his arcana imperii. The quality of the King thus ceases to be a transcendent essence. The transcendental foundation of kingly power collapses: “solemn temples,” “gorgeous palaces,” “cloud-topped towers,” even existence, all gone. Prospero’s power has revealed to be “baseless”: literally a power with no base, no legitimacy. Why does Prospero dismiss his vision so quickly? What makes the illusion disappear? Why does Prospero reveal the secrets of his potent Art to Ferdinand after showing its power? Why does he do it when Caliban’s conspiracy comes into his mind? To answer these questions we have to go back to the famous beginning of the play, where the authority of an entire ruling class is tried and made

Political Miracles in The Tempest  217 shipwreck in a tempest created by Prospero’s magical Art. It is the boatswain, the only practical authority of the ship, as will be remembered, to reveal the powerlessness of the court on board: if you can command these elements to silence, and work the peace of the present, we will not hand a rope more; use your authority (1.1.21–23) In what both Ariel and Prospero call the “King ship” – the most natural and therefore favourite representation of the state in seventeenth-century England (Norbrook 1992, 33) – the King proves not to own those supernatural virtues on the basis of which, still in the beginning of the seventeenth century, he might legitimately claim his power over his subjects. “What cares these roares for the name of the King?” (1.1.16–17). For the mariners, who are frantically working on the ship’s deck in an attempt to save their lives, “King” is just a name. Neither Antonio nor Gonzalo nor the king of Naples Alonso, nor Sebastian, the King’s brother, can command the elements. Their authority is lost. On Shakespeare’s King’s ship, it is the mariners, instead, who are at the helm of the ship and repeatedly and impatiently try to get rid of the presence of the court on the deck that hampers their work: “You mar our labour. Keep your cabins! You do assist the storm” (1.1.13–14). They warn them and even order their superior to “keep below.” If the court cannot pacify the water – they cry – then, “out of the way.” It is their effort and their work on the ship that enables them to send the court to hell. Indeed, if we think that the chief addressee of The Tempest was James I at whose court the play was first represented, one cannot help remembering that no other English King had insisted more vigorously on his transcendental power (McIlwain 1965, xxiii). And this particular power made him openly claim his absolute divine right: “The State of Monarchy” he said in a most famous passage of one of his speeches spoken to Parliament, on March 21, 1610, “is the supremest thing upon earth; for Kings are not only Gods lieutenants upon earth and sit upon God’s throne, but even by God himself they are called gods” (James I 1965, 308). At the same time, one cannot help remembering that James was forced to close the Parliament in 1611, when the Commons were putting into question his very claim to absolute divine right. On Shakespeare’s ship, not only have the King and his court lost the supernatural basis that justified their power over the mariners, but they have also lost the natural virtue that had traditionally characterized its moral supremacy. In the bitter spat occurring between the mariners and the members of the court on the deck of the ship, the court eventually tries to reaffirm its lost supernatural superiority by appealing to

218  Rosanna Camerlingo fearlessness, the natural virtue that allowed nobility to claim its power over the people, which, supposedly vile and fearful, needed protection and leadership. Shakespeare has often his aristocratic characters remind courage as the distinctive virtue of nobility. The most famous and convincing appeal to courage and honor appears in Henry V’s patriotic speech to his soldiers before the battle of Agincourt. After discussing the issue of fear (fear of dying in the battle) with his soldiers and having secretly confessed his own fear of losing the battle only to the audience, Henry makes courage the ennobling virtue of all warriors: “be he ne’er so vile, / This day shall gentle his condition” (Shakespeare 2009, 4.3.62–63). On the fields of France the honor of the nobility welds with the nation’s honor.2 Not so twelve years later on the ship/state of The Tempest performed in front of James I. Being angered by his own impotence and by the boatswain’s insolence, Antonio bursts out, “Hang, cur! hang, you whoreson, insolent noisemaker! We are less afraid to be drowned than thou art” (1.1.43). And even when there is no longer trace of salvation, he cries, “Let’s all sink wi’ th’ King” (1.2.63). Despite all brave intentions and noble declarations, in Ariel’s account of the storm, courage and honor are shamefully belied: “All but mariners / Plunged in the foaming brine and quit the vessel; / . . . the King’s son Ferdinand, / With hair up-staring (then like reeds, not hair), / Was the first man that leapt, cried ‘Hell is empty, / And the devils are here’” (1.2.210–15). The ruling class quits the ship even before the mariners, who, instead, stay and sink with the ship. Prince Ferdinand (Ariel insists on him in detail), the heir of the Kingdom of Naples, is the most fearful (“with hair up-staring”) and the first to leap out. Not only shipwrecked but also ignoble, this aristocracy betrays even its own founding values, thus proving to be definitely unfit to rule. This opening, as has been often remarked (Orgel 1987, 14; Norbrook 1992, 21; Lindley 2002, 6, 9), is dramatic and explosive because it overthrows the social order of the ship/state. The rebellion of the mariners, however, is not mere mutiny. It justly follows the natural order of things. The mariners, that is to say, take over because, in tumultuous waters, natural and supernatural justifications of the power of the ruling class are wholly demystified. No longer credulous, and rightly disenchanted, the mariners evidently do not need to be reformed, as it will be the case of the bankrupt aristocracy, by the work of Prospero. They, therefore, may well figure as virtuously sinking with the ship in place of an insolvent ruling class, and might be easily put to sleep while order is restored. On the other hand, on the island, Prospero too has lost his kingdom: he had been thrown by a storm on an unknown island, and is now alone, invisible, distressed, out of reach of the senses of his court. Unlike his dispossessed peers, however, Prospero still owns supernatural virtues.

Political Miracles in The Tempest  219 We know that he is the author of the tempest that uncovered the aristocratic failure. He, therefore, might still count on those transcendent virtues that justified that divine right claimed by the King in front of whom The Tempest was performed. In The Tempest, Prospero must recover his lost authority and his lost kingdom. To do so, he must reenact those extraordinary events on which his divine right was first founded. This is what Machiavelli taught in the first chapter of the third book of the Discorsi: since all Sects or Republics are inevitably doomed to die, he writes, when they show signs of decay, and are on the verge of dying, they need changes that “lead [them] back towards their beginnings” (Machiavelli 1996, III.1). For a Republic or a State to last longer, Machiavelli continues, it needs to “regain the observances of religion and justice which were beginning to be tainted in it” (III.1). It needs to recover those principles that had founded its legitimacy. The retrieval of Prospero’s power over his riotous courtly subjects shown to be shipwrecking in a very naturalistic storm occurs by means of a series of artificial “tricks” that look like the miracles that had founded the force and the legitimacy of sixteenth-century monarchies. For, as Machiavelli writes in Discorsi, since men do not easily obey other men, the Prince who wants to be obeyed must recur to some supernatural authority. So did Numa Pompilio, who, according to Machiavelli, was the real founder of Rome, for, having to deal with the ferocious and unruly Roman people, and doubting his own authority, invented the existence of a nymph from whom he claimed he received advice for ruling the city. That device, Machiavelli continues, led the Romans to obedience, and permitted the rise of new and civil orders that made Rome great. Miracles and supernatural inventions are not only necessary for founding a Republic or a State, Machiavelli continues, but also to keep it. The Prince who wants to keep the State and extend its life, if and when it seems to be declining, must revive “the miracles celebrated even in false religions . . . for from whatever source they spring, discreet men will extol them, whose authority afterwards gives them currency everywhere” (I.11). Miracles are needed both at the beginning and at the end of the life of a State. Prospero does not invent conversations with a nymph, but uses a nymph to create visual and acoustic prodigies that act on his disobedient subjects’ senses. Wonder, amazement, astonishment and bafflement are the psychological effects on their minds: Now I will believe That there are unicorns, that in Arabia There is one tree, the phoenix’ throne, one phoenix At this hour reigning there. (3.3.21–24)

220  Rosanna Camerlingo Magic is Prospero’s political action. The potency of his prodigies is such that the aristocrats – who are more credulous than credulous “boys,” as Gonzalo specifies (3.343–49) – are reduced to awe and terror, forced to believe the unbelievable, and consequently forced to obey: Alonso is terrified: O, it is monstrous, monstrous: Methought the billows spoke and told me of it; The winds did sing it to me, and the thunder, That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced The name of Prospero: it did bass my trespass. Therefore my son i’ the ooze is bedded, and I’ll seek him deeper than e’er plummet sounded And with him there lie mudded. (3.3.95–102) Prospero’s charms work: “My high charms work /And these mine enemies are all knit up / In their distractions: they now are in my power” (3.3.88–90). “Your charms so strongly work on them,” Ariel confirms (5.1.17). Indeed, so potent is Prospero’s Art that his enemies’ swords, raised against Ariel’s invented threatening visions, prove helpless: “You fools . . . the elements, / Of whom your swords are temper’d, may as well / Wound the loud winds, or with bemock’d at stabs / Kill the still closing waters, as diminish / One dowle that’s in my plume” ­(3.3.60–65). Prospero’s “strength” is not made of the heavy stuff of his enemies’ swords. His prodigies transform airy visions into power (Marin 2005, 56), making his subjects obey without using violence. The Tempest, however, is not only “a fantasy about controlling other people’s minds,” meant to “bring about reconciliation,” as Stephen Orgel argues (1984, 9). Prospero’s end is not to make peace, or to take revenge, but to recover his lost kingdom. To do so, he does what absolutist kings did in seventeenth-century Europe. He must act on his subjects’ senses: “To work mine ends upon their senses” (5.1.53). As Robin Kirkpatrik remarks, Prospero, bears an uncanny resemblance to the Machiavellian absolutists who  .  .  . are virtuosi of the arcana imperii and the coup d’état. In this case Prospero’s magic would lie in a knowledge of political needs and in the exercise of appropriately impressive illusionism. His repeated coups de theatre might in this case be read as recurrent coups d’état. (Kirkpatrik 2000, 88) Prospero’s magic can be defined as a coup de théâtre that hides a coup d’état, whose end is to recover a power on the verge of shipwrecking.

Political Miracles in The Tempest  221 Prospero’s subjects are tamed; authority and order are reestablished by way of theatrical tricks that look like miracles. Even skeptical Sebastian eventually believes in Ferdinand’s resurrection: “A most high miracle!” (5.1.177). We will soon know what kind of art Prospero is using. It is an art, as he recapitulates in his famous speech inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which is founded on Prospero’s deep knowledge of nature: “Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves” (5.1.33). This is the first line of the long, thundering, solemn address to the elements, which – he proclaims – he is able to command at his pleasure. Having drawn a circle around him, Prospero appears as a magician enacting a magic ceremony that celebrates his own complete control on and communication with all the elements of nature, as the fundamental source of his power. Thus Prospero, unlike his enemies, knows how to control nature, as he has shown all over the play. A command that he shares with a long line of magicians, starting with the witch Medea, whose speech on her power to open tombs and resuscitate the dead he cites verbatim from Golding’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses: “graves at my command / Have waked their sleepers, op’d, and let them forth / By my so potent Art.” (5.1.48–50). This is a power that he shares not only with the evoked sorceress Medea but also with the most famous among the prophets that claimed to be capable of resuscitating the dead: Christ. If we add to this that Prospero’s first magic action has to do with waters, one cannot help thinking of Moses, of his power on the waters of the Red Sea, and of his being often associated with Christ as magician and first abuser of credulous people (see Sacerdoti 2016, 12–16), The idea that both Moses and Christ were tricksters was as old as the True Discourse in which the second-century Greek philosopher Celsus established his theory on the imposture of religions. The theory was revived and rather widespread in sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when scientists and free thinkers demystified the religious foundation of European monarchies in a Europe immersed into bloody religious wars. In England, this demystification appears, among other places, in Marlowe’s notorious list of blasphemies reported to the authorities by a second-rate secret agent, Richard Baines. Marlowe affirms, the Note reports, “that the beginning of religion was only to keep men in awe,” “that it was an easy matter for Moyses being brought up in all the artes of the Egiptians to abuse the Jewes being a rude & grosse people,” “that Moses was but a juggler and that one Hariot being Sir Walter Raleigh’s man can do more than he” (see MacLure 1979, 37; Shirley 1983, 182–83; Camerlingo 1999, 25–28). Not only does Marlowe ridicule the whole biblical tale, but he confronts it with the new emerging account of the origin of the world. The biblical lawgiver Moses and the scientist Harriot are compared only on the basis of their knowledge of nature. But Harriot’s “miracles” did not mean to cheat credulous people.

222  Rosanna Camerlingo The last of Prospero’s prodigious ceremony, the masque created for Ferdinand and Miranda, is the richest and the most powerful. And yet, as Norbrook (1992, 35) notes, “Shakespeare’s questioning of legitimacy extends even to the genre par excellence of the naturalisation of authority, the court masque.” Ceres, “the most bounteous lady,” the goddess of the fecund and rich variety of a “proud earth,” is invited by Iris, the colored messenger of Juno, the royal goddess of light and childbirth, to participate in the celebration of the two lovers’ marriage: IRIS Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas Of wheat, rye, barley vetches, oats, and peas; Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep, And flat meads thatch’d with stover, them to keep; Thy banks with pioned and twilled brims, Which spongy April at thy hest betrims, To make cold nymphs chaste crowns; and thy broom-groves, Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves, Being lass-lorn: thy pole-clipt vineyard; And thy sea-marge, sterile and rocky-hard, Where thou thyself dost air; – the queen o’ the sky, Whose watery arch and messenger am I, Bids thee leave these, and with her sovereign grace, Here on this grass-plot, in this very place, To come and sport: her peacocks fly amain: Approach, rich Ceres, her to entertain. CERES Hail, many-colour’d messenger, that ne’er Dost disobey the wife of Jupiter; Who with thy saffron wings upon my flowers Diffusest honey-drops, refreshing showers, And with each end of thy blue bow dost crown My bosky acres and my unshrubb’d down, Rich scarf to my proud earth; why hath thy queen Summon’d me hither, to this short-grass’d green? (4.1.60–83) Abundance and colors, fertility and magnificence are allied and strictly intertwined in this dialogue between Ceres, Iris and Juno. The three goddesses fully respect their traditional representation as they were to be found in Vincenzo Cartari’s work translated into English in 1599 as The Fountain of Ancient Fiction, or in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Iris is the proper goddess to be called into the masque: her rainbow is the traditional symbol of peace after the storm; her bright colors, according to the legend, trace the path that leads to Paradise. She is a messenger to the God who appears to men covered with iridescent dewdrops. To Iris’s

Political Miracles in The Tempest  223 rainbow is entrusted the task of striking the sight. The resulting visual effect is one of a vivid, luminous pastoral peace, promoting harmony and fecundity. This is the picture that the couple is ordered to contemplate in silence: “No tongue! All eyes! Be silent” (4.1.59). Prospero’s insistence on silence and on eyes seems to be intended to produce a hypnotic effect on the betrothed couple. An effect that continues the process of transmission of instructions that had started with the father ordering Miranda to listen to his past life-story “Obey, and be attentive” (1.2.38). Ferdinand’s reaction is, indeed, one that Prospero might expect: “This is a most majestic vision, and / Harmonious charmingly” (4.1.131–2) he admits. Ferdinand recognizes the spectacle as a charming and harmonious vision, not as an awesome miracle. Nevertheless, he risks to be swallowed up in the wonderful painting: Let me live here ever! So rare a wond’red father and a wise Makes this place Paradise. (4.1.123–24) The moving kaleidoscopic image is irresistible. For Ferdinand (who, it will be remembered, had been the first to leave the ship, thus giving Prospero good reasons to call him “traitor”), Prospero is a rare, wise, and wondered father. The allusion to James, whom the French King Henry IV called “the wisest fool in Christondom” (McElwee 1958), and who, in the Basilicon Doron, called himself “a loving nourish father” (James I 1965, 24), must have seemed obvious for the contemporary aristocratic audience.3 Prospero is James the magician, who displays his masques to his appointed heir. “Ghost of absolute power,” as Louis Marin (2005, 262) calls royal feasts in the seventeenth century, Prospero’s masque is a ritual by which the sovereign confirms and intensifies his hold on his subjects’ affectivity. Unlike his fellow victims of the shipwreck, Ferdinand, therefore, is willingly beguiled by Prospero’s “tricks”: he is not at all intimidated or frightened. He does not believe in the vision: he likes it. Rather than being submitted, he recognizes Prospero’s masque as a masque, accepts the emotional link his sovereign/father offers him, and is pleasantly spellbound by the harmonious, colorful, lavish spectacle. “All the masque’s energies draw the spectator into such a golden world,” writes Gillman (1980, 219), “sealed off from all perturbation and flaw, regulated by the perfect patterns of the dance, visually stunning, and-­ insofar as that world is conceived to be both a projection and reflection of the royal mind, an image of the court basking in its own glory-­massively narcissistic.” “In ‘Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue’,” Gilman (1980, 225) observes, “Jonson may assure his audience that dancing ‘maketh the beholder wise,’ but in The Tempest hauling logs would seem to offer a more effective moral lesson than watching a dance of nymphs and reapers.”

224  Rosanna Camerlingo Prospero’s masque, indeed, does not want to make the couple wise. It just intends to freeze Ferdinand’s “ardour of my liver” (4.1.54–56). The pleasure of that masque is obtained at the expense of the whims of Venus and Cupid, whose “scandal’d company” Ceres “has forsworn.” Prospero’s masque, writes Stephen Orgel, “moves in an easy progression; and its eros includes no lust, its natural cycle includes no winter” (Orgel 1987, 50; see also Orgel 1975, 46–47). In the eternal Spring that Prospero paints for the young couple, Venus and Cupid are banished: Tell me, heavenly bow, If Venus or her son, as thou dost know, Do now attend the queen? Since they did plot The means that dusky Dis my daughter got, Her and her blind boy’s scandal’d company I have forsworn. (4.1. 86–91) Lusty Venus (“Mars hot minion”) has been pushed out of the picture, Cupid has been thwarted and reduced to idleness: “Swears he will shoot no more but play with sparrows / And be a boy right out” (4.1. 99–100). Harmony and peace can exist in Prospero’s ideal world because lust and desire are not there. “Wanton charms” must be banished. Despite the richness of colors, and fertile wishes, without Venus and Cupid the masque remains a frigid picture possessing the quality of a no place. No wonder, then, that the appointed heir of Prospero’s Kingdom be disenchanted, warned, and informed of the highly artificial nature of Prospero’s wonderful Art. It is no wonder that he be advised that what he sees is not a paradise to live in, that that paradise is lifeless fiction, similar, in a way, to Gonzalo’s no kingdom: “no traffic, no magistrate, no riches, no poverty”; “all men idle, all; / And women too, but innocent and pure” (2.1.145, 150–52). According to Orgel, in his masque, Prospero presents “his own version of Gonzalo’s utopia, a vision of orderly nature and bountiful fruition” (Orgel 1987, 64; see also Scott 2014, 188). Commenting on the masque’s closing dance of “sunburnt” reapers – “weary of August” harvest – and ethereal nymphs, Norbrook, however, argues that whereas in Gonzalo’s utopia all things are in common, in Prospero’s golden age there is a hierarchical structure in which the labour of the reapers is ultimately motivated by the transcendent gods and goddesses who are figures of the leisured aristocracy. (Norbrook 1992, 35) Indeed, while Gonzalo’s utopian commonwealth is soon ridiculed by cynical members of the aristocracy – Machiavellic Sebastian and

Political Miracles in The Tempest  225 Antonio  – Prospero’s Neoplatonist masque is made disappear by the lowest step of Prospero’s hierarchical/aristocratic ladder. The contradictions already present within the masque where reapers, rather than court members, dance with airy nymphs, burst out when the “ideological” (Norbrook 1992, 36) recollection of Caliban emerges in Prospero’s mind. Caliban’s “disproportioned . . . manners / [and] . . . shape” (5.1.291–92) cause the radical collapse of an unsustainable aristocratic Neoplatonic harmony, as unsustainable as was the hierarchical order of the ship/state in the initial tempest. And if the ship and its aristocratic inhabitants sink in a “tempestuous noise of thunder lightning,” while “confused noise” is heard within, Prospero’s masque does not merely disappear: it collapses in “strange hollow and confused noise.” The old aristocratic order cannot be proposed to the future heirs of the new Kingdom of Naples and Milan. The attempt to replace Ferdinand’s lusty mind with a bewildered and passively obedient mind fails. That mind is led to consider a picture that includes the presence of Caliban. Not only does the masque fail to teach Ferdinand and Miranda any moral and political lesson, but it also risks to make them unfit to rule the kingdom. Prospero’s project is in danger. “O brave new world,” is Miranda’s famous line. Prospero’s no less famous reply (“’Tis new to thee”), pushes the vision down from high. In the final reconciling scene, Prospero – who has just abjured his “rough magic” – is ready to explain, and to bring from strange to probable “these happen’d accidents.” Ferdinand, indeed, has learned that Miranda is not a goddess as she still appears to his father’s eyes, but, undeniably, “mortal” (5.1.188). It is not surprising, then, that it is Caliban’s beastly conspiracy that interrupts the dreamy vision of Ferdinand. The “quick motion of the masque,” Gilman (1980, 224) remarks, is not only followed by the lusty and rapid approach of Caliban but is also preceded by Prospero’s warning to Ferdinand not to let his sexual desire move him too quickly: ‘do not give dalliance/ Too much the rein: the strongest oaths are straw / To th’ fire i’th’ blood’ (4.1.51–53). Lust besieges the purity of the Arcadian picture. Lust is the main issue of the conversation among the three goddesses. It plots against the couple, threatens their chastity: Venus and Cupid “thought they to have done / Some wanton charm upon this man and maid” (4.1.94–95). Prospero’s masque seems to have no other end than screening off the couple’s vision. And yet earthly lust cannot be avoided. Prospero’s censure is broken by Caliban’s sudden invasion. Caliban, however, is not just the dark lusty monster undermining Prospero’s colorful order. He is also the only character in the play who knows that the secret movements of the island

226  Rosanna Camerlingo are not supernatural prodigies but free and independent expressions of a living body. Far from being the effect of the artificial Art made up by Prospero, Caliban’s wonders in the island are the natural sounds of a breathing creature: the isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices That, if I then had waked after long sleep, Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming, The clouds methought would open and show riches Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked, I cried to dream again. (3.3.133–41) So Caliban pays homage to his island. This island has nothing to do with the strange, monstrous, wonderful, frightening, mysterious island invented by Prospero to beguile his court and force it to obey. Caliban’s island spontaneously moves, autonomously sounds. It resembles the atomistic nature explored by Harriot’s admired observation: “I have led you,” he wrote to Kepler, to the doors’ of nature’s mansion, where her secrets are hidden. If you cannot enter on account of their narrowness, abstract yourself mathematically, and contract yourself into an atom, and you will enter easily. And after you have come out, you will tell me what wonders you have seen. (see Jacquot 1952, 181) Surprise and wonder are not the prerogative of artificial miracles. Harriot wins his competition with Moses and his followers. Neither is Caliban’s “long sleep” like Alonso and Gonzalo’s loss of conscience induced by Ariel while Antonio and Sebastian plot against them. Caliban’s sleep does not endanger his life, but is the ally of a dreamy happiness, a chosen daydream: “when I waked / I cried to dream again.” A rich, natural Paradise, rather different from the artificial one created and imposed by Prospero on Ferdinand’s eyes. Caliban cannot be caught in the static picture of a cold happiness: he actively listens to the many voices of a speaking creature. Caliban’s harmonious conversation with the hidden life of the island is the reason why he cannot be seduced or beguiled by Prospero’s tricks: “Let it alone, thou fool; it is but trash,” (4.1.224) he warns Trinculo, who is ready to take on the cheap clothes used by Prospero to thwart the conspiracy. The theater wardrobe, the “trumpery” sent from Prospero “for stale to catch” Caliban,

Political Miracles in The Tempest  227 is taken for what it is: the tricks of an actor; trash: vain fiction, not to believe in. Prospero’s use of theatrical wardrobe to beguile and catch riotous subjects eventually lay bare and enhance the analogy between the fiction of the theater and political miracles, between cheap theatrical clothes and “rough magic.” They cannot work on this thing of darkness intimately rooted in the island’s soul. The sole correct interpreter of the “miracles” of the island, Caliban is also the sole unbeliever of Prospero’s “divine power.” It is this Caliban that interrupts Ferdinand’s ecstatic wonder. The magnificent, motionless picture made up for Ferdinand noisily collapses under the inevitable intrusion of the material life of the body politic: material not only because it introduces the force of lust and desire into the willfully ethereal Ficinian drawing but also because Caliban, the most incredulous and resistant to Prospero’s magic, is the only character in the play that knows that Prospero is cheating. The wonderful illusion turns out to be “trash,” like the trumpery Prospero sends in order to subdue Caliban. For trash is the Art that wants to amaze only to submit. Exactly like the “rough” magic Prospero eventually gives up. Prospero’s “rough” magic has reached its goal. Order is reestablished. The court is ready to recognize Prospero’s divine right, and even the incredulous rebellious mariners are happy to have found the King again: “The best news,” says the boatswain, “is that we have safely found / Our King and company” (5.1.218–19). Aristocracy and mariners, all subjects are ready to recognize the new and stronger political alliance between the Kingdom of Naples and the Dukedom of Milan. Thus, Prospero can easily “break” his “staff, / Bury it certain fathoms in the earth” (5.1.54– 55) and never use it again. All spectators know that Prospero has astutely beguiled his subjects. They also know that Caliban resists his illusions. We know that the court has been tamed, but we do not know whether Ferdinand and Miranda have finally become aware of the “rough” nature of Prospero’s magic, whether they have learnt that the darkness that has interrupted their pleasant enchantment is as inevitable as desire, that the Kingdom they are going to rule is no Paradise, nor a brave new world, nor the utopian Kingdom of Gonzalo, nor the splendid Ficinian picture of Prospero’s masque. They must recognize that it is impossible as well as undesirable to leave Caliban’s ugly, lusty body, out of the picture. We do not know whether they recognize that thing of darkness, as Prospero does; and if they have learned that the thing of darkness is as necessary to the people of the world as well as to rule the kingdom.

Notes 1 All quotations from Shakespeare’s The Tempest are from Stephen Orgel’s edition (1987).

228  Rosanna Camerlingo 2 See also, “True nobility is exempt from fear: / More can I bear than you dare execute,” in King Henry VI, part 2 (Shakespeare 1999, 4.1.131-32). 3 The word “wise” has been a crux ever since Nicholas Rowe in 1709 substituted “wife” for “wise” on the basis of the fact that it made sense for Ferdinand to acknowledge Miranda as his wife in his notion of Paradise. The change has been welcomed by feminist criticism. In their introduction to the Arden The Tempest in 1999, Virginia Mason Vaughan and Alden T. Vaughan write, “The ‘wise/wife’ conundrum . . . encapsulates several of the play’s major issues: the role of the chaste female (daughter/wife) in Prospero’s generative project; the magician’s wisdom and control of events (or lack thereof); and, most centrally, the question of what it takes to turn a paradise into a ‘brave new world’” (138). I opt for the word “wise” not only because, as has been often argued, there is no textual evidence nor compelling reason to alter a word that is as plausible as its alternative but because the word “wise” that appears in the phrase attributed to James I by Henry IV fits well Ferdinand’s phrase and the context of the whole play.

References Camerlingo, Rosanna. 1999. Teatro e Teologia: Marlowe, Bruno e i puritani. Napoli: Liguori. Gilman, Ernest B. 1980. “Prospero’s Inverted Masque.” Renaissance Quarterly 33 (2): 214–30. Jacquot, Jean. 1952. “Thomas Harriot’s Reputation for Impiety.” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 9 (2): 164–87. James I. 1965. The Political Works of James I. Edited by Charles Howard ­McIlwain. New York: Russel & Russel. Kirkpatrik, Robin. 2000. “The Italy of The Tempest.” In The Tempest and its Travels, edited by Peter Hulme and William H. Sherman, 78–96. London: Reaktion Books. Lindley, David. 2002. “Introduction.” In William Shakespeare, The Tempest, edited by David Lindley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Machiavelli, Niccolò. 1996. Dicourses on Livy. Translated by Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. MacLure, Millar, ed. 1979. Christopher Marlowe: The Critical Heritage. ­London: Routledge. Marin, Louis. 2005. Politiques de la Représentation. Paris: Editions Kimé. McElwee, William. 1958. The Wisest Fool of all Christondom: The Reign of James IV and I, London: Faber and Faber. McIlwain, Charles Howard. 1965. “Introduction.” In The Political Works of James I, edited by Charles Howard McIlwain. New York: Russel & Russel. Norbrook, David. 1992. “‘What Cares These Roarers for the Name of King?’: Language and Utopia in The Tempest.” In The Politics of Tragicomedy: Shakespeare and After, edited by Gordon Mcmullan and Jonathan Hope, 21–54. London: Routledge. Orgel, Stephen. 1975. The Illusion of Power: Political Theatre in The English Renaissance. Berkeley: University of California Press. Orgel, Stephen. 1984. “Prospero’s Wife.” Representations 1 (8): 1–13.

Political Miracles in The Tempest  229 Orgel, Stephen. 1987. “Shakespeare and the Cannibals.” In Cannibals, Witches and Divorce: Estranging the Reanaissance, edited by Marjorie Garber, ­40–66. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Sacerdoti, Gilberto. 2016. “La Tempesta: Cani blasfemi e rozzi maghi.” In La fine del Rinascimento nelle letterature europee, edited by Antonio Gargano, 1–18. Pisa: Pacini. Scott, Charlotte. 2014. Shakespeare’s Nature: From Cultivation to Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shakespeare, William. 1987. The Tempest. Edited by Stephen Orgel. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shakespeare, William. 1999. King Henry VI, part 2. Edited by Ronald Knowles. London: Arden. Shakespeare, William. 2000. The Tempest. Edited by Virginia Mason Vaughan and Alden T. Vaughan. London: Arden. Shakespeare, William. 2002. The Tempest. Edited by David Lindley. ­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shakespeare, William. 2009. King Henry V. Edited by Andrew Gurr. ­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shirley, John W. 1983. Thomas Harriot: A Biography. Oxford: Clarendon.

13 “Picture is the invention of heaven” Ben Jonson and the Paradox of the Visual Keir Elam Ben Jonson’s relationship with “picture” was a contradictory and mutable affair. He was probably the best-informed English dramatist of his time on the visual arts. In his plays and in his commonplace book Discoveries, he discusses picture in general and great continental artists in particular, while in his poetry he praises contemporary English portraitists. A considerable part of his later career was devoted to a close working collaboration with architects and painters. At the same time, however, he waged a long-term war against the visual aspects of theatrical performance and repeatedly averred the superiority of poetry to painting. In this essay, I wish to explore such contradictions, which at times verge on the paradoxical.1 References to “picture,” and especially portraiture, are fairly frequent but decidedly ambivalent in Jonson’s early plays – those written for the Globe stage – which express what John Peacock terms “the suspicious anxieties that his plays entertain towards ‘painting’ and other snares in the domain of the visual” (2010, 211). In the first, “Italian” version of Every Man in his Humour (1598 quarto), for example, Lorenzo Jr affirms optimistically to Stephano the ideal that the portrait reveals the man: . . . but let the idea of what you are be portrayed in your aspect, that men may read in your looks: “Here within this place is to be seen the most admirable, rare, and accomplished work of nature.” (1.2.86–89; Jonson 2012; vol. 1, 137)2 In the same comedy Prospero analogously perceives Lorenzo’s external appearance as a readable narrative painting: “‘Sheart, how now, the picture of the Prodigal?” (5.3.200–1; vol. 1, 220). In practice, however, the opposite is true in the play, whose plot of intrigue and masking involves various forms of deception and self-concealment rather than self-­revelation: hardly anybody shows the “picture” of his true self. In the later, “English” version of the play, published in the 1616 Folio, the merry Justice Clement decrees “picture” to be altogether a false and

The Paradox of the Visual  231 misleading sign, a principle that – somewhat paradoxically – justifies his forgiveness of all involved: It shall be discourse for supper between your father and me, if he dare undertake me. But to dispatch away these. [To Bobadill and Matthew] You sign o’the soldier, and picture o’the poet – but both so false, I will not ha’ you hanged out at my door till midnight – (5.5.39–42; vol. 4, 726–27) The trajectory of pictures in Jonson’s dramatic career describes on the whole a downward graph. In Volpone (1606), paintings and graphic images, like all other goods of consumption, are above all objects of avid possession and libidinous desire. Lady Politic Would-Be shows off her knowledge – and her possible possession – of the most notorious pornographic engravings of the period, namely I modi, that is, the erotic drawings by Giulio Romano that gave rise first to engravings by Marcantonio Raimondi and then to Aretino’s highly graphic Sonetti lussuriosi: Dante is hard, and few can understand him. But for a desperate wit, there’s Aretine; Only his pictures are a little obscene (3.4.95–97; vol. 3, 108–9) Later in the same play, Corvino makes a further allusion to the “sinful” eroticism of Aretino’s “lecherous” sonnets and Raimondi’s pornographic prints: Should I offer this To some young Frenchman, or hot Tuscan blood, That had read Aretine, conned all his prints, Knew every quirk within lust’s labyrinth, And were professed critic in lechery; And I would look upon him, and applaud him, This were a sin; (3.7.58–66; vol. 3, 115) Pictures are therefore an integral part of the corrupt and greed-driven world of Volpone’s Venice. In both allusions to I modi, Jonson names and privileges Aretino, as if the “prints” were by the poet himself rather than by the unnamed artist and his engraver. He also reverses the order of composition – as indeed Aretino himself endeavors to do in his ­sonnets – implying that it was the poems that inspired the pornographic illustrations rather than vice versa. As we will see, this question of priority between poetry and picture is recurrent in Jonson.

232  Keir Elam The role of pictures as morally dubious objects of consumption and collection becomes even more explicit in later plays written for the Blackfriars stage, such as The Alchemist, where Lovewit imagines an erotic exhibition staged by Face as part of his strategy of intrigue and extortion: LOVEWIT What device should he bring forth now?… Sure he has got Some bawdy pictures to call all this ging: The Friar and the Nun; or the new motion Of the knight’s courser covering the parson’s mare; (5.1.15–23) Lovewit’s “bawdy pictures” recall the “wanton pictures” that the First Lord offers to show Christopher Sly in the Induction to Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, likewise as a “device” of intrigue. The two plays probably intersect in their evocation of specific erotic pictures, again Romano’s I Modi, to which Sir Epicure Mammon refers overtly in the same play: I will have all my beds blown up, not stuffed; Down is too hard. And then, mine oval room Fill’d with such pictures as Tiberius took From Elephantis, and dull Aretine But coldly imitated. Then, my glasses Cut in more subtle angles, to disperse And multiply the figures as I walk Naked between my succubae. (2.2.41–48; vol 3, 597) Jonson here is showing off – far more explicitly than Shakespeare in Shrew – his knowledge of iconographic history. The erotic poems of the Greek poet Elephantis, to which Mammon alludes, notoriously inspired pornographic illustrations and were, in many ways, Aretino’s model. The comparison between Elephantis and Romano-Aretino, meanwhile, had appeared in Ariosto’s preface to I suppositi, which pointedly condemns I Modi. The allusion gains further in erudition through Mammon’s reference to Tiberius and the “succubae,” reworking Suetonius’s narration of the Roman emperor’s abusing of “younge drabbes and stale Catamites,” and of his collection of “most lascivious pictures,” including those contained in “the bookes of Elephantis” (Suetonius 1609, 99).3 Elephantis’s “bookes” are a semi-historical and semi-mythical example of poetry giving birth to pictures, however morally questionable, and as such are a model for Aretino and perhaps for Jonson himself. Another classical literary source for erotic paintings was Ovid’s Metamorphoses, to which, for example, the descriptions of the “wanton pictures” in Shakespeare’s Shrew make implicit reference. Jonson, instead, explicitly

The Paradox of the Visual  233 names Ovid as intertextual inspiration for narrative wall paintings in another Blackfriars play, Epicoene (1609): otter I will have these stories painted i’ the Bear-garden, ex Ovidii Metamorphosi. (3.3.100–1, vol. 3, 439) Here is another prestigious example of the creative dependence of pictures on poetry. Jonson’s ambivalence toward “picture” is especially acute with reference to Giulio Romano. The several allusions to I modi in the plays appear to express a morally critical position toward the Roman artist, even if he is never named. Nevertheless, Jonson includes Romano – the one artist likewise named by Shakespeare, in The Winter’s Tale – among the great Italian Renaissance painters that he lists in two non-dramatic texts. In the epigram “To the Right Honourable, the Lord Treasurer of England” (i.e., Sir Richard Weston), Jonson places Romano in exalted company: I would, if price, or prayer could them get, Send in what or Romano, Tintoret, Titian, or Raphael, Michael Angelo Have left in Fame to equal or outgo The old Greek hands in picture or in stone. (Underwood 77, lines 5–9; vol. 7, 242) This list is varied and extended in the more emphatic praise of Italian artists – including Romano again – in Discoveries: There lived in this latter age six famous painters in Italy, who were excellent and emulous of the ancients: Raphael de Urbino, Michelangelo Buonarota, Titian, Antony of Correggio, Sebastian of Venice, Giulio Romano, and Andrea Sartorio. (Vol. 7, 553) Jonson’s declared admiration for the Roman artist is therefore at odds with the seeming moralism of his allusions in the plays. There is some doubt regarding the dramatist’s direct knowledge of the artists in question. As Stephen Orgel observes, “whatever pictures Jonson saw, he mentions painters but no paintings . . . . Jonson’s praise of ‘picture’ is so genuinely magnanimous, but at the same time so relentlessly unspecific” (2000, 142). Orgel points out that Jonson’s source for these lists was the Jesuit Antonio Possevino’s Tractatio de poesi et picture ethica, humana, et fabulosa (1595), which, in turn, copied G. B. Armenini’s De’ Veri Precetti della Pittura (1586). Thus, Jonson’s engagement with Italian art – with the possible exception of I modi – was more textual, or ekphrastic, than strictly visual (Orgel 2000, 140–41).

234  Keir Elam Elsewhere, and closer to home, Jonson also pays somewhat backhanded compliments to contemporary English painters, notably his friend the amateur portraitist Sir William Borlase. In his poem The Poet to the Painter – in response to Borlase’s portrait of him, and to the artist’s own accompanying poem (Underwood 52b) – Jonson creates a brief paragone between the two arts, which, while apparently complimenting the painter’s skill, actually implies the superior veracity of poetry: But, you are he can paint; I can but write: A Poet hath no more but black and white, Ne knows he flattering colours, or false light. (lines 19–21; vol. 7, 200) Pictures are “false” and “flattering”; poems – at least Jonson’s – are fiercely sincere. In this poem, as Jennifer Brady observes, “Jonson will apply a self-lacerating corrective to his friend’s partisan perspective. His own portrait, a tissue of punning revisions of the painter’s flattering trompe-l’œil, draws a different likeness” (1991, 196). A good example of an unsparingly realistic verbal – as opposed to pictorial – “portrait” of Jonson’s large and imposing self is My Picture Left in Scotland (Underwood, 9), in which the poet adopts the trope of a supposed painting, left by his beloved (Charis), as a pretext for mocking self-description. Orgel suggests that the poem refers to an actual portrait, “presumably a miniature, and entirely too much like him” (2000, 143), but the “picture” in question is above all the lady’s optical perception of Jonson’s body, which prevents her from loving him, and which allows him in turn a caustic and ekphrastic self-portrait: . . . she hath seen My hundreds of grey hairs Told seven and forty years, Read so much waist, as she cannot embrace My mountain belly and my rocky face; (lines 13–17; vol. 7, 103) The ekphrasis outdoes the putative original, thereby confirming the greater sincerity and evocative power of poetry. The contradictory nature of Jonson’s stand on the visual arts is expressed at greatest length over a number of entries in Discoveries. In the most eulogistic entry, titled De Pictura, Jonson enthusiastically paraphrases Quintilian on the seemingly unrivalled efficacy of picture in penetrating our emotions: Whosoever loves not picture is injurious to truth, and all the wisdom of poetry. Picture is the invention of heaven: the most ancient and akin to nature. It is itself a silent work, and always of one and the

The Paradox of the Visual  235 same habit; yet it doth so enter and penetrate the inmost affection – being done by an excellent artificer – as sometimes it o’ercomes the power of speech and oratory. (Vol. 7, 550) The divine origins of the image, and the irresistible pathos it evokes, seem to decree unequivocally the apotheosis of the visual. On closer inspection, however, the object of Jonson’s praise may be something other than pictorial art as such. Quintilian’s recommendation of pictura is in the first instance, as Jonson well knows, directed toward the graphic powers of the orator (enargeia, hypotyposis) rather than the painter proper so that rather than overcoming “the power of speech and oratory,” picture may be incorporated within it. There may also be an implied theatrical reference here: the quietness of painting, and its being always of “the same habit” may be in contrast with dramatic poetry in its stage performance, loud and with ever-changing habits, and thus even more capable of arousing pathos. So much so that later in the same entry Jonson goes on affirm the mimetic precedence of word over image: “Picture took her feigning from poetry” (551). In another entry, titled Poesis et pictura, Jonson takes up the classical ut pictura poesis theme, and quotes Plutarch (who in turn quotes Simonides) on speaking pictures: Poetry and picture are arts of a like nature, and both are busy about imitation. It was excellently said of Plutarch that poetry was a speaking picture, and picture a mute poesy. For they both invent, feign and devise many things, and accommodate all they invent to the use and service of Nature. (550) This paragone between the “sister” arts seems perfectly equitable: they complement and indeed translate into each other. In Jonson’s version of the comparison, however, it is poetry that comes out on top: Yet of the two, the pen is more noble than the pencil; for that can speak to the understanding, the other, but to the sense. (550) It is, as he goes on to say in his entry Oratio imago animi – ­paraphrasing Vives’s De ratione – not the image but the word that expresses the innermost nature of man: Language most shows a man: speak, that I may see thee. It springs out of the most retired and inmost parts of us, and is the image of the parent of it, the mind. (vol. 7, 567)

236  Keir Elam This recalls the unjustified trust invested in pictures in Every Man in his Humour, where in the end it is the word rather than the image that reveals one’s true self. At the heart of Jonson’s troubled relationship with picture is the binary opposition between body and mind, or soul. This binomial recurs frequently throughout Jonson’s work and across the literary genres he adopts. The territory of picture is the body, pure externality; the domain of poetry is the mind. Thus, Jonson’s poem The Picture of the Body (Underwood 84.3) ends with an impossible challenge to the painter: But, Painter, see thou do not sell A Copy of this Piece; nor tell Whose ‘tis: but if it favour find, Next sitting we will draw her Mind. (lines 29–32; vol. 7, p. 263) It is precisely the mind that the Painter cannot draw: only language can represent it, so much so that the twin poem, The Mind (Underwood 84.4), opens with a dismissal of the painter, whose art is superfluous to a representation of this unpaintable subject: Painter, you’re are come, but may be gone, Now I have better thought thereon, This work I can perform alone (lines 1–3, vol. 7, 263) The body–mind opposition is prominent in Jonson’s brief poem accompanying Droeshout’s portrait of Shakespeare in the frontispiece to the First Folio. The “graver” has struggled with nature “to out-do the life” (line 4; vol. 5, 637); the only thing he has not succeeded in capturing – and the only thing worth capturing – is Shakespeare’s mind: “O could he but have drawn his wit” (line 5). It is for this reason that Jonson ends by dismissing the portrait altogether and inviting the reader to “look / Not on his picture, but his book” (lines 9–10). Jonson’s body/mind and picture/book antinomies re-elaborate Paolo Giovio’s distinction between the body (image) and soul (motto) of the impresa in his Dialogo dell’Imprese Militari et Amorose, 1555, translated by Samuel Daniel in 1586: “ . . . it (the Impresa) must haue a posie which is the soule of the body” (sig. Biiiv). In many ways, the model for Jonson’s view of the word-image dialectic is precisely the impresa. In Stephen Orgel’s words, In fact, Jonson’s most obvious expertise in the pictorial arts is not in painting but in the bookish world of iconologies, hieroglyphs, emblems, impresas – the rich and complex visual language of Renaissance symbolism. (Orgel 2000, 144)

The Paradox of the Visual  237 By way of confirmation of this expertise and interest, the dramatist described his own impresa during his conversations with William Drummond in Scotland: His [Jonson’s] impresa was a compass with one foot in center, the other broken; the word, deest quod duceret orbem” [i.e. that which might draw the circle (or, that which might guide the world) is missing] (Informations to William Drummond; vol. 5, 386) Jonson’s impresa has been variously interpreted in the critical literature. In a seminal article, Thomas M. Greene associates it with the Jonsonian theme of the “centered self,” and in particular with the dialectic between the centripetal and centrifugal tendencies in his work: Center and circle become symbols, not only of harmony and completeness but of stability, repose, fixation, duration, and the incompleted circle, uncentered and misshapen, comes to symbolize a flux or a mobility, grotesquely or dazzlingly fluid. (Greene 1970, 326) The incomplete circle therefore points to a world of chaos and entropy, rather like the world of The Alchemist under the rule of Face. Lester A. Beaurline (1978), instead, notes that the impresa’s Latin motto from Ovid refers to the story of Perdix, nephew of Daedalus, who, envying his ability in – among other things – inventing the compass, threw the boy from the citadel of Minerva. He was saved by Pallas, who turned him into a bird (perdix, partridge). For Beaurline, Jonson thought of the broken compass as a symbol of the failure of art, in the lives of Perdix and his parallel, Icarus, for whose fall Daedalus had two reasons to curse his art. Moreover, the failures are clearly on account of envy and striving to go too high. (Beaurline 1978, 306) Jonson’s only other reference to the compass occurs in The Masque of Beauty, in the stage direction describing the allegorical figure of Perfection: perfectio, in a vesture of pure gold, a wreath of gold upon her head. About her body the zodiac with the signs. In her hand a compass of gold, drawing a circle. (vol. 3, 240) The marginal gloss adds that “Both that [the zodiac] and the compass are known ensigns of perfection” (vol. 3, 248). Perfection, however, is associated with the drawing of a complete circle. In the case of Jonson’s impresa,

238  Keir Elam therefore, the uncompleted circle presumably alludes to unachieved perfection. It was probably inspired by the emblem of a broken compass in Gilles Corrozet’s Hecatonographie (1543, Figure 13.1), which is headed Entreprendre par dessus la force, “To venture beyond one’s power” (see Beaurline 1978, 308–9). In the light of this precedent, and given Jonson’s ambivalence toward the visual, the impresa may take on an additional, self-referential meaning. The broken leg of the compass should have held the very pen or pencil that would have executed the drawing of the circle. It is hard not to associate the image, in a Jonsonian context, with the draughtsman or painter who fails to achieve perfection by venturing beyond his powers. The visual artist is destined to fail unless his art is supported and completed by the word. Jonson’s impresa – as opposed to Corrozet’s – may be read as an affirmation of the incompleteness of an art not based on language. In the impresa, it is the motto, rather than the drawing, that should guide the world (quod duceret orbem).

Figure 13.1  E  mblem from Gilles Corrozet, Hecatonographie (Paris, 1543). By courtesy of the Archiginnasio Library, Bologna.

The Paradox of the Visual  239 Semiotically related to the impresa is another mixed-media and highly symbolic form, the masque. Jonson’s collaboration with Inigo Jones on court masques was the culmination not only of his professional career but also of his paradoxical relationship with the visual. Initially, he expressed enthusiasm for the intercourse between word and image, and in particular for the spectacular perspective sets Jones created for his texts, as in the case of The Masque of Blackness (1605): … the scene behind seemed a vast sea, and united with this that flowed forth; from the termination, or horizon of which . . . was drawn, by the lines of perspective, the whole work shooting downwards from the eye; which decorum made it more conspicuous, and caught the eye afar off with a wandering beauty. (2.53–55; vol. 2, 514) Johnson’s ekphrastic description of the set in the published text of the masque betrays two opposing attitudes: admiration for Jones’s scenic skills on the one hand and an abiding faith in the superiority of the word on the other. His ekphrasis endeavors not only to recapture but to outdo the scenery. Jonson’s initial enthusiasm for the collaboration was posited on his belief that it was he, the poet, who maintained the overall artistic control of the masque in performance. Jones’s sets were at the service of his dramaturgic and poetic inventions: he was, in Orgel’s words, “a man who declared that the masque was not spectacle, but poetry” (Orgel 1965, 4). It is for this reason that later in the opening stage direction, Jonson, re-evoking Giovio’s body/soul antinomy, goes on – somewhat incongruously, after his meticulous description of the set – to dismiss Jones’s efforts as mere “body”: “So much for the bodily part, which was of Master Inigo Jones his design and act” (vol. 2, 515). A year later, in his preface to the masque Hymenaei (1606), Jonson’s dismissal of “the bodily part” is more emphatic and articulate. The body of the masque (i.e., the performance in its visual aspects, appealing to the senses) is mortal, the soul (its dramaturgic and poetic structure, addressing the spectator’s understanding) immortal: It is a noble and just advantage that the things subjected to understanding have of those which are objected to sense, that the one sort are but momentary, and merely taking, the other impressing, and lasting. Else the glory of all these solemnities had perished like a blaze, and gone out in the beholders’ eyes. So short-lived are the bodies of all things in comparison of their souls. And though bodies oftimes have the ill luck to be sensually preferred, they find afterwards the good fortune, when souls live, to be utterly forgotten. (vol. 2, 667)

240  Keir Elam The collaboration becomes a competition for territorial supremacy. There is already a note of acrimony in the attribution of “ill luck” to the short-lived spectacle. Jonson’s vacillation between praise and condescension toward the visual components of the masque is partly a question of professional self-defense. His battle for control of the masque as hybrid art form was increasingly a losing one, and the history of court performances shows that it was Jones’s stage inventions that gained prevalence over Jonson’s poetry. As long as he believed that he had, as it were, the last word in artistic control, Jonson was indulgent toward the architect’s visual conceits. When, however, his loss of authorial power was evident, Jonson’s attacks on “picture” became ever more virulent. His notorious quarrel with the architect was at once aesthetic and political. The vituperative 1631 poem An Expostulation with Inigo Jones expresses all of Jonson’s bitterness at his defeat in the war of the arts, turning the paragone into an exercise in sarcasm. The perspective illusions that he once admired are now transformed into trivial stage trickery: O shows, shows, mighty shows! The eloquence of masques! What need of prose, Or verse, or sense to express immortal you? You are the spectacles of state! ’Tis true Court hieroglyphics! And all arts afford In the mere perspective of an inch board! (lines 39–44; vol. 6, 377) Jonson’s rancor is due, above all, to his loss of professional status. This leads him to equate Jones’s artistic and public success with money-­ grubbing financial interest worthy of Volpone: O, to make boards to speak! There is a task! Painting and carpentry are the soul of masque. Pack with your peddling poetry to the stage; This is the money-get, mechanic age! (lines 49–52) Jones’s “body” had won the war. Jonson is left with the spiritual consolations of the soul. There may be in his impresa of the broken compass an implicit allusion to Inigo Jones and the supposed “failure” of his scenic art, that goes beyond its own powers in not being sufficiently supported by Jonson’s word. A further product of the paradox of the visual in Jonson’s artistic career is the 1616 Folio edition of his complete works, his crowning authorial achievement. Of particular pertinence to the poetry/picture dialectic  is the volume’s ornate frontispiece, designed by Jonson and

The Paradox of the Visual  241 engraved by William Hole (Figure 13.2; see Corbett and Lightbown 1979,145–50), which stages the intermedial interplay between neoclassical architectonic ornament and embedded paratextual inscription. Jonson’s design displays in its lower niches tragedy (left) and comedy (right), discovered standing between classical columns. Above, figures representing satire (left) and pastoral (right), and between them, in the upper central niche, the figure of tragicomedy. In the top left niches are shown the figure of Bacchus, patron of the drama, and on the right Apollo, leader of the muses. The design includes two theaters, a Roman theater (THEATRUM) in the central niche of the higher, shrine-like structure and an amphitheater (VISIORUM), bottom right. Bottom left is a horse-drawn wagon (PLAUSTRUM), which may evoke the medieval English stage. The frontispiece thus brings together the history of the theatre and of literary and dramatic genres by way of self-homage to Jonson’s versatility. He includes two Latin inscriptions, both quotations from Horace, that announce his somewhat elitist poetics: below the title

Figure 13.2  Frontispiece to the 1616 Folio edition of The Works of Benjamin Jonson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Jonson_folios, ­accessed July 1, 2018).

242  Keir Elam is a motto quoting the Sermones, which proclaims, “I am contented with a few readers” (Contentus paucis lectoribus); along the frieze a quotation from the Ars Poetica on the decorum or place (locum) allotted to each genre. Jonson’s intention in including this elaborately symbolic illustration in the title page is not so much to embellish the volume as to allegorize the primacy of literature, and more specifically of Jonson’s own texts. The visual design is a celebration of verbal art. In the words of Sara van der Berg, The semiotic design of architectural façade, allegorical figures, literary inscriptions, and publication data surrounds the central statement of title and author’s name to portray a kind of force field in which the poet writes. (van der Berg 1991, 111–12) As Margery Corbett and Ronald William Lightbown observe, the iconography of Jonson’s “comely frontispiece” is triumphal and monumental, a tribute to the glory and permanence of the ensuing pages: In producing a collected edition of his works Jonson had engaged on an undertaking unprecedented in the world of contemporary drama. The presence of the obelisks, which are monuments, and the laurel, the traditional crown of the poet, is surely to signify the author’s desire that the folio may bring him a poet’s immortality. (Corbett and Lightbown 1979, 150; on Jonson’s Folio, see also Conner 2014, 93–120) This is the definitive paradox of Jonson’s conflicted rapport with the visual arts. The illustration is, as it were, a self-deconstructing artifact designed to lead the beholder’s gaze away from itself and toward what it so learnedly represents, but with which it cannot compete. The invitation to the reader is to dedicate not to the image but to the subsequent texts the respect and attention they deserve: as Jonson says of Shakespeare’s Folio and its opening portrait, “Look not on his picture, but his book.”

Notes 1 On Jonson’s relationship with the visual arts, see in particular Stephen Orgel (1965 and 2000), and John Peacock (2010). 2 All citations of Jonson’s works refer to David Bevington, Martin Butler and Ian Donaldson, ed., The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, 7 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. 3 In his tragedy Sejanus His Fall (1603, 4.391-401), Jonson’s Arruntius gives a more detailed account of Tiberius’s sexual vices.

The Paradox of the Visual  243

References Beaurline, Lester A. 1978. Jonson and Elizabethan comedy: Essays in Dramatic Rhetoric. San Marino, CA: Huntington Library. Brady, Jennifer. 1991. “‘Noe Fault, but Life’: Jonson’s Folio as Monument and Barrier.” In Ben Jonson’s 1616 Folio, edited by Brady and Herendeen, 192–216. Brady, Jennifer and Wyman H. Herendeen, eds. 1991. Ben Jonson’s 1616 Folio. Newark: University of Delaware Press. Conner, Francis X. 2014. Literary Folios and Ideas of the Book in Early Modern England. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Corbett, Margery and Ronald William Lightbown. 1979. The Comely Frontispiece: The Emblematic Title-page in England, 1550–1660. London: ­Routledge and Kegan Paul. Corrozet, Gilles. 1543. Hecatonographie. Paris. Greene, Thomas M. 1970. “Ben Jonson and the Centered Self.” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 10 (2), Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama (Spring): 325–48. Jonson, Ben. 1616. The Works of Benjamin Jonson. London: W. Stansby. Jonson, Ben. 2012. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson. ­E dited by David M. Bevington, Martin Butler, and Ian Donaldson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Meskill, Lynn S. 2008. “Ben Jonson’s 1616 Folio: A Revolution in Print?” Études Episteme: Revue de littérature et de civilisation (XVIe - XVIIIe siècles) 14. https://journals.openedition.org/episteme (accessed 29/06/2018). Orgel, Stephen. 1965. The Jonsonian Masque. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Orgel, Stephen. 2000. “Jonson and the Arts.” In The Cambridge Companion to Ben Jonson, edited by Richard Harp and Stanley Stewart, 140–51. ­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Peacock, John. 2010. “Visual culture.” In Ben Jonson in Context, edited by Julie Sanders, 201–11. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Suetonius. 1606. Life of Tiberius. Translated by Philemon Holland. London. van der Berg, Sara. 1991. “Ben Jonson and the Ideology of Authorship.” In Ben Jonson’s 1616 Folio, edited by Jennifer Brady and Wyman H. Herendeen, 111–37. Newark: University of Delaware Press.

Index

Note: Page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes. Agrippa, Cornelius 93 Alberti, Leon Battista 5, 73, 81n11, 135 Alciati/Alciato, Andrea 34, 40, 47n1, 113, 129 Allori, Cristofano 9, 88, 93, 94, 96 The Ambassadors (1533, National Gallery) 174 Anne of Denmark, Queen 123, 127, 128, 136n1 Anonymous, The History of The Trial of Chevalry 11, 57–8, 179–96 Anonymous, Zepheria 10, 155–9 Apuleius 112 Aquinas, Thomas 92 Aretino, Pietro 119, 143, 231–2 Aristotle 4, 6, 25, 126, 129, 152, 184 Armenini, Giovan Battista 233 Augustine 27, 36, 38, 88, 142 Bacon, Francis 76 Baldung-Grien, Hans 93 Beard, Thomas 93 Becon, Thomas 89 Beham, Barthel 93 Beham, Hans Sebald 93 Behn, Aphra 209 Bellincioni, Bernardo 143 Bellini, Giovanni 115 Bembo, Pietro 143 Bible 55, 69, 87, 88, 93, 94, 98, 98n1; Bishops’ Bible 87, 92; Coverdale Bible 92; Douai-Reims Bible 92; Geneva Bible 47n2, 55, 69, 87, 92, 94, 98, 148, 149; King James Bible 92; Matthew Bible 92; Septuagint Bible 92; Vulgate Bible 38, 92, 94; Wyclyffe Bible 92; Old and New Testament 103, 104, 106, 108; Genesis 96, 167; Exodus 35; Deuteronomy 22, 27, 47; Judges

89; Psalms 55, 59, 94, 148, 149; Ecclesiastes 112; Isaiah 43; Judith 87, 88, 92, 94; Maccabees 87; John 43; Corinthians 43, 69; Revelation 109 Boccaccio, Giovanni 101, 119 Bonner, Edmund 36, 89 Borlase, Sir William 234 Brant, Sebastian 93 Bruno, Giordano 25, 29n7 Calvin, Jean 19, 36 Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) 9, 13, 88, 91, 96, 97, 98 Carlell, Lodowick 203 Cartari, Vincenzo 222 Castiglione, Baldassare 131, 182 Cecil, William 33, 34 Chrysostome 36 Clovio, Giulio 3, 145 Cobham portrait (1567, Longleat House) 165, 166 Colonna, Francesco 130, 132 Constable, Henry 3, 13, 144, 146, 161 Correggio (Antonio Allegri) 10, 115, 116, 117, 118, 120, 233 Corrozet, Gilles 238 Cranach, Lucas, The Elder 93, 96 Daniel, Samuel 128, 156, 159, 203, 204, 236 Davies, John 150, 154 da Vinci, Leonardo 66, 67, 68, 69, 73, 74, 75, 81n11, 81n15, 142, 143 de’Cavalieri, Giovanni Battista 114 De Heere, Lucas 169 Dekker, Thomas 163, 205 Della Casa, Giovanni 143, 144 Dolce, Ludovico 142, 144 Doni, Anton Francesco 119 Donne, John 8, 33–49, 144, 161n1

246 Index Drayton, Michael 156 Drummond, William 237 Edward VI, King of England 77, 103, 169 Elizabeth (‘Bess’) Ralegh (née Throckmorton), Lady Ralegh as Cleopatra (NPG) 204 Elizabeth I, Queen of England 21, 23, 34, 39, 40, 87, 103, 109, 113, 119, 123, 167, 177n2; in The Allegory of the Tudor Succession 169; in The Armada Portrait 170; in The Ditchley Portrait 170; in Elizabeth and the Three Goddesses 168; in Queen Elizabeth as Cynthia 120n3; in The Rainbow Portrait 120n3, 126, 128; in The Sieve Portrait 168 Elyot, Sir Thomas 34, 38, 48n4, 97 Epictetus 34 Eworth, Hans 165, 168 Falco, Charles M. 69, 80n5 The Family of Henry VII (Royal Collection) 166, 167, 169 Fletcher, Giles 146, 149, 151 Fletcher, John 201 Ford, John, Love’s Sacrifice 201–2, 204, 211 Gager, William 8, 19, 21, 22, 23, 28 Gentileschi, Artemisia 9, 88, 90 Gentili, Alberico 8, 19–32 Giovio, Paolo 236, 239 Gheeraerts, Marcus, the Younger 120n3, 127, 165 Golding, Arthur 97, 189, 190, 221 Gosson, Stephen 6, 19 Gower, George 1 Gregory of Nazianzen 36, 37 Griffin, Bartholomew 145 Harding, John 36, 37, 43, 45 Haydocke, Richard 8, 52, 54, 56–61, 134, 182, 200 Henrietta Maria, Queen 175, 176, 203 Hemings, William 176–7 Henry VII, King of England 166, 167, 169, 172, 176 Henry VIII, King of England 103, 167, 169, 172, 176 Heywood, Thomas 169, 180, 193, 205 Hilliard, Nicholas 3, 120n3, 123, 124, 126, 127, 128, 131, 144, 146,

161n1, 203; The Arte of Limning 8, 52–4, 58, 60, 63, 151, 182–4 Hippocrates 27, 29n12 Hockney, David 9, 69, 80n5 Holbein, Hans 76, 124, 165, 166, 172, 176 Hole, William 241 Holland, Philemon 111 Homer 144, 154, 173 Horace 4, 25, 241; ut pictura poesis 2, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 135, 142, 152, 198, 235 Hytner, Nicholas 197, 199 James I, King of England 12, 44, 103, 109, 114, 118, 123, 215–18, 223, 228n3 Jewel, John 36, 37, 39, 43, 45 Johnson, Gerard 191 Jones, Inigo 5, 10, 12, 123, 128, 129, 136, 136n1, 203, 215, 239–40 Jonson, Ben 5, 12, 128–9, 136n1, 203, 205, 215, 223, 230–43 Kepler, Johannes 75–7, 226 Kyd, Thomas, The Spanish Tragedy 10, 163–78 Lafrery, Antoine 114 Lockey, Rowland 166 Lomazzo, Giovanni 9, 52, 54, 56, 57, 182, 183, 195n3 Ligozzi, Jacopo 94 Lucretius 25, 26, 29n9 Luini, Bernardino 96 Luther, Martin 88 Machiavelli, Niccolò 26, 129, 219 Mantegna, Andrea 89, 107 Marlowe, Christopher 94, 172, 204, 221 Marston, John 171, 192, 205 Martini, Simone 141, 142 Mary, Queen of Scots 33, 34, 36, 40, 103 Massinger, Philip 52, 60, 60–3, 208 May, Thomas 205 Merian, Matthäus 118 Michelangelo (Buonarroti) 3, 89, 144, 146, 201, 202, 233 Middleton, Thomas 163 Montague, Walter 203 Munday, Anthony 6 Mytens, Daniel 164

Index  247 Nash, Thomas 6, 189 Norgate, Edward 3, 145 Oliver, Isaac 3, 10, 123–38, 203 Ovid 97, 109, 144, 150, 168, 189, 221, 222, 232, 233, 237 Paleotti, Gabriele 102 Palma il Vecchio (Jacopo d’Antonio Negretti) 96 Parmigianino (Francesco Mazzola) 10, 67, 115, 116, 118, 119, 120 Peacham, Henry 54 Peele, George 177n1 Perkins, William 56, 102 Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca) 141, 142, 144, 159 Plato 6, 9, 27, 66, 67, 92, 188 Plautus 21 Pliny 150, 153, 154 Plutarch 111, 131, 132, 235 Portrait of Sir Henry Unton (1596, NPG), 166 Portrait of Sir John Luttrell (1550 Curtauld Institute /1591 National Trust, Dunster Castle) 170, 171 Possevino, Antonio 233 Quintilian 235 Raimondi, Marcantonio 233 Rainolds, John 8, 19–24, 26–8 Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio) 3, 107, 126, 133, 136, 146, 233 Ripa, Cesare 129 Roccatagliata, Nicolò 113 Romano, Giancristoforo 146 Romano, Giulio 107, 231–3 Rubens, Pieter Paul 94, 175 Sampson, William, The Vow Breaker 205–6 Scrots, William 77 Segar, William 1 Seneca 21, 22 Shakespeare, William: Antony and Cleopatra 10, 66, 106, 111–12, 123, 124, 130–6, 168–9; Coriolanus 80n2; Cymbeline 9, 87–100, 101–22, 185; Hamlet 63, 68, 70, 77, 80n2, 98, 132, 167, 168, 170, 173, 174, 175, 201, 202, 209; 2 Henry IV 168; Henry V 81n17, 218; 1 Henry VI 81n18; 2 Henry

VI 228n2; Julius Caesar 11, 81n18, 168, 197, 198–200; King Lear 70, 77, 79, 80n9, 81n18, 133; Love’s Labour’s Lost 9, 81n18, 87–100, 180; Lucrece 167, 168, 185; Macbeth 8, 50–65, 70, 80n9, 167; The Merchant of Venice 80n2, 81n18, 172, 173, 184, 204; The Merry Wives of Windsor 81n19; Othello 202; Pericles 107; Richard II 70, 76, 80n9; Sonnets 70, 77, 141, 149, 173–4, 185; Taming of the Shrew 232; The Tempest 11, 129, 215–29; Timon of Athens 167, 182; Troilus and Cressida 78, 81n18; Twelfth Night 81n18, 163; The Two Gentlemen of Verona 166, 172, 173, 179, 205; The Two Noble Kinsmen 201; Venus and Adonis 66, 80n2, 184; The Winter’s Tale 79, 81n17, 107, 194, 233 Sidney, Philip 25, 29n7; Arcadia 181, 184, 186, 188, 195n4; Defence of Poesie 4–5, 24, 25, 28, 89, 152 Simonides of Ceos 4, 142, 235 Sirani, Elisabetta 94 Souch, John 174 Spenser, Edmund 154, 169 Spiering, François 113 Steele, Richard 145 Stubbes, Philip 19 Suetonius 232 Tebaldeo, Antonio 146 Titian (Tiziano Vecellio) 67, 70, 96, 115, 143, 144, 175, 176, 233 Tofte, Robert 10, 146–51, 153, 154, 156, 159 Van Dyck, Anthony 175, 176 Van Eyck, Jan 67 Varchi, Benedetto 142 Vasari, Giorgio 3, 118, 145 Velázquez, Diego 71, 72, 73 Veronese (Paolo Caliari) 96 Virgil 168, 172, 173 Vives, Juan Luis 235 Webster, John 11, 197, 205, 207–9, 210n3 Wheatstone, Charles 74, 75, 76 White, Nicholas 33, 34, 39, 40, 41, 43 White, Peter 37, 38, 39, 44, 45 Whythorne, Thomas 67