1st Edition

Portraits in Early Modern English Drama Visual Culture, Play-Texts, and Performances

By Emanuel Stelzer Copyright 2019
270 Pages
by Routledge

270 Pages 8 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

270 Pages 8 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Portraits in Early Modern English Drama studies the complex web of interconnections that grows out of the presentation of portraits as props in early modern English drama. Emanuel Stelzer considers this theory from the Elizabethan age up to the closing of the theatres. This book examines how the dramatic text and the subjectivities of the dramatis personae are shaped and changed through the... Read more

List of figures; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I The meanings of staged portraits: theoretical and historical perspectives; Chapter 1. Interpreting portraits: semiotic approaches; Chapter 2. Early modern visualities; Chapter 3. Early modern English portraiture: objects and poetics; Chapter 4. Portraits on stage in early modern England; Part II. Case studies: portraits in action; Chapter 5. "Closet scenes": The case of Hamlet’s First Quarto (1603); Chapter 6. Tragic limning in John Webster’s The White Devil (1612); Chapter 7. Philip Massinger’s The Picture (1630): Impregnable women and pregnable pictures; Chapter 8. Shadow vision in William Sampson’s The Vow-Breaker (1636); Chapter 9. The drama of Platonic gazing in Caroline Courtly play-texts: William Cartwright’s The Siege (1651); Conclusion; Appendix; Index

Biography

Emanuel Stelzer is an adjunct lecturer at the University of Bergamo, after earning a PhD there in cotutelle at Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen and working as a postdoctoral researcher at Università della Valle d’Aosta. His publications have appeared in Critical Survey, Notes and Queries, and Early Theatre.