UNIVERSITY OF BERGAMO School of Doctoral Studies Doctoral Degree in ―Studi Umanistici Interculturali‖ XXIX Cycle SSD: L-LIN/10 Joint PhD program with JUSTUS LIEBIG UNIVERSITÄT GIESSEN Portraits in Early Modern English Drama: Visual Culture, Play-Texts, and Performances Advisors Chiar.ma Prof.ssa Angela Locatelli Chiar.mo Prof. Ingo Berensmeyer Doctoral Thesis Emanuel STELZER Student ID 1031607 Academic year 2015/16 Table of contents: Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………….......3 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………...... 6 I. The Meanings of Staged Portraits: Theoretical and Historical Perspectives…...........17 I.1.1 A Short Premise: Drama as Action and as a Visual Art ………….………………18 I.1.2 Interpreting Portraits: Semiotic Approaches………………………………….......21 I.1.3 Situating Portraits in Visual and Material Culture Studies……………………….29 I.2 Early Modern Visualities……………………………………………………….......35 I.2.1 Salient Aspects of the Visual Culture of Early Modern England…………….......36 I.2.2 Framing Vision: The ―Figuring Forth Good Things‖ and the ―Infecting of the Fancy‖……………………………………………………………....…………..40 I.2.3 Offending Shadows: Idolatry and Iconoclasm……………………………………45 I.3 Early Modern English Portraiture: Objects and Poetics…………………………….53 I.3.1 Innovation in the Renaissance Portrait....................................................................55 I.3.2 Portraits in Early Modern England……………………………………………......58 I.3.3 Miniatures…………………………………………………………………………68 I.3.4 The Poetics of Limning……………………………………………………….......75 I.4 Portraits on Stage in Early Modern England……………………………………......82 I.4.1 Viewing Auditors, Hearing Spectators……………………………………………83 I.4.2 ―Passioning‖ over Pictures in the Theatre…………………………………….......87 I.4.3 Seeing and Looking at the Staged Pictures……………………………………….95 II. Case Studies: Portraits in Action…………………………………………………..127 II.1 ―Closet scenes‖: The Case of Hamlet‘s First Quarto (1603)…………………......128 II.2 Tragic Limning in John Webster‘s The White Devil (1612)………………….......162 II.3 Philip Massinger‘s The Picture (1630): Impregnable Women and Pregnable Pictures……...…………………………………………………………......192 II.4 Shadow Vision in William Sampson‘s The Vow-Breaker (1636)……………......225 II.5 The Drama of Platonic Gazing in Caroline Courtier Play-Texts: William Cartwright‘s The Siege (1651)…......…………………………………........253 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….285 Appendix………………………………………………………………………….......293 List of Illustrations…………………………………………………………………….302 List of Works Cited……………………………………………………………….......303 2/327 Acknowledgements There are many people I would like to thank for the advice and support they gave me while writing this dissertation. My project could not have had better supervisors than Professor Angela Locatelli (University of Bergamo) and Professor Ingo Berensmeyer (University of Gießen). Professor Locatelli has guided me with extreme alacrity and competence. A true model of mentorship, her generosity, commitment, and passion for her profession are exemplary. Professor Berensmeyer‘s honest, learned, and constructive feedback has helped me extensively; besides, his kindness and sense of humour are qualities that can only be applauded. I also wish to express my gratitude to the PhDnet ―Literary and Cultural Studies‖ of which I am a member. This organisation has proved the perfect arena to discuss parts of my project on a regular basis: coordinated by Dr Nora Berning, all the PhDnet symposia were amazingly stimulating and I would like to thank all the professors, especially the founder of the PhDnet, Professor Ansgar Nünning, and doctoral colleagues, and dear friends, from the universities of Bergamo, Gießen, Graz, Helsinki, Lisbon, and Stockholm, who commented on my papers and presentations. None of this could have happened if I had not been enrolled in the doctoral programme in ―Studi Umanistici Interculturali‖ at the University of Bergamo, coordinated by Professor Alessandra Violi, which fostered my work both professionally and financially, giving me research grants to participate in the PhDnet symposia, in a number of conferences (Lisbon, Graz, Galway), and in missions to the United Kingdom (to the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon, the National Portrait Gallery, the Heinz Archive, and the British Library in London). I have discussed parts of my project with a number of scholars whose criticism has helped me more than they may suppose: Tobias Gabel and Dr Martin Spies (University of Gießen), Dr Tarnya Cooper and Dr Jane Eade at the National Portrait Gallery, Dr Tara Hamling (University of Birmingham), Professor Anna Maria Testaverde (University of Bergamo), and Dr Martin Wiggins at the Shakespeare Institute. I presented my project at the Young Scholars‘ Research Workshop 3/327 organised in Bergamo on 29 May 2015 by the Italian Association of Shakespearean and Early Modern Studies (IASEMS), chaired by Professor Graham Holderness (University of Hertfordshire), where I also received constructive feedback and encouragement from Professor Carlo Maria Bajetta (University of Aosta Valley) and Professor Alessandra Petrina (University of Padua). Parts of my project were also presented at the IPP colloquium in Gießen (13 January 2016, coordinated by Dr Natalya Bekhta), at the ―After Iconophobia? Patrick Collinson‘s ‗From Iconoclasm to Iconophobia‘, Thirty Years On‖ workshop at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-Upon-Avon (2-3 July 2015), and at the panel ―Picturing on the Page and the Stage in Renaissance England‖ organised by Dr Camilla Caporicci (University of Munich) and Dr Armelle Sabatier (Panthéon-Assas University, Paris II) within the ESSE conference in Galway (24 August 2016). Special thanks are due to Dr Yolana Wassersug, who very kindly sent me a copy of her unpublished doctoral dissertation. I would also like to thank the staff of the British Library and of the university libraries of Bergamo, Gießen, and Trento. Professor Berensmeyer and Dr Christine Schwanecke (Mannheim University) generously allowed me to teach a few lectures within their courses, on Hamlet and The White Devil, respectively, which proved a very exciting opportunity to test my ideas. Madeleine LaRue carefully and patiently proofread my English; all remaining mistakes are my responsibility alone. I could never have finished this dissertation without the help of my friends. Snežana Vuletić made my research stay in Gießen a joy, with our daily chats over a nice cup of coffee. Her commitment and passion can hardly be equalled. I would like to single out some of my colleagues at the University of Bergamo whom I am happy to count as friends: Stefano Guerini Rocco, Rita Locatelli, Thomas Persico, and Giulia Valsecchi. My staunch ―fans‖, Cristina De Bacco, Giulia Minati, Sara Tomio, and Dania Urthaler have always managed to make my days lighter and brighter. My greatest debt of thanks is to my parents, Miriam and Dario, and to my sister, Valeria. They have endured a son‘s and brother‘s continuous rambling about topics such as iconophobia, Shakespeare‘s theatre as part of the early modern visual world, 4/327 and the semiotics of drama with patience, unconditional support, and love. I dedicate this dissertation to them. 5/327 Introduction In the 2014 production of Sophocles‘ Electra at the Old Vic, London, starring Kristin Scott Thomas, the princess of Mycenae first appears furtively pinning a picture of her murdered father on a tree centre-stage. She wails over the image and quickly hides it as other characters arrive. This is clearly an innovation since it is not present in the original tragedy, but many spectators did not pay attention to this feature, caught as they were by Electra‘s moving lament. After all, it seems natural that a child should gaze upon a picture of her deceased parent. Interestingly, however, this seemingly minor innovation changes a key element of Greek tragedy: Greek retrospection: Elizabethan remembrance. Aeschylus‘s revengers, like the Orestes and Electra of Sophocles and Euripides, have no private memory of their father; they know about his life and death only because it is public knowledge. They take revenge for equally public reasons […] Elizabethan revenge tragedy replaces the vital exteriority of the links between living and dead in the Greek plays by something more private: almost invariably, its revengers cherish vivid, personal memories of their lost friends and kinsmen. These memories are usually, as in The Spanish Tragedy, shared with the audience1. By the protagonist‘s looking at the picture of Agamemnon, the Electra at the Old Vic was recast into early modern drama. The review in The Guardian reads: ―It is hard to watch Electra without thinking of Hamlet‖2. This was certainly due to Scott Thomas‘ performance and to the conversion of the Old Vic into a theatre in the round. Yet, what I would like to highlight is that this simple viewing of a portrait on stage radically modifies the play‘s appraisal. The portraits in Hamlet‘s ―closet scene‖ are not the only pictures staged in early modern English drama. There are seventy-five plays, from the Elizabethan to the Caroline period, that feature the staging of a portrait. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate how the presentation of portraits changed the interactive dynamics between actors and spectators; how staged pictures could address socially charged topics of the rich, though embattled, visual culture of the time; how these special 1 John Kerrigan, ―Hieronimo, Hamlet and Remembrance‖, Essays in Criticism, Vol. 31, no. 2, 1981: 106.