Shakespeare and the Visual Imagination

This book is a fully illustrated study of Shakespeare's knowledge of visual art, its theories and contemporary debates, and their importance in his plays and poems. It will be of value for upper-level students and academic researchers of Shakespeare, as well as readers interested in early modern theatre, literature and art history.

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Shakespeare's knowledge of the practices of visual art, its fundamental concepts and the surrounding debates is clear from his earliest works. This book explores this relationship, showing how key works develop visual compositions as elements of dramatic movement, construction of ideas, and reflections on the artifice of theatre and language. The Taming of the Shrew, Love's Labour's Lost, Richard II and A Midsummer Night's Dream are explored in detail, offering new insights into their forms, themes, and place in European traditions. The use of emblems is examined in Titus Andronicus and As You Like It; studies of Venus and Adonis, some sonnets and The Rape of Lucrece reveal different but related visual aspects; a later chapter suggests how the new relation between seeing and soliloquy in The Rape of Lucrece is developed in other plays. Extensively illustrated, the book explores Shakespeare's assimilation and exploration of visual traditions in structure, theme and idea throughout the canon.