Shakespeare’s Visual Theatre: Staging the Personified Characters

In this study of Shakespeare’s visual culture Frederick Kiefer looks at the personified characters created by Shakespeare in his plays, his walking, talking abstractions. These include Rumour in 2 Henry IV, Time in The Winter\'s Tale, Spring and Winter in Love\'s Labour\'s Lost, Revenge in Titus Andronicus, and the deities in the late plays. All these personae take physical form on the stage: the actors performing the roles wear distinctive attire and carry appropriate props. The book seeks to reconstruct the appearance of Shakespeare’s personified characters; to explain the symbolism of their costumes and props; and to assess the significance of these symbolic characters for the plays in which they appear. To accomplish this reconstruction, Kiefer brings together a wealth of visual and literary evidence including engravings, woodcuts, paintings, drawings, tapestries, emblems, civic pageants, masques, poetry and plays. The book contains over forty illustrations of personified characters in Shakespeare’s time.

• Will add considerably to our understanding of the visual dimension of Renaissance theatre • Includes 40 illustrations of personified figures in Shakespeare’s time • Will also be of interest to people involved in theatre production - theatrical directors, costume designers

Acknowledgments; Introduction; List of illustrations; 1. Spring and winter in Love’s Labour’s Lost; 2. Revenge, murder, and rape in Titus Andronicus; 3. Rumour in 2 Henry IV; 4. Hecate and the witches in Macbeth; 5. The five senses in Timon of Athens; 6. Time and the deities in the late plays; Conclusion; Select bibliography.

‘A handsomely illustrated and presented book.’ Shakespeare at the Centre Magazine

‘… lavishly illustrated and interesting … This book as a whole is stronger than its individual parts, and it is significant because it brings together all of Shakespeare\'s personified characters in a single story, allowing readers to see these figures as similar forms of theatrical and artistic representation.‘ MLR

‘Frederick Kiefer‘s Shakespeare\'s Visual Theatre provides readers with a prime example of the power of informed conjectural readings based on extraliterary sources. … This is a carefully researched and thoughtfully written examination of an important and neglected aspect of Shakespeare‘s drama. … Kiefer‘s book has the capacity to reorient significantly current discussion of Renaissance English literature, dramatic and otherwise … important and painstakingly detailed …‘. Sixteenth Century Journal