Table of Contents

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

About the Author

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.