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

My dissertation aims to study the complex web of interconnections that grows out of the presentation of portraits in early modern English drama. The time period under consideration ranges from the Elizabethan age up to the closing of the theatres. The two overarching critical tools I use are the semiotics of theatre and drama, and visual culture studies, but this research calls for an interdisciplinary approach that includes the history of drama and literature, art history, material culture studies, and gender studies. I carry out a study of the diverse ways in which the structure of the dramatic text and the subjectivities of the dramatis personae are shaped and changed through the process of observation and interpretation of pictures in their dramatic actions and dialogues. The dissertation includes an analysis of five case studies: Shakespeare’s Hamlet (with particular focus on the 1603 First Quarto); Webster’s The White Devil (1612); Massinger’s The Picture (1630); Sampson’s The Vow Breaker (1636), and Cartwright’s The Siege (1651).