Interpreting the pictorial record: Theatre iconography and the referential dilemma

Theatre Research International

Volumn 22, Issue 3, 1997, Pages 190-201

  Balme, Cristopher B ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MUNICH   (Germany)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 61449197280     PISSN: 03078833     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0307883300017004     Document Type: Review

References (32)

1. The quotation reads: 'One only needs to imagine what a history of painting would look like where the author had at his disposal neither originals nor copies of pictures but only any number of good descriptions! The historian of the theatre finds himself provisionally in just such a situation as soon as he leaves the realm of his own perception.' Julius Bab, Das Theater der Gegenwart: Geschichte der dramatischen Bühne seit 1870. Mit 78 Abbildungen (Leipzig: J.J. Weber, 1928), p. 231. My translation.
2. Michael Quinn, 'The Comedy of Reference: The Semiotics of Commedia Figures in Eighteenth-Century Venice', Theatre Journal 43, 1 (March 1991), p. 72.
3. See Tadeusz Kowzan, 'Theatre Iconography/Iconology: The Iconic Sign and its Referent', translated by Scott Walker, Diogenes 130, 1985, pp. 53-70;
4. and Cesare Molinari, 'About Iconography as a Source for Theatre History', unpublished paper tabled at the Istituto Internazionale per la Ricerca Teatrale (Venice, November 1991).
5. See Cesare Molinari, p. 3.
6. See Molinari, p. 4.
7. See Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of a Social Energy in Renaissance England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).
8. Norman Bryson, 'Semiology and Visual Interpretation', in Norman Bryson, Michael Ann Holly, Keith Moxey, eds., Visual Theory: Painting and Interpretation (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991).
9. Bryson critiques traditional Marxist approaches to visual art as being insufficiently interested in the actual signs of a painting, often being content to analyse the economic circumstances surrounding the production of art but not concerned with the structures of meaning in particular works.
10. See Bryson, p. 66.
11. See Erwin Panofsky, 'Iconography and Iconology: An Introduction to the Study of Renaissance Art', in Erwin Panofsky, Meaning in the Visual Arts (New York: Garden City, 1955).
12. How miserable the iconographical record is can be seen in Jerzy Limon's recent study of the English Comedians: Gentleman of a Company: English Players in Central and Eastern Europe 1590-1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). He does not include this picture.
13. The most important document is a letter written by the Princess Magdalena to her brother, the Archduke Ferdinand. It is reproduced in Irene Morris, 'A Hapsburg Letter', Modern Language Review 69 (1974), pp. 12-22.
14. For an overview of these plays see Johannes Bolte, ed., 'Niemand und Jemand: Ein englisches Drama aus Shakespeare's Zeit übersetzt von Ludwig Tieck', Jahrbuch der deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft 29 (1894), pp. 4-91 (28).
15. A communication from George Speaight informed me that the Nobody featured still in the eighteenth century in puppet plays. See also the reference to Nobody in The Tempest, III, ii, 128-9: Trinculo: 'This is the tune of our catch played by the picture of Nobody.' The iconographical tradition is, however, much older. The earliest example, a woodcut by a Strasbourg barber named Jörg Schan, dates from the end of the fifteenth century. See Bolte, p. 10.
16. These are described by Bolte, p. 26.
17. The Graz picture has the following coloration. Nobody is wearing blue trousers with large green buttons, green sleeves and stockings, black boots with gold buckles, a blue hat with a black feather. His hair is sepia brown, his beard ochre yellow with light brown streaks. The rosary beads are black, the attached cross is gold; the book is embossed with gold. For a description of the picture see Willi Flemming, ed., Das Schauspiel der Wanderbühne (Deutsche Literatur Sammlung literarischer Kunst- und Kulturdenkmäler in Entwicklungsreihen; Barockdrama, Bd. 3) (Leipzig: Philipp Reclam, 1931), p. 333. This description is based on Flemming and confirmed by comparison with a colour reproduction of the frontispiece in the present author's possession.
18. David Garrick's dynamic first appearance on the London stage marks as we know a decisive caesura, or paradigmatic shift, to use Joseph Roach's term, in the development of European acting. Garrick ushered in what was perceived as a natural style of acting in contrast to the declamatory practices of rhetorically trained actors of the previous generations. See Joseph Roach, The Player's Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting (Newark: Associated University Presses, 1985), pp. 56-7.
19. On the question of generic designation see also Shearer West: 'Although the work was in one sense a portrait, the subject matter gave it some of the weightiness of history painting. Hogarth spent much of his life trying to gain credibility for British history painting amongst a nobility who much preferred foreign examples of the type'. Shearer West, The Image of the Actor: Verbal and Visual Representation in the Age of Garrick and Kemble (London: Pinter, 1991), p. 101.
20. For an excellent analysis of this painting see also Michael S. Wilson, 'Garrick, iconic acting, and the ideologies of theatrical portraiture', Word & Image, 6, 4 (October-December 1990), p. 373ff.
21. James Boswell, 'On the Profession of a Player', London Magazine (September 1770), p. 469. If this view of the character must seem familiar, it is because Erving Goffman's view of social beings as involved in continual role-playing, fully able to separate their various roles or character, has become part of our conceptual vocabulary. Boswell comes to the same conclusion and points out that not only actors utilize the ability to operate with a double consciousness, it is part and parcel of everyday behaviour. Boswell offers thus a psychological explanation of acting, rather than an aesthetic one.
22. See Michael S. Wilson, 1990: 'Hogarth was concerned to catch Garrick's expression in characteristic transition between admiration (astonishment to us) and horror', p. 373. In his historical and theoretical study, A General View of the Stage, published in 1759
23. Thomas Wilkes describes the acting of 'astonishment' as follows: 'the whole body is actuated: it is thrown back, with one leg set before the other, both hands elevated, the eyes larger than usual, the brows drawn up, and the mouth not quite shut.' A General View of the Stage (London: J. Coote, 1759), p. 118.
24. Wilkes uses the metaphor 'paint' a great deal as a kind of learned allusion to the doctrine of ut pictura poesis; see p. 122.
25. There are numerous testimonies to Garrick's facial expression, the most famous description is probably that of Lichtenberg. A less frequently cited witness is Arthur Murphy, Garrick's biographer and fellow actor. He writes: 'The moment he entered the scene the character he assumed was visible in his countenance [...] the passions rose in rapid succession, and before he uttered a word, were legible in every feature of that various face.' Cited in Alan S. Downer, 'Nature to Advantage Dressed: Eighteenth-Century Acting', PMLA 58 (1943), 1002-37 (1016).
26. Ronald Paulson, Hogarth: His Life, Art, and Times, Vol. 2 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), p. 26.
27. See Michael S. Wilson, 1990, p. 369.
28. For a production and reception history, see Günter Seehaus, Frank Wedekind und das Theater (Munich: Laokoon, 1964), p. 289-91. During Wedekind's lifetime the role of Moses was always performed by a woman. After a while Tilly Wedekind refused to play the role as it reduced her part to that of a mute listener.
29. Wedekind toured the piece as part of a performance consisting of two one-act plays.
30. In the context of the text it can only be understood as paternal solicitude (other alternatives would be possible but not particularly palatable).
31. Later Wedekind created a dialogue version but the role of Moses was not substantially improved; see Seehaus, 1964, p. 290.
32. See West, 'The Construction of Racial Type: Caricature, Ethnography, and Jewish Physiognomy in Fin de Siècle Melodrama', Nineteenth-Century Theatre 21, 1 (1993), pp. 5-40.