Shakespeare's Visual Theatre: Staging the Personified Characters.(Book Review)

Publication: The Modern Language Review

Publication Date: 01-JUL-05

Bookmark this article Print this article Link to this article Email this article Digg It! Add to del.icio.us RSS

COPYRIGHT 2005 Modern Humanities Research Association

Shakespeare's Visual Theatre: Staging the Personified Characters. By FREDERICK KIEFER. Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. 2003. xiv+358 pp. 50 [pounds sterling]; $70. ISBN 0-521-82725-6.

Frederick Kiefer's book is a lavishly illustrated and interesting account of how Shakespeare's personified characters would have been staged, based on pictorial traditions. In the introduction Kiefer argues that in Renaissance England 'the everyday objects that people wore, handled, and used in their homes [...] reveal a delight in the visual' (p. 6). Kiefer sees the theatre as the culminating site of this phenomenon, 'the intersection of a culture that, while investing the word with...

Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.