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Interpreting the Pictorial Record: Theatre Iconography and the Referential Dilemma

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Christopher B. Balme
Christopher B. Balme
Affiliation:
Christopher B. Balme is Professor of Drama, University of Munich.
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Extract

In 1926 the German theatre critic and scholar Julius Bab compared the endeavour of the theatre historian engaged in reconstructing past performances with that of the art historian required to study paintings solely on the basis of descriptions. The analogy serves as a justification for Bab's own study of contemporary theatre based on personal observations: only the privileged status of the eye-witness account can do justice to the transitory nature of theatrical performance, he argues. What today may seem like a self-evident truth was in the 1920s by no means so. German Theater-wissenschaft of the time was very much a historical discipline, focusing on the theatrical past and utilizing historiographical tools borrowed from neighbouring disciplines. Contemporary theatre was not in its field of vision.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1997 , pp. 190 - 201
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1997

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References

Notes

1. The quotation reads: ‘One only needs to imagine whal 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’. Bab, Julius, Das Theater der Gegenwait: Geschichte der dramatischen Bühne seit 1870. Mit 78 Abbildungen (Leipzig: J.J. Weber, 1928), p. 231.Google Scholar My translation.

2. Quinn, Michael, ‘The Comedy of Reference: The Semiotics of Commedia Figures in Eighteenth-Century Venice’, Theatre Journal 43, 1 (03 1991), p. 72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. See Kowzan, Tadeusz, ‘Theatre Iconography/Iconology: The Iconic Sign and its Referent’, translated by Walker, Scott, Diogenes 130, 1985, pp. 53–70Google Scholar; and Molinari, Cesare, ‘About Iconography as a Source for Theatre History’, unpublished paper tabled at the Istituto Internazionale per la Ricerca Teatrale (Venice, 11 1991).Google Scholar

4. Ibid., p. 56.

5. See ibid., p. 59.

6. Ibid., p. 61.

7. See ibid., p. 68.

8. Ibid., p. 68.

9. See Molinari, Cesare, p. 3.Google Scholar

10. See Molinari, , p. 4.Google Scholar

11. See ibid., p. 10.

12. Ibid.

13. See Greenblatt, Stephen, Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of a Social Energy in Renaissance England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).Google Scholar

14. Bryson, Norman, ‘Semiology and Visual Interpretation’, in Bryson, Norman, Holly, Michael Ann, Moxey, Keith, eds., Visual Theory: Painting and Interpretation (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991).Google Scholar

15. Ibid., p. 66.

16. 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.

17. See Bryson, , p. 66.Google Scholar

18. See Panofsky, Erwin, ‘Iconography and Iconology: An Introduction to the Study of Renaissance Art’, in Panofsky, Erwin, Meaning in the Visual Arts (New York: Garden City, 1955).Google Scholar

19. 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.

20. The most important document is a letter written by the Princess Magdalena to her brother, the Archduke Ferdinand. It is reproduced in Morris, Irene, ‘A Hapsburg Letter’, Modern Language Review 69 (1974), pp. 12–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21. For an overview of these plays see Johannes Bolte, ed., ‘Niemand und Jemand: Bin englisches Drama aus Shakespeare's Zeit ubersetzt von Ludwig Tieck’, Jahibuch der deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft 29 (1894), pp. 4–91 (28). 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.Google Scholar

22. These are described by Bolte, , p. 26.Google Scholar

23. 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 Flemming, Willi, ed., Das Schauspiel der Wanderbühne (Deutsche Literatur Sammlung literarischer Kunst- und Kulturdenkmäler in Entwicklungs-reihen; Barockdrama, Bd. 3) (Leipzig: Philipp Reclam, 1931), p. 333.Google Scholar This description is based on Flemming and confirmed by comparison with a colour reproduction of the frontispiece in the present author's possession.

24. 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 Roach, Joseph, The Player's Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting (Newark: Associated University Presses, 1985), pp. 56–7.Google Scholar

25. 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’. West, Shearer, The Image of the Actor: Verbal and Visual Representation in the Age of Garrick and Kemble (London: Pinter, 1991), p. 101.Google Scholar For an excellent analysis of this painting see also Wilson, Michael S., ‘Garrick, iconic acting, and the ideologies of theatrical portraiture’, Word & Image, 6, 4 (10–12 1990), p. 373ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26. Boswell, James, ‘On the Profession of a Player’, London Magazine (09 1770), p. 469.Google Scholar 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.

27. See Wilson, Michael S., 1990Google Scholar: ‘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, 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. Wilkes uses the metaphor ‘paint’ a great deal as a kind of learned allusion to the doctrine of ut pictura poesis; see p. 122.

28. 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 Downer, Alan S., ‘Nature to Advantage Dressed: Eighteenth-Century Acting’, PMLA 58 (1943), 1002–37 (1016).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29. Paulson, Ronald, Hogarth: His Life, Art, and Times, Vol. 2 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), p. 26.Google Scholar Paulson is of the opinion that aspects of Garrick's actual performance can be seen in the painting, mixed with other influences: ‘Although he presumably shows the scene as Garrick staged it, with the properties he used, he takes his composition from Le Brun's Tent of Darius’. Ibid., p. 24.

30. See Wilson, Michael S., 1990, p. 369.Google Scholar

31. For a production and reception history, see Seehaus, Günter, Frank Wedekind und das Theater (Munich: Laokoon, 1964), p. 289–91.Google Scholar 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.

32. Wedekind toured the piece as part of a performance consisting of two one-act plays.

33. In the context of the text it can only be understood as paternal solicitude (other alternatives would be possible but not particularly palatable).

34. Later Wedekind created a dialogue version but the role of Moses was not substantially improved; see Seehaus, , 1964, p. 290.Google Scholar

35. See West, , ‘The Construction of Racial Type: Caricature, Ethnography, and Jewish Physiognomy in Fin de Siecle Melodrama’, Nineteenth-Century Theatre 21, 1 (1993), pp. 5–40.Google Scholar