This major new interdisciplinary study argues that Shakespeare exploited long-established connections between vision, space and language in order to construct rhetorical equivalents for visual perspective. Through a detailed comparison of art and poetic theory in Italy and England, Thorne shows how perspective was appropriated by English writers, who reinterpreted it to suit their own literary concerns and cultural context. Focusing on five Shakespearean plays, she situates their preoccupation with issues of viewpoint in relation to a range of artistic forms and topics from miniatures to masques.

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Alison Thorne is Lecturer in English Studies at the University of Strathclyde.

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List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Bibliographical Note Preface Alberti, As You Like It and the Process of Invention English Beholders and the Art of Perspective Ut Pictura Poesis and the Rhetoric of Perspective Hamlet and the Art of Looking Diversely on the Self Troilus and Cressida , 'Imagin'd Worth' and the 'Bifold Authority' of Anamorphosis Antony and Cleopatra and the Art of Dislimning The Tempest and the Art of Masque Endnotes Selected Bibliography Index