Shakespeare Through the Telescope: Monarchs, Magi, and What They See in Mirrors

Mirrors changed the scopic regime of early modernity. Like the rise of the playhouse, the increasing availability of specular tools of variable materials and quality produced a new medium for viewing oneself and the world. More than thirty plays staged in England in the decades around 1600 feature mirrors as stage props, while the language of virtually every other play staged in that era makes use of some kind of mirror imagery. This keynote first explores the mirrors employed in the power struggle surrounding Shakespeare's monarchs Richard II and Macbeth in the plays of their names. It illustrates how the narrative tradition of 'imperial mirrors' (prognostic or telescopic glasses legendarily relied on by rulers since antiquity) found its way onto the stage, where the mirrors' effects are twisted to challenge ideas of sovereign omnipotence. Further discussing two non-Shakespearean comedies, Ben Jonson's 'The Alchemist' and Thomas Middleton's 'A Game at Chess', it demonstrates how changing perspectives on (natural) magic in the early seventeenth century affected the presence of 'magic' mirrors on stage. It closes by suggesting a congeneric relationship between the early modern mirror and the theatre.