Shakespeare and the Loss of Eden

‘In the keeping of Paulina’

“…Catherine Belsey, for example, refers to Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel's pioneering collection of antiquities, assembled between 1612 and 1615, and notes that 'The Winter's Tale … precedes by a whisker the fashion Arundel helped to inaugurate'. 51 Following Bruce R. Smith, Belsey suggests that 'the likely model for Hermione's statue was tomb sculpture'. 52 This is indeed likely, and enables a reading of Paulina as a patron in the vein of early modern female patrons of the visual arts who were widows or were 'released from marital responsibilities', and were of a high social status.…”

“…While the statue appears 'masterly done', Paulina warns that it is 'but newly fixed; the colour's / Not dry' (5.3. [47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65]. In suggesting that the final coat of paint has been applied to the statue, but that this paint has not yet settled, Paulina presents the artwork as still in the process of reaching finish, and therefore susceptible to defacement.…”

‘But begun for others to end’

“…34 Catherine Belsey, finally, discusses the function of the creation myth in the early modern formation of the ideology of the family. 35 For the most part, however, the far-reaching implications of early modern belief in God as creator remain underexplored. This neglect is significant, because slippages in the distinction between man and God shape the post-Reformation social and religious turbulence in which theatre is implicated.…”

Early modern English drama and visual culture

“…46 As Catherine Belsey has shown in a study which informs Hamling's work, however, it can be highly profitable to read Shakespearean drama alongside religious visual imagery from the period. 47 Greater awareness of the types of visual representation that playwrights may have encountered in domestic spaces should surely inform our interpretation of the depiction of visual culture on the early modern stage. Recognising that early modern visual culture was not the 'end of art', then, this book is most heavily indebted to Hamling and Williams's conceptualisation of a Protestant visual culture undergoing change.…”