Theatre Iconography: An Introduction

Abstract

Theatre iconography systematically attempts to integrate the pictorial representation of theatre as a vital source of information in researching the history of theatre. Given the primacy of the written word (lógos) in western culture, the status of the illustration as a source of historical research has remained low in the West where it is the norm to give the text priority over illustrations, which serve merely as decorations, to support a conclusion or confirm a statement made in the text. Theatre iconography, however, involves the search for a new dialectical relationship between the written word and the theatre illustration, one in which the illustration is not immediately interpreted as an appendage to a text. It involves an autonomous ‘reading’ of the image in which the use of other documents, preferably from other sign systems, cannot and may not be discounted. The aim here is to study theatre history with the help of tools that are more effective than those used previously.

Was Commedia dell'arte Performed by Mountebanks? Album amicorum Illustrations and Thomas Platter's Description of 1598

“…Only now is this approach being actively refined as a powerful research technique, by scholars concerned with the emerging field of theatre iconography. 7 The evidence presented here is Thomas Platter's account of mountebank activity in 1598, and images of mountebanks in alba amicorum. 8 Their relevance to questions surrounding the relationship between mountebanks and the cornmedia dell'arte is far greater than their previous minimal treatment suggests.…”

Problematic Images: Some Pitfalls Associated with the Use of Iconography in Seventeenth-Century French Theatre History

“…For, as Robert Erenstein succinctly put it, "[v]isual artists produce work for their contemporaries, not for future theatre historians." 80 We must similarly continue to collect evidence of all types and be scrupulous in the confrontation of our images with it, so as not to consider them in a vacuum.…”