Introduction

image ethics

pp. 1-29

in: James A. Knapp, Image ethics in Shakespeare and Spenser, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011

Abstract

Overwhelmed by a miniature portrait of his beloved Portia, the hero of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice is prompted to ask: "What demi God / Hath come so near creation?" (3.2.122-23).¹ Facing Portia's likeness, Bassanio marvels in Petrarchan fashion at the liveliness of the eyes, lips, and hair portrayed before him. The spell only lasts a moment, however, for almost as soon as he falls under the image's power, he turns and repudiates it: "Yet looke how farre / the substance of my praise doth wrong this shadow / in underpinning it, so far this shadow / doth limp behind the substance" (3.2.133-37). Bassanio's sudden shift provides a window onto the anxiety of an era in which visual images evoked both admiration and scorn. His praise of the miniature's appearance comes only a few lines after a fairly doctrinaire speech in which he had summed up the perils of visual appearance with the memorable aphorism: "So may the outward shows be least themselves / the world is still deceived with ornament" (3.2.79-80). By following Bassanio's speech on the proper attitude toward "outward shows' with a scene in which the hero is called upon to respond to a particular visual image thrust before his eyes, Shakespeare stages an important and unresolved struggle over the ethical response to images in early modern England. That struggle is the subject of this book.