ABSTRACT
Shakespeare's interest in the optics of Renaissance art is well-documented. Ernest Gilman's seminal study focused on Shakespeare's integration of "the curious perspective" of sixteenth-century mannerist painting into the aesthetics of his plays, Richard II and Twelfth Night in particular, paving the way for numerous other studies such as François Laroque's "Perspective in Troilus and Cressida" and Jean-Francois Chappuit's comparative study of Alberti's De Pictura and Shakespeare's Hamlet. In Shakespeare's own work, hints of a shared visual paradigm for pictorial and dramatic art may emerge in evocations of obstructed vision. As Evelyn Kibble notes, The Tempest testifies to Shakespeare's awareness of the poor quality of mental images, as opposed to images produced by immediate perception. This chapter discusses the meta-dramatic implications of Edgar's evocation of Dover Cliff. In Shakespeare's day 'the mind's eye' could have encompassed a range of meanings from imagination to understanding, meditation, oracular revelation, or metaphysical intuition.
