ABSTRACT
Anamorphosis, and anamorphosic perspective was an obscuring tool deployed by William Shakespeare on several occasions. Both catoptric anamorphosis and perspectival anamorphosis were known to Shakespeare. Like anamorphic perspective, mirroring, reflection and doubling often figure in Shakespeare's plays and sonnets with the effect of creating distortion. David Scott Kastan observes that Macbeth itself appears, with its two invasions, its two thanes of Cawdor, its two feasts, two doctors, two kings, and two kingdoms, in every point twice done, and then done double. Macbeth calls down all manner of destruction on others as compensation for the knowledge he desires. This leader, this king, calls destruction upon the very 'germain' of life. Engendered by King James's desired union of the kingdoms, Shakespeare's 'show of kings' displays Shakespeare's Englishness. King James uses the corrective mirror in his Basilikon Doron in which he advises his son, Prince Henry, to 'look' into various books of the Bible.
