ABSTRACT
There are more than 75 early modern English plays that feature the staging of a portrait. This chapter intends to examine the relationship between the size of portraits and their performative potential by using the critical tools offered by material and visual culture studies, and the semiotics of theater and drama. It can be argued that miniatures were not the only format of pictures used by the actors and that the staging of a portrait has often metatheatrical effects. In order to understand how written texts and images communicate differently in the theater, I examine their manipulation and the spectators’ different reactions to each type of prop in the staging of the “forum scene” (3.2) in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in Nicholas Hytner’s 2018 production at the Bridge Theatre, London, and I concentrate on the use of portraits in John Webster’s The Devil’s Law-Case (1623) to test my arguments.
