The "Perspective Glass" in Shakespeare's Richard II
Author(s): Allan Shickman
Source: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 , Spring, 1978, Vol. 18, No. 2,
Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama (Spring, 1978), pp. 217-228
Published by: Rice University
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/450358
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218 ''PER S PE C TI VE GL ASS''
"whereby was shewd manie strange sightes"-deeply impressing
the red men, who were unable to comprehend such marvels.'
Evidently, Shakespeare's audience was familiar enough with the
plentitude of "perspectives" to grasp Bushy's allusion immediately. Today we are not so sure.
The most common interpretation of the speech holds that
Shakespeare was thinking of an anamorphic perspective, of which
the distorted portrait of Edward VI, now in the London National
Portrait Gallery (but on display in Whitehall Palace when Shakespeare is believed to have performed there, in 1591/2), is the
example universally cited.2 To see this portrait in its proper form,
one regards it "awry" from the right edge, at which angle the
distortion is corrected. The trouble with this interpretation is that
an anamorphosis of this type, while grossly distorting the image,
does not really "divide one thing entire to many objects," and
whereas the London portrait is grotesquely skewed when viewed
from the front ("rightly gazed upon"), it does not actually show
"nothing but confusion."
The line, "sorrow's eye, glazed with blinding tears," also pre-
sents its problems. The suggestion is of a perspective glass of
some sort, which "divides one thing entire to many objects." Here
modern scholarship performs adroitly. Shakespeare, we are some-
times told, was thinking of a multiplying glass, a beveled lens
which refracted the image of whatever was viewed through it in
each of its many facets. This explanation is also unsatisfactory
because the viewer looks directly into a multiplying glass; he does
not regard it "awry." Therefore, it is concluded, Bushy began by
referring to a multiplying glass, but also envisioned a second,
anamorphic, type of perspective-an interpretation that is confus-
ing, incongruous, and hence, indefensible.3
It must be remarked that a glass perspective need not have been
intended at all. It does not absolutely follow because the Queen's
eyes are "glazed" with tears that the metaphor applies to the
'Thomas Harriot, A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia,
ed. Henry Stevens (London, 1900), p. 57.
2E.g., Lionel Cust, "Painting, Sculpture and Engraving," Shakespeare's England, II (London, 1917), p. 10; Arthur Fairchild, Shakespeare and the Arts of
Design, The University of Missouri Studies, XII (Columbia, 1937), 128; Claudio
Guillen, Literature as System (Princeton, 1971), pp. 304-309.
3This view is expressed by G. Blakemore Evans, The Riverside Shakespeare
(Boston, 1972), p. 816. See also William Shakespeare, King Richard the Second.
The Arden Edition of the Works of William Shakespeare, ed. Peter Ure (Cambridge, Mass., 1956), pp. 70-71.
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subsequent simile, "like perspectives, [etc.]." That the eye divides
things like perspectives does not necessarily indicate the perspective has to be glazed like "sorrow's eye." But the likelihood must
be acknowledged that a reflecting or refracting glass of some kind
was envisioned. The difficulty lies in demonstrating the presence
in Shakespeare's era of glass perspectives that were meant to be
"eyed awry."
There existed in that period a great variety of perspective
glasses, testimony to the fascination that dioptrics and catoptrics
held for the investigative minds of scholar and magus. Vitellio
and Bacon were still authorities widely read and translated, but
their positions were soon to be superseded by Maurolycus, Della
Porta, and Kepler. A good deal was known about refraction that
was not mathematically understood in this transitional period,
but Snell's Law was not far away. Indeed, it was formulated in
England by Harriot in 1601, more than twenty years preceding
Snell.4 The metaphysical approach to the science of light was
declining, but in Shakespeare's day it was not extinct. In 1533,
Agrippa von Nettesheim, master of occult science, had written
that experiments with mirrors and lenses were "daily seen," and
listed an impressive variety: "Hollow, Convex, Plane, Pillarfashion'd, Pyramidal, Globular, Gibbose, Orbicular, full of an-
gles, Inverted, Everted, Regular, Irregular, Solid and Perspicuous.
. . .There is a sort of Glass wherein a man may see the Image of
another man, but not his own . . . [etc.]."5 This inventory closely
resembles the one in Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft of 1584, and
was probably a principal source of Scot's discussion of "Strange
things to be doone by perspective glasses:"
But the woonderous devises, and miraculous sights and
conceipts made and conteined in glasse doo farre exceed
all other; whereto the art perspective is verie necessarie.
For it sheweth the illusions of them, whose experiments
be seene in divers sorts of glasses; as in the hallowe, the
plaine, the embossed, the columnaire, the pyramidate or
piked, the turbinall, the bounched, the round, the cornered, the inversed, the eversed, the massie, the regular,
the irregular, the coloured and cleare glasses: for you may
have glasses so made, as what image or favour soever you
4Antonia McLean, Humanism and the Rise of Science in Tudor England (New
York, 1972), p. 153.
5Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, The Vanity of the Arts and
Sciences (London, 1676), p. 73.
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220 v 'PER S PE C TI VE G LASS''
print in your imagination, you shall thinke you see the
same therein. . . . There be glasses also, wherein one may
see another man's image and not his owne . . . [etc.].6
Baxter's Sir Philip Sidney's Ourania of 1606 speaks of perspective
glasses in the magical tradition of Vitellio:
. . .Glasses perspective,
Composed by Arte Geometricall
Whereby beene wrought things Supernaturall;
Men with halfe bodies, men going in th' Ayre,
Men all deformed, men as angels fayre,
Besides other thinges of great admiration,
Wrought by this Glasses Fabrication. (Sig. L 3 verso)
Giambattista della Porta's expanded version of his Magia Naturallis, published in 1589, has an entire chapter on "Strange Glasses,"
and Elizabethan magus Dr. John Dee's experiments with a variety
of "magic glasses" are well known. Could any one of the plentitude of glasses recorded in this investigative age have been of the
kind Bushy mentions?
In recent years, Edgar R. Samuel has reasonably argued, but
failed to prove, that the anamorphic skull in Holbein's "Ambassadors" (London National Gallery), painted in 1533, and similar in
kind to the elongated portrait of Edward VI, was meant to be
viewed through the wall of a thick glass tube, which would
correct the distortion.7 The theory is in some measure supported
by the publication of Agrippa quoted above, also of 1533, which
mentions cylindrical ("Pillar-fashion'd") glasses-a volume which
Holbein and his patrons apparently knew.8 Thus, we might have
had, prior to Shakespeare's birth, a perspective that could either
have been viewed from an angle or with "glazed" eye. Even if
Samuel is right, however, the poet could hardly have had this
device in mind in Richard II, since the glass would have consoli-
dated the image and rectified the distortion; it would not have
divided "one thing entire to many objects."
Could Shakespeare have been thinking of the type of perspective glass which Thomas Hobbes mentioned in his letter to
Davenant, published in 1651? "I believe, Sir, you have seen a
6Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft (Carbondale, 1964), p. 265.
7Edgar R. Samuel, "Death in the Glass-A New View of Holbein's 'Ambassadors'," Burlington Magazine, 105 (1963), 436-438.
8See Jurgis Baltrusaitis, Anamorphoses ou Perspectives Curieuses (Paris, 1955),
p. 62 ff.
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curious kind of perspective, where he that looks through a short
hollow pipe upon a picture containing divers figures, sees none of
those that are there painted, but some one person made up of
their parts, conveyed to the eye by the artificial cutting of a
glass."9 From this quotation Samuel's theory seems, at first, to
find confirmation-a picture is corrected by looking through a
tube. Hobbes referred to an entirely different type, however, which
may well have been known in Shakespeare's day, and is described
and illustrated in Jean-FranSois Niceron's La Perspective Curieuse, first published in 1638 (Figure 1). Today it is called a
polyoptric telescope, the lens of which, multifaceted on one side,
is mounted in a cylindrical tube like an ordinary telescope. One
looks through the lens at a picture which contains numerous
figures, but through the glass one sees no such thing because of
the refraction. What does come into view is an entirely different
image made up of several fragments, each refracted by a different
facet of the glass. Thus, the face of one man may be made up of
parts of several carefully positioned portraits on a single panel.
Needless to say, the glass must be held in exactly the correct
relation to the picture, and a mounting apparatus is provided.
Thomas Powell, author of Humane Industry (1661), described
one: "A picture of a chancellor of France presented to the com-
mon beholder a multitude of little faces:-but if one did look at it
through a perspective, there appeared only the single pourtraicture of the chancellor."'8 A later specimen is recorded in Ozanam's Recreations: "A picture by Amadeus Vanloo . . . was
shewn in the year 1759, in the exhibition room of the Royal
Academy of painting. To the naked eye, it was an allegorical
picture, which represented the Virtues, with their attributes, properly grouped; but when seen through the glass, it exhibited the
portrait of Louis XV.""l These late examples may shed light on
the invention of an earlier time. An actual polyoptric telescope
may be seen in the collection of George III in the Science Museum, Kensington, but the pictures intended to be seen through it
are unfortunately lost. However, that museum also possesses a
similar dioptrical device for which a number of pictures do
9William Molesworth (ed.), The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, IV (Darmstadt, 1966), 457. This passage is also quoted in John Foster, A Shakespeare Word
Book, (New York, 1969), p. 466.
?0Quoted in Robert Nares, Glossary, II (London, 1901), 651.
"Jacques Ozanam, Recreations in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, II
(London, 1803), 297.
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'P R S PE C TI VE G LASS''
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224
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survive. The most interesting one shows a royal crown such as
might "round the mortal temples of a King," painted around
with an elaborate border. Observed through the faceted lens, the
king's crown disappears, and predetermined fragments of the
border come together through refraction to form the other kind of
"hollow crown," a carrion death's head "scoffing his state and
grinning at his pomp."
This playful novelty hardly accords with the solemnity of the
lines just quoted, and to be sure, it was made in a later era than
Shakespeare's. But was it the kind of perspective Bushy envisaged?
Niceron included it in his book of 1638, and it may have been
invented much earlier. Perhaps similar devices figured in the
crystallomancy of Dr. Dee, whose techniques with perspective
glasses and concealed images may have been used, according to
Richard Deacon, as a means of engaging in espionage.'2 But if
such a lens resembles the tear-glazed eye, it does not divide one
thing into many, but rather divides many objects to make one.
Nor does one view awry either glass or picture.
Shakespeare probably was familiar with many kinds of perspective novelties. If he knew the passage in Scot's Discoverie of
Witchcraft which gives instruction for replacing a human head
with that of an ass-Bottom's "translation" in A Midsummer
Night's Dream-he surely read on the very next page Scot's recital
of "mervaillous glasses," quoted above. The playwright's familiarity with optic glasses is indicated in All's Well that Ends Well
(V.iii.48-52) when Bertram recalls:
Contempt his scornful perspective did lend me,
Which warp'd the line of every other favour;
Scorned a fair colour, or express'd it stolen;
Extended or contracted all proportions
To a most hideous object. ...
He had seen Helena as through a distorting glass, perhaps not
unlike the one that Samuel says was used to view the skull in
Holbein's painting, which would correct an anamorphosis but
skew the proportions of anything else beheld through it-though
it is equally possible that Shakespeare was thinking of a distorting mirror such as George Puttenham depicts in this simile:
'2Richard Deacon, John Dee: Scientist, Geographer, Astrologer and Secret Agent
to Elizabeth I (London, 1968), p. 112.
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And this phantasie may be resembled to a glasse . . .
whereof there be many tempers and manner of makinges,
as the perspectives doe acknowledge, for some be false
glasses and shew thinges otherwise than they be in deede,
and others right as they be in deede, neither fairer nor
fouler, nor greater nor smaller. There be again of these
glasses that shew thinges exceeding faire and comely,
others that shew figures very monstruous & illfavored.13
Shakespeare knew of yet another kind of perspective which was
evidently quite common in his lifetime, since it is mentioned by
several of his approximate contemporaries, including Chapman,
Drayton, and Burton, and which seems to match more nearly the
one mentioned in Bushy's speech than any of those discussed
above. It consisted of two separate pictures combined on a pleated
wooden panel so that one image would be visible from the left
and another from the right. Each picture would be cut into
several strips; the pieces of one would be fastened to the pleats
visible from the left, while the other set of strips would be
fastened to the pleats visible from the right. Regarded from the
front, the intermixed images would present "nothing but confu-
sion." Shakespeare alludes to this type in Antony and Cleopatra
(II.v.1 16-117) when the Queen exclaims of her errant lover:
"Though he be painted one way like a gorgon,/ The other way's
a Mars." The image cut into numerous strips is "one thing
entire" divided into many objects; these are assembled into a
perspective that is intended to be "eyed awry." An example of this
type, probably dating from the late 16th century, may be seen at
the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh. It shows Mary,
Queen of Scots, from the left, and a "shape of grief," a grinning
skull, from the right.'4
The phrase, "glazed with blinding tears," as has been pointed
out, need not have applied to Bushy's perspective at all. But there
apparently were pleated perspectives made with glass. A series of
prisms would be laid side by side and framed to form a slab of
glass that was pleated on one side and smooth on the other. The
painted (or printed) strips were attached to the transparent pleats
"3George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesy, ed. Gladys Willcock and Alice
Walker (Cambridge, 1936), p. 19. See also William L. Rushton, Shakespeare and
'The Arte of English Poesie' (Liverpool, 1909), pp. 53-54. Rushton believed that
Shakespeare was thinking in RII of the type of distorting mirror mentioned by
Puttenham.
I4For a discussion of this type see Allan Shickman, "'Turning Pictures' in
Shakespeare's England," Art Bulletin, 59 (1977), 67-70.
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226 ''PER S PE C TI VE GL ASS''
face down, and the pictures formed of them were viewed obliquely
through the smooth side. Beheld directly from in front, refraction
and reflection produced bewildering effects. Sir George Mackenzie
refers to this type in Religio Stoici (1665): "Matters of Religion
and Faith, resembling some curious pictures, and Optical
Prismes, which seem to change shape and colours, according to
the several [i.e., separate] stances from which the aspicient views
them. "'5
This investigation might well end here, for the perspective just
described answers well to the clues that Bushy's speech provides.
There is, however, another variant of the pleated perspective
which also seems to accord with Shakespeare's conception, and
therefore must be mentioned as a possible solution. This interesting type combines a pleated perspective with a mirror. It resem-
bles the plain wooden version, but the pleats are horizontal
instead of veritcal, and hence one subject appears when viewed
obliquely from below, another from above. The mirror is care-
fully placed in a tilted position above the panel, which is hung
high enough that the second subject cannot be directly seen
without the glass, but becomes visible by reflection. The onlooker
approaches the perspective and sees the image on the lower pleats.
When he glances at the mirror hanging above, perhaps expecting
to see his own countenance, he is astonished with the reflection of
something else, possibly a death's head warning against vanitywhich the looking glass traditionally symbolized-or any other
mysterious apparition the artificer has prepared. Niceron explained and illustrated this type (Figure 2),16 but it was known
much earlier. Della Porta, in his widely read Magia Naturalis,
gave detailed instructions for fashioning a mirror in which one
could find the reflection of "that which appears no where''17-the
same device that Scot intended when he darkly declared: "There
be glasses also, wherein one may see another man's image, and
not his owne," and that Agrippa had still earlier described in
almost the same words.
Hence, "glazed" might have referred to the looking glass
through which the pleated perspective was to be "eyed awry," an
'5Quoted in William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra. The Arden Edition of
the Works of William Shakespeare, ed. M. R. Ridley (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), p.
80.
'6Jean-Fran5ois Niceron, La Perspective Curieuse, (Paris, 1652), pp. 151 ff.
'7John Baptista Porta, Natural Magick. The Collector's Series in Science, ed.
Derek J. Price (New York, 1957), pp. 378-379.
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A LLA N SHICKMA N 227
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2 Plate from Niceron's La Perspective Curieuse showing a pleated
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228 ''PER S PE C TI VE GL ASS''
interpretation that gains credence if evaluated with respect to the
symbolism of the play. For a mirror assumes a brief but impor-
tant role in Richard 11. At the moment when Richard is forced to
face his shattered illusions, his eyes full of "blinding tears," he is
inspired to examine his own reflection. Agonized by the disparity
between what he sees and feels, he dashes to the ground the
"flattering glass," commenting ironically that his sorrow has
destroyed his face. The ensuing exchange is notable:
Bolingbroke. The shadow of your sorrow hath destroyed
The shadow of your face.
Richard. Say that again.
The shadow of my sorrow? Ha! Let's see!
'Tis very true: my grief lies all within;
And these external manners of laments
Are merely shadows to the unseen grief. ...
(IV.i.292-297)
The same key words that conjoin in Bushy's speech make them-
selves felt together in this scene-"glass," "shadow," "grief" and
"'sorrow."''8 Subtle echoes such as these account in large measure
for the extraordinary resonance of many passages of the play, and
point in this case to the strong possibility that a mirror also was
envisioned in the speech by Bushy with which this paper begins.
University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls
8Cf. IV.i.244-246:
Mine eyes are full of tears; I cannot see.
And yet salt water blinds them not so much
But they can see a sort of traitors here.
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