Doubtful Images

Abstract

The earliest Dutch illustrations of indoor theatrical performances date from the seventeenth century, and portray the activities of itinerant professional actors or plays performed in fixed areas, in chambers of rhetoric (Het Wit Lavendel in Amsterdam) and in what may be classed as their successors: the Nederduytsche Academie (1617–37) and Jacob van Campen's Theatre (1637–65). There are also between thirty and forty illustrations of open-air theatre performances given by non-professional actors (mostly rhetoricians), in paintings and prints of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Sometimes one cannot be entirely sure as to whether the illustrated scene contains a theatrical performance or even a stage. These are the ‘doubtful images’ of my title.