Wisdom Enthroned: Iconic Stage Portraits

Abstract

Art history has provided an invaluable resource for modern directors of medieval plays. As an encyclopedia of style, medieval paintings, woodcuts, and doorway sculpture have helped to establish the historic credibility of recent medieval drama productions, for instance, at Bristol, Toronto, Leeds, Indiana, Michigan, and Western Michigan Universities. By verifying that clothing details shoe styles (blunted or pointed), headgear, length and fullness of sleeves or mantles accord with a specific date and a particular place, a costumer may avoid the unintended comedy of placing an Elizabethan courtier side-byside with a Chaucerian peasant, thus helping to dispel the lingering notion that history ceased to function during several medieval centuries. 1 Or a director of mystery plays can select historically appropriate anachronisms for instance, costuming a fifteenth-century Caesar Augustus as a medieval king rather than a Roman emperor. However, being aware of the ways in which art history can influence the staging of medieval drama means more than knowing whether Caesar should wear a Roman toga or an ermine robe. By visually representing the verbal symbols and allegorical figures of a morality or mystery play, props and costumes can serve iconographie functions similar to those of the medieval wall paintings and doorway sculpture to which they have been compared.2 Like verifying historically accurate costuming styles, drawing on art history as a source for specific iconographie portraits is one way of establishing a credible link between contemporary