The Pornographic Ideal

Abstract

Iturn now from the interrelations of text, performance, interpretation and history in a particular play to a much narrower example: a Shakespearean text of only two words that has become a notorious crux for both performers and editors. Near the end of The Winter’s Tale we are told of a surpassingly lifelike statue of the late queen Hermione, the work of “that rare Italian master Giulio Romano,” commissioned and owned by the noble Paulina, connoisseur and architect of the play’s reconciliations. In the final scene, the statue is revealed, and brought to life. The invocation of Giulio Romano is striking for a number of reasons: this is the only allusion in Shakespeare to a modern artist and, indeed, one of the earliest references to Giulio in England—Shakespeare here, as nowhere else, appears to be in touch with the avant-garde of the visual arts. But Giulio was not a sculptor, and in fact the name is all the play gives us. As it turns out, there is no statue; the figure Paulina unveils is the living queen. What is in that name; how are we to understand this most minimal of texts and—the ultimate question for a play—how are we to perform it?