Depictions of Venice in Nineteenth-century performances of The Merchant of Venice

Venice is possibly the most enduring of symbolic landscapes of the Renaissance. We don’t know how Venice was visually reproduced on the Renaissance stage, possibly virtually through the imaginative power of the language or through the fictional “landscape” coming from the readings of Lewes Lewkenor’s translation of Contarini or travelers’ books. As it is well known, Venice was a myth in the Renaissance and its representations was based mainly on a Venice told and retold. The Merchant stages an imaginary Venice on the English stage, without any pretense to mimetic realism. This imaginary Venice became increasingly a real, tangible Venice. A Venice no more coming for travelogue or history books, but coming from personal reminiscences, or from the Venice depicted by painters and engravers. The chapter explores how Venice was represented in 19th-century performances on the London stage, through the production of theatre managers such as Charles Kean, William Charles Macready, and Henry Irving, and their pictorial sources.