Implicit in the discussion of theatrical italics (for any period of drama) is the question: given the available resources, how can playwright and players present an image or concept onstage so as to make it evident, even obvious, to a first-time playgoer? Such a question, in turn, cannot be separated from the study of “imagery” in its various senses as applied to drama. In revisiting such well traveled terrain, I do not wish to denigrate the valuable work of several generations of close readers who have expanded and refined their formulations of Shakespeare's “image patterns” and other iterative devices. Few readers today, moreover, need to be reminded that imagery-in-thetheatre (which combines poetry, costumes, properties, gestures, and larger configurations for the eye) can yield effects and meanings not available to the reader attending only to imagery-on-the-page. Also of importance is the work of those scholars who have studied icons, emblems, and other manifestations of that larger language of the visual arts by no means irrelevant to Shakespeare's vocabulary.

Awareness of such distinctions and possibilities, however, does not necessarily aid in the process of “ recovery.” Rather, any discussion of Shakespeare's “theatrical,” “dramatic,” or “presentational” images, symbols, and metaphors inevitably involves considerable speculation about what a spectator, then or now, did or should “see.”