Earticle

This essay explores the way that Shakespeare dramatizes an ekphrasis process with the wager between Iachimo and Posthumus in Cymbeline. Recent critics have defined ekphrasis as the verbal representation of visual representation. Many Shakespearean critics increasingly consider Shakespeare’s drama as powerful examples of ekphrasis. In this way, it is possible that ekphrasis should be central to the study of Shakespeare. The wager between Iachimo and Posthumus is a masculine competition for verbal representation and Imogen’s beauty or her body becomes an object for the ekphrasis battle. Thus, the descriptive contest can be seen as an triangle relationship and in Cymbeline, ekphrasis is represented as a strategy by which men describe the female body in order to triumph in a verbal contest with other men. Above all, Iachimo’s description of Imogen and decorations in her bedroom, especially tapestry is one of the best examples of the verbal representation of visual objects in Shakespearean drama. In particular, it is remarkable that Iachimo first calls the hanging in Imogen’s bedchamber an “arras” and then later a “tapestry.” Through the shift in textile terminology, he skillfully dramatizes tapestry ekphrasis. As tapestry is not on the stage but described by Iachimo, Shakespeare requires the audience /reader to see it in the mind’s eye. In bringing pictures to the mind’s eye, ekphrasis can provide images that are not represented on the stage. Eventually, in Cymbleine, Shakespeare’s ekphrasis is presented as a trope that can create a powerful illusion of presence, describing the absent object that we cannot see on the stage.