Love’s Labour’s Lost contains a delightfully absurd vision of human obtuseness, which is rendered in some strikingly visceral terms: the character of Dull is here described as the one who ‘hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book. / He hath not eat paper, as it were, he hath not drunk ink. His intellect is not replenished’ (4.2.24–6). For all its exaggerated humour, Shakespeare’s playful definition of the ignorance of books of wisdom draws attention to the inherent physicality of the reading act, which is usually overshadowed by the mental experience it offers. A type of book that does justice to both modes of reading is the artists’ book, a cross-generic form which appeals not only to the mind of its viewers-turned-readers but also to their senses, necessitating the recognition of its own materiality. Its concern with the book as a thing, also as an art object, makes the artists’ book a perfect vehicle for a creative response to Shakespeare’s Othello, a play built up around one of his most memorable props, the strawberry-spotted handkerchief, and featuring a troupe of increasingly objectified characters. As book artists enter into a creative dialogue with the Shakespearian text, they arrive at a variety of forms, ranging from the abstract to the figurative, or, to move from the province of the image to that of the word, the wordless to the verbose.

This chapter contends that the Stuart court masque provided a scenic environment that was conducive to the display of the supernatural, the most famous example being the antimasque of witches in The Masque of Queens. Zukowska aims to prove that the masque’s basic magical prop, which served to bridge the gap between the metaphysical (the gods and abstractions revealed on stage) and the real (the king and courtiers watching the entertainment), was the masquer. Silent, passive, and styled to look like statues, masquers could only be activated by the king. The Stuart monarch would thus assume the role of a magician infusing life and motion into the inanimate, which was all the more miraculous as he did not even enter the stage. This chapter proposes the reading of the masquer as a mystical automaton, where the performing aristocrat is not only affected by magic but also acts as a tool of spreading it further to the entire court so as to deify it. Particular attention is paid to Campion’s The Lord Hay’s Masque, with its magic wand, charmed grove of dancing tress, and the overwhelming presence of musical magic, as well as Jonson’s magical globes with animated figures.