The Living Image

First published in 1972.

The imagery of field sports - of hawking, hunting, shooting and fishing - and the associated imagery of warfare are a striking feature in Shakespeare's plays. The Living Image examines the nature of this imagery, considering it first in the light of the practices and techniques of Elizabethan field sports and weaponry and then its broader metaphoric significance in relation to the themes of the plays.

The contemporary associations of the imagery - the inferences of female sexuality and waywardness from hawking imagery, for example, and the ideals of nobility and courage attached to images of hunting and war are all discussed.