Cast
The 1630 quarto contains an unusually full cast list of the original King's Men's production of the play:
| Role | Actor |
|---|---|
| Mathias, "a knight of Bohemia" | Joseph Taylor |
| Ladislaus, King of Hungary | Robert Benfield |
| Ferdinand, "general of the army" | Richard Sharpe |
| Eubulus, "an old counsellor" | John Lowin |
| Ubaldo, a "wild courtier" | Thomas Pollard |
| Ricardo, a "wild courtier" | Eliard Swanston |
| Julio Baptista, "a great scholar" | William Penn |
| Hilario, "servant to Sophia" | John Shank |
| Honoria, "the queen" | John Thompson |
| Sophia, "wife to Mathias" | John Honyman |
| Acanthe, a maid of honor | Alexander Gough |
| Corisca, "Sophia's woman" | William Trigg |
The list is informative on the state of the King's Men company at this period. The veteran Lowin, who was likely the Iago to Richard Burbage's Othello three decades earlier, was by his early 50s tending toward senior roles. The clown Hilario, played by John Shank, is a thin-man character; the thin man was apparently a standard feature of the King's Men's dramaturgy — in the previous generation of Shakespeare and Burbage, hired man John Sinklo had filled thin-man clown roles like Pinch in The Comedy of Errors and Shadow in Henry IV, Part 2. And the female character of Queen Honoria is written for a supremely beautiful woman; she is more than once described as a "Juno" — which raises questions as to how the boy player Thompson managed the role.
An adaptation of The Picture by a Rev. Henry Bate, titled The Magic Picture, was performed at Covent Garden in 1783. It was not a success. In 1835 Alfred de Musset produced his own adaptation, Barberine. In 2010 Philip Wilson directed a production for Salisbury Theatre, with Olivia Grant and Simon Harrison as the central romantic couple.
Read more about this topic: The Picture (Massinger Play)
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