Author's Pen and Actor's Voice: Playing and Writing in Shakespeare's Theatre by Robert Weimann , Helen Higbee , William West (review)

Abstract

164 Reviews Michael Bernard-Donals treats postcolonialism in 'The Manichean Problem in Post-Colonial Criticism; or, Why the Subaltern Cannot Speak' (pp. 41-63); Charles E. Wilson, Jr,discusses the African American experience in 'Medievalism, Race, and Social Order in Gloria Naylor's Bailey's Cafey (pp. 74-91); and Timothy Richardson considers Brian Eno's theory and composition?of ambient music in particular?in 'Brian Eno and the Music ofthe Spheres: The Possibility of a Postmodern Church' (pp. 216-31). Essays by Krista Ratcliffe and Rebecca M. Douglass are among those in which con? nections to medievalism appear most problematic. The association of medievalism with radical feminism is the subject of Ratcliffe's 'The Metaphoric Language Functionsof Mary Daly'sEight Deadly Sins: The Possibility of (K)no(w)ingwithout Loss' (pp. 64-73). Ratcliffe acknowledges that Daly is not a medievalist but insists that she makes 'medievalist moves' (p. 64) in exploring notions of the Otherworld Journey and the Deadly Sins. The notion of medievalist 'moves' by a non-medievalist leads us to ask whether we are in fact dealing with medievalism other than by coincidence. Douglass's 'Ecocriticism and Middle English Literature' (pp. 136-63) appears to yield more negative than positive evidence for the applicability of ecocriticism to medieval literature. Although ecocriticism studies 'the relationship of texts to literal and figurative environments' (p. 136), Douglass has to acknowledge 'the lack of overt concern with nature in medieval texts' (p. 150). Indeed, in analysing two of Chaucer's tales she locates little reference to nature beyond comparisons of beauty with May flowers and of ferocitywith a lion (p. 153). Where there is more detail about medieval flora and fauna, it serves only to establish that the landscape, even in a work set in classical Greece, is medieval European. Richard R. Glejzer's 'The New Medievalism and the (Im)Possibility ofthe Middle Ages' (pp. 104-19) is a polemical and quite critical reassessment of the 'New Me? dievalism'. Arguing that it 'values context over an examination of method' (p. 107), that it 'ignores contemporary considerations ofthe subject' (p. 109), and that two of its practitioners (Stephen Nichols and Howard Bloch) have a 'very limited commitment to theory' (p. 113), Glejzer concludes that it 'is neither New, nor is it medievalism' (p. 116). We can expect replies to this essay. Roundingout the volume are the following articles: Ellie Ragland, 'The Supposed Nominalism of William of Ockham and the Lacanian Real' (pp. 92-103); Linda Sexson, 'Nature's Old Tunic and the Erotic Sudarium: A Versicle on the Text and Texture of Medievalism', a retelling of,and curiously lyrical reflectionon, the' Sponsa Christi' (pp. 184-215); and Andrew J. Dell'Olio's Alasdair Maclntyre's Moral Me? dievalism' (pp. 232-43). This is a fascinating collection, for reasons both good and bad. A number of the articles are engaging and informative, but all in all the quality is very uneven. Moreover , some of the essays directly engage the subject of medievalism, whereas others seem to be straining to establish a connection with that subject, and their approaches and tones, from the rigorously scholarly to the lyrical and subjective, are as diverse as their quality. Pennsylvania State University Norris J. Lacy Author's Pen and Actor's Voice: Playing and Writing in Shakespeare's Theatre. By Robert Weimann, ed. by Helen Higbee and William West. Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. 2000. xiii + 298 pp. ?40.00; $64.95 (pbk ?14.95; $22.95). ISBN 0-521-78130-2 (pbk 0-521-78735-1). At a time when a number of critical approaches are reassessing the concept of transmission of a play-script from author to stage in Shakespeare's time, Author's Pen MLRy 98.1, 2003 165 and Actor's Voice represents a stimulating contribution to the debate on this topic. One of the most notable achievements is its ability to demonstrate the inadequacy of assumptions adopted from the eighteenth century onwards to explain the textual instability of early modern play-texts. An illuminating instance, discussed at length in Chapter 1, is provided by the three extant versions of Hamlet, each one containing substantial differences from the others...