Abstract
REVIEWS Jerzy Limon. Dangerous Matter: English Drama and Politics in 1623/24. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Pp. vii + 174. $34.50. This is a very intricate and detailed book, much more a study of history and politics than literature. There is little in it about theater as such, but Limon stresses the propaganda possibilities of theatrical performance . The plays are discussed not for themselves but for their topical significance. Limon marshals his evidence effectively and he draws us into the web of sometimes illicit pamphlet literature, theological tracts, ballads, and popular journalism—all devoted to promoting the Protestant cause against Catholic Spain. The evidence that Limon extracts from plays, however, is often so tenuous and so secondary as hardly to be credible. The strongest case is made in Chapter 3 for Massinger's play The Bondman as an indirect comment on contemporary affairs: "We want to show how the text gained a political function, whether intended by the author or not, at the time when it was first circulated in print. In other words, our attempt will be to prove that The Bondman, when seen on stage or read in March-April 1624 was bound to evoke unambiguous associations in spectators or readers" (p. 76). Much depends on what Limon means by "political function," which he discusses at greater length in the Introduction. How could Massinger possibly have gone to the trouble that Limon postulates for him if the political meaning was not intended? This seems to me like a logical dodge. The audience or readers of The Bondman are expected to make the political link even though there are no overt or primary clues in the text. In view of the political situation in England in March-April 1624, "it was very likely that Massinger's play evoked associations in spectators or readers with certain aspects of the extra-textual reality known to them. Sicily, as the only island amongst the countries involved in the conflict, could easily have been associated with England, Greece with England's most important ally in that period, the United Provinces, and dieir common enemy Carthage with Spain" (p. 69). Such a perception requires that the spectators or readers understand The Bondman allegorically. Chapter 3 on Massinger is die most considerable argument in the book, and the reader is impressed by its wealth of reference. Limon is modest in his claims, but everything still hinges on whether the contemporary reader or spectator felt a secondary political theme in The Bondman. In 1988 this political theme depends entirely on reconstruction. Chapter 2 postulates even more elaborate political claims for The Life of the Duchesse of Suffolk by Thomas Drue than for Massinger's play. Nothing is evident directly; everything depends upon association. Does Frederick II in Drue's play look ahead to Frederick V, the hapless Elector of the Rhenish Palatinate, who was married to James I's daughter 370 Reviews371 Elizabeth and who was the champion of the Protestant cause against the Catholics? This remains problematical, although Limon makes the strongest possible case. In support of his thesis, we do know that Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels and censor of plays, found Drue's seemingly innocuous play "full of dangerous matter" and demanded that it be "much reformed" (p. 40). The first chapter on Jonson's masque Neptune's Triumph for the Return of Albion, related to the return of Prince Charles from Spain without marrying the Infanta, is of less interest than die chapters on Drue and Massinger. The patriotic acclaim for Charles is a political matter that is hardly problematic. The final chapter on Thomas Middleton 's A Game at Chesse, which promises to be the most exciting because it is so directly concerned with public events, is strangely peripheral. Limon does not seem to be happy in dealing with a popular, scandalous, and highly successful play; he is more persuasive when arguing about politics at two removes. This chapter has a wealth of non-dramatic citation, some of it wild and zany, about the Spanish Antichrist. This looms larger than Middleton's bold and enormously popular attack on Spain in A Game at Chesse—a play that could...
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