Disciplining Satire: The Censorship of Satiric Comedy on the Eighteenth-Century London Stage by Matthew J. Kinservik (review)

Abstract

MLR, 99.2, 2004 469 related questions: how can the defender of regicide portray God as king in his great epic, and how can the rabbis base their divine portrait in the midrashic king-mashal on the imperial cult of the Roman emperor? Shoulson considers David Stern's ar? gument, regarding the latter,that 'the imagery and regalia of the cult, once removed from their lived context, lost their transgressive character' (p. 97). Shoulson respect fully disagrees. (Throughout the book he is uncommonly generous in observing the scholarly courtesies, often playing down his own originality.) He recognizes that both the rabbinic and Miltonic portraits are indeed transgressive and points to their po? tential forparadox and contradiction. As a critic and scholar, Shoulson finds scope forhis powerful analogical imagination in the vastness and complexity of Miltonic and rabbinic texts. His opening chapter combines what had always been three separate lines of enquiry: Milton and Hebraic and Judaic learning, Milton and contemporary millenarian and radical Protestant trends, and Milton and the debate over the readmission of the Jews to England. Shoulson writes with insight and without overstatement about the parallel between the fourth-centurypost-Constantine Jewish community and post-Constantine Chris? tianity as Milton reads it (oppositional and disenfranchised), and about the idea of diaspora in Milton's oeuvre. The latter includes not only the famous quote 'One's country is where it is well with one', but also the myth of the scattered limbs of Osiris in the Areopagitica. Readers will not agree with every point in the book. (One senses that Shoulson would not want them to.) He is, I think, much too optimistic about the possibility of human achievement after the Fall. What matters finally is the breadth and depth of his approach coupled with an eye for the telling detail. These are the qualities that make the book of interest to readers outside the field of seventeenth-century Eng? lish literature, as the multi-disciplinary prize selection committee of the American Academy of Jewish Research recognized when it awarded Milton and the Rabbis its Salo W. Baron Prize for 2001. Georgetown University Jason P. Rosenblatt Disciplining Satire: The Censorship ofSatiric Comedy on theEighteenth-Century Lon? don Stage. By Matthew J. Kinservik. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press; London: Associated University Presses. 2002. 301 pp. ?38. ISBN 0-83875512 -7. It has been axiomatic in any discussion of eighteenth-century drama that the 1737 Licensing Act had a detrimental effect on the theatre by discouraging new work, and constraining dramatists to write conservative, moralistic drama that eschewed political and religious satire or lampooning of public figures. Referring to Foucault's Discipline and Punish, Matthew Kinservik challenges this view of the effect of the legislation, suggesting that the Act had some positive benefit by encouraging a gentler , 'sympathetic', and didactic satire, by bringing the actor into greater prominence and encouraging the performance of more Shakespeare and other sixteenth- and seventeenth-century drama. Linking the terms satire and censorship, Kinservik finds the latter to be a disciplinary 'regulatory, rather than a simply punitive, tool' (p. 10). And in his examination ofdramatic satire ofthe eighteenth century?a subject lacking any substantial study apart from Jean B. Kern's Dramatic Satire in theAge of Walpole (Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1976)?heperversely uses analyses of the work of three particularly colourful and truculent dramatists of the century, Fielding, Foote, and Macklin, to conclude that satire need not be only vituperative, but that the gentler humour of sentimental comedy is also satire. He argues against the traditional polarization of satirical and sentimental drama. 47? Reviews Suggesting that the Collier controversy was actually about satire, Kinservik offers a narrative of the development of dramatic satire from the beginning of the century, arguing that the stimulus forsympathetic satire lay in Collier's challenge to the stage. Furthermore, Kinservik suggests that as comedy had been changing since the be? ginning of the century, there was not an abrupt alteration caused by the Act. He challenges the familiar interpretation of events surrounding the Licensing Act, questioning whether responsibility lay with Fielding's satirical attacks on Walpole. He shows Fielding to be an experimenter with dramatic satire, who began his dramatic...