Drama and Resistance: Bodies, Goods and Theatricality in Late Medieval England (review)

Abstract

282 Reviews Her reading of 'Tis Pity is similarly inaccurate. Thus she claims that 'Florio even hints at Giovanni's potential future in the Church when he dismisses his son as a candidate for the continuance of the family line' (p. 113), but what Florio in fact says is: 'he is so devoted to his book, / As I must tell you true, I doubt his health' (I.iii.5-6). Smith tries at this point to argue that ultimately, and ironically, 'the very basis of incest lies in the sanctioned vocabulary of devotional love' (p. 112), but she simply does not make her case. Incredibly, she claims that if Giovanni were to pray (etc.) as the Friar instructs him to, a circular path would take him back to his desires for Annabella (pp. 113-14). O n page 15, Smith speaks condescendingly about Brian Vickers's supposedly 'naive call for a return to the text'. But, on the basis of the readings which the author herself produces in her book, I would suggest that she should pay attention to Vickers's call, and that she might avoid misreadings if she studied texts, as texts, more. Joost Daalder School ofHumanities Flinders University Sponsler, Claire, Drama and Resistance: Bodies, Goods and Theatricality i Medieval England (Medieval Cultures 10), Minneapolis and London, University of Minnesota Press, 1997; pp. xvii, 209; R.R.P. US$54.95 (cloth), US$21.95 (paper), ISBN 0816629269 (cloth), 08166292779 (paper). This book offers a carefully structured and compelling reading of late medieval drama and cultural practices in relation to techniques of domination and strategies of resistance. It explores the effectiveness of mechanisms aimed at social control, the w a y they seduced the subject into compliance with his/her o w n containment, and the extent to which these mechanisms also incorporated, and indeed animated, the conditions of their o w n 'undoing'. The parameters of the analysis remain evident throughout each of the six chapters, which deal respectively with sumptuary laws and the regulation of social positioning, Robin Hood games and cross-dressing, conduct books, morality plays, Books of Hours, and the flawed symbolism of corporate wholeness in Corpus Christi drama. 283 Sponsler works from a cultural materialist perspective, recognising late medieval citizens as active 'consumers' of cultural products w h o were capable of responding in unorthodox ways to the systems that attempted to define and limit their lives. O n e of the achievements of the study is its demonstration that the 'pre-modern subject' is a viable focus for this sort of analysis. N e w Historicist and cultural materialist approaches have largely concentrated their efforts on what is seen as the emergence of the subject in the Age of Shakespeare and beyond. This arbitrary line in the sand has come under attack from medievalists in recent years and Sponsler's book provides substantial grist to the mill. Sponsler relies on the principle of divergent response, discussed in an article she published in Theatre Journal in 1992 entitled "The Culture of the Spectator: Conformity and Resistance to Medieval Performances', to sustain her analysis of the possibilities for alternate, dissenting interpretations of medieval dramatic texts. She profitably integrates the insights of contemporary reception and social theory as well as sociohistorical studies. She contests conventional readings of the social function of dramatic texts, laws governing dress codes, and conduct and devotional literature, arguing that the potential meanings they impart are as diverse as the individual cultural consumers by w h o m meaning is assigned. The six chapters alternately discuss the conditioned and the rogue responses elicited by regulatory systems and dramatic performances in this era. Sponsler considers customs together with dramatic activity under the one rubric of 'performance', including in this concept the selffashioning and representation of the self that individuals engage in during the everyday activities that inform their lives. Chapter O n e considers the late medieval concern over apparel uses and abuses and the attempts to engineer the stability of the social hierarchy through sumptuary laws that prescribed standards of dress on the basis of social status and sermons and advice literature that equated excessive personal display with immorality. Sponsler argues...