Elizabethan Theater: Essays in Honor of S. Schoenbaum ed. by R. B. Parker and S. P. Zitner

Abstract

Reviews597 and organization is the chance occurrence of a term or allusion in a given text. As such, they are a great convenience for students of ancient literature, and enable an appreciation of local nuances that are now opaque and thereby improve our understanding of great works of art. Unfortunately, the pitiful remains of Alexis's comedies do not permit the latter pleasure. But scholars are grateful for every amelioration and explication of the texts that survive, however humble they may be. Someday, perhaps soon, new electronic technologies will render the commentary form as such obsolete. But the enormous learning and good judgment that have gone into Arnott's Alexis are a permanent treasure, and a major contribution to our knowledge of ancient comedy as a whole. DAVID KONSTAN Brown University Elizabethan Theater: Essays in Honor of S. Schoenbaum, ed. R. B. Parker and S. P. Zitner. Newark: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1996. Pp. 324. $45.00. A festschrift for Sam Schoenbaum is a special occasion, in view of his long illness and his unusual place of honor in the Shakespeare world. For that reason, this festschrift has built-in attractions—so much so that I very much hope this particular collection will survive the neglect that has attended too many such collections in the past. Sam was an admirable scholar, whose life was in the Folger Library, the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon, and other research institutions. He had many devoted friends. Most of the contributors to this volume are not former students of his but fellow scholars. Brian Parker and Sheldon Zitner have had no trouble in assembling a glittering roster of essayists, a distinguished sample of the Shakespeare Establishment. The editors have made a brave attempt at providing a taxonomy for the contents of this volume, with a section on the biographical record, another on "The Idea of Authorship," and two more sections that move out into the broader terrain of "The Playwright in the Play" and "Playwrights and Contexts." These four categories are offered as reflecting the areas of research in which Sam Schoenbaum was especially interested , though I think it would be more accurate to say that they cover the waterfront of Shakespeare and Renaissance drama studies and thus provide a safe haven for each particular essay, whatever its focus. Even the biographical portion of the volume, in which field Sam Schoenbaum especially shone, is rather dispersed in its topics. Insofar as the concept of this volume purports to be Sam Schoenbaum and the "Elizabethan Theater" (not a memorable title, though usefully reminiscent of the fact that Sam did start and edit the journal called Renaissance Drama), it quickly becomes what it appears to be, a display case of various aspects 598Comparative Drama of Renaissance drama research. Let me particularize, then, since the value of the collection must lie in its individual contents. The most remarkable essay for my money is that of Richard Dutton. In the vein of refreshingly sensible revisionism for which he has already won a name in his Mastering the Revels— where he argues with great common sense that Elizabethan dramatists' difficulties with official censorship were not simply the case of artistic freedom versus governmental oppression that our modern sensibilities too readily suppose—Dutton here asks why Shakespeare did not print his own plays. He raises a quizzical eyebrow at the common assumption that Shakespeare did not care about this form of publication, or at least about a reading audience. Why, if Shakespeare was indifferent to readership , are so many of his finest plays such as Hamlet, King Lear, and Troilus and Cressida too long for performance? Dutton presents evidence that acting companies were not nearly as worried about publication as has been too often assumed; publication does not seem to have reduced the value of plays as theatrical pieces. Shakespeare may have refrained from publication out of a sense of loyalty to his company and to the contractual terms that bound him to that organization, or possibly out of a wish to avoid a certain social stigma attached to the writing of plays, but he was far from indifferent, in Dutton's view, "to his...