Four Tudor Interludes ed. by J.A.B. Somerset, and: Sonnets of the English Renaissance ed. by J.W. Lever

Abstract

REVIEWS J.A.B. Somerset, editor, Four Tudor Interludes, Athlone Renaissance Library series (London: Athlone Press 1974). viii, 184. $12.00 (cloth), $4.25 (paper) J.W. Lever, editor, Sonnets of the English Renaissance, Athlone Renaissance Library Series (London: Athlone Press 1974). iii, 186, $12.00 (cloth), $4.50 (paper) All anthologies are, at best, a compromise between the desire to present accurate scholarly texts of a particular author's works and the demand to present a broad general survey of a particular historical period or literary genre. Sometimes the compromise works well and the result is a text that does justice to both of these aims in a general way; in other cases the attempt often fails in one of the aims because of attention to the other; and there are times when neither desire is fulfilled for a variety of reasons. Under the general editorship of Professor Geoffrey Bullough, the Athlone Renaissance Library series has tried to present a series of anthologies that illustrate various aspects of the literature of the Renaissance in England and on the continent. J.W. Lever's Sonnets of the English Renaissance and J.A.B. Somerset's Four Tudor Interludes are of par­ ticular interest for students of English literature both for what they do for one's understanding of the English literary renaissance and for what they fail to do as anthologies of the particular genre that is the subject of the individual volume. Following a similar format, both with regard to text and apparatus, each volume aims at providing the reader with accurate texts and with a scholarly context for those works. Whereas the former does an admirable job for the Renaissance sonnet, the latter leaves something to be desired in its treatment of the Tudor interlude. In Four Tudor Interludes, an edition of the anonymous Mankind, Heywood's Play of Love, Wever's Lusty Juventus, and Fulwell's Like Will to Like, Somer­ set presents dramatic texts that span the one-hundred-year period just prior to the opening of the first London Playhouse. He introduces the collection with comments on the genre, on the influence the form had on later drama, and on the nature of each of the four plays. Some twenty pages of notes gloss the texts English Studies in Ca n a d a , i i , 3 , Fall 1976 354 English Studies in Canada and provide additional information germane to each particular play. The entire edition, including twenty-two pages of introduction, the twenty pages of notes, one page of bibliography, and about one hundred and forty pages of text, is available in paperback at what seems at first glance to be a reasonable price. If one were offering a course in the development of English drama and needed a text that would illustrate something of the nature of the Tudor interlude, then Somerset's work might answer the need. It is a relatively inexpensive small text that fulfils the editor's modest hope that it will ''provide some insight into the dramatic traditions behind the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre" (Somerset, p v). The problem is that most of what Somerset does in his edition has been done more thoroughly, sooner, and more cheaply elsewhere, or has been superseded by material published since the manuscript was completed but before the text was published. Although price is often one of the minor criteria involved in the selection of a text for an undergraduate course, one nonetheless is liable to hesitate before choosing Somerset's collection of four plays at $4.25 when he could have Peter Happe's collection of six complete interludes and extracts from four more for $2.50, Schell and Shuchter's collection of ten interludes and moralities for $2.50, or Edmund Creeth's sterling collection of seven interludes and plays for $2.95.1 Each of these covers the same ground with roughly the same purpose as Somerset's volume. As well as being done elsewhere for less money, the task set for this edition has already been accomplished sooner, by Creeth and Schell and Shuchter, and thoroughly. If one is looking for a comprehensive anthology of early English drama, then...