John Milton: ‘Paradise Lost’ ed. by David Scott Kastan, and: William Shakespeare: ‘The Merchant of Venice’ by Warren Chernaik, and: William Shakespeare: ‘Othello’ by Emma Smith

Abstract

MLR, I02.4, 2007 "139 Smith challenges 'the assumption that the absence of women writers from the genre of the sonnet sequence arose from the gender encodings inherent in their generic structure' (p. 6o), but she perhaps fails,at times, to take adequate account of other factorsbeyond the casket sonnetswhich might have encouraged the absence of female sonnet-writers during this time. By theconclusion of thework the reader is left with the tantalizing question of how thesewriters and their texts impacted upon thewider fieldofwomen's writing at this period. This is touched upon at times,but amore prolonged discussion would have provided not only an additional research area, but also amore satisfying conclusion to thework. UNIVERSITY OF READING LUcINDA BECKER JohnMilton: 'Paradise Lost'. Ed. by DAVID SCOTT KASTAN. Indianapolis: Hackett. 2005. lxxix+427pp. ?7.95. ISBN 987-o-87220-733-I. William Shakespeare: 'TheMerchant of Venice'. By WARREN CHERNAIK. Horndon: Northcote House. 2005. iX+ I26 pp. ?iI.99. ISBN 978-0-7463-0995-7. William Shakespeare: 'Othello'. By EMMA SMITH. Horndon: Northcote House. 2005. Viii+ I04 pp. LI I.99. ISBN 978-o-7463-0999-5. New editions of familiarworks and fresh introductions to canonical texts offerop portunities to reflecton thepresent state of scholarship. Every edition is a rendition, every introduction an intervention.This isparticularly pertinent where current cri tical developments impinge upon the texts in question. Editions and introductions carry a greater responsibility than essays andmonographs precisely because theywill be seen as windows onto thework rather than as positioned readings in their own right.They are likely to be taken on board by awider readership, and can influence undergraduates encountering a textforthe firsttime inways other scholarship cannot. Any new edition of Paradise Lost has to take on board recent readings ofMilton's work in relation to colonialism or republicanism, specifically the advent of sustained and sophisticated readings of the laterpoetry in the light of thepolitical prose.Mil tonand Republicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), ed. byDavid Armitage, Armand Himy, and Quentin Skinner, established linksbetween thepolitics and the poetry, obscured in earlier scholarship, while Milton and theImperial Vision (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, I999), ed. by Balachandra Rajan and Elizabeth Sauer, made itharder to sustain theargument presented byDavid Armitage in Milton andRepublicanism that Milton was a 'poet against Empire'. 'Colonial repub licanism' is a compromise termcapturingMilton's investment inan anti-monarchical politics of empire. David Scott Kastan is aware of the tensions and contentions in Milton's politics, and how theyplay out inhis poetry.Kastan isan exemplary editor, attuned toemerg ingcritical currents, yet steeped in the scholarship of an earlier tradition, aware of the text's provenance and reception, alert to its topicality.His introduction, amodel of theoretically informed,politically committed, historically grounded criticism,makes this edition of Paradise Lost all you would expect from one of themost erudite and perceptive figures in the field.His revised edition ismore than amere updating of the monumental work of his predecessor Merritt Hughes. Like the best editors, Kastan puts his imprint on the text. Yet, like all editors ofMilton, Kastan has moments of blindness aswell as insight. Early in his introduction he cites Samuel Johnson's comment that 'Paradise Lost is one of thebooks which the reader admires and laysdown and forgetsto takeup again', I I40 Reviews adding his own observation that this 'has too often been borne out inexperience. It is not a poem that sits comfortingly by thebedside' (p. xii). Great literature isnot sup posed tocomfort. Permitting Johnson's wishful thinkingto go unchecked goes against thegrain ofKastan's own experience as a student and teacher, and against theview of JohnKeats quoted in this edition's epigraph: 'Shakespeare and Paradise Lost every day become greater wonders tome' (p. vii). Johnson had reason to forgetParadise Lost. He berated Milton's republicanism inhis Lives of theEnglish Poets as 'founded on an envious hatred of greatness, and a sullen desire of independence; inpetulance impatient of control, and pride disdainful of superiority', and suggested that Milton's 'predominant desire was todestroy rather than establish, and thathe feltnot somuch the love of liberty as repugnance to authority' (Samuel Johnson, Lives of theEnglish Poets, 2 vols, ed. by L. Archer Hind (London: Everyman, 1925), I,92-93...