Late Shakespeare: A New World of Words (review)

Abstract

Short Notices 263 during the singing of a high Mass for the Dead', and so on for another day or so (p. 16). In other words, the tomb held a central place, physically as well as ritually in the life ofthe church or priory. The surroundingfiguresare each framed within a highly decorative gable supported on columns. The closest similarity to these is in the triforia ofthe bigger churches constructed after 1230, such as Saint-Denis or Beauvais or Troyes, in which the glazing of the clerestory has been extended downwards into the triforium arcade so the intricate gables over the triforium appear like so many crystalline roofs under the glory of the great windows. In the upper parts of the churches this represents the City of God, the Heavenly Jerusalem, below which the daily rituals of the earthly plane are acted out. In the tombs one has a similar impression that those in the lower register are in some way associated with the Heavenly City, which then supports the dead on the level above in a devout posture already ascending beyond the City for that awe-filled moment of Judgement. With feelings of good hope, one trusts. Towards the end of the middle ages many tombs, like the churches themselves, were mass-produced and assembled from standard parts. The merchant class had joined the nobles, but through their influence lineage and social prestige was less important than the display of wealth and ties ofpatronage. Though much has been written over the years on the subject of tombs, this is an excellent resource that brings together many of the separate strands only covered in shorter articles on specific tombs, in which Morganstern has woven a well-researched argument. John James Lawsons Long Alley Hartley Vale, NSW Palfrey, Simon, Late Shakespeare: A New World of Words, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1999 (1997); paper; pp. ix, 298; R.R.P. £14.99; ISBN 0198186894. This book, now issued in paperback, proposes a radical re-assessment of Shakespeare's romances from the point of view of what is coming to be called, on the analogy of new historicism, 'new philology'. Stripping the works of the kind of supernatural and courtly mantle with which Wilson Knight draped them, Simon Palfrey emphasises the disruptive, transformative and disjunctive kinds of language they employ, seeing Shakespeare's version of romance as inherently 264 Short Notices political, and posing a challenge to literary authority. The plays are read as examples of civic humanism rather than traditional romance, and therefore politically charged. The island of The Tempest is said to be 'fashioned aurally': The play will then trace, elliptically and impressionistically, the steps of linguistic evolution, and so the processes through which structures of dominance and subservience become canonized and naturalized in language, (p. 149) Character is seen as essentially speech-act, a construction of language withou necessary reference to notions of unified identity. Pericles becomes a 'lacunar hero, constructed by his gaps and absences rather than by continuity or essential identity, 'less a personal thing than a text of civic potential' (p. 61). In analysing the 'textual exploitation' of Imogen and the role of Perdita as 'proleptic repairer', Palfrey attempts to correct the reading that they are 'inert vessels of a wistful pastoral tradition'. Palfrey's book is alert to linguistic nuance and reveals complexities that have until n o w been found more often in the tragedies and histories. As a consequence, however, he runs theriskof under-stressing the unique theatricalism of the last plays, and of over-complicating dramatic effects that do seem different in kind from Shakespeare's earlier work, and more reminiscent of Elizabethan romance. For all its ingenuity and innovativeness, the book will not be to every reader's taste. The writing seems calculated to mirror Shakespeare's audacious unruliness, and metaphor runsriot.This is a clever and challenging book, but at times over-clever. R. S White Department ofEnglish The University of Western Australia ...