Lives: An Anthropological Approach to Biography (review)

Abstract

264 biography Vol. 7, No. 3 have, or are in the process of being challenged. It is not that Connell necessarily misinterprets his facts, but that the facts required to delineate , in detailed fashion, the course of players' lives or their duties to the company are simply unavailable, or needing to be ferreted out of the public records. When they are known to be unavilable—as in the case of the Grocers Company records—the author fails to indicate that he has searched and found material wanting. In addition, Connell makes no conjectures, which, although perhaps coming too close to the realm of taste for some readers, would draw his picture of the playhouse community more attractively. (Was, for instance, Ben Jonson's notice of Abel Drugger as "free of the Grocers" (The Alchemist) an underhanded reference to Heminges; an inside joke?) Connell is modest , and not unduly so, in his claims and purposes. Consequently, he tends to be reticent which only leaves his readers wondering. Connell's strength, should one be all pervasive, lies in his ability to bring to the foreground forgotten facts: that there are no known portraits of Heminges or Connell, but that the engraving they chose for the First Folio must have been that most closely approximating Shakespeare 's appearance; that Shakespeare must, as many upcoming dramatists , have begun his career as a "play repairer" so that his "canon" is essentially unknown; that Heminges and Condell must have "transformed " extant manuscripts and printed texts bearing in mind their own aesthetic intentions; that during the first two decades of the seventeenth century playhouses became the players' enterprises in every way, but that the combination of financial and personal associations directed literary inheritances at the Globe Playhouse. Throughout Connell's work this impression stands out. It is owing to the friendship of Heminges and Condell that Shakespeare's work was not lost to the evanescence of Prospero's magic. The explanation is plain; but the reader, ordinary as well as specialist, may well find upon reflection that it is preferable. S. P. Ceras ano Colgate University L. L. Langness and Geyla Frank, Lives: An Anthropological Approach to Biography. Novato, California: Chandler and Sharp, Publishers , Inc., 1981.221 pp. Perhaps biography is neither genre nor art, but method, simply a pattern for organizing data. Like man—the larger biological pattern upon REVIEWS 265 which it is based—biography lends itself comfortably to a wide range of approaches and techniques. In part, this interdisciplinary generality accounts for the renewed popularity of the form, for in biography one is freed from the constraints of scholarly specialization. Only the life in question holds sway. Because no single approach dominates the biographical world, any nuts-and-bolts kind of book on method in life-writing should be of interest to all students of biography. A good book on biographical method becomes an invaluable resource. Langness's and Frank's Lives is such a good book and, as one who has never been able to understand why anyone could get excited by stone tools, I found that Lives serves not only as a clarification of biographical approach but also as a valuable introduction to anthropological method in life-history. Lives, designed for both the specialist and the student, consists of five parts. A historical review traces the development of the importance of biographical data in anthropological research. The "Methods " section discusses interview techniques. A third part deals with conclusions and often the lack of conclusions drawn from biographical data. A discussion of the types of biographical structures follows. The last section (which treats ethical and moral concerns), because it discusses several often only tangentially related ideas, is the sketchiest section of the text, and, because of an interview with Hilda Kuper, the official biographer of the late Sobhuza II, King of Swaziland, is one of the most interesting. Primarily the value of Lives to the student lies in the extensive bibliography the authors have assembled. Over 500 works are listed in the reference section which makes it about as complete a reading list as one could wish for. Furthermore, each section of the text presents such a thorough discussion of the references that...