Middleton and Rowley: forms of collaboration in the Jacobean playhouse

Abstract

and Rowley: Forms of Collaboration in Jacobean Playhouse, by David Nicol. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012. Pp. xii + 228. Cloth. $50.00.Middleton and Rowley, an important contribution to study of early modern dramatic collaboration, challenges at outset both more traditional view that collaborative should be read as interpretation of recognizable and distinctive authors whose work should be applauded when their individuality is subsumed, and more postmodern and poststructuralist assertion that the very notion of individual author with a distinctive style is anachronistic when applied to early modern drama (3). David Nicol's approach is not reactionary: he proposes to historicize rigorously and consider carefully important collaborations that left their marks on text [such as] playwrights' relationships with actors, playing companies, and patrons (7). Nor is he opportunistically acquiescent to more recent critical prejudices, since he believes that denial of authorial distinctiveness has become so extreme that its proponents are unable to analyse very multiplicity of voices that makes collaboration so significant to them (6). There may indeed be a kind of residual essentialist tendency evident in argument, and one of major effects of this study, indicated in title of opening chapter, Middleton and Rowley: Writing about Collaborative Drama, is to heighten critical awareness of second of these playwrights, significance of whose art has been too often subsumed in a consideration of first.But if and Rowley are indeed the greatest collaborators of their age (4), their most important collaboration is undoubtedly The Changeling, which Nicol therefore understandably treats as focus of book's first two chapters. His attention to text's polyvocality rather than simply thematic blending promises, in my opinion, to be exceptionally fruitful with respect to critical discontinuities and anomalies of this famous play. Although Nicol confirms attribution of tragedy's main plot to Middleton, and (more comic) subplot to Rowley, recognition that Rowley also wrote both opening and closing scenes increases importance of his overall contributions to thematic structure of play, but also complicates any clear critical apportionment of ideologically contradictory aspects of text. In second chapter Nicol proposes that some of most powerful effects of main plot of The Changeling are created by disunities resulting from shifts from one playwright's work to that of other (37), and subsequently explores different theological beliefs of two playwrights, pitting Middleton's Calvinism against Rowley's apparently deeper investment in rational self-control, the potential of reason and willpower to defeat sinful desires (39). The result is book's richest and most intriguing discussion. Nicol contextualizes The Changeling's opening scene with another of Rowley's plays, All's Lost by Lust, and concludes that Rowley focuses audience's attention on mental conflict of characters as they decide to commit a sin . . . . All of this changes when takes over story (57). This particular argument is likely to lead to further critical debate, for there are aspects of initial self-idealization in psychology of both Alsemero and Beatrice-Joanna which are perhaps not inconsistent with Middleton's later portrayal of these characters. Yet strength of book, it must be admitted, largely consists of both clarity of Nicol's prose and undeniable tightness of his logic, even when reader is inclined to challenge local moments in argument. …