Restoration Shakespeare: Viewing the Voice by Barbara A. Murray (review)

Abstract

744 Reviews with an emphatic 'Yes'. It is a necessary book. It will be useful to lecturers and stu? dents of filmand of theatre, and to those who wish to use films of Shakespeare's plays as a means of focusing on questions of performance. The volume sent for review was a hardback edition. I hope that it will soon be available in paperback. I shall certainly be recommending it to my students, both at undergraduate and at postgraduate level. University of Reading Brian Woolland Restoration Shakespeare: Viewing the Voice. By Barbara A. Murray. Cranbury, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Associated University Presses in conjunction with Modern Humanities Research Association. 2001. 306 pp. ?35. ISBN 0-8386-3918-6. This is the firstbook to consider all the adaptations of Shakespeare's plays between 1660 and 1682: during these years, the theatre in London was undergoing major changes which gave the visual dimension a whole new significance. The introduction of actresses, forinstance, had far-reaching implications on Shakespearean production. Innovations in stagecraft, such as moveable scenery and machinery for sophisticated spectacular effects,also meant that adaptations on the Restoration stage tended to emphasize the visual dimension. This is not to say that the aural sphere lost its im? portance, as is testifiedby the employment of orchestras which provided music during performances and intervals. The 'grand manner of Restoration acting style' (p. 28) also privileged the aural dimension. Accounts by Restoration commentators, among which are Pepys's lively remarks on his experience as a theatregoer, reveal the emotional effectthat the combination of the visual and the aural had on the audiences. Similarly, treatises on dramatic poetry (for instance, those by Dryden and Flecknoe) point to the idea that that 'the audience is capable of making all sorts of imaginative transferences' (p. 30). This evidence leads Murray to reassess the widely held assumption that Restoration drama was principally preoccupied with the decorum imposed by neoclassical rules. In the introduction, she argues that 'the overriding need was both to make [Shakespeare's] language operate more like speaking pictures, in coherent visual imagery and metaphor [. . .] and also to accommodate this language to the added emotional power of scenery, music, and acting delivery' (p. 32). The section ofthe book entitled 'Laws and Lovers' focuses on the fiveShakespeare adaptations of the 1660s, among which are Davenant's The Law against Lovers (an amalgamation ofMeasure for Measurewith Much Ado About Nothing), The Tragedy of Hamlet Prince ofDenmark (also probably by Davenant), and Dryden and Davenant's The Tempest; or, The Enchanted Island. The frequent use of 'metaphorical depiction of issues concerned with civil order' (p. 61) and other linguistic alterations in the versions of this decade were often complemented in performance by the insertion of special effectswhich exploited new stagecraft. The images evoked verbally were underlined visually, sometimes with an ironic effect,on the stage. The second part of Murray's study, 'Miseries and Civil War', analyses the Shake? speare adaptations between i674and 1682. Except forthe'lavishly spectacular'(p. 93) operatic version of The Tempest and Duffet's burlesque reply to it, The Mock Tem? pest?both produced in 1674 by,respectively, the Duke's and the King's Company? the remaining ten adaptations were produced between 1678 and 1682. Unlike the earlier plays, which disclose 'an almost [. . .] philosophic interest in the topics at their heart and had made use of comedy more readily than tragedy to deploy it' (p. 89), the later group is exclusively concerned with histories and tragedies. The feeling of anxiety and uncertainty characterizing the language and imagery of these versions is MLR, 99.3, 2004 745 not surprising given the threat of civil unrest in the years of the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Crisis. Political topicality is evident in all these rewritings of Shakespeare's plays, including Shadwell's The History of Timon ofAthens, theMan-Hater, Ravenscroft 's Titus Andronicus, Otway's The History and Fall of Caius Marius, and Tate's notorious adaptation of King Lear. But even if the preoccupations revealed by these plays are of a more serious nature, they share an important trait with the plays of the 1660s: their verbal 'depictive power' (p. 140) is reinforced...