Shakespeare and the Arts of Language by Russ McDonald

Abstract

43 o Reviews Nevertheless, the attention to formlessness highlights important aspects of the his? tory play, notably its embeddedness in a time outside the world of the play and its corresponding resistance to clear beginnings and endings. Griffin's later chapters of? fersome interesting insights into history plays ofthe 1580s and 1590s, and one ofthe reasons why his arguments about genre do not always convince is that he is properly appreciative of the distinctiveness of individual plays. His attention to companies and repertories in his closing chapter also usefully disposes of some untenable theories about popular and populist theatre. The book is more valuable for its comparative analyses of history plays as representing differentkinds of theatrical experience than for its analysis of the genre. University of Nottingham Janette Dillon Shakespeare and the Arts of Language. By Russ McDonald. (Oxford Shakespeare Topics) Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 2001. ix + 211 pp. ?25 (pbk ?12.99). ISBN 0-19-871170-0 (pbk 0-19-87171-9). As a recent contribution to the series Oxford Shakespeare Topics, Shakespeare and the Arts of Language offersa comprehensive overview of various aspects of and ap? proaches to language in the plays of Shakespeare. Chapters relate to the historical development of English leading to phenomenal change in the use of the vernacular in the sixteenth century; the uses and abuses of rhetoric; prose styles; metrical de? velopment; the study of imagery and of wordplay. Shakespeare's 'particular gift for language' is thus weighed with the humanist and cultural contexts that shaped and enabled the expression of his verbal facility. In this sense, in the spirit of the times, Russ McDonald is returning a topic to the context from which it was wrenched by the New Critics and modernists. The topic is not one but many, as McDonald draws, for example, on the work of Sister Miriam Joseph on rhetoric, on M. M. Mahood and William Empson for wordplay and ambiguity, and on Caroline Spurgeon and Wolfgang Clemen for study of imagery. Surprisingly, there is no mention in the text or in the further-reading sec? tion of G. Wilson Knight, who did so much to popularize the prevalence and use of image patterns in Shakespeare. As with secondary material, so with primary texts, as illustrations of linguistic excess or stages of Shakespeare's metrical experimentation are taken from a range of plays. Points are well made, but with so much local detail, their effectiveness demands familiarity with the canon. McDonald's approach to Shakespeare's use of metre and his rhetorical and figurative styles tends towards the chronological and teleological. In verse, McDonald charts a move from metrical simplicity to sophistication. In relation to the use of language, the celebration of its virtuosities, manifest in the earlier comedies, gives way in the tragedies to a distrust of its duplicities. Yet McDonald implies, and in? deed illustrates, a dialectic throughout the canon, though particularly discernible in tragicomedy, as faithin language is eroded by scepticism. Words, figures,and rhetoric are constantly abused and wilfully appropriated by Machiavels and villains such as Richard III and Iago. It is the na'ifs,Lear, Othello, and Desdemona, with their faithin the relation of sign and signifier,who are most vulnerable to the power and manipulation of language. More than any of his contemporaries, Shakespeare self-consciously exploited the dramatic and theatrical potential in verbal slipperiness and ambiguity. Good students will, of course, soon discover this latter feature for themselves by close reading, for example, of lines spoken by Falstaff, Hal, or Henry IV, or by Claudius in Hamlet. This raises a question about the intended readership of McDon? ald's study. The series as a whole seems designed forA-level teachers and undergraduates . In textbook fashion, McDonald illustrates his topics with copious citations, but MLR, 98.2, 2003 431 unless the reader is familiar with most of Shakespeare's plays, and the book's intended reader may not be, there is a danger of losing the subject in local detail. In trying to cover such discursive material in comparatively short compass, Shakespeare and theArts ofLanguage shifts uneasily from commonsensical to the occasional linguistic foray,from the technicalities of humanist rhetoric...