Shakespeare's Letters by Alan Stewart

Abstract

834 Reviews touches keep inserting themselves into Greys more official prose. A letter on Greys journey intoUlster to oppose Turlough Luineach O'Neill includes the or thodox Calvinist?and authentically Spenserian?sentiment 'the success well or yll, greate or small beeyng onely Gods', anticipating the opening stanza of The Faerie Queene, i. x, 'Ifany strengthwe haue, it is to ill, |But all the good isGods, both power and eke will' (p. 96). More pervasively, Grey's insistent requests for a recall are reminders of Spenser's expertise in the complaint mode?Burlinson and Zurcher note the 'impassioned', and frankly un-Greylike, 'anaphora' of the closing paragraph of a letter to theQueen (pp. 106, 109). This volume reveals that Spenser's administrative work existed cheek by jowl with the poetry forwhich he is remembered. For that reason, these documents are an indispensable supplement to the canon. The Open University Richard Danson Brown Shakespeare's Letters. By Alan Stewart. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2008. xvi+405 pp. ?25. ISBN 978-0-19-954927-6. Alan Stewart's materialistic study of letters in Shakespeare's plays explains the socio-cultural history ofwriting, sealing, sending, reading, and responding to let terson the earlymodern stage as part of a complex network of social confirmation, truth,and authority. These keymaterial props appear in almost all of Shakespeare's plays to alert audiences not only to new narrative developments but also to the legitimacy of feelings and actions. Physical letters carry heavy historical and so ciological meanings, making them key props that 'invoke and gesture towards a real-world epistolary system' (p. 73) commonly understood in the early modern period. Covering topics from letter forgery to undelivered (or potentially undeli verable) letters, this book creates an exceptional range of new ways to considering commonly overlooked letter culture appearing on the earlymodern stage. Stewart begins with letters in Shakespeare's Roman plays as props signifying blatant historical anachronism, largely because theirkey features in these texts re present earlymodern letter-writingpractices rather than traditions of the classical worlds. 'Rome's power [like England's] is built on itsuse of letters, itsgeographi cally vast empire controlled by an epistolary network' (p. 95). While Shakespeare often opts for oration and spectacle over letter-writing in Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Titus Andronicus, Roman letters provide a telling case study for theways inwhich Shakespeare repeatedly turns to the contemporary over the historical' (p. 76). Carriers of letters come into focus when Stewart discusses Malone's discovery of the only surviving letterwritten to Shakespeare by Richard Quiney, a document thathelps us tounderstand thevast 'network of carriers and carriers' inns on which somuch communication depended' (p. 117). Shakespeare would have frequented inns in order to use carriers for correspondence with his family and colleagues in Stratford-upon-Avon. Early modern letter-carriers appear on stage sparingly, but MLR, 105.3, 2010 835 when they do, as in the Gadshill episode in 1Henry IV, their presence speaks to concerns over responsibility and libel attached to undelivered or lost letters of credit and business. Stewart contends that the carrier entering with the Sheriff in 1Henry VI, 11.2, represents the new and important cultural phenomenon of letter-carriers sharing closer ties tomore and more people in an age with no formal postal system. In TheMerchant ofVenice letters of credit form the basis of Shylock's grievance with Antonio. As the debt owed by Antonio has been set down inwriting, legal rhetoric and wordplay form the basis for Portia to undo Shylock's claim through language. Portia's skill with written letters helps her succeed both in court and in her courtship of suitors. Stewart discusses the rhetoric of letter culture as it extends through all the romantic relationships in the play, as seen with Shylock's frustration over someone 'breaking the seal' (p. 190) of both his letters of debt as well as his daughter Jessica s body. 'King Lear is a play riddled with letters' (p. 194), driving Stewart's enquiry into the theatrical importance of having actual characters such as Kent and Oswald personally deliver letters by hand. Essentially, characters delivering letters create paratextual effectson the intended messages of these specific letters.The...