Shakespeare Studies Vol. 28 ed. by J. Leeds Barroll, and: Shakespeare Studies Vol. 29 ed. by J. Leeds Barroll (review)

Abstract

MLRy 99.1, 2004 161 and the equally calculated coup de theatre of having, not Jove with a thunderbolt, but Allah with dysentery finallystrike the tyrannous blasphemer down, a whole play later. However understandable the decision to cut and conflate, the loss of Marlowe's formal generic manipulation (and attendant stage business) distorts his diptych, particularly Tamburlaine himself: had Sher possessed the full two-performance text, and had to manage a far longer part with a quite differentdouble are of plots and tonalities to guide him, another, more interesting Tamburlaine would have had to emerge. My principal problem with Alan Shepard's book is that even Edward Alleyn barely gets a mention, never mind Sher, and genre fares little better. Besides a nod to Jarman1 *s EdwardII (1991), Shepard simply elides performance: his Zenocrateand Dido are wholly female textual constructs, to whom no boy brings life and cross-costumed body; his burning sword of Aeneas, preceding Dido into her pyre, is innocent of wondering how its fieryconsumption was staged in the 1590s. With Edward's pokered scream that wakes the town (and gives directors sleepless nights), such bookish limitation is perhaps a relief; in an extended discussion of theatrical masculinity deeply concerned with blood, both swelling and shed, it creates progressive incoherence. Marlowe's life and politics are also slighted: Charles Nicholl's persuasive study of Marlowe's murder, The Reckoning, is ignored even in the bibliography while a wildly unlikely speculation by Curtis Breight (that the Privy Council ordered Marlowe killed because Edward II was subversive) appears in isolation in the main text. Individual chapters, however, have much to suggest. Edward II receives a lucid discussion, aware of class as well as sexuality and appropriate forundergraduate use? perhaps the firstreal fruitof Charles Forker's excellent 1994 Revels edition. In The Jew of Malta 'why Malta?' is refreshingly more important than familiar arguments about anti-Semitism. There is even an extended and very useful discussion of The Massacreat Paris. But with Dr Faustus the theatrical weakness of Shepard's approach shows clearly in his resort to a magpie terminology of 'magical realism' to cope with the metatheatrics of comedic business. To apply such terminology to Renaissance theatre might be fruitful,but cannot be so if an awkward substitute for any direct approach to how late Elizabethan audiences spectated and audited. The book is readable and well produced, and the most general case Shepard makes, following Nick de Somogyi, for 'rhetorics of masculinity' as a conscious concern of almost all Marlowe's drama, is persuasive. In dealing with martial law Shepard forgets (as de Somogyi did not) the homophonic extension to 'martial lore', but does strengthen the case that the issue needs substantive attention from all concerned with the late Elizabethans. Overall, some chapters are likely to seduce students, but the whole will ravish no scholars and the impotence of a narrowly textual approach to drama (and gender) has rarely been plainer. Cambridge John Lennard Shakespeare Studies, Vol. 28. Ed. by J. Leeds Barroll, book review editor Susan Zimmerman. Cranbury, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Associated University Presses. 2000. 374 pp. ?45. ISBN 0-8386-3871-6. Shakespeare Studies, Vol. 29. Ed. by J. Leeds Barroll, book review editor Susan Zimmerman. Cranbury, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Associated University Presses. 2001. 278 pp. ?45. ISBN 0-8386-3922-4. The annually published Shakespeare Studies, now in its twenty-ninth year, is es? tablished as one of the major international Shakespeare journals. Under the expert editorship of J. Leeds Barroll, aided and abetted by a very persuasive reviews editor, Susan Zimmerman, the journal has gone through a number of transformations in an 162 Reviews attempt to ensure that its concerns remain up to date despite the inevitable time lapse between submission and publication of material. Some three years ago Barroll and Zimmerman introduced the innovative concept of the 'review article' in which the work of significant Shakespeare scholars might be appraised in relation to a topic of current interest. In Volume 29, forexample, Paul Whitfield White expertly evaluates the scholarly work now emerging on 'Playing Companies and the Drama ofthe 1580s', drawing together in an exemplary critical debate a number...