Song in Morality Plays and Interludes by Peter Happé

Abstract

264Comparative Drama tive and independent investigation. This is only one way in which the ideas contained in a bibliography like Brandt's could be used in classroom teaching as well as in personal research. For instance, students in courses on critical theory might read the section on Doctor Faustus with an eye not only for the different specific arguments each critic makes but also for the different theoretical assumptions each one takes for granted. To read Brandt's book is to be reminded that there are not only different arguments but different ways of arguing—not only, that is, different specific interpretations but different ways of reading. To be exposed to such differences in such rapid-fire fashion can be exhilarating or frustrating, but in either case it is enlightening. Not the least value of such a book is that it makes it easy to listen to many more voices, and consider many more possibilities, than one might otherwise seek out on one's own. Plowing through a work such as Brandt's can help keep a reader both current and alert, both honest and humble. The worth of a work like this depends mainly on its breadth, depth, and index. Brandt's work is strong in all three respects. All of Marlowe 's works are covered, and the annotations are almost always helpfully full and are usually very lucid. In addition, as Constance Brown Kuriyama notes in her "Foreword," "Professor Brandt has also been remarkably conscientious in sifting through works which do not take Marlowe as their primary subject, thus helping his colleagues locate pertinent material in places where they do not normally expect to find it" (p. ix). An intelligent introduction outlines the volume's scope and methods, and if the index inevitably misses some subjects covered in particular entries, such oversights are hard to fault. One might wish that dissertations were briefly described rather than simply listed; often some of the best work on any topic never finds its way into "permanent " print. But nit-picking is always easy; doing the kind of solid, lasting work that Brandt has accomplished is difficult. We owe him thanks. ROBERT C. EVANS Auburn University at Montgomery Peter Happé. Song in Morality Plays and Interludes. Medieval Theatre Monographs, 1. Lancaster: Medieval English Theatre, 1991. Pp. iv + 121. £12.00. If the importance of song in early drama needed verification, Peter Happé's Song in Morality Plays and Interludes would provide ample evidence. The author has studied sixty-one plays from 1425 to 1590, finding "219 occasions for song . . . , 147 texts or titles of songs, and a further 59 cues," along with the possibility of other songs that may Reviews265 have been performed. The number of songs suggests the wide repertoire available in dramatic productions; their uses range from expressing emotion, underlining plot, identifying characters (broomsellers, ratcatchers, barbers, among others) to accompanying the stage business of exits and entrances. The variety of songs indicates that music was one of the pleasures expected and provided in theatrical performances and that the players were accomplished and "versatile enough to sing frequently, in many different moods, and in many different combinations of voices." In fact, over twice as many part as solo songs can be distinguished, and the verse forms of the texts are of an "astonishing variety." All of this material is discussed in an introduction and organized in an alphabetical Index of songs, burdens, and titles and a chronological list by play of song texts and cues. One appendix provides a chronological list of plays, a second the texts of songs from Bèze's Tragédie of Abraham's Sacrifice, translated by Arthur Golding. The alphabetical Index and the two chronological lists are cross-indexed. Each entry in the Index of songs gives, where the information is known, the play's title, date, cues, singers, name of tune, surviving music, and other sources/analogues. Despite the seemingly methodical presentation, however, the book is in no way user-friendly. For instance, a reader wishing to study the songs in a particular play must know the date (drawn primarily, but with some puzzling and unexplained differences, from the 1964 edition of Annals of English...