Staging Spectatorship in the Plays of Philip Massinger (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Staging Spectatorship in the Plays of Philip Massinger Julie Sanders (bio) Joanne Rochester. Staging Spectatorship in the Plays of Philip Massinger. Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. Pp. x + 172. $99.95. Joanne Rochester's study Staging Spectatorship in the Plays of Philip Massinger is a very welcome addition to what she herself describes as the "growing literature on Caroline drama" (3). While acknowledging that her study of the inherent metatheatricality of Renaissance drama follows in a long tradition of exploring plays-within-plays in drama from this period, Rochester makes the case for the innovative nature of her approach, not only in terms of its focus on the woefully understudied figure of Massinger, but in her consideration of plays-within-plays and inset masques as conscious "enactments of spectatorship" (1). Three particular plays from Massinger's oeuvre form the backbone of her analyses: The Roman Actor (1626), The City Madam (1632), and The Picture (1629) (though there is also a very useful analysis of The Guardian (1633) in chapter 2). The two former plays on the list have perhaps enjoyed the most sustained critical focus of late, but The Picture, which recently enjoyed a successful restaging in the UK, is now coming firmly into view. Rochester's study is, then, well-judged in speaking to such timely interests. While the three-play focus may seem tight to the point of narrowness in a monograph-length study, this focus does allow her to offer sustained close readings, and she stresses that her discussion of particular plays has far wider implications and applications. [End Page 142] Massinger is, as she rightly observes, a key "transitional figure" whose career bridges the Jacobean and Caroline moments and involves extensive collaborations with other playwrights. He is also the producer of work within the compass of several distinct types of playing venue: Philip Henslowe's open-air amphitheater, the Rose, Christopher Beeston's indoor theater at the Cockpit, and in the context of the King's Men's extensive and flexible repertory at both the indoor, roofed Blackfriars and the open-air Globe. Describing The Roman Actor as Massinger's "most metatheatrical play" (15), Rochester uses it as a springboard for the volume as a whole. Though in date terms this play falls squarely within the confines of Caroline drama, the author argues that it has its roots firmly within a Jacobean aesthetic and ethos, and she compares it to other Jacobean Roman plays such as Ben Jonson's Sejanus. Exploring how the opening of the play superimposes a deserted Roman playhouse onto the crowded Caroline one of the actual performance venues, Rochester demonstrates in lively fashion how The Roman Actor dramatizes the King's Men's working practices and the vexed relationship that existed in the 1620s between commercial playhouses and the court. Though this is an entirely proficient and worthwhile chapter, Rochester is not exactly breaking new ground in interpreting The Roman Actor from this standpoint, and she rightly acknowledges the influence of the pioneering editorial work of Martin White in this regard. Nevertheless, this is a helpful case study in terms of providing a means of navigation through some of the less familiar material to follow. In chapter 2, she moves onto the category of "masques-within-plays." Noting that Massinger (like Shakespeare) wrote no official court masques, she indicates that he was nevertheless fascinated by the form. Providing useful background material on the masque genre and making enroute the significant observation that in the Caroline period the masque developed into a huge "diversity of venues and forms," (59) Rochester argues that the very dominance of the masque by this time allowed for its diversification. I admired the way in which, throughout, Rochester was constantly alert to the interactions of space, site, and form, and it is a very located and embedded picture of Massinger as a playwright that she offers us as a result. She also makes important distinctions between country-house masques, those performed for corporate and commercial contexts (such as Jonson's recently rediscovered 1609 Entertainment at Britain's Burse), and the court variety of the form that she identifies as Massinger's...