The Complete Plays of John Bale ed. by Peter Happé

Abstract

Reviews283 summer Night's Dream and The Merry Wives of Windsor, he argues, the boundary between human being and monster dissolves, so that characters confront the obliteration of humanity and even loss of life. The book's concluding section shows how the romances, especially The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, confront and transcend the dangers of metamorphosis. Thus in The Tempest, not only must Prospero become a Sycorax or Medea by surrendering himself to magic, but he must also surrender his magic and his control to become fully human. Only by representing another is he free to present his true self. This summary may suggest two weaknesses in the book: ambition and arbitrariness. Sometimes Carroll lets his subject become too broad and can offer only sketchy development of his more ambitious ideas. One wishes for a fuller treatment of the theological implications of marriage, for example, with its supernatural transformation of two individuals into a single entity. Again, the question is raised of how gender and metamorphosis are related, but the problem is not completely explored. Although Carroll's chapter on transvestism is promising, one wishes for more discussion. One final example is Carroll's provocative idea that doubling "becomes an emblem for 'writing' and 'reading' " in The Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night. One wonders if this emblem extends to the rest of the canon. If so, the text of Bottom's playscript or Prospero's book takes on new meaning, as does the doubled appearance of Perdita and Hermione. The book says nothing about these points. There is also an arbitrariness in Carroll's choice of materials for examination. While this arbitrariness may be both natural and necessary, it is also natural and necessary that the reader question it. Since Carroll chooses to discuss the Henriad and Richard III, one wonders why he ignores Richard II and its transformation scenes in which subjects become kings and vice versa. Again, if Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest receive discussion, why is Pericles only referred to once? And finally, why does a book on Shakespearean comedy say so little on the problem plays? All's Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure are scarcely mentioned; Troilus and Cressida is completely ignored. Despite these problems, the book is a fine piece of work. It is particularly valuable for its breadth and Carroll's refusal to be hamstrung by too narrow a focus; inevitably, this breadth causes problems in his rhetorical strategy. The discussion of the metamorphic paradox that begins the book is superb, and the readings of individual plays are sensitive and balanced. One can say the best and worst thing about it in a single sentence: when the book is read, one wishes for more. FRANCES TEAGUE University of Georgia Peter Happé, ed. The Complete Plays of John Bale. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1985. 2 vols. Pp. ? + 167; xii + 193. £27.50 ea. If a new edition of the five extant plays of John Bale were needed, this one by Happé is a considerable improvement over the John S. Farmer edition of 1907. Happé has worked carefully from the Huntington manu- 284Comparative Drama script of King Johan and from the sixteenth-century editions of God's Promises, Johan Baptystes Preachynge, The Temptation of Our Lord, and Three Laws. He has done his homework, certainly, in the secondary sources until 1981. And he has not been hesitant to seek the advice of other experts such as Richard Rastall in musicology. The end-notes are probably the most helpful of any editions. The appendices are also useful: a transcription of the overlapping pages of scribe A's hand and Bale's own in the King Johan manuscript, a translation of one of Bale's three autobiographical passages from other works, passages from several of Bale's chief sources, and doubling schemes for the five plays. Something more might have been done with those doubling schemes, for there is an apparent correlation between the dates of composition or revision and the casting pattern. (God's Promises is an exception: it was not designed for a professional company but needs only Bale to play God and one actor/singer for...