The Elizabethan Theatre IV: Papers Given at the Fourth International Conference on Elizabethan Theatre held at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, in July 1972 ed. by George Hibbard

Abstract

479 Reviews Christian allegory," but I hope that most readers will prefer his view that "Sir Orfeo contains a variety of elements from both secular and religious sources, which are blended into an imaginative work of entertainment rather than a tightly woven symbolic scheme imbued with Christian didacticism" (Orpheus in the Middle Ages, p 190). It is perhaps a pity that Dr Doob did not publish her interpretation of Sir Orfeo as a separate essay and treat instead under the heading of Holy Wild Man some of the lively tales of saints who were considered mad (the terrifying St John Chrysostom, for example), and some madmen venerated as saints (cf Welsford, The Fool). The only madness in Sir Orfeo is Heurodis's wild grief when she awakens (not emphasized by Doob): Orfeo does indeed become a wild man, but nobody stigmatizes his behaviour as mad (although the Fairy King does call him foolhardy). In her fifth chapter Dr Doob returns more centrally to her subject in examin­ ing Hoccleve's poetry on sin and disease, melancholy and madness, and their secular and religious remedies. She succeeds admirably in arousing interest in a little-read poet, and it is good to know that she intends to include further material on Hoccleve in a subsequent study of "late medieval autobiographical, pseudo-autobiographical, and first-person narrative" (2ion). Although some of the foregoing remarks imply criticism of Dr Doob's tendency to overstate her case and to ignore inconvenient evidence, the merits of her book far outweigh any failings. Her wide research and good documenta­ tion make her book a rich source of further reading and provide stimulating suggestions for other applications of her material. She writes clearly, vigor­ ously, and entertainingly. Her quotations are often chosen with a lively sense of fun, and she tells a story (such as that of St Norbert's battle with the devil) with most effective energy and economy. Above all, she communicates such a sustained sense of enjoyment in what she is doing that she constantly delights and disarms her reader. judith m . Kennedy / St Thomas University George Hibbard, ed, The Elizabethan Theatre iv: Papers Given at the Fourth International Conference on Elizabethan Theatre held at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, in July 1972 (Toronto: Macmillan, 1974). xv, 175. $10.00 The year 1972, the quadricentennial of Ben Jonson's birth, was the time to celebrate Jonson and to reassess the man, his works, and our attitudes towards them. We had the Fourth International Conference on Elizabethan Theatre at the University of Waterloo in July; the Ben Jonson Conference in October at the University of Toronto; and in December the New York mla Seminar on Jonson and the mla Renaissance Drama Seminar devoted to a review of Jonson scholar­ ship. Each of these conferences produced a book.1 Six of the eight papers given at the Waterloo Conference were on Jonson, and the publication of these papers by Macmillan of Canada in The Elizabethan Theatre tv, edited by George Hibbard, makes a significant contribution to the reassessment of Jonson. In implicit response to T.S. Eliot's charge in his 1919 essay on Jonson that “ no critic has succeeded in making [Jonson] appear pleasurable or even interest­ ing," six of the contributors endeavor to make a case for the appeal of Jonson as man, playwright, masque-maker, or poet. The two other contributors write on Shakespeare and The Wasp: J.M. Nosworthy explores the “ love interest" in Hamlet, and J.W . Lever introduces a neglected manuscript play about to be printed which he bills as "a political thriller disguised as history" and "a comedy of disguise" by an anonymous Caroline dramatist. Samuel Schœnbaum begins the volume by focussing on "The Humorous Jonson" and by reminding us that, over-solemnity and erudite exegesis to the contrary, we are in fact meant to laugh at Jonson's comedies (preferably in performance) and that it is by his mastery of comedy that Jonson is likely to live. We need to be reminded that Jonson can be a very funny writer to judge by what Richard Levin identifies in " 'No Laughing Matter: ' Some New Readings of The Alchemist" (Ben...