The Italian World of English Renaissance Drama: Cultural Exchange and Intertextuality by Michele Marrapodi Italian Studies in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries by Michele Marrapodi , Giorgio Melchiori (review)

Abstract

work develops. In particular, I would urge him to engage more thoroughly with recent trendsin Englishhistoricallinguistics,notablylexicological study. UNIVERSITY OFGLASGOW JEREMYJ.SMITH TheItalianWorld ofEnglishRenaissance Drama:Cultural Exchange andIntertextuality. Ed. by MICHELEMARRAPODI.Associate ed. A. J. HOENSELAARS. Cranbury, NJ: University of Delaware Press;London: Associated University Presses. I998. 370 PP. ?39.50. Italian Studiesin Shakespeare and his Contemporaries. Ed. by MICHELE MARRAPODI and GIORGIO MELCHIORI. Cranbury,NJ:University of Delaware Press;London: Associated University Presses. I999. 299 pp. ?37. These studies disclose considerable editorial versatility. Michele Marrapodi has respectivelyedited and, with Giorgio Melchiori, co-edited two collections of essays that demonstrate divergent approaches to Renaissance drama and its Italian connections. TheItalianWorld ofEnglishRenaissance Dramais broadly historicist,as Marrapodi in his introduction applies Stephen Greenblatt's concept of 'social energy' to denote interculturaldiscourse between literatures.Focusingon a range of Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline plays, international contributors to the volume explore intertextualmatriceswith the Italian drama and, more nebulously, suggestions of cultural exchange. ItalianStudies appears in the series International Studies in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries and as such reflects the present critical and theoretical perspectives of Italian scholars writing about English, principallyShakespearean,drama. The two partsof TheItalianWorld ofEnglish Renaissance Drama,'CulturalExchange' and 'Intertextuality',provide a useful structureto the volume, although the lines of demarcation are not alwaysclear-cut. Culturalexchange is an evocative but loose term for the multifariousborrowingsfrom and resonances of Italian literarytexts, in additionto denoting the gripItalyheld on the imaginationof Englishplaywrights for nearlya century.In an opening essay,David Bevington describesthe process of Italian influence on Renaissance drama, ranging from the translationof Ariosto's I Suppositi in George Gascoigne's Supposes in 1556 through to the Italianatesettings of the late plays ofJohn Ford,as developed in a subsequentessayby Lisa Hopkins. The narrative, of course, does not finish there, as both Richard Flecknoe and William Davenant appealed to the Italian scenic theatre and its use of recitativein their attemptsto revive theatreduringthe commonwealth. A. J. Hoenselaars is the sole contributor to extend the period of analysis when he cites, among earlier examples, the influenceof Machiavelli'snovella Belfagor in the anti-parliamentarian playlet, TheDevill,andtheParliament (I648). The figurationof the Italian court in Jacobean drama is a given of Renaissance dramacriticism.There is, however, scope for furtherinvestigationof the politics of specificlocations. In this context, J. R. Mulryne explores the representationof the Florentine setting in Middleton's Women BewareWomen as a 'working model of a possible futurefor London and England'. In other essaysin the section, classicalor Italianliterarytexts become the focal point of interpretation:Castiglione's TheBook oftheCourtier helps to define Othello's 'otherness'and the myth of Procne pervades successiveEnglishRenaissancerevenge tragedies. In her introduction to the section on intertextuality, Louise George Clubb concedes that, in the absence of specific textual contacts, 'the conduit carrying knowledge of the Italiantheatricalsystemremainsunidentified'.With thispremise, work develops. In particular, I would urge him to engage more thoroughly with recent trendsin Englishhistoricallinguistics,notablylexicological study. UNIVERSITY OFGLASGOW JEREMYJ.SMITH TheItalianWorld ofEnglishRenaissance Drama:Cultural Exchange andIntertextuality. Ed. by MICHELEMARRAPODI.Associate ed. A. J. HOENSELAARS. Cranbury, NJ: University of Delaware Press;London: Associated University Presses. I998. 370 PP. ?39.50. Italian Studiesin Shakespeare and his Contemporaries. Ed. by MICHELE MARRAPODI and GIORGIO MELCHIORI. Cranbury,NJ:University of Delaware Press;London: Associated University Presses. I999. 299 pp. ?37. These studies disclose considerable editorial versatility. Michele Marrapodi has respectivelyedited and, with Giorgio Melchiori, co-edited two collections of essays that demonstrate divergent approaches to Renaissance drama and its Italian connections. TheItalianWorld ofEnglishRenaissance Dramais broadly historicist,as Marrapodi in his introduction applies Stephen Greenblatt's concept of 'social energy' to denote interculturaldiscourse between literatures.Focusingon a range of Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline plays, international contributors to the volume explore intertextualmatriceswith the Italian drama and, more nebulously, suggestions of cultural exchange. ItalianStudies appears in the series International Studies in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries and as such reflects the present critical and theoretical perspectives of Italian scholars writing about English, principallyShakespearean,drama. The two partsof TheItalianWorld ofEnglish Renaissance Drama,'CulturalExchange' and 'Intertextuality',provide a useful structureto the volume, although the lines of demarcation are not alwaysclear-cut. Culturalexchange is an evocative but loose term for the multifariousborrowingsfrom and resonances of Italian literarytexts, in additionto denoting the gripItalyheld on the imaginationof Englishplaywrights for nearlya...