The Theatres of Inigo Jones and John Webb by John Orrell

Abstract

and motifs, and confirms her views by a sound consideration of the precision with which Malory uses language. She cites echoes in widely separated parts of the Morte, confirming her interpretation and, incidentally, the unity of the whole book. Particularly convincing is Kennedy’s examination of the occurrence of certain key words in the Morte. Identifying the meaning for Malory of such words as lightly, mischief, and adventure, but especially of hap and unhap and their cognates, she confirms her opinion that Malory believed, like the True knight, in a providential world. In such a world, the future was not determined, as the fatalistic Heroic knight believed, but was one in which God might “fordo” destiny, and where men’s actions affected the outcome. It differed, too, from the world of the Worshipful knight in which God was “on the way to becoming the Prime Mover of the post-Newtonian Christian universe (328), and had done his part by giving man reason. In view of the evidence she offers of Malory’s belief in a world governed by God’s providence, and in True knighthood as the only practical ideal, it would seem difficult for historians to avail themselves of the permission Kennedy grants them, as one alternative, of attributing the collapse of Arthur’s kingdom to Lancelot for keeping “ trouth” with the queen. They could do so, I think, only by believing that Malory was wrong in his vision of the world. For Kennedy leads us to the point of thinking that Malory shared Rolle’s opinion that a just society might be established if “all men truely lyfed” (344), and that bad things happen to good men because they “with ill ar mengyd” (337). Knighthood in the “ Morte Darthur” is a book no specialist will want to overlook or, I think, will fail to profit from. An excellent bibliography and notes that are easily accessible are added virtues. It is also a book that will present no great difficulties for general readers with a love for Malory, and will certainly enhance their pleasure in his great work. Margaret j. a l len / University of Manitoba John Orrell, The Theatres of Inigo Jones and John Webb (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 240. $42.50 (u.s.) This is a fine book — meticulously researched, elegantly written, and hand­ somely produced. Together with Orrell’s previous book — The Quest for Shakespeare’s Globe (Cambridge University Press, 1983) — it establishes its author as the most innovative and original historian of the English Renais­ sance theatre. It is not flattery — it is merely “free truth” — to say that John 328 Orrell combines those “high” qualities which Jonson praised in his teacher Camden — “sight in searching the most antique springs” and “weight and authority” in recording, explaining, and integrating the fruits of research. Orrell’s book is a reconstruction and analysis of the theatre-designs (ex­ cluding those for masques) of Inigo Jones and John Webb. It draws together all the material pertinent to such a study, and in this respect alone will serve others as a valuable reference book. With one exception, Orrell’s assembling and basic handling of his material is entirely sound (the exception — a speculative attempt to connect four unidentified drawings with Christopher Beeston’s Cockpit Theatre in Drury Lane — will be dealt with below). Orrell ’s extensive knowledge of Renaissance theatre-design and of the particular theatres of Jones and Webb allows him to deal ably with the relationship between Jones and Webb and their Italian precursors (especially Sebastiano Serlio and Andrea Palladio), with the artistic relationship between the two men themselves (Jones the undoubted master, Webb the undoubted fol­ lower) , and with the influence of Jones and Webb on the English theatre in general. Orrell’s zestful and detailed scholarship undertakes to prove one principal thesis — namely that Jones and his disciple Webb, in their work in the Jacobean and Caroline theatres, laid the foundations for the elaborate scenic stage of the Restoration. In other words, the theatre of the second Caroline age had its roots not in France but rather in the English theatrical tradition developed primarily by Inigo Jones: The new taste for scenes and...