The Towneley Cycle: Unity and Diversity by Peter Happé

Abstract

MLR, I03.3, 2oo8 823 a new socio-political significance in an open society. People were sick of ideology [. . .]' (p. i89) and the form 'would never again be permitted [. . .] to kowtow to respectability' (p. I9I). But if the defence of reputation is no longer an issue, why do publishers, editors, and film-makers employ lawyers?What about ghost-written autobiography? And if 'ideology' was dead, how do we explain theCold War? The new subjectivism ofmodernism and postmodernism isapparently embraced yetwith no acknowledgement of the epistemological collapse, the sense ofmultiple selves, essential to the deconstruction ofVictorian realism. Hamilton's book is, in effect,a defence of realism, his chapter on thedeath of theauthor a lightweight snook-cocking at Barthes and Bakhtin asmembers of 'a group of intellectuals' (p. 206) resentful of the power of authors to control their texts. 'Barthes and Derrida', he asserts, 'were exposed and derided' (p. 2I3). Of course theyweren't: and yetHamilton wishes to defend feminism, gay liberation, cultural multiplicity, and the study of ordinary lives, strangely ignoring theways inwhich postmodern notions of the self have enabled such liberal thinking.The biography he admires is 'history without theory' (p. I90). Yet his own history isdeeply ideological. What is lacking here isany serious engage ment with the ethics of biography. Only one side of this ispresented: the rightof free speech. The other, the colonization and prostitution of a lifeforprofit, is largelyneg lected.He cites Janet Malcolm's The Silent Woman (I 994) as 'by farthemost brilliant expose of theworkings ofmodern biography' (p. 276), yet the object of her assault is the object ofHamilton's defence. The moral question she examines-who owns a life?-is effectively answered by him as 'The biographer'. And the big question, 'Where does factend and interpretation begin?' (p. I5), is sidestepped. UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER MARTIN STANNARD The Towneley Cycle: Unity and Diversity. By PETER HAPPE. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. 2007. xiv+290 pp. ?6o. ISBN 978-o-7083-2048-8. The Towneley plays, one of the four cycles ofmedieval English drama, are linked with Wakefield and have contributions by an unknown 'WakefieldMaster'. His dra mas (which include local shepherds with a firmgrip on reality)have long been praised fordepictions of lifeboth sacred and profane. Some think that if Bruegel had not been a Flemish painter but aYorkshire playwright, his work would have been much like thatof the Wakefield Master. To thewriting of thatunknown genius, as also the rest of the cycle, Peter Happe isan expert guide. During fourdecades he has enlightened readers on themodes and contexts of early English drama, and sowrites with the experience of a lifetime.The result is a carefully structured and disciplined book in fourparts. It begins with the textof the cycle; goes on to performance, and then ideology and interpretation; and closes with a brief account of textual negotiation. The firstsection hence discusses the unique sixteenth-century manuscript, once in thekeeping of theTowneley familyofLancashire, but now inCalifornia. Subjects to the forehere are the adaptation of the cycle from theYork one, theprovenance and authorship of thematerial, and what we can gather of the Wakefield Master himself. The second section, on performance, contains much novel material, since itdiscusses productions not just of the fifteenthcentury but of the twentieth and twenty-first. This is refreshing.Happe assembles a mass of experience from recent actors and directors of theplays.We hear of theirproblems and rewards as regards performance out of doors, waggons vs. a fixed stage, communication with audiences of bystanders, and so on. Happe thus takes his dramas out of the stale air of a library to their rightful place below the skies of an English high street. 824 Reviews The third section engages with questions of gender, religion, popular culture,mu sic, class, and social justice (with the Wakefield Master's known eye for theunderdog, like amedieval Mayhew), as also theoverarching dimension of theplays as a comedy human and divine. This includes (p. 226) the special interestof the Wakefield Master (forwhom heaven and hell were not vague concepts but present realities) in human evil. The final section rounds things up onmatters of interpretation and reception. This is a clear, sober, and absorbing study,quietly original and full of good...