Three Renaissance Usury Plays: 'The Three Ladies of London' by Robert Wilson, 'Englishmen for my Money' by William Haughton and 'The Hog Hath Lost his Pearl' by Robert Tailor. (Revels Plays Companion Library) by Lloyd Edward Kermode

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218 Reviews Three Renaissance Usury Plays: 'TheThree Ladies ofLondon byRobert Wilson, 'Eng lishmenfor myMoney' byWilliam Haughton and 'The Hog Hath Lost his PearV byRobert Tailor. Ed. by Lloyd Edward Kermode. (Revels Plays Companion Library) Manchester: Manchester University Press. 2009. ?60. xii+380 pp. ISBN 978-0-7190-7262-8. This is a very topical publication. Lloyd Edward Kermode cites a Jacobean com mentator who wrote that 'themightie sommes imployed by the waye of Usurye [...] are thought tobe soe hudge, that ifall themoney ofEngland were layd on one heape and every Usurer should clayme his parte therewoulde not be coyne suffi cient to pay them' (p. 2): in 2009, this vision of irresponsible lending and national bankruptcy seems far from hypothetical. It is not only its financial theme that makes this edition timely,however. In thewake of ScottMcMillin and Sally-Beth MacLean's The Queen's Men and theirPlays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), and theUniversity of Toronto's experimental performances of items from that company's repertory, accessible scholarly editions of 1580s plays such as Robert Wilson's The Three Ladies ofLondon (performed firstby Leicester's and then by the Queen's Men) are much to be welcomed. Kermode's edition of the play is certainly scholarly and accessible; I could wish he had followed McMillin and MacLean's lead by devoting more attention to its performative aspects (for instance, by providing stage directions for apparent instances of direct address to the audience). He also might have spentmore time explaining the play's allegory? something students are likely to find more challenging than, say, its reference to Robin Hood, glossed as a 'Nottingham folk hero of the Middle Ages and Renaissance' (4. 36 n.). Towards the end of The Three Ladies of London we are told that the character Usury 'was seen at the Exchange very lately' (17. 10). InEnglishmen for myMoney, by contrast,William Haughton gives his usurer a name?Pisaro?and shows him atwork in the Exchange; Kermode's volume thus nicely exemplifies the transition from late allegorical morality to the specificity of citizen comedy. He deals well with what must be one of the trickier editorial aspects of Englishmen, the garbled versions ofDutch, French, and Italian spoken by some of the characters, electing to retain an orthographic inconsistency 'in character with the text itselfand with the arguments about Anglo-foreign relations that the play raises' (p. 66). Translations and a glossary guide the reader through the resulting tangles, and amap of London helps localize the play's many topographical references. The surprise inclusion in this volume isRobert Tailor's The Hog Hath Lost his Pearl, acted by apprentices at the Whitefriars in 1613. The performance was broken up by the sheriffs and some of the actors detained, whether because theywere unlicensed amateurs, because the performance was in Lent, or because the 'Hog' was taken as referring to Lord Mayor John Swinnerton (Kermode does not discuss Matthew 7. 6, 'pearls before swine', a phrase that also seems to inform the title). Part city comedy, part Fletcherian tragicomedy, this is an outstandingly derivative play to which usury is, until the final act, relatively marginal. More striking is MLR, 105.1, 2010 219 its frank discussion of the Protestant doctrines of predestination and salvation by faith, repudiating 'the self-justifier,who doth surmise |By his own works to gain salvation' (iv. 3. 76-77). The notion that through being cheated out of his goods the usurer has saved his soul is also treatedwith apparent absence of irony: this is the kind of conversion Jonson, Chapman, and Marston had already parodied in Eastward Ho. While Tailor's play is a left-field (though not unwelcome) choice, modernized editions of the other two are long overdue. Kermode's discussion of earlymodern ideas about usury, and his survey of literaryand dramatic treatments of the subject, will also make this book an essential point of reference for those interested in the topic. Sheffield Hallam University Tom Rutter Acting Like a Lady: BritishWomen Novelists and theEighteenth-Century Theater. By Nora Nachumi. New York: AMS. 2008. xxvi+347 pp. $94.50. ISBN 978 0-404-64850-3. There are many good things to say about Nora...