Faith Gildenhuys, ed. The Bachelor’s Banquet (Ottawa: Dovehouse; Bing hamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1993). 153. $22.00 cloth, $9.00 paper. Faith Gildenhuys has provided a useful modern-spelling edition of The Bach elor’s Banquet, a 1603 English translation and adaptation of the medieval French Le Quinze Joies de Manage. The 153-page hardcover includes a solid 44-page introduction, 89 pages of text, a Commentary, Textual Notes, and brief Works Cited. (Unhappily, there is no index.) Under the auspices of Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies in Binghamton, New York, the edition is part of the publication series of the Barnabe Riche Society, whose commendable aim is “to provide scholarly, modern-spelling editions of works of imaginative literature in prose written in English between 1485 and 1660, with special emphasis on Elizabethan prose fiction” (9). Too long neglected as a poor relation of Elizabethan drama, the period’s prose fiction merits such attention. Highly popular in its own day, the Bachelor’s Banquet — so called be cause it feeds bachelors on a rich diet of anti-wife lore designed to dissuade them from marriage with all its miseries — was “one of the non-dramatic bestsellers of the Elizabethan period” (13). Chapter 3, “A Woman Lying in Childbed,” with its vivid scene of tipsy gossips enthusiastically assassi nating neighbours’ characters, is among the best of a genre I have called “the gossips’ meeting,” and may have been a direct influence on the fine christening-party scene in Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. Gildenhuys responds sensitively to the Banquet’s teasingly unstable genre: “It may be read as a satire against wives, an exemplary fiction about the dangers in marriage, a marriage manual, a nascent short fiction or, most convincingly, as a jestbook, an English incarnation of a book of fabliaux” (31). She comments persuasively on the way the book’s incipient social realism, much enhanced by dialogue added by an English translator with a dramatic flair, creates dynamic tensions when wedded to the carnivalesque fabliau tradition that had always trafficked in flatter characters and skimpier social context. Since the Banquet goes considerably beyond its medieval antecedent in fleshing out marital situations with contemporary English detail, some social history concerning early modern marriage does seem appropriate as back ground; however, I think Gildenhuys relies too heavily on Lawrence Stone, whose conclusions about marriage and the family have come under heavy fire from historians. There have been many recent discussions of early modern marriage (not all of which appear in the Works Cited, by the way — where, for example, is Ann Jennalie Cook’s Making A Match: Courtship in Shake speare and His Society?), and I can sympathize with the editor’s decision 100 not to work this well-tilled ground too exhaustively. However, her account at some points seems too condensed: The family was undergoing a transformation between 1500 and 1700 that created increasing pressures on the relations between husband and wife. Political, economic, and social changes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries increased the significance of the independent individual and con sequently led to the growth of the nuclear family. The growth of the na tion state undermined feudal loyalties. The ability of Elizabeth to sustain peace and the reluctance of James I to wage war lessened the need for unquestioned vassal obedience to the prince. (15) And so on, through commercial development, erosion of old communal affili ations and kinship bonds, the growth of the middle class, population increase in London, — and this is just the second half of one paragraph! Rocketing through a whole age inevitably blurs some fine detail. However, this is to some extent compensated for by the richly-detailed notes in the Commen tary. Gildenhuys says that the notes “are intended to further the enjoyment and appreciation of the nonspecialist” (44), and in general she has a good ear for what words will need to be glossed for nonspecialist readers, though some words left unglossed might still flummox such readers— for example, “lapped” meaning “imprisoned,” “to speed” meaning “to prosper,” “likes her” meaning “pleases her,” and “against” meaning “in preparation for.” Notes appear at the back of the...
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Jan 1, 2002
E Mark Cummings + 2
