Reviews 341 errors in the book, and the Index fails to list one of the authors treated at length in the text. The production of a carelessly printed book crammed with critical judgments that can only be called inanities at best is both an intellectual and an ecological disaster. GEORGE E. WELLWARTH State U niversity o f N e w Y o rk a t B ingham ton David Galloway, ed. The E lizabeth an Theatre III: P apers G iven a t the T hird International C onference on E lizabethan Theatre H eld a t the U n iversity o f W aterloo, O ntario, in July 1970. Hamden, Connecticut: The Shoestring Press, Inc., 1973. Pp. xviii + 150. $7.50. This volume of eight essays was, according to its editor, intended to have “The Theatre and Society” as its general theme. But as Professor Galloway himself admits, several of the essays have no relationship to this theme and concentrate instead on the physical structure of the Eliza bethan playhouse. For example, in the initial essay, “Shakespearian Staging, 1599-1642,” T. J. King surveys the staging requirements of some 276 professional plays produced between 1599 and the closing of the theaters. King’s conclusions, based on a wide sampling and scrupulous scholarship, are sound; but this essay, which King calls “an informal re port on the findings of my book” (p. 1), has been superseded before pu b lication by the book itself (Harvard University Press, 1971), which bears (with the exception of an “e”) the same title as the essay. The es say was undoubtedly useful when it was read at the University of Water loo in 1970, but at present it seems redundant and perhaps should have been excised, following the procedure of the Southeastern Renaissance Conference. The second essay, Clifford Leech’s “Three Times H o and a Brace of Widows: Some Plays for the Private Theatre,” analyzes the similarities among W estw ard H o, E astw ard H o, N o rth w a rd H o, and The W id o w ’s Tears, attempting with this selection to give us some picture of “the private theatre of the seventeenth century’s first decade” (p. 14). Leech feels that the atmosphere of the private theater was that of a “club”: “the profan u m vulgus was without, and could be safely mocked” (p. 15). Herbert Berry’s “The Boar’s Head Again” gives a detailed history of the Boar’s Head Inn from the sixteenth century to the present. In a brief appendix, Berry discusses the accuracy of Ogilby and Morgan’s map. I would like to suggest that this essay is a parody of historical scholarship. It is replete with P.R.O. references, social history, and architectural de velopments; but its final purpose is, ironically, to tell the Greater London Council where to place their blue commemorative plaque, and the essay ends with a national grid reference: TQ 33830/81306: a crowning touch. The only thing we miss in all this is an indication of any possible rele vance to the Elizabethan Theater; the Boar’s Head playhouse is virtually 342 Comparative Drama neglected. I can only conclude that Berry meant to satirize the vacuities of historical recreation. In the next paper, “Shakespeare and the Second Blackfriars,” J. A. Lavin openly attacks, in the scholarship of G. E. Bent ley, a major premise of historical criticism, i.e., that the artist is pro foundly and directly affected by his milieu. Lavin puts it succinctly: “Events which had a marked effect on the activities of the King’s Men need not have had any effect on Shakespeare’s dramatic creations” (p. 76). Lavin’s strictures should perhaps be remembered when rereading Leech’s essay on the private houses. Lavin’s careful skepticism is ex tremely appealing. Glynne Wickham in “Romance and Emblem: A Study in the Dra matic Structure of The W in ter’s Tale" feels that Shakespeare was com menting on contemporary history. Identifying a “gothic tradition of typo logical, prefigurative and emblematic methods of play-construction” (p. 83), Wickham claims that T he W in ter’s Tale was...
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Mar 1, 1973
W L Godshalk 
Open Access