Reviews 281 men, and Don Quixote; the figure he seeks exists in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but the main current of the Shakespearean canon sug gests that “earthlier happy is the rose distilled.” Of the four essays not yet discussed, one uses deconstruction, one uses metadrama, and two use political approaches. Madelon Gohlke’s far-reaching essay offers standard overall interpretations, good insights on metaphor, and a meditation on patriarchal versus feminine discourse. Marianne Novy’s account of the heroines as actors and audience is perceptive, but shows the limits of the approach; the gentleman’s account of Cordelia reacting to Kent’s letter reveals her as more than audience/ listener—she is like “a better way.” Paul Berggren’s “The Woman’s Part: Female Sexuality as Power in Shakespeare’s Plays” and Lorie Leininger’s “The Miranda Trap” show the virtues and the dangers of revisionist approaches respectively. The Berggren essay covers too much for analysis here, but every generalization provokes thought. Both these essays are weak on The Tempest, probably because they share the same political bias. Disliking Prospero, why should both critics believe him in thinking Caliban unteachable? Of all Shakespeare’s plays, The Tempest is the most likely to present the characters as extensions of the major figure; self-government is certainly a major theme, for without such government one is a slave. Ferdinand is in bondage, Antonino-Sebastian-Alonso-Gonzalo are spell-stopped, Ariel is a servant, Trinculo-Stephano are stuck in mud. Whatever political application King James’ daughter might have made, the play is intractable when treated from a literalistic political viewpoint. As in Measure for Measure, everyone is freed; no real government’s punishments extend “not a frown further.” As for Caliban, he hears music, dreams, knows that clothes are just show, is acknowledged by Prospero, and is left—free— on the island to “seek for grace hereafter.” The Woman’s Part is a very useful and provocative collection—highly recommended. CECILE WILLIAMSON CARY Wright State University Bernard F. Dukore. Money and Politics in Ibsen, Shaw, and Brecht. Columbia, Missouri, and London: University of Missouri Press, 1980. Pp. xxii + 172. $15.95. This book is a doctoral dissertation grown up. Its title with the quasi-scientific ardor germane to such activities neatly and clearly marks out its concerns. There are to be no mysteries confronted, discoveries made, or journeys unplanned in this undertaking; the itinerary is set forth at the very start of the exposition with the mathematical rigidity (not to say rigor) of some algebraic formulae. This study, we must never forget, is thematic criticism at its most relentless and formidable: interests pursued, one must also say, with an admirable, though ultimately stulti fying, scholastic vigor. 282 Comparative Drama Professor Dukore, concerned with the subject of money and other social and/or political issues in selected plays of these eminent dramatists, examines eighteen texts as exemplars of this theme, thesis, position, or attitude. There is nothing particularly wrong with his discussion (six chapters, an introduction, and a conclusion) which neatly wraps up his argument rather like an evening spent with the debate squad. Everything Professor Dukore says about the plays is right, correct, true, demon strable, and scholarly. Ibsen, Shaw, and Brecht are, were, and continue to be (since in a very real, profound, and wondrously reassuring sense none of them is dead) radical critics of society, writers who treated “similar issues or themes,” to quote the hortatory pronouncements of the blurb writer. That these men are, were, or continue to be also great poets of the stage is a profound and difficult issue the book ignores at its own peril, a notion Professor Dukore quickly and hurriedly mentions (p. xxii) as he moves on to his easier societal concerns. But the latter issue (how ideas are thrust onto the stage and amalgamated into that unique stage poetry we call modern drama) is another matter of greater importance, I think, raising questions beyond the intentions and scope of this current undertaking. It is, of course, to ask Professor Dukore to write a book other than the one under review. But the disturbing problem will not go away; it is, in fact...