M. S. Robinson, Writing the Reformation: Actes and Monuments and the Jacobean History Play, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2002, pp. 216, hb. £40, ISBN: 0754606147.The idea behind this book is a commendable one. Robinson's professed goal, to examine those Jacobean history plays based on episodes in John Foxe's celebrated martyrology, the Acts and Monuments (popularly known as 'Foxe's Book of Martyrs'), and the ways in which they articulate 'a Foxean vision of history' (p. xv), if successfully implemented, would fill an important and neglected gap in literary studies. Unfortunately, this design is so poorly executed that Robinson's book does not appear to achieve any useful purpose whatsoever.A number of conceptual and methodological flaws undermine the volume. One major conceptual problem is Robinson's failure to define properly the topic of the book, 'the Foxean history play'. Is this any history play which uses Foxe as a source, as Robinson seems to indicate at one point (p. xv)? Or is it, as she implies on the same page, plays which give dramatic expression to Foxe's interpretation of history? Apparently it is the former, since Robinson repeatedly discusses Shakespeare's Henry VIII, which - despite Robinson's bizarre claim that it imitates 'the form of apocalyptic history itself' (p. 19) - cannot be claimed as a presentation of Foxe's interpretation of history. In fact, since Thomas Dekker, Thomas Drue, Thomas Heywood, Anthony Munday, Samuel Rowley, William Shakespeare and John Webster are all the authors of 'Foxean' history plays discussed by Robinson, her criteria for inclusion appear to be so loose that her book becomes simply an omnium gatherum of Jacobean dramatists. If these authors share similar religious beliefs, similar political convictions, a similar interpretation of history or even similar attitudes, Robinson has not revealed them.This lack of discrimination is aggravated by Robinson's failure to consider, much less analyze, the different purposes these plays served and the different audiences for which they were written. Heywood's hugely popular If You Know Not Me, with its stock comic characters such as the prodigal nephew and the foolish but wealthy tradesman is a very different work on every level from Dekker's complex, detailed allegory, The Whore of Babylon; yet Robinson runs them both, and all the other work she discusses, through the same blender. Questions of patronage and performance are completely ignored, while the political circumstances in which the works were written are only mentioned very occasionally.The chief methodological problem in the book is Robinson's reliance on one of the corrupt Victorian editions of the Acts and Monuments and her failure to consult the original editions. …