From Script to Stage in Early Modern England (review)

The new series of which this book is part, Redefining British Theatre History, was initiated because "theatre history is in need of a substantial reassessment" (xi). In what will eventually be five volumes, the series aims "to establish ways in which previous assumptions need fundamental questioning and in which a future for the field can be enunciated in modes as yet undervalued" (xiii). Each volume has its origins in a conference organized by the general editor Peter Holland and sponsored by the Huntington Library and Palgrave Macmillan. On the evidence of this volume, such a context can produce a wide range of essays, some better suited than others to subsequent publication.

Perhaps in an attempt to impose order on an idiosyncratic mix of ideas and approaches, the editors have organized these eleven essays under four headings: "Questions of Evidence," "Interrogating Data," "What Is a Play?" and "Women's Work"; but these divisions seem arbitrary, and the last especially problematic in its implied segregation. It is difficult to know whom the authors and editors had in mind as readers of these essays: seemingly not a general reader, because in most cases the context for the arguments is minimal; probably not a student, because while the discussions are usually very specific, too little supporting documentation is provided and the index is rudimentary at best. Possibly the intended readers are other researchers who share the interests of the contributors; but too often in this collection an idea is offered as new when in fact similar suggestions have been made by other researchers who are nowhere acknowledged. While these omissions would not be surprising or noteworthy in conference papers, they are more troubling in a volume that advertises itself as offering new ways to do theater history. This is not to say that there is no place for the kind of informed speculation that distinguishes the best essays in this collection; but in other essays the treatment of evidence is sometimes surprisingly superficial, the interpretations questionable, and the links between points tenuous. Such weaknesses, combined with the failure to acknowledge earlier work, are almost certain to raise the eyebrows if not the ire of those who have reason to know better.

That said, there are some stimulating pieces here, which certainly have the potential to spark new approaches for research, to initiate reassessments of old ideas, or to suggest different places to look for evidence. Not surprisingly, the Records of Early English Drama project receives attention in several essays. Peter Holland begins his contribution by noting the irony that one needs to look long and hard in the REED volumes for the title of a play, and then demonstrates how REED offers the opportunity to redefine "what dramatic activity is in the early modern period" (53). Holland's particular concern is our collective failure to "[theorize] the position within the central strategies of theatre history of almost any form of event that is non-metropolitan and/or non-professional, precisely those areas of activity that REED most completely documents" (53–54). Moving back in time, Richard Beadle tries to provide a clearer idea of what spectators of medieval performances saw and how they felt about what they saw. Beadle's particular interest is the convention of performers wearing masks, especially when representing supernatural figures. He sees "the masking of the supernatural figures in the mysteries as one of the central and governing facts of late medieval theatricality" (37). The difficulty of reconstructing the experience of early modern performance is also Bruce R. Smith's concern. To account for "the phenomenological experience of movement in early modern theatre" (135), he considers movement in actors' bodies and the physical space of the playhouse, as well as how movement affects the perceptions of spectators. He concludes that "the entire space within the wooden O needs to be imagined as full of movement" that "begins in the will...