Shakespeare & Co.: Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Dekker, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middletown, John Fletcher and the Other Players in His Story (review)

The full title delineates the book's subject matter, and Wells explains his purpose: "This book aims to place Shakespeare within his theatrical context" (5) in all its richness. He writes the book primarily for an interested general audience, although specialists will certainly learn something and benefit from Wells's informed judgments. Stanley Wells seems the perfect person to offer such an overview of Shakespeare's theatrical world, reinforced by the dust jacket's image of Shakespeare, which curiously resembles Wells's photograph on the flap!

In the opening chapters, Wells provides a sketch of the theatrical scene, underscoring how the theater was a growth industry in late sixteenth-century London. He reminds us that most playwrights were freelance, the notable exception being Shakespeare, who wrote exclusively for one acting company. Shakespeare as actor gets considerable attention, although Wells does not mention that Shakespeare's brother Edmund also acted. Wells surveys the notable actors, including Tarlton, Kemp, Alleyn, and Burbage, and discusses the boy actors as well. He might have explained the organization of acting companies and why Shakespeare's company first had the name Lord Chamberlain's Men. Wells does not discuss the repertory principle by which companies arranged productions.

In the chapter on Marlowe, Wells also includes brief commentary on other playwrights, such as Lyly, Greene, Peele, and Kyd. The analysis of Marlowe flows with rich information (sufficiently sensational about his life) and astute judgments about the plays. Wells asserts: "it seems certain that if Shakespeare had died when Marlowe did, we should now regard Marlowe as the greater writer" (78). He claims that Doctor Faustus is Marlowe's "most enduringly successful play" (91), but does not provide convincing evidence of this. "For all the affinities between Marlowe and Shakespeare, their gifts were different. Shakespeare's range was much greater" (104).

Wells makes a strong case for Dekker's link to London and the emerging interest in the city, as revealed in his plays. The opening sentence in the chapter on Jonson is alone worth the price of the book: "Ben Jonson was the most aggressively self-opinionated, conceited, quarrelsome, vociferous and self-advertising literary and theatrical figure of his time" (129). He also, as Wells proves, had exceptional talent as a playwright. I particularly benefited from the discussion of the vexing Roman tragedy Sejanus, set in the context of Jonson's address to the reader. His comedies, however, remain the most admired, outside of Shakespeare's, as Wells cogently demonstrates. The verbal energy and "unintelligibility" of The Alchemist, for example, underscore Jonson's skill. Wells calls attention to the crucial importance of the Jonson Folio of 1616, which he mistakenly refers to as "printed in double columns" (157). Why not also tell us about William Stansby, the printer of the Folio? The court masques get noticed; and then Wells concludes with this bracing claim: Jonson "is both one of the most fascinatingly complex characters and the most complete man of letters in the whole of British literature" (166). Perhaps.

I think that Wells loses sight of his intended audience in the chapter on Middleton. It turns out to be primarily about Middleton's presumed finger or hand in at least three Shakespeare plays: Timon of Athens, Macbeth, and Measure for Measure. This seems grist for the scholar's mill rather than useful fare for the general reader. Of course, we should know about such matters, but not at the expense of omitting any discussion of Middleton's comedies, one of his great claims to fame. I think that Wells should have a separate chapter in which he confronts matters of authorship, attribution, and collaboration. These issues certainly carry over into the discussion of Fletcher, where the excellent discussion of The Woman's Prize, an unjustly neglected play, gets rather obscured by...