Approaches to Teaching English Renaissance Drama (review)

For those of us who have taught courses in non-Shakespearean Renaissance drama, the challenges are familiar, such as the perceived need to situate every play in terms of Shakespeare, the unfamiliarity of the language and social world portrayed, the inexplicable motivations of the characters, and the relative paucity of film/stage versions for supplementary viewing. This book is part of the Approaches to Teaching World Literature series published by the Modern Language Association under the general editorship of Joseph Gibaldi, with the purpose of being a "sourcebook of material, information, and ideas on teaching the subject of the volume to undergraduates" (Preface). This welcome addition to the series deals with English Renaissance drama, giving a variety of classroom approaches in twenty-eight essays that focus on a range of plays by dramatists such as Jonson, Marlowe, Kyd, Webster, Cary, and Middleton.

In preparation for this volume, Bamford and Leggatt conducted a survey in which "instructors were asked to report on the courses in which they teach Renaissance drama, the challenges and opportunities it presents, and the critical approaches they have found useful" (3). Leggatt's brief overview of the survey results from forty-seven respondents provides an intriguing starting place for this collection, although a more thorough incorporation of the results might have been beneficial. Continuing the discussion on "Practices and Materials" in the initial section of the book, Bamford takes up the problem of finding good texts for teaching these courses, listing available editions and recommended reading, both primary and secondary; she mentions the Norton anthology of English Renaissance Drama, edited by David Bevington, which is now available and is an excellent textbook for courses such as the ones described in this volume. Also helpful is Philippa Sheppard's list of available film adaptations of Renaissance drama, including information on where to procure copies.

The second section is entitled "Approaches" and comprises the bulk of this collection. A subdivision of this section into "Texts and Resources," "Strategies," and "Contexts" serves as a rough organization that alerts readers to the methods discussed in each part. Although the approaches vary widely, these refreshingly succinct essays are all devoted to explanations of effective classroom practice.

The first subsection deals with the availability and employment of supplementary material. A.R. Braunmuller provides a thorough overview of information relating to the physical staging, costumes, and playhouses of the early modern stage as a way of engaging students, while Philippa Sheppard gives a bibliography of books with useful illustrations for teaching Renaissance drama, with suggestions appropriate to particular plays. Taking up the issue of multiple primary texts, Leah Marcus focuses on Doctor Faustus as a way of engaging a larger question: "[H]ow, if at all, should we incorporate our knowledge of textual differences into our teaching of non-Shakespearean plays?" (29). This "Texts and Resources" subsection is useful, although it would be more appropriate as part of the short "Practices and Materials" section, for it seems to be a continuation of the type of material provided there.

The second subsection on "Strategies," however, is decidedly different, dealing with practical, hands-on classroom methods. Joseph Candido focuses on the problem of language in Ben Jonson by outlining his teaching method in The Alchemist; he aims to "begin with concrete and minute incidents and ask students how any particular event, individual utterance, or pattern of speech contains in its linguistic texture ideas that can shed light on the play as a whole" (57). Two essays here also offer quite different views on how to relate Renaissance plays to the students' own experience. James Hirsh believes that when teaching The White Devil it is productive to allow students to connect the drama to notions of "human experience," but Frances Teague strongly disagrees with this sort of approach, explaining that she has "adopted a teaching technique that allows the students to control the works they study effectively enough to understand how their preconceptions about the Renaissance, drama, or literature may fail" (67...