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{ 165 } BOOK REV IEwS social caste system in rehearsal, using the actors’ lack of status against them to help manage the rehearsal hall and advance his personal artistic objectives. Within the realm of acting, Schuler subtly reveals how polarized tensions reminiscent of a nation transfixed both by native talent and foreign sophistication emerge. Actors such as Mochalov and Iakovlev possessed Russian soul, that “elusive quality of authentic Russianness” (61), and a native mentality that helped them occasionally deliver brilliant performances; however, these actors found it difficult to consistently harness their talents and replicate their best moments onstage. Popular and well-regarded actors such as Vasilii Karatygin relied much more on discipline and technique, qualities that, in some detractors ’ eyes, masked or obscured Russian soul. Actresses such as Polina Strepetova used the mystic qualities of authentic Russian soul to marshal impressive displays of emotion and native talent. At the same time, she immersed herself into her roles so completely that some observers speculated nervously about “possession ” (235). Throughout the book Schuler identifies a series of compelling rivalries among imperial-era actors. In an age of action and reaction, between national and foreign, and between Moscow and St. Petersburg, a good imperial actor usually had an opponent who employed an almost diametrically opposed acting method. In these contests the actor with the greater sense of Russian soul generally prevailed; however, the presence of competing extremes suggests that the theatre continued to grapple with the modernizing legacy put in motion by Peter’s reforms. Neither the unvarnished evocation of the Russian soul and its native talents nor the polished and practiced depictions of actors associated with the West would suffice. Nearing the end of the nineteenth century, the answer to the question Who are we?—in the Russian theatre at least—remained a mix of native and foreign influences. —RYAN TVEDT University of wisconsin–Madison \ Weyward Macbeth: Intersections of Race and Performance. Edited by Scott L. Newstock and Ayanna Thompson. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. xvii + 288 pp. $90.00 cloth, $28.95 paper. The title of Scott L. Newstock and Ayanna Thompson’s collection of essays comes from the word used to describe the witches in Shakespeare’s play, a word often { 166 } BOOK REV IEwS modernized from “weyward” to “weird.” In her introduction to the collection, which developed from a 2008 conference at Rhodes College focusing on racialized productions of Macbeth, Thompson sets forth the goal of using the “multiplicity and instability” of the word “weyward” as a way of thinking about “racialized restagings, adaptations, and allusions to” Shakespeare’s Macbeth (3). Thompson posits that because Shakespeare’s play deals with the ontological difference between a king and a usurping other, the play has been, at times, particularly attractive to those who felt marginalized by the otherness of their skin. The collection of essays is extremely broad,consisting of twenty-five studies— most of which are no longer than ten pages—plus an epilogue and a detailed appendix. The essays are divided into seven sections. The first section, “Beginnings ,” consists of two essays on race and textuality: Thompson’s introduction and Celia R. Daileader’s exploration of the texts of Macbeth and Middleton’s The Witch, in which Daileader argues that Middleton’s interpolations have created the ambivalent Macbeth we know, contributing to racialized readings and stagings specifically through dance and “exoticizing” theatrical additions. The second section,“Early American Intersections,” contains five essays on American productions and allusions to Macbeth before 1935. John C. Briggs skillfully charts Frederick Douglass’s allusions to and quotations from Shakespeare— especially Macbeth—employing Shakespearean language and character to suggest a freedom of spirit.Bernth Lindfors’s detailed,engaging essay,“Ira Aldridge as Macbeth,” places Aldridge’s performance of the role within the larger trajectory of his career and examines his performance style and audience reception . One of the highlights of “Early American Intersections”—and the entire book—is Heather S. Nathans’s exploration of the ways Macbeth fit the cultural mood in the United States leading up to the Civil War; Nathans shows how the violent imagery from Macbeth and Nat Turner, John Brown, and Edwin Forrest (as Macbeth) became conflated in the popular imagination...

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