Cornish literature (review)

Reviews 279 commedia in Florence and Ferrara in 1565 and 1566. Helen WatanabeO 'Kelly in 'From Italy to Versailles via Bavaria: the Munich Applausi of 1662 and Les plaisirs de I'isle enchantie' describes a process of transmission, as the daughter of a French princess in Turin takes Italian practices with her to Munich in 1564, which in their turn influence spectacles back at the court of Versailles. J. R. Mulryne in 'Marriage entertainments in the Palatinate for princess Elizabeth Stuart and the Elector Palatine' examines the political significance of the entertainments of 161213 . H. Gaston Hall in 'Italian participation in French court ballet, come"dieballet and opera 1581-1674', Marie-Claude Canova-Green in 'Les "feste teatrali" de Mantoue et de Florence en 1608 et leurs metamorphoses sur la schne francaise'', and Josephe Jacquiot in 'De Ventree de Cesar a Rome a I'entrie des rois de France dans leurs bonne villes' constitute the Frenc section. John Peacock in 'Ben Jonson and the Italian festival books', Olav Lausund in 'Splendour at the Danish court the coronation of Christian IV, and H. Neville Davies in 'The limitations of festival: Christian IV's state visittoEngland in 1606', make up the Anglo-Danish section. Only the most dedicated student of European festivals and their Italian origins will read this volume from cover to cover. The key conclusions can be drawn at any stage. Pageantry that represents the majesty of its sponsor is enormously expensive and has to be done properly. The elements proper to the Renaissance theatrical festivals include Italian-ness, though with Jonson this becomes an insult, and extravagant invention, grounded nevertheless in antiquity, that will inspire wonder and amazement. Nerida Newbigin Department of Italian University of Sydney Murdoch, Brian, Cornish literature, Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 1993; cloth; pp. ix, 174; R.R.P. UK£25/US$50.00. Most of the surviving literature in the Cornish language is medieval and most of that is drama. Everyone working with early European drama should read this book. Initial reservations about why more comparative attention is not given to the Breton plays are overcome as the various pieces of Cornish literature are put in their proper context as one of several distinctive early European dramatic traditions: Breton, English, French, German, and so forth. The resulting study illuminates more than Cornish literature. It 280 Reviews gives a valuable perspective on medieval popular culture and its roots in medieval learned culture. The opening chapter does not stress the extensiveness of the literature and this is intensified by an error on the dust jacket: 'Little now survives— only two plays and a poem'. Even if the three plays of the Ordinalia are counted as one, as is not customary, this would be wrong. More to the point, these are long verse plays. Of the Ordinalia trilogy, Origo mundi is 2,846 lines, Passio Domini 3,242 lines, and Resurrexio Domini 2,646 lines. Beunans Meriasek has around 4,500 lines, Creadon ofthe world over 2,500 lines, and the Passion poem is about 2,000 lines. These works are the subject of chapters twotofive,while the last chapter deals with the bits and pieces of post-Reformation Cornish literature, including modern revivals. The poem known as Pascon agan Arluth ('The passion of our Lord') or Mount Calvary is a work of affective piety and didacticism. It is the earliest complete work in Comish, probably from the earlier part of die fourteenth century. While it is 'not die same kind of work as die Ordinalia' (p. 39), the poem is one of the sources of the Ordinalia Passion play. The Ordinalia trilogy was probably composed in the latter part of die fourteenth century. Murdoch makes clear the ways in which it is distinctively different from its English counterparts, and his elucidation of one oftiiese,the use of the Holy Rood legend to unify the three plays, is especially effective. He asserts strongly die presence of intricate links between the three plays and their component parts and has an important message regarding early drama in general: 'There is a danger in the evaluation of medieval plays of stressing the disparity of individual elements, but the notion of dramatists...