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Reviews 3 Q Q travelled the Camino, has to question whether anyone would want to expose such an expensive and large book to the rigours of travel when there are numerous less expensive and more durable guides avatiable. While this problem does lessen the usefulness of the book as a complete reference work on the architecture of the Camino, the combination of the PUgrim's Guide with the authors' observations and comments makes this a useful work for anyone wanting an introduction to medieval pilgrimages and the Camino de Santiago, as well as a good general reference for those interested in the art and architecture of this pilgrimage route which so heavily influenced both France and Spain. Lawrence V. Mott Department of History University of Minnesota Slights, Camille Wells, Shakespeare's comic commonwealths, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1993; cloth; pp. viii, 290; R. R. P. CAN$45.00. It is increasingly difficult nowadays to open a new book on Shakespeare with the expectation of receiving new insights: the reader is always haunted by the suspicion that more would be gained by seeing fresh productions of the plays, or by re-reading them. What then, is special about Shakespeare's comic commonwealths? The book explores the importance of community in the comedies. Thisrefersnot only and not chiefly to the workings of the law or to formal relationships between different social ranks, but more to informal mechanisms by which 'honest neighbours' reconcile quarrelling parties and encourage social cohesion and good will. In each of the comedies the social background to the events is constructed slighdy differently. Customs and conditions known to the Elizabethan audience in its life outside the theatre are always blended with exotic or non-realistic elements. One of the latter, w e may note, is the absence of a notion of the need for strong central government. In King Lear and Thefirstpart ofKing Henry the Fourth the prospect of a partitioning of the nation-state is a threat In the 'pure' comedies, however, the typical unit is an Italian city-state, whose smallness is presented as desirable and endearing. In The merry wives of Windsor, the only one to be set in England, it is a small country town, in which intrusions from the capital threaten disruption. A n d while the typical Shakespearian comic duke makes 310 Reviews pronouncements at the beginning of the play about the importance of enforcing laws and exacting punishments, he nevertheless allows social and humanitarian motives to prevail over strict justice in the end. This seems to have something to do with the fact that he presides over a small community, not a large one. Shakespearian comedy, for the writer of this book, is not revolutionary in its sympathies: 'All that Gonzalo would banish from his perfect commonwealth—trade, magistrates, letters, riches, poverty, servitude, inherited privilege, and individual property—are the very stuff of Shakespeare's comic societies.' While acknowledging that Shakespeare's plays 'were written and performedfirstin an undemocratic, racist, sexist culture', Slights clearly feels that their representations of cohesion and community make up for these failings. Besides, a monolithic culture, unified through uniformity of beliefs and values, 'was neither a reality nor an ideal for the Elizabethans: in fact, emphasis on the desirable heterogeneity of society was commonplace.' So rather than re-present the plays for a twentieth-century culture, Slights prefers to resituate her reader in what she regards as the relatively benign imaginative world of the Elizabethan playwright. While acknowledging writers like Greenblatt, Montrose, Dollimore and Sinfield, and (outside the realm of Shakespearian criticism) Bakhtin and Eco, Slights does not confront them. She prefers to go behind them to the plays themselves, reverting to a type of largely empirical criticism which was prominent two decades ago. Within these limitations the book is wellwritten and often perceptive. W h U e it is unlikely to effect a turnaround in Shakespearian studies, it should give its student readers some creative insights into the imaginative world of Shakespearian comedy. T. G. A. Nelson Department of English and Communication Studies The University of N e w England Slights, William W. E., Ben Jonson and the art of secrecy, Toronto, University of Toronto...

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