Hamlet, and: The Merchant of Venice (review)

258 Reviews seeking to understand English wills as legal products wiU find this collection of essays a valuable introduction to further research. Stephanie Tarbin Department of History Australian National University Smith, Peter J. and Nigel Wood, ed., Hamlet (Theory in Practice), Buckingham, Open University Press, 1996; paper; pp. 161; R.R.P. AUS$37.95. W o o d Nigel, ed., The Merchant of Venice (Theory in Practice), Buckingham, Open University Press, 1996; paper; pp. 192; R.R.P. AUS$39.95. The Theory in Practice series includes six Shakespeare volumes, covering seven plays. Currently available, in addition to those under review, are: Henry TV, Parts I and II, Measure for Measure, The Tempest and Antony and Cleopatra. A recent survey of what this series' writers scathingly, but not very originally, call 'the Shakespeare industry' noted the disjuncture between the 'outpourings' of academic discussion of the plays and the theatre-going public's relatively simple enjoyment of them. The problem for teachers of undergraduates is, given limited time, to talk about the plays and to find ways to introduce students to these often abstruse theoretical approaches. The Penguin Critical Guides, for instance, offer no assistance at all to those wanting to get up to scratch in this field, while the discussions of 'theory' by Brian Vickers and Graham Bradshaw are addressed to readers already familiar with both texts and theoretical approaches. Only two volumes of the Norton Shakespeare have appeared in editions which take in the latest theoretical material, and a new series announced by Macmillan from the USA, Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism, is only just beginning. Contributions from the U.K take a more partisan line when turning to this task: on one side there is Howard Mills' Working with Shakespeare; on the other, the new versions of the Casebooks, which proclaim their rejection of 'traditional methods and assumptions'. If there were a title of 'Most Controversial Shakespeare Series', Reviews 259 Theory in Practice might offer a strong challenge to the Shakespearean Originals: First Editions series (Holdemess and Loughrey, ed.), except for the overlapping among their contributors. Both enterprises see themselves as taking on the old guard: it is not only '[t]he epistemological difficulties of Hamlet' which provide for these writers 'evidence of the inappropriateness of our traditional critical approaches' (Hamlet, p. 13). Though Theory in Practice promises to move beyond the 'crude dichotomy of theory versus non-theory' (Hamlet , p. 8) the essays are often sharply combative in tone. Shakespeare, if not more generaUy 'the author', is a frequent target, most notably in the 'resistant' reading of The Merchant of Venice by Scott Wilson, w h o describes his o w n m o d e of discourse as 'foulmouthed irreverence'. This particular attempt 'to help bridge the divide between the understanding of theory and the interpretation of individual texts' (Hamlet, p. ix) busily attempts to meet its perceptions of students' needs, offering advice on 'How to Use this Book', and no less than five other prefatory or concluding pieces, including annotated 'Further Reading' and a large bibliography. To m e this amounted to an excess of preliminary directions, while the 'Supplement' of foUow-up questions (from the editor to the essayist) merely gave both a chance for further elaborations, rather than raising questions or doubts. The coUections do not aim to provide a survey of the fundamental argument of a particular theoretical approach, but invite contributors to demonstrate an approach in their essays. A s anyone w h o has attempted it wtil know, it is not easy to balance the need to address the text and the particular theoretical position, whtie simultaneously mamtaining some critical distance from it, and writing in an accessible language. Of course, probably only a minority of these contributors would accept that as a definition of what they should be doing. The Merchant volume has a useful essay by Graham Holdemess, a reading of the play 'through' Marx's essay on the Jewish question which embraces m u c h of the play's riches. Indeed, given the particular 'economic' focus of the other chapters, there is an amount of repetition here, especially when the argument of Newman's essay...