Patterns and Perspectives in English Renaissance Drama by Eugene M. Waith (review)

Reviews381 hoods of Shakespeare's time. For diose of us who have poked around the present day streets of Shoreditch and Southwark retracing the playhouse sites, Berry's work offers anoüier benchmark for orienting ourselves. The voices of the past still inform the atmosphere of Holywell, Curtain Road, and Clink Street. KENNETH S. ROTHWELL University of Vermont Eugene M. Waith. Patterns and Perspectives in English Renaissance Drama. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1988. Pp. 309. $38.50. Professor Waith has collected essays written over a thirty year span and divided them into three groups according to various patterns the dramatists have imposed upon their materials—patterns inspired by the classics, by traditions of staging, and by the dramatists' perspectives. These essays stand the test of time; the slightest reveals wit, breadth of learning, and point. Breadth of learning is most clearly indicated in the first section, essays on patterns derived from the classics. The opening essay focuses on the controversia, an inherently dramatic form of classical declamation and a required exercise for Elizabethan schoolboys. It demanded imaginative description and dramatic characterization combined with sensational themes and exciting detail. Although the essay is limited to Medwall and Massinger, the newly informed reader will find further examples throughout Elizabethan drama. The other articles in this section are narrower. An Ovidian influence and a narrative technique designed to elicit "admiration " is quite plausible for Titus Andronicus, but does not reconcile me to the play. Professor Waith's comparison of English and French plans based on Lucan's account of Pompey's death admirably reveals two writers using the same source for different purposes. "Reflections on the Author's Agents in Comedy" is simply that—reflections, but educated ones ranging from Roman to Restoration comedy. Another essay on comedy argues from Greek "old" comedy, Roman "new" comedy, and Elizabethan drama for exemption from judgment for the comic deceiver. I would argue that the more conventional the play, the more exempt the deceiver from moral judgment. Who would judge Merrygreek? But Jonson judges Volpone, and Helena, though witty slaves and clever wenches be stacked end to end, remains a problem. What has convention to do with such speeches as Helena's after the bed trick: "But oh strange men!/ That can such sweet use make of what they hate/ When saucy trusting of the cozened thoughts/ Defiles the pitchy night"? In the penultimate classical essay, Professor Waith shows how the standard Renaissance history of the development of ancient comedy influenced the development of English comedy. The last classical essay connects two traditional functions of comedy (to mock folly and to celebrate a new society) with some successful English masques. The illustrations (one of which is used on the dust jacket) nicely show the incorporation of the royal audience into the transformed society. The book's second section concerns the English dramatic tradition. 382Comparative Drama The opening essay's title originally focused on Titus and still should— why else stop with that play with a title 'The Wounds of Civil War in Plays by Shakespeare and His Predecessors"? As with several of the essays the point about the devices used to dramatize civil war seems obvious once stated. The next essay, also on Titus, is perceptive on double views—occasions where stage picture and words clash, brutal facts against ceremonial interpretation. After a clear-cut presentation on ceremonies in two Shakespearean romances (Pericles and The Two Noble Kinsmen), an essay on masques underlines the importance of the "spectacle of state" and the monarch as subject, object, and agent. One of the dangers of the approach is apparent in an essay on Jonson ("Things as They Are and the World of Absolutes"); going through a play spectacle by spectacle sometimes approaches plot summary. The final staging essay gives a fascinating account of Ford's Love's Sacrifice, convincing in its contention that Ford relied on staging for much of the final effect. However , I am somewhat bemused by the idea that saintliness consists in not being tempted rather than in abstaining from temptation! Despite containing excellent insights, the last section (perspectives) seems less well defined. Why, for instance, is "King John and the Drama of History...