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HUMANITIES 123 and takes its place at the top of Leggatt's writings, which is high praise indeed. (WILLIAM c. CARROLL) John Greenwood. Shifting Perspectives and the Stylish Style: Mannerism in Shakespeare and His Jacobean Contemporaries University of Toronto Press. 227, illus. $35.00 The reader looking for a clear and strongly defended argument will findit difficult to come to terms with this book. Initially, John Greenwood's purpose is to establish a connection between the mannerism of Italian Renaissance artists, especially Giulio Romano, and the style of the Jacobean dramatists, chiefly Shakespeare in, not surprisingly, The Winter's Tale and his other late plays. Perhaps since he is not the first to suggest such stylistic similarities, Greenwood begins with a discussion of how English artists such as Inigo Jones and Shakespeare himself might have seen or heard of examples of Italian mannerist art. It becomes apparent through Greenwood's repeated use of 'if,' 'seems,' 'likely,' 'might,' 'possibly,' 'probably,' and a virtual refrain of 'we do not know' that a direct connection cannot be made. More than anything, this extended introductory discussion prompts one to fall into the same mode, speculating on why he would want to invite scepticism at the outset. Once Greenwood begins to focus on mannerism in English drama, he tells us that 'much of Shakespeare's Jacobean canon in fact can be distinguished from its Elizabethan counterpartby the degree to which the playwright seems concerned with the illusory nature of his art: the meditation is more deliberate and sustained in the Jacobean canon than it is in the Elizabethan one.' If this seems vague, the discussion does not help counter the impression. Particularly disconcerting is Greenwood's practice of taking passages out of their dramatic context in support of interpretations imposed by him. Although the similarity is surely unintended, such authorial manipulation ofthe reader is not very different from the effects ofthe artistic device at the centre of Greenwood's study, the 'Sprecher': 'the figure in the composition who arrests our glance by looking directly at us, thereby directing our attention away from the rest of the work.' The small boy in the foreground of El Greco's Burial of Count Orgaz, the cat in Romano's Madonna della Gatta, and the maiden in the far left of Parmigianino's Madonna with the Long Neck are examples of the Sprecher cited by Greenwood, and are among the twenty-six illustrations with which the book begins. To define the Sprecher figure in Shakespeare, Greenwood contrasts 124 LETTERS IN CANADA 1988 Touchstone, who he says is not, with Lear's Fool, who is, as are Enobarbus and Thersites. But just as he seems to have begun a detailed study of Shakespeare's Sprechers and the plays in which they create the 'double perspective' he describes, Greenwood abruptly shifts to a broader discussion ofthe use ofthe figure byShakespeare's contemporaries (Bosola, Malevole). Such jumping from one play and playwright to another is characteristic of this study. On the one hand, Shakespeare seems to be a standard against which the others are contrasted; but on the other, Greenwood seems forced to acknowledge that what he has termed mannerism is far more apparent in those of Shakespeare's contemporaries who often developed manner at the expense of matter. Nevertheless, as the discussion proceeds the focus becomes 'the mannerist Shakespeare'; Lucio and the other elements of Measure for Measure create 'perplexing signals ... which seem to be saying, "Caution, mannerist playwright at work.'" And in Antony and Cleopatra, one of Greenwood's main sources of illustration, 'we see Shakespeare adapting to his purposes the techniques of the mannerist's art used in the service of satirical drama by other playwrights for the King's Men.' Such casual observations are representative of Greenwood's approach and method. While the reader cannot complain of a lack of examples of elements Greenwood claims are mannerist, he has a habit of presenting his interpretations as ifthey were fact. Unfortunately, his earlier unavoidable tentativeness about historical events is seldom apparent where the plays themselves are concerned, and the result is a series of suggestive but superficial and often distorted connections and conclusions. But maybe one shouldn't worry...

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