Romance and Reformation: The Erasmian Spirit of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure (review)

The title of this monograph announces its three major topics: Erasmus, romance, and reformation. Bennett examines the rhetorical approach to the Logos that inspired Erasmus to publish the Greek Scriptures (1516) and to author so many exegetical, devotional, educational, and satiric works. Bennett proposes "comic romance" as a new genre for Measure for Measure, and he argues that humanist theater aims to reform society.

In chapter 1 Bennett begins his study of the Logos with Heraclitus, who described Cosmic Law as the mediating force in Nature, and with the evangelist John, who proclaimed the Word made flesh as the redemptive agent in human history. In his second edition of the Christian Scriptures (1519), Erasmus translated logos not as verbum or word but as sermo or discourse. Thus, for Erasmus, language has a mediating and spiritualizing power. It is doubtful that Erasmus read Heraclitus, but he certainly knew Plato and John. In the Symposium, Alcibiades compares Socrates to statues of a satyr that opened to reveal a god: ugly on the outside, inspiring on the inside. Erasmus applied this analogy to Christ in his Adage, "The Sileni of Alcibiades" (1515), and Bennett further contrasts outside to inside in Friar Ludovico and Duke Vincentio, Caius and Kent, Tom o'Bedlam and Edgar.

Bennett's philosophical approach does show remote antecedents for Shakespeare's theater, but I wish that Bennett had also alluded to Erasmus's lifelong labors on dramatic texts. To help himself learn Greek, Erasmus translated Euripides's Hecuba and Iphigenia in Aulis into Latin verse. While living in Venice from 1507 to 1508, Erasmus also helped to prepare the Aldine editions of Terence (1517) and Plautus (1522). Several years later he contributed notes to a Paris edition of Seneca (1514). In old age, Erasmus published his own edition of Terence (1531). In his comprehensive study of sixteenth-century English grammar schools, William Shakspere's Small Latine & Lesse Greeke (1944), T. W. Baldwin notes how frequently the dramas of Terence (most), Plautus (somewhat), and Seneca (least) appeared in the standard curricula. These, together with the De Copia (1512) and the Colloquies of Erasmus, influenced Shakespeare.

Surprisingly, Bennett makes only two brief references (29 and 34) to the Colloquies, although they contain numerous mirror images of Measure for Measure. In "The Girl with No Interest in Marriage," for example, Catherine resolves to enter a convent, and in "The Repentant Girl," she leaves after twelve days, perhaps a role model for Isabella. In "The Funeral," George is fearful of death, though not, like Claudio, terrified. The avaricious Dominican and Franciscan friars of "The Funeral" share their names with Duke Vincentio and the condemned prisoner Barnardine. In "The Well-to-do Beggars," the good Franciscans Conrad and Bernardine share literal and spiritual food with the innkeeper. The index to the two-volume set of the Colloquies contains nearly forty references to Shakespeare.

Romance, Bennett's second topic, is treated in chapters 2 and 4. Bennett defines a new genre of "comic romance," drama with a calamitous opening, social leveling, mounting confusion, and festive resolution (65). In my opinion, Bennett lessens the social and political disorder in Measure for Measure by comparing it to A Midsummer Night's Dream and As You Like It. More persuasive is his brief comparison of decadent Vienna to the London of Middleton's Chaste Maid in Cheapside and Jonson's Alchemist. For Bennett, Duke Vincentio is not a ruler in a history play or a tragedy but in a romance.

For his third topic, Bennett focuses not on the Protestant "Reformation" but on moral "reformation" and even on spiritual "re-formation." In chapter 3, Bennett studies two threats to social order, fornication and calumny, as well as their opposites, ordered sexuality and honest language. Bennett gives slightly more attention to fornication than to...