In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

HUMANITIES 417 book to possess. It also offers convincing proof that Irish Studies in Canada continue to thrive and stimulate. (BRIAN JOHN) G.R. Hibbard, editor. The Elizabethan Theatre, VlIl P.O. Meany, 1<)82. xiv, 192. $22.95 Given that The Shepheardes Calender was first published in 1579, and given what Northrop Frye has called our superstitious reverence for the decimal system of counting, it seemed appropriate for the 1979 International Conference on Elizabethan Theatre at the University of Waterloo to focus on pastoral drama. The resulting conference volume is better unified than most. In his introduction G.R. Hibbard performs the usual general editor's task of drawing the threads together; that he does it gracefully and without strain is a tribute not only to skills honed over the years but to the co-operativeness of this particular body of material. The importance of time; the connection between art and public affairs; the interest in the monstrous and extraordinary; the affinities with masque - these are the threads that tie the volume together. There is little here about the pastoral as simple escape, presumably because the major artists of the Renaissance hardly ever used it that way. In his close-packed article on The Shepheardes Calender A.C. Hamilton stresses that by its very nature the calendar puts us in a time-bound world, 'a meaningless and endless cycle' (p 6), though in giving us a steady view of this cycle Spenser also allows us to see beyond it. Anne Lancashire surveys the dark, uncomfortable side of Lyly's pastoral dramas, especially Gallathea, Love's Metamorphosis, and Woman in the Moon. The golden world, she argues, is embodied not in the play but in the presence of Elizabeth in the audience; just by being there, she completes the occasion with an image of the order the pastoral vision lacks. (In a previous Waterloo volume, Elizabethan Theatre IV, William Blissett made a similar suggestion about James I at the court performance of Barthalomew Fair.) Lancashire leaves Endimion to one side - in fairness, she has enough to do without that tricky play - but it would be interesting to extend her argument further, asking how the Elizabeth who watches Endimion relates to the Cynthia we see in the play. Her article suggests the affinities between pastoral drama and masque: the prince, the audience, the occasion itself, are all part of the statement. James Y. Yoch argues that in Italian pastorals the spectacle asserts the authority and power of the court itself, though he establishes this more decisively with Salmacida Spolia, that desperate last fling of the court of Charles I, than he does with the Italian shows that are his main subject. David M. Bergeron complements Lancashire's argument by reversing it, seeing in the pastoral visions of civic pageantry a golden world very 418 LETTERS IN CANADA 1983 different from the uncomfortable lives of the citizens who watched them. His survey is a useful one, but his extension of the term 'civic pageant' to include country-house entertainments performed during royal progresses is a complication we could do without. As Lancashire shows the masque element in regular drama, Eugene M. Waith reminds us of the importance of traditional dramatic structures in certain masques: the quest, the blocking character, the satiric laughter directed against antimasque figures. The antimasques in particular are not just the irrelevant entertainments they are sometimes thought to be, but integral parts of a clear dramatic structure. Waith and Yoch both stress the essential coherence of the court entertainments they discuss, drawing material from England and Italy. Discussing Shakespeare's 'Pastoral Metamorphoses: J.M. Nosworthy asks us to admit that 'pastoralism begins with sheep, which have a tendency to stray' (p 90), and goes on to a rambling but witty and attractive account of pastoralism in Shakespeare, suggesting its wide range - 'pastoral,' he tells us, figures in four of Polonius's eight categories of drama - and its idiosyncratic quality. He gives a good survey of the inconsistencies - comic, teasing, occasionally nightmarish - in AMidsummer Night's Dream and a suggestive account of the wide range of possible backgrounds to that play and The Winter's Tale. His suggestion that The Golden Ass lies behind the Bottom-Titania affair is engagingly argued, if a discussion of bestiality can be said to be engaging, but needs to be balanced by James Black's reminder, in his article on Shakespearean monsters, that Bottom is transformed only from the neck up: 'The centaur-figure ... which Bottom has become could be considered as glancing at deeper yearnings to be as beautiful as a human and as virile as a beast. But we cannot get around the comic factthat poor Bottom's luck is to have the centaur elements in reverse: he is as beautiful as a beast and at best merely as virile as a human' (p 56). Black's article draws some very disparate material together (his principal plays are Dream and Lear) around the ideas of coining, breeding, and monstrosity. Bottom's transformation hints at the sort of fear the final blessing of the bride-beds is meant to overcome. Lear's three daughters call our attention to the mysteries of engendering, which can produce saints or monsters. There are tricky connections here, but Black makes them with considerable wit and analytical power; he is especially eloquent on Lear. G.M. Pinciss, writing on the figure of the Savage Man, also tries to draw disparate material together, but his survey is too light and eclectic, the connections insufficiently revealing. A category that includes the purple-nosed brute who captures Amoret in book IV of The Faerie Queene, Caliban, Timias, Pericles, Posthumus, and finally Mowgli and King Kong, is, we may feel, dangerously loose. The article is readable but ultimately unsatisfying; this time the sheep really do seem to be astray. 1579 also saw the last performance of the Corpus Christi play at Coventry, and the result is the one article in the collection that does not fit the main theme. A less astute scholar than R.W. Ingram might have tried to be clever on the subject- the death of an old drama, the birth ofa newbut Ingram wisely concentrates on reporting some of the results of his research into local records. He shows that the old drama was, in fact, a long time dying.After 1579 there were several attempts to revive whathad been a strong tradition of local performances. Behind many of these was a rich upholsterer named Thomas Massie, a stubborn fellow who was not above slanging the authorities or even lying to them. History was against him, but in a more propitious time his energy, dedication, and unscrupulousness might have made him a great pioneer. As it is, he appears an engaging minor hero defending a lost cause, and students of drama will be grateful to Ingram for recovering some of his story. (ALEXANDER LEGGATI) Northrop Frye. The Myth of Deliverance: Reflections on Shakespeare's Problem Comedies University of Toronto Press. viii, go $5.95 paper The Myth of Deliverance exhibits many of the usual difficulties with 'myth: but the idea of deliverance is important enough and its centrality presented cogently enough that these may be overlooked for a moment. The three essays in the book are based on the Tamblyn Lectures given at the University of Western Ontario in 1981. By 'deliverance' Frye means an expansion of consciousness, energy, and freedom that often entails a reversing of the normal current of life and expresses the human desire for a more intense mode of living. It may be found in either tragedy or comedy, but the focus here is on the reversals and recognitions of comedy. The first chapter, 'The Reversal of Action: employs Aristotle's terms to explore the comic structure of the last half of The Odyssey and to demonstrate the comic shape of Measure for Measure. At m.i.I50, where blank verse gives way to prose, the action of the play is reversed, Frye says, from tragedy to comedy. Consequently, the sentence of death that hangs over three of the characters, Claudio, Angelo, and Lucio, is also reversed. The second chapter, 'The Reversal of Energy: identifies three major forms of love: Christian charity, Courtly Love, and the Eros of Plato's Phaedrus, the last of which is also said to be ' the heightened form of the energy of life itself: The normal current of Eros is said to be in the direction of Thanatos, or death, and the chapter attempts to show the reversal of this current in The Aeneid and in All's Well That Ends Well. At this point, however, the apparently neat symmetry of Frye's argument becomes ...

pdf

Share