Playing with Desire: Christopher Marlowe and the Art of Tantalization by Fred B. Tromly (review)

362 letters in canada 1999 between master and servant in figure 4, and yet the position of Don Quixote, ahead of Sancho Panza, suggests that his gaze is directed across Sancho, as if reflecting on something his servant has said or is saying. A few minor points: the innkeeper does not know how to read; Cervantes, strictly speaking, did not rot in `Turkish captivity,' he was imprisoned in Algiers; calling Sancho's donkey `Rucio' is inappropriate, since it has no name (compare Don Quixote's use of Rocinante); Maritornes's beau is àmuleteer' not a `swineherd'; the `supposed critique' of Lope de Vega's theatre occurs in chapter 48, not 49; Cupid surely does not `hover over' Don Quixote, nor is the lion really at his feet. Still, these are minor points, and do not detract from a fine piece of scholarship that will be invaluable for anyone wishing to trace the evolution of Don Quixote from burlesque comedy to canonized text. (GETHIN HUGHES) Fred B. Tromly. Playing with Desire: Christopher Marlowe and the Art of Tantalization University of Toronto Press 1998. xii, 238. $50.00 This handsomely written book analyses Marlowe's use of the myth of Tantalus in his seven plays and in his poetry. Throughout the volume, the author widens his discussion of this myth to include the general notion of tantalization in the corpus: patterns of enticement and withholding in the plays, the theatrical technique of arousal and frustration of audience expectations. The attention to detail does much to correct the misapprehensions of some readers who may view Marlowe's characters as mannequins stating the obvious in bombastic yet technically proficient blank verse. The author also wishes to supplement the older critical tradition that argues solely for the figure of Icarus as emblematic of the playwright and his opus. After an introductory chapter that makes the case for the importance of Tantalus and the concept of tantalization in the works of Marlowe and some other Renaissance writers, the author proceeds chronologically through Marlowe's career in seven chapters. The author is generally successful in his enterprise; his subject is worth a book rather than an article. His ideas about audience reactions seem projective at times. He knows that one cannot delineate with absolute certainty what these may have been in the Renaissance, and puckishly reveals his awareness of this conundrum. The chapter on All Ovid's Elegies is surprisingly sketchy, given the obvious importance of the ancient author as influence on young Marlowe for the subject at hand. At times, the critic conflates Marlowe and Ovid, not attending enough to the poems as translations , apparently unacquainted with translation theory, ancient or modern. Much of the Ovid scholarship he cites as ipse dixit support is old. He has nothing particularly new to say about the Elegies; every thought humanities 363 should probably have had a footnote affixed to it. The Dido chapter is the weakest, because the evidence for Tantalus in that play is scanty (as it is for The Jew of Malta). Since the author spends much of his time discussing the Ovidian translations in this section as well as the one that precedes it, it might have been best to combine chapters 2 and 3. This illustrates the one larger difficulty in the book. Thematic studies tend to stretch themselves, sometimes to airy thinness. The thesis in Playing with Desire sometimes disappears, the author apparently more concerned to discuss other ideas about Marlowe that are nevertheless important to him. At times, the argument for the primacy of the enticed Tantalus does not so much supplement the concept of the overreaching Icarus as repeat it. The book, quite engaging and not jargon-encrusted, wearing its immense learning lightly and well, could be read aloud to an audience. The author bravely attempts to write about Marlowe without much reference to poststructuralist studies, especially those of recent importance from the practitioners of new historicism and queer theory. He treads carefully around the issue of gayness in the canon. Although one could say that queer theorists have overdetermined the issue in Renaissance studies, one could also say that their important work on Hero and Edward II could have benefited...