Sussex ed. by Cameron Louis (review)

206 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 work. The images are seen as foci for meditative rumination on the meaning and interconnections within the poem (all this much influenced by the work on meditative memory by Mary Carruthers). The whole book provides an exceptionally stimulating example of the newer, more holistic interpretative methods: every aspect of the manuscript contributes to the discussion, and the interdisciplinary skills of the authors are very impressive. Nevertheless, the interpretation is just that: an interpretation, sometimes perhaps an over-interpretation. The illustrations are of poor quality (figure 1 is impossible), and show only parts of pages. The book attempts to piggyback on Pearsall=s facsimile of Douce 104, but since that is hard to come by, the authors= arguments have to be taken on faith. Kerby-Fulton and Despres often attempt to carry their argument by adjectives: >seductively wavy blond hair,= >shady-looking friar,= >apostolic garment=; and it is only in a footnote that they reveal that the picture they call >the young bastard= throughout is elsewhere called >Cain,= B which would require a radical reordering of sympathy. The rather unnecessary argument that the illustrator is drawing upon the >Ages of Man= iconography confuses two traditions, and Despres=s claim that medieval authors placed the faculty of imagination above reason should be taken with a pinch of salt: imagination was a skittish power, which often led into temptation; it appears as such in at least two morality plays. But the real merit of this book is not so much in the interpretation offered as the method: it is the most stimulating exercise in reading a manuscript I have ever seen. (E. RUTH HARVEY) Cameron Louis, editor. Sussex. Volume 15 of Records of Early English Drama University of Toronto Press. cx, 404. $150.00 The fifteenth volume in the Records of Early English Drama series resembles its predecessors in regard to such matters as format, principals of inclusion, and excellence of editorial production, but is also B like each volume, and each region and city examined thus far B unique. As editor Cameron Louis points out, this particular region is largely defined by >natural barriers ... which to some extent cut eastern Sussex off from Kent, Surrey, and London, in spite of its proximity in terms of distance.= The same might be said of the various forms of entertainment documented here. Rye was one stop on what appears to have been a whole >circuit of southeastern and southern locations (and sometimes beyond) often used by travelling performers,= including the theatre companies of Elizabethan London; foreign companies also played here. However, the main picture provided in this volume is of local entertainers B numerous bearwards, as well as players and minstrels B visiting neighbouring towns and villages. The picture is, inevitably, all too incomplete. The descriptive records of HUMANITIES 207 the various entertainments given Elizabeth over her week-long visit with Lord Montagu at Cowdray in 1591 are both interesting in themselves and well discussed in the introduction. Otherwise, the nature of performances recorded here is generally unclear. As Louis points out, the terms >minstrel= and >player= were sometimes but not always interchangeable, and >mimi= could be either musicians or actors. Few records of any sort survive from the larger centres other than Rye. Records from the small town of West Tarring take up only slightly less space than those from Chichester, and more than those from Lewes, Chichester=s rival in importance; still less survives from Hastings and almost nothing from Winchelsea. West Tarring, like nearby Steyning, was a site of church ales associated with some sort of dramatic activity >well into the Protestant era=; it was also the source of some >players= who apparently performed in 1511/12 for the benefit of Rye=s mayor. Yet Louis writes nothing about West Tarring itself beyond its having a market-place. Larger civic and political structures are dealt with at length, but in alphabetical order B an odd choice, given that it separates Hastings from the Cinque Ports of which it was a part (the other four being in Kent), and these from Rye and Winchelsea, >recognized as members of Hastings= within that confederation. Overall, the records in this volume...