Gender and the Italian Stage: From the Renaissance to the Present Day by Maggie Günsberg (review)

502 BOOK REVIEWS intriguing profile of Dieppe, a trendy holiday haven for artists and a setting for popular novels with Wildean characters, describes the kind of liminal social space where Wilde would be expected to belong. Readers interested primarily in Wilde's drama might prefer to begin with the seventh and last chapter, a selective examination of the 1990S theatrical versions of the four major comedies. In his discussion of performances directed by Philip Prowse, Peter Hall and Nicholas Hytner, Stokes suggests that these directors, while they have represented current analytical trends, have also unearthed "hidden or unacknowledged" intentions originating from Wilde himself. Although he cannot verify such a premise, Stokes does offer a vividly detailed account of the interpretive decisions featured in the four productions. The critical position of each is documented almost exclusively from reviews, and it seems possible that Stokes has consciously adopted such a reductive perspective as the most recent link in achain of interpretive responses fromwhich to begin what he calls the critical process of "backtracking." To this end, Stokes most effectively defines contemporary reviewers' and his own impressions of Maggie Smith's 1993 version of Lady Bracknell as the inverse of Edith Evans's seminal 1939 performance. These disparate interpretations are scrupulously explained as different hues of Wilde's writing, the apparent prism through which are refracted particular conditions of class, nuances of manner and conventions of perfonnance. Perhaps several other critical connections suggested in the same chapter would be as viable if Stokes had further extended his scrutiny beyond the mere words of the journalist critics. Although he may have good reason, Stokes never mentions why he cites a statement from only one of the three directors (Hall). In another instance, Stokes remarks that there was little commentary on the provocative kiss exchanged by Jack and Algy in Hytner's 1993 production of The Importance a/Being Earnest, then wonders if the gesture might have been excluded from some of the early performances. An inquiry to any number of reviewers or actors would surely have answered the question. Nonetheless, where Stokes does not provide answers, he lets the reader know where to look for them, a creditable feature in a concise book, which, in total. provides a rich source of infonnation and astute commentary. TED BAIN t ROCHESTER I NST ITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY MAGGtE GUNSBERG. Gender and the Italian Stage: From the Renaissance to the Present Day. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1997. Pp. 275. $59·95 This timely survey of gender issues in selected mainstream Italian play texts Book Reviews from the Renaissance to the present offers an important historical overview of a much neglected field. Theatre scholars should find Gtinsberg's investigations of the limits imposed on the representation of women on the Italian stage very informative. Still, Gtinsberg's offerings of "feminist readings in which gender is seen to interact with other social categories, particularly those of class, age and the family" (I) presents certain problems since "gender" refers . to staged representations of the female sex situated inside a "patriarchal ideology " that remains unaltered by the variables of the "changing socioeconomic climate"(2). Gtinsberg's professed feminist materialism does not include an ongoing analysis of how patriarchal structures adapt to exploit market and labour relations under capitalism and cannot, therefore, fully deconstruct historical categorizations of "masculine" and "feminine," or suggest resistant alternatives to rigidly binarized gender formations. Patriarchal ideologies in the play texts become absolutes, mirrors of prevailing social relations rather than artistic expressions of masculine anx" ieties about specific power and knowledge systems, often revealed through the "woman as other." A materialist feminist critique, as Teresa Ebert argues, would be searching the texts for "what has been suppressed; that is, what IS resistant and potentially transformable .'" To highlight Gtinsberg's important discoveries while indicating where she might have offered more resistant readings, I will start with the first chapter, where the special value of her study of female characters in famous Renaissance comedies lies in its comparative quantification of their rare stage appearances in compliance with draI!1aturgical rules prohibiting the entry of respectable women into public spaces. What is omitted in her conclusion that female characters remain "distinctly marginalized...