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202 Reviews Hiberno-Norse hybrid religion, and Sidebottom) w h o show a somewhat distant acquaintance with both Scandinavian sources and current research in Old NorseIcelandic studies. In a work that emphasises interdisciplinarity this is unfortunate. There were also some features of the book's organisation that could have been better handled, aside from some spelling errors and inconsistency of reference (e.g. Wormald 1998 on p. 48 = Wormald 1999 in the bibliography on p. 64). These were, on the whole minor, though some (for example Sidebottom's persistent citation of Anglo-Saxon tribal names on his maps as ending in -na (gen. pi. for -an, nom. pi.), as in Wreocanscetna, Magonscetna etc.) betray a shak grasp of Old English grammar. The organisational feature that was most unfortunate, and took up unnecessary space, was the editors' decision to have a bibliography at the end of each chapter rather than a consolidated one at the end of the book. As there was a considerable overlap in many of the authors' reference lists, a good deal of space could have been saved by an editorial act of consolidation. Finally, i t was surprising, though perhaps it was a gesture of a Young Turkish kind, that the book was silent on the contributors' identities and institutional affiliations. Margaret Clunies Ross Department ofEnglish University ofSydney Hattaway, Michael, ed., A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture (Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture), Oxford, Blackwell Publishers, 2000; cloth; pp. xix, 747; 19 illustrations; RRP AUS$80.00; ISBN 0631216685. Most readers would probably think of a 'Companion', when that word is applie to a book, as a 'vade-mecum' (OED), i.e. a handbook or guidebook. This book is often far too difficult to function as such. It is also - it has to be said - too disorderly. Specialist academics will probably feel no less disoriented than the beginner in wondering just what the purpose of this gathering of essays is. It is not, in general, the quality of those (there are 59 of them in addition to the Introduction) which is the trouble, but rather the nature of the selection, and the lack of a firm, clearly intelligible arrangement. As Shakespeare is absent, it would have been useful to make that clear in the title. Admittedly, the absence of his name did not seem to matter greatly Reviews 203 in the case of The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Drama (1990), a very successful and admirable book also edited by Hattaway, together with A.R. Braunmuller. But while most readers probably understand 'Renaissance Drama' to exclude Shakespeare, they cannot necessarily be expected to think in the same way about a book on 'Renaissance Literature and Culture' - an area so wide that the omission of Shakespeare seems odd. The gap is not only damaging to Shakespeare: it reduces the effectiveness of much else which is discussed. As one of the contributors, Rowland Wymer, puts it in a very good essay on Jacobean drama: 'There was a continuous artistic dialogue between [Shakespeare] and his fellow playwrights and w e must not listen to only one side of the exchange' (p. 547). One suspects that the exclusion of Shakespeare as a topic for discussion in this book is ultimately due to the fact that the Blackwell Companions already include A Companion to Shakespeare and A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare. I feel that there is a lack of clear focus in what is presented. This is not the fault of individual contributors, but of the publishers and the editor. In a book on 'literature' on the one hand and"culture' (used in the now current 'broad' sense) on the other, one expects firm integration of those two concepts, or, if that proved impossible, an explanation why. Thus, in turning to some of the literary discussions under 'Readings' (the editor's term), one finds competent analyses of, for example, Wyatt's 'Who so list to hunt' (Rachel Falconer) and Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy (A.J. Piese) but both of them are, in essence, conventional exercises in exegesis which are not markedly influenced by considerations of 'culture' such as many now consider essential (see p. 663), and which one would...

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