Female Monastic Life in Early Tudor England; with an Edition of Richard Fox's Translation of the Benedictine Rule for Women, 1517 (review)

Reviews 175 Parergon 20.2 (2003) whilst no doubt responding to immediate community imperatives, display no clear evolutionary contribution to early modern drama. Chapter Eight constitutes the ‘early modern’ section of Clopper’s study. The emphasis here is not on the emergence of popular drama, but the persistence of selected medieval dramas through the Tudor and Elizabethan eras, especially during the 1520s and the 1560s. A curious omission from this discussion of the 1560s is any reference to the impact of the ‘Christian Terence’ plays produced in earlier sixteenth century Europe. This is especially disappointing because of Clopper’s willingness to cite Terence and Plautus at length early in the study during his discussions of theatrum. Some attention to the influence of the Christian Terence on Elizabethan moral dramas and popular comedy would have added a well-rounded conclusion to the study. Nonetheless, this study should appeal to anyone interested in the development of both theatrical and antitheatrical traditions in England prior to the emergence of the commercial theatres in Elizabethan London. Craig Allan Horton English Program La Trobe University Collett, Barry, ed., Female Monastic Life in Early Tudor England; with an Edition of Richard Fox’s Translation of the Benedictine Rule for Women, 1517 (The Early Modern Englishwoman 1500-1750), Aldershot, Ashgate, 2002; pp. x, 179; 4 b/w illustrations; RRP US$69.95, £40.00; ISBN 1840146095. This is a useful edition of a rare printed translation of the Benedictine Rule that Richard Fox, in his retirement from the king’s council to his diocese of Winchester, prepared for some Benedictine houses under his jurisdiction. It is an exact transcription of the printed text to the extent of the irritating reproduction of the early sixteenth century tilds and other abbreviations used by sixteenth century printers. More usefully, Collett reproduces the manuscript emendations and comments written in one of the two surviving texts by its owner, Margareta Stanburne, prioress of the Benedictine abbey of St Michaels, Stamford. The Benedictine Rule, however, had been modified over the nearly thousand years of its existence and Collett does not seem to have identified the copy that 176 Reviews Parergon 20.2 (2003) Fox was using for his main source. He claims, however, that Fox did not limit himself to an exact translation of this original, expanding it to encompass his own and perhaps other early sixteenth century clerical attitudes. To establish how far his rewriting went, however, if his main original cannot be identified, one needs at least copies of the Benedictine Rule – probably a number of the various recensions from the earliest to the Latin version that Fox himself may have used – and, if possible, the rewritings and translations of the rule which had taken place in other kingdoms. This, understandably, we do not have in this volume, so that support for Collett’s assertions about what the ‘Fox’ alterations tell us about him and about female monastic life at the time has to be sought elsewhere. His suggestions about the literary changes Fox made are interesting and important, if they can be more fully substantiated, although in using them scholars should remember that the rule applied only to the Benedictine houses which were usually the older, more secure and wealthier institutions. Female houses of other orders would not have been bound by them. The introduction is disappointingly slight, perhaps a brevity imposed by the editors of the series. Collett’s interpretation of Fox in the introduction is curiously and heavily dependent on the seventeenth-century study by Edward Herbert, Lord of Cherbury, called the Life and Raigne of King Henry the Eighth and the biased account of Polydore Vergil.This is used to support an interpretation of Henry VIII’s early years as a period of factionalism. This view is, to say the least, contentious, although fashionable. Fox’s concern for improving religious observances is supported by some of his other publications, although unfortunately Collett does not expand on the significance of the actions he identifies. Fox’s emendations to the Use of Sarum, in the printed edition he sanctioned, for instance, could usefully be explored further, together with the issue of whether his fellow bishops, in dioceses where the...