The Renaissance Theatre: Texts, Performance, Design. Vol. 1, English and Italian Theatre. Vol. 2, Design, Image and Acting (review)

Reviews 157 Reading Dreams concludes with an extensive bibliography and a thorough index. I found it an enjoyable contribution to a fascinating subject. L. S. Davidson Department ofEconomic History University of Sydney Cairns, Christopher, ed., The Renaissance Theatre: Texts, Performance, Design. Vol. 1, English and Italian Theatre. Vol. 2, Design, Image and Acting, Aldershot, Ashgate, 1999; cloth; pp. xi, 206; x, 130; R.R.P. AUS$243.00; ISBN 0754600068. This is a somewhat eclectic, two-volume selection of papers presented to the Society for Renaissance Studies conference at the Globe theatre on September 12,1997. While it is an impressively presented collection, highlighted by a series ofwonderfully reproduced illustrations and photographs, the selected papers offer few highlights. Volume One, sub-titled 'English and Italian Theatre' concentrates primarily on dramatic texts themselves, rather than their theatrical presentation. There are, however, some significant and pleasing departures, such as Margaret Rose's examination of the figure of Desdemona in eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury illustrations and Ronnie Mirkin's paper on issues of cross-dressings in relation to the only surviving portrait of Elizabeth Cary, in Oxford's Ashmolean Museum. The volume begins with Bent Holm's reading of The Tempest in which he draws a parallel between Shakespeare's use of magically conjured storms and the events surrounding James I's proxy marriage to Anne of Denmark. Anne's journey to Britain was prevented by massive storms, as was James's ensuing attempt to retrieve his new bride. After a series of witch trials, the storms were later identified as a particular form of black magic previously unknown in Britain. Although written more than 20 years later, The Tempest represents for Holm the theatricalisation of events still fresh in the British popular imagination. Despite i t s promising start, however, the paper does deteriorate into a confusing mishmash of speculative nomenclature and directionless commentary toward its conclusion, which has no clear connection with what comes before it. A more pleasing aspect of this volume is the inclusion of papers that draw on a wide variety of Early M o d e m discourses, many of which are not obviously 158 Reviews related to the drama. One of the best examples is M . A. Katritzky's examination ofthe travel journal of Thomas Platter and various other alba amicorum (largely German, pocketsize volumes kept by Early Modern travellers, which contained collections of various illustrations relevant to their travels). Katritzky identifies these as a reliable source offirst-handpictorial accounts of theatrical practice, especially those used for lavish banquets, masquerades and other public displays. The focus on Platter relates largely to his travels through Spain and France, but the connection to English and Italian theatre is made clear. The inclusion of 10 illustrated plates drawn from various alba amicorum offers further proof of the potential value of such texts to further studies of Renaissance theatrical practice, especially costume. Ronnie Mirkin's excellent aforementioned article on the portrait of Elizabeth Cary is preceded by another paper on the w o m a n playwright by Valerie Lucas and particularly her most well known work Miriam the Faire Queene of Jewry (1613). Lucas sees that play as a study of 'women's speaking', which is 'riddled with contradictions' (p. 71) in that it promotes female servitude, but implicitly questions that view in the kind of 'gaps, silences and absences', (p. 71) prized by Pierre Macherey. The argument is a complicated one and the attempt to read those 'gaps, silences and absences' as the locus of Miriam's resistance to patriarchal power is ultimately unconvincing. A far more comprehensive paper and one which seems more overtly 'at home' in this collection is Caroline Patey's 'Shakespeare's Italian Nature, or, from Garden to Stage'. Patey offers here an explanation ofthe process by which Italian visual styles seeped into English culture, despite the English aversion to iconography and pictorial display in the late sixteenth century. For Patey, the agency of Italian style in England was gardens. M a n y elaborate gardens established in England between 1550 and 1600 were built in the Italian mannerist style and were themed on similar sources to those used in drama, such as Ovid's...