Early Modern English Drama: A Critical Companion (review)

When compiling a list of suggested readings for a university course on English Renaissance drama, what are the sorts of things one should look for? Ideally, readings should be scholarly in content as well as form, providing a model for students writing their own essays. Readings should also be informed by current critical trends and debates, whilst remaining succinct and accessible to a student readership. Assessed in these terms, Early Modern English Drama: A Critical Companion offers a valuable collection that will no doubt find its way on to university reading lists.

At first glance, this is not the usual 'companion' collection that we are used to. The editors acknowledge as much in their introduction, admitting that 'whereas most "companion" texts divide material according to topics, ours begins with a slightly different structural principle: authors and their works' (p. v). After two preliminary essays on the material conditions of early modern drama (authorship and print, theatre companies and stages), the collection offers thematic essays on a number of 'canonical' plays of the period prepared by experts on both the plays and themes addressed. For instance, Gail Kern Paster's contribution, 'Bartholomew Fair and the Humoral Body', serves as a concise introduction to the sort of issues explored with greater detail in her monograph studies, The Body Embarrassed (1993) and Humoring the Body (2004). There is nothing controversial about the collection in this sense – for the most part the essays do not go out on critical limbs and remain on secure, if not well-trodden, paths – which is fitting for a collection aimed at a student readership. This is not to suggest by any means that the newly commissioned essays in the collection do not take recent critical trends into account. The choice of plays is similarly grounded, with the editors sticking to the 'tried and true' lineup of Tudor and Stuart drama – again this is appropriate for a classroom setting, since the plays covered are readily available in standard literary collections and individual editions.

While the coverage of the collection is far from comprehensive – chapters on individual plays by Marston, Chapman, Brome, Dekker, Heywood, Lyly, and Peele are notably absent – it never purports to be authoritative or exhaustive. The variety of themes on offer will certainly appeal to a student readership, with topics ranging from the expected (race, gender and sexuality, politics and religion, genre and source studies) through to more specialised and specific areas of investigation (geography, the 'London underworld', masters and servants, incest). The inclusion of essays on masques and closet drama by Martin Butler and Danielle Clarke respectively also extend the scope of the collection.

As the editors suggest in their introduction, since the majority of the essays provide contextual readers, teachers and students are able to 'transport topics from one play to another' (p. vi). For example, a class studying The Merchant of Venice would benefit from Daniel Vitkus's chapter on 'Turks and Jews in The Jew of Malta', Alan Stewart's essay on 'Edward II and Male Same-Sex Desire', or Rob Maslen's chapter on 'Twelfth Night, Gender, and Comedy', depending on the particular focus of class discussion. In this light, what might appear initially as a shortcoming of the collection is turned to its advantage, since students are not only given the contextual background information they seek, but are also provided with a model essay incorporating it.

Quibbles about the title and extent of the volume aside, Early Modern English Drama: A Critical Companion seeks to complement other collections of this kind rather than supersede them. Offering newly commissioned essays on a range of plays and themes valuable for a student audience, the 'critical companion' certainly fulfils its aims and should quickly and deservedly find its way onto course reading lists.