Sons and Authors in Elizabethan England (review)

Sons and Authors aims to show that despite the characterization of imaginative writing as juvenilia, writers across the social spectrum in Elizabethan England were attempting to use writing as "an alternate passage to adulthood, a way from them to grow up" (14). Derek Alwes posits his study as "both an answer and a continuation" (15) to Richard Helgerson's seminal work in Elizabethan Prodigals (1976). However, while acknowledging the importance of the pattern of rebellion and guilt identified by Helgerson, Alwes raises an important note of warning about its limitations. Instead of imposing a single generalized template on figures whose careers — both as social figures and writers — unfolded over a span of time, he explores the gradual development of their constructions of authorship, arguing that in the "late works of each there is at least evidence that 'guilt' was no longer an issue" (16).

The first of two chapters on John Lyly shows how ambitious young writers like Lyly faced a double trap, forced to choose between defiance of paternal expectations that led to guilt and condemnation, and unquestioning compliance that threatened a "loss of self from failing to distinguish one's identity from that of the father" (43). Through a careful reading of the two Euphues volumes, Alwes argues that Lyly's solution was to accept the importance of paternal wisdom, while simultaneously emphasizing the role of youthful authorial wit in rendering such instructions palatable for the readers of his generation. The focus on the "servant-subplots" of Lyly's plays in the second chapter, however, is rather less satisfying, primarily because of Alwes's reluctance to engage with the complexities and nuances inherent in the workings both of courtly "service" and quotidian "servitude" in Elizabethan England.

In the two subsequent chapters on Philip Sidney, Alwes argues that while Sidney more than fulfilled the expectations of his "father figures," the rebelliousness and conflict that characterizes the prodigal template emerged in his relationship with the queen. While this approach offers a fascinating reading of Sidney's 1578 masque, The Lady of May, Alwes's emphasis on Sidney's interactions with Elizabeth I refuses to accommodate the frequent notes of disquiet and rebellion we often see, for instance, in the letters exchanged between Sidney and Hubert Languet — one of the many male mentors who tried to mould young Sidney's "raw" talents into qualities befitting a leader of the Protestant cause in Europe. A similar focus characterizes the readings of Astrophil and Stella and the two Arcadias, as when Alwes argues that Astrophil and Stella should be read "as a critique of Elizabeth's Petrarchan policy" (81). In this and other similar arguments, readers may be left wishing that Alwes had engaged more closely with other existing critical readings of these well-known texts.

The final chapters on Robert Greene are arguably most effective in illustrating Alwes's thesis. An astute analysis of Greene's use of his projected female readerships in chapter 5 shows that Greene's patient and all-forgiving women not only offer a foil to his prodigal young heroes, but also act as a model audience for his equally prodigal texts. With increasing popularity, however, Greene outgrew this need for this "feminized," even "maternal" (126), audience. Chapter 6, which focuses on the fascinating cony-catching pamphlets about the English criminal underworld, also traces a gradual shift in Greene's attention to a mature male readership. One surprising omission in this otherwise thought-provoking pair of chapters, however, demands a mention. Greene's 1589 romance, Menaphon, with its wonderfully complex network of generational relationships and desires that culminate in three generations — father, husband, and son — physically competing for control over the female protagonist, Samela, is noticeably absent in this study apart from three cursory passing references.

The short conclusion that attempts to bring together the "mirror" metaphor frequently used by Elizabethan authors with Lacan's theory of the mirror-stage in the development of the human infant...