The Mirror of Nature: The Alexander Lectures 1982 by Robertson Davies (review)

HUMANITIES 433 Renaissance allegory: they become instead familiar and untamed potentialities of every heart and mind. To whom, I wonder, is Tennyson's Camelot addressed? Presumably only a graduate student or a Tennyson specialist would be interested in a close examination of the Idylls' medieval sources. But such a reader would surely expect a more penetrating discussion of allegory, idealism, and of Victorian influences generally. What might serve well enough in a critical introduction or survey, intended primarily for undergraduates, will not do in a book for specialists. It is a pleasure to conclude, however, with a brief summation of the book's real merits. Tennyson's Camelot will be valued for its scholarship, which combines the utility and concision of a handbook with the authority of a carefully annotated variorum edition. Utility, it seems to me, is an underrated scholarly virtue. For the obvious utility of this book all Tennyson scholars should be grateful. J.M.Gray's edition of Idylls of the King is a worthy addition to the excellent Penguin/Yale editions of the English poets under the general editorship of Christopher Ricks. Because of Ricks's own splendid edition of Tennyson in the Longmans series, Gray has not had to undertake the enormous editorial labour of his colleagues John Pettigrew and Thomas Collins, who as co-editors of the Browning poems in the same series had to collate the copy-texts against the first editions and the earlier collated editions. Gray offers a more portable and affordable edition of Idylls ofthe King than has been previously available. Its critical commentary and text will be serviceable for any graduate or undergraduate class that needs more than a selection. The notes are informative and concise, though I would have found them easier to consultif they had appeared on the same pageas the poems. Gray provides a useful guide to further critical reading and a table of dates in Tennyson's life. If readers are interested in Tennyson's revisions, they should consult Ricks's own edition of Tennyson, which collates the Eversley edition of Tennyson's Works with the one-volume Macmillan edition of1894, and which includes a wealth of manuscript variations in the notes. (It should be remembered, of course, that even Ricks does not consider all the variants from the editions he is editing, but only the more interesting selections.) (w. DAVID SHAW) Robertson Davies. The Mirror of Nature: The Alexander Lectures 1982 University of Toronto Press. 129. $6.50 paper In the three lectures gathered under the title The Mirror of Nature, Robertson Davies uses the drama of the period as a way to talk about changes in psychological bias, changes in the way people in general came to think of themselves, in the course of the nineteenth century. Along the way he talks about theatre conditions and their consequences, about 434 LETTERS IN CANADA 1983 melodrama and burlesque as characteristic play forms, and about typical character types. And he finds in these things a key to understanding the people who spent their leisure hours watching this entertainment. The lectures make fascinating reading, and those working on an aspect of the nineteenth century, or those curious about its byways, will find them provocative and enlightening, whether they are persuaded to Davies's conclusions or not. The kind of knowledge Davies brings to bear on this theatre is especially valuable because it is non-academic and hard to come by. Though he is learned on the subject in a conventionally scholarly way (as a collector and keen reader of playscripts, costume and theatre designs, pictures of actors in their great roles), and though many of his insights spring from his wide reading in psychology, especially of lung, nonetheless it is his knowledge as a playgoer and practical man of the theatre that most enriches his understanding of this neglected theatre. He speaks of seeing Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) when it was still part of the standard repertOire during the twenties; he mentions what he learned when he directed the melodrama East Lynne; but he makes no reference to the astonishing number of these plays he has seen over a lifetime of enthusiastic playgoing, no reference...