The Preaching Fox: Festive Subversion in the Plays of the Wakefield Master (review)

118Comparative Drama Warren Edminster. The Preaching Fox: Festive Subversion in the Plays of the Wakefìeld Master. New York: Routledge, 2005. Pp. xüi + 230. $75.00. Thelatest contributiontothestudyofworks generallyattributedto the fifteenthcentury British playwright known as the Wakefield Master, Professor Warren Edminster's The Preaching Fox offers a new and challenging examination of the many ways in which the famous"play-doctor" transforms the conventional biblical subject matter of his Corpus Christi drama into caustic satires of the corruption plaguing the Church and secular authority in contemporary latemedieval England. This book's eight chapters, followed by a speculative conclusion about the Wakefield Master's ideological leaning (the reader is kept guessing whether Edminster believes the Master was a Lollard until the very last page),convincingly establish the Master's subversive intent by considering each of the Master's plays within the critical context of festive culture. While that context is constructed by a creatively imaginative combination ofinsights from such notable figures as E. K. Chambers, C. L. Barber, and Mikhail Bakhtin, Edminster does not, in his first chapter ("Subversion and the Festive Instinct"), serve the reader old wine in a new bottle. Rather, by demonstrating how the festive functions as the principal means ofsubversion,he provides himselfwith an informative and practical means ofaddressing the particular thematic effect of the "dialogue" between the opposing world views of official and unofficial culture present in each of the Master's plays. To guarantee that consideration of this "dialogue conflict" reveals what is latent and sophisticated in the Master's dramatic art, Edminster clarifies the dialogic or interactive relationship between official and unofficial culture by reviewing in the second chapter ("Typical Festive Elements in the Plays") the "vocabulary" or "principal forms" of festive culture itself (27). This review includes identification and examination of two fundamental kinds of festive elements. The first of these has to do with character. Under this heading, the functions of the Mock King and the Fool are discussed. The second kind of defined festive element turns attention to a variety ofactions. Under this heading , Edminster explains the function ofsuch "forms" as invocation, usurpation of authority, reversal, burlesque, images of feasting, and two kinds of abuse— physical violence, in the form of actual beatings, and verbal violence, in the form of threats, profanity, etc. What is made clear by these discussions is that not all ofthese"forms"are included in each ofthe Master's plays,but the combination of elements of one or more in each helps to develop a dialogue between official and unofficial culture that is unique to that particular work. What is more, these "forms," as Edminster emphasizes, do not erase traditional meaning Reviews119 in the plays. In fact, it is through the interplay generated by their relation to traditional meaning that the subversive ideas the Master intends to convey have their greatest impact (22). In the first of the Master's plays, Mactatio Abel, the subject of the third chapter ("The Overthrow of Religious Obligation"), numerous festive forms are readilydiscernable and carefullyintegrated in the workto achieve the greatest dramatic and thematic effect. Garcio,for example, plays the role offool,turning the world of the play upside down. Cain, too, introduces an important festive element—that of the Lord of Misrule. His physical as well as verbal violence introduces a distinct contrast to Abel, who, through his insistence upon observing obligations and his occupation as a shepherd, functions as a representative of officialdom. The eventual killing of Abel, seen as it is "through the prism of [these and other] festive forms" (71), offers the audience an uncrowning—a usurpation that directs "festive hostility and scorn towards orthodox obligation" while drawing "empathy towards Cain's complaints even if the audience does not fully embrace Cain as Lord of Misrule" (67). While the conventional didactic meaning of the play is "muted" by these and related emphases , a festive reversal that is also included by the Master reveals his true genius as a playwright. Cain's shift from initiator to object ofparody and festive abuse, especially in his final exchanges with Garcio as he assumes the role of officialdom's spokesperson, provides the audience with the opportunity to experience a true...