Winter Fruit: English Drama 1642-1660 by Dale B. J. Randall (review)

Book Reviews205 DALE B. J. RANDALL. Winter Fruit: English Drama 1642-1660. Lexington: University Press ofKentucky, 1995. 454 p. Winter Fruit is the first book-length examination of drama during the Interregnum since Alfred Harbage's study, Cavalier Drama, was published in 1936. Such a study is welcome, as there is still a widespread assumption that no dramatic activity occurred from 1642-1660, and most general histories of drama still omit any discussion of this period. Randall's study does not replace Cavalier Drama but greatly adds to the earlier study in light of scholarship of the past sixty years, and also in light of newly emerging critical perspectives. While Harbage is concerned with this drama as evincing a movement from the popular theater to the theater of the upper social classes that emerges centrally with the Restoration, Randall examines this drama in terms of the social and political context. He also argues for a connection between the Interregnum drama and the popular drama that preceded it, whereas Harbage sees Interregnum drama as the direct outgrowth of an earlier private court drama or closet drama written by gentlemen not directly connected with the public theater. Although the author emphasizes that drama continued to be performed during the period, the book's primary emphasis is on plays written, for the most part, by frustrated Royalists, as these are the plays that have survived . Professional dramatists such as Shirley, who needed to make a living, turned their time and talents to other work, so most of the surviving plays are the work of amateurs. Some of these plays were published, while others remained in manuscript; most appear never to have been performed. It is not surprising, then, that these plays, while interesting in terms of their social and political context, would not fare well in performance. Although their primary purpose, as shown by the emphasis on tragicomedy, appears to have been escapism or wistful attempts to rewrite recent history in which Royalists had been the losers, Randall also argues that these plays, by the use of "parallelism," indirectly deal with political matters and thus have a propagandistic intent. While some of the parallels discussed seem a bit strained, most do support the author's assertion that these plays are significant social and political documents. What is not clear from such a broad survey, however, is whether any of these plays are significant as works of literature or even as a foundation for the drama that developed after the Restoration. The book is cast as a broad survey—an approach made necessary because the author is breaking new ground—and most readers will not be familiar with the plays he discusses. The opening chapters focus on the historical context of the drama of the 1630s. An additional chapter discusses older plays and suggests that some of these plays were printed or reprinted between 1642 and 1660 because, through parallelism, they could reflect current social and political concerns. The later chapters survey the period's drama by forms—such as shows, motions, and drolls—as well as by the more traditional genres oftragedy, comedy, and tragicomedy. A separate chapter is devoted to the Cavendish family's ventures into dramatic writing. 206Rocky Mountain Review The useful appendices give the texts of Leonard Willan's preface to Orgula and Richard Flecknoe's A Short Discourse ofthe English Stage. One drawback to a broad historical approach is that while the book contains much valuable information, the interpretation of that information is, to some extent, limited. Some of that limitation is imposed by the material; as Randall points out, many plays from this period have likely been lost, so all interpretations will always be based on incomplete evidence. Furthermore, since the drama that has survived from this period is mostly amateur work, we do not have the work of professional dramatists for comparison ; this amateur work will of necessity differ in kind from the professional drama produced before the theaters were closed, and this issue needs to be addressed. There is also the vexing question of whether drama without an audience is really drama, since audience is a factor in shaping plays. While the author's point about...