The Comic Matrix of Shakespeare's Tragedies: "Romeo and Juliet," "Hamlet," "Othello," and "King Lear" by Susan Snyder (review)

Book Reviews117 Malcom K. Read. Juan Huarte de San Juan. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1981. 147p. This study is a well-documented examination of Juan Huarte de San Juan and his only treatise, Examen de ingenios para las ciencias (1575), a work that caused a profound impact on many European theologians, grammarians, philosophers, and writers. Translated into all major European languages and Latin as well, the treatise is a fascinating compendium of ideas that explores such topics as humoral psychology, vocational guidance, innovative teaching methodology, and other psychological and physiological issues, to the extent that its scope and vision remain unparalleled in its time. However, in spite of such impressive contributions in the fields of scientific and technical thought, imaginative literature, and literary criticism and theory, Huarte de San Juan has remained obscure and has not attracted due critical attention. Professor Read has successfully assessed Huarte's brilliance and importance by writing this comprehensive work of Huarte's complex and unorthodox ideas about man and the world and showing how this Renaissance physician-intellectual addressed issues that continue to be currently relevant, especially those in the realm of psychology concerning individual differences, the creative process, and man's natural versus acquired ability (even Noam Chomsky has alluded to Huarte in his research on the innate linguistic mechanism of the human mind). Following the format of the Twayne World Author Series, Professor Read provides an informative biographical and historical commentary, followed by nine chapters that examine various facets of the Examen: the nature and identity of man, faith versus reason, pedagogical theory and practice, eugenics, dietetics, and so on. Chapter Nine discusses the far-reaching influence of the Examen in Spain, Italy, France, Germany, and the modern period. It is easy to agree with Professor Read that Huartean scholarship needs to be enhanced by additional studies. A short conclusion along with an up-to-date selected and annotated bibliography closes the study. Professor Read's study is a useful guide for specialists and also serves to make Huarte accessible to readers at large. V7RG7JV7A RAMOS FOSTER Phoenix College Susan Snyder. The Comic Matrix of Shakespeare's Tragedies: "Romeo and Juliet," "Hamlet," "Othello," and "King Lear". Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. 185p. Susan Snyder has written on a subject long overdue: comic traditions as the basis of Shakespearean tragedy. The prestige of Aristotle, combined with the accident of the loss of the portion of The Poetics devoted to comedy, has created an imbalance in critical attitudes toward the relative merits of comedy and tragedy. Historically, this imbalance has meant a diminishment of Jonson in comparison to Shakespeare but also a diminishment of Shakespeare's comedies in comparison to his other plays. Now Snyder has uncovered the vitality ofcomic form within some of the greatest of Shakespeare's tragedies. The wonder is that it has taken so long. Simply reading through Plautus, Terence, and Seneca (Shakespeare's universally acknowledged prototypes of classical form) should have alerted criticism to the lack of narrative vitality in Seneca, far closer to declamation than theatre, and its superlative abundance in plays such as The Twin Menaechmi and 118ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW Othello. Such is the power of categorical thinking over the contradictory facts of historical and artistic truth, however, that Shakespeare's tragedies have been assigned in form to the precepts of Aristotle, to the conventions of Seneca, to the "medieval heritage of Elizabethan tragedy," even to the epic battle between virtue and vice in the morality play tradition. Most recently, by a sudden reversal of the historical telescope, Hamlet and Lear have been uncovered as prototypes of the Theatre of the Absurd. The most obvious category of all — that of New Comedy — works especially well with Othello. Consider the stock characters: senex-Brabantio, miles gloriosusRoderigo , prostitute-Bianca, charming and sexually active young man-Cassio, servant and confidante-Emilia (with lago as a brilliant variation, onesubsuming the paracite as well). Add in thelost or misdirected love token, eavesdropping, contrived exits and entrances, drunkenness as comic, and overcomplicated and disintegrating plots and stratagems cooked up by a clever servant. Then turn to Romeo and Juliet with all this in mind as you add in the formulas of Italian Renaissance Romantic...