Fangs of Malice: Hypocrisy, Sincerity, and Acting by Matthew H. Wikander (review)

Matthew H. Wikander. Fangs ofMalice: Hypocrisy, Sincerity, and Acting. Iowa City: University ofIowa Press, 2002. 229p. Catherine Wiley University of Colorado at Denver Like the best theater history, Fangs ofMalice helps to remind us why, despite the efforts of the medieval Church fathers, Puritans, various government-sponsored censors, and the advent offilm, television, and digital enhancement, live theater has yet to expire. In this wide-ranging study ofwhat Jonas Barish famously called the "anti-theatrical prejudice," play texts themselves are employed as primary evidence of the centuries-long diatribe against everything theatrical. Actors, as the embodiment ofthe lies told on stage, bear the brunt ofthis prejudice, but actors can also claim that the power of theater begins and ends with them, with their performances. Without the convention ofour willing suspension ofdisbelief, of ouragreement that the man we applaud (or hiss) is no longer himselfbut his character , drama exists only on the page. This conventional dismantling ofidentity is inherently dangerous and thus eternally appealing. In other words, as Wikander concludes, "Acting and play goingare compulsive, mutually dependent behaviors; actors and audiences, in the language ofaddiction, are each other's enablers" (1 83). We need theater even while we revile its producers: an antagonism as old as the drama itself. Rather whimsically divided into acts and scenes instead ofchapters, the book outlines three primary causes for the conventional mistrust ofthe stage: costuming and disguise; dissemblance and dishonesty; and its celebration of addictive behaviors like alcoholism and gambling. Primarily a series ofclose readings ofa dazzling variety of plays, Fangs ofMalice undertakes a gentle but unapologetic critique ofNew Historicism. Such a critique is particularly appropriate in a text depending so heavily on plays ofthe Renaissance period, a period well trodden by New Historicist scholars. Wikander finds this bias too literal in its application of the precise historical moment to explain every element oftheater. Indeed, the New Historicist compulsion to explain theater solely in terms ofits social context does dilute its magic, a magic which may be, Wikander implies, timeless. As evidence, Wikander points to the common Renaissance trope ofcharacters musing, or worrying, about being mistaken for actors. Ofcourse the audience's knowledge that such fear is being voiced by none other than the actor makes it more compelling. Is this a reflection of the playwright's distrust ofhis medium, another person? That a number of playwrights discussed in the book were also actors seems not to matter here, although we might conjecture that their experience as actors made them even more critical ofthe job. The question, ofcourse, 86 * ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW + SPRING 2003 Reviews goes beyond the boundaries ofthe stage to encompass the very nature ofthe self. According to Wikander, "The mimetic problem of staging the inner self—by definition unplayable—extends through the whole context of European early modern and modern drama. The great characters of this drama, like Hamlet, Alceste, and Hedda Gabler, repudiate the falsity of the worlds they inhabit and arrogate to themselves sole power to be judges over themselves" (xvii). The New Historicist selfmay be a product oftime and place, but theater's lengthy efforts to expose that self remain a source of fascination. In a fine reading ofShakespeare's Henry IV, Part One, and Henry V, Wikander shows that mutability, especially Hal's, is a source ofpower rather than weakness, and that Hotspur's lack ofacting ability is his real problem. Hotspur appears the same at all times, before all audiences, and is thus an inappropriate leader for a people who understood, as Shakespeare's richly mixed audience did, that performance plays an integral part in being human. Hal adjusts his "self" according to context, acting one way with Falstaffin the tavern and quite anotherway with his father at court. Wikander reads Hal's great "Yet herein will I imitate the sun" speech as a discourse on the actor's chameleon-like ability to adapt, to change the outside of his true selfwithout distorting who or what he is. Such power underscores what Michael Goldman has termed the actor's "terrific energy," terrific in the sense ofexcessive as well as terrifying. The terror of illusion—that it will either unmask us or trick us into believing that the...