The Cambridge companion to medieval English theatre (review)

142 Reviews Beadle, Richard, ed., The Cambridge companion to medieval English theatre, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994; paper, pp. xxii, 372; 34 illustrations; R.R.P. AUS$35.00. Although the play (The martyrdom of St Apollonia) within the self-frame of the cover of this book (a close-up of the director orchestrating the performance with book and baton) argues strongly for a focus on text and performance, which is advocated by this present volume, the illustration is, sadly, not English. The cover instandy signals 'medieval theatre' to the buyer. The Fouquet Apollonia has an aesthetic appeal and is familiar to students in the field. It appeared, appropriately, on the dust cover of The theatre ofmedieval Europe, (ed. E. Simon, 1991). But in this case, there may have been an argument for placing one of the excellent photographs of modem productions included in Chapter eleven on the cover. A strength of this volume is its consistent advocacy ofre-creationof medieval performance as a respectable research tool, and this could have been signalled before the reader opened the book. But 'you can't judge a book by its cover', and from here on one can do nought but praise the concept and execution of this Companion. One of the most exciting things about this book is that it does not pretend to give all the answers. The individual contributors have given an overview of previous scholarship as weU as a strong sense of then personal biases. But the major thrust of then discussion is to give the reader a sense that there is much more to be discovered. It is this sense of a future for the study of medieval English theatre that makes this an ideal 'companion' for the student and the aspiring scholar. William Tydeman's general introduction gives some clues for possible directions for scholarship which are elaborated on and added to elsewhere in the book. The Companion tells the reader that 'this is where w e are now'. The individual chapters, supported most ably by Peter Happens guide to the published criticism, show that there is a place from which to start but, more importandy, that there is stiU somewhere to go. The volume benefits from having contributors with different theoretical starting points. This is not a book which sets out to prove a single theory and the reader is given a broad spectrum of opinion and approach. Richard Beadle's editorship must be highly commended. While there is no loss in the integrity of the styles of the individual contributors, he has drawn the Reviews 143 sections of the book together with his editorial apparatus and given a direction to the individual talents of the contributors. This is a users' book, and thetextand the bibliography have been dovetailed to make each chapter a comprehensive guide to the area of English theatre under consideration. While the chapters can be read as self contained units, they are not mutually exclusive and contain useful crossreferencesto one another. The surviving texts from the English medieval theatre are predominandy religious in subject matter. However, the Companion does not limit its interest to these texts and points out that there was a thriving secular theatre. There are reminders that there are extensive records of pageantry and music that future scholars might be able to fit into their analyses of the theatrical endeavours of the period. For the expert on 'Middle English' drama, there is a most welcome overview of the theatre of medieval Cornwall. This relatively inaccessible area has been treated most sensitively with a concentration on the subject matter of the Comish plays and the differences between them and then 'English' counterparts. Richard Beadle has given prominence to the value of civic records in the study of medieval texts by including a reproduction from the Or do paginarum in the York A/Y memorandum book (p. 96). H e advocates a new examination of the Ordo to update the work completed in the early 1970s by Johnston and Rogerson. A renewed effort is needed to uncover the mysteries of this much damaged and erased but potentially rewarding document. What new insights might the researcher, aided by the m o d...