Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England: An Annual Gathering of Research, Criticism and Reviews, Vol I. ed. by J. Leeds Barroll III (review)

Reviews85 also torn apart metatragically, dismembered into a sequence of costumes that ends up as the empty mask" (p. 166). Such homologies among phenomena at different levels of organization, such as ritual, plot, and the theatrical experience, duly marked as tentative by qualifiers such as "possibly" and "could well have," render the Bacchae a commentary on its own tragic effect. Prophecy and metaphysical terror, the collapse of reason, parody, metatragedy and subjectivity: the range of approaches is wide, and fascinating perspectives are opened on how dramatic action refracts the social and psychological structures of ancient Greek experience. Taken as a whole, the collection offers us a compound Euripides rather than the sense of a single creative presence, but anyone with a special interest in the plays treated here, or in the directions being taken in Euripidean criticism today, will find this volume valuable and exciting. DAVID KONSTAN Wesleyan University Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England: An Annual Gathering of Research, Criticism and Reviews. Volume I. Ed. by J. Leeds Barroll HI. New York: AMS Press, 1984. Pp. xi + 289. $42.50. Handsome, finely printed and produced, the first volume of Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England has now taken its place alongside the Spring number of Studies in English Literature and the annual Renaissance Drama as a forum for critical inquiry and response. Ably edited by J. Leeds Barroll III, with the assistance of Paul Werstine, this hardcover journal is devoted to studies "in the drama in England from the beginnings to 1640, exclusive of Shakespeare." Sixteen new essays, two review articles, and four reviews make up its nearly 300 pages. The essays are arranged more or less chronologically by the dates of the works they discuss and range from John Wasson's contribution on "Professional Actors in the Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance" to analyses of plays by Kyd, Marlowe, Marston, Beaumont and Fletcher, Jonson, Chapman , Webster, Massinger, and Dekker. Capping the series of essays is Herbert Berry's "The Globe Bewitched and El Hombre Fiel," a fascinating account of "what happened at the Globe one afternoon in August 1634" (p. 211) during a production of The Late Lancashire Witches. Add to all this review articles by Doris Adler on Cyrus Hoy's Commentaries to texts in The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker and by Paul Werstine on new Revels editions of Peele's Old Wives Tale and Youth and Hycke Scorner. And add to all that reviews of an edition of The Lisle Letters and of books on Jonson, revenge plays, and Webster to total the volume's contents. Unlike Renaissance Drama, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England has not established a single subject or topic for each issue; the work found here is not related to any particular theme. But perhaps, given the nature of the entries, two editorial decisions may be discerned. One, obviously, is to include essays on medieval and early Renaissance plays; whether or not the editor wishes to stress the relationship between 86Comparative Drama the earlier and later drama, as the journal's name might suggest, remains to be seen. A second decision seems to be to expand the canon of plays regularly discussed in learned journals: here we have articles on Henry VIITs entertainment for the Queen of Scots in 1516 and on neglected plays like The Devil's Charter, Massinger and Dekker's The Virgin Martyr and The Late Lancashire Witches. Whether the inclusion of essays on plays not often considered will continue also remains to be seen. But it is heartening to think that a journal on the drama will offer analyses of plays in addition to such mainstays as The Changeling, The Revenger's Tragedy, and The Duchess of Malfi. The contributions vary in scope and quality, and they each have their own concerns. But in them may be felt a number of critical currents. The most finely wrought of the essays, Robert Y. Turner's "Heroic Passion in the Early Tragicomedies of Beaumont and Fletcher," considers an issue that has received increasing comment: the relationship between a play's ethical content and its dramatic techniques and conventions. Turner implicity seeks to modify the view established by Eugene...