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Reviews187 readers who would have no other access to many of the plays . . ." (p. xx). For specialists in Russian drama, Karlinsky offers both facts and personal observations: the notorious Catherine "composed" three volumes of plays (mostly satirical comedies and opera libretti)—which Soviet critics reduce to footnotes, fearing to make a social critic of a monarch—; Shakhovskoy's TAe Lipetsk Spa (1815) is a play that "opened a new chapter in Russian drama and in Russian literature," and Dmitry Lensky's five-act vaudeville, Lev Gurych Sinichkin, provided with "a good idiomatic translation might yet make it performable in a foreign country" (p. 277). Karlinsky also has high praise for Lukin's TAe Wastrel Reformed by Love (first performed in 1765), the first full-length "modern" comedy-sentimental drama written in Russian. There are remarkably few errors in this study; I offer the following in the event of future printings: the quotation should read "his true self," not "shelf" (p. 180); sPinda, should be S Pinda (p. 71); at one point, stikhotvorets is translated as "poet," at another "poetaster"—perhaps "rhymester" would be preferable (p. 232) ; Razia, should be Roza (p. 324); the verb seems to be in trouble in the following: "moreover, there is no indication in TMoBC {TAe Misfortune of Being Clever] that this situation obtains in St. Petersburg or the rest of Russia" (p. 292); and finally, the "it" in the following seems a bit covert: "Without knowing about it, we cannot hope to understand their works for the stage" (p. 185). The final chapters in this book (on Griboedov and Pushkin) are the finest pieces of criticism that Karlinsky has written. Karlinsky need not have been so defensive in his introduction, nor does his study demand an apologia either to his "Scandinavian specialist and the Oxford colleague " nor to "a group of skeptical Russian ghosts, headed by Vladimir Nabokov." This is truly an intellectual fun-book, and Karlinsky is always good company in print or in the flesh. E. J. CZERWINSKI State University of New York, Stony Brook Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume. Producible Interpretation: Eight English Plays, 1675-1707. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985. Pp. xvi + 336. $30.00. Producible Interpretation is an important book of a kind that has long been needed. Taking eight plays, each raising very different questions of interpretation and production, Professors Hume and Milhous consider both the kinds of textual reading that can be made to work on the stage and the kinds of production concept that can, with varying degrees of textual permissibility, be applied to the texts. The book performs many valuable functions. Crackpot interpretations and the dronings of the Central Theme school are submitted to the test of producibility and, with pleasing regularity, are found wanting. Still more usefully, the authors show that production considerations invalidate quite plausible responses to the written text; that, for example, it is virtually impossible to make 188Comparative Drama Harcourt and Alithea or Lady Bountiful appear as moral norms in the theater. In addition to evaluating the readings of others, the authors offer some valuable textual readings of their own, including an outstanding study of TAe Wives Excuse. But, as one would expect, the main strength of the book lies in its examination of the stage possibilities of the plays. Analysis of entrances and exits in All for Love and TAe Spanish Fryar strikingly demonstrates that staging can convey important nuances unperceived by most scholars in their studies. Most valuable of all are the discussions of original casts, usually accompanied by comparison with later or hypothetical casts. The results of these comparisons are subtle and illuminating—the more so because they avoid excessive stress on type-casting and acknowledge the range of which the best actors were capable—and they reveal important considerations for the critic. In TAe Spanish Fryar, the casting of Underhill as Pedro means that his jibes at Torrismond's expense are fairly lightweight; had the part gone to Smith, the anti-heroic element would have been altogether stronger. And the casting of Nokes as Sosia in Amphitryon suggests a somewhat sympathetic portrayal which would excite some unease at his ill treatment and consequently influence...

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