The Whole Journey: Shakespeare's Power of Development by C. L. Barber, Richard P. Wheeler (review)

Reviews401 than the commonplace. Elsewhere, in discussing one documentary source, he warns that "pageants" referred to in the churchwardens' accounts of St. Andrew's Church in Ashburton are fixed shrines in the church and hence are not to be taken as having a relevance to the study in hand. Yet another useful point made which contributes more generally to the careful handling of the evidence provided by theatrical and other records is the observation that the presence of a Vice in a Robin Hood play from Chudleigh in 1561 may be added to the growing list of indications that the mention of a vice figure is no evidence of morality influence. Since the principal aim of the volume is to document rather than to process testamentary material, however, it would be misleading to dwell exclusively on Wasson's comments and conclusions, interesting and frequently enlightening though they be. In the process of turning up material, Wasson has been assiduous, and the volume is a substantial one in terms of size. Herein lies an irony, for it is in fact much larger than J. J. Anderson 's Newcastle-upon-Tyne volume in which the entries are arguably much meatier in the information they yield. One might therefore argue that, given that the REED project has not been without its financial problems, to produce such a large book for Devon is rather excessive. By way of defense it should be stated that the volume is dealing with a large county, and comprehensiveness is clearly an aim of this project, though the compiler does display a love of anecdote which leads him to include some items which if intrinsically interesting might be considered of dubious relevance, such as the story of the apostasy of Robert Hode, the story of Sir Richard Edgecumbe from 1553, or some of the extensive extracts from the Register of Bishop John de Grandisson. However, these scarcely detract from the usefulness of the volume and add considerably to its general reading interest. There are, of course, also many substantial items of enormous significance including several sections of John de Grandisson 's writings and, in the civic records of Exeter from 1413-14, an extended reference to the Corpus Christi plays. Wasson's volume on the Devon records of early English drama takes its place honorably among the REED collections produced so far. Like the previous volumes, it displays meticulous scholarship and a clear dedication to the task of facilitating the work of future researchers, be they social, economic, or theatrical historians. DARRYLL GRANTLEY University of Kent at Canterbury C. L. Barber and Richard P. Wheeler. The Whole Journey: Shakespeare's Power of Development. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986. Pp. xxix + 354. $37.50. Henrik Ibsen's father went bankrupt. Critics have no trouble reconciling this fact with the ruined and feckless paternal figures who populate his drama; we willingly see the symbolism of plays like The Master Builder as openly autobiographical. William Shakespeare's father squandered his wife's dowry and, fearing arrest for debt, stopped attending church. Hamlet, on the battlements, responds to the cannonade attending Claudius's royal drinking-bout with a meditation on the way a single 402Comparative Drama fault can cost a man his reputation. The ghost of his father appears and cuts off the speech. While we feel comfortable seeing old Ibsen in old Ekdal, and the playwright in the builder, the suggestion that the two father-figures in Hamlet hint at John Shakespeare will give most of us pause. For C. L. Barber and Richard P. Wheeler, that meeting on the battlements is a turning point in Shakespeare's whole journey of development not simply as an artist but also as a man coming to grips with his own deep psychic needs. "Barber believed that the art met needs in the man who created it and knew himself through it," Wheeler tells us in the Foreword to this ambitious, bulky book. "His art embodies him—an achievement which seems to have made other forms of public self-expression or assertion superfluous," Barber wrote in a draft manuscript of the first chapter (p. xvi). The Whole Journey marks the culmination...