Editing Early English Drama: Special Problems and New Directions ed. by A. F. Johnston (review)

82Comparative Drama Shakespeare could generate such a collection. We have only begun to scratch the surface of the nineteenth-century theater and drama; and I cannot even think of an intelligent work on some of the monumental and seminal figures of the nineteenth-century theater, such as Pixerecourt, Jerrold, Boucicault, to name just a few. We must not forget that the nineteenth century was the last great popular age of theater. It was this popular tradition that made Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, and Shaw possible . And it has even kept a faint whimper of drama and theater just barely audible a hundred years later. MICHAEL X. ZELENAK Yale University School of Drama A. F. Johnston, ed. Editing Early English Drama: Special Problems and New Directions. New York: AMS Press, 1987. Pp. 143. $29.50. In 1976 at the twelfth annual Conference on Editorial Problems sponsored by the University of Toronto, Ian Lancashire brilliantly surveyed the state of editing with regard to the medieval drama in an essay (published in Editing Medieval Texts English, French, and Latin Written in England, ed. A. G. Rigg [1977]) that still deserves to be read by everyone with an interest in the field of drama studies. The papers in the nineteenth annual Conference on Editorial Problems (1983), now very fortunately published by AMS Press, are entirely devoted to the topic of medieval drama and again are worthy of very close attention by scholars and critics alike. In spite of the burgeoning of interest in drama that is called "medieval ," the available editions are even now less than satisfactory for many purposes, including not only scholarship and teaching but also production. For example, the new edition of the Towneley plays which is to replace the antiquated Early English Text Society edition of 1897 has not yet appeared, though the publication of the facsimile of Huntington Library MS. HM 1 has been a considerable help in the interim. Also, while Paula Neuss has contributed significantly by producing her Creation of the World ( 1983 ) , much work is yet to be done to make available other Cornish and Welsh drama. Pamela Sheingorn, in her Easter Sepulchre in England (1987), has published facsimiles and texts of the Latin Easter musicdramas and Holy Week ceremonies, and yet these are not performable since the music does not appear with the texts as published. Further, the lack of less expensive editions of the plays is more critical than ever in spite of the availability of the Beadle and King selection from the York cycle in modernized spelling and the exemplary edition of The Mary Play from the N. Town Manuscript (1987) recently prepared by Peter Meredith. The preferred solutions here are perhaps more difficult than in 1983 because of the reluctance of publishers to underwrite the kinds of texts recommended by the contributors to Editing Early English Drama. While, as David Bevington (whose Medieval Drama thankfully remains in print) has indicated in his essay, anthologies from such sources as the cycle drama must involve "compromise" (p. 27), teachers will neverthe- Reviews83 less praise Penguin for reprinting Peter Happé's English Mystery Plays. But, in addition to setting forth the kinds of the texts that are needed, this book provides an invaluable focus for understanding medieval drama texts, for the manuscripts involve complex problems which need to be recognized before comment on their content can become viable. This drama was not primarily literary (in spite of the fact that some of the manuscripts did have a literary or antiquarian purpose, since in some cases when they were copied there was little chance that the plays would be revived as theatrical entities) and often achieves its greatest effectiveness on stage (though, it would seem, not when treated to conventional modern production, as at York, or to parody, as in the National Theatre's Mysteries) . Hence the emphasis, found in several of the essays, including David Parry's on The Castle of Perseverance, on the necessity of staging these dramas is well placed. Yet it is disappointing that the contributors to the volume fail to argue for the necessity of iconographically informed production as a principal route to understanding the drama. This drama is to be seen...