The Drama of J. M. Synge by Mary C. King, and: A Critical History of Modern Irish Drama, 1891-1980 by D. E. S. Maxwell, and: Sean O'Casey and His Critics: An Annotated Bibliography, 1916-1982 by E. H. Mikhail (review)

84Comparative Drama the Great in Medieval Art," EDAM Newsletter, 3, No. 1 [1980], 4-10). Further, might we not guess that Herod's mention of "devills" in the Chester play also suggests the appropriateness of another stage prop, the demon crown, which likewise appears uniquely in English iconography? Meredith's essay makes mention too of the alternative silence or music (Psalm 69, "Save mee, O God," which continues: "for the waters are come in, even unto my soul") during the time of the Flood in the Chester cycle—two "practical" solutions to a problem in production (p. 80). For the modern scholar-director, however, the exact nature of the music proposed in the one solution is not within our reach, since we do not know what setting of the psalm might have been used. Fortunately, the modern production, even when attempting to achieve reasonable fidelity to the play as it was conceived in the sixteenth century, need not be bound by the demand to do things exactly as they were done in the past; such notions of authenticity, though current in some early music circles, are proven impossible in theatrical production in any case. Yet J. A. B. Somerset has a valid point in his essay when he objects to the relegation of the music for a particular play to an appendix in Richard Beadle's edition of the York plays (p. 99). In her fine concluding essay surveying the importance of the Chester and York records for our knowledge of the play texts, Alexandra F. Johnston affirms: "I would hope that textual matters, thematic concerns and performance concerns would be part of the detailed introduction [of the ideal editions of medieval English drama] using both record evidence and the evidence of the experience of performance" (pp. 137-38). To these may we ask that editors also give careful, rigorous, and detailed attention to iconography—iconography as closely related to the local setting and date as possible. CLIFFORD DAVIDSON Western Michigan University Mary C. King. The Drama of J. M. Synge. Syracuse, N. Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1985. Pp. vii + 229. $17.50. D.E. S. Maxwell. A Critical History of Modern Irish Drama, 1891-1980. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Pp. xvii + 250. $16.95. E.H. Mikhail. Sean O'Casey and His Critics: An Annotated Bibliography, 1916-1982. Metuchen, N. J.: The Scarecrow Press, 1985. Pp. ? + 348. $25.00. The Irish drama has never lacked its devoted students, ardent commentators , and acidulous detractors. In the wealth and sometimes welter of religious strife, militant nationalism, bitter politics, diverse history, rich myths, charming folklore, private obsessions, and public concerns, the Irish dramatists from Synge to O'Casey, for example, to Brian Friel or Hugh Leonard have made their way from seeming partisan origins and concerns to sterling reputations of international importance. No careful student of Irish theater history and drama could fail to be mesmerized Reviews85 by the contentious scenes which ricochet throughout a fascinating, indeed often thrilling panorama of events and people, of places and times, familiar matters no doubt out of which have come a score of good, even great plays which still command the modern stage. And yet as with anything so boisterous and divisive, so focused on emotional particularities , so quick to praise and blame, to champion and criticize, the Irish drama is obviously possessed of no single truth capable of defining and describing that fictive Ireland created by its dramatists. What results, rather, are many truths which commingle to produce for some critics a prolix blather best ignored, and for others a dramatic literature complexly profound, haunting in its bewildering diversity and odd coherence, its richly wondrous sense of itself. So the powerful contextuality of Ireland's past has fed its playwrights well, and, as we know, also driven them from home, and sometimes, though not always, brought them back again. Noone need recite the famous list of expatriates. Scholarship has studied them regularly, and the three books here under review are but exemplars of on-going concerns. Refreshingly, however, these studies are notably free of the oracular cant, inchoate jargon, néologie gibberish, pretentious nostrums, and other such critical fol-de-rol so popular...