Anticourt Drama in England, 1603-1642 by Albert H. Tricomi (review)

88Comparative Drama on power relationships and on Jonson's poetry; his readings of particular poems are well-written analyses of texts and contexts. Inevitably in a study of this sort there is a tendency to reduction: after a while the reader has difficulty distinguishing one patronage poem analysis from any other. Yet the sometimes overwhelming thoroughness of Evans' approach is more strength than weakness. Generally the book supplies an intelligent and lucid analysis of the poetics of patronage. Although its focus is Jonson, its method could well be extended to include other Renaissance writers. FRANCES TEAGUE University of Georgia Albert H. Tricomi. Anticourt Drama in England, 1603-1642. Charlottesville : University Press of Virginia, 1989. Pp. xv + 235. $35.00. Anticourt Drama in England, 1603-1642 joins recent reconsiderations of areas marked out by the New Historicism. It challenges claims for radicalism in Jacobean drama by applying alternative methodologies to study relationships between drama and history. In defining many dramatic impulses as anticourt rather than radical, Tricomi argues that much social and economic criticism embedded in the drama derives from tensions between crown and public, producing in the latter a reformist yet conservative agenda that we see in plays. (I use conservative here in the sense of keeping something from being lost.) This vital tradition, insists Tricomi, takes its inspiration from Elizabethan literature and continues through the Caroline period in plays often thought nonpolitical. This thesis is at once both sensible and ambitious, perhaps excessively so, reflecting the book's great strengths and its limits. Although he occasionally cites Foucault, Tricomi generally avoids most of the New Historicist theoretical pantheon. His methods sensitively conflate a kind of old historicist use of political reference with the tactics of critics who locate topical meanings. Tricomi is less interested than Jonathan DoIIimore in seeing literary texts as part of a "seamless" cultural discourse; but awareness of such patterns informs his insights. Hence, unlike "old" historicists, he generally avoids presenting historical materials merely as a "backdrop" to which literary works respond. Defining five major genres comprising Anticourt drama helps Tricomi manage the potential indefinition of his topic. As readers might expect, though, this strategy works with varying success, particularly when dealing with the smaller and more subtle evidence of Caroline plays. At times he is so cautious that his readings, though corrective, seem familiar, as when he emphasizes the anti-Humanist, Christian conservatism of Italianate tragedy. At times, though, such caution leads to nicely balanced observations, as when Tricomi recognizes that A Game of Chess, with its Puritan sources, undercuts James while remaining nationalistic, and with other plays contributes to the formation of policy by the time of the 1623 anti-Jesuit proclamation. Each part of this study looks at one of the five anticourt genres, beginning with a chapter sketching a critical theme in cultural discourse, moving to discussions of individual plays and the events and persons to Reviews89 which they refer or respond, and concluding with a summary outlining the general aims of the subgenre. Part 1, "Topical Dramatic Satire, 16031608 ," describes the optimism which greeted the idea of succession and the quick disappointment in James himself. Public sentiment about the new court's extravagance and sensuality fed the invention of dramatic satirists in plays about disguised dukes and topical satire about individual persons at court. Intertwined with good readings of plays, particularly Chapman's, is a representation of Jacobean censorship, including a chapter on the Children of the Queen's Revels. Sometimes Tricomi's assessment of censorship doesn't necessarily fit the pattern he describes. For example, although the history of the Children suggests that going too far indeed cost them, and all theaters, dearly by 1607-08, their appearance at court in 1608, and their 1610 regaining of the Queen's patronage, cannot be wholly explained by the company's reorganization. As Tricomi knows, James surely stood to gain from supporting companies formerly seen as critical of him; but today we know too that monarchs also look good for tolerating an institution critical of them but lacking effective power to subvert their aims. Indeed, Tricomi concludes his first section by reminding us that tragedies of this period aimed less to subvert...