Shakespeare Manipulated: The Use of the Dramatic Works of Shakespeare in teatro di figura in Italy by Susan Young (review)

320Comparative Drama level in medieval and early modern England is only just beginning to emerge. English Parish Drama has presented a well integrated set of studies of new material and issued a challenge for other researchers to continue to look for additional new material and to revise their views of the manifestations of the theatrical impulse as the search expands. MARGARET ROGERSON University ofSydney Susan Young. Shakespeare Manipulated: The Use ofthe Dramatic Works of Shakespeare in teatro di figura in Italy. Teaneck, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996. Pp. 232. $38.50. Shakespeare and puppetry may strike you as an intriguing if not a rather unusual, perhaps slightly uneasy combination; in fact, Susan Young's attempt to gather as much information as possible about the use of Shakespeare in the Italian teatro di figura is a labor of love coupled somewhat uncomfortably with scholarly research and field work, together with critical evaluation. It is in the latter area where this work falls short. I do not intend to be slighting or to belittle Young's work in any way—her enthusiasm for her subject is contagious and inspiring—but I did find myself wondering several times while reading this engaging book why she has hung a study of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italian teatro difigura on productions ofShakespeare, by any account a very small percentage of the repertoire, regardless of the form. And if she is going to hang her study on Shakespeare, why not bring the full weight of Shakespeare criticism into the project? The answer to this question seems quite simple: it was beyond the scope of her project. The answer to the first question, if there is one, could lie in the continual search for novelty demanded by the environment in which we work, an issue that must be left hanging; it could also be that Young is at once a pioneer whose critical perspective is quite derivative. Her final chapter, "Shakespeare with Strings," attempts to bring a semiotic reading to teatro difigura, but here, as with her main concern, she offers only a summary of what has gone before; along the way, though, whether intentionally or not, she does manage to show numerous contradictions in this surprisingly confining critical approach. Adaptations of Shakespeare for the various forms of puppet theater —marionettes and their southern Italian counterparts pupi, burattini (hand puppets), shadow puppets, etc.—is a little-tilled field and one would think a quite rich one at that. To accomplish her aim ofgathering as much information about her subject as possible, she makes use of interviews and archives but also relies heavily on the work of Italian scholars to provide the background. The link between Shakespeare and teatro di figura is tenuous, as she points out, but existed even during Shakespeare's lifetime, authorization for both marionettes and hand Reviews32 1 puppets coming three years before The Theater opened in Shoreditch. All of the information provided about the status of puppet theater in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century London and Shakespeare's supposed exposure to these art forms is gleaned from Italian scholarship; she adds nothing of her own. The same is true for what she has to say about Shakespeare's Italy. Perhaps the weakest point of this work is her overly conservative interpretations of Shakespearean drama that stem perhaps from her reliance on semiotics, constricting the plays rather than giving free reign to the rich ambiguities for which they have long been admired. Shakespeare is not her main concern, however; she is more interested in performance itself and its status as popular culture. Again she relies heavily on the work of others, but here she does attempt to fill in or at least respond to perceived inadequacies or omissions; in this area hers is a more rigorous scholarly approach than that ofher predecessors, for she is concerned more with performers, repertoire, dates, places, and production outlines. The catalogue section, the first half of the book, is a compilation ofperformance details, recording data to serve as the base for the discussion in part 2. Because the term teatro di figura encompasses marionettes, pupi, and burattini, the catalogue is divided into the relative sections with an...