John Bale by Peter Happé (review)

454Comparative Drama implied in the loss of Achilles' arms" (Tragedy and Civilization, 110). In Trachinian Women, Dianeira remembers being courted by the river god, Achelous, who appeared in three shapes, like a bull, a snake and a man with a bull's head: "Ill-fated, awaiting such a suitor, I kept on praying always to die before ever coming near this bed." To Segal this means, "The young Dianeira's fears, like Psyche's, are (at least in part) sexual (anxiety about the 'monstrosity' ofthe phallus that will penetrate her" (75). This way of interpreting Greek drama is not only "extraneous to Greek ways of thinking," it resolutely ignores what the text says. Literary criticism of ancient literature initially tried to help us understand what the Greeks were trying to say. Charles Segal's essays and books have made important contributions to this effort. Greek tragedies are plays composed by great poets, put on at a religious festival sponsored by the Athenian state, and paid for and performed by and for Athenian citizens. There is room for complexity here but also definite limits on interpretation. An obsession with triple and multiple ambiguities and notions foreign to Greek thought has led us astray. It is time to trudge back to the place where we left the main highway: an historically-rooted understanding of die texts. E. CHRISTIAN KOPFF University of Colorado, Boulder Peter Happé. John Bale. Twayne's English Authors Series, 520. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1996. Pp. xvii + 174. $28.95. That Peter Happé's book on John Bale is number 520 in Twayne's English Authors Series is a fact worth noting because it places the book in the context of a massive and meticulous literary history of the sort that, in many ways, begins with the labors of John Bale himself. It contains useful apparatuses such as a chronology and an annotated bibliography . Eight chapters set forward an account of Bale's life, his religious beliefs, his archival and historical efforts, his polemical works, and his dramatic achievements. In sum, Happé provides a TEAS volume that amply fulfills the series' goal to be a thorough introduction for college students and non-specialists. Happé treats Bale's biography and nondramatic works in the first three chapters and spends the remaining five on the drama. Some might object to this emphasis on drama, since Bale's bibliographic and historical research, not to mention his polemical tracts, had a clearer immediate impact in his time and have had a more lasting influence on our own. But Happé shows how Bale's drama, history, and polemic are never far apart. The first chapter is an engaging biography primarily concerned with the chronology of Bale's research, writing, and publications, taking into consideration his sphere of influence. It relies quite heavily on Bale's writings about himself in the Summarium and in the Vocacyon, but it Reviews455 also outlines the gaps in our knowledge about him and treats his word with the appropriate skepticism. Chapter 2, on Bale's polemical works, begins with a discussion of his theology—or, rather, his developing theology, since a convert like Bale is characterized by change. The second halfofthe chapter summarizes and contextualizes Bale's copious polemical works, including those on Anne Askew and Sir John Oldcastle , Lord Cobham. Chapter 3, summarizing and evaluating Bale's work as a literary historian and bibliographer, also touches on his association with John Leland. Happé rightly notes that Bale's efforts in this field—his Catalogus and Summarium—remain fountains of information for modem scholars. The second half of the book—the part of most of interest to readers of drama—begins with Chapter 4, treating the play Three Laws. Chapters 5 and 6 focus on King Johan and on the biblical God's Promises, John the Baptist 's Preaching, and The Temptation respectively. Each of these chapters has four sections, headed "Text," "Plot," "Character," and "Language and Verse," which set out the basic discussion of the topic and point to its complexities. The arrangement does not allow for sustained argument about the works, but each chapter offers important insights about the state of the text and about evidence of...