In Small Proportions: A Poetics of the English Ayre 1596–1622 by Daniel Fischlin (review)

HUMANITIES 207 prominent place in Defoe's Essay on Projects. But these successes were followed by less successful expeditions against the French in Canada. Phips's reputation at this stage stood considerably higher in England than it did at home. The friendship and patronage of two leading New England divines, Cotton and Increase Mather, were probably, as the authors suggest, what secured Phips's appointment in 1692 as the first governor of Massachusetts under the new charter. The colony, at the accession of William and Mary, was highly factionalized. The Mathers thought that the new charter was the best possible compromise among the conflicting positions of the various parties who hoped for a restoration of the old charter and those who had been the champions and beneficiaries of the experiment in direct royal administration in the years immediately before the Revolution. The Mathers hoped that a new man like Phips could navigate these shoals. The New England Knight then nicely analyses Phips's career as he dealt with this fractious society. The new governor quickly became embroiled in the witchcraft crisis. The irregularity of his multiracial household and some of his wife's earlier connections brought them under suspicion and limited his actions. Nevertheless Phips succeeded in moderating. the frenzy. His overall policy for the colony was commercial expansion in the northeast and ultimate extinction of the French presence in Canada. In his quarrels with neighbouring English colonies over borders and jurisdictions , in his strategic policy and sometimes raids against the French and Indians on the frontier, and in the administration of trade and the enforcement of the Navigation Acts he sometimes had difficulty keeping his personal and policy interests separate. Complaints against him led to his recall to London, where he died before he had a chance to defend himself. Although Phips's only unqualified successes were as a 'projector' searching for treasure in the Caribbean, his difficulties and shortcomings as governor were exacerbated by his origins and by the lack of secure patronage. Still, as the authors point out, his problems foreshadowed what would be the situation for most royal governors after him. By placing Phips's life in the context of evolving commercial and strategic objectives and the dynamics of empire, this study helps us to appreciate the complexity of colonial society at the end of the seventeenth century. (ARTHUR SHEPS) Daniel Fischlin. In Small Proportions: A Poetics of the English Ayre 1596-1622 Wayne State University Press. 404, illus, musical examples. us $39.95 The subtitle of Daniel Fischlin's In Small Proportions: A Poetics of the English Ayre 1596-1622 clearly indicates the focus of the book: the textual 208 LETTERS IN CANADA 199B much more than the musical issues of the generally solo-voice genre which came into increasing prominence as the dominance of the madrigal waned. The ayre, or Jute-song, Fischlin rightly observes, needs to be taken seriously from the literary as well as musical point of view and not just because the texts, for example, suggest metaphysical connections or because of the form's vital role in the emergence of English solo song. A good deal of primary material is available in, for instance, Edmund H. Fellowes's pioneering edition of ayres in The English Lute Songs (revised by Thurston Dart) and the widely popular selection in An Elizabethan Song Book, edited by W.H. Auden, Chester Kallman, and Noah Greenberg ; much critical comment is also at hand, ranging from Bruce Pattison 's still splendid Music and Poetry of the English Renaissance to later work by Ian Spink (English Song from Dowland to Purcell) and others. That the ayre was a popular form in the late Elizabethan and the Jacobean years is clear. Though some texts are anonymous, others are by major writers (Donne, Jonson, Raleigh, Shakespeare, Sidney), and the musical side also reveals illustrious names (Campion, Dowland, Ford, Hume, Jones, Rosseter). Often displaying extraordinary skill both in words and setting and in intellectual and emotional intensity, the ayre deserves serious attention by scholars, performers, and audiences for its own sake as wel1 as for what it reveals about its largely courtly context or literary-musical stylistic relationships. Fischlin offers a...