The Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts, 1540–1773 ed. by John W. O'Malley, SJ et al (review)

humanities 349 In the royal palaces, such as Hampton Court and Whitehall, the crucial`spatial principle of court theatres from the largest to the smallest was that the royal seat should directly face the stage, and hence both stage and state were aligned on the central axis of the chamber.' Late in the period Inigo Jones designed the conversion of the Whitehall Cockpit into a permanent theatre space, `the first court theatre in England.' Astington meticulously discusses the requirements for such theatres from trestles to illumination. This also leads him to consider the artists and artisans who made the drama possible. Here we find familiar and unfamiliar names, from Jones to George Gower. Astington suggests that the theatrical craft `most prominently patronised by the court was that of the costumier,' and Jones became the chief designer of costumes. The skill of these many artists reinforces the point that England did not suffer as an artistic backwater of Europe. In the section on audiences, Astington addresses three principal questions : `Who went to court entertainments ...? How many people saw plays and masques at court? What did they think of what they saw, and how did they behave?' Not surprisingly, a number of the answers to these questions remain elusive from lack of specific evidence. These audiences came to court for royal birthdays, the Christmas season, Shrovetide. In the Elizabethan period they would have seen a number of John Lyly's plays; but at the Jacobean court plays produced by the King's Men prevailed, including a number of Shakespeare's. By 1603, Astington observes, `playhouse practice and royal economy had changed the appearance of plays at court.' They now mainly resembled what one would have encountered in the commercial theatre. The appendix illustrates and the book demonstrates the interconnected relationship of the court theatre and the major acting companies, the commercial theatre owing much to the patronage of the court, the court dependent on the public companies for entertainment. Astington's study underscores the vitality of the theatre in its various manifestations. Alongside the public and private theatres and London's streets, we need to add the court theatres in order to begin to capture dramatic activity in this extraordinarily rich period. Astington helps us in this task. (DAVID M. BERGERON) John W. O'Malley, SJ, Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Steven J. Harris, T. Frank Kennedy, SJ, editors. The Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts, 1540B1773 University of Toronto Press. xx, 772. $80.00 This volume is a useful addition to the flourishing study of early modern Catholicism. John O'Malley is central in this reappraisal, not least as one 350 letters in canada 1999 who insists on that phrase, in contrast to Counter-Reformation, a negative term suggesting mainly adversarial resistance to change. The Society of Jesus in particular was misread. Informed by militant piety, and bound, unlike other religious, by a fourth vow of obedience to the Holy See, Jesuits, chief agents of the Counter-Reformation, proceeding by crafty network and a dubious view of truth, aimed to return the lands of Protestant monarchs to Roman allegiance. By the time the Holy See suppressed the Society in 1773, Jesuits had, in just over two hundred years, built an empire of their own, from East to West. This enormous collection continues the revision of this earlier perception of the Society, and, paradoxically, further stresses its power. The thirty-five papers are selected from a 1997 conference at Boston College. Like many Jesuit universities, this one is named for the place in which it was established B a part of the Jesuit way of proceeding. The essayists come from North America, Israel, Sweden, the Philippines, Poland, France, Italy, and Germany. Eight are Jesuits, three from Boston College itself. Papers are grouped in six sections: Jesuit historiography, the Society in Rome, overseas missions, Jesuit influence upon the East, Jesuit innovation and accommodation, conversion through devotion and the arts, with three final comments on what was learned, what lies ahead in research. Any of these will instruct the reader; the bibliographies will be especially valuable to those working in the fields to which the papers belong. Some needed pruning, some expansion, but these problems can...