This Wide and Universal Theater: Shakespeare in Performance Then and Now by David Bevington (review)

REVIEWS 231 itself, but his remarkably thorough (over 100 pages) introduction to the poem. Ringler’s years of scholarly expertise on the text are evident in his enlightening synopses and analyses of the poem, and the variety of textual challenges the manuscript presents. The topics covered in his introduction are The Story, Oral and Written Beowulfs, Legend and Lore, Narrative Strategies and Structures, The Hero, Christianity and the Problem of Violence, The Poet, and The Meter of the Translation. Each section discusses its topic in depth with thoughtful insight. Ringler also provides helpful maps and appendixes to give the reader a more complete understanding of the text, as well as the context. He includes translations of three other Old English poems, “The Fight at Finnsburg,” “A Meditation ” (Ringler’s own title for the poem more widely known as “The Wanderer ”), and “Deor.” These extra translations make this edition that much more comprehensive and worthwhile. Ringler’s glossary of people and places in Beowulf proves especially useful, as he provides line numbers for each reference . The short but fairly comprehensive bibliography of critical material also contributes to making Ringler’s text a worthwhile scholarly edition as well as an edition for the casual reader coming to Beowulf for the first time. SOS BAGRAMYAN, English, Indiana University David Bevington, This Wide and Universal Theater: Shakespeare in Performance Then and Now (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2007) xi + 242 pp. David Bevington’s book on the staging of Shakespeare’s plays is not aimed at an academic readership. This text will prove more useful to fans of Shakespeare , those interested in the history of performance of Shakespeare’s plays (from the Elizabethan period onward), or even those in the theatrical profession looking for some insight into how people have staged Shakespeare through the ages. This book does not include performance theory or rigorous academic analysis. While not a purely academic text, Bevington’s book provides piercing insights into the relationship between text and stage. In Bevington’s own words: “[This book] places Shakespeare’s plays in that original theatrical space as a way of suggesting how an awareness of their theatrical dimensions can illuminate numberless dramatic situations inherent in the dialogue; and to juxtapose those insights with more modern instances in film, television, and theatrical performance in order to appreciate some ways in which changed modes of presentation can arise out of, and contribute to, chanced perceptions of the text” (1–2). The first chapter (the introduction) goes through a general history of how Shakespeare has been staged from 1590 to the present day. Bevington wishes to show why productions of Shakespeare today tend to veer more toward the spirit of the original productions of the 1590s and 1610s. While this serves as the general thesis, the majority of the book is informational in nature and sometimes sprinkled with interesting interpretations of both the staging of certain plays as well as the texts themselves. Chapter 2 discusses the world of the Elizabethan theater and gives a comprehensive history of not only the how plays were produced in the Renaissance, but also the history behind theater REVIEWS 232 houses, their owners, and actors involved in the world of the theater. Bevington gives the reader all of what we can say for sure (and what we can only guess) about early modern playhouses and how productions were conducted. The third chapter deals with the staging of the comedies, concentrating on The Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and As You Like It. Bevington shows how, in his comedies, “Shakespeare transforms his theatrical environment into a world of playful illusion” paying attention to how these plays have been interpreted on stage as well as on film (66). He gives only a few pages to The Comedy of Errors, The Merchant of Venice, Love’s Labor’s Lost, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Twelfth Night, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona. In chapter 4 Bevington moves on to how the histories would have been staged on both the Elizabethan stage as well as more modern interpretations. He spends much of his time on how the early modern stage would have...