A Common Stage: Theater and Public Life in Medieval Arras by Carol Symes (review)

REVIEWS 329 Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene. Book Six and the Mutabilitie, ed. Andrew Hadfield and Abraham Stoll (Cambridge, MA: Hackett Publishing Co. 2007) 239 pp. The last in Hackett Publishing’s series of paperback volumes of sections of The Faerie Queene, this comes a year after the first four volumes. The introduction is thoughtful and informative, outlining both how the concept of courtesy is a particularly “complex and contradictory” (vii) virtue, even in comparison to the virtues which rubricate Spenser’s previous books. The editors provide a welcome guide to the enjoyment of the text, pointing out, for example, how Calidore “often appears as a comic figure,” and that his “interventions are invariably clumsy and ill timed, and frequently disastrous” (x). While the introductions to other volumes in this series are more firmly assertive about what the respective section means, or more focused on identifying zones of ambiguity, here the introduction asserts a well-informed reading of the book, while allowing for some acknowledgment of critical debate—often through a list of names taken to mark critical positions. Though this is better than no acknowledgment at all, one might hope for a bit more explanation of how exactly, for example, Williams, Cain, and Bernard differ on the meaning of Calidore’s pastoral experience (ix). At these times and others, the introduction seems rushed. For example, it includes a subsection on “violence” and another on “savagery”; it seems that these concepts, though not the same, need to be discussed together. Hadfield and Stoll skillfully negotiate the complicated tension between (ir)resolution and autobiography at the end of Book Six. The section on the Mutabilitie Cantos is particularly alert to the tension between a mythopeic reading and a political one. One might, however, have wished for more attention to prosody and form, especially since those issues are crucial to Spenser generally and these texts in particular. Like the other volumes in the Hackett series, this edition includes, in addition to the standard apparatus, Spenser’s “Letter to Raleigh ,” an index of characters, and a guide to further reading. Though the explicatory footnotes are erudite, they are, at times, overcrammed and overdeterminative of reading and analysis; they seem more like marginal notes that would lead to a fascinating lecture than restrained exegetical assistance. The advantage of this is that the reader is not only guided through the literal meaning of the text, but also continually reminded of the stress that key words experience, such as instances of “courteously” (6.7.4.1) and “cowherd” (6.6.26.6). The disadvantage is that Spenser relies upon and rewards a reader who makes mistakes, corrections, revisions, associations and interpretations as they go along. Though perhaps some of the analysis presented in footnotes would have worked better in a longer and more developed introduction , they are undeniably insightful and informed by recent work in Spenser. This carefully presented and useful volume certainly demonstrates a strong enthusiasm for these tricky texts, which as the editors claim (speaking of Book Six), serve to “unravel the project Spenser outlined in the earlier books” (vii). MICHAEL SAENGER, English, Southwestern University Carol Symes, A Common Stage: Theater and Public Life in Medieval Arras (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2007) xvi + 335 pp. Carol Symes analyzes five of Europe’s earliest vernacular plays created in the REVIEWS 330 medieval town of Arras, a rich cloth trade town on the border of the kingdom of France and Flanders. Symes entertains and educates in this most revealing book, making interesting connections between the public sphere and the creation and performance of plays. The assortment of plays includes a wide variety of subjects and mores. The Jeu de saint Nicholas (The Play of Saint Nicholas) has at its heart the French expansion into Flanders in 1191. The Courtois d’Arras (The Courtly Lad of Arras) follows the story of the Prodigal Son, if he lived in the year 1228. Le garçon et l’aveugle (The Boy and the Blind Man), dating from around 1265, is a satire that was preformed for hundred of years to come. There are also two plays by Adam de la Halle, the Jeu de la feuillée (The Play...