The Elizabethan Theatre

274 ANNE LANCASHIRE It is, however, not merely passages like this that will move the reader to agree with Mr Fussell that In Parenthesis is 'in many ways a masterpiece impervious to criticism': the book is, as he rightly observes, in detail 'accurate and evocative,' and it is 'profoundly decent.' Twice he uses the phrase 'The Matter of Flanders' to apply to the whole complex ofGreat War experience and literature, on the pattern ofthe mediaeval/Matters' of France and Britain and Rome the Great. Once, in the context of David Jones, he rejects it, but in his preface (presumably his last afterthought) he is more receptive. Such rejection and acceptance is a recurring pattern in this strange, troubled book. My own last afterthought is this. In Parenthesis has been continuously in print since 1937 and will probably survive: at least it is a bit late to call it a miscarriage. Failure to fit a masterpiece into an intricate critical pattern is somehow less culpable in a critic than missing the virtues of a small work. Mr Fussell draws out the excellences of Graves, Sassoon, Blunden, and a host of smaller writers admirably; when it comes to David Jones he can sit down beside Samuel Johnson, who said, 'Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last.' (WILLIAM BLISSETT) THE ELIZABETHAN THEATRE* We have come to expect good things - new factual information and provocative suggestions - from the volumes of the annual Elizabethan Theatre conferences at the University of Waterloo; and this fifth volume of conference papers does not fail to meet expectations. The 1973 volume is unified by a focus upon the acting of pre-Shakespearean plays, and eight contributors cover the ground from records of medieval cycle drama through Tudor interludes to the plays of Lyly, Kyd, Peele, and Marlowe. The two most valuable papers are those by R.W. Ingram and T.W. Craik. Ingram has done painstaking and significant work into guild records in Coventry , and has added considerably to our knowledge of early theatrical activity there. More of this kind of work needs to be done, in place of the vast quantities of purely literary speculation that fill too many learned journals these days. Craik's work is similarly basic and valuable: through a close look at textual indications of stage action and properties, and at the sources and conventions underlying these lines of dialogue, he illuminates the staging - and meaning - of plays such as Peele's David and Bethsabe and Marlowe's Edward II. Craik also provides ammunition, through staging details, for those who have been reluctant to accept the B text of Doctor Faustus as Marlowe's original text. D.F. Rowan's paper on the staging of The Spanish Tragedy is somewhat similar to Craik's work but is at once narrower and more general in scope: some interesting points are made, but much of the article is speculative only, for, as Rowan himself admits, the many and different Renaissance productions of the play doubtless necessitated much variety in its staging. *G.R. Hibbard, ed., The Elizabethan Theatre V. Papers given at the Fifth International Conference on Elizabethan Theatre held at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, in July 1973. Toronto: Macmillan 1975. Pp xvii, 15B. $11.00. THE ELIZABETHAN THEATRE 275 David Bevington, discussing 'Discontinuity in Medieval Acting Traditions,' usefully separates clerical from lay acting in medieval religious drama and emphasizes professionalism in the acting of late medieval plays, though his statements on the morality drama as competing with Corpus Christi drama do not allow for the significant difference in purpose between these two types ofdramatic activity. J.A.B. Somerset, tracing the development of vice-comedy, unwisely calls morality drama 'rough and unsubtle in dramaturgy,' but nevertheless accurately perceives both thematic reasons for comedy in morality drama (vice is both appealing and deceitful) and thematic and theatrical reasons for its growth to dramatic centrality. Inga-Stina Ewbank deals with the relationship of 'Language and Spectacle in the Theatre of George Peele,' in connection with the sense of wonder invoked by much of Peele's dramatic work. Peter Saccio contributes a largely literary interpretation ofLyly's Endimion (the play is 'Lyly's Legend...