The Woman Turned Bully ed. by María José Mora, Manuel J. Gómez-Lara, Rafael Portillo, and Juan A. Prieto-Pablos (review)

220 one-sided. Not only are the women discussed nearly all anti-royalist, which the title does not lead one to expect, but the writing itself, especially on Queen Christina, lacks a modicum of impartiality . Anne Barbeau Gardiner John Jay College, CUNY The Woman Turned Bully, ed. Marı́a José Mora, Manuel J. Gómez-Lara, Rafael Portillo, and Juan A. Prieto-Pablos. Barcelona: Publicacions i Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona, 2007. Pp. 211. ⫽ C 15. The Woman Turned Bully is not much noticed in surveys of Restoration drama except as it might relate to Behn’s canon . For the most part, the relationship is based on the tobacco-smoking and aledrinking widow in this play and in The Widow Ranter, although the two figures are different, and a trousers part for a fast-talking young woman bent on avoiding an arranged marriage and on finding a suitable alternative for her marriage bed. The Woman Turned Bully deserves notice on its own for its satiric playfulness that riffs on lawyers and on young women who try to learn manners and morals from contemporary drama. Yet it is an odd play that splits its attention between the heavy Latinate jargon of the denizens of the Inns of Court and the impertinent patois of the playhouse. The editors have successfully modernized the text, silently emending capitalization and punctuation without betraying the sense of Restoration stage prose, although one might wish that they had left the name of the principal family as it appears in the 1675 edition, ‘‘Goodfeild.’’ The footnotes are copious and enlightening. Most useful for anyone wanting to study the way this piece plays off other Restoration comedies are the identifications of almost every quotation uttered by Betty Goodfeild, the woman who pretends to be a ‘‘bully,’’ a ‘‘blustering gallant’’ according to the OED, and who uses the cover of masculine garb to engage in duels and in banter with her brother, her brother’s friend, and with her mother’s lovestarved maid. The editors gloss at least twenty-six direct quotations from plays of the same period, with Dryden’s The Assignation used most (eleven lines). The excessive legal terms are translated and explained. These two scholarly contributions illuminate the tastes of the mid-1670s. The play itself seems not to have been a success in 1675. No later editions are recorded, and little appears in any of the theatrical records about it. The cast is not given in the original edition, although there has been some speculation that it was a Lenten presentation with minor players. But the editors show that some better players likely took the major roles. The editors’ Introduction is worthwhile . Not only do they concern themselves with the cast, they examine the style of comedy and satire, analyze characters, and discuss staging. Questions of authorship have vexed critics since Langbaine placed it last in his list of over one hundred sixty plays by unknown authors in his 1691 Account of the English Dramatick Poets, with the notation, ‘‘This I take to be a very Diverting comedy.’’ While the editors are wise not to suggest attribution, they profile the author (or authors)—someone familiar with Dryden’s work, someone with a legal background, perhaps a member of the Inns of Court, someone with knowledge of gambling. 221 The work of these Restoration scholars should be better known by English and American scholars. This is the second Restoration play in this series from Barcelona, the other being an equally interesting edition of Joseph Arrowsmith ’s The Reformation (2003). Mary Ann O’Donnell Manhattan College S’amuser en Europe au siècle des Lumie ̀res (Enjoying Oneself in Europe during the Enlightenment), ed. Élisabeth Détis and Françoise Knopper. Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Mirail, 2007. Pp. 245. ⫽ C 22. This entertaining and informative little book examines leisure activities in the eighteenth century in five European areas. For each, ten prints and ten extracts from novels or essays given in French and in the original language are preceded by an analysis by a leading scholar. The volume ends with a useful Bibliography and Index. In ‘‘L’Angleterre, un jardin de plaisance ?’’ (‘‘England, a Pleasure Garden...