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STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER ing that romance tradition, specifically a pattern of folktale types, shapes the narrative of this drama, Burton explores The Winters Tale "as part of the long line of stories in folktale and MiddleEnglish romance dealing with the separation of family members and their eventual reunion" (p. 176). The Brewer collection does not contain a comprehensive bibliography or an index. Despite these scholarly omissions and despite the extravagant arguments of Shippey and Wrigley, this volume, on balance, provides new insights into the romance vision of reality. ROBERT]. BLANCH Northeastern University MARIANNE G. BRISCOE andJOHN C. COLDEWEY, eds. Contextsfor Early English Drama. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989. Pp. xiii, 258. $27.50. First delivered in a symposium at the Medieval Institute in Western Michi­ gan University in 1982, the twelve essays in Contexts for Early English Drama carry marks of the time and the origins of their first presentation. Generated by the conservative wing ofmedieval drama studies (the major­ ity of contributors are associated with the Records of Early English Drama project), these essays were putatively written "in response to several recent developments in the study of English culture, including a revival in social history studies" (p. xi). The editorsdivide the essays into twoall-embracing categories: the first is "sociological contexts" ("political, religious, and economic forces affecting this drama") (p. xi) as well as the graphic and musical arts); the second is "literary contexts" (the plays' texts, their production and performance, their relationship to sermons, and the influ­ ence ofcontinental dramatic traditions). As these old-fashioned classifica­ tions indicate, Contextsfor Early English Drama is at best only a partial response to recent developments in culture studies: no cultural materialist or new historical essay is included; no feminist essay; no anthropological or semiotic or psychoanalytic or deconstructive undertakings. With the one exception of Pamela Sheingorn, who works with recent art-historical the­ ory, the scholars chosen to represent the state of medieval English drama studies appear sublimely indifferent to the middle and upper registers of contemporary theoretical debate. It is therefore advisable simply to set 172 REVIEWS aside whatever initial dissatisfactions one has with the collection's concep­ tual limitations, and to read these essays, all written by recognized au­ thorities, for the information each scholar is able to provide after many years' labor in a specialized field. The result is a collection of reports and studies that vary widely in their quality and usefulness. The lead-off essay by Alexandra Johnston, "What if No Texts Survived? External Evidence for Early English Drama," offers aninformativeoverview of the three major kinds of English community drama (biblical drama, saints' plays, and folk drama), the geographic areas where they predomi­ nated, andthe different kinds of plays classified within each genre. Empha­ sizing how much drama has been lost,Johnston counsels against allowing any a priori generic category to regulate our appreciation of each play's distinctiveness: "We must begin to look at each text and each piece of evidence as the survival of a unique event similar to, but never identical with, any other" (p. 12). Alan Nelson's "Contexts for Early English Drama: The Universities" offers an extremely informative survey of Anglo-Latin plays at Oxford and Cambridge between 1450 and 1564. Despite the paucity of surviving texts, Nelson is able to point toward the identity of nearly one hundred University authors and some 150 plays, reminding us that "[p]robably half of the known English playwrights up to 1642 were university men who were presumably influenced in some way or other by university plays" (p. 144). In "The Unity of Medieval Drama: European Contexts for Early English Dramatic Traditions," Robert Potter sensibly calls for "a more ecumenical scholarship" which would see English drama as part of the world of Euro­ pean drama generally, noting that generic corollaries may be found in manyplaces, as for instancebetweenEnglish drama-especiallythe moral­ ity plays-and the nearly 600 surviving medieval Dutch plays. Lynette Muir,in "Medieval English Drama: The French Connection," tries to knock down one "nationalistic iron curtain" by hypothesizing that in "language, subject matter, staging, and organization" connecting links between French and English plays should be expected to...

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