A Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge ed. by Clifford Davidson (review)

REVIEWS sion is the kind of social system that Crane might have engaged in her attempts to connect romances to their extraliterary cultures; confessional scenes, needless to say, are not unknown in the texts she writes about. The last chapter, on adventure, hazard, and gain, could have made better use of Michael Nerilch's wonderfully suggestive book, Ideology ofAdventure, and his comparisons between knightly and mercantile exploits. Crane's book is one I will look forward to rereading with students. It is compact, intelligent, well written, and informative. Some of Crane's inter­ pretations will strike readers as extreme or partial, but the merits of new books on Chaucer (which are thick on the ground) are not, in my view, new interpretations alone but rather new ways of reading texts against sharply defined theoretical concerns richly illustrated, in the first instance, by text and language. Even if one disputes the conclusion, one can learn from the process by which it was reached. On this count Crane's book is highly successful. Another possible merit of a new book on Chaucer is its view of other books on Chaucer. I was disappointed that Hansen took so little notice of Carolyn Dinshaw's Chaucer's Sexual Poetics (1989) and that Crane takes so little notice of Hansen's or Dinshaw's work (are the publication dates really too close to permit fuller consideration?). Crane is extremely accommodating ofother readers, even those whose work she plainly contra­ dicts; Hansen's chief opponent seems to be herself as a critic in earlier stages. It would be very helpful to have a clear sense of the differences among these and other authors; surely feminist discourse on Chaucer can tolerate some explicit interfeminist debate and difference. Those divisions seem real to me, ifas yet largely unarticulated, and what is imaginary is the need to shield what is surely a predominant-if not the predominant­ strain ofChaucer criticism today from the displacements and tensions of its own complex agenda. Au.EN ). FRANTZEN Loyola University Chicago CLIFFORD DAVIDSON, ed. A Tretise ofMiraclis Pleyinge. Early Drama, Art, and Music Monograph Series, vol. 19. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval In­ stitute Publications, 1993. Pp. viii, 183. $36.00 cloth, $15.00 paper. This edition of the Middle English A Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge is a "re­ vised, corrected, and expanded" version of Davidson's earlier typescript 189 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER edition of the same work, A Middle English Treatise ofthe Playing ofMira­ cles (1981). Copied in an early-fifteenth-century manuscript containing other Wycliffite or Lollard tracts, the Tretise is actually comprised of two closely related prose pieces. Taken together, the two halves of the Tretise, 749 lines in the present edition, represent the earliest sustained criticism in English ofthe drama. Part 1 ofthe Tretise is clearly the more important, for in order to condemn "miraclis pleying," its author takes up arguments made by proponents of such plays in order to refute them. Consequently, this part of the Tretise provides a contemporary statement of the principles underlying the late-medieval religious dramas: they encourage the worship ofGod, they cause men and women to commit to moral living, they move the audience to compassion and devotion, they convert the recalcitrant who would otherwise not be swayed, they provide an acceptable recreation, and they provide a more memorable experience than painted representations. Part 2 of the Tretise, addressed to "a friend," further denounces "miraclis pleyinge" through a series of specious allegorical interpretations of biblical passages. Davidson's textual apparatus includes a thirty-page introduction, textual notes, and glossary. The introduction follows the organization and general view of the earlier edition. It provides a historical overview of the official attitudes to dramatic performances and to iconographic representation from the time of the early church fathers up until the development of the English civic cycles. Although Davidson acknowledges the now proverbial ambiguity of medieval dramatic nomenclature, in particular the word "miraclis," he argues that the Tretise condemns a "fairly broad range of dramatic representation ... , especially the playing of the Passion." Ac­ cordingly, the central argument of both parts of the Tretise is that actors who dramatically imitate holy lives and works hollowly play...