European Drama of the Early Middle Ages by Richard Axton (review)

Reviews 365 zation and plot structure reflect a more open and natural idiom. Shake­ speare superimposes and shifts these two idioms throughout the play, so that, for example, the more naturalistically conceived Venetian world of money becomes stylized in the trial scene, while the romantic Belmont is jolted by the arrival of Salerio. The exclusiveness of the ending of the play, the fact that so few of the characters are assembled for the con­ clusion, reveals the limited success of Shakespeare’s experiment. Order is achieved but not one that is encompassing: “In short, the play has shown a larger world than it can finally bring into harmony” (p. 149). In his discussion of the three remaining romantic comedies, and in his concluding chapter covering briefly the plays which follow Twelfth Night, Leggatt concentrates on examining Shakespeare’s continued ex­ perimentation with the interplay of two kinds of art, the formal and the realistic. In both Much Ado About Nothing and As You Like It Shakespeare blends these two approaches, to reveal ultimately “the natural rhythms of life,” the reality behind the convention. In Twelfth Night, however, these two kinds of art are clearly separated, as the characters themselves are locked into their own private visions of the world. Leggatt asserts, somewhat unconvincingly, that Feste’s last song resolves the tension between stylized and realistic art. The last lines of the song should remind us that the vision of wind and rain, the process of natural decay, has been one more creation of illusionary art. The permanence of art thus affirmed, artifice can be seen as transcending the naturalistic vision of decay. Within the framework of his interest in juxtaposed visions of ex­ perience, Leggatt provides for each play close and detailed analyses which he often informs with references to theatrical productions. Over­ all, I find the chapter on As You Like It the most refreshing and engag­ ing. Perhaps this is because in the long run we are most pleased with the acceptance and successful manipulation of convention, finding the achieve­ ment of an overall harmony deeply satisfying, conventional though that harmony might be. Conversely, Feste’s troubling song strikes us less as “a final rescue for artifice” than as a wistful reminder of human trials and solitude. NORMA J. FISK University of Missouri—Columbia Richard Axton. European Drama of the Early Middle Ages. London: Hutchinson University Library, 1974. Pp. 227; £2.45, paper. This work is a study of European secular dramatic traditions and their impact upon the religious theater of the Middle Ages. It is beset by the difficulty inherent in all such attempts made in modem times— the lack of adequate documentation in surviving texts. As the book’s thesis is not new, much of the evidence has already been presented in earlier studies like those of E. Faral and E. K. Chambers. Professor Axton divides the secular traditions into mimicry, combat and dancing- 366 Comparative Drama game. The first is the repertory of the ancient Mediterranean mime, transmitted to medieval culture by the late Roman theater, and the second is the remnant of pagan fertility rituals (largely a Germanic contribution). The dancing-game, less clearly of either Roman or Teu­ tonic origin, is presented as a common European type of festivity more easily documented from French records than from any other source. The book is, in my judgment, more valuable for its minor achieve­ ments than for its central line of argument. In dealing with early med­ ieval drama, little is done to prove the interrelationship of secular and religious plays in the Gallican and Carolingian eras. Most of the evidence dates from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, especially in the category of the dance, and this is the era of the High Middle Ages rather than the one designated in the book’s title. The same lack of solid interconnection between the secular dramatic traditions and the late med­ ieval cycle plays troubles the reader repeatedly in the chapters (8 and 9) devoted to English religious drama. Certain subordinate problems that emerge from early medieval texts, however, are admirably handled, as in Chapter 5, where impersonation by liturgical actors is discussed. Karl Young’s...