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Reviews 363 Alan C. Dessen. Elizabethan Drama and the Viewer’s Eye. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977. Pp. xii + 176. $12.95. This book arrives at a particular historical juncture. Time was when it seemed impossible that the literary critic and the play director could reconcile their points of view toward Elizabethan drama. Nowadays, however, evidence abounds that these practitioners can meet on com­ mon ground—the play itself—and through their combined expertise can eliminate unreal interpretive distinctions between the play as literary artifact and as theatrical actualization. Both camps are now responsible for studies that are truly of mutual interest and benefit. From the academic side have come readings of Shakespearean drama, for example, which are as perceptive of symbolic expression in its theatrical modes (gestures, props, costumes, etc.) as in the form of language. Some leading examples are Maurice Chamey’s Shakespeare's Roman Plays: The Function of Imagery in the Drama (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1961), Chamey’s Style in “Hamlet” (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1969), and J. L. Styan’s Shakespeare’s Stagecraft (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1967). And to these must be added many later books and essays of similar persuasion, about a dozen of which appear in the bibliography of Dessen’s book (pp. 171-72). From the theatrical camp has come the splendid and incomparable record of The Royal Shakespeare Company’s Production of “Henry V,” edited and with interviews by Sally Beauman (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1976). More valuable to the critic than any directorial prompt book could ever be, this volume unfolds an authentic interpretation of the play, evolved by the director, Terry Hands, in obvious close collaboration with his actors, designer, and composer. From their individual articles, notes, and recorded interviews the scholar-teacher himself can take lessons in practical criticism; for what governs here is not mere theatrical expediency, but a sensitivity to the thematic function of stagecraft in relation to the playwright’s words. Clearly, then, there are growing indi­ cations that the goals of interpretive criticism and live theater are be­ coming more complementary. Thus it is that balancing the divergent claims of historian, critic, and director upon Elizabethan drama has become the subject of lively interest—and of Alan Dessen’s latest book. For his central thesis the author makes the “painfully simple” suggestion that the respective views of all three parties are of “equally important” value to our understand­ ing, and that “reading an Elizabethan play should involve more than only attending to the words on a page” (pp. 4-5). In light of my opening remarks, one can readily accept Dessen’s own admission that these are “unrevolutionary” theses, and that “Obviously, I am not the first to make such an attempt” (ibid.). And, as with many another theatricalist study of Renaissance drama, Dessen’s major concern throughout is with visual means of symbolic expression: costumes, props, gestures, emblem­ atic movements, and the like. From the title and the fact that most of its pages are given over to discussing a wide range of examples from Tudor and Stuart drama, the reader might well expect this book to argue the influence of contemporary graphic arts in the manner of John Doeb- 364 Comparative Drama ler’s Shakespeare’s Speaking Pictures: Studies in Iconic Imagery (Albu­ querque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1974). This is not the case, however, for Dessen’s critical emphasis is quite different from the before-mentioned studies by Charney, Styan, and Doebler, among others. The latter type of theatricalist or performance criticism examines single, local instances of symbolic stagecraft for their intrinsic connotations and relation to the play overall. To use a non-Shakespearean example, it can be observed how the traditional religious iconography of hell informs the action of Marlowe’s Barabas sitting in a bubbling cauldron. By contrast, more than half of Dessen’s book—the middle four chapters out of a total of six—offers proof that the author is as much a structuralist critic as a theatricalist one. That is, he focuses rather upon visual situa­ tions that are not symbolic per se, but because of their relationship to analogous actions or...

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