Antonio’s Revenge by John Marston (review)

Reviews 367 eluded), the appendix opens the way for further studies of the theme as a dramatic technique in Lope’s theater. It is to be hoped they will exhibit the same sound scholarship as Larson’s book does, but will be more innovative in their critical approach to the dramas. DAVID H. DARST Florida State University John Marston. Antonio’s Revenge, ed. by W. Reavley Gair (The Revels Plays). Manchester: Manchester University Press, and Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1978. Pp. xv + 174. $14.00. Professor Gair’s Revels edition of Antonio’s Revenge amply fills the prescriptions set forth by Clifford Leech when he inaugurated this blueribbon series twenty years ago. The full and informative introduction’s special strength is its section on the play’s presentation in its theater, which suits Leech’s emphatic concern with “the kind of staging for which the plays were originally intended”; and the glosses in the notes, together with an appendix, literally add stars to the annotational banner that Leech raised and that Professor Hoeniger, the current general editor, waves proudly as he reaffirms the series’ standards and goals (in Gair’s notes and appendix, stars mark words “the usage of which seems to have been initiated, at least on the stage and in print, by Marston in this play” [p. 6]). It should be noted that, as the Preface announces, E. A. J. Honigmann and J. R. Mulryne have now joined F. David Hoeniger as general editors of the Revels Plays. My review will necessarily focus on the quality and usefulness of the Introduction and explanatory apparatus, since it would appear that textual problems here were minimal, given the comparatively good 1602 Quarto. (Textually, as in other respects, Antonio’s Revenge apparently serves as a simpler foil to the complexities of Hamlet.) In 1963, Professor Leech added to his general preface the hope that the Revels series, as well as offering superior editions of the most im­ portant Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, would “be able to include cer­ tain lesser-known plays which remain in general neglect despite the lively interest that an acquaintance with them can arouse.” One may suppose that Antonio’s Revenge found its way into the series through this opening. In its case, however, G. K. Hunter’s excellent and still inexpensive 1965 edition in the Regents Renaissance Drama series will have taken the urgency out of any worry about “general neglect,” and inevitably will force the Revels edition to justify not only its existence but its $14.00 price tag. What does this volume offer us that we won’t find in Hunter’s Regents edition for $1.85? I have already suggested the basic answers to that indelicate question. First of all (if not most importantly), Mr. Gair simply offers a good deal more by way of straight information and explanation. His Intro­ duction is more distinguished for its clear exposition of plentiful factual detail than for its critical brilliance; and the glosses and citations of 368 Comparative Drama sources and analogues in the notes come in generous portions. Where Hunter gave a few words or identified an allusion, Gair sometimes gives a paragraph and often includes the passage alluded to or quotes fippi relevant background material; and of course he glosses more lines than Hunter did. He may sometimes tell us what we could readily enough infer: that, for example, “snarling gusts” means “gusts producing the sound of a snarl”; that “juiceless” means “dried up”; and that “aspects” means “appearances of things” (though the first two of these instances, all from the Prologue, are dictated by his commitment to mark and gloss all of Marston’s neologisms). Most of the annotations, however, are useful even when they are not essential— “desirable,” as Professor Leech’s guiding term for his editors’ glossarial discretion has it. Seldom does any question arise from the text that is not addressed in the notes. The exception for me concerns the disposition of Feliche’s bloody corpse between I.iii. 129, where it “appears hung up” at Mellida’s window, and TV.iii.109, where Piero orders Alberto to “take him down and bear him to his father.” Does...