Shakespeare’s Tragedies by Phyllis Rackin (review)

Reviews 379 for a play dealing with the historical turning point of the Soviet Revolu­ tion to project the ultimate positive solution of all historical, i.e., essen­ tially social, conflicts: the creation of “new man.” Applying this combination of specifically ideological criteria as an absolute standard, the author not only registers in his analyses the varying degrees of compliance, but also traces the discrepancies, as functions of the ideological positions of the playwrights, to their his­ torical origins. As result, he advances the thesis, substantiated quite convincingly in the case of GDR drama, that in this respect the prevail­ ing socialist doctrines of the day must be regarded as the most influential factors. While this explains his sometimes lengthy discourses on the his­ tory of Socialism, his insights are hardly new from a theoretical point of view. Whether acceptable or not, Preus’ many strict verdicts on plays or phases of the genre, ranging from “Romantisierung” (Worker’s Thea­ ter) and “Geschichtsklitterung” (Weiss) to “apologetischer Systemkonformismus ” (GDR drama) are consistent with traditional Marxist literary criticism. REINHART JOST Washington University Phyllis Rackin. Shakespeare’s Tragedies. World Dramatists Series, ed Lina Mainiero. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1978. Pp. 184. $9.50. Professor Rackin’s volume is the latest in Ungar’s series on “World Dramatists.” Written explicitly for amateurs, its goal is “to help readers make contact with the plays . . . to discover the human significance that has earned these plays their place at the very center of our cultural tra­ dition.” It contains a Shakespeare chronology, a brief account of stage history, a highly selective bibliography (22 books and six editions), eight indifferent photographs from stage productions, and ten short essays illustrating a variety of critical approaches to ten plays. The result is neither a single-minded interpretation nor a compre­ hensive handbook of Shakespearean tragedy. Instead, the book is Pro­ fessor Rackin’s personal excursion through the plays, indicating “one or two angles of approach” for each. The general reader, then, is encour­ aged to apply all of these methods to any of the plays, to create his own “personal encounter” with Shakespeare’s tragedies. Most conspicuous among these approaches is the New Criticism’s close attention to language, “because Shakespeare’s tragedies are poetry as well as drama.” Imagery, both physical and figurative, is a major concern in several essays. A reader new to Shakespeare can learn of its highly symbolic, thematically unifying value in Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Macbeth, and Hamlet—and its static richness in Timon of Athens. Aristotle’s Poetics, although mentioned only briefly, underlies Profes­ sor Rackin’s discussions of pride and “tragic flaw” in Julius Caesar and 380 Comparative Drama Coriolanus, cause and effect in Macbeth, purgation in Timon of Athens, and plot structure with reversals and recognition scenes in Hamlet. Historical methods are also used to illuminate some of the plays. Literary history, for example, helps a reader understand Titus Andronicus as a neo-Senecan revenge tragedy, with further influence from medi­ eval de casibus tradition, and the Renaissance “Machiavel”; Macbeth has antecedents in Marlowe’s drama of simple plots with titanic protagonists. On a broader scale, intellectual and political history help explain themes and contexts in Julius Caesar, King Lear, and Coriolanus. And a variety of other approaches Surface throughout the book, where they would benefit from regular and explicit labels. If the methods were identified and listed, it would be apparent that several very important approaches are omitted: affective, archetypal, biographical, Marxist, rhetorical, and textual, to mention a few. Ob­ viously, a “personal encounter” will be selective; and the size of the book (fewer than 200 small pages) prevents a comprehensive overview. None­ theless, a curious amateur might like to know further possibilities. Per­ haps the bibliography should include a reference to something like Norman Rabkin’s 1964 collection, Approaches to Shakespeare, or even a volume like A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature, ed. Wilfred Guerin et al. (2nd ed., 1978). More important, the “survey” method of discussing Shakespeare’s tragedies leads to a problem of coherence. By analogy, the problem appears in a description of King Lear, where Shakespeare seems “to confront every possible thesis about the action...