The Media Players: Shakespeare, Middleton, Jonson, and the Idea of News by Stephen Wittek (review)

Stephen Wittek's slender but intriguing volume focuses on the intertwined development of early modern theater and the contemporary public's increasing appreciation of the phenomena beginning to constitute "news." Although The Media Players would have benefited from a more sustained analysis drawn from a wider range of plays, its nuanced discussions of Shakespeare's Winter's Tale, Middleton's Game of Chess, and Jonson's Staple of News both as texts and as presentations in the flourishing commercial theatrical enterprise provide an illuminating account of drama's role in the emerging social structures that created and sustained the diverse modes of information that coalesced into the category of "news."

Grounding his discussion in Habermas's conceptualization of the public sphere, Wittek maintains that "the unique discursive space created by the commercial theater helped to foster the conceptual framework that made news possible" (1). The Media Players is at its most persuasive during these introductory sections. The growth of theaters as a venue for informal social observation and interaction as well as a space for scripted entertainment supports their proposed function as catalyst and incubator for news. As with today's celebrity culture, early modern theatergoers attended performances, in part, to observe prominent audience members and to enjoy firsthand experiences with people from widely varying social positions (5). They also anticipated seeing issues and personages of immediate interest and appreciated the communal excitement: "It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that the opportunity to see and judge public men was the only element fueling popularity. Contemporary documentation suggests the crowd at the Globe operated something like a friendly riot, a collective expression of enthusiasm that escalated in a spontaneous, organic fashion, growing in size and intensity as it attracted more and more people who simply wanted to share in the excitement" (79). Theater's contribution to the public's increasing appetite for shared experiences makes its role in the development of news both plausible and compelling. With strong historical support, Wittek meticulously lays out his claims for this interaction. He is particularly skilled at deflecting skepticism at moments when it is most likely to appear. He provides additional necessary evidence for his conjectures at precisely the right moment, when his correlation between the public theaters and the creation of news begins to seem strained. As a consequence, his monograph ably models the process of building an argument in addition to presenting his central thesis.

The three dramatic texts at the heart of this study add complementary perspectives to Wittek's examination. The Winter's Tale chapter focuses on the wiles of Autolycus and his customers' gullibility, but it also nimbly situates this discussion within what Wittek describes as the play's "extended meditation on truth and belief " (27). The signature generic slipperiness of The Winter's Tale makes this play a particularly apt text to include. The alternating linkages and disparities among the play's diverse plot features illuminate the range of seemingly separate social and performative elements that form Wittek's conceptualization of news.

Wittek's Middleton chapter starkly demonstrates the scope of the phenomenon he documents: "During the course of a nine-day run in August 1624, Thomas Middleton's A Game of Chess attracted thirty thousand spectators, or a seventh of London's adult population, approximately twelve times the regular attendance rate for all of the city's theaters combined" (59). The play's topicality and its historical record provide rich resources for supporting Middleton's significant role in the creation and fulfillment of early modern appetites for news. Similarly, the final chapter on The Staple of News (followed by a short epilogue entitled "News Is What They Say It Is") neatly chronicles Jonson's active participation in what Wittek terms "the invention of media criticism" (87). Together, these chapters provide lively and convincing evidence for Wittek's representation of the ways that...