The Best Pairt of Our Play. Essays Presented to John J. McGavin. Part Two ed. by Sarah Carpenter et al. (review)

Lively and engaging, this collection of essays is the second half of an affectionate tribute to John McGavin, presented at the 2015 Medieval English Theatre Meeting (METh) in Southampton. Written by McGavin’s friends, colleagues, and former students, the essays ‘celebrat[e] the breadth and influence of John’s interests’ (p. 1). Each essay is in its own right a valued contribution to the field of medieval drama. But the high esteem in which McGavin is clearly held within that field, and the sense of the close METh community which binds the individual essays, are infectious. The reader is immediately drawn in, making the volume a delight to read.

The various papers (eleven in total and including the late David Mills’s last article) are loosely linked by being generally concerned with issues of performance, ceremonial and spectatorship. The first two—by Eila Williamson and Alice Hunt—also have a decidedly Scottish flavour, referencing McGavin’s long interest and expertise in the field of Scottish medieval and early modern drama. Williamson’s is an analysis of the funeral of Walter Scott, Earl of Buccleuch, seeking ‘insight into what the onlookers would have seen and what message the participants in the procession, or “actors”, intended to communicate through their performance’ (p. 3). Hunt explores the coronation of James VI of Scotland (later James I of England), focusing on the ‘coronation ritual [as] a complex, and necessary, act of representation—in short, a valuable kind of theatre’ (p. 24).

From Scotland, the focus shifts to Wales. Sue Niebrzydowski ‘examines the cultural appropriation and adaptation of Chaucer’s version of Troilus and Creseyde […] in an anonymous, late sixteenth-century, Welsh-language play, Troelus a Chresyd’ (p. 38). She convincingly argues that ‘the very existence of this play is testimony to a continued interest in medieval English literature, and to dramatic performance in early modern Wales’ (p. 39). David N. Klausner explores with wit and vigour the Abergavenny Crucifixion play, which greatly upset the fourteenth-century Bishop of Hereford. But, as Klausner points out, it ‘suggest[s] that plays in some form were a significant part of the life of Abergavenny, its parish and its priory’ (p. 66).

Of the remaining essays, two prove—for this reviewer at least—particularly fecund: Elisabeth Dutton’s on the St John’s College Narcissus, and Pamela King’s on the soundscape of medieval outdoor performance. Dutton compares the little-known Narcissus play with Filippo Lippi’s 1442 Annunciation painting—a slightly unusual approach, but one which leads into a rewarding ‘study of staging, of spectatorship, and indeed of staging spectatorship’ (p. 68). King considers the importance of sound of all kinds—‘vocal art, audience noise, and the “political in produced noise”’(p. 131)—to medieval performance, suggesting in conclusion that ‘a consideration of the materiality of early dramatic performance could fruitfully re-orientate itself away from its near transfixion with visual effects and turn up the sound’ (p. 141).

Also of interest for its unusual subject matter is Clare Egan’s ‘tackl[ing of] an unexpected form of performance, the publication of libels, using the rich but underexplored resource of reports of Star Chamber cases from Devon’ (p. 1). Contributions from Charlotte Steenbrugge (on audience address in medieval sermons and morality plays and the differences between the two genres), Nadia Thérèse van Pelt (on spectatorship, metatheatricality, and cognitive theory), Mishtooni Bose (on the medieval ‘drama of performed thought’ (p. 125)), and David Mills (on the 1550 play Abraham sacrifiant) round out a volume that is a forceful and thought-provoking meeting of complementary minds.