Shakespeare, Spenser and the Crisis in Ireland (review)

Reviews 227 of earlier top-down accounts. I find his use of various sociological theories fruitful, and appreciate a historical monograph which neither shies away from theoretical approaches nor focuses on theory to the exclusion of content, but in fact provides a model of the integration of theory and empirical research. The brief history of medieval heresy and the Languedoc contained in the introduction make this book accessible to the non-specialist. At the same time, it adds m u c h to our knowledge of the Languedocian inquisition and suggests by its example new ways for historians to examine the workings of power in the past. Kathleen Troup Department of History University of Waikato Highley, Christopher, Shakespeare, Spenser and the Crisis in Ireland (Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture 23), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997; cloth; pp. ix, 246; 6 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. AUS$95.00. The attic in Elizabethan England where they keep the Others is gettin very crowded. W o m e n , Jews, Turks and Moors have at various times been so designated, and I a m sure readers could nominate other Others; now they need to make room for Christopher Highley's Irish. In his relatively brief and very interesting book, Highley offers readings of Spenser and three history plays of Shakespeare, along with Peele's Edward I, proposing that English people of the time would have regarded these texts within the discourse of England's continued attempts to establish hegemony in Ireland. In Chapters O n e and Five, Highley proposes that Spenser's time in Ireland was a time of 'cultural self fashioning', not 'an exile from the centers of power', but 'an opportunity for a m a n of modest beginnings to fashion more flexibly his social identity'; his distance from the political centre of London 'gave him a critical distance upon England and especially upon the queen's role in Irish affairs'. This is seen in The Faerie Queene, where 'Spenser puts assumptions about female powers of reformation in Ireland under even greater pressure', and envisions 228 Reviews Ireland as ideally a 'female-free zone', an English 'homosocial community' living outside England. I consider these chapters to be the most successful; Spenser criticism has moved away from seeing The Faerie Queene as a long obsequious poem of praise to Elizabeth, and Highley's reading is a fresh and provocative addition to this body of criticism. Students of Spenser will find much that is worthwhile here. The readings of the three Shakespeare plays are also worthwhile, but more problematic. Chapter Three is on 2 Henry VI, where Highley engages with York's return from Ireland in 5.1, the Folio stage direction showing 'Enter Yorke, with his A r m y of Irish with drum and colours'. To Highley, 'the staged appearance of a band of Irish soldiers under an English general would have provoked hostilities and fears in Shakespeare's audience, but a sense too that the dangerous Other was also a danger from within'; he subsequently notes, 'the spectacle of "gallowglasses and stout kerns" on English soil in 2 Henry VI, although brief, seems calculated'. I doubt very much, however, that there was such a spectacle, even a brief one. While the Folio stage direction reads 'army of Irish', the quarto, almost certainly a reconstruction of a performance, shows only 'Enter Duke of York with D r u m and Soldiers'; after the first line, 'From Ireland thus comes York to claim his right', Ireland is not mentioned again. Buckingham speaks only ofYork's 'arms in peace', and at 1 . 47 these soldiers exit, and are forgotten. The scene then jumps over two years; the victors at St Albans are the English w h o enter with York's sons at 1 . 121, and with Warwick at 1 . 147, as indicated in Q stage directions. These soldiers would obviously have been played by the same apprentices or hired m e n w h o entered with York, and that they would have been dressed somehow to look like kerns and gallowglasses, only to remain on stage for 40 lines, and then change costume within a space...