Textual Patronage in English Drama, 1570–1640 (review)

David M. Bergeron's book is a rich and thought-provoking study of the paratextual materials included in English printed drama to the Restoration. Readers will find this book beneficial because it draws attention to a body of textual materials or "textual event[s]" (23), as Bergeron calls them, which have only recently been systematically explored. By focusing on the patronage system that enabled early playwrights to seek social recognition and financial support, Bergeron's book complements other recent studies in dramatic publication, such as Douglas A. Brooks's From Playhouse to Printing House (2000), Joseph Loewenstein's Ben Jonson and Possessive Authorship (2002), and Lukas Erne's Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist (2003).

Bergeron's book qualifies assumptions about how early dramatists negotiated the transition of their work from stage to page by closely examining a large number of epistles dedicatory and addresses to the reader. Many readers will, for example, remember John Webster's resentful comments on The White Devil's negative reception when first staged, possibly by the Queen's Men at the Red Bull: as Webster reports in his address "To the Reader," his play "'was acted in so dull a time of Winter, presented in so open and black a theatre, that it wanted . . . a full and understanding auditory'" (97–98). However, the same quarto ends with a note, where, as Bergeron explains, Webster "removes from the actors any taint about the performance" (98) and singles out actor Richard Perkins for his talent and "'well approved industry'" (99). In other words, when the paratextual materials of the first edition of The White Devil (1612) are considered as a whole, Webster's proverbial disdain for the theater appears to be only a partial appraisal of his investment in theatrical and print cultures. As Bergeron concludes, "While the address to readers enunciates Webster's poor regard for audiences, this textual 'epilogue' reveals his esteem for actors and their 'voices'" (99).

On other occasions, Bergeron's book confirms our expectations by foregrounding the literary elitism of other early dramatists who found in the press and textual patronage the means to elevate their work from the material conditions of performance. Jonson's vitriolic attacks against his audiences and the actors are among the most entertaining primary materials explored here. While glossing Jonson's address "To the Reader" in The Staple of News (1640), Bergeron specifies that it is unusually placed "after the second Act and the second Intermean" (135). However, as Bergeron notes, its position is directly relevant to Jonson's view that "'the allegory and purpose of the author hath hitherto been wholly mistaken, and so sinister an interpretation been made, as if the souls of most of the spectators had lived in the eyes and ears of these ridiculous gossips that tattle between the Acts'" (135).

Bergeron also offers important insights into textual patronage as a complex system of economic and social interrelations among those agents involved in the production and consumption of theatrical and print commodities. He explains that, although the language of commodity exchange originated from the commercialization of the playhouse and the printing house, an exchange component was also central to the structure of aristocratic patronage. While acknowledging that little evidence is available to establish what led aristocratic patrons to support playwrights and how successful the latter were in securing their protection, Bergeron outlines the close interdependence between patron and protégé and the shaping power of patronage relationships. If playwrights repeatedly suggest that their "'Essay[s] in gratitude,'" as playwright Henry Glapthorne calls them (212), never completely cancel their debt to patrons, patrons are in turn elevated by the dedications, which, in Richard Brome's words, "'encrease the Glory of [their] Name among Good men'" (193). For Bergeron, textual patronage represents a "'noble construction'" (192), both in the sense that patrons construct a system which nourishes and supports the writer, and in the sense that their support constructs the writer. In this respect, Bergeron...