The Tragedy of Coriolanus ed. by R.B. Parker (review)

HUMANITIES 187 will prove relevant, or how. Somerset himself queries the authenticity of a document he includes here as appendix 2: I A Medieval Legend of the Virgin' because it refers to an otherwise unattested annual gathering of minstrels at Shrewsbury. Yet we only know that Milton's Comus was performed at Ludlow Castle from the printed text itself - the masque is mentioned only once in these records, not by name, and only because of a payment made by the high bailiff in connection with the event. If I have any complaints, they involve very minor sins of omission. Finding translations of individual records (by Abigail Ann Young) is inconvenient at best - running headers indicating place names would be a welcome addition (the records volume itself has place and date headers; REED: Cambridge has date headers both for the records and for the translation section). Also, a map of Ludlow would have been a useful inclusion - there are two for Shrewsbury (while the inset enlargement of one section of the Shropshire map adds nothing at all). Otherwise the apparatus is a joy to use. Somerset's introductory material is lengthy, relative to previous REED volumes, but always informative, and gives the overview discouraged by the otherwise useful place-by-place format of the records volume itself. The compactly detailed section dealing with 'Historical Background' is notably well linked throughout to questions of dramatic activity, while the section on 'Drama, Music, and Popular Customs' constitutes an admirable collection of short essays that, like these two volumes as a whole, should prove valuable to a wide range of scholars. (GARRETT P.J. EPP) R.B. Parker, editor. The Tragedy ofCoriolanus Clarendon Press. The Oxford Shakespeare. xi, 388 $108.00 cloth The last and most austere ofShakespeare's tragedies has increasingly won an unquestioned place - particularly in our own century - among the dramatist's most esteemed masterpieces. This is undoubtedly because it dramatizes with unique and subtle complexity the relationship between the individual and the state, probing psychological and political conflicts with equal depth and realizing them, visually as well as poetically, with enormous theatrical power. It is a pleasure to report that Brian Parker's superb new edition in the Oxford series satisfied virtually every need that a serious student, a literary critic, a theatrical director, or an actor would be likely to conceive. The text is scrupulously edited" attractively modernized in a logical and thoroughgoing manner, and fully and helpfully annotated. Although Coriolanus, being a play for which the Folio of 1623 is our only authority, presents relatively few textual difficulties, any editor must contend with puzzling anomalies in the ascription of speeches and nagging problems of lineation, occasioned, on the one hand, by the 188 LETTERS IN CANADA 1994 typesetting of cast-off copy, which had to be crowded or spread to accommodate the double columns of the folio page, and, on the other, by a deliberately jagged, irregular, and abrupt verse style that frequently pushes iambic pentameter to the verge of prose. To avoid cluttering his collations with the many required alterations in verse lining, Parker prudently relegates these to an appendix, duly recording the edition followed in each case. He explains that he takes personal/responsibility' for 'all "asides" or directions to speak "to" a particular person,' not troubling to record the earliest source of such additions unless there is . some doubt or controversy about them and, in most cases, failing even to indicate by the use of square brackets that an aside has been inserted at all. I find this policy regrettable since, for historical reasons, it is sometimes useful to know precisely what has been added to the text and by whom - even when the decision to clarify the direction of a speech provokes no debate. It is only fair, however, to point out that in this regard Parker appears to be following a procedure mandated by his series editor rather than acting on his own initiative. Analysing the nature of the copy text, which (partly on the basis of spelling preferences and partly on the evidence of literary, permissive, and redundant stage directions) he thinks is authorial and was drafted in 1608 when Shakespeare may...