REED in Review: Essays in Celebration of the First Twenty-Five Years (review)

This collection of essays constitutes an appropriate and moving tribute to an immense project in the assembling, for scholarly use, of data about performance of early English drama. As the editors point out, The Records of Early English Drama began publication in 1978, almost two years after its foundation, with its York volume, edited by Alexandra F. Johnston and Margaret Dorrell Rogerson. A conference was held that year in Toronto; a second took place in 2002, marking the twenty-fifth year. This collection arises out of that second gathering.

This volume enables us to understand and appreciate how much the field of medieval drama studies has advanced during those years. By 1976, solid funding had established the project on a sound financial basis, at least for the next decade, thanks to the Canada Council. Much thought and hard work has gone into defining what classes of records should be regarded as primary. Huge efforts have been devoted to checking and rechecking the accuracy of transcriptions. Factual information in the Record Office has needed to be integrated with the ‘received wisdom’ of scholarly research in the field, as Sylvia Thomas points out. A talented staff needed to be assembled with appropriate language and computer skills. Collaborative teamwork has been of chief concern, as Abigail Ann Young observes. Much has been learned from the productions of cycle drama and other medieval plays in Toronto by the Poculi Ludique Societas, originally under the artistic leadership of David Parry.

Starting in 1986, once the rich resources of cities and towns like York and Chester had been collected and published, a necessary shift took place in the direction of country collections, including family and household accounts. reed has moved into Wales and Scotland, as shown here by Eila Williamson and John J. McGavin. As John Marshall demonstrates, cumulative records from the west of England have made possible an analysis of civic and parish records bearing on the play or game of Robin Hood. Parish records have turned up rich amounts of information about ales, dancing days, and Hocktide activities. Accounts of payments to players’ troupes, minstrels, and waits have provided extensive new mappings of players’ itineraries across the British Isles.

The impact on the scholarly world, as detailed in this collection by Suzanne Westfall, Paul Werstine, and Roslyn Knutson, has been extraordinary. Research continues to demonstrate the roots of theatre in the provinces and in the cultural links between London and other parts of the kingdom. The aristocrats and gentry in their country seats who helped sponsor dramatic activity were not isolated from the capital. reed has essentially revolutionized theatre history by decentring the London-based assumptions of traditional scholarship. Provincial playing has been laid before us in all its rich diversity of indoor performance in town and country residences and in patterns of patronage. The shift has been from individual dramatists and plays to companies and repertories. As Gervase Rosser and Tanya Hagen argue, the project has done much to lay to rest stereotypes about the ‘pre-Elizabethan’ or ‘pre-Shakespearean’ as of paramount importance in the study of early English drama. One major consequence of this re-examination is a revision of the dramatic textual canon. A website devoted to Patrons and Performances, established in 2003, facilitates the exchange of information that enables the reed project to go forward with its work, as shown in this collection by Jenn Stephenson’s and James Cummings’s analyses of hypertext and Web presentation and their relationship to the construction of theatre history. reed‘s ongoing work makes clear the need for new editing of dramatic texts outside the established canon, drawing on the expertise and methodology that the reed project has assembled.

Thus, reed continues to grow and to make remarkable contributions to the study of early English drama. This collection, for which John Lehr has assembled a useful select bibliography, is more than...