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Wars of the Theatres: The Poetics of Personation in the Age of Jonson by Matthew Steggle (review)

2002; Modern Humanities Research Association; Volume: 32; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/yes.2002.0013

2222-4289

Stephen Longstaffe,

Medieval Literature and History

Forbidden Matter.Religion intheDramaofShakespeare andhisContemporaries. By GERALD M. PINCISS. Cranbury,NJ:Universityof Delaware Press;London:Associated University Presses. 2000. I42 pp. /25. One of the strikingfeatures of the last years of the twentieth century and the first months of the twenty-first has been the emergence of books on the religious controversiesof, roughly,Shakespeare'stime. These have come fromEarlyModern historiansand, somewhat laggardly,from literaryhistorians.Gerald Pincisswrites about six plays spanning forty years to demonstrate how they reflect the religious controversies of their times. His book opens with a brief (eight-and-a-half-page) account of religion and state censorship as it applied to plays. Pinciss, rightly quoting Richard Dutton's definitiveMastering theRevels (London:Macmillan, 991), agrees that the Revels Office was more permissive, even over religious material, than has often been assumed.Discussionof the sixplaysdoes show that 'playwrights could offera variety of views on mattersof religion, relyingon the intelligence and subtletyof the cleverermembers of theiraudience to applyor decode theirmessage fully'(p. 20). The word 'decode' ringsalarmbells, as allegorizingtexts can produce quite astonishingtheoriesof religiousconspiracy:yet Pincissdoes not often wander down that enticing alley. He disarminglynotes that (in spite of his book'stitle)none of the plays he dealswith caused controversy.He findsthat disturbancein response to Dr Faustuscomes from its theological indeterminacy. He may be right in his assumption that Marlowe must have been impressed deeply by 'the controversy between Calvinistsand Anti-Calvinists[. . .] duringhisyearsat Cambridge'(p. 38). What one misses in these seventeen pages on Marlowe is the experience of that play'snew high drama.The same istrueof the followingnineteen pages, a 'reading' of Measurefor Measure that finds clashing and ambiguous theological positions, and makesthe play, it mustbe said, seem a doctrinalmess. That is a position with which many would agree; but, again, interesting as his commentary is, there is no sense here thatMeasurefor Measure playssatisfyinglywell on the stage. Chapter4 compares Rowley's When You SeeMe You Know Meand Heywood's If You Know NotMe You Know Nobody,'prime examples of Protestant theater in the early Stuart years' (p. 58). Jonson's Bartholomew Fairshows the playwright'stolerance: Pinciss usefullyfollows through the suggestionsof sympathywith English Catholics in the play, alongside that for 'EstablishedChurch' and 'Puritan'figures,though his allegorizingof Grace Wellbornand her destinyis a little far-fetched.John Ford'sPerkin Warbeck is the last play in the volume, 'a Protestantcommentary on his own political world disguised as a chronicle history of the late fifteenth century' (p. io7). A final five-page 'Conclusion'summarizeswhat hasgone before.The fourteenpagesof notes (though not without errors)do make a useful survey of recent writing on the subjects.The sound of gunfire when Early Modern historians write about religion can be distressing,as can theirsense thatliteratureis a forbiddenand unchartedpartof the map where be dragons. Gerald Pinciss's short, rather charming and useful book comes as a refreshingcontrast. HERTFORD COLLEGE, OXFORD DAVIDDANIELL Warsof the Theatres: ThePoeticsof Personation in theAge of Jonson. By MATTHEW STEGGLE. (EnglishLiteraryStudies,75)Victoria, BC:EnglishLiteraryStudies. 1998. I48 pp. $I6. The book investigates English Renaissance satirical comedies representing living people between 1598and I640. Such 'personation',often ofplaywrightsthemselves, Forbidden Matter.Religion intheDramaofShakespeare andhisContemporaries. By GERALD M. PINCISS. Cranbury,NJ:Universityof Delaware Press;London:Associated University Presses. 2000. I42 pp. /25. One of the strikingfeatures of the last years of the twentieth century and the first months of the twenty-first has been the emergence of books on the religious controversiesof, roughly,Shakespeare'stime. These have come fromEarlyModern historiansand, somewhat laggardly,from literaryhistorians.Gerald Pincisswrites about six plays spanning forty years to demonstrate how they reflect the religious controversies of their times. His book opens with a brief (eight-and-a-half-page) account of religion and state censorship as it applied to plays. Pinciss, rightly quoting Richard Dutton's definitiveMastering theRevels (London:Macmillan, 991), agrees that the Revels Office was more permissive, even over religious material, than has often been assumed.Discussionof the sixplaysdoes show that 'playwrights could offera variety of views on mattersof religion, relyingon the intelligence and subtletyof the cleverermembers of theiraudience to applyor decode theirmessage fully'(p. 20). The word 'decode' ringsalarmbells, as allegorizingtexts can produce quite astonishingtheoriesof religiousconspiracy:yet Pincissdoes not often wander down that enticing alley. He disarminglynotes that (in spite...