Magnificence and Princely Splendour in the Middle Ages. By Richard Barber

Most of this volume’s contributions investigate the luxuriant handwritten undergrowth of printed Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. Prominent among these is Kara J. Northway’s study of the witnessing to theatrical loans in Henslowe’s Diary (written by Philip Henslowe 1592–1609). In an essay on present-day political implications, Kirsten Inglis and Mary Polito compare Thomas Goffe’s play, Baiazet / The Raging Turk (Arbury Hall MS A415), transcribed from a live performance c. 1619 by ten Oxford notetakers, with the printed version published in 1631, when English hostility towards the Ottoman Empire had hardened. Jakub Boguszak’s speculations about ‘parts’—manuscript copies of their lines distributed to individual actors—draw examples from plays by Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, Rowley, Dekker, Tourneur, Webster, and Ford. In an essay that pioneers the application of computers to handwritten annotations in printed and manuscript texts, Rebecca Munson reports preliminary outcomes of her project, Common Readers. That early readers enjoyed i Henry IV primarily as a comedy, and that readers of playscripts became more numerous and engaged after 1630, are among Munson’s hypotheses (p. 358). Other topics include performance methods for comic and clowning roles in three manuscript Caroline plays, and the brave continuance of playwriting, private performance, and publication across the Cromwellian interregnum. Modern productions of old plays frequently utilize opportunities for creative reinterpretation and invention. By contrast, the scholarly investigation of early texts and performances is an exacting task that strives, based on usually incomplete evidence, to reinsert plays into the contexts that produced them. It takes courage to modify cherished assumptions, and this collection’s honesty in achieving just this deserves high praise. In the tradition of the manuscripts the authors so perceptively discuss, Early British Drama is itself a ‘fine book’ which fully justifies its purchase price. The generous illustrations, including timelines, computer-generated charts, photographs of manuscript pages and bindings, an ‘Index of Manuscripts’ and a ‘General Index’, testify to the editors’ care. Readers are empowered to check descriptions and to enjoy the manuscripts for themselves. A ‘Works Cited’ appended to each contribution facilitates further reading in what is a fascinating and continually developing field of scholarship. Cheryl Taylor, James Cook University