Books received

Shakespeare

Clara Calvo and Ton Hoenselaars (eds), Shakespeare and Commemoration (New York: Berghahn, 2019), vi+153 pp., ISBN 9781789202472, £24.95 (pbk).

Ton Hoenselaars and Clara Calvo, Introduction: Shakespeare and the Cultures of Commemoration. 1. Emily Shortslef, Acting as an Epitaph: Performing Commemoration in the Shakespearean History Play. 2. Robert Sawyer, From Jubilee to Gala: Remembrance and Ritual Commemoration. 3. Graham Holderness, Shakespeare Remembered. 4. Katherine Scheil, American Shakespeare Clubs and Commemoration. 5. Monika Smialkowska, Shakespeare and ‘Native Americans’: Forging Identities through the 1916 Shakespeare Tercentenary. 6. Adrian Poole, The Disciplines of War, Memory, and Writing: Shakespeare’s Henry V and David Jones’s In Parenthesis. 7. Anita M. Hagerman, Monumental Play: Commemoration, Post-war Britain, and History Cycles. Graham Holderness, Afterword: The Seeds of Time.

With the recent bevy of celebrations commemorating the 400th anniversary of both Shakespeare’s birth and death, scholars of various international backgrounds investigate in this timely volume how different cultures have and continue to recognise and negotiate the wide-ranging socio-historical impact that Shakespeare has had over the centuries. Themes of memory and identity in particular interweave in this diverse gathering of comparative studies on authorship, celebrity, and afterlives.

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Sarah Dustagheer and Gillian Woods (eds), Stage Directions & Shakespearean Theatre (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), xvi+350 pp., ISBN 9781474257473, £80.00 (hbk).

Sarah Dustagheer and Gillian Woods, Introduction: Something Rich and Strange. TAXONOMY. 1. Tiffany Stern, Inventing Stage Directions; Demoting Dumb Shows. 2. Laurie Maguire, The Boundaries of Stage Directions. 3. Paul Menzer, ‘Peter falls into the hole’: Nonce Stage Directions and the Idea of the Dictionary. TEXT. 4. Emma Smith, Reading Shakespeare’s Stage Directions. 5. Douglas Bruster, Shakespeare’s Literary Stage Directions. EDITING. 6. Suzanne Gossett, When Is a Missing Stage Direction Missing? 7. Terri Bourus, Editing and Directing: Mise en scène, mise en page. SPACE. 8. Martin White, ‘By indirections find directions out’: Unpicking Early Modern Stage Directions. 9. Sarah Dustagheer with Philip Bird, ‘Strikes open a curtain where appears a body’: Discovering Death in Stage Directions. PLAYS. 10. Andrew Hiscock, ‘Enter Macduffe, with Macbeths head’: Shakespeare’s Macbeth and the Staging of Trauma. 11. Sarah Lewis, ‘(From the Dutchesse Grave)’: Echoic Liminalities in The Duchess of Malfi. 12. Gillian Woods, Understanding Dumb Shows and Interpreting The White Devil.

Stage directions have had a particularly complex history, with overbroad interpretations or erroneous attributions to a playwright or scribe, or to a particular production leading to confusion as to their provenance or utility for theatre practitioners. Experts of various backgrounds, ranging from book history and performance studies to theatre practice, engage with the subject from several angles and explore its endless creative possibilities for each of their respective fields and more.

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Stuart Hampton-Reeves, Shakespeare in the Theatre: Peter Hall, The Arden Shakespeare (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), viii+212 pp., ISBN 9781472587077, £75.00 (hbk).

This book offers an in-depth analysis into all of the celebrated director’s forays into Shakespeare in a historical perspective, from his time as Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company and of the National Theatre London and beyond.

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Rebecca Lemon (ed), King Richard III: Language & Writing, Arden Student Skills (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), xii+186 pp., ISBN 9781474253345, £15.99 (pbk).

The discussion of Richard III in this volume is organised around four areas, following an introduction and overview: language in print, language and structure, language through time, and writing tips and topics. The first section discusses how to analyse the play’s text in light of its varying early printed editions, while the second section concentrates on how the play uses language to construct its plot. The third section offers several different popular interpretations in various forms of media on the crookback king, such as ‘Fascist Richard’, ‘Libyan Richard’, and ‘Digital Richard’.

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Claire McEachern, Believing in Shakespeare: Studies in Longing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), xii+324 pp., ISBN 9781108422246, £75.00 (hbk).

This innovative monograph investigates how belief in Shakespeare’s plays related to English Reformation’s belief in eternal salvation. Using Richard II, King Lear, and The Tempest as case studies, McEachern argues that the positivist Protestant faith allowed for deep and profound connections with literature beyond a feeling for a play’s characters.

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Charles Ney, Directing Shakespeare in America: Historical Perspectives (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), x+248 pp., ISBN 9781474289696, £75.00 (hbk).

In this book, Ney conducts a comprehensive study of leading American Shakespearean directors from the late 19th to the end of the 20th century, such as Orson Welles, Tina Packer, Tyrone Guthrie, Jack O’Brien, and Julie Taymor. Ney’s examination of archival material ranging from rehearsal and production diaries to personal correspondences, reviews, and photos, serves to immerse the reader into each theatrical practitioner’s world and the material conditions by which he or she operated.

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Katherine West Scheil, Imagining Shakespeare’s Wife: The Afterlife of Anne Hathaway (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), xxiv+272 pp., ISBN 9781108404068, £14.99 (pbk).

Scheil’s original monograph offers a compelling new take on Anne Hathaway, as the author explores how the various historical and contemporary depictions of ‘Shakespeare’s wife’ in biographies, theatre, and other forms of fiction impact later representations of this uniquely situated figure in early modern theatrical history.

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Non-Shakespeare

Pascale Drouet and William C. Carroll (eds), The Duchess of Malfi: Webster’s Tragedy of Blood (Paris, Belin/Humensis, 2018), 346 pp., ISBN 9791035804367, 21€ (pbk).

Pascale Drouet, Introduction. WEBSTER AS AN ARTIST. Michael Neill, ‘Crabbed Websterio’: The Duchess of Malfi and the Character of a Dramatic Poet. WEBSTER’S LITERARY SOURCES AND CREATIVENESS. 1. Christophe Camard, ‘Your mery bookes of Italie’: From the Passion for the Novella to John Webster’s Drama. 2. Agnès Lafont, ‘I am truly more fond and foolish than ever Narcissus was’: Webster’s Duchess of Malfi and Ovidian Resonances. 3. Richard Hillman, Discursive Presence and Absence in The Duchess of Malfi. CONTEXTUAL APPROACHES: SOCIO-POLITICAL, MEDICAL AND METAPHYSICAL. 1. Rachel Prusko, Young Widowhood in The Duchess of Malfi. 2. Nathaniel Amos Rothschild, Learned Service and the [In]humanism of Webster’s Intelligencer. 3. Aurélie Griffin, The Melancholy Body Politic in The Duchess of Malfi. 4. Pascale Drouet, Madness in The Duchess of Malfi. 5. Devin Byker, ‘Death hath ten thousand several doors’: The Duchess of Malfi’s Arts of Dying. VARIETY AND HYBRIDITY. 1. Mickaël Popelard, Spatial Uniformity and Natural Variety in The Duchess of Malfi. 2. Guillaume Coatalen, ‘When were we so merry?’: Comedy in The Duchess of Malfi. 3. Claire Guéron, Authorising Laughter in The Duchess of Malfi. 4. Yan Brailowsky, ‘True substantial bodies’ in The Duchess of Malfi. ON STAGE: TRADITION AND EXPERIMENT. 1. Estelle Rivier-Arnaud, Performing Violence in The Duchess of Malfi: From Page to Stage. 2. Nathalie Rivère de Carles, Channelling the Tragic Through the Arras in The Duchess of Malfi. 3. Cecilia Istria-Dorland, ‘Fix[ing] a general eclipse’: Reflections on Staging The Duchess of Malfi. Laura Tosi, Postface: Remodelling the Skull Beneath the Skin: Websterian Echoes in Contemporary Fiction.

This collection of 18 essays offers a rich diversity of perspectives on John Webster’s bloody revenge tragedy, ranging from source studies based on Italian moral tales and Ovidian intertextualities, to feminist and even comedic readings, to the staging of violence and the material conditions by which contemporary productions are mounted.

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General

Claire Cochrane and Jo Robinson (eds), Theatre History and Historiography: Ethics, Evidence and Truth (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), xiii+205 pp., ISBN 9781137457271, £130.00 (hbk).

This unique collection of essays brings theatre historians together in order to consider how ethical thinking may illuminate certain truths that may be obscured when dealing with complex subjects or thorny matters, such as feminist historiography in Victorian Britain or colonial theatre in India.

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George Klawitter, Andrew Marvell, Sexual Orientation, and Seventeenth-Century Poetry (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2017), ix+269 pp., ISBN 9781683931034, £70 (hbk).

For fans of Andrew Marvell or anyone interested in sexuality in Renaissance poetry, George Klawitter’s book offers a superbly detailed and nuanced treatment of the poet’s provocative works, such as ‘The Unfortunate Lover’, which like many of his poems carries strong homoerotic undertones. Klawitter also devotes a generous amount of ink to some of Marvell’s contemporaries and their sexually charged poetry.

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Sederi: Yearbook of the Spanish and Portuguese Society for English Renaissance Studies, 25 (2015), 239 pp., ISSN 1135-7789 (free online access at: http://www.sederi.org/).

In Memoriam Prof. F. J. Sánchez Escribano. ARTICLES: Maurizio Calbi, Shakespeare: Reiterating Pericles in Jacques Rivette’s Paris nous appartient. Camilla Caporicci, The Tyranny of Immaterialism: Refusing the Body in The Winter’s Tale. Andrew Hadfield, Grimalkin and Other Shakespearean Celts. Victor Houliston, Filling in the Blanks: Catholic Hopes for the English Succession. Begoña Lasa Álvarez, Constructing a Portrait of the Early-Modern Woman Writer for 18th-Century Female Readers: George Ballard’s Memory of Several Ladies of Great Britain (1752). Francesca Rayner, Adapting Macbeth in a Lusophone Context: The Challenges of Intercultural Performance. NOTES: María José Mora, The Casting of Sancho in Durfey’s The Comical History of Don Quixote, Parts I–II (1694). REVIEWS: Camilla Caporicci, The Dark Lady. La Rivoluzione Shakespeariana nei Sonetti Alla Dama Bruna, Passignano Sul Trasimeno (by Cristiano Ragni). Pilar Cuder-Domínguez (ed.), Genre in English Literature, 1650–1700: Transitions in Drama and Fiction (by Jonathan P. A. Sell). Andy Kesson, John Lyly and Early Modern Authorship (by Jonathan P. A. Sell). Philip Lorenz, The Tears of Sovereignty: Perspectives of Power in Renaissance Drama (by Víctor Huertas). Laura Martínez-García, Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century English Comedies as a New Kind of Drama (by Jorge Figeroa Dorrego). Ángel-Luis Pujante, Juan F. Cerdá (eds), Shakespeare en España: Bibliografía anotada bilingüe / Shakespeare in Spain: an Annotated Bilingual Bibliography (by Rui Carvalho Homem). Miguel Ramalhete Gomes, Texts Waiting for History: William Shakespeare Re-Imagined by Heine Müller (by Francesca Rayner). Richards, Cynthia & Mary Ann O’Donnell (eds), Approaches to Teaching Behn’s Oroonoko (by Ángeles Tomé Rosales). PERFORMANCE REVIEWS: ‘Shakespeare in Almagro 2014: Hambret’ (by Isabel Guerrero).

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Sederi: Yearbook of the Spanish and Portuguese Society for English Renaissance Studies, 26 (2015), 239 pp., ISSN 1135-7789 (free online access at: http://www.sederi.org/).

ARTICLES: John Drakakis, Money Makes the World Go Round: Shakespeare, Commerce and Community. Linda McJannet, Timūr’s Theatrical Journey: Or, When Did Tamburlaine Become Black?. Alejandra Ortiz-Salamovich, Anthony Munday’s Palmerín d’Oliva: Representing Sexual Threat in the Near East. María Luisa Pascal Garrido, Re-Humanising Coriolanus: Community and the Ethical Self. Rosa María García-Periago, More than an Indian Teen Shrew: Postcolonialism and Transnational Feminism in Isi Life Mein. Jesús Tronch, Database-Oriented Annotation of Early Modern Plays: A Proposal. NOTES: Susana Oliveira, ‘The intolerable business’: Religion and Diplomacy under Elizabethan Rule. Paula Schintu Martínez, ‘The mobile shall worship thee’: Cant Language in Thomas Shadwell’s The Squire of Alsatia (1688). REVIEWS: Manuel J. Gómez-Lara, María José Mora, Paul de Pando, Rafael Portillo, Juan A. Prieto-Pablos and Rafael Vélez Núñez (eds), Restoration Comedy 1660–1670: A Catalogue (by Ángeles Tomé Rosales). Justin Kurzel, Macbeth (by Víctor Huertas Martín). James Mabbe, The Spanish Bawd, ed. José María Pérez Fernández (by Jordi Sánchez-Martí). Bartolomé Sanz Albiñana, La expresión de la sexualidad en las traducciones españolas de ‘Hamlet’ (by María José Álvarez Faedo). Oana-Alis Zaharia, Cultural Reworkings and Translations in/of Shakespeare’s Plays (by Madalina Nicolaescu). PERFORMANCE REVIEWS: Las Alegres Casadas, Almagro, 2015 (by Isabel Guerrero). Recreating Shakespeare: You Are My Destiny (Lo Stupro di Lucrezcia), Zagreb, 2014 (by Remedios Perni).