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Theater History to 1900

A book on performed Shakespeare, and a collection of essays on the study of Shakespearean performance that, each in its own way, provide exceptionally provocative and useful arguments. Robert Shaughnessy's Representing Shakespeare interrogates the RSC's work on the histories, showing how interrogation has been sidelined. Shaughnessy's cultural-materialist approach does not (as sometimes happens) give the impression that the author is simply demonstrating a comforting assumption that no company in the RSC's social, economic, and geographical position can ever produce truly radical theatre. Rather, he relates the various productions of history plays to their circumstances in the internal politics of the RSC and the wider context of the troublesome reigns of Wilson, Heath, Wilson (again), Callaghan, Thatcher, and Major. Although he does not proceed by giving blowby-blow accounts of the interpretive scenic life of each staging, Shaughnessy draws on vivid and telling details, and a wide range of ancillary material (reviews, directors' and actors' statements, etc.) to support a strongly argued analysis of their general tendencies. The emphasis is not on celebrating or condemning theatrical effect, but on understanding the work these shows have done and, in retrospect, continue to do in society. In Shakespeare, Theory and Performance, eleven authors consider aspects of the analysis and the historiography of Shakespearean production. Particularly interesting (and pungently expressed in James C. Bulman's introductory essay) is the historicizing of the view of Shakespearean stage history exemplified in J. L. Styan's The Shakespeare Revolution. Cary Mazer takes it upon himself to historicize an individual scholar's projects (those of Alan C. Dessen), and Barbara Hodgdon speaks against the marginalization by British reviewers of Robert Lepage's National Theatre Dream: the compare-and-contrast between Brook's white box and Lepage's sea of mud seems likely to haunt accounts of the play in the theatre for some time to come. Other contributions include an examination by Richard Paul Knowles of the politics of the Berry/Linklater/Rodenburg approach to voice teaching; and discussions from a variety of perspectives of the complex existence of 'Shakespeare' as a cultural force. There is plenty in this valuable book to argue with and ponder.