Oxford Shakespeare topics

Renaissance Quarterly, Summer, 2002 by Mary Bly

Andrew Gurr and Mariko Ichikawa. Staging in Shakespeare's Theatres. (Oxford Shakespeare Topics.) Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. 181 pp. $39.95 (cl), $19.95 (pbk). ISBN: 0-19-871159-X (cl), 0-19-871158-1 (pbk).

Bruce R. Smith. Shakespeare and Masculinity. (Oxford Shakespeare Topics.) Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. 182 pp. $39.95 (cl), $19.95 (pbk). ISBN: 0-19-871188-3 (cl), 0-19-871189-1 (pbk).

Lawrence Danson. Shakespeare's Dramatic Genres. (Oxford Shakespeare Topics.) Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. 160 pp. $45 (cl), $19.95 (pbk). ISBN: 0-19-871173-5 (cl), 0-19-871172-7 (pbk).

Martin Wiggins. Shakespeare and the Drama of his Time. (Oxford Shakespeare Topics.) Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. 149 pp. $39.95 (cl), $19.95 (pbk). ISBN: 0-19-871161-1 (cl), 0-19-871160-3 (pbk).

Michael Taylor. Shakespeare Criticism in the Twentieth Century. (Oxford Shakespeare Topics.) Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. x 278 pp. $39.95 (cl), $18.95 (pbk). ISBN: 0-19-871185-9 (cl), 0-19-711840 (pbk).

Robert S. Miola. Shakespeare's Reading. (Oxford Shakespeare Topics.) Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. 186 pp. $19.95. ISBN: 0-19-871169-7.

Russ McDonald. Shakespeare and the Arts of Language. (Oxford Shakespeare Topics.) Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. x 211 pp. $39.95 (cl), $18.95 (pbk). ISBN: 0-19-871170-0 (cl), 0-19-871171-9 (pbk).

Stanley Wells, ed. Shakespeare in the Theatre: An Anthology of Criticism. (Oxford Shakespeare Topics.) Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Reprint, 2000. xiv 337 pp. $35 (cl), $19.95 (pbk). ISBN: 0-19-871177-8 (cl), 0-19-871176-X (pbk).

Steven Marx. Shakespeare and the Bible. (Oxford Shakespeare Topics.) Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. ix 165 pp. $39.95 (cl), $19.95 (pbk). ISBN: 0-19-818440-9 (cl), 0-19-818439-5 (pbk).

Zdenek Stribrny. Shakespeare and Eastern Europe. (Oxford Shakespeare Topics.) Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. xiii 161 pp. $49.95 (cl), $19.95 (pbk). ISBN: 0-19-871165-4 (cl), 0-19-71164-4 (pbk).

Likely many of you reading Renaissance Quarterly have experienced, as have I, a growing divide between scholarship and teaching. The Fordham English Department recently ran a search for a junior medievalist; I found myself mentally applauding those candidates who looked dubious when asked whether undergraduates would show great interest in learning about their dissertation on the etymology of jakes and its unconsidered appearance in twelve manuscripts. The better candidates knew instinctively that our undergraduates, at least, would wilt if asked to read eleven confession manuals as background to one of Chaucer's tales. My own field is early modern bawdy puns, and while students show enthusiasm for Shakespeare s use of prick, they would find Lording Barr/s pun-filled, filthy Ram Alley tedious indeed. Consequently, when I go to conferences given by the Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies and listen to fascinating, nearly unintelligible papers, I catch myself wondering if the speakers are better than I at c arrying their work into the classroom.

It was from this perspective that I agreed to review the Oxford Shakespeare Topics series -- with voyeuristic curiosity, in other words. The series was designed to be "accessible" to students and teachers, a label I would never give my own performances at the GEMCS conference. Surely "short books on important aspects of Shakespeare criticism and scholarship" boils down to classroom behavior. Reading Bruce Smith on Shakespeare and Masculinity will be a window to Professor Smith of the classroom rather than the conference room. And, indeed, voyeuristic pleasures are not among the least in reading the series.

Lawrence Danson opens a chapter of his Shakespeare's Dramatic Genres with a newspaper headline, "BOY KILLED IN TRAGEDY" What is the difference, he asks, between the unprovoked, violent death of a child, and the sense of dramatic inevitability that Aristotle lists as a quality of tragedy? The report of a child killed by a bus may be a tragedy to us, but not to the Greeks. At the best, these books pose questions that we should all be asking in class. I spend little time addressing genre in my Shakespeare course, but Danson's point that although a contemporary genre novel may be the best of its kind, "the modern idea is that great works belong to no specific kind at all," is clearly a terrific way to begin such a discussion (143). As he notes, Shakespeare saw genres as opportunities for inventiveness, not limitation.

Reading the best moments from this series, one feels both opportunistic and argumentative. For instance, Danson claims that there is a dearth of modern works calling themselves tragedy. He suggests that we no longer believe in the outstanding individual whose flue, in other cultures than ours, produced the experience of pity and fear. Yet I did not cry through lam Sam on my lonesome. Which leads to the question of whether an outstanding individual, twenty-first century-style, is necessarily mentally handicapped? Or do we allow only children to be outstanding, fashioning the boundaries of tragedy around potential?