1. G.K. Hunter's English Drama 1586-1642 belatedly completes The Oxford History of English Literature, the earliest volumes of which appeared in the 1940s. Restricted by the limitations of the series' unfashionable format, Hunter nevertheless produces a very learned book that will become a useful addition to many academic libraries, where it will serve as a valuable reference tool for students and teachers of Renaissance drama. It is the kind of book that one might pick up in order to read a short commentary on a particular play or group of plays. In this respect it is particularly informative on less known plays such as A Yorkshire Tragedy and The Miseries of Enforced Marriage.

2. Nevertheless, the structure of the book creates difficulties. Hunter's decision to organise his material generically in an attempt to achieve an overview of dramatic practices is problematic, as it results in a fragmentation that makes it difficult for readers to follow the theatrical development of individual dramatists. This is particularly noticeable in the cases of Shakespeare and Jonson whose plays are discussed intermittently throughout the book. Moreover, in its search for inclusiveness the book sacrifices detailed consideration of the plays. While certain chapters are particularly informative, especially those on the university wits and the boy actors, they give the impression of being compressed, trying to cover an immense amount of material in a limited space.

3. As regards critical procedure, emphasis is placed upon similarity between plays within a genre in the belief 'that a competent audience would have learnt from the culture in general and especially from regular theatre attendance' (5). As a result 'the plays that get most space are not those that are literary favourites but those whose innovations and conduct connect most richly with the practices found in other plays' (5). The drawback of this approach can be seen in the discussion of revenge tragedy in Chapter 9 when a whole page is given over to comments on Thomas Goffe's The Tragedy of Orestes (424-5), whereas Hamlet (426-8) is given less than three. This creates a sense of disproportion and critical imbalance for which the focus on dominant conventions is never likely to compensate. Indeed, occasionally one felt that the emphasis upon similarities overshadowed the distinctive qualities of the plays.

4. The main problem with this book is that it has been written 30-40 years too late. In his preface, Hunter writes that when F.P.Wilson (the scholar originally chosen to write this volume) 'died in 1963, I was asked if I would see through the press the interconnected chapters he had written (which I did) and then if I would consider carrying on the project from 1586 to 1642. The latter I declined to do.' He goes on to explain how, twenty years later, he came to reconsider his decision. However, the format, structure and critical style of the book make it more appropriate to the early sixties than to the late nineties. There is virtually no acknowledgement of the theoretical discourse that has revolutionised literary studies in the last thirty years and little consideration is given to recent innovative scholarship in Renaissance drama. Although critics such as Richard Dutton and Alan Sinfield are listed in the bibliography there is little evidence of their ideas in the course of the book. Instead Hunter places his trust in a much earlier generation of literary scholars that includes such venerated names as Fredson Bowers, T.S. Eliot and T.M. Parrott. Bowers is celebrated as having written 'the standard monograph' on revenge tragedy (421), although his book of 1940 has surely long been surpassed by Lever's Tragedy of State and Dollimore's Radical Tragedy. Rather than consider new insights into the plays suggested by gender based studies, new historicism and postcolonialism, Hunter falls back upon the more traditional view of seeing the plays as representations of the conflict between virtue and vice. Indeed, the implications of colonial politics in a play such as Eastward Ho, that have been emphasised in a number of recent studies of the play, get no consideration whatsoever, as Hunter prefers to view it as a morality play (324).

5. Chapter 7 on 'The boy actors and the new dramaturgy' is one of the strengths of the volume. In the chapter Hunter offers some insightful commentary on the development of the children's companies from the 1580s to the first decade of the seventeenth century when they were at the height of their popularity. He considers the ironic significance of boys' productions in which the parts of heroic characters were played by young men. For example, in his discussion of George Chapman's Bussy D'Ambois he suggests that:

   If Nathan Field was indeed the Bussy of the original performance in 1604, then we have to think of the 'height and pride of D'Ambois' youth and bravery' as played by a 17-year-old, who must have given the part a quality of heroic exaggeration' (348-9).

   Nevertheless, Hunter, like so many critics before him, fails to recognise the political content of the play. He suggests that 'the relation between body and soul is the central subject of Chapman's play' (348). This is as true as claiming that Hamlet is a play about indecisiveness. Chapman, like Shakespeare and his Jacobean contemporaries, sets his tragedies within a court environment not so as to consider the finer points of neo-platonism and stoicism but to represent the ideological conflicts of court politics.

6. One of the more intriguing aspects of this book is the way in which Hunter seems to discuss one play in a manner that suggests virtually no awareness of the critical work done in the last thirty years and then, two pages later, offer a much more insightful analysis of another play. This is what we see when he discusses Chapman's Byron plays (350-352). These plays, that bear many similarities to Bussy D'Ambois, are discussed as if they came from an entirely different culture to the earlier play. Now Chapman's concerns with history and the court 'take him back to the central issue in Shakespeare's history plays, the unavoidable tension between a centralizing monarchy and a still powerful feudal aristocracy, claiming rights of prowess and honour in competition with the head of the ruling family' (350). It is difficult to comprehend that the person who wrote this was the same person who wrote the comments on Bussy D'Ambois.

7. Although a valuable resource for Renaissance scholars and a fitting conclusion to a historic series of literary criticism, one cannot help but feel that this book should have been written thirty or forty years ago. Appearing in the bookshops for the first time in 1997 it has all the appearance of a relic from a bygone age of literary scholarship.

GLEN MYNOTT
UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL ENGLAND IN BIRMINGHAM