Andrew P. Williams. 1999. The Image of Manhood in Early Modern Literature: Viewing the Male. Westport: Greenwood Press. xv + 196pp. ISBN 0-313-30766-0. £48.95.

1. The development of gender studies has radically redefined the conception of 'masculinity' in recent years, so much so that the two books under consideration here take different routes towards demonstrating the same thesis: that masculine identity is constructed rather than essential. Masculinity, argues Bruce R. Smith in Shakespeare and Masculinity, a volume in the new, student-orientated series Oxford Shakespeare Topics, 'is not a natural given, something that comes with possession of male sexual organs, but an achievement, something that must be worked toward and maintained' (131). Andrew P. Williams repeats this argument in the introduction to his edited collection, while sharing Smith's insistence that 'there is no one way to be a man'. Like Smith, Williams believes in the coexistence of different conceptions of masculine selfhood in any given period, a coexistence which produces 'a complex web of masculinities' (xii). Both books set out to prove and explore this insight.

   In a slim volume, Smith, who is best known for his ground-breaking monograph Homosexuality in Early Modern England, connects Shakespearean drama to a new area of gender studies, and, in so doing, revises our conception of traditional critical terms such as 'character'. His first chapter reflects on the difficulty of describing 'masculinity' in a period which, Smith claims, had no conception of self-consciousness, and he arrives at a definition of 'person' - from Latin persona, the mask worn by actors on the Roman stage - which promises to capture the performed, social aspect of gender identities in the period. The book continues to describe different 'types' of ideal masculinity - among them, the chivalrous knight, the Herculean hero, the humanist, the merchant prince, the saucy jack, the gentleman and the courtier - and different rites of passage to manhood. In Chapter 4, Smith reviews masculine behaviour as a series of social adjustments to 'others', who include women, foreigners, men of different social rank, and sodomites. The final chapter summarises earlier arguments and offers the term 'coalescence' - from Latin co, 'together' and alescere, 'to begin growing' - as a tool 'to avoid the impasse between essentialism and constructionism and thus to study the ways in which masculinity is achieved, against the odds, in Shakespeare's plays and poems' (133).

2. Shakespeare and Masculinity is aimed at the student market rather than researchers. It does not pretend to offer original insights, but rather summarises lucidly a variety of early modern conceptions of manliness which can be readily applied to Shakespearean characters. Smith's range of reference is to be admired; indeed, the volume provides much helpful information. Chapter 3, 'Passages', includes a very useful survey of recent work by social historians on the life-cycle of boys and men that is sensitive to the issue of social rank. This alerts us to the importance of cultural events now lost to us which defined sexual identity, such as breeching, and considers statistics on, among other things, the average marital age for men (28 or 29) and the male lifespan (20 to 25 in the poorer London parishes, over 50 outside London). Meanwhile, Smith's consideration of 'Others' also offers an introduction to key terms like 'race' which have been recently applied in early modern criticism. Smith's range, however, also constitutes a weakness. Little sense is given of the way in which ideals of manliness are in a process of construction, as well as being subject to negotiation in this period, or of the way in which a dramatic text and performance might dispute or test the limits of particular identities. Indeed, Shakespeare's plays are cited, it often seems, in order to prove what has become a commonplace: that gender identities are constructed. It would also be refreshing to see some of the axioms underpinning the study of gender in early modern criticism subjected to scepticism. Can we be so sure that there was no such thing as an early modern self-consciousness, especially given recent attention to 'inwardness' in the drama of the period? Can we be so sure, too, that early modern authors (never mind 'society') shared our belief that there is no 'essentialist' (masculine) self?

3. Andrew P. Williams's collection The Image of Manhood in Early Modern Literature: Viewing the Male may prove more useful to students interested in early modern masculinities. This is because it showcases different styles of critical enquiry and so conveys something of the debate around the term 'masculinity' in gender studies. Williams's introduction reiterates several key ideas, that the 'history of masculinity is inherently bound to the history of gender inequity, patriarchy, and the exploitation of both men and women', and also that male identities 'are defined by the limited, heterocentric parameters of Western gender politics' (xi). However, these ideas are in general explored meaningfully in the essays which follow. Several contributors examine carefully the way in which new ideals of masculine behaviour explored in literary texts intersect with misogynist conventions. Thus, Goran Stanivukovic examines the attempt of John Fletcher's Bonduca to shape an alternative homoerotic masculinity, while remaining sensitive to how its tirades against women are implicated in a style of rejecting heterosexual norms. Similarly, Lisa Hopkins painstakingly reveals how male camaraderie is predicated on the traffic in women in Beaumont and Fletcher's The Maid's Tragedy. Other essays explore the shifting object of the insulting term, 'effeminate'. Andrew P. Williams's considers how the title 'husband' came to be deemed 'effeminate' in the Restoration culture of the unrepentant libertine, while Thomas A. King traces the historical particularity of 'effeminacy' from the sixteenth to the eighteen centuries. 'Early modern' is interpreted broadly in this work which includes essays on Jacobean drama, seventeenth-century poets (Carew, Marvell and Dryden) and eighteenth-century novelists. The volume concludes with Stephen Gregg's examination of the godly manliness of urban, working class men in Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year and Susan Korba's study of 'masculine homogeneity' in Samuel Richardson's Clarissa and The History of Sir Charles Grandison.