Renaissance Forum: Volume 7, Winter 2004: Mike Pincombe

John Lyly. 2003. 'Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit' and 'Euphues and His England': An Annotated Modern-Spelling Edition. Ed. Leah Scragg. The Revels Plays Companion Library. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 358 pp. ISBN 0-7190-6458-9. Ł47.50.

Leah Scragg introduces her new edition of John Lyly's prose-books with the observation that her author, having remained for generations 'on the periphery of the literary canon', has now moved to 'a central position in the study of the English literary Renaissance' (1). This is perhaps wishful thinking. Along with most other Renaissance writers, Lyly's critical fortunes were at their height in the 1970s, sharply declined in the next decade, then started slowly to recover in the 1990s. This recovery has largely been thanks to a revival of interest in the comedies, rather than the prose-books, but the two parts of Euphues have played their part, and, thanks to Scragg's new edition, we may hope to see them playing an even larger role in the future.
This is the first single-volume edition of the Euphues books since the Croll and Clemens edition of 1916, to which it acts as a useful complement without quite superseding the older text. Both editions are modern-spelling, but Croll and Clemens still provide more detailed annotation, to which Scragg frequently refers the readers of her own edition (as she does to Richard Warwick Bond's Clarendon edition of 1902). She explains: 'Rather than focusing upon the location of source material, the notes are largely explanatory, and are designed for the assistance of a reader lacking the classical and biblical knowledge assumed in the past to be the cultural norm' (22). Still, some readers may be irritated at having to chase up the location of sources in earlier editions, and it is unfortunate that some minimal level of sourcing was not provided. It would have been useful, too, to have some indication of the changes which Lyly made to the first edition of Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit, which are, after all, quite extensive and revealing. Having said that, Scragg has a sure sense of where notes are needed, and she supplies them with admirable clarity and economy. The two texts are cleanly edited from the second, augmented and corrected edition of Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1579) and the first edition of Euphues and his England (1580). A spot-check of the microfilms of these texts indicates that Scragg has worked through the original very accurately; and it is also worth noting that she has managed to modernize Lyly's punctuation in a way which makes the music as well as the sense of his euphuistic style very accessible to today's reader (you need to read Lyly out loud to appreciate the beauty of his prose). Judicious use is made of bold type to indicate the letters and 'discourses' scattered throughout both parts. All in all, then, this is an edition which is aimed very squarely at the non-specialist reader, in which respect it succeeds very well. A reader, say, interested in the history of the novel rather than in Renaissance literature per se, might very well find all she needs to know in Scragg though, as mentioned above, Renaissance specialists will still need the older editions to hand.
Scragg's introduction is likewise a useful guide to the range of themes which have traditionally commanded attention from critics and scholars. She rightly side-steps the old question of the sources and influence of euphuism, and focuses instead on Jonas Barish's ideas on the 'doubleness' of the style and its relation to narrative structure. Her note on further reading offers useful direction here, and her emphasis on the topicality of duplicity and indeterminacy in Lyly's writings begs the question why it has not been subjected to more extensive and rigorous semiotic and structuralist analysis. In some ways, I am quite relieved that we have not been presented with a 'post-modern Lyly', but it is quite surprising that this line of inquiry has not been followed up more thoroughly. Scragg also provides a brisk account of Lyly's use of allusion and intertextuality and of the relation between the prose-books and the plays. The most important facts of Lyly's life and some pertinent observations on the literary milieu in which the Euphues books were composed and received round off what is, on the whole, a very succinct and valuable introduction.
On the other hand, thinking back to the questions of centre and periphery with which Scragg's new edition opens, I find myself wondering whether it is Lyly's destiny to move closer towards the mainstream of English Renaissance studies or to remain an interesting and not unfamiliar outsider on its 'inner margins' (as it were). In some ways, as the master-euphuist and the only significant purveyor of mythological drama, and that in prose not verse, Lyly is perhaps simply too distinctive for his own good. Criticism tends to concentrate on what makes him different from his contemporaries rather than what makes him similar to them, so he is always at risk of being treated as a special case. But the only way to escape the curse of eccentricity is to be constantly exposed to new readers, and Leah Scragg's new edition should make Lyly's prose-books more readily available to a wider readership than has been possible for decades. The year 2006 will mark the quatercentenary of Lyly's death of the plague in London, in the midst of a legal dispute over washing-lines; let us hope that Scragg's efforts in bringing Lyly to new readers will have by then started to stimulate new readings which will complicate our understanding of this attractive but still enigmatic writer.

MIKE PINCOMBE
UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE