Andrew Hadfield, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Spenser.

Andrew Hadfield, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Spenser. (Cambridge Companions to Literature.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. xx + 278 pp. illus. index. $54.95 (cl), $19.95 (pbk). ISBN: 0-521-64199-3 (cl), 0-521-64570-0 (pbk).

Russ McDonald. The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare: An Introduction with Documents. 2nd. ed. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's Press, 2001. xxiii + 451 pp. $45. ISBN: 0-312-23713-8.

Thomas N. Corns, ed. A Companion to Milton. (Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture, 10.) Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001. xvi + 528 pp. bibl. index. $124.95. ISBN: 0-631-21408-9.

These three Companions are devoted to the three Renaissance English authors typically featured most prominently in surveys and period courses. Given the ubiquity of reference material of questionable value, including student-friendly internet sources, these three books will make an important contribution. Though each fulfills the promise of friendly and authoritative company for students and their teachers, these books have distinct audiences, aims, and methods.

Andrew Hadfield's Companion assembles a collection of essays by distinguished Spenserians: Richard Rambuss on "Spenser's Life and Career," David J. Baker on "Historical Contexts: Britain and Europe," Richard A. McCabe on "Ireland: Policy, Poetics, arid Parody," Patrick Cheney on "Spenser's Pastorals," Susanne L. Wofford on books 1-3 and Andrew Hadfield on books 4-6 of The Faerie Queene, Anne Lake Prescott on "Spenser's Shorter Poems," Willy Maley on "Spenser's Languages," Linda Gregerson on "Sexual Politics," John N. King on "Spenser's Religion," Colin Burrow on "Spenser and Classical Traditions," Roland Greene on "Spenser and Contemporary Vernacular Poetry," and Paul Alpers on "Spenser's Influence." These scholars and topics make good on Hadfield's pledge to stay "in tune with contemporary critical concerns, as well as ... form a balanced assessment of the contexts that informed Spenser's writing" (7). More dubious is the publisher's claim that the book is "accessible" to "any student of Spenser," providing "all the essential information required to appreciate and understand Spenser's ... work." Many contributors seem to have an advanced audience in mind: teachers will find it very useful, as I did, but undergraduate students will find parts of it daunting.

For one thing, Latin and French quotations (including a whole sonnet, 247) are untranslated. For another, the volume does not have the built-in redundancy that would permit undergraduates to approach individual chapters as free-standing. McCabe's sensitive and learned chapter, for instance, refers to "the disastrous Munster famine" (quoting a relevant snippet of Spenser's View of the Present State of Ireland) and "the massacre of hundreds of disarmed mercenaries at Smerwick" (70) without any elucidation of the events themselves. (The index will lead a student to brief accounts of the Smerwick massacre in Rambuss' and King's chapters, but the Munster famine is not explained.) Baker's chapter, admirable in its coverage of intellectual currents and its subtle analysis of Elizabeth's governing style, also moves quickly from "Events and Personages" to an analysis of how these "impinged on Spenser's works" (40)--perhaps too quickly for American undergraduates.

Other chapters will be easier going for typical students enrolled in surveys and period courses. Patrick Cheney's opening sentence, "Edmund Spenser is England's first great pastoral poet" (79) is engagingly direct, as are his brief sketches of each Calender eclogue and Colin Clouts Come Home Againe and the interpretive issues they raise. Anne Lake Prescott's contribution is lucid and attractively detached in tone, balancing a summary of each work with comments on critical debates. Linda Gregerson introduces contemporary historical, literary, and political preoccupations, then illustrates Spenser's elaboration and critique of Petrarchism in a wonderfully readable chapter. John N. King helpfully plots English religious controversies along Spenser's biography, then offers readings of the satirical eclogues of the Calender and books 1-5 of The Faerie Queene.

Sadly, few American undergraduates are in the market for a book "to guide readers through [all of Spenser's] fascinating and complex writings" (6), aiming "to cover as many aspects of Spenser's work as can be contained within a manageable volume" (7). Most undergraduates, even English majors, will encounter only The Faerie Queene (probably only bks. 1 and 3 at that) and Amoretti and Epithalamion. Such students will find Hadfield's Companion a useful resource, but instructors will still want to put introductions like Russell J. Meyer's The Faerie Queene: Educating the Reader (1991, for Twayne's Masterwork series) and Elizabeth Heale's The Faerie Queene: A Reader's Guide (1999, now in its second edition from Cambridge), and of course The Spenser Encyclopedia (1989, rpt. 1997) next to it on the reserve shelf.

While Hadfield's Companion opens with an introduction entitled "The Relevance of Edmund Spenser," McDonald's Companion to Shakespeare begins without any such anxiety. Our high and popular culture, not to mention the secondary education curriculum, have kept Shakespeare alive for students, and even two-year campuses can fill "gen. ed." Shakespeare courses with eager sophomores who adored reading Romeo and Juliet in high school. Familiarity with such students shapes McDonald's sense of audience and helps him cultivate a tone which is down-to-earth without being condescending. (Although the book is a monograph rather than a collection, McDonald credits "half the living Shakespeareans in the United States and England" with helping him, both directly and by responding to questionnaires, either about their own teaching or about the book's first edition.) Unlike the other companions under review, McDonald does not provide separate chapters dedicated to extended readings of his author's works. Rather, by providing chapter-length discussions of backgrounds--of Shakespeare's life and authorship, "Shakespeare's Dramatic Language," "Kinds of Drama," "Performances, Playhouses, and Players," "Shakespeare's Reading," texts, "Life in Shakespeare's England," "Gender, Family, and Society," "Politics and Religion," and "Shakespeare in Performance"--McDonald's book aims to free up class time for teachers and students to talk about the plays themselves.

A quick search of the Penn State library system for key words "Shakespeare" and "Companion" nets twenty titles. What sets McDonald's Companion (subtitled An Introduction with Documents) apart from the rest is the volume of "documents"; in several chapters, these bulk larger than the corresponding "introduction." He includes a generous representation of the usual maps, portraits, title pages, and sketches of playhouses, as well as an exuberant selection of the less usual: a 1602 "Inventory of Theatrical Costumes" from Henslowe's papers (129-31), long stretches from the 1563 Homily of the State of Matrimony (285-90), Sir John Harington's 1606 "Letter Describing the Revels at King James' Court" (333-34), and illustrations and photographs of productions ranging from 1761 to 1999, to name only a few. At 451 pages, the book is surprisingly slim, and at $45, it offers good value.

With Corns' Companion to Milton selling for $124.95, the question must be, "How does it stack up against Dennis Danielson's 1999 revision of his 1989 Cambridge Companion to Milton?"--reputable, deservedly popular with students, and only $23 in paperback. The answer is, "Very well indeed." Though the price may prevent it going on the list of "required" texts, it belongs on the "recommended" list, and one copy won't be enough for the reserve shelf. A book as good as this will eventually appear in paperback at a price students can afford.

Corns' contributor list overlaps with Danielson's (of Danielson's eighteen contributors to the 1999 revision, six number among the authors of Corns' twenty-nine chapters), but the authors deserve to be heard on more than one aspect of Milton studies, and the essays themselves are distinct. Six chapters on "The Cultural Context" open the volume: "Genre," by Barbara K. Lewalski; "The Classical Literary Tradition," by John K. Hale; "Milton on the Bible," by Regina M. Schwartz; "Literary Baroque and Literary Neoclassicism," by Graham Parry; "Milton and English Poetry," by Achsah Guibbory; and "Milton's English," by Thomas N. Corns. The second section, "Politics and Religion," includes Cedric C. Brown on "The Legacy of the Late Jacobean Period," N. H. Keeble on "Milton and Puritanism," John Rumrich on "Radical Heterodoxy and Heresy," Diane Kelsey McColley on "Milton and Ecology" (an anachronistic title which will draw students into a consideration of Milton's monism and vitalism in contrast to the Baconian view of the natural world), Andrew Hadfield on "The English and Other Peoples" (specifically, the exploited natives of colonized lands, as well as Picts, Scots, and Irish), and Joad Raymond on "The Literature of Controversy."

Part 3 considers "texts": Corns on "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity," "Upon the Circumcision," and "The Passion"; Leah S. Marcus on Comus; and Stella P. Revard on "Lycidas." Elizabeth Skerpan Wheeler, Annabel Patterson, Martin Dzelzainis, and Laura Lunger Knoppers contribute chapters on the prose (Patterson is especially readable and provocative on "Milton, Marriage, and Divorce"). Paradise Lost receives five chapters: "Paradise Lost in Intellectual History," by Stephen M. Fallon; "The Radical Religious Politics of Paradise Lost," by David Loewenstein, "Obedience and Autonomy in Paradise Lost," by Michael Schoenfeldt; "Paradise Lost and the Multiplicity of Time," by Amy Boesky; and "Self-Contradicting Puns in Paradise Lost," by John Leonard (at pains to rebut a deconstructionist reading). Chapters by Sharon Achinstein on Samson Agonistes and Margaret Kean on Paradise Regained round out the section.

Three final chapters consider "Influences and Reputation" (in "Reading Milton, 1674-1800," by Kay Gilliland Stevenson and "Milton: The Romantics and After," by Peter J. Kitson) and "Biography" (though Gordon Campbell's emphasis in "The Life Records" is instructively, if unexpectedly, on the process of "life reconstruction" rather than on Milton's biography). "A Consolidated Bibliography" serves the dual purpose of saving space between chapters and offering students a handy list of recommended additional reading--though even those students who limit theirs to Corns' Companion will be admirably served by this comprehensive and readable smorgasbord of current Milton studies.

MARGARET CHRISTIAN

Penn State Berks-Lehigh Valley College