Jonson, Shakespeare and Early Modem Virgil.

Margaret Tudeau-Clayton. Jonson, Shakespeare and Early Modem Virgil.

New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 5 pls. + xi + 267 pp. $59.95. ISBN: 0-521-58079-x.

James Lawrence Shulman. "The Pale Cast of Thought": Hesitation and Decision in the Renaissance Epic.

Newark, DE and Cranbury, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 1998. 196 pp. $35. ISBN: 0-87413-635-0.

Each of these fine recent books draws Virgil into the arena of early modern studies of classical authors. Their emphases, though, lead them in quite different directions. Margaret Tudeau-Clayton has added a major landmark to the history of classical scholarship by focusing on the reception of many "Virgils" from medieval sources through editions and annotations for scholars and students alike. This examination provides a context for reading Jonson, Shakespeare, and others in an era of cultural and ideological change. James Shulman, in contrast, chooses one moment in the Aeneid, when the hero hesitates for a moment before killing Turnus. As he examines parallel points of hesitation in Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, and Milton, he considers the evolution of moral choices toward the increasing individuality of the central figures. This movement from epic to novel contributes more toward narrative theory than to the detailed context of Virgil's early modern reception.

Tudeau-Clayton clarifies her aim early: "this book is not about authors and texts but 'authors' and 'text,' not definitive meanings but finite mediators, the figures produced and circulated in the discourse of a historically and culturally specific universe" (1). She moves beyond individualized studies to explore "what else was at stake" (16) during major cultural transitions in the early seventeenth century. The two sections of her study, "Figures of Virgil and Their Place in Early Modern Editions" and "Jonson, Shakespeare, and the Figures of Virgil," not only inform readers about the commentaries and illustrations of many Virgilian texts but also contrast the medieval, more "Catholic" associations of Virgil as prophet, benevolent magician, and order-bringer in Jonson's works with a clearly defined "Protestant turn" illustrated by Shakespeare's The Tempest. In Jonson's works, Virgil and a small group control the discords of nature and of society, the hegemony Shakespeare's play challenges with multiple nois es and voices outside the benevolent magician's control.

To support these decisive generalizations about Virgilian interpretations and influence, Tudeau-Clayton devotes her early sections to clear, accurate descriptions of early editions of Virgil in Latin and in translation. Including added commentaries dating from the late classical Servius and Macrobius, material which presented Virgil as a magician and natural philosopher, she continues to "teaching editions" which omitted more esoteric readings in favor of short moral statements. Reproduced illustrations demonstrate the juxtaposition of voyages of discovery with the traditional narration of the Trojan hero's stormy journey.

Part 2 of the study moves from the analysis of many "Virgils" to those conveyed by Jonson's masques, dramas, Timber, and even the epigrams. In every instance she convincingly points to Jonson's elite audience of privileged, learned, and virtuous men who understand arcane allusions. This group stands above and controls the multiple, heterogeneous voices of the figures of the anti-masque. Although such figures are exaggerated, their counterparts in society represent a genuine threat to a strong monarchy and clergy, inhabiting the chaotic underworld Virgil's Sibyl describes.

In contrast, Tudeau-Clayton considers Shakespeare's most Virgilian play, The Tempest, a dramatic representation of "the Protestant turn," a replacement of the "closed and enchanted structure" (9) and language of Jonson's masques with a "new world" and "the seaman's grammar of Nature": "interrogating and displacing the received Virgilian mediations as groundless fictions of the past, and at the same time dismantling the structure of authority and the hierarchy of privilege -- in short, the politics -- implied in their production and circulation as knowledge" (10).

This section includes a fine discussion of a Virgilian storm which royal power cannot control, a wedding masque which revises the union of Aeneas and Dido, and the replacement of magical power with Prospero's forgiveness of his enemies. Figures who challenge authority displace coherent discourse with fragmented speech and sounds. Juxtaposing this Virgil, based upon less arcane readings, with Jonson's Virgil provides impressive connections to a world of exploration, colonization, and political opposition to royal power.

Tudeau-Clayton's contrast of Jonson and Shakespeare's mediations of Virgil makes excellent sense within her established line of argument. Yet other views of the play admit a more positive interpretation of The Tempest's politically "weak" characters. In her discussion of texts and audiences, some early figures surely resist categorization as elite or common. One of the major editors including a "learned" Virgil was Henri Estienne, a strong Protestant also read by university students. Further, a note accounting for educated Protestant royalists, including women discussed by such scholars as Louise Schleiner, would tell us more about court audiences for the masques.

James Shulman's "The Pale Cast of Thought" undertakes a comprehensive discussion of many epics, beginning with Aeneas's moment of hesitation before killing Turnus in Virgil's Aeneid and proceeding to similar moments in Renaissance epics by Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, and Milton. Although some chapters include fine cultural and historical material, he emphasizes the evolution of character and genre. Early figures exercise Aristotelian proairesis, a deliberated moral decision. In the early modern works figures who hesitate over fallen opponents resist martial heroism in ways that allow greater individual variety in their psychological development. These moments also influence the generic evolution from epic to novel. In contrast to Tudeau-Clayton's emphasis on original materials and their early contexts, he begins with assumptions about the author's "figure" in the work; a character's remnants of mental activity "offstage"; and the reader's involvement with the central figures (7). The book is thought-provoking, a revision of the author's prize-winning Yale dissertation, but its combination of intentionality, reader response criticism, historical criticism, and narrative theory poses a difficult task for author and reader.

Shulman compares Ruggiero of the Orlando Furioso, who postpones his epic destiny, with Artegall of Spenser's The Faerie Queene, both as characters who hesitate but grow. Artegall's hesitation to kill and his subsequent learning of survival skills prepare him to administer the harsh "justice" his quest requires. In contrast to these "assenting" epic figures, Shulman develops well-considered discussions of "more comprehensively transgressive narratives" in which Tasso's Tancredi fails to strike the tree which speaks with Clarinda's voice and Adam hesitates before he joins Eve, preferring his marriage vows to God's prohibition.

Each discussion contains illuminating sections with helpful summations at chapter ends and useful reminders of links with similar figures in other sections. Shulman's argument that Rinaldo and Tancredi divide heroic virtues united in earlier works helps his reader understand the evolution of epic. So does his inclusion of other poetry and prose by Tasso, Spenser, and Milton to support his generalizations. An interesting section defends Adam's "wrong" choice in book 9 of Paradise Lost. Whether or not the reader accepts the "Triumph of Romance" Shulman calls Milton's treatment of the Fall, his discussion of Adam's coming to know an unknown father in book 8 ,and his defense of a human attachment Raphael has not experienced, add some fresh readings to current thinking. However, some terms such as "courtly love" and "liturgical" marriage need further clarification. In discussing both Spenser and Milton, an indication of the part heroic women, particularly Eve, play would further clarify the choices Artegall and A dam make.

Engaging as Shulman's line of development and analyses of specific scenes are, a major difficulty is assessing the audience addressed. His discussion of ethos and psyche assumes a reader who appreciates scholarly discourse, yet references to Artegall's "streetwise" education suit a popular audience. At other points a reader leaps from a scene in an epic to a paragraph beginning with the views of Georg Lukacs or Simone de Beauvoir, needing a clear transition.

Of the two studies, Margaret Tudeau-Clayton's contribution to the cultural uses of many Virgils will interest not only readers of Jonson and Shakespeare but also others working with the ways many classical authors were mediated by their editors, commentators, and early readers. Shulman is stimulating even when a reader disagrees; among his many areas of emphasis narrative theorists should benefit.