Renaissance Magic and Hermeticism in the Shakespeare Sonnets: Like Prayers Divine.

Thomas O. Jones. (Studies in Renaissance Literature, 9.) Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 1995. 180 pp. $79.95. ISBN: n.a.

It is not inherently improbable that Shakespeare's sonnets were influenced at second hand by ideas in Plato's Symposium, as reworked by Renaissance Neoplatonists and introduced into England by Bruno and others. What/s problematic is the way Thomas Jones touts this thesis as the one finally-discovered key to the mysteries of the sonnets, the solution to an age-old "puzzle." Jones shows what seems like good sense, when he drily comments on the line "my name be buried where my body is" that "a poet who truly wishes to be forgotten will not address his beloved with a long series of poems" (130), or queries critics' emphasis on noble patronage, seeing that sonnets like 96 savage the "young man": "What noble patron would have accepted such a conceit addressed to him? Would his purse strings have been loosened?" (135). Such evidence of competence in reading makes startling the breezy way Jones reads meaning into sonnets he considers central to his case: in Sonnet '68, the blameless word "antique" calls forth allusions to the cult of Adonis and identification of the young man with Thoth/Hermes; and the occurrence of "sepulchres" and "green summer" in the same sonnet proves that the poem refers to "an ancient religion that was practiced outdoors" (125-26). In Sonnet 20, a poem with no religious diction that I can detect, "the master-mistress is being subtly transformed into the immanent God" (109). Too subtle for me.

Jones can be witty, as when he writes of contempt for women's intellect that co-existed with adulatory sonnets: "The poet might compare a woman's eyes to the stars, but he would never hand her a telescope or consider her thoughts on Copernicus" (124). But his prose often slips from one level of discourse to another, rupturing decorum: Renaissance white magic does not mean "pulling rabbits out of hats or sawing women in half in Las Vegas" (2); black magic is like "the entertaining horror produced by Hollywood or Marvel comics" (38); "the homo-phobes might be leaping out of their chairs" (110). Such tonal shifts are symptomatic of Jones's apparent confusion as to who his audience might be. Mostly he assumes ignorance of the Renaissance: he tells us who Petrarch, Ronsard, Wyatt, Surrey, and Jonson were, informs us that Cupid was a "young cherubic boy representing love" (12), that Italian writing was admired in England (16), and that the Renaissance inherited the Great Chain of Being from the Middle Ages (40). But who, other than Renaissance specialists, would be interested in this arcane topic? Perhaps Jones hoped to appeal to Shakespeare buffs among the occult crowd. If so, may they be wealthy enough to afford $79.95 for an unillustrated, un-dust-jacketed, 180-page book.

This is by no means a work of serious scholarship. Its thin documentation is eccentrically presented, with no numbered notes, just a sprinkling of references at the end. Most bibliographic items are from the 1960s and 1970s; no recent Shakespeare scholarship is cited except a 1989 book by John Mebane (called McBane, in one of many uncorrected errors). Jones seems simply unaware of literary scholarship of recent decades; for example, he charges into the issue of homoeroticism, bandying about the word "homosexual" unreflectingly with no acknowledgment of the vast recent theorizing and debate on this subject, and his fulminations against homophobic criticism betray no recognition that sonnets have been studied by those sympathetic to their homoerotic potential.

The Mellen Press's Studies in Renaissance Literature Series includes some books by respectable scholars. Jones's book reflects no credit on the others, and the slack editing which let through oddities like "the [sonnet's] opening stanza" (122), much sloppy syntax, and various misquotations like the one from Shelley on page 132, should make scholars think twice before publishing in that series.

LINDA WOODBRIDGE Penn State University