Shakespeare's Tribe: Church, Nation, and Theater in Renaissance England.

Jeffrey Knapp. Shakespeare's Tribe: Church, Nation, and Theater in Renaissance England.

Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2002. xvi + 277 pp. + 1 b/w pl. index. append. illus. bibl. $36. ISBN: 0-226-44569-0.

An Erasmian spirit of reform, Shakespeare's Tribe argues, infused the idea of the theater in post-Reformation England--and the theater's idea of England as a Christian nation. In the densely argued chapters of his study, Jeffrey Knapp maintains that the Tudor theater did not evolve from its early Protestant associations into a secular institution under Shakespeare and his successors; it instead mirrored and promoted the spirit of toleration expressed by the Elizabethan settlement. Refusing ties to faction, sect, and nationalism, the theater of Jonson and Shakespeare offered its services to an inclusive Christian ministry. It established its peculiar virtues, in contrast with polemics from many a pulpit, as those of the flesh and good fellowship. In Shakespeare's Tribe, Knapp puts aside the new historicist view that the theater was animated by topical debate, whether of a conservative or interrogative nature. For Knapp, the theater's core project was to move playgoers beyond ideology and difference to a universal Christianity.

Serving as lynchpin to Knapp's argument is the affinity between players and Erasmus, who desired, after the Apostle Paul, to be "all things to all men." The goal of players, seen in the light of Erasmian evangelism, is to establish an inclusive community; the player is thus seen as the accommodating opposite of the precise Puritan, who understands neither playing nor godly mirth. Knapp's Erasmus does not communicate nostalgia for the good old days before the schism but instead represents a continuing spirit of reform: England has separated from Rome but will not cease her spiritual wanderings until she looks beyond her national borders and reunites with the Christian brotherhood of Europe. The idea that the early modern English theater inserted itself into religious preoccupations with an incomplete process of spiritual reform is persuasive. Considerably more provocative is the concomitant argument that the theater opposed England's incipient nationalism in favor of continued identification with Europe.

In a chapter entitled "Rogue Nationalism," Knapp discusses the Elizabethan invention of a coherent "nation" of vagrants as an effect of, and guilty reflection on, the internal divisions that the Reformation brought home to an England it had failed to solidify. Initially--and ultimately--used to discredit players, vagrancy became in the heyday of English drama an important trope through which the players fashioned and defended the theater. Players styled themselves as canny discoverers of rogues and trickery, and thus defended an otherwise vulnerable England along with, of course, themselves. More crucial to the survival of the theater was the players' limited identification with rogues: as "good fellows" and merry tricksters, they protected England from the strictures and divisions of Puritans, seen as enemies to Christian and theatrical welfare alike. The actors enjoyed their popular and godly mirth until they lost out to the Puritans, who pulled down the stages and asserted their right to define England's players and national identity alike. A succeeding chapter, "This Blessed Plot," continues the anti-nationalist reading in terms of English history plays such as Edward I and King John, which oppose forward-looking internationalism to insular nationalism. Chapters on the rhetoric connecting preaching and playing round out the volume.

Anti-theatrical tracts and pro-theatrical defenses are (almost) the most familiar texts quoted at length in this study; other mainstays are the mutual critiques and counsels to good faith produced by Catholics and Protestants. Knapp offers detailed accounts of relatively unfamiliar comedies and histories--the two genres that speak most clearly to his theme of a roguish theater reflecting on England's national and spiritual health--from the 1530s to the Restoration. He offers persuasive readings of the efforts of the "Tribe of Ben" to unite preaching and playing; a compelling exposition of King John; a provocative reading of Henry V's Chorus and King; and an illuminating study of Sir Thomas More, whose title figure directly confronts the relationship of acting to conformity. Knapp is at his most expansive when treating fairly obscure plays: his remarks on Twelfth Night are more sparing and his evocations of plays such as Comedy of Errors, Measure for Measure and The Tempest come mostly in passing.

Readers of Shakespeare's Tribe will be struck by the book's wide reference, insight, and original argumentation. The study both rewards and demands careful study. Few readers are likely to know in-depth the abundant materials Knapp collates. It will indeed take some time, as Stephen Greenblatt observes in a remark printed on the dust jacket, for scholars fully to assimilate Knapp's claims about the theater's ministry to the spiritual problems of Reformation England. One reason is that Knapp's approach is genuinely inventive; the other is that he generally avoids working out his argument in terms of better-known plays, whose interpretive stakes are high. As a fan of books that take risks and perform archival research beyond the norm, I welcome this study and conclude with a single question and a lone wish. Knapp weaves his account of the English theater from the 1530s to the 1690s out of a dazzling array of historical materials, which at times strike this reviewer as insufficiently differentiated by era and cultural crisis. In the wake of New Historicism, the methodology with which Knapp is closely tied, it is hard to guess why political events from conspiracies to acts of high treason and even regicide do not exert more influence on the texture of the story of theatrical ministry. My chief wish, however, in reading Shakespeare's Tribe is simply that the book provided more readings of Shakespeare, even if it meant the sacrifice of some details of Knapp's impressive research. Wanting more is not at all a bad thing, for I stand a chance of seeing my wish realized.

HEATHER JAMES

University of Southern California