Subjects on the World's Stage: Essays in British Literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Although the editors attempt to frame thematically this diverse collection of essays originally presented at the Seventh Citadel Conference on Literature in 1991, the inclusiveness of the title suggests the difficulty of their task: the eighteen essays cover medieval and Renaissance literature, poetry and drama, and theoretical approaches grounded in history, psychoanalysis, and performance. The "subjects" of the title does not refer particularly to political, psychological, or textual subjects, but rather to the general idea that literary works are subject to extra-textual influences. But many a conference organizer has struggled to cast a net over the multifarious interests of a congregation of scholars. Like other collections of conference papers, this book is eclectic and uneven, but overall the quality is high and the reading interesting.

One problem with adapting conference papers to a written format is that the writers, heeding stem warnings from time-conscious session leaders, often do not fully develop the critical, theoretical, or historical background in sufficient detail to answer the questions of all readers. Such is the case with A. C. Spearing's essay on "The Poetic Subject from Chaucer to Spenser," a thoughtful and suggestive essay and one of the few that directly addresses subjectivity, which demonstrates that the subject becomes fragmented and "self-alienated" throughout this period. A more noticeable lapse occurs in Sallye J. Sheppeard's discussion of Dr. Faustus, which begins traditionally with a historical analysis of the ideological conflicts in the play, but attempts in the end to resolve them with an appeal to Joseph Campbell's pronouncements on the role of mythology in our lives. On the other hand, Michael O'Connell persuasively links the decline of biblical drama and the growth of secular drama to changing attitudes toward "incarnationalism" and the written word in "God's Body: Incarnation, Physical Embodiment, and the Fate of Biblical Theater in the Sixteenth Century." Another interesting contribution is Jacquelyn Fox-Good's essay on the music of Hamlet, which draws on the insights of feminism and music theory to show the subversive power of Ophelia's songs. The weakness of conference papers, however, can also be their strength: what they sometimes lack in development, they often gain in focus and originality. Such might be said for Thomas J. Farrell's essay, which uses the shifting meanings of "fyn" to cast light on the much debated question of the Troilus's conclusion, or Robert W. Halli, Jr.'s careful piece of literary and historical detective work that attempts to redeem the reputation of Cecilia Bulstrode from her literary detractors. Similarly, Martha Widmayer investigates the historical and dramatic role of Mistress Overdone's alehouse in Measure for Measure.

Noteworthy also are those essays that approach Renaissance drama through performance. Here, two influential scholars demonstrate that lucid, persuasive criticism can be written without the usual ponderous apparatus that makes the text merely a piece in a larger cultural and historical mosaic. David Bevington, having worked as a dramatic consultant for a production of All's Well That Ends Well, eloquently reminds us how much textual meaning resides in the mundane demands of staging a particular scene in rehearsal. Robert Ornstein's discussion of Shakespearean character, in what might be seen as futile resistance against the tides of contemporary theory, particularly psychoanalytic, rightly chides us that the farther we stray from the play itself, the more we leave behind the very things that continue to attract audiences and scholars to Shakespeare. I think many readers will find this collection useful, and its variety offers engaging reading.

ANDREW M. KIRK Idaho State University