The Dialogue of Solomon & Marcolphus.

This volume provides a facing-page facsimile and modern transcription of an English text published in 1492 in Antwerp. According to the editor, this is the unique English example of a dialogue long popular on the continent in Latin and other languages (particularly German), but which, for various reasons, was produced in only one printing in English. In addition to the facsimile, made from the 1892 reproduction by G.E. Duff, Beecher offers an extensive, excellent introduction and bibliography, along with an explanation of the editorial procedures followed, an analysis of the vocabulary, and, as an appendix, the translation of a German analog, Hans Folz's King Solomon und Markolf. He also furnishes illustrations from various other editions, for the simple English publication had none. The original publisher, Gerard Leeu, provided the translation, probably from a Latin edition he had earlier published (11).

The genre of which this "Englished" Dialogue of Solomon & Marcolphus is an example consists of two consistent parts: a contest of traditional proverbs between King Solomon and the peasant, Marcolphus - the only real "dialogue" - and the relation of a series of practical jokes played by Marcolphus upon the king. This edition represents the tradition faithfully.

The introduction is a fine piece of scholarly and historical work discussing the genre, critical approaches, and the cultural and literary history underlying this work and early comic literature in general. Beecher has teased out the tradition's history, generic development, influences on subsequent work, intertextual relationships, and the iconography of the characters.

A great deal of expert work has gone into the production of this book. It is one of the Barnabe Riche Society Series, whose principal goal is "to supply much-needed editions of many of the most critically acclaimed works of the period [between 1485 and 1660]." One is left wondering why exactly this text was selected for this series. The scholarship is of fine quality (what one expects of the editor-translator of A Treatise on Lovesickness) and the text undoubtedly deserves attention, but this is simply not an English work, in spite of Beecher's attempt to claim for it such a title (18). One does not call a translation of a novel by Umberto Eco or Isabel Allende "American literature" merely because it appears in the United States in English. This is a translation of a popular European text, but it has not been adapted in any way for an English audience, the way Chaucer changed the tales he borrowed from Boccaccio, for instance. The Dialogue is a Flemish publisher's opinion of what might appeal to English audiences. Beecher himself acknowledges that Leeu was likely in error because, for whatever reason (and there are so many possible reasons), only one copy of this unique printing has survived. With so many unmodernized works of early English prose still unavailable in modern editions, this seems a very anomalous choice. Like many early documents of whatever genre, it attracts the specialist but not the general reader or student, for whom other writers deservedly take precedence.

At the same time, however, it is a great delight to praise the high quality of the introduction. Any student of early literature - more particularly, anyone interested in the transmission of literature during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries - will benefit from the thorough, engaging, and thought-provoking material gathered and presented here. For such an audience, this volume should carry both utility and fascination.

MARJORY E. LANGE Western Oregon University