Tolkien and Shakespeare: Essays on Shared Themes and Language.

TOLKIEN AND SHAKESPEARE: ESSAYS ON SHARED THEMES AND LANGUAGE. Ed. Janet Brennan Croft. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2007. 327 pp. $35.00. ISBN-13: 978-0-7864-2827-4. (Orders www.mcfarlandpub.com or 800-253-2187).

THIS LATEST ANTHOLOGY OF ESSAYS on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien is the second edited by Janet Brennan Croft, the first being Tolkien on Film: Essays on Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings (2004). It is also the second in the series of Critical Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy edited by Donald E. Palumbo and C.W. Sullivan III, which thus far includes five volumes, the first on contemporary female dystopias and the latter three on the Star Wars films, Star Trek, and Hugo Gernsback. The presence of a book dedicated to Shakespearean influences on and comparisons with Tolkien in such a series is one more proof of the Bard's perennial inspiration to the genres of popular culture, both literary and filmic. This accolade is reason enough to put Tolkien and Shakespeare: Essays on Shared Themes and Language on more than a few recommended reading lists; the number of papers in this collection not based on subjects already identified by eminent Tolkien scholar Thomas Shippey (J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, 2001, and The Road to Middle Earth, 1983; revised and expanded edition 2003), is another.

Croft has divided the volume's eighteen essays, all completed by lists of cited text and internet sources, into four groupings: Faerie, Power, Magic, and the Other. A Midsummer Night's Dream is by far the most popular Shakespearean point of reference for the authors of the Faerie section, but they offer the reader far more than predictable character comparisons. Allegra Johnston finds Tolkien's use of Norse and Anglo-Saxon mythical traditions apparent in his dignified and frequently heroic Elf characters, all of whom contrast sharply with the whimsical lightweights more commonly found in Shakespeare's plays. Jessica Burke finds the Victorian literary and artistic expansion on Shakespeare's diminutive Faerie a more powerful, albeit even more negative, inspiration for Tolkien than Shakespeare's own work. Rebecca-Anne C. Do Rozario has discovered numerous points of comparison between the rather "English" craftsmen of A Midsummer Night's Dream and Hobbits, including geographical displacement, hairiness, interest in the transformation of current events into stories for re-telling, and romance; this latter point is developed with reference to Aragorn whom Tolkien originally portrayed as a Hobbit. Romuald I. Lakowski lends his research skills to the influences common to both authors including Warwickshire and various medieval sources and motifs, particularly the "meeting with the hideous hag" which he makes the basis of an extensive comparison of Titania and Galadriel.

The section on Power begins with Daniel Timmons' timely discussion of the frequent, though by no means unanimous, negative critical responses to the presentation of war in Lord of the Rings and the consistent approval of supportive representations of the same theme in Henry V in the context of twentieth-century military conflicts. Kayla McKinney Wiggins draws out the themes of revenge and Machiavellian methods of rule, as well as those of fate and fatalism and chaos and order, as points of comparison between the princes of Lord of the Rings and Hamlet. Leigh Smith's essay on the influences and parallels between King Lear's plot, definition of good kingship, disguise, and the complex treatment of good and evil and Lord of the Rings is unquestionably one of the most thorough and well argued in the collection. Timmons, Wiggins, and Smith all give research credit to Croft's book War and the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien (2004).

The other three papers on Power address it in relation to inheritance and heroism. Judith J. Kollman uses Gandalf's "All that is gold does not glitter" recommendation of Strider/Aragorn to the Hobbits as the basis for an extended comparison between the rightful heir of Gondor and Hal/Henry V. Annalisa Castaldo argues that Shakespeare provided Tolkien with his most important literary models for portraying history and, more specifically, for his conception of the non-aristocratic hero. Anne C. Petty's comparison of the cathartic realizations of the seductive and corrupting nature of power by Thorin Oakenshield in The Hobbit, Denethor in Lord of the Rings, and Feanor in The Silmarillion with that experienced by Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth, and Richard III provides a well thought out conclusion to this section.

There are, regrettably, only three essays on Magic: Nicholas Ozment's fascinating discussion of Elizabethan and twentieth-century attitudes towards magic with reference to Prospero and Gandalf; Frank P. Riga's comparison of Merlin, Prospero, Saruman, and Gandalf; and Croft's own analysis of the reappearance of motifs from Macbeth in different form in Lord of the Rings.

The five essays in the section on the Other begin with Maureen Thum's identification of carnival strategies, such as masking, as methods used to subvert traditional gender roles, specifically those of women in Twelfth Night and Lord of the Rings. Charles Keim and Robert Gehl both compare Gollum and Othello, but where Keim emphasizes the psychological aspects of the two characters, Gehl places his discussion in the context of racism, giving attention to Shakespeare's and Tolkien's respective developments of location in Venice and the Shire and portrayals of their main characters' fetishistic attachments to Desdemona and the Ring. Anna Fahraeus considers Tolkien's Men, distinguished from his Elves in The Silmarillion and Lord of the Rings by their mortality and its attendant ambition, in relation to Shakespeare's, particularly those in Richard II and Richard III. Lisa Hopkins considers Tolkien's interests in evolution and in the passing of cultural authority from Troy to Rome to England as factors contributing to the likenesses between Sam's relationship with Gollum and Ariel's with Caliban. The uniqueness of this primary discussion notwithstanding, Hopkins' unexpected comparison of Gollum and Dracula is not only the high point of her essay, it also suggests a third reason to recommend this anthology to Tolkien readers and that is its forays into topics and territories that, while suggesting Shakespearean "influences" at work, go beyond the specific Tolkien-Shakespeare comparison implied by the anthology title.