University of Georgia, USA

                Ronald Huebert’s discussion of pleasure in English Renaissance drama is both varied and comprehensive – with one initially surprising exception.  The book is notable, not only for its chronological survey of various playwrights’ goals and definitions of pleasure, but also for its admitted and blatant exclusion of the works of William Shakespeare.  As Huebert quite correctly observes, when we moderns think of Renaissance drama, we almost certainly call Shakespeare’s name and corpus to mind – to the detriment and neglect of other, less currently canonical writers.  Huebert’s book, then, has really two goals – to explore the progressively changing usage and perception of pleasure in Renaissance drama, and to call attention to other dramatists besides the canonical Bard.  Even a single chapter on Shakespeare, Huebert argues, would give him automatic critical preference within the work, preventing equitable study of other, lesser-known writers, such as John Marston, Thomas Heywood and John Ford.  But even Huebert’s deliberate and unabashed omission of Shakespeare does not free him entirely from the playwright’s shadow; instead, he makes frequent mention of Shakespeare’s works, tying them to his current objects of study.  In this, Huebert is entirely justified; Shakespeare can not be completely deleted from the Renaissance, but he can be gently pushed aside, as Huebert does, to allow for the study of other dramatists. 

As the book’s title suggests, its general focus is pleasure, and Huebert explores this subject through the works of Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, John Marston, Thomas Heywood, Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, John Webster, Thomas Middleton and John Ford.  Huebert covers a lot of dramatic and social territory within his book, but he does allow for a variety of dramatic interpretations of pleasure.  He grounds his discussion of pleasure in a theoretical framework, first acknowledging that pleasure as a subject of scholarly attention has largely been repudiated or ignored by important critics, such as Stephen Greenblatt and Catherine Belsey, and their mentors, Foucault and Lacan.   Huebert, however, contends that pleasure is slowly becoming an object of valid critical interest, and he locates his discussion of Renaissance dramatic pleasure alongside other authors who have also begun to consider pleasure a motivating force.   While he identifies a variety of pleasures that may be encountered on the Renaissance stage – among them the pleasures of mimesis, pathos, discovery, recognition, and escape – Huebert also argues that the connective element between these is an increasing appreciation and desire for individual choice. 

                The expansive breadth of Huebert’s study generates both its strengths and its weaknesses.  It is easy to lose the focus on pleasure in Huebert’s prolonged discussion of Jonson’s ideas of masculinity – and in other places throughout the text.  Furthermore, the variety of pleasures that Huebert identifies may be partly attributed to the diversity of the Renaissance and its writers, but that diversity also limits the effectiveness of pleasure as a central focal point for the book.  The book often rapidly moves back-and-forth between the aesthetic (and voyeuristic) pleasures experienced by the audience, to the many pleasures desired and experienced by the characters on stage and paper – and each, to Huebert, is equally real, equally valid.  Too, when Huebert says “pleasure,” he frequently means merely the sexual/asexual relationships between men and men, men and women.  In much of the book, indeed, pleasure may be reduced to just that: desire and a correlation between sex and power.  Huebert even divides his book along gender lines:  chapter five in the middle depicts the violent encounter between male and female desires, whereas previous chapters deal with masculinity, including homoeroticism in Marlowe, and latter chapters reveal female reactions to the masculine power and desire of the earlier chapters.  But, if pleasure itself as the topic of the text is occasionally lost, and that pleasure often is equated only to sex, the book also identifies a rare similarity between distinct and disparate dramatists.  Huebert manages, for example, to distinguish similar concerns in the works of Marlowe and Jonson, whose ideas of masculinity are sometimes seen as mutually contradictory.  Additionally, Huebert’s observations are always well defined and his points well argued, and his interpretations of textual moments and cultural precepts are often innovative and interesting.  He argues, for example, that the idea or practice of justly executing an adulterous wife, as implied in A Woman Killed with Kindness, is neither a legal nor a social reality, but, instead, a fantasy of male authority and power.  Eventually, Huebert identifies a shift from masculine choice and authority to female participation in the definition and selection of types of pleasures.  This, he comments, is something closely tied to the modern world’s continuing efforts to understand and negotiate male and female versions of sexual choice and power. 

                Huebert’s occasional references to the modern world and reader are also indicative of the tone he adopts throughout the work.  He is very much an active presence, engaged in the creation of a lively communication between himself, his reader, and even the characters he studies.  Huebert often indulges in colloquial language, remarking at one point that Flamineo from The White Devil “screws [Zanche] without relish and discards her without compunction.”  To Huebert, the characters from the plays he studies are very real indeed, people who interact with each other based upon determined needs and wants, people who inspire concrete reactions in their audience.  Huebert himself repeatedly indicates a strong emotional connection to the characters; of Evadne from The Maid’s Tragedy, he observes that “I can’t help feeling outrage at this clear-headed statement of a repugnant morality.”  More honestly than most, Huebert has admitted his own biases and predilections into the book, judging the characters’ actions as if he were one among them, up on the stage. 

                Huebert’s evident fascination with his subject results in a very readable and engaging book, both for scholars of the Renaissance and interested laymen.  The plays are almost as real in Huebert’s critical study of the pleasures that drive them as they are on stage.  The book depends upon a solid foundation of theory, but does not overwhelm its reader with abstract criticism; instead, it is ultimately a highly interesting, thoughtful, well-structured, and “pleasurable” encounter with an influential theme inherent in English Renaissance drama.