Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 5 Number 1, April 2004
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Huebert, Ronald. The Performance of Pleasure in English Renaissance Drama. Great Britain: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. 218 pages, ISBN: 0333995570, $65.00.
Reviewed by
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.