Peter Corbin and Douglas Sedge, eds. Thomas of Woodstock
or Richard the Second, Part One. Manchester and New York: Manchester UP,
2002. 215pp. ISBN 0 7190 1563.
Michael Egan
drmichaelegan@hawaii.rr.com
Egan, Michael. "Review of Peter Corbin and Douglas Sedge, eds. Thomas
of Woodstock or Richard the Second, Part One." Early Modern Literary
Studies 9.2 (September, 2003): 9.1-7 <URL: http://purl.oclc.org/emls/09-2/eganwood.html>.
Thomas of Woodstock or Richard the Second, Part One is an anonymous
and untitled Elizabethan manuscript play of some 2989 lines, missing a front
cover, list of dramatis personae and an unknown number of final pages. This
new edition reconsiders many of the textual and critical issues that have
accumulated in the nearly 60 years since A.P. Rossiter's Woodstock, a
Moral
History (1946), still the standard version.
It is impossible to come away from the text without an overwhelming sense
of Shakespeare's presence -- one way or another. Either he wrote it or knew
it extraordinarily well, stealing scenes, characters and lines with ruthless
abandon. Richard II and 2 Henry VI offer particularly close
analogies, though in fact there is not a single work in the canon (including
the long poems and
sonnets) which does not contain striking parallels and/or echoes.
Possibly for these reasons the editors all but identify Shakespeare as
the author, noting that "intriguingly" he "is perhaps the
one known dramatist in the 1590s whose dramatic style most closely resembles
that of Thomas of Woodstock." And while they quickly add that
"any attempt at identification must remain conjectural" (4), firmly
ascribing the play on its title page to "Anon.", they do adumbrate
a series of stylistic criteria matching it to its most likely originator.
These include the juxtaposing of court and rural life; the sophistication
of its treatment of history; 'England' as a major character; assurance in
dramatic technique; persuasive female figures; what they call "Nimble's
malapropisms, anticipating Costard, Dogberry and Mrs. Quickly," (a
misprision of their own: Nimble never misspeaks, though Bailiff Ignorance
typically does, and is often compared to Dogberry, etc.); the writer's skill
in manipulating his audience; and the way that Woodstock's character anticipates
Richard II' s John of Gaunt. (4)
They also take the level of critical analysis up a notch, showing that
the play is much more than the crude "moral history" of Rossiter's
over-simplified reading. Woodstock in their view is not just a symbolic
figure of ethical and political rectitude but a persuasive and contradictory
character, a real man "continually at war with himself" (35).
Even the piously virtuous Queen Anne conveys "a sense of insecurity
and even embarrassment" at her first meeting with the peers, while
the King too is not merely a political villain destined for the inevitable
chop of history. His grief at the death
of first his wife and then of his lover Green, and his repentance for Woodstock's
treatment, "draw the audience's sympathy towards his personal suffering
if not his political acumen" (35).
Corbin and Sedge are also impressed by the drama's "skill in narrative
construction," which they contrast with the "repetitive"
and "broken-backed" architecture of Marlowe's Edward II
(9). They note the subtle comprehensiveness of its clothing imagery,
both linguistic and visual, which
is used to emphasize the contrast between "misrule, ungoverned appetite
and intemperate will," and "established order, compassion and
communal responsibility" (26-7). The playwright's ability to orchestrate
dramatic tonal registers (from gravity to comedy and thence to suspense
and turmoil) is equalled only by the "inventive flexibility" of
his deft rhetorical capacities (30-2.)
Textually, the editors approach their task with resolution, altering the
manuscript as judgment and experience dictate. Despite some inaccuracies
and a few crude footnote plagiarisms from Rossiter and his predecessor W.P.
Frijlinck, they make at least two vital emendations that deserve to be
permanently included in all future editions -- redraftings of III.i.58-65
and III.ii.60-6. Almost equally valuable is their conscious retention of
the subjunctive in Richard's exit line at the climax of IV.iii, "My
wounds are inward. Inward burn my woe!," which Rossiter insensitively
emended to the
indicative, "Inward burns my woe!"
Thomas of Woodstock: or King Richard the Second, Part One is a handy
new edition that fails to replace Rossiter because it has less to say, both
critically and in terms of scholarship. It flirts with the authorship question,
coming close but not quite crossing the line between convention and
discovery (or recovery). Some of its textual emendations are of permanent
value, as are several footnotes, but in the end it marks time only, moving
the discussion of key issues neither back nor forward.
Works Cited
- Frijlinck, Wilhemina P. The First Part of the Reign of King Richard the Second or Thomas of Woodstock. London: Printed for the Malone Society by J. Johnson at the Oxford UP, 1929.
- Rossiter, A. P., ed. Woodstock, a Moral History. London: Chatto & Windus, 1946.
Responses to this piece intended for the Readers' Forum may be sent to the Editor at L.M.Hopkins@shu.ac.uk.
© 2003-, Lisa Hopkins (Editor, EMLS).