eJournals Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 42/1

Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik
0171-5410
2941-0762
Narr Verlag Tübingen
Es handelt sich um einen Open-Access-Artikel der unter den Bedingungen der Lizenz CC by 4.0 veröffentlicht wurde.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
2017
421 Kettemann

Bernhard Reitz (Ed.), Das englische Drama und Theater von den Anfängen bis zur Postmoderne. Trier: WVT, 2016.

2017
Sarah Frühwirth
Rezensionen Bernhard Reitz (Ed.), Das englische Drama und Theater von den Anfängen bis zur Postmoderne. Trier: WVT, 2016. Sarah Frühwirth Although the volume under consideration begins its coverage with medieval drama and theatre, the book nevertheless lives up to its title, which promises to outline the history of English drama and theatre from its ―beginnings‖ until the postmodern era. Accordingly, the book‘s editor, Bernhard Reitz, does not leave blank the history of English drama before the Middle Ages, but also broaches the subject of pre-medieval drama in his introductory remarks. Having made good on the promise indirectly given in the volume‘s title, the book‘s first actual chapter is dedicated to the three main subgenres of English medieval drama, namely mystery plays, miracle plays, and morality plays. This first of altogether eight main sections delineates the main characteristics of each of these dramatic subgenres, mentions a few representative examples, and outlines the transition from medieval to Elizabethan drama. In contrast to the other seven main sections, this survey of medieval and early modern drama is not followed by sub-chapters dealing with exemplary plays of this particular historical period. Instead, the plots of a number of representative examples of these three early dramatic genres are already integrated into the editor‘s survey of the era. This decision to dispense with sub-chapters detailing individual plays might be related to the largely generic nature of medieval plays, but the decision to merely give a rough outline of individual medieval plays without quoting original text passages might also have been influenced by considerations of making the description more comprehensible for prospective readers as well as the limited accessibility to most of the manuscripts, which complicates their scholarly treatment. With the exception of this first main section focussing on medieval and early modern dramatic genres, all the other main sections follow a similar pattern. All in all, the body of the book consists of eight main sections, each of which deals with a different epoch in the history of English drama. The first main section on medieval and early modern drama is followed by sec- AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 42 (2017) · Heft 1 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Rezensionen 160 tions dealing in turn with different time periods and their dramatic output from the late sixteenth century to the end of the twentieth century, namely ―Drama and Theatre in the Shakespearean Period‖, ―The Restoration: A New Beginning in Tragedy and Comedy‖, ―The Drama of the Eighteenth Century‖, ―Verse-Drama, Melodrama, the Problem Play and Comedy in the Nineteenth Century‖, ―Drama and Theatre of the ‗Irish Literary Revival‘‖, ―Between Convention and Renewal: 1900 Until the Middle of the Century‖, ―Beckett, 1956 and After: From the Angry Young Men to In-Yer-Face Theatre‖. Each of these main sections is prefaced with a short, very informative introduction by the editor, in which he details the historical and literary context that shaped the dramatic products of the respective age, points out the poetics that informed contemporary dramatic works, refers to the most popular subgenres of every period and outlines their most prominent characteristics, gives interesting information on what contemporary theatres looked like and the types of stages that were in use then, and names important figures in the contemporary theatrical scene, like theatre directors, actors, or stage designers. These general remarks are followed by concise reviews of individual plays by different expert contributors. These reviews, though all of them are fairly short, provide a good overview of the respective play‘s plot (most of the time including direct quotations from the primary texts), biographical information on the author, as well as a short analysis of the play‘s most important themes and characters. The volume under consideration thus strikes a good balance between comprehensiveness and conciseness. The reviews of individual plays are sorted by their dates of composition, rather than by author; an approach perfectly logical, which, however, leads to slight confusion in a section like ―Drama and Theatre in the Shakespearean Period‖, where several plays by one and the same author are discussed, and Shakespearean plays thus alternate with those by Marlowe, Jonson and Webster. Considering the varying importance of theatre and dramatic composition in the various periods, a certain imbalance between the individual sections was unavoidable. While the editor‘s introductions to the respective main sections are of roughly equal length, the number of reviews of exemplary plays varies considerably between the eight main sections, and it soon becomes obvious that the volume‘s main focus is on drama and theatre of the second half of the twentieth century. While the section on eighteenth-century drama merely contains three sub-chapters, which respectively deal with Susanna Centlivre‘s The Gamester, George Lillo‘s The London Merchant, or The History of George Barnwell, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan‘s The School for Scandal, the last section ―Beckett, 1956 and After: From the Angry Young Men to In-Yer-Face Theatre‖ contains a total of twenty-five reviews of individual plays ranging from Samuel Beckett‘s Waiting for Godot (1953) to Martin Crimp‘s Attempts on Her Life (1997), thereby giving the reader a comprehensive overview of modern British drama. While the volume thus focuses on the dramatic products of some periods more than others, the selection of plays and authors on the whole is wellbalanced, since it does not privilege plays of authors of a particular gender, social class or region. By doing so, the book certainly fulfils its obvious aim of Rezensionen 161 giving as broad an overview of the English theatrical landscape as is possible within the confines of a single volume. There are some omissions which may seem surprising at first, which, however, are inevitable in a volume of this kind. It is noteworthy that renowned seventeenth-century playwrights like William Wycherley, William Congreve, George Farquhar, or John Vanbrugh are not discussed in individual reviews. The editor briefly refers to the three ―female wits‖, Mary Pix, Delarivier Manley, and Catherine Trotter, in his introduction to the section ―The Drama of the Eighteenth Century‖, but no play of these early female playwrights is subsequently presented in detail. The only eighteenth-century female playwright who is treated in the form of an individual review is Susanna Centlivre. Another literary figure missing from the volume is Oliver Goldsmith, whose 1773 play She Stoops to Conquer was an immediate success and is still occasionally performed nowadays, and therefore might have made a good addition to the slender section on eighteenth-century drama. It is, of course, virtually impossible to make a selection that pleases everybody. As regards the Victorian period, the ―sensation play‖ or ―sensation drama‖, which thrived in England in the nineteenth century, is subsumed under the general heading of ―melodrama‖, although the author does make reference to plays of Dion Boucicault as well as Hazlewood‘s stage adaptation of Lady Audley‟s Secret. The many stage adaptations of contemporary Victorian bestsellers are also treated only briefly in the editor‘s introductory remarks. The book is part of a series that aims at offering surveys of English literary history to the interested German reading public, a highly recommendable project. Hence the text is written in German, generously interspersed with English quotations (from the primary texts as well as secondary literature on the topic). Although the decision to include quotations from the primary texts in their original, untranslated form is perfectly understandable, since there might not be a German translation of all the plays discussed in this volume, some German readers who do not have sufficient command of the English language might therefore find the book difficult to read in some places, especially when older texts (e.g. from the Renaissance period) are discussed. These trifles, however, hardly have an impact on the overall very high quality of the book. The volume under consideration is a very informative book that will appeal to both scholars and the general public. By managing to detail the history of English drama and theatre within the confines of a 450page volume without creating an impression of superficiality, the editor has certainly accomplished a very impressive feat. Although a total of 33 experts have contributed to the volume, the high standard of quality of the individual contributions remains consistent from beginning to end. All in all, the volume presents itself as a well-researched and highly useful book that, if made an addition to one‘s personal library, will certainly be one of the first points of reference whenever one needs to brush up one‘s memory on a point relating to English drama and theatre. Sarah Frühwirth Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Wien