Choice Review

This survey in the "Longman Literature in English" series is less detailed and scholarly than The Revels History of Drama in English, v.3 (CH, Dec '75), to which Leggatt also contributed; nor is it designed, as The Revels History is, to convey information about theatrical and social conditions or to define conventions and genres. Instead, Leggatt proceeds pretty much exclusively by readings of individual plays: these are nicely done, neither eccentric in their emphasis nor utterly bland, being studded with fresh perceptions and occasional bon mots, although the form itself is a bit wearying as one reading follows another. Leggatt's steady attention to psychological mood, moral values, and the sense of community in each play produces a clear sense of the historical changes of the period: the dark uncertainty of the great early Jacobean plays is well presented, and he is particularly insightful about the contrast with the more cheerful but still threatened mood of the contemporary popular theater and the modulation of values between the early and the later (Fletcherean) Jacobean drama. The writing is clear and economical, and Leggatt (who has published three other books on the drama of this period) sounds unpedantically authoritative over the whole range of his material. This survey seems pitched to intelligent undergraduates; it includes a chronology, bibliographies, and notes on individual authors. Recommended. J. Haynes Bennington College