George Washington University

Macbeth, a Complete Guide to the Play. by J. Wilson McCutchan; Julius Caesar. An Outline
Guide to the Play. by Irving Ribner; Othello. An Outline-Guide to the Play. by Paul A.
Jorgensen; As you Like it. An Outline-Guide to the Play. by S. Schoenbaum; King Lear. An
Outline-Guide to the Play. by Mark Eccles; Hamlet. An Outline-Guide to the Play. by Fredson
Bowers; A Midsummer Night's Dream. An Outline-Guide to the Play. by ...
Review by: Hugh G. Dick
Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Winter, 1968), pp. 95-97
Published by: Folger Shakespeare Library in association with George Washington University
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2867855 .
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 REVIEWS 95
furthersubdivided withseparate essayson the fourtragedies:Hamlet,Othello,
King Lear, and Macbeth.The collectionis overweightedwith twentieth-
centurycriticism, but Kermodemakesno apologiesfor thisdisproportion.
In his introduction,Kermode,surveyingShakespearian criticism,observes
the tendencyto debatewhetherart and learningor naturepredominate in
Shakespeare. He seemsnot to havenotedthe recentcriticaldebateoverhow
ChristianShakespeare was in his playsand poems,but it may still be too
earlyto assessthistrendin criticism.
Howeverinvidiousthese may be, certaincomparisons come to mind.
Kermodehas donein brieferspacewhatD. NicholSmithand AnneBradby
did less fully a generationago in theirtwo volumesin the OxfordWorld
Classics.Nor is Kermode's booksucha gallimaufry of tidbitsas is Eastman
and Harrison's Shakespeare'sCriticsfrom Jonson to Auden.It is alsobetter
thanis Siegel'srecentcollection,
balancedin its selections His InfiniteVariety.
Myonlyregretis thatKermode's volumeis nothardbound.
Emory and Henry College ROBERTH. GOLDSMITH

Focus BooksNos. 70I-7I0. J. WILSON MC CUTCHAN, generaleditor:Macbeth, a Complete

Guide to the Play. By J. WILSON MC CUTCHAN. Pp. iV + I24. Julius Caesar.An Outline
Guide to the Play. By IRVING RIBNER. Pp. V + i2i. Othello. An Outline-Guideto the Play.
By PAUL A. JORGENSEN. Pp. [iV] + I24. As You Like It. An Outline-Guideto the Play.
By S. SCHOENBAUM. Pp. iV + I24. King Lear. An Outline-Guideto the Play. By MARK
ECCLES. Pp. Vi + i22. Hamlet. An Outline-Guideto the Play. By FREDSON BOWERS. Pp. iV +
I24. A Midsummer Night's Dream. An Outline-Guideto the Play. By MATTHEW BLACK.
Pp. vi + i2i. The Merchantof Venice.An Outline-Guideto the Play. By WALDO F. MC NER.
Pp. vi + i2i. Romeo and Juliet. An Outline-Guideto the Play. By RICHARD HOSLEY. Pp.
iv + I24. New York: Barnes& Noble, [i963-i965]. Paperbound950 each, in Canada$i.io.
Focus Books Nos. 7I0-7I2. Plot Outlines of Shakespeare'sComedies Scene by Scene. Pp.
Xviii + i74. Plot Outlines of Shakespeare'sHistories Scene by Scene. Pp. viii + i84. Plot
Outlines of Shakespeare'sTragedies Scene by Scene. Pp. xx + i65. By J. WILSON MC-
CUTCHAN. New York:Barnes& Noble, [i965]. Paperbound $I.25 each,in Canada$I.35.
Clothbound$3.50.
A generation ago, in I934, Barnes and Noble issued their paperback Outlines
of Shakespeare's Plays by Watt, Holzknecht,and Ross, the progenitor of the
present series of Plot Outlines and Outline-Guides. As a result of the paper-
back explosion, that modest volume, which cost 75 cents in the Depression,
has fissioned into twelve volumes costing more than sixteen times as much.
The price of such progress is disproportionately high, and for such users as
merely seek synopses, gone is the convenience of a single volume with a
single index.
Yet there is no doubt that the synopses offered in the original Outlines could
no longer serve today, for there the compilers took great liberties with the
order of scenes in the plays themselves and freely omitted scenes and episodes
judged unessential to an understanding of the plot, a decision that produced
countless striking omissions. It is not too much to say that the original hand-
book drew a quite arbitrary line between "plot" and "play", strove to furnish
readable rather than faithful synopses, and gave users a Shakespeare adapted
and improved, so to speak, in abstract. Both the present series forego any such
attempt to improve upon Shakespeare at second hand and furnish instead
faithful scene-by-scenesynopses.
Such synopses indeed comprise most of each of the three volumes in the
present Plot Outline series prepared by the late Professor McCutchan. The

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96 SHAKESPEAREQUARTERLY

volumes on the Comedies and the Tragedies contain additionally a chapter

on how to read Shakespeare'splays adapted from that in the original Watt,
Holzknecht, and Ross volume, together with a one-page tabular chronology
of the plays and an index of characters.The chapter on reading Shakespeare,
which appears also in some of the Outline-Guides, is dropped in the volume on
the History plays to make room for a biographical index of the historical
characters. The three volumes of Plot Outlines seem to be designed almost
entirely for reference.
A more elaborate apparatus accompanies the Outline-Guides to the single
plays, so that these seem intended more for student use than for simple ref-
erence. Some of this apparatus is furnished by Professor McCutchan as Gen-
eral Editor and is duplicated in whole or in part from one volume to another.
Such are the "Suggestions for Reading Shakespeare" adapted from the
earlier volume and the brief summary accounts of the English drama to
Shakespeare'stime, England and London (0558-i6I2), the drama and theater in
Shakespeare'sday, the poet's life, and the chronology of his plays.
The extent to which this handbook material is duplicated from one volume
to another depends upon Part 2 of each volume, which is the part furnished
by the individual contributors to the series. Where their materials are extensive
the accompanying handbook materials are correspondingly curtailed. But
each contributor offers (i) a scene-by-scenesynopsis of the given play, (2) an
account of its sources, (3) an appraisal of theme, setting, and action, (4)
a guide to the language of the play-a feature that varies markedly from
one volume to another, (5) an analysis of the characters, (6) brief selections
of a paragraph or so from leading critical commentaries on the play in chron-
ological order, (7) an account of staging and production, and (8.) suggestions
and questions for study, review, and essay topics.
The two most debatable features of the Outline-Guides as a total enter-
prise are the sections on character analyses and on the language of the plays.
As for the former, one wonders what real purposes are served-or who
exactly is served-by a running list of quoted speeches with accompanying
prose explications in words of one syllable arranged seriatim under topics
and illustrating the innocence of Desdemona, the avarice of Shylock, the
sufferings of Lear, or the loyalty of Kent, the graciousness of Duncan, the
femininity of Titania, and the like. The long columns of quotations under
these subject headings, with the highly simplified explications, seem too ex-
tensitive to serve any general reference use; and if they are intended for student
use, they posit (quite unrealistically, I believe) an almost total incapacity on
the students' part to understand how character and emotion are expressed in
speech.
Similarly, though on different grounds, one must question the running
glosses offered as guides to the language of the various plays. It seems
scarcely conceivable in this day of annotated texts that either a general user
or a beginning student will have the patience to sit with the text of Shake-
speare in one hand and a copy of the pertinent Outline-Guide in the other-
and all the more because the line numbering of the Guides is pegged to no
single accepted text.
Two of the contributors have made useful departures on this score. Pro-
fessor Jorgensen dispenses with a glossary to Othello and briefly treats the
thematic imagery of the play instead. Professor Bowers, on the other hand,
offers a full running commentary on the speeches in Hamlet that adds up to
a total interpretation of the play. Of all the volumes in the series his alone
looks steadily beyond the most elementary readers of Shakespeare to the needs

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 REVIEWS 97
of adultusers,to whom(includingthe selectbodyof readersof thisquarterly)
it can indeedbe recommended as a usefuland significantcontribution. By
theverysametokenit giveseverypromiseof beingthemostrewarding volume
to studentstoo.
Universityof California,Los Angeles HUGH G. DICK

Teatr epokhi Shekspira (The Theater of Shakespeare'sTime). By A. ANIKST. Moscow:

Publishing House "Iskusstvo",i965. Pp. 328. i ruble, 44 kopeks.
Nash sovremennik Viljam Shekspir (Our Contemporary, William Shakespeare). By
Moscow, Leningrad: Publishing House "Iskusstvo",i962. Pp. 3I7.
GRIGORIJ KOZINTSEV.

54 kopeks.
(WilliamShakespeare.
ViljamShekspir.OcherkTvorchestz'a An Essayof his works).By
Moscow: PublishingHouse'Prosveshchenije",i965. Pp. 228. 42 kopeks.
I. A. DUBASHINSKIJ.

Teatr is a very good and useful book intended primarily for a serious student
of the Elizabethan theater. Prepared with obvious love and care, well docu-
mented, the book presents a detailed picture of the theater during Shake-
speare's time. Each chapter deals with a different aspect of the theater: theater
if London and the provinces, actors, censorship, theater owners, acting, scenery
and costumes, rehearsals, audiences. The book is provided with numerous
useful charts and interesting illustrations. One can only regret that such an
excellent book has neither an index nor a bibliography.
The second volume, a slim, interesting book, is a collection of travel notes,
reviews and essays by the well known Soviet motion picture director G.
Kozintsev, who is known to American audiences for his production of Hamlet.
The first chapter includes sketches and impressions of the author's visit
to England. Since there are relatively few travel notes published by Soviets
who have travelled abroad, this part of the book seems particularly interesting.
Unfortunately the chapter is much too short and his comments on the con-
temporary theater and cinema are all too brief. One would like to know more,
for example, of the author's views of Peter Hall's productions, recent motion
pictures, or even his reactions as a tourist.
The second chapter is a series of very enthusiastic reviews of the Stratford
Memorial Theatre performancesin the Soviet Union in i958. The third chapter
discusses scenery and costume designing made for Shakespeare productions
in Leningrad by a very talented Soviet artist, little known in the West-A. G.
Tyshler. The other chapters are essays on King Lear, Hamlet, and Falstaff.
Mr. Kozintsev shows a thorough knowledge of the plays, but his approach
to the characters seems to be largely an expansion of Belinski's interpretation
of Hamlet.
It is unfortunate that books of the type of I. A. Dubashinskij's are still
published in the Soviet Union and in such a large number of copies (37,000).
Intended as a study of Shakespeare's works, this is more a study of Shake-
speare's evolution as a sociologist, a revolutionary,but never as a dramatist, and
least of all as a poet. Not once in the book is there a mention of Shakespeare's
poetic language or imagery, and in the last chapter one may be even surprised
to discover that he was a poet. Even chapters on the Sonnets and two early
poems omit a discussion of poetry.
What is really bad is that the book is written with a pedantic dead-pan
seriousness bordering on the ridiculous. Such gems as these are scattered on
every page: "A particularly great activity is manifested by those lovers, who
are entirely subordinated to love" (p. 84). "The ardent breath of the people

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