Review of Katherine Duncan-Jones' book, "Sir Philip Sidney" (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1989)

Daalder, Joost

The Review of English Studies

Flinders Academic Commons

precedes George's desertion of Una, for in it we see that 'the ideal relationship between the movements of the heavens and the actions of man is disrupted' (p. 89). Other readings are more suspect. 'Eubolia or Good Counsel' is not 'a virtue . . . technically distinct from prudence' (p. 50), but is a part of prudence (Aquinas, ST, 2a 2ae 51). Further, the claim that justice is the 'supreme virtue' (p. 223) of Spenser's poem is contradicted by the description of chastity as 'that fairest vertue, farre aboue the rest' (3 Proem, 1). This is a  lucidly and elegantly written book, although at times somewhat self-consciously formal, as evidenced by Dr McCabe's fondness for such a verb as 'bespeak'. It forms a distinguished beginning to a new series, and will not be easy to follow. Trinity College, Dublin GERALD MORGAN Sir Philip Sidney. Edited by KATHERINE DUNCAN-JONES. Pp. xxvi+416 (The Oxford Authors). Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Cloth, £25; paper, £9.95. The time is certainly ripe for an edition of Sidney such as the thinking behind 'Oxford Authors' allows—one that is authoritative, intended for the student and general reader, and which offers a generous selection from both the poetry and the prose. As Herbert and Vaughan had to share one volume, we are pleasantly surprised to see that Sidney is given some 440 pages—perhaps more than enough scope to do justice to him in a series of this kind. It is therefore interesting and important to examine this new edition in some detail. The editor tells us that her texts of Sidney's literary works 'are based when possible on previous Oxford editions'. I believe that any editor (and I include myself) should prepare his/her text from the relevant primary sources, not from previous editions (and I include those from Oxford). Be that as it may, comparison of a number of poems (selected at random) as printed in W. A. Ringler's highly regarded Oxford text (1962) and in the present edition yields some puzzling results. The first poem printed in Katherine Duncan-Jones's text (DJ) has 'sings' in line 8 where Ringler (R) has 'thinks'. The discrepancy is not explained. (Yet DJ's departure from R in Astrophil and Stella 1, 2 is discussed in a note.) In Astrophil and Stella (AS) 45, 11 DJ prints 'honours', but R has 'honor', as has for example Robert Kimbrough in Sir Philip Sidney: Selected Prose and Poetry (New York, 1969) and David Kalstone in his Selected Poetry and Prose (New York, 1970). In AS 65, 13 DJ prints 'in the thine arms' where R and the others read 'in thine armes'. In a case like this, at any rate, I find it impossible to believe that DJ is right, and I must admit that her other unexplained departures from R do not inspire me with confidence either. However, her handling of punctuation is worse. She refers to 'some regularization of punctuation' in her 'Note on the Text', but we are offered passages like this one (Certain Sonnets 4, 1-8): The nightingale, as soon as April bringeth Unto her rested sense a perfect waking, While late bare earth, proud of new clothing, springeth,           Sings out her woes, a thorn her song-book making.      And mournfully bewailing Her throat in tunes expresseth. What grief her breast oppresseth For Tereus' force on her chaste will prevailing.  REVIEWS 99Daalder, Joost 1992. Review of "Sir Philip Sidney" by Duncan-Jones. 'Review of English Studies', vol.43, no.169, 99-101.This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in 'Review of English Studies' following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version is available online at: http://res.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/XLIII/169/99Archived at Flinders University: dspace.flinders.edu.au100 REVIEWS R has a colon after 'making', which is still too heavy a mark, but at least he understands that there should be absolutely no break after 'expresseth'. Passages where DJ's semicolons or colons make nonsense of the syntax which Sidney must have intended are frequent, and we have another absurd full stop in, for example, Certain Sonnets 15, 1-3: 'Like as the dove which seeled-up doth fly, Is neither freed, nor yet to service bound. But hopes to gain ... (etc.). On the other hand, Certain Sonnets 20, 6 'heart' needs a full stop after it, as in R, not a comma as in DJ. The editor's inadequate handling of Sidney's syntax is apparent also in her explanatory notes. For instance, the difficulty (commented on by R) in AS 45, 4, 'though thereof the cause herself she know', is not explained. Nor is there any comment on the notorious complexity (cf. R and Kalstone) of "'What now, sir fool," said he; "I would no less, I Look here I say."' (AS 53, 7-8; punctuated this way in DJ). On the other hand, the famous last line of AS 31, 'Do they call virtue there ungratefulness?' receives the comment that 'Inversion of the order of subject and object' makes it hard to determine whether this means 'Do ladies in heaven call their lovers' virtue "ungratefulness"?' or 'Do ladies in heaven call their own ungratefulness virtue?' But the syntactical ambiguity here (if there is one) does not involve the subject ('they') at all: it is one of object ('virtue' in the first reading, 'ungratefulness' in the second) and object complement ('ungratefulness' in the first reading, 'virtue' in the second). I have elaborately commented on, for example, R. A. Rebholz's misunderstanding of syntactical matters in his edition of Wyatt (Harmondsworth, 1978), but I would have expected an Oxford editor to do better. Nor are students well served in the area of glossing. Most striking there is the absence of help that should have been provided. See for example AS 1, 8 'sunburnt' (cf. R and Kalstone), 9 'stay', 11 'feet' (cf. R), 11 'still' (cf. Kalstone), 14 'heart' (cf. R) ; or AS 2, 3 'mine' (cf. R), 8 'partial' (cf. R), 'footstep' (cf. R) ; or AS 3, 1 'dainty wits' (cf. R), 2 'bravely masked' (cf. R), 6 'tropes' and 'problems' (cf. R). These examples from just the first three sonnets of AS are representative. The strange situation results that the student and general reader for whom this edition has been intended in practice will need to look for explanation in—above all—R, whose volume was not primarily aimed at this audience. Moreover, R edited only the poetry, and the DJ reader who tries to face the prose of The Lady of May without a knowledge of Latin will flounder badly. Yet surely a knowledge of Latin cannot be taken for granted; after all, John Buxton—not the editor herself—provides the translations, in this volume, of some letters which Sidney wrote in Latin. Not surprisingly, after all this, the edition contains a number of minor errors due to e.g. bad proof-reading. The degree sign (°) is intended to indicate notes at the end of the book, but it is sometimes lacking (p. 251, 11; AS 2, 10). On p. 355 we find 'unaccompained', and on p. 360 '30' instead of '20'. John Buxton's book on Sidney appeared in 1954, not '1964' (p. 331), and Rebholz's edition of Wyatt is called The Complete Poems, not 'Poems' (p. 336). But these are comparatively trivial matters. Not trivial is the question of how Sidney's work has been faced as literature. The much too short introduction (pp. vii–xviii) achieves little, and spends time on trying to answer—fruitlessly—why Sidney wrote rather than on a much-needed attempt to discuss what he did say. There is, throughout, far too little attention paid to questions of style—extremely important in the case of this author, and well discussed by e.g. R. L. Montgomery in Symmetry and Sense (Austin, Texas, 1961) and John Thompson in The Founding of English Metre (London, 1961), neither of which occurs in the list of 'Further Reading'. Whether the selection of works is sensible or not is a matter for dispute. No one will suggest that AS and The Defence of Poesy should not have been included. But it seems quite indefensible to include about 100 pages of poetry from The Old Arcadia and none of the lively and interesting prose. Daalder, Joost 1992. Review of "Sir Philip Sidney" by Duncan-Jones. 'Review of English Studies', vol.43, no.169, 99-101.This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in 'Review of English Studies' following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version is available online at: http://res.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/XLIII/169/99Archived at Flinders University: dspace.flinders.edu.auREVIEWS 101 Kimbrough includes the first book (mostly prose) entire, plus a summary of the whole work and a further selection of poetry—all in 75 pages. This is not to say that he, or anyone, at present provides an ideal volume. But that is the more reason why this Oxford edition comes as a major disappointment. In fairness to Katherine Duncan-Jones one must add that not all of the short-comings of the edition are necessarily hers. One does not feel confident that other people carefully examined and proof-read her material, and it is possible that the format of the series—about which we are told too little—imposed some undue constraints upon her. Flinders Univers i t y of  South Austral ia  JOOST DAALDER Shakespeare and the Popular Voice.  By A N N A B E L.  P A T T E R S O N .  Pp .  v i i i+196 .  Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989. Cloth, £27.50; paper, £9.95. In Shakespeare and the Popular Voice, Annabel Patterson sets out to demyth-ologize the 'conservative Shakespeare' which she sees as 'a nineteenth-century construction' (p. 7) and to instate, or reinstate, a Shakespeare who 'was one of our first cultural critics . .  .  capable of profound, structural analysis' (p. 9).  She sees Shakespeare's career as a life-long meditation on the structure of English society' as he moved from 'a wary belief in the Elizabethan settlement', through a brief period of optimism set in motion by James's accession, on to 'an intense political scepticism' which was followed by 'a mature radicalism' (p. 10). The 'story' of this transition is told through an examination of relevant moments taken from seven plays: Henry VI, Part 2, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Henry V, Hamlet, King Lear, Coriolanus, and The Tempest. These seven plays are illuminated 'intertextually', the related 'texts' including: passages from documents which record and comment on some moments of popular protest which Shakespeare would seem to be mirroring; passages from some of Shakespeare's contemporaries (Montaigne, Heywood, Puttenham, and others) which comment on relationships between drama and society; passages from modern historians which look freshly at the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods in the light of recent research; and passages by modern literary and cultural theorists (including Benjamin, Lacan, Foucault, Derrida, and Bakhtin). Given this range of skilfully selected reference, it is not surprising that there is much rupturing of familiar bonds between signifiers and signifieds as the plays under consideration are set freshly echoing. A brief consideration of Patterson's treatment of A Midsummer Night's Dream will serve to illustrate her methodology. Patterson assumes that most readers of the Dream will accept Theseus's aesthetic position (poetry as an 'airy nothing') as Shakespeare's and will have been conditioned into regarding the play as 'unaccountable to social or political realism' (p. 53). She sets out to counter this view by elaborating on the social and political significances of the two moments in the play which are generally agreed to refer to topical events: Titania's reference to natural disaster (ii. i. 93-100) and Oberon's reference to Queen Elizabeth as 'the imperial votress' (II. i. 163). She links Titania's speech to the disastrous harvests of 1595-6 and to the related, but less well known, Oxfordshire uprising in which two artisans (a carpenter and a miller) had planned an anti-enclosure riot. She reminds readers that the midsummer season was traditionally a time of popular protest and that in June 1596 there had been twelve disturbances in London and the suburbs, one led by a silk weaver and another involving artisans and apprentices. Artisans (and especially weavers) she suggests were, at the time when A Midsummer Night's Dream was written, associated with protest. She argues that Oberon's reference to Queen Elizabeth may have been less unambiguously celebratory than has been generally assumed, alerting readers to links between Queen Elizabeth Daalder, Joost 1992. Review of "Sir Philip Sidney" by Duncan-Jones. 'Review of English Studies', vol.43, no.169, 99-101.This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in 'Review of English Studies' following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version is available online at: http://res.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/XLIII/169/99Archived at Flinders University: dspace.flinders.edu.au

Review of "Sir Philip Sidney" by Duncan-Jones

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Review of "Sir Philip Sidney" by Duncan-Jones

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