Review by Choice Review
An intriguing and lively argument on behalf of the stage viability of a play whose critical importance has most often been connected to the question of Shakespeare's authorship of an added fragment. McMillin demonstrates that The Book of Sir Thomas More, ed. by W.W. Greg, (1911-manuscript in the British Museum), bears striking resemblance to other plays produced by Lord Strange's men at the Rose Theatre, primarily because More's needs for a large cast and for a relatively large inner below and platform match the Rose's repertory of the early 1590s. McMillin suggests that many revisions occurred a decade later, at the time of Edward Alleyn's return to the stage. An appendix hypothesizes that Hand D, reputed to be Shakespeare's, bears resemblance to the unidentified Hand C, a functionary who probably participated in revisions. The suggestion is meant to set to rest the debates over authorship and raise the possibility that master and slave-genius poet and theater functionary-are the same. McMillin's study demonstrates just how speculative research in theater staging must be. To some, this stance fits today's critical attitudes; to others, the book will be inaccessible, both because the full script of More is not widely available in print, and because reading McMillin demands knowledge of the history of debate over this text. Graduate collections.-J.E. Gates, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review