Review by Choice Review
Though he admits that "the practice of performance criticism [is] an admittedly insecure pursuit," Friedman (English, Univ. of Scranton) grounds his work clearly in his introductory chapter and then takes time to savor isolated performance differences in four Shakespeare plays: Two Gentlemen of Verona, Much Ado about Nothing, All's Well that Ends Well, and Measure for Measure. He presents a stage history of each and reveals how softened productions have often played into the audience's expectations of romantic comedy. He argues for a comic subgenre--the comedy of forgiveness--in these plays and notes that they share an underlying structure with identical character types (e.g., the forgiven comic hero, the male friend, Griselda, the devoted woman, etc.). He goes on to show how Shakespeare validates but also violates the "model narrative." Friedman covers a lot of territory here and adds an interesting final chapter about taming patterns also found in the plays. Well documented with 35 pages of notes and works cited, this study will interest students and scholars of these early comedies at the upper-division undergraduate level and above. J. S. Carducci Winona State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
