Performing The Cycle

Happe's carefully balanced presentation of Towneley's contradictions

, combined with his generous inclusion of all scholarly points of view, can make his book occasionally frustrating to its reader: this is particularly true for the 'cover-to-cover' reader, who might normally expect to be drawn on by a definite authorial position and a clearly sustained single line of argument. The difficulty is inherent in the project: it is a paradoxical strength of this book that it outlines the problems in its own creation so clearly, for the competing senses of unity and diversity which Happe locates in Towneley are recreated in the competing impulses of his discussion of it. Happe observes of the Towneley plays that 'Perhaps the most valuable outcome of this scepticism about a unified practice is the view that we need to look at each play on its own terms': something similar might be said about Happe's book, which works best when read episodically. Each of the four major sections is subdivided 'Performing the Cycle', for example, includes subsections on 'Dramaturgy' 'Modern Revivals', 'Special Features' and given a provocative Prologue. Each section is carefully related to the central questions of Links London unity and diversity: though the sections taken together are inevitably occasionally repetitious, each section can stand alone well.

Happe has thus created an invaluable reference book, a useful starting-point for scholars working on Towneley, and a book which, one imagines, could provide an informative and convenient resource for the lecturer preparing a class or seminar. The subdivided structure of the book makes it easy to locate relevant information, though it also works against sustained discussion of Links Of London Charms the textual practices which Happe so minutely observes. Observations about modern stagings and continental parallels are a particularly helpful supplement to Happe's analysis of the play texts themselves. They provide a context for discussing the plays as dramatic texts which is otherwise inevitably lacking, given the author's circumspect refusal to commit himself to a hypothesis about the staging of the Towneley cycle.

Of one thing at least Happe is persuasively sure: whatever the circumstances of their composition and copying, these plays are dramatically successful. He argues that this is true not only of the plays which have been attributed to the Wakefield Master, but also of plays which have not been so attributed. Traditional scholarly discussion of the Wakefield Master can be rather circular there are some plays which are exceptional in their dramatic quality; these must be the work of one man who must have been a dramatic genius; this man therefore cannot have written plays which are less compelling. Happe does not directly challenge this argument but his careful sifting of the evidence of the Wakefield Master's hand, together with his arguments for the dramatic quality of other plays preserved in the Towneley manuscript, is an important tool in challenging the 'idolatry' which he observes in discussion of the Wakefield Master.

by: Shirley Green

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