December, 1971

NOTES AND QUERIES

479
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negligible private means, but with access to
a University press. It seems that all a play
needs to get full scholarly treatment these
days is, like Mount Everest, to toe there.
There are worse plays than Swetnam.
F. E. Schelling even brought himself to call
it " exceedingly able ". Mr. Crandall gives
it the fainter praise of being " a pretty good
example of Jacobean tragi-comedy". It
would take an undemanding reader to get
much satisfaction out of i t If, as seems
possible, it is by Heywood, it is one of his
more routine efforts, unimaginatively
dependent, as Mr. Crandall shows, on its
narrative source. As for the " controversy", Swetnam's Araignment of . . .
women, from the account given of it, was the
sort of specimen of mindless anti-feminism
that should convince even those sceptical of
progress that there are at least some types
of boring idiocy that we have grown out of
in the last 350 years.
The Introduction gives the necessary
basic information. I do not see why the
source, the Historia de Aurelio e Isabella
is called " a translated and slightly modified
version of a Spanish and apparently
superior work, Grisel Y [so throughout,
except for one occurrence, in a quotation
from another scholar, of the more normal
y] Mirabella". We learn that there were
indeed translations into other languages,
but Mr. Crandall does not make clear
whether there is any evidence for the use
of any specific version. Perhaps the existence of an English translation is taken as
presumptive evidence that that was what
was used.
The play offers no great textual difficulties. The one desperate sentence is a piece
of (Italian?) gibberish at IV. ii. 44, which
to^yJOHN D. JUMP.
still awaits its emender. The 1620 Quarto
is the only substantive text, and comparison
SWETNAM THE WOMAN-HATER: of copies has revealed only two press; 
THE CONTROVERSY AND THE variants. There are two recurrent flaws in
PLAY, A Critical Edition with Introduc- the presentation of the text Mr. Crandall,
tion and Notes, by Coryl Crandall. for no obvious reason, has decided to
Purdue University Studies, 1969; pp. xi, reduce capitals at certain points to lower
164; $4.95.
case, but has failed to notice that medial
A T the beginning of Anthony Hope's " V " ought to become " u ", not " v ". So
Tristram of Blent, we are introduced we have such anomalies on pp. 53 and 54
to " an elderly man of comfortable private as "Actorvm Nomina" and "Prologvs".
means " and scholarly tastes, who " would Punctuation-marks following words in
edit anything provided there was no great italics are themselves italicized. If Mr.
public demand for an edition of it". His Crandall cares to tolerate this in his own
successors are youngish men with, as a rule, part of the book, that is his concern; in a

Pompey and, even more, Jonson's Sejanus
expose the political forces at work in the
history of the times they represent Sejanus
depicts a world of despotism, demagogy,
sycophancy, espionage, hypocrisy, and
terror. Professor Lever rightly observes that
" in the present age of super-powers and
super-demagogy Jonson's portrait of the
state in its most monstrous, hypertrophied
form is full of ominous correspondences"
(p. 64). Nor does Sejanus conclude with any
hope for the future. It leaves us with every
reason to fear that the tyranny of state will
flourish indefinitely. Politically, it is the most
sophisticated and the most concentrated of
the eight plays considered here.
Webster, returning to the Italian settings
and revenge themes of Marston and The
Revenger's Tragedy, emphasizes in The
White Devil "the suffocating ambience of
power and oppression" (p. 84). In The
Duchess of Malfi, the lovers challenge this,
and the leaders of church and state exact a
terrible vengeance. Professor Lever has no
patience with those modern critics who scold
the Duchess for remarrying. He knows well
that she and Antonio have a firm hold on
the sympathy, moral and instinctive, of any
playgoer or reader who has not argued himself into bewilderment To be sure. The
Duchess of Malfi is a highly moral play;
" but its morality does not toady to the prejudices of an establishment" (p. 90).
Professor Lever insists a little too strongly
on the moth-eaten state of the Elizabethan
World Picture by 1600. Moreover, he tends
to gloss over some of the weaknesses of the
plays he discusses. But his book does
genuinely illuminate its subject and it should
help to correct a number of current wrong
emphases in the interpretation of Jacobean

480

NOTES AND QUERIES

how little Schoenberg the man and musician
was understood at this time, Wellesz's insight
seems all the more remarkable. With the
help of liberal quotations from the composer's writings and scores, Wellesz traces
the course of Schoenberg's life and musical
development, linking them up to the intellectual evolution which at last resulted in the
systematic realization of what has come to
be known as the 12-tone method of composition. The 12-tone method itself is only
briefly discussed, but this is hardly surprising, as it had not yet found its fully developed
form at the time when the book was written.
Nevertheless, the examination of the pre-12tone works displays thoroughness combined
with enlightened admiration, and the republication of this book can only be greeted with
pleasure by all those interested in the extraordinary person of Arnold Schoenberg.
R. T. BECK.

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text which claims, with a few stated exceptions, to follow exactly the accidentals of
the copy-text, it is just wrong. There are
misprints at III. iii. 28, IV. iii. 41, IV. v. 11,
V. ii. 259, and a necessary emendation
printed in the text at V. i. 110 has been
overlooked when the line is quoted on p.
16. Quite unnecessary alterations of forms
such as to morrow, assoone, etc., which can
cause no difficulty to a modern reader, have
been put in the text One of these—
foreuer for for euer {V. ii. 138)—even introduces what is (at least in modem
British English) the less usual form. One
necessary change of punctuation has
escaped Mr. Crandall, as it escaped
Grosart before him: at V. iii. 107 there
should be stronger punctuation after
"cease" and no full stop at the end of
the line.
Substantive emendations are not always
happy. When Atticus at I. i. 71 says, " I
sooner looke to see the dead than hee: /For
I am almost spent", he means what he
says: he will see the dead before he sees
his son, because he is about to join them;
" me " for " the " is pointless. At I. i. 180,
in spite of the plural subject, " begins" is
required, to rhyme (imperfectly) with
" Kings "—so at 198-9 " win " and " King "
rhyme. At n . i. 85, " As " seems to me no
improvement on " And ". At III. i. 49, if
" h e r e " is disyllabic, Grosart's metrical
filler " b u t " is unnecessary.

December, 1971

THE LYRE OF SCIENCE: Form and
Meaning in Lucretius' De Rerum Natura,
by Richard Minadeo. Detroit: Wavne
State University Press, 1969; pp. 174;
$8.50.
pROFESSOR Minadeo finds the unity of
Lucretius' poem in the cycle of generation and destruction, a theme he sees as pervading the whole work and expressed in its
style, its structure and even its rhythm. No
one would deny the importance of this idea
in Lucretius: the contrast, for example,
J. C. MAXWELL.
between the beginning of Bk. I and the end
of Bk. VI or the conclusion of Bk. n ,
ARNOLD
SCHOENBERG,
by Egon especially when set against its context, are
Wellesz, translated by W. H. Kerridge. indeed significant. But the method by which
Da Capo Press, 1969; pp. vii, 159; $8.50. Professor Minadeo elaborates his thesis is
1?GON WELLESZ'S famous study of quite unconvincing. It is, in effect, a mere
Arnold Schoenberg was first published word-hunt The " reasoned proof " on pp.
in this country in 1925 and since that time 25-26 has for the reviewer only the virtue
has remained one of the standard works on of needing no refutation; and unfortunately
its subject Wellesz, himself a Schoenberg it is characteristic of the whole book. The
pupil, is equally eminent both as a com- interpretation of naturae^ species ratioque in
poser and a musicologist, and was on terms I. 148 (pp. 11-15) which introduces and
of friendship with many of the greatest underlies the author's argument is a tissue
creative artists and thinkers of his time of fancy. Had he focussed on genuine occur(Berg, Webern, Bartok, Hofmannsthal, rences of the cycle-idea in their real contexts
Gropius, Kokoschka, to name but a few). and not in a tenuous thematic network,
In a word, he was admirably equipped to something might have come of his investigawrite on one of the most complex of all tion; as it is, while he is clearlv sensitive to
twentieth-century composers. The book falls the grandeur of Lucretius' design (p. 53). he
into three main sections, dealing with " The completely fails to make an argument out of
New Path ", Schoenberg's teaching, and his his conception.
works respectively. When one remembers
C. W. MACLEOD.
Printed In Ortal Britain by The Campfletd Press. St. Albans. Hens.,
and pabtWud by Ike Oxford Vntterstty Pros. TJ Dorer Sara. London. W1X 4AB