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Macbeth: Texts and Contexts. Edited by WILLIAM C. CARROLL. Boston and New York: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1999. Pp. xxii + 346. Illus. $39.95 cloth.
A Midsummer Night's Dream: Texts and Contexts. Edited by GAIL KERN PASTER and SKILES HOWARD. Boston and New York: Bedford Books of St. Martins Press, 1999. Pp. xx + 394. Illus. $39.95 cloth.
Reviewed by JOAN PONG LlNTON
Readers interested in a historicized understanding of Shakespeare's plays will find much to like in the Bedford critical editions of Macbeth by William A. Carroll and of A Midsummer Night's Dream by Gail Kern Paster and Sidles Howard. As the editors make clear in their introductions, their primary aim is to provide historical and discursive contexts for the plays. Without assuming specialized knowledge of English history and society in Shakespeare's day, both editions are designed to invite critical engagement with the plays by including selections from contemporary sources that enrich readers' knowledge of the politics and culture in which the plays participate. The sources are organized into chapters, with commentary on their thematic relevance and with headnotes and annotations that render them readily accessible to readers. The illustrations-reproductions of woodcuts and title pages, musical scores (Paster and Howard), genealogy charts (Carroll), etc.-capture for readers parts of the period's material culture. The result in each case is a richly textured slice of early modern English culture and history, providing multiple starting points for scholarly inquiry.
While they share a historical interest, the two editions differ in the critical approaches employed, a difference that accounts for their choice of source materials and interpretive strategies. Carroll's new-historicist approach to Macbeth appropriately highlights the play's relevance to James Is succession to the English crown. The bulk of the sources are devoted to making these connections visible, with selections ranging from competing historical narratives of Macbeth and English constructions of Scotland (chapters 1 and 2) to treatises on the topics of sovereignty, treason, and witchcraft (chapters 3, 4, and 5), topics on which James himself had written. The headnotes and commentary are highly illuminating and...