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COPYRIGHT 2000 www.wmich.edu/compdr
Ralph Berry. Tragic Instance: The Sequence of Shakespeare's Tragedies. Newark: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1999. Pp. 228. $39.50.
Ralph Berry's book about Shakespearean tragedy is not, and does not claim to be, a single sustained argument. It is made up mostly of essays and book chapters published over the years. In his introduction Berry dismisses the traditional overarching ideas that used to preoccupy critics of tragedy (tragic waste, poetic justice) and argues for eclecticism as a necessary method: "One must, I think, change one's guard and mode of attack for each play" (17). The result is an occasional discontinuity in matters of detail: there are discussions of Richard III and Richard II as actor-kings, but no attempt to link them; when Aufidius taunts Coriolanus as "boy" this has a sexual meaning (passive homosexual) in one chapter and class connotations in another; each reading remains independent. Occasionally a chapter begins with what reads like a reference back to a chapter in a different book, highlighting the discontinuity of this one. Berry offers a few tentative ideas about Shakespeare's development in the Introduction, but does not really follow them through.
Yet Tragic Instance is more coherent than this may suggest. Its coherence lies in a distinctive critical voice: brisk, tough, witty and (for this relief much thanks)...
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