Deborah G. Burks. Horrid Spectacle: Violation in the Theater of Early Modern EnglandHorrid Spectacle: Violation in the Theater of Early Modern England by Deborah G BurksReview by: Alberto   CacicedoRenaissance Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Spring 2005), pp. 333-334Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Renaissance Society of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1353/ren.2008.0575 .

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Deborah G. Burks. Horrid Spectacle: Violation in the Theater of EarlyModern England.Medieval and Renaissance Literary Studies. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2003.viii + 456 pp. index. illus. $60. ISBN: 0–8207–0341–9.

Deborah Burks has three objectives. First, she wants “to reenvision Restorationdrama’s historical and political place by redefining the usual . . . period withinwhich we imagine it to belong” (1–2). Second, she affirms that early modern stagerepresentations of rape, ravishment, and torture, as well as later polemical texts thatuse such tropes, derive from the sexualized imagery of martyrdom in John Bales’sEpistle exhortatorye (1544) and John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (especially theedition of 1563). Finally she argues “that English writers . . . perceived the viola-tion of their rights to property and to religious faith as . . . analogous to theviolation of a woman’s body in rape or to the violence suffered by the male bodyin castration” (13).

The book takes the reader from Foxe and Bale to regicidal and Whig po-lemicists, and from Shakespeare and Chapman to Dryden and Behn. From 1544to the Restoration, the language of rape and irregular sexuality goes hand in handwith the violation of property rights and religion. The strength of the book isBurks’s forceful and convincing argument that the early modern period consis-tently stages “representations of abusive authority as rape” (89), whether it be inthe Elizabethan and Jacobean, or the Restoration theater, where it is “the indul-gence of desire that led monarchs to oppress their subjects” (302). The evidencethat Burks adduces to demonstrate the political valence of the language of rape and

REVIEWS 333

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sexuality is so copious that its sheer volume compels belief. There are seventy-fourpages of notes, many of them referring to an impressive array of primary sources.Unfortunately the book does not have a bibliography.

The weakness of the book is in making credible the argument that the po-lemicists, Bale and Foxe to begin with, but also Prynne, Coke, Milton, and otherregicidal and Whig writers, have a specific influence on early modern drama. Theearly chapters are especially weak in this regard. For instance, Burks details Foxe’snarrative of Anne Askew’s rhetorical sparring match with a priest sent to shrive her,then jumps to Shakespeare: “In Measure for Measure a similar contest developsbetween Angelo and Isabella . . .” (89–90; emphasis added). The final scene ofMeasure for Measure, Burks says, “presents an image not unlike the woodcut JohnDaye used to illustrate Foxe’s account of Anne Askew’s execution” (93; emphasisadded), so that “for the Protestant members of Shakespeare’s audience, this finalscene must have resembled many of the woodcuts in Acts and Monuments” (95;emphasis added). Ultimately Burks acknowledges the weakness of an argumentthat depends so heavily on likeness when, in regards to Bussy D’Ambois, she saysthat “It is not necessary to debate whether . . . Chapman was influenced by eitherof these specific images [Bale’s account of Askew or the woodcuts in Foxe’s book];all three share a common strategy for villainizing the men they portray” (127). Acommon strategy betokens similarity, but it is not the same thing as direct influence.

The book also suffers from bad proofreading. Some of the problems seemcareless: we are told that polemical texts construct an audience “compromised [sic]of reformed and reforming believers” (73). Some are minor but troubling, as in thefailure to match Burks’s subject with Middleton and Rowley’s predicate in thestatement that Beatrice-Joanna in The Changeling “comes to ‘love anon’ what sheinitially ‘fear’st and faint’st to venture on’” (163). Some are puzzling, as whenBurks calls Rochester “Wilmot” and Buckingham “Villiers,” but happily callsCooper “Shaftesbury” (342). In any case, a good editing job would have made thebook briefer and more cogent. After two hundred pages of text, Burks does notneed to remind the reader that “Dramatists routinely used plots centering on sexualcoercion and violation as mechanisms for commentary on political power” (231).

ALBERTO CACICEDOAlbright College

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