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Reviews 95 of the volume is a pot pourri of brilliance, pretentiousness, and dullness. It should be read selectively. WILLIAM L. GODSHALK University of Cincinnati Robert Edwards. The Montecassino Passion and the Poetics of Medieval Drama. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977. Pp. 213. $12.50. . The earliest drama to treat exclusively Christ's arrest and cruci­ fixion was brought to lighf in 1936 by Mauro Inguanez, who uncovered it in the Benedictine monastery at Montecassino, Italy. The document is preserved in · a partially mutilated four-page manuscript that dates from the middle of the twelfth century. The play remained relatively unknown until Sandro Sticca reprinted Inguanez's text in Latomus, 20 ( 1961 ) , 568-74. Sticca later made the drama the object of his dissertation at Columbia, which he published as The Latin Passion Play: Its Origin and Development (Albany : State University of New York Press, 1970) . On pp. 66-78, Sticca included the complete Latin text plus variants and additions to the play included in what is known as the Sulmona fragment. The speaking parts of the drama are in a type of Latin sequence verse called versus tripartitus caudatus, the stage directions and glosses are in prose, and the Virgin's perorational planctus, of which only three verses remain, is in the vernacular. Robert Edwards' study of the Montecassino Passion is a logical continuation of Sticca's work. While Sticca was interested in the Latin text and the problems of the play's priority, origin, and influence, Edwards pursues the literary and artistic merits of the drama. He there­ fore includes only an English translation-the first-of the play (pp. 10-21 ) and ignores the linguistic intricacies of the original Latin. He sees the Montecassino Passion as a major innovation in Western drama both in theme and in structure. The play, for example, does not rely directly on liturgical structure; rather it draws heavily on many preceding literary treatments of the theme and on contemporary usage of icono­ graphy, music, and judicial procedure. Chapter One studies the twelfth-century ambience in which the play originated. Edwards compares the work to contemporary liturgical drama, such as the quern queritis trope and the officium pastorum, to the Byzantine kontakia, and to the Latin fragmentary- material called cento. The work differs from these three forms in its dependence on legal structures: testimony by both false witnesses and defendants, pro­ fuse forensic language, a documentary style, and proper judiciary pro­ cedure. The incorporation of these juristic processes transforms the drama into a standard trial for the contemporary spectator, who thus experiences the event in a direct manner unavailable from the dogma of the Mass. The second chapter, entitled "The Aesthetics of Recovery,'' examines precisely this trait; it demonstrates that the play achieves a 96 Comparative Drama truly dramatic sense by recovering the historical event of Christ's death and presenting it as such, rather than as a mystical occurrence repeatable through the ritual of Communion. Chapter Three, on the use of icono­ graphical sources and visual images to convey meaning, proves that the play is a counterpart to the miniature cycle, following the same ideolog­ ical lines that had earlier been laid down for that type of image. Proof is the fact that the MS of the play actually leaves room for twelve miniatures. This section previously appeared in Comparative Drama, 8 . ( 1974), 157-7 1. Chapter Four reexamines the relationships between the drama and liturgy, adding no new material. It is perhaps the weakest section in the book. The last chapter, on the other hand, contains a good critical analysis of the drama. Edwards demonstrates how the principal staging devices (glossing, multiple acting areas, and simultaneous action) influence and enhance the representation of character in the play. He then applies Aristotle's notions of plot, spectacle, character, thought, and diction to show how the play concurs or varies from those estab· lished norms. Edwards' study, coupled with Sticca's work, brings to completion the basic research on the Latin Passion play in general and on the Montecas­ sino text in particular. The genre can now be fully incorporated with related Medieval forms of drama; for, as Edwards notes in his...

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