This volume represents an exciting addition to both queer studies and the study of premodern literature. On one level, the book traces representations of queerness in its more overt forms in terms of staged representations of sodomy and sin. On another level, the book focuses on a range of sexual expression in early English dramatic literature, revealing a pattern not only of “reticence about queer sexualities and identities” but also frequent depiction of “heterosexual affection as a sign of moral depravity” (9). Pugh examines a wide array of drama, applied here “in its broad sense to an entertainment designed for performance by actors assuming the roles of characters and enacting a storyline while reciting dialogue” (13), from the 1300s to the 1570s. Within this scope, Pugh deftly renders visible traces of queerness in its subtlest forms, as early English plays sought to allude to sexuality or elide it in ways that throw into relief the peculiarities of desires and identities linked to sexuality and gender. The author stresses that medieval dramatic criticism—the writings of Augustine being perhaps the most well-known—linked dramatic performance with sin and sexuality by warning of how theatricality can lead to impure feeling and thought.
We encounter the volume's impressively wide range of dramatic work in the book's first section, “Queer Theories and Themes of Early English Drama.” The section contains two substantive chapters that look at history plays, interludes, morality plays, mystery plays, and psychomachia in order to demonstrate the diversity of expression of queerness in such genres. The first chapter in this section helps us understand the crucial role of the “subjunctive” named in the volume's subtitle. By reading plays with a close eye on the implied should, would, and could within the characters and narratives, Pugh helps us see the tension between attitudes and behaviors idealized by Christian tenets, as well as the possibilities and temptations against which those tenets buttress. The second chapter examines amity as a powerful case study for such tensions: friendship can be the path to virtue but its inherent homosociality might misdirect the righteous protagonist toward sinful forms of same-sex desire.
The second section of the book, “Queer Readings of Early English Drama,” contains four chapters that take different tacks toward identifying queerness in premodern texts. Pugh convincingly argues that the work of allegory and typology, as they trouble representation and chronology, generate instances of queer expression. The chapters further apply a variety of keywords and themes of queer study—chastity, cross-dressing, the gaze, and hermaphroditism—in discussions of canonical and lesser-studied texts to map a topography of queer expression. We find case studies here and throughout the book that will appeal to researchers: Lyndsay's Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis, John Bale's Interludes, Mankind, and the York Corpus Christi Plays.
The book's conclusion broadens the temporal scope of the study to consider “dramatic medievalisms,” or theatrical performances embodying “post-medieval artefacts that are set in or obviously influenced by a medieval past” (171). A very helpful survey of such works culminates in close analysis of Terrence McNally's 1998 play Corpus Christi, which reimagines Jesus as a gay man from Texas and, in doing so, “conflates the tropes of passion plays and of morality plays” (174). Intriguingly, Pugh notes how criticisms of the play echo similar negative commentary levied against medieval dramatic performance that seemed to preach to the converted. This final chapter is as incisive as it is surprising, and it constitutes an apt ending to this compelling and fascinating volume.
Pugh's study represents careful and thoughtful scholarship, always clarifying its terms and weighing how discussion of sexuality in sometimes contemporary terms can be fraught. At the same time, On the Queerness of Early English Drama pushes the study of early literature in new and very welcome directions.
