Textual Patronage in English Drama, 1570–1640 builds on a career long devoted to the study of theatrical patronage and performance in early modern England, illustrated in such works as Women as Patrons of English Renaissance Drama (Routledge, 1998) and Pageantry in the Shakespearean Theater (University of Georgia Press, 1985), a classic collection that brought together essays by Gail Kern Paster, Leah S. Marcus, and Stephen Orgel. However, Bergeron's latest offering presents a departure by examining the textual dimensions of drama and proposing the central concept of “textual patronage,” involving author interactions with “aristocrats and others who provided support and status” beyond the playhouse and the paying audience (vii).

This study explores the importance of publication, as the point where the theater's “legitimation” is made evident, and, specifically, on the prefaces, where the author's role as an agent in a system of patronage is highlighted (1–3). As Bergeron explains in the introduction, “A Preface about Prefaces,” his approach is, in part, a challenge to theater studies that overstate the primacy of performance over the textuality of drama (3) and also a corrective to the tendency among modern editors to downplay or deny the importance of dedications and other prefatory material, which is usually relegated to the back pages or simply omitted (5).

An interesting premise explored by Bergeron is that the establishment of theatrical culture and dramatic literature in Tudor-Stuart times was not defined by a “breach” with the past—the abandonment of traditional patronage in favor of a modern publication system—but by “improvisations on traditional systems of patronage,” a matter of “appropriation and accommodation” (13). It is this process of accommodation that Bergeron traces through this study of such “paratexts” as the prefaces and dedications to patrons, a term that encompasses both influential aristocrats and the general readership.

The study's eight chapters address various sectors within this broad production-and-patronage structure, with chapters focused on major authors, including John Marston, Thomas Dekker, William Shakespeare, Thomas Heywood, Ben Jonson, and John Ford. In these terms, chapter 1 is devoted to printers and publishers; chapter 2 addresses the production of pageants and masques—Bergeron stressing the wealth of information to be gleaned “from the author's own voice: biographical facts, discourse about social purposes the entertainment,” and so forth (50); chapter 3, titled “Women as Patrons of Drama,” represents well-trodden ground for Bergeron, who observes that despite the “male-dominated” nature of their society, “women nevertheless functioned effectively and sometimes compellingly in drama's textual economies by offering support for the arts and specifically for drama and playwrights” (74). While Bergeron distances himself from Richard Helgerson's arguments in Self-Crowned Laureates about the primacy of patronage over money where such “gentleman amateurs” as Ben Jonson were concerned (9), he stresses that, in dedicating plays, “many dramatists simply sought recognition, hoping that the patroness's name would lend a kind of luster to their effort” (78).

However, it is the predominant place given to John Marston in chapter 4 that I would question. That Marston, in the preface to The Malcontent (1604), “creates the persona of the plain, blunt man” with the intent of guiding “the understanding of his text” (94), is indisputable. Indeed, Bergeron's analysis of Marston's preface is a masterful justification for his arguments about the importance of such paratexts. However, I disagree with the rationale for focusing on this particular dedication to the reader, for Bergeron describes this dedication as “a starting point … offering the first extensive address to the reader by a major playwright” (94; also 14). Perhaps “extensive” is the key word here. But, arguably, the distinction of being the first such dedication to the reader belongs to a document that is not even mentioned in passing: the “Epistle” to Thomas Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday (1600), addressing “all good fellows, professors of the Gentle Craft, of what degree soever” (ed. R. L. Smallwood and Stanley Wells, Revels Plays edition [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press], 9). Although it is unsigned, there is scholarly consensus as to Dekker's authorship of the epistle, which presents similar criteria to Marston's later dedication; in addition to exploiting the prestige of aristocratic and royal patronage, manifested in the play's performance “this present Christmas before the Queen's most excellent Majesty” (Dekker, 9), it also involves the creation of an authorial persona. In this case, rather than Marston's “blunt” man—a persona suited to the concerns and style of The Malcontent—Dekker adopted the heartwarming voice of his own hero, Simon Eyre—a character who manipulates the structures of court patronage in the play itself—for the analogous purpose of guiding reader response: “Take all in good worth that is well intended, for nothing is purposed but mirth. Mirth lengtheneth long life, which with all other blessings I heartily wish you” (Dekker, 9). In these terms, despite the wealth of material examined in this study and Bergeron's illuminating reading of such prefatory material, the lack of discussion of the prefatory epistle that accompanied Dekker's most famous play seems a serious oversight.

The principal strength and originality of Bergeron's study must surely be found in his discussion of Thomas Heywood, whose contributions to the English theatrical world over several decades make him an ideal subject for an examination of developments in the textual patronage of drama. Bergeron, therefore, traces the evolution of Heywood's voice, from his defensive dedications of the early 1600s—apologies for publishing—to the statements of the late 1630s, when, paradoxically, despite the established practice of commercial publication, the playwright continued to place evident value in patronage. It is in detailing the negotiation and accommodation by early modern dramatists of distinct values and pressures—and, hence, in shedding light on the importance of dedications and prefaces not as “empty forms,” but, rather, as “full of information and insight” (212)—that Bergeron's study succeeds as a valuable and well-argued contribution to our understanding of the theatrical culture of the early modern period.