Whilst it develops from within an awareness of this broad cultural context, Younglim Han’s study limits its focus to a narrow definition of Romanticism which ‘is confined to the critical ideas which the three Romantics – Lamb, Coleridge and Hazlitt – applied to their interpretations of Shakespeare’s plays (p13). The methodological framework for the book is provided by sustained reference to twentieth-century reader response theory. Three author-focused chapters are prefaced by two chapters that examine the literary and cultural contexts of the critics’ work. The first of these discusses ‘Romantic’ criticism in light of contemporary stage practice and the development of an anti-theatricalism in response to a perceived over-reliance on stage spectacle. Han proceeds to argue that Romantic criticism developed the notion of an ideal ‘socially and intellectually elite reader’ who ‘is able to view the author’s language in terms of its organic relationship with the text as a whole’ (p 54). This combination of ‘elitism’ and ‘holism’, she suggests, is reproduced in the practices of reader-response critics. The second chapter explores the relationship between the ostensibly empirical scholarship of Edmund Malone on the one hand and the apparently more idealizing work of the Romantics on the other. Han argues that ‘Malone’s editorial and scholarly aims, such as the identification of the factual documents of Shakespeare’s biography, the attempt to establish the authenticity of Shakespeare’s texts, and the reconstruction of Shakespeare’s personal experiences through in-depth reading of his works, paved way for Romantic critical practices’ (p 55).

The majority of the volume comprises three chapters on Charles Lamb, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Hazlitt. Lamb’s work is discussed in relation to Wolfgang Iser’s ‘gap of indeterminacy’. Han suggests that both critics see the text as inviting the reader to respond with a creative engagement which is nonetheless contained within certain textually defined limits. Coleridge’s criticism is approached via a reading of Stanley Fish’s concept of an ‘interpretative community’. The Romantic critic is defended against the often-made charge of plagiarism and seen instead to be working within a historically specific ‘community’ of shared critical endeavor. In a final chapter, Hazlitt’s more radical and politically engaged accounts of Shakespeare’s work is read against Hans Robert Jauss’s idea of ‘dialogic communication.’ Jauss’s ‘theory of a progressive reception of past art’ is related by Han to what she terms ‘Hazlitt’s approach to the theatre criticism as an act of constituting the meaning of a past work for the present time’ (p 208).

There is no concluding chapter to the book and this absence highlights a possible central weakness. Whilst Han discusses a considerable amount of fascinating primary and secondary material, she largely works within the parameters of existing critical discussions. The book’s claim to distinctiveness lies in its deployment of reader-response theories in relation to Romantic Shakespeare criticism. However, it is unclear in what ways these two areas of critical practice are being brought together. Early on, Han claims that ‘the purpose of this study is to provide a rightful assessment of the validity and modernity of British Romanticism, by looking into a set of shared assumptions which exist between Romantic and contemporary theories of the relation of the text to the reader’ (p 13). Here, and in the book as a whole, there seem to be three competing and not fully integrated arguments. The first of these reads Romantic Shakespeare criticism as a distinct produce of its own historical moment. The second line of argument interprets the Romantic critics as ‘modern’ in their effective anticipation of twentieth-century critical theory. The final tendency seems to be towards an argument that aims to establish a transhistorical ‘validity’ for Romantic critical pronouncements. As a result of this apparent confusion, the book’s focus is somewhat diffuse and the possibility arbitrary pairings of Romantic and reader-response critics can come to seem like an intellectual exercise which lacks a clear over purpose.

However, apart from my reservations on these points, there is much in this book to entertain and instruct. Although the argument at local and general levels is somewhat unclear, the material discussed – ranging from eighteenth-century editorial practice to detailed accounts of late twentieth-century stage productions – is constantly interesting. Anyone working on the period’s engagement with the Shakespearean canon will benefit from the helpful overview provided by this book.

Philip Cox, British Association for Romantic Studies, March 2003

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