The Album Amicorum and the London of Shakespeare's Time.

Reynolds, Paige Martin

The Album Amicorum and the London of Shakespeare's Time

By June Schlueter

London: The British Library, 2011.

June Schlueter's remarkably detailed study of early modern alba amicorum is, in a word, "intriguing," a description the author herself uses twice on the opening page alone and repeatedly throughout to describe the book's subject matter. In part, what makes the topic of Schlueter's study so intriguing is the tendency of the texts to combine--often bizarrely--the personal and the public in a way that will be readily recognizable to socially networked modern readers. Schlueter defines the album amicorum (or "friendship album") as a "distinct early modern genre" (though it seems not strictly early modern, as the author points out in her reminiscence about owning a similar album herself in the twentieth century) that began in the universities of Germany and some other regions of Europe (8). Initially, such an album was an attractive, personalized book in which a student (or professor) collected autographs, mottos, and words of advice or praise written by mentors or friends. Alba amicorum could include watercolors and other images as well. The fashion for keeping an album eventually extended outside of academia, and was popular for recording influential figures encountered and important sights seen on one's travels. The books served a moral purpose as well, according to Frankfurt bookseller Sigmund Feyerabend, whose preface to an album reveals his desire that the owner will "see himself as in the Socratic mirror and will find what defects in himself he should improve" (13).

Of particular interest to Schlueter are the insights such texts can provide about "the people, places, and things that were likely to have been part of the verbal and visual vocabulary of someone living in London in Shakespeare's time" (2). Through her extensive exploration of continental autograph albums, Schlueter hopes to situate these eclectic personal texts within the "cultural history of early modern London" as well as the "history of art" (2). The author's meticulous scholarship is evident--in a staggering number of libraries and archives, she examined 2,000 alba amicorum, making innovative connections and drawing provocative conclusions along the way.

The book's first chapter provides a helpful overview of the content, construction, and conventions of alba amicorum, along with an introduction to the genre's sometimes bewildering artistic and linguistic tropes. The nine chapters that follow range in scope from focus on individual album owners (chapter 2, "A Case Study: Michael van Meer's Album" and chapter 10, "Francis Segar and the International Network of Englishmen") to specific images found in numerous albums (chapter 4, "Picturing the Lord Mayor of London" and chapter 8, "The Blind Water-carrier"). Through her multifaceted approach, Schlueter not only shows how these private books give readers a glimpse into the owners' (and the contributors') conscious "acts of self-fashioning," but also convincingly demonstrates how "northern Europeans' impressions, interpretations, and insights might become an integral and transformative part of the picture of early modern England" (28, 2). Her chapter on "Landmarks" (chapter 3), for example, amounts to "collectively, an early modern tour guide" of popular London sights, showing what various continental visitors to England thought prominent, prestigious, or peculiar enough to record (4). Schlueter describes little-known album watercolors of recognizable landmarks like Windsor Castle, Richmond Palace, the Tower of London, and London Bridge as well as images depicting favorite English pastimes, such as theater, bearbaiting, cockfighting, and hunting. One of the more fascinating topics of a chapter on "Royal Images, Arms, and Autographs" (chapter 5) is a previously undocumented woodcut of Elizabeth I--not portraying an eternally youthful English queen, as was usually the case, but rather revealing "a face beset with wrinkles, candidly depicting a woman whose celebrated beauty was on the wane" (68). In chapter 6, "Who Owned the King's Album?," Schlueter takes up the investigative task of determining the original owner of the British Library's "King's Album" (and does so persuasively).

If Schlueter's insightful work makes any dubious claims (which the conscientious author is careful to avoid), they lie in its unrelenting commitment to foster specific connections to Shakespeare. Indeed, she claims from the outset that the material in the book should prove useful not only to historians, "but also, and especially" to Shakespeare scholars (1). The impulse to find Shakespeare--or traces of him--in the contents of various alba amicorum has something to do with setting boundaries for a feasible timeline on the study (cultural clues limited to "Shakespeare's time"); at times, however, the connections seem as if they are straining toward conclusions they cannot quite reach. The chapter on Michael van Meer's album (notable for its opulent images and impressive signatures, including those of King James I and Queen Anne of Denmark), for instance, ends with the almost parenthetical suggestion that in one of the album's watercolors may lie the answer to the question of whether the younger or the elder Martin Droeshout was the engraver of the Folio portrait of Shakespeare. Similarly, a chapter entitled "Players: Indoors, Outdoors, and on the Road" (chapter 7) begins with a discussion of "Shakespeare's London" and his place in the city's theatrical scene, only to transition to the remainder of the chapter's valuable findings by lamenting that "Shakespeare (like Queen Elizabeth) does not appear to have offered his autograph" (98). While the signatures of Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones merit a brief mention, the disappointing absence of Shakespeare's autograph is followed up with a footnote referring the reader to chapter 9, "Other Curiosities," where the uneasiness with which the texts facilitate discoveries specific to Shakespeare is perhaps most clear. Schlueter acknowledges her hope for palpable Shakespearean evidence--"I would be disingenuous if I did not admit that throughout my research, I kept an eye open for an album signature of William Shakespeare"--then offers an unidentified signature with "the possibility that it could be Shakespeare." Schlueter follows this tentative suggestion with the conclusion that, for now, the mysterious signature "must remain an elusive curiosity" (136; 138).

As will be immediately obvious to the book's readership, the success of Schlueter's smart and thorough archival research does not stand or fall on connections to Shakespeare in the alba amicorum. The book will prove a valuable resource and a captivating read to scholars across disciplines--from literature to history to art. Among the many other "curiosities" uncovered by Schlueter's painstaking research, for example, are images of an orchestra composed of (and conducted by) rabbits, conjoined twins, a man divided vertically (half courtier or preacher, half soldier or musician), a gathering of shirtless hunchbacks in a courtyard, a blind water carrier being led by a dog with a lantern (the subject of an entire chapter, as previously mentioned), and a woman "retronursing" a child she is carrying on her back. Intriguing indeed.