Barnabe Riche (1542–1617) was a prolific, if underappreciated, English writer, whose twenty-six works on a wide range of topics were published in London beginning in the 1570s and spanning the remainder of his life. There was a time when the scholarly community recognized him primarily as the author of the tale on which Shakespeare based Twelfth Night, but since the early 1980s, interest in his work has grown among not only those scholars interested in early modern prose fiction, but also among those interested in early modern Ireland, anti-Catholic attitudes, and early modern English culture, broadly defined.

Joseph Khoury’s edition of Riche’s prose romance, The Adventures of Brusanus, Prince of Hungaria (1592), makes available to a broad audience one of Riche’s few fictional texts. Brusanus follows the title character through a series of episodes that demonstrate his education in princely virtue, from his beginning as a young man “so spotted with voluptuousness, so nuzzled in wantonness, so given over to licentiousness, so linked to willfulness, and so carried away with all kinds of wickedness that neither the fear of God, the displeasure of his parents, the sundry admonitions of his careful and loving friends, nor the regard of his own honour could make him desist or drive him from his detestable kind of life” (128). Along the way, Riche treats his readers to discussions of many of his favorite concerns — the limited value of travel, the negative influence of court life on traditional masculinity, the cultural devaluation of the military, and the threats that heterosexual love poses to masculine friendship. Khoury’s edition of the text provides a thorough introduction to Riche’s intellectual concerns and stylistic complexities, focusing primarily on placing Brusanus within the context of early modern English fiction. His introduction emphasizes the literary genres that infuse Brusanus (Greek romance, medieval romance, euphuism, the speculum principis, and the querrelle des femmes), the stylistic influence of euphuism on Riche’s prose, and Riche’s interplay with, and borrowing from, other early modern writers, especially from the prose fictions of Robert Greene.

Khoury is most interesting when he explores the connections between Riche and Greene. In a section of the introduction titled “The Art of Imitation: Robert Greene” (41–52), Khoury traces Riche’s indebtedness to Greene’s romances in detail. This section of the introduction begins with a summary of the role of imitatio within theories of early modern authorship, providing a solid understanding of the importance of borrowing and intertextuality for individuals new to early modern literature. This discussion is followed by a thorough analysis of Riche’s use of Greene’s Gwydonius: The Carde of Fancie (1584), especially in books 2 and 3 of Brusanus. Khoury is certainly not the first to note connections between Greene’s romance and Riche’s text, but he argues that Riche does not simply borrow from Greene, but instead restructures elements of Greene’s plot, amplifying it with elements drawn from Sidney’s Old Arcadia and his own Riche His Farewell to Militarie Profession. Khoury provides his readers with clear charts and lists that document the structural and linguistic influences of Greene’s text upon Brusanus, providing those new to the genre with a strong introduction to the ways in which the texts of early modern fiction speak to each other, creating the complex interrelationships that exist among these texts.

Khoury’s introduction is strongest when it is delineating connections such as those between Greene and Riche, between various literary genres and Brusanus, and between Riche’s text and Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. His clarity and attention to detail in these sections of the introduction make this edition very useful as a teaching text for advanced undergraduates as well as graduate students. There are some elements of the introduction that are less strong, such as Khoury’s attempt to separate Riche from the misogyny of his historical period (23), or his brief discussion of Riche’s “caustic humour” (84–85). The notes and annotations to the text itself are clear and useful.

Khoury has performed a significant service to the profession by preparing this edition, and the Barnabe Riche Society is to be commended for encouraging such work. It is to be hoped that a comparable edition of Riche’s two-part romance, The Strange and Wonderful Adventures of Don Simonides, is in preparation.