Baroque Lorca: An Archaist Playwright for the New Stage by Andrés Pérez-Simón

Abstract

Reviewed by: Baroque Lorca: An Archaist Playwright for the New Stage by Andrés Pérez-Simón Andrew A. Anderson Baroque Lorca: An Archaist Playwright for the New Stage. By Andrés Pérez-Simón. New York and London: Routledge. 2020. xii+158 pp. £48.95. ISBN 978–1–0320–4820–8. In his Introduction, Andrés Pérez-Simón states clearly the three basic aims of his book on Lorca's drama: to draw attention away from the so-called rural tragedies and focus instead on works more modernist in nature; to study Lorca's activity as a theoretician of the stage and as a hands-on director; and finally to propose a vision of Lorca 'as archaist playwright and director', informed above all by 'the tradition of Spanish Baroque' (pp. 4–5). The rationale for the first two goals is overstated. The last twenty-plus years have witnessed a major shift in Lorca criticism away from Bodas de sangre, Yerma, and La casa de Bernarda Alba (and Romancero gitano) and towards El público, Así que [End Page 512] pasen cinco años, and El sueño de la vida (and Poeta en Nueva York). Likewise, there are multiple studies of Lorca's theoretical statements on drama and his leadership of La Barraca. The real novelty of Pérez-Simón's book resides, therefore, within the remit of the third contention: while other critics have pointed to Lorca's two-pronged approach, seeking inspiration in foreign avant-garde theatrical movements (Symbolism, Expressionism) as well as classical Spanish theatre, he proposes that the two approaches need to be understood holistically and that Lorca's forward-looking reform and modernist innovation lie precisely in the very appropriation and utilization of a variety of works and genres originating mainly in the Golden Age. Other notable aspects of the book include the emphasis on the role of Eduardo Marquina in Lorca's career, the contextualization of the latter's oeuvre within the framework of the drama rural, and some provocative comparisons drawn with Pirandello's dramatic output. The five chapters offer analyses of El maleficio de la mariposa and Mariana Pineda; the puppet plays La zapatera prodigiosa and Amor de don Perlimplín con Belisa en su jardín; El público; El sueño de la vida; and the rural trilogy. Así que pasen cinco años and Doña Rosita la soltera are not studied. There is much thought-provoking critical commentary here, with plenty of fresh ideas as well as controversial contentions. True to his title and subtitle, throughout Pérez-Simón teases out persuasively the intertextual presence, in one or other play, of the Auto de los Reyes Magos, Cervantes's entremeses, Lope de Vega, Calderón's honour plays, and, perhaps above all, Calderón's autos sacramentales, especially El gran teatro del mundo, allegorical texts that were only just beginning to be rehabilitated in the 1920s. (There are also, naturally, references to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream.) The author relies heavily on William Egginton's concept of the baroque, while his Lorca critics of choice appear to be María Delgado, Luis Fernández-Cifuentes, Paul Julian Smith, Christopher Soufas, and Sarah Wright. I was not always convinced by interpretations based on different strains of modern theory. While rightly debunking simplistic life-to-literature approaches, Pérez-Simón does not always have the full biographical, historical, textual, and editorial facts at his fingertips. This results in overly convoluted readings of, for instance, the prologue to El maleficio de la mariposa, the incomplete state of the unique surviving manuscript of El público, or the fine political line Lorca trod as director of La Barraca. Chapter 2 would have benefited from a discussion of Edward Gordon Craig's notion of the Übermarionette and perhaps of Jacinto Grau's El señor de Pigmalión; there is no puppet show in La zapatera prodigiosa (p. 62); and the chronology for El retablillo de don Cristóbal is incorrect (pp. 45–46). No one writing on Lorca today could be expected to have consulted everything...