Homosociality and Dramatic Conflict: A Reconsideration of Early Modern Spanish Comedy

Abstract

SINCE publication in 1985 of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's ground-breaking analysis of English literary representations of male bonding in Between Men, study of has provided new insights into a wide variety of individual texts and authors. Comedia scholars including Anne Cruz, Harry Velez Quinones, and Christopher Weimer have also begun to explore role of homosociality within individual Siglo de Oro texts. This essay will move beyond explication of individual texts or authors, in order to examine importance of relations for an entire genre: early modern Spanish comedy. In more than a dozen non-canonical Golden Age comic plays, dramatic agon stems from male protagonist's attempts to reconcile competing and conflicting demands of and heterosexual bonds. This study will focus upon four representative homosocial comedies, Tirso's Celos con celos se curan, Ruiz de Alarcon's Ganar amigos and El examen de maridos, and Lope de Vegas La noche de San Juan. This exploration of significance of ties as primary force in comedia texts which foreground courtship and marriage can be viewed as a contribution to current re-evaluation of usefulness of Northrop Frye's notions of comic structure for study of Golden Age Spanish comedy (Blue 22-25, Regueiro 28-29, 42-43). In Frye's construct, comic emplotment is typified by representation of young lovers who overcome an obstacle to their union by winning over or tricking a blocking figure who attempts to prevent marriage. Frye's archetypal closure foregrounds re-establishment of order around younger generation, marginalization or exile of blocking figure, and restoration of harmony at all levels of plot (Blue 22-23). In early modern Spanish comedies which deploy galan's bonds as obstacle to a heterosexual marriage, dynamics of conflict and of its resolution are very different. This essay will scrutinize impact of homosociality upon three key elements of comic drama: representations of marriage, dama, and nature of social cohesion posited in denouement. The term homosociality, as coined by Sedgwick, refers to a well-established custom in patriarchal societies: the desire to consolidate partnerships with authoritative males in and through bodies of females in order to maintain hierarchical status quo (38). The four plays under consideration here explicitly reveal problematic connections among male friendship, social power, matrimonial arrangements, and misogynist discourses which marginalize or demonize women. At same time, each play highlights a different aspect of early modern Spanish patriarchy and homosociality: Lope de Vegas La noche de San Juan explores relationship between commodification of female relatives as exchange objects and emergence of an economic order based upon monetary wealth; Alarc6n's Ganar amigos traces initial formation of a bond (an alternative form of courtship), while both this play and El examen de maridos depict gradual marginalization of a heterosexual relationship in favor of male bonding as basis for mate selection; and, in Tirso's Celos con celos se curan, plot centers upon efforts of male protagonist to maintain a relationship as primary bond in his life and as basis for social stability even as he seeks to contract a marriage. Lope de Vegas La noche de San Juan highlights economic benefits deriving from marriages based on bonds within a society which increasingly has come to valorize accumulation of capital. The plot focuses upon attempts of two galanes, Bernardo and Luis, to trade sisters in order to cement their friendship-and to avoid depletion of their accumulated capital through an equal exchange which precludes need for dowries: En el dote vengo a conformarme, / Siendo el que yo le doy el que ha de darme (I. …