<i>Del monte sale quien el monte quema</i> (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Del monte sale quien el monte quema Don W. Cruickshank Lope de Vega , Del monte sale quien el monte quema. Edited by Ana María Porteiro Chouciño. Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela. 2007. 320 pp. ISBN 978-8-497509-00-8 Del monte sale quien el monte quema is one of Lope's late plays, with an autograph manuscript dated in Madrid on 20 October 1627. As such, it provided one of the benchmarks for Morley and Bruerton's Chronology. Since the manuscript is readily available in the Biblioteca Nacional, it has, of course, been edited before: by Cotarelo (1916) and Juliá Martínez (1934), while there is a palaeographical edition by Le Fort Peña (Buenos Aires, 1939). A new edition is not going to change the Morley and Bruerton percentages of different metres, but in the last 70 years scholars have become increasingly aware that evidence from orthoepy, and the varying use of diaeresis and synaeresis or of hiatus and synalepha, can be as useful as metrical evidence in determining authorship: and the most reliable evidence for the practice of authors is provided by original manuscripts. Another factor which makes a new edition worthwhile is the neglect of the play: it apparently remained unprinted until 1916 and has been largely ignored by critics. In addition, as the list of variants shows (pp. 305–10), the previous editors were not always accurate: they tended to 'correct', consciously or otherwise, precisely those oddities which are now of interest. There are apparently only 44 surviving manuscripts which are wholly or partly in Lope's hand. Original manuscripts often provide other information besides the text of the play. This one has licences and a list of actors' names (the list is not autograph): one of the few actors to have both Christian name and surname is the notorious María de Heredia, who also figures in the reparto (this time, in the author's hand) of another autograph text, Calderón's La desdicha de la voz (1639). The editor argues cogently from what we know of the career of Ms Heredia and the other actors who can be plausibly identified that their names should be associated with the licence granted in October 1636 in Granada: these are not the actors who premiered the play. Since Del monte sale has been so little studied, critics are not even agreed on how to categorize it. Simply describing a play as a 'comedia palatina' would not be helpful, but the editor examines what this means: the social category of the characters, and the temporal and spatial distancing. The setting is, in fact, France, and both the setting and the closing lines ('Aquí acaba / Del monte sale, que dio / tan ilustre reina a Francia') were no doubt seen as a compliment to Isabel, Philip IV's French queen. The editor also examines themes (love, honour, jealousy, 'menosprecio de corte y alabanza de aldea'), the individual characters, the dramatic action and the style; there are extensive textual notes, as well as a list of the variant readings found in the other surviving manuscript (BNE, MS 16786, of the nineteenth century) and the printed editions. The editor suggests, no doubt rightly, that the play was not a huge success in its day: it never appeared in a parte, and if it was ever printed as a suelta, no such editions [End Page 111] have survived. It is a useful source of information, though, about a period when Lope was writing fewer plays, and the editor is to be congratulated on making it available to scholars in a reliable edition. Don W. Cruickshank University College, Dublin Copyright © 2010 Liverpool University Press