Sociología de la comedia española del siglo XVII (review)

Abstract

76Bulletin ofthe Comediantes La devoción de la cruz and La vida es sueño) in which individual characters either create for themselves a double standard of ethics or abandon one moral position for another in an effort to fulfill an immoral desire, to cover up a misdeed, to protect personal interests, or to bolster a weakened sense of self-esteem. The final essay, «Perspectivas sobre la tragedia en el Siglo de Oro,» contains Professor Hesse's description of the «new» tragedy of the Spanish Golden Age, which is characterized by its «preocupación con la vida interior opsíquica de sus personajes.» (p. 175) The major flaw in this attractive book is its lack of a bibliography. Also, the use of a system of footnotes which takes into account documentation already given in full in an earlier chapter would eliminate such duplications as, for example, the notes on pages 96-7 and page 143. Professor Hesse has once again provided a highly readable series of studies stimulating to the student and the specialist alike. Frances Exum Winthrop College DIEZ BORQUE, JOSE MARIA, Sociología de la comedia española del siglo XVII. Madrid: Cátedra, 1976. Paper. In &prólogo to the Diez Borque volume, Professor J. A. Maravall repeats an opinion of several years before: that Spain's Golden Age drama was propaganda for all the major aspects of the status quo. Señor Diez Borque set out to test Maravall's statement for Lope's plays. The results he achieved convinced him of the truth of the Maravall statement for Lope, and he believes that it is true also for the plays of the other dramatists of the period. As a generalization more true than it is not, the thesis is now probably accepted by most of the informed students of the Comedia. Diez Borque draws his conclusions from the words of Lope's characters, a procedure of less than assured validity, since characters do not necessarily express their authors' opinions. In the case of Lope, however, Diez Borque's evidence is supported by the letters Lope wrote to the Duque de Sessa as this worthy's Secretary.The missives, if taken literally and as expressing Lope's inner convictions with no major element of sycophancy, reveal Lope's conviction that all is well with the Spanish system. In the letters, as in his plays, Lope seems to have chosen to see the culture of his country as God-directed, and it was the king who carried out the divine will as the Deity's chosen instrument. In this role the monarch was supported by the Church, the nobility, and the wealthy landowners. Lope's comedias, built almost always about love as the central theme, were intended to entertain his audience and apparently were not aimed at questioning the need for any change in the Establishment. In detailed fashion, documenting his findings in numerous plays, Diez Borque shows Lope's attitude, as this is expressed in the characters' statements , toward the major ideas and codes that ruled Spanish society: toward love as God-given, toward honor as a concept of supreme importance, toward Reviews77 the pureza de sangre as a topos of major import. Other concepts that governed society receive discussion, and over all, implicitly or explicitly, there is a note of idealism that hardly existed in the reality of the culture. Lope's characters are nearly always of the upper classes that had the power to make Spain what it was; the lower-class characters are usually ignored except for occasional use and then often for comic episodes. Diez Borque, then, interpreting Lope's intention as in line with the Maravall thesis, expresses neither approval nor disapproval of Lope's attitude toward his dramatic topoi, nor does he choose to remind his reader that all drama distorts more or less the reality it portrays. One might wonder why the author chose the fifty-three plays from which he quotes rather than others. The plays documented date from no earlier than 1617-21, the bracketed years for Dios hace reyes, to 1635, and thus embrace the first decade and more of the reign of Felipe IV. What might...