Tirso de Molina and The Drama of the Counter Reformation (review)

Abstract

figurations, recapitulations, and such devices as «deceptions with the truth», contrasts, and exaggerations for creating surprises and for augmenting dramatic effects. After the excitement of a climactic duel, the ensuing conclusion secures a renewed order contingent upon the young lovers' marriage, which gives a sense of direction and meaning to their worldly existence. The format of the book is pleasant, and it makes for a handy text. There are some minor typographical errors that have escaped correction. The notes by the editor are well chosen and informative. One note, however, requires comment since the etymology of ce, a familiar term used to attract someone's attention, continues to be troublesome. Valbuena accepts ce as an abbreviation of ucé for usted (p. 144), but this expression appears in La Celestina (1500 as per Vindel), indicating that it was in vogue long before ucé or usted came into general use in the seventeenth century. More acceptable explanations resort to onomatopoeia or the Latin ecce. The play's literary merit, its preoccupation with young love, its fine satirical elements, and its value as individualized history together with its presentation of the seventeenth-century customs and superstitions of Madrilenian society make for interesting reading and discussion particularly among the young college set for whom the play is suitably attuned. John Lihani University of Kentucky SULLIVAN, HENRY W., Tirso de Molina and The Drama of the Counter Reformation. Amsterdam: Ridolpi, 1976. Paper. 193 pages. $19.00. The purpose of Professor Sullivan's book is to show that the great disputes arising from the Counter Reformation were everpresent in Golden Age and, more particularly, Tirsian theater. He achieves his goals admirably. In the first chapter, he presents a clear, panoramic view of the theological and philosophical conflicts spawned by the Council of Trent and the Counter Reformation. He discusses moral probabilism, casuistry, philosophic skepticism, and the criteria of knowledge. How each controversy was reflected in Golden Age drama is carefully, succinctly, and often wittily explained. Contrary to the generally accepted notion that the virulent attacks on the comedia by moralists and theologians occurred because of the plays' or actors' supposed immorality or because of the plays' lack of adherence to accepted rules of art, Sullivan advances the theory that the violence of the attacks was due, rather, to the fact that the stage became a«public debating chamber» wherein problematical questions of human freedom were examined. Among the things portrayed on stage were the abuse of royal power, tyrannicide, wife-murder, homicide, incest, scrutinies of «national myths,» inquiries into individual value and honor, and the desintegrative force of «uncurbed sexuality.» He further suggests that the Spanish dramatists could not face the implications of these problems directly 70 and thus had to devise ingenious situations to resolve the conflicts presented in their plays. The fact remains, however, as Sullivan convincingly shows, that the Spanish stage was an outlet for a popular exposition of current philosophical and theological clashes. In the second chapter, Professor Sullivan collects scattered passages from several of Tirso's plays in an attempt to reconstruct the playwright's dramatic theory. He says that Tirso saw his plays as self-reflective, and thus they had their own internal rules which permitted paradoxes and reduplication . He also relates Tirso's theory to mimetic, pragmatic, expressive , and objective theories of art. Sullivan describes, in the third chapter of his book, a typical Tirsian protagonist as one «cornered by circumstances, confronted by an overwhelming set of odds and willing to step adroitly in and out of a multitude of social and sexual identities in order to prevail» (111). Although he does attempt to tie this discussion of the Tirsian Character and of a Tirsian«personality theory» to the material in previous chapters, his links are not as carefully forged as they could have been. In the fourth chapter, we enter the labyrinthine world of the Baroque in Tirso, Sullivan discusses both the dramatist and Velazquez since they each experimented with «aesthetic space,» but he carefully avoids the trap of imposing the rules of plastic arts on drama. Instead he compares the similar effects of parallel techniques of the play-within-a-play and the paintingwithin -a-painting: in...