Building on the work of Pérez Pastor, Cotarelo y Mori, Rodríguez Marín, and Shergold and Varey, scholars in the latter part of the twentieth century such as Oehrlein, Díez Borque, and Rodríguez Cuadros attempted to find and interpret the few accounts available that give information about the baroque actor’s technique. Their work opened the way for more recent studies by Ferrer Valls, De Salvo, Sanz Ayán, and Blythe Daniels, among others, who have provided information about acting companies, performance venues, and the business of the theater. However, despite this recent attention, the fact remains that historical accounts and studies of performance techniques are notably and unfortunately few. A great deal of what is discussed in terms of the actor’s craft is more conjecture than fact. We simply do not have the data. We know much about the literary history of playwrights and the texts they authored, but we know far less about the performance of those texts and even less about performance techniques such as gesture and articulation.From the entremés’s remote origins in the commedia dell’arte, we can appreciate the corporal movements and declamatory skills used by actors. Behind the improvisation, we know that there lay a repertory of gestures, voices, and postures that helped the actor to depict and the audience to understand and empathize with certain characters. Clearly, the text depended on the actor for communication, and the requirements or qualities of an actor were deemed to be part of his or her nature: a good memory, an attractive physical presence, a clear voice and articulation, and what might be called audacious poise (desenvoltura or osadía). To these qualities could be added a keen ear and an eye for observation and imitation. But of equal importance would be experience and practice, both on and off the stage.In this actor-centered theater, we know that a particular actor could make or break a play, and that the most effective players could move the audience to tears or laughter. There are indications that Aristotelian verisimilitude was sought in the physical presentation of a character’s state of mind or emotions with care taken not to exaggerate or overdo things. This would come from experience; in his Arte Nuevo Lope maintains that in order to write or perform a passion, one has to have lived it first. In sum, there is a lot we know.Yet there are so many questions that remain. We know that actors studied in the early morning before rehearsing, but we don’t have a clear idea what they did when they were studying, or how rehearsals were conducted. How much of early modern Spanish acting consisted of acting clichés and perfunctory performance styles inherited from older generations of actors and actresses? What sort of exercises—physical or mental—were favored among actors? How immersed in the role were the best players, and how attentive were they to the audience’s responses to their portrayals? How did the physical surroundings of the corral contribute to the success of an actor? And how did the professional status of an actress translate to her daily life?In Women’s Somatic Training in Early Modern Spanish Theater, developed from her 2013 dissertation, Elizabeth Cruz Petersen offers a new lens through which we can imagine how women actors of early modern Spain might plausibly have trained: somaesthetics, “a tool to explain how an artist’s lived experiences and emotions unite in the interpretation of art, reconfiguring her ‘self’ via the transformation of habit” [Overleaf]. This term, coined by philosopher Richard Shusterman, compounds “soma” (the lived, sentient, purposive body) and “aesthetics” (sensory perception). The volume contains a short introduction, four chapters, and a very brief conclusion, followed by a glossary, bibliography, and a condensed index.Of primary importance is the first chapter, Theoretical Models, in which Petersen explains the various dimensions of somaesthetics and how they correspond to early modern Spanish theater, arguing for a cognitive approach that takes into account “essential performative aspects” as well as “an embodied view that considers the fundamental aspects of audience embodiment” (12). Concentrating on pragmatic somaesthetics, the goals of which are “to synthesize physical actions with those of experience in order to propel the body into action,” (14) Petersen explains the dimensions of pragmatic somaesthetics: representational, experiential, and performative, all three of which are essential for actors. The author proposes that an actor’s craft would result from cultivation of pragmatic practices and techniques; but these habitual practices “initially pursued for representational ends often produce inner feelings that are then sought for their own experiential sake [. . . ] empowering the women with aesthetic agency (16). Drawing parallels to Stanislavski’s System, Petersen suggests that actors “improve their somatic movements with expressions that come from within their own understanding, building physical strength and integrity that give credence to their character” (18). To illustrate, Petersen discusses works by Quintilian, Pinciano, González de Sala, and Alcázar that, she affirms, resemble somaesthetic practices in the seventeenth-century Spanish actor’s process of building a character: “Once aware of these somatic functions, the actor can make adjustments in hopes of heightening her aesthetic sensitivity in order to portray her character in a natural and realistic manner” (21).Chapter 2, The Corral’s Contribution to Somatic Experience, builds on previous studies by Allen, Shergold, and Varey, to posit the effect of the structure of the theater on the performer’s somatic practice as well as the spectator’s experience. Actors “were not only agents whose embodied emotions mediated the spectators’ theatrical experience but they also became models of behavior through which spectators challenged the social rigidity of early modern Spain” (50).The third chapter, Sociopolitics of the Spanish Woman Actor, explores the representational, experiential, and performative dimensions of pragmatic somaesthetics that can help us to understand how women of the stage crossed social and economic boundaries both inside and outside the theater community. Treatises important to Petersen’s analysis are La perfecta casada (Fray Luis de León) and Instrucción de institutione feminae christianae (Juan Luis Vives). As well, she discusses Juan de Zabaleta’s letters praising and criticizing woman’s role in the theater; Agustín de Rojas’s El viaje entretenido provides anecdotes on customs and theatrical life of theater companies.In the fourth and final chapter, Building a Character for the Seventeenth-Century Spanish Stage, Petersen examines several comedias that reveal aspects of the actor’s modus operandi: Lope’s Lo fingido verdadero, Luis Vélez de Guevara’s La serrana de la Vera, Tirso’s El amor médico, and Ana Caro’s Valor, agravio y mujer.Throughout, the author focuses her interpretative lens on women actors, with special attention to famous figures like Jusepa Vaca, Bárbara Coronel, María de Riquelme, or María de Córdoba, suggesting that the somatic training and resulting somatic habits they cultivated allowed them to create both on and off the stage “a sense of self-stylization that not only permitted them to dominate the body but to strengthen its expressive authority” (135).Throughout her discussion, Elizabeth Cruz Petersen takes the reader through various sources that are indirectly related to the professional actor, gathering information about vocal training in rhythm and breathing from rhetoricians and preachers, about gestures and positions from paintings, about attitudes and comportment from behavior manuals, about dialogue and stage directions from playtexts themselves, and about appreciations of the qualities of excellent actors from commentaries contained in literary sources and from playgoers, both critics and enthusiasts. Her study is historically and textually grounded while offering valuable insights and convincing arguments through a new and relevant theoretical lens. Petersen provides ample evidence of how the early modern woman actor might have gone about acquiring and perfecting the qualities of her profession through hard work and technical formation, or, as Petersen terms it, somatic training. Although at times the theoretical lens confuses more than it clarifies, the points made are convincing.