Golden Age Drama Research Articles

El arte nuevo de estudiar comedias: Literary Theory and Golden Age Drama (review)

378BCom, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Winter 1997) reputation based on infamy rather than honor, but the students seemed to focus on the long list of adjectives attributed to the women. They found the section "Metáfora, Símbolo, Simetría" interesting ifa bit formalistic. On the question of authorship, they found the discussion useful and satisfying. They thought the bibliography was helpful. In general, they believed the text footnotes enlightening but the sidenote explanations ofparticular words were to them more distracting than effective. Overall, they liked the paperback edition, the print, and the price, especially the price since, they calculated , at that rate all ofthe plays we used in the course would have cost less than four ofthe novels they were reading as part ofanother course. Now to some degree, their "review" was unfair because they were second-year graduate students and had already had some experience with the comedia before entering the class. Moreover, El burlador was the sixth play we read in the course so by then they had had even more experience. Thus their comments on the introduction and the sidenotes need to be contextualized . Also such comments might not have been forthcoming from undergraduates. Unfortunately, I did not teach an undergraduate course where I could have really given the edition a fair trial. There, I believe, the students would have loved the introduction, the footnotes, and the sidenotes , which, probably, they would have wanted even more of. I also found the text to be easy to read, and Parr's disagreements with what other critics had said about certain passages in the play were fun and spirited. In an undergraduate course, I personally do not get into the authorship question — I am more concerned that they can read and understand the dialog, the action, and the meaning —, and in a beginning level graduate course, I touch on the problem only lightly. As a result, I found Parr's discussion of "Autoría" about right (for another view, see Ruano, BCom 45.2,1993). The fact is that this edition does not pretend to be more than what it is, a good, usable, clear, inexpensive classroom text. And it is just that. William R. Blue University ofKansas Simerka, Barbara, editor. El arte nuevo de estudiar comedias: Literary Theory and Golden Age Drama. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 1996. Hardcover . 260 pp. $39.50. This collection of studies aims at illustrating the application to the come- Reviews379 dia of various modern theoretical/critical approaches, as well as making (in the editor's words) "a defense ofthe usefulness ofliterary theory in general ... for enriching the study ofthe comedia" (7). Although the essays included illustrate a number oftheories and methods, those grounded in poststructuralist theory and cultural studies predominate. Part of this volume's value to students of the comedia is the fact that nearly all contributors provide full and careful explanations of the theories employed, so that, among other things, this arte nuevo constitutes a useful digest ofa variety ofmodern literary theories. Those represented are deconstruction (Grace M. Burton's "Deconstruction and the Comedia: The Case for Peribáñez)" and Charles Oriel's "The Play of Presence and Absence: Writing and Supplementarity in the Comedias de privanza"); speech act theory (Catherine Larson's "The Visible and the Hidden: Speech Act Theory and Cervantes's El retablo de las maravillas"); semiotics (Edward H. Friedman's "Theater Semiotics and Lope de Vega's El caballero de Olmedo "); reader response (Susan L. Fischer's "Reader Response, Iser, and La estrella de Sevilla"); and Lacanian theory (Henry W. Sullivan's "Jacques Lacan and the Golden Age Drama"). In the section entitled "Cultural Studies and the Comedia" appear Teresa S. Soufas's "A Feminist Approach to a Golden Age Dramaturga's Play" (on Ana Caro's Valor, agravio y mujer); James T. Abraham's "The Other Speaks: Tirso de Molina's Amazonas en las Indias"; and Christopher B. Weimer's "Desire, Crisis, and Violence in Fuenteovejuna: A Girardian Perspective; Barbara Simerka's "Dramatic and Discursive Genres: La verdad sospechosa as Problem Comedy and Marriage Treatise;" and Dian Fox's "The Literary Use ofHistory: El médico de su honra in Contexts." The volume is rounded out...

‘La vida es sueño—¿o risa?’: Calderón Parodies theauto

The long-established conception of Calderón as a supremely Catholic and sober if not sombre dramatist derives from his readers' primary focus on his serious dramas and his autos sacramentales.1 1. Furthermore, as Ignacio Arellano has pointed out recently, critics of Golden-Age drama tend to look for serious themes even in clearly comic works, rather than focusing on the nature of their comedy. The numerous ‘serious’ readings of La dama duende that he cites illustrate this trend. His criticism is certainly valid insofar as it underlines the potential distortion of readings that fail to acknowledge that themes such as honour, for example, function differently in a clearly comic structure than in a tragic plot. He is also right to point out the critical prejudice that leads us to undervalue the comic; this prejudice was well established by the time of Aristotle and one of its results has been a paucity of critical tools with which to evaluate comic works. However, it would also be reductive to dismiss as wrong-headed all attention to serious themes in comedy. One of the most fascinating aspects of the comic mode is the way it illustrates the human capacity to laugh at that which we most value or fear; therefore, a full appreciation of comedy may well require discussion of the serious themes on which it works its liberating magic (Ignacio Arellano, ‘Metodología y recepción: lecturas trágicas de comedias cómicas del Siglo de Oro’, Criticón, LII [1990], 7–21). Without questioning the importance of these works, I would like to suggest that we tend to overlook another side of his writings, the playful and parodic visions of life and stage versions of life that he offers in a number of entremeses and mojigangas. In this essay, therefore, I would like to bring these two aspects of Calderón into the sort of creative tension in which they existed—or co-existed—on the stages of Madrid in his lifetime. To do so, I will concentrate on one mojiganga, the delightfully funny Mojiganga de las visiones de la muerte which Calderón apparently wrote for performance with the auto La vida es sueño.2 2. Lobato postulates this combination on the basis of the fact that the one seventeenth-century manuscript of the mojiganga (BN Ms. 16.796) which attributes the piece to Calderón, also says that [Jerónimo de] Peñarroja played the part of the Carretero and that of the Ángel was played by Mariana, which could be either Mariana de Borja or Mariana Romero. These three actors worked together in the Corpus festivities of 1670–1674. The second version of La vida es sueño was performed as the auto for 1673 (see Calderón, Teatro cómico breve, ed. María-Luisa Lobato [Kassel: Reichenberger, 1989], 352). All citations of the work are drawn from this edition. In their edition of Calderón's burlesque pieces, Entremeses, jácaras y mojigangas (Madrid: Castalia, 1982), Evangelina Rodríguez and Antonio Tordera, citing Valbuena Prat's linkage of the theme of the mojiganga with that of the ‘auto viejo’ El pleito matrimonial del cuerpo y el alma, suggest that the burlesque piece was composed prior to 1655. However, references to La vida es sueño are at least as important in the mojiganga as those to discordant marriages, and as I argue, the metatheatrical play involved in the role of Caminante parodies the structure of Calderón's technique in the mature autos. In their monographic study of 1983, Rodríguez and Tordero agree with Lobato, and add further evidence from Calderón's ‘Memoria de apariencias’ for 1673 to support the combination of Visiones with La vida es sueño in that year (see Evangelina Rodríguez and Antonio Tordera, Calderón y la obra corta dramática del siglo XVII [London: Tamesis, 1983], 167–68). I will be examining the logic of its comedy; its play on and against the conventions, both thematic and structural, of the autos in general and of La vida es sueño in particular; and its function within the performance of the auto programme as a whole.

Alarcón's Licurgo: A Magnanimous Hero's Honorable Vengeance

Honor and vengeance are irrevocably joined in the comedia , portraying both a social code and a literary device. As an integral element of the Spanish honor code in Golden Age drama, vengeance must be viewed as more than spiteful retaliation. It must have the potential to be considered an honorable act of magnanimity. In Ruiz de Alarcón's El dueño de las estrellas (c. 1620) the protagonist Licurgo's magnanimity is reflected in his heroic constancy to uphold the ideals of the honor code—reputation, dignity, and virtue—particularly when exacting its required vengeance in the face of dishonor. Throughout the drama Licurgo is shown to be a hero in keeping with the humanistic view of Greco-Roman and traditional Spanish characteristics of magnanimity, civic responsibility, and fealty. More than merely participating in society's honor system, he internalizes the code. His ultimate suicide, an uncommon occurrence in seventeenth-century Spanish theater, dramatizes the depth and intensity of his magnanimous heroism. When faced with a crisis of honor, Licurgo concludes that the blood spilled to restore honor must be his own. With a single magnanimous act this hero eludes fate and restores his honor. But perhaps the greatest measure of Licurgo's valor is a persistent resolve to remain true to his convictions in matters of honor and dishonor, and to take action fulfilling his commitment to society and the code of honor. (DAD)

Looking at the Comedia in the Year of the Quincentennial. Proceedings of the 1992 Symposium on Golden Age Drama at the University of Texas, El Paso, March 18-21 (review)

Looking at the Comedia in the Year of the Quincentennial. Proceedings of the 1992 Symposium on Golden Age Drama at the University of Texas, El Paso, March 18-21 (review)

The Novelist as Playwright: Cervantes and the Entremes nuevo

Contents: Cervantes, entremeses, interludes, Spanish Golden Age drama, popular culture, mass culture, carnivalesque imagery, theatrical performance, dramatic theory, novelization of drama, literary closure.

Charles Oriel, "Writing and Inscription in Golden-Age Drama" (Book Review)

Charles Oriel, "Writing and Inscription in Golden-Age Drama" (Book Review)

Writing and Inscription in Golden Age Drama

Writing and Inscription in Golden Age Drama

Writing and Inscription in Golden Age Drama (review)

Writing and Inscription in Golden Age Drama (review)

Editing the Comedia , II (review)

Reviews117 is both seductive and productive; and it is likely to engender yet another generation ofcritical progeny. Barbara Simerka Davidson College McGaha, Michael D. and Frank P. Casa. Editing the Comedia, II. Ann Arbor : Michigan Romance Studies, Vol. XI, 1991. Paper 165 pp. $10.00. The general approval with which the publication in 1985 of Editing the Comedia was greeted, called for a complementary volume to expand and enrich the offerings ofthe first volume. The editors, Frank P. Casa and Michael D. McGaha, have this time assembled essays dealing primarily with the issue ofwhat constitutes a critical edition. The first contribution by Carol Bingham Kirby is a lucid and practical introduction to solid investigation based on the experience of medievalists. For the author a critical edition is "the reconstruction of the lost archetype, the text from which all extant versions must derive and the version closest to the original of the author" (p.2). We shall see that other scholars view this subject from a different perspective. J. M. Ruano de la Haza, after a lengthy discussion of what is meant by the original ofa dramatic text (one that reflects the author'sfinal intention), makes a convincing, handily illustrated and copiously annotated case for the eclectic method of editing. He reaches a clearcut, workable conclusion according to which "The author of a critical edition is not just a clerk who must confine himselfto transcribing the original; on the contrary, he should use his faculty to choose, alter, add or omit readings, as long as he does so in keeping with clearly defined criteria and indicates what he has done in a footnote or by means of a facsimile reproduction ofthe text. What is never permissible is silently altering the original" (p. 61). This echo of Don Cruickshank's example of an editor who ventures beyond textual criticism sounds very encouraging to a would be practicioner who finds little satisfaction in a mere facsimile reproduction now that technical means are available to do that with relative ease. Margaret Rich Greer makes a plea for printing multiple authorial versions of a play where they exist and, as far as possible, employing the facing-page format. This strategy enables the student to see and understand the predicament of the theatre director who had 77??BCom, Vol. 46, No. 1 (Summer 1994) to create a script for performance from various sources and to appreciate this complex social process when dealing with the comedia. A handy list of "Sources ofInformation on Golden Age Actors and Actresses" supplements her study. The many problems posed by sueltas are enumerated and discussed by Don W. Cruickshank who provides a very helpful list of books, pamphlets and articles on the subject. The thorny issue of attribution of plays is introduced by Constance H. Rose. Although a great variety of strategies have been employed, many Golden Age plays have remained unassigned. Therefore the very last sentence : "Each play and each author has his own demands, and each requires patience" (p.133) is very valid. For those who are considering using microcomputers to edit comedia texts, Charles Ganelin provides an introduction to the Macintosh computer and appropriate software, explaining its suitability for this type ofwork. Finally, John B. Wooldridge has appended a list ofpublications on editing comedia texts. This practitioner oícomedia editing wishes he had studied some ofthese suggestions before embarking on his chore. It may not, however, be too late for many who are new to the field to learn from the valuable experience of their learned colleagues. Florian Smieja University ofWestern Ontario Profeti, Maria Grazia. La vil quimera de este monstruo cómico. Estudios sobre el teatro del Siglo de Oro. Kassel: Edition Reichenberger, 1992. Maria Grazia Profeti offers, in this collection, nineteen of her articles on Golden Age drama published since 1980 (with the exception of one published in 1976) encompassing a wide range of critical methodologies. The essays are a testament to the breadth and depth ofProfeti's critical and editiorial acumen. They offer the broadest possible view of the trajectory of her scholarship—from the theater of Juan del Encina to Alberto Arbasino's twentieth-century rendering oí Elprincipe constante (?principe costante); from Golden Age...

Writing and Inscription in Golden Age Drama

Writing and Inscription in Golden Age Drama

Writing and Inscription in Golden Age Drama

Writing and Inscription in Golden Age Drama

Writing and inscription in Golden Age drama

Writing and inscription in Golden Age drama

Cubillo de Aragón's "La mayor venganza de honor"

Most critics now accept that the theme of marital honour is not always treated in exactly the same way in Golden-Age drama. However, it was not until after the war that scholars began consistently to suggest that some plays, once thought to be unquestioning in their support of a certain attitude to marital honour, were implicitly critical of that attitude. Four plays in particular, each one presided over by a suspiciously flawed or at least ambiguous ruler, were mentioned in this context: El castigo sin venganza, El medico de su honra, A secreto agravio, secreta venganza and El pintor de su deshonra.1 Since then, it has been argued cogently that even such a play as Los comendadores de Cordoba, ‘safely’ presided over by King Ferdinand the Catholic, presents the protagonist in such a light that we cannot take his vengeance at face value.2 The portrayal of conjugal honour in La locura por la honra and La victoria de la honra has also revealed significant ironies.3

Comedias del siglo de oro and Shakespeare (review)

276BCom, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Winter 1992) homenaje a la labor de los Reichenberger en diversas artes y culturas. La utilidad de esta valiosa colección de una gran variedad de ensayos hubiera aumentado con un índice final. Algunos de los estudios se podrían haber relacionado explícitamente con las láminas que los dividen. La molestia leve de algunas erratas en los artículos redactados en español e italiano, produce a veces cierta confusión en los que están escritos en inglés. En su totalidad, sin duda alguna, el tomo constituye una aportación impresionante a las letras áureas. Susana Hernández Araico California State Polytechnic University, Pomona Fischer, Susan L., editor. Comedias del siglo de oro and Shakespeare. Lewisburg : Bucknell UP, 1989. Comedias del siglo de oro and Shakespeare, an issue of the Bucknell Review , contains six essays comparing plays of Shakespeare with those by Lope, Tirso, Calderón, and Rojas Zorrilla, a discussion of the problems of translating Golden Age drama by Kenneth Muir, a Foreword by Bruce Wardropper and an Afterword by Walter Cohen. A puzzle for the reviewer of this collection is to figure out who is its intended reader. Professor Wardropper seems to anticipate one unacquainted with Spanish Golden Age drama. He explains what the comedia is and who Lope, Tirso and Calderón are, and declares a hope that this volume "piques readers' curiosity about Spanish Baroque drama." At least part of Cohen's Afterword, however, is explicitly directed at "students of the comedia," and many of the Spanish plays discussed in the volume would be completely unknown to non-Spanish readers and some unavailable in English translation. A criticism of this collection related to the question of its intended reader is that it is not a truly comparative study, or, more precisely, it is a very unbalanced one. As Cohen observes, "The [book's] discussions of Shakespeare reveal themselves less as ends than means." Indeed it is fair to say that in this volume almost nothing both original and significant is said about Shakespeare . Commentary on his works often amounts to summaries of selected English and American critics (one contributor quotes fourteen in two and half pages and makes reference to others), with a fairly consistent bias towards modern ones. Moreover, some parallels contributors discover between Shakespeare and Golden Age plays are inaccurate, like Fischer's between the forest of Avero in El vergonzoso en palacio and Arden in As You Like it, or forced like Bruce Golden's between the condition of Hamlet and Calderón's Don Reviews277 Gutierre. Fischer reasons that since neither Avero nor Arden is a pastoral paradise, they share some basic likeness. The fact is, however, that a Shakesperean "green world" like Arden is not so much a place as a morally rejuvenating spiritual process; Avero has no comparable function. Golden squeezes drama's most massive character into the relatively small and ill-fitting costume of an honor hero when he asserts that the problems which (in Golden's view) plague Don Gutierre—the need to "maintain his masculine ego" a fear that the code which demands he commit murder is "barbaric," and an impulse to "rationalize" an "irrational anger"—are also at the core of Hamlet's agonized soul. This volume is obviously and directly influenced by recent trends in criticism . In Cohen's words, it seems to be a "settling of accounts with the prior generation of critics of the comedia." Some contributors focus on the linguistic tensions in plays which, they claim, expose rents in the seventeenth century social and philosophical fabric. William Blue argues that, in the comedies of Calderón and Shakespeare, order is undercut by the estrangement of language from the ideas it is supposed to communicate. Denise Dipuccio continues in a similar vein, asserting that these two dramatists "lay bare examples of the arbitrary nature of language and its effects on comprehension of cosmic harmony .' ' Lope's El ganso de oro and As You Like It, according to Frederick de Armas, challenge traditions "questioning classical examples," "breaking boundaries" in order "to lead the audience to more readily accept the mythification of theatrical space. An especially...

Teaching Golden Age Drama: Metatheater as Organizing Principle

Teaching Golden Age Drama: Metatheater as Organizing Principle U Anita K. Stoll, Cleveland State University It has come to be accepted that metatheatrical Shakespeare. Perhaps the most thorough analytexts are frequently found in Golden Age Drasis is that of Richard Hornby in Drama, ma, despite the heated polemic on this issue Metadrama and Perception. I have chosen to which arose in the l97Os. In fact, self-conscious focus on this approach, since it is the one I techniques are so prevalent that they can virjudge most easily accessible to students. Horntuatty be considered a convention. The course by divides metadrama into several categories, begins with the broad definition of metatheater each having different effects. His categories of as drama about drama. It is a process by which metads-ama are the play within the play, the the playwright enlists the enthusiastic cooperaceremony within the play, s-ole-playing within tion of a wilting reader/audience in the simuttathe rote, and literary and real life reference withneous creation and dismantling of the fiction of in the play.

Mentidero: The 1991 Comediantes Banquet

MENTIDERO THE 1991 COMEDIANTES BANQUET CATHERINE LARSON Indiana University The 1991 Comediantes banquet was held on December 29 at Alejandro's Restaurant in San Francisco. A cash bar preceded the dinner of Spanish dishes. Following the dinner, Everett Hesse described the first Comediantes banquet, which was held over forty years ago in New York, James A. Parr gave the annual report on the state of the Bulletin, and a number of other colleagues announced upcoming conferences and publications of interest to the group. The topics for the 1992 MLA sessions in the Division of 16th- and nthCentury Spanish Drama were also announced. They are: "Reexamining Honor in Golden Age Drama"; "Sex, Lies, and Videotapes—and Golden Age Theater"; and "Theater at the Beginning and the End of the Golden Age." The MLA Division Executive Committee for 1991 consisted of John J. Allen, Dian Fox, Catherine Larson, Michael McGaha, and Susana Hernández Araico; Catherine (Connor) Swietlicki was elected to begin a five-year term in 1992. At the Executive Committee meeting, two nominees were chosen to stand for election for the term beginning in 1993. This annual opportunity for scholars who are interested in the comedia to commune with one another during the MLA conference is unique to our field, and all those interested in the comedia—from the founders of the Comediantes to the newest members of the profession—are invited to attend the banquet next year in New York. Forty-eight members and guests attended the banquet, including: 185 186 BCom, Vol. 44, No. 1 (Summer 1992) John J. Allen Judith Arias Salvador Cerón Deb Cohen Anne J. Cruz Halina Czarnocka Frederick A. de Armas Viviana Díaz Balsera Glen Dille John Dowling Patricia Finch Louise Fothergill-Payne Charles Ganelin Margaret R. Greer Bob Greer Dan Heiple Susana Hernández Araico Everett Hesse David Hildner Mary Hivnor Patricia Kenworthy Catherine Larson Robert Lauer Sandra Nielsen Agnes McGaha Michael McGaha Adrienne Martin Valerie H. Oakey Charles Oriel Jack H. Parker James A. Parr Patricia Parr Elias Rivers Georgina Sabat de Rivers Ruth Sánchez Imizcoz Rachel Schmidt Don Schmiedel Grace Schmiedel Teresa Soufas Anita Stoll Matthew Stroud Marsha Swislocki Pierre Ullman Shirley B. Whitaker Judith Whitenack Amy Williamsen ...

Approaches to Teaching Spanish Golden Age Drama

Approaches to Teaching Spanish Golden Age Drama

"Approaches to Teaching Spanish Golden Age Drama", ed. Everett W. Hesse with the assistance of Catherine Larson (Book Review)

"Approaches to Teaching Spanish Golden Age Drama", ed. Everett W. Hesse with the assistance of Catherine Larson (Book Review)

Approaches to Teaching Spanish Golden Age Drama

Approaches to Teaching Spanish Golden Age Drama

Writing the Performance: Stage Directions and the Staging of Sor Juana's Los empeños de una casa

As comedia critics and theater professionals explore the relationship between text and performance, the semiotic function of the stage directions in classical Hispanic dramatic texts—specifically, the ways that playscripts dictate performance—merits a closer look. The first part of this essay addresses the function of the didascalia in Golden Age drama; the second part relates staging information to a representative text, Sor Juana's Los empeños de una casa . Because the number and nature of Sor Juana's staging cues in Los empeños are representative of those found in countless other comedias , a clearer understanding of its stage directions can help to bridge the gap between readings and stagings of the play. Sor Juana's drama underscores the reader's role in creating a potential performance text that combines diverse elements: explicit stage directions, implicit staging information found in the dialogue, comparisons of and contrasts between the stated and the unstated, between text and context. Despite the relative scarcity of explicit stage directions in Los empeños , the entire amalgam of staging clues found in the play can aid the contemporary reader in translating the play's substance into enactment and in examining the entire process of reading texts written for the stage.