bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
In Defense of Segismundo
Authors: Fox Dian
Published: January 2014

Hispanists now understand that in a number of Calderón's most important serious dramas, the concluding deus-ex-machina judgments of historically notorious rulers should not necessarily be taken at face value, as bearing the playwright's own approval. Calderonistas are therefore beginning to feel entitled to scrutinize any denouement of any comedia for a dramatic irony which might completely contradict the traditionally accepted interpretation of the play. Because Segismundo imprisons the rebel soldier at the end of La vida es sueño but rewards all the aristocrats who participated in Poland's civil war, it has become fashionable to view him as a calculating, cruel Machiavellian prince, a tyrant who is bound to repeat his father's injustices and political oppression. His treatment of Rosaura is likewise called into question. However, we are also beginning to acquire a new appreciation of the political context of these plays that should help balance such harsh judgments of Calderón's hero. A consideration of the seventeenth-century Spanish views on political resistance will show that Calderón intended no dramatic irony in the denouement of La vida es sueño . The playwright, immersed in the political theory of the times, supported resistance to poor rulership, but also, consonant with the restoration of order, fully approved of Segismundo's imprisonment of the rebel soldier. Furthermore, the Prince's betrothal of Rosaura to Astolfo is entirely in keeping with her own desire and the healing convention of classical comedy. (DF)
Una nota sobre la cazuela alta del Corral del Principe
Authors: Ruano De La Haza José M.
Published: January 2014

In his excellent book on The Reconstruction of a Spanish Golden Age Playhouse , J.J. Allen concludes that the top floor of the facade building of the Corral del Príncipe was roughly divided into two halves; on the right-hand side, facing the stage, was the tertulia and on the left-hand side, divided from the tertulia by a thin partition, was the cazuela alta . Allen's solution is a compromise designed to resolve an apparent contradiction in the documentary evidence available to him. On the one hand, the Armona sketch (1730) shows that this space was occupied exclusively by the tertulia , on the other hand, dozens of seventeenth-century documents mention the existence of a cazuela baja and a cazuela alta in the facade building. This article proposes another solution, based on a document dated 15 July 1695 and signed by Juan Suárez de Somoza, one of the two lessees of the corrales for the period 1695-1699. (JMRDLH)
La risa festiva en el gracioso de Lope de Vega
Authors: Gann Myra
Published: January 2014

El gracioso de Lope de Vega ha sido objeto de estudio desde perspectivas muy variadas. Sin embargo, con excepción del muy conocido ensayo de José F. Montesinos, no ha habido un intento de interpretar el significado de su presencia en la obra de Lope. Aquí analizo muchos de los mismos rasgos que siempre se le han atribuido al gracioso, pero los veo desde la perspectiva de la naturaleza y función de la risa que producen. He recurrido principalmente a Mijail Bajtín para el marco teórico de la interpretación. (MSG)
Unity in Dichotomy: The Fundamental Dualism of Calderón's Guárdate del agua mansa
Authors: Whitbourn Christine J.
Published: January 2014

Calderón's Guárdate del agua mansa is a lively comedy with which a succession of set-pieces related to a royal wedding has been combined. The hybrid nature of the work has given rise to much discussion and not a little adverse comment. It is the aim of this article to show —as J. E. Varey has already done with the comedy Casa con dos puertas mala es de guardar — that both comedy and epithalamium are in fact heavily stylized and closely interrelated. What is in question is not a trivial if amusing play onto which a protracted piece of flattery has been rather clumisly superimposed, but a skillfully unified piece of work. In the comedy the audience is shown the absurdity of various extreme points of view through a series of sharply contrasting characters who ultimately recognize their own follies and, having improved in discretion and responsibility, finally enter into suitable marriages with every prospect of happiness. The court episodes, apart from being a graceful celebration of a royal occasion, present the spectator with a contrasting standard by which to measure what he is seeing in the main action. Instead of the confusion which reigns in the comedy, a stately harmony pervades the wedding poem, and the audience is presented with the ideal marriage in the ideal setting. The play therefore has an essential unity, based on entry into matrimony: progress from indiscretion and irresponsibility towards discretion and responsibility is reinforced by an idealized royal example. (CJW)
A Study of Staging and Scenic Effects in Two 'Comedias de Tramoyas' by Tirso de Molina
Authors: Smith Dawn L.
Published: January 2014

The architecture of the public playhouse was an important factor in shaping the comedia , particularly the comedia de tramoyas , which made use of a variety of scenic effects. No seventeenth-century dramatist exploited this architectonic potential more boldly than Tirso de Molina. This study compares the staging requirements of Los lagos de San Vicente , an early work, and Las quinas de Portugal , generally thought to be one of Tirso's last plays. Although the two plays call for a similar range and disposition of effects (and even share an identical opening cuadro ), the later work shows greater sophistication and experimentation in its use of the performance space. This evidence would suggest that, contrary to a belief that the comedia de tramoyas represents the last gasp of a declining theatrical fashion, it continued to flourish and to explore new possibilities primarily because of an awareness of innovations taking place in the court theatre and elsewhere in the visual arts. (DLS)
Structures and Social Structures in El Vizcaíno Fingido
Authors: Johnson Carroll B.
Published: January 2014

This study considers the relations between socially mobile prostitutes and decadent aristocrats as dramatized in Cervantes' entremés . The problem springs from the evolution from a traditional land based economy to one where wealth was a function of money, and the consequent realization that the traditional social signifiers of class and status could be counterfeited by money. A law of 1611 had attempted to codify society visually, to put everyone in his/her place by a new system of visual signifiers that would provide reliable data. The action of the play is set immediately following promulgation of the new law, and reveals its effects on two sets of characters who represent its two target groups: prostitutes and aristocrats. The behavior of both groups should be altered, but in practice only the prostitutes are forced to reform. The play's anti-aristocratic social message is encoded in a set of binary oppositions: up-down; in-out; riding-walking; coach-foot; coachhorse that stand for society's divisions. The study elucidates these semiotic relationships and locates them in historical context, especially with relation to the social values present in the signifier vizcaíno . (CBJ)
Allegory and Diplomacy in Calderón's El lirio y la azucena
Authors: Rupp Stephen
Published: January 2014

Written for the Corpus festival of 1660, El lirio y la azucena celebrates the "universal peace" which Spain and France had negotiated in the Treaty of the Pyrenees. The auto presents the treaty as an instrument of concord through which the two Catholic monarchies have asserted their victory over the demonic opposition of Discord and War. Its central allegory interprets the agents and actions of the diplomatic process as figures or types of personages and events in Scripture, and its development relates the historical details of that process to general issues in contemporary political thought. Discord, who describes herself as the favorite of Synagogue, foments antipathy between France and Spain through Machiavellian reason of state; the Arms Secular (Luis de Haro) and Ecclesiastical (Mazarin), as perfect favorites who base their conduct on Christian models and values, counter this demonic stratagem with a true statecraft that leads to the reconciliation of the two realms through a marriage which repeats the figural pattern of Christ's union with the Church. In attempting to characterize the perfect favorite and to distinguish good reason of state from bad, the auto reflects the terms of debate in Catholic political theory; in placing the issues and events of Franco-Spanish diplomacy within the order of providential history, it portrays the Treaty of the Pyrenees as a triumph for the faith and the imperial policies of the Spanish Hapsburgs. (SR)
Los índices léxicos, métricos y estilísticos y el problema de la atribución del Burlador de Sevilla
Authors: López-Vázquez Alfredo Rodríguez
Published: January 2014

Nuestro estudio trata de ofrecer un conjunto de índices, cijantitativos o cualitativos, que permitan dilucidar un doble problema: la atribución de El burlador de Sevilla a Andrés de Claramonte, o al mercedario Tirso de Molina, y la relación textual entre las dos versiones de la obra, Tan largo me lo fiáis y El burlador . Se analiza una serie de estilemas marinos y se replantea el problem de los estudios de métrica, corrigiendo algunos errores en torno a Claramonte. Concluimos, de acuerdo con los índices analizados, y su cotejo entre Tirso y Claramonte, que los rasgos de estilo de la obra concuerdan plenamente con los de otras obras de Andrés de Claramonte. (ARL-V)
Segismundo: The Perfect Machiavellian Prince
Authors: Homstad Alice
Published: January 2014

Much has been written by major critics (Hesse, Wilson, Sloman and Palacios) supporting the belief that "La vida es sueño" is a Christian conversion play. However, comparing the changes in Calderón's hero with Machiavelli's description of the perfect prince, the reader finds an undeniable connection. I argue that "La vida es sueño" is a political play, not a religious one. Segismundo is converted by the events which transpire, but the conversion is from an imperfect to a perfect Machiavellian prince who applies many of the tenets presented in The Prince : the importance of political self-survival, the balance between man and beast, the necessity for evil tactics, and the need for pretending virtue. The article investigates the nature of prudence as it interprets Segismundo's actions from a new perspective. It questions the very existence of the perfect Christian prince. (AH)
Imágenes de la sexualidad en La venganza de Tamar de Tirso
Authors: Hesse Everett W.
Published: January 2014

Se ha escrito muy poco sobre La venganza de Tamar , probablemente por ser el tema del incesto/estupro algo delicado y casi tabu. Este ensayo intenta presentar un estudio de las imágenes no examinadas hasta ahora. Indicaré cómo crean un ambiente de sexualidad por toda la obra, cómo afectan la caracterizacion y la dirección de la acción, y cómo llaman la atención del lector a la violencia inevitable del estupro, la cual conduce a la tragedia. Las imágenes estudiadas son gustativas, termales, astrológicas, herpetólogas y teatrales; además escudriña imágenes de salud, de pájaros, de aves de rapiña, de fuego, de agua, de guerra, de colores, del juego, de flores, y algunas en forma de equívoco. (EWH)
Evidenciary Marks in Comedias Sueltas : Recording and Interpreting Manuscript Markings on Plays
Authors: Arizpe Víctor
Published: January 2014

In recent years we have seen the publication of numerous works identifying and cataloguing comedias sueltas found in libraries throughtout the United States and Europe. This scholarly activity has proven invaluable to Spanish drama scholars of both the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The scope of this paper is to identify yet another unknown collection of comedias sueltas housed in the Ohio State University library, to highlight its most unique features, and mainly to suggest a new direction in comedia suelta studies, namely, recording and interpreting of evidenciary marks. (VA)
History and Invention in La Tragedia de San Hermenegildo
Authors: Ruggerio Michael J.
Published: January 2014

The Tragedia de San Hermenegildo (1580) is one of the best examples of the Spanish Jesuit theatre in the Golden Age. This article studies the way in which the authors handle the historical source material relating to the life of Hermenegild. It is obvious from the comparison between history and the play that the authors were quite concerned about their artistry. They did not hesitate to change facts, add motives, invent rivalries and betrayals of all types. Nor did they hesitate to convey their religious bias in the way in which they developed the historical material. However, despite a seeming contradiction between art and lesson, these priests were able to produce a valid drama, a work of art, worthy of a place in the vast collection of plays in the period. Their ability to create and convey the inner character is of great importance in any understanding of the art of characterization seen later in the comedia . (MJR)
Deliberate Choice as One Reason for the Scarcity of Early Castilian Dramatic Texts
Authors: Morrison Robert
Published: January 2014

The troublesome lack of texts from the early period of Castilian drama has been explained in several ways, some in conflict with others. Castilians were distinctively conservative; moreover, they considered themselves entrusted with a divine mission to protect, rather than change or embellish, the rituals and practices of their Church. Thought should be given to the possibility that Castilians tended to reject, by conscious choice, their opportunities to add dramatic dialogue to their liturgy. (RM)
Reconstructing Narcissus: Vision and Voice in Calderón's Eco y Narciso
Authors: Pasero Anne M.
Published: January 2014

The admonition, "Guárdale de ver y oír," from the prophecy regarding Narciso's destiny in Eco y Narciso , provides the key to the play's apparent enigma as well as to the playwright's aesthetic approach, and the former is inseparable from the latter. That is, only by preventing the players from accurately perceiving themselves and reality (through vision and voice) can the theatrical illusion be maintained. Calderón achieves just that end result through deliberate manipulation. It is not so essential for Calderón that the protagonists "die" at the end, apparently consumed by their own illusions; rather, the ultimate affirmation of their illusionary nature, both verbal and visual, is what allows them to survive artistically, to achieve transcendence in a fictitious domain. Overall, Eco y Narciso reflects a sophisticated self-consciousness on the part of the author, which can not extend to his characters, and which enables him to transform artifice into the subject of theater. (AMP)
Writing the Performance: Stage Directions and the Staging of Sor Juana's Los empeños de una casa
Authors: Larson Catherine
Published: January 2014

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.
Animal Imagery in Lope de Vega's Fuente Ovejuna
Authors: Chaffee-Sorace Diane
Published: January 2014

The major contribution that animal imagery makes to Lope de Vega's Fuente Ovejuna has not been thoroughly explored by critics. Lope was inspired by such imagery found in works by his predecessors and contemporaries when he composed this masterpiece. The dramatist utilized animal references from bestiaries, folktales, ancient myths, and books by renowned authors as a point of departure for creating an allegorical dimension in the characters of his great play. This paper studies Lope's employment of animal imagery in Fuente Ovejuna and the effects produced by the resulting allegorical dimension of his characters. These effects are: 1) the development of an intense contrast between the forces of good (the noble peasants) and evil (the villainous Fernán Gómez and his men), 2) the vivid and in-depth portrayal of the main characters, and 3) the entertainment of both the educated reader of Lope's day with recognizable allusions to ancient, medieval, and Golden Age literature and the less cultured reader with references to folklore. Although there are animal references in other plays by Lope, the large number of bestial comparisons in Fuente Ovejuna and the well-developed allegorical dimension that they add to his characters shed light on Lope's creative talent and enhance the reader's understanding of the play.
By Love Dispossessed: Comic Pharmacology in Calderón's Antes que todo es mi dama
Authors: ter Horst Robert
Published: January 2014

The inclusive endings of most Calderón plays have latterly troubled critics to the point where some have seen his indeterminacy as a failure to face the consequences of his own dramatic postulates. "Comic Pharmacology" invites the calderonista to put aside the sharp and mutually exclusive binary oppositions inherent in the thinking of the Poetics of Aristotle, as inscribed in generic ideology, in favor of two other models, an earlier one provided by Socrates in the Symposium and the Phaedrus , and a later Derridaian one derived from these. "Comic Pharmacology" proposes that Socrates's struggle to align comedy with tragedy likewise informs the dramaturgy of Calderón and that the degree to which a play partakes of one mode rather than its companion other—sibling, twin—is a function of the strength of the tragic dose, pharmakon . Comedy is thus a dilute of the prime tragic potion.
The Burlador and the Burlados: A Sinister Connection
Authors: Conlon Raymond
Published: January 2014

Two popular views of El burlador de Sevilla are that it is a misogynic work and that the relationship between the burlador and the burlados is that of victimizer and victim. This essay takes issue with both these views. First, through a psychoanalytical study of the burlados , the figures in the play most hostile to and suspicious of women, it establishes that rather than extolling or defending misogyny the work exposes this reaction to women as a pathological aberration. Second, it argues that the relationship between Don Juan and the men he cuckolds, contrary to appearances and traditional understanding, is not that of victimizer and victim. Instead. Burlador and burlados are two halves of a misogynic configuration, with Don Juan's pointless humiliations of the women attached to these men expressing their baseless distrust of women generally, and of these females in particular. (RC)
Un breve olor de corte para La noche de San Juan , de Lope
Authors: Caparrós Esperante Luis
Published: January 2014

La noche de San Juan aparece enmarcada en un momento vital extremadamente penoso de la vida de Lope, en 1631, aunque, paradójicamente se trate de una comedia alegre, destinada además a la diversión palaciega de Felipe IV y su corte, ante la cual se representará en la noche de San Juan de ese año. Pese a la escasa atención que ha recibido, presenta rasgos de indudable interés, sea por su casi perfecta factura —de dibujo espléndido—, sea por su afirmación vitalista del loco amor todopoderoso, cuando ya el propio Lope, viejo, se encamina hacia la muerte. Precisamente, la férrea estructura geométrica del drama sirve a una conclusión opuesta: el amor no sabe de simetrías, de normas ni de leyes. En torno a esos hilos, el artículo estudia el contexto de su representación, su estructura geométrica, el conflicto entre arte y vida, el simbolismo de la luz, los ingredientes metateatrales, etc. La Corte, a un lado, y el Lope pretendiente a punto de desengaño, al otro, encuadran la obra. (CLE)
Milking the Machine: The Aesthetics of Formula in Calderón
Authors: Johnson L. Carl
Published: January 2014

Critics have often noted that the tradition of the comedia was characterized by a tendency to recycle the sort of organizational and thematic elements pointed out by Lope and Bances Candamo in their contemporary descriptions of Spanish drama. That is to say that comedias tended to be in some degree "formularistic," a description that as applied to recreational literature commonly connotes inferior quality, even though any given dramatic component presumably becomes formular because it proves both efficacious and resilient. The present study proposes otherwise and argues instead that the particular formulas developed by Lope and Calderón were themselves largely responsible for the aesthetic impact of plays such as El perro del hortelano and El pintor de su deshonra . The plays by Calderón are of special interest because they were produced after the more efficacious elements of dramatic composition had become conventional, and because he improved significantly upon the basic formulas explored by Lope.
Classical Spanish Drama on the Contemporary French Stage
Authors: Zatlin Phyllis
Published: January 2014

The new Cambridge Guide to World Theatre affirms that Calderón is rarely staged outside Spain. Henry Sullivan's 1983 book establishes that this generalization has not been true with respect to the German lands, and it likewise does not apply to France. Calderón may be considered an integrated playwright in French repertory. Several of his works have been performed repeatedly in stagings that have received national visibility; in 1982 his name was added to the roster of the Comédie Française. La Celestina , first staged in French by Albert Camus in Algeria in 1936, has also had notable productions in France, including a controversial one at the Comédie Française in 1975. Among Golden Age playwrights, Cervantes, particularly his entremeses , continues to enjoy popularity in France. Indeed Golden Age drama has been associated in France with popular theatre, as defined by Jean Vilar and Roger Planchon. The sometimes unacknowledged French debt to Spanish drama is foregrounded in two plays from the 1970s in which the original Spanish authors become characters in the French texts: Dennis Llorca's production of Corneille's Le Cid and Eduardo Manet's metaplay based on Ruiz de Alarcón's Las paredes oyen . The statement in the Cambridge Guide notwithstanding, Spanish classical drama, particularly Calderón, does play north of the Pyrenees. (PZ)
Metatheater and World View in Lope's El divino africano
Authors: Case Thomas E.
Published: January 2014

Metatheater has been the focus of many studies since Lionel Abel's work published in 1963. O'Connor and Hornby have broadened Abel's definition of metatheater. Lope de Vega's El divino africano deals with the life and conversion of St. Augustine and involves the use of metadramatic techniques as described by Hornby. In the play, there are three different levels of staging to produce three levels of drama, and through their juxtaposition the public is aware of the "higher" drama intruded into the historical action to perceive the truth behind the mystery. Lope's El divino africano dramatizes the eventual triumph of the spirit over the flesh contained in the essential message of St. Augustine's Confessions .
Tener voz y dar voces en una audiencia: Dos discursos procesales en Fuenteovejuna
Authors: Baena Julio
Published: January 2014

The right to have a voice, as opposed to the voicing of a statement, is analyzed here in its relation to the role of women in both plays and society in the times of Lope de Vega. To have a voice is taken as a masculine attribute, a derivation from virtus ; the presence of such a voice, with its rhetorical requisites, in a woman, results in a monster-like ( amazona ) presentation of conflict. Two discourses in Fuenteovejuna show the intricacy proper to legal oratory. One of them —by Flores— comes out quite naturally. The other —by Laurencia— does not. Appropriation of the technique by Laurencia implies a subversion of the feminine role like the one in the cliché of women dressed up like men.
Desire and the Supplement in La estatua de Prometeo
Authors: Blue William R.
Published: January 2014

A central motivating force in La estatua de Prometeo is desire, desire for love, for worship, for power. Since both Prometeo and Epimeteo, as well as the gods they serve, desire the same things, they resort to violence to achieve their goals; yet the violence that separates them, on one level, makes them superficial polar opposites of one another, and on a deeper level, makes them nearly indistinguishable. Both desire and the need to supplant the other drive the characters in their search for realization, but that search is condemned to frustration given the parallel natures of desire and the supplementary. At the end of the play, the curtain falls at a moment when the last word in the endless chain has yet to be spoken, when both desire and the supplement are still in full force.
Dramaturgic Variation in the pre-Lopean Theatre: Susanna and the Elders
Authors: Hathaway Robert L.
Published: January 2014

Tres breves piezas del siglo XVI narran, cada una a su estilo, el episodio de Santa Susana y los ancianos (Daniel 13): la Farsa del religioso extremeño Diego Sánchez; la Comedia del tejedor segoviano Juan de Rodrigo Alonso de Pedraza; la Tragedia del clérigo canario Bartolomé Cairasco de Figueroa. Por estudiar las tres obras se llega a entender —o a conjeturar— el intento y concepto de las denotaciones genéricas en los títulos, así para ilustrar una dramaturgia española en transición: en la interacción de texto y público se pretende también precisar el carácter de éste y ponderar cómo habría afectado la creación y orientación de aquél.
Las 'causas que se silencian': El castigo sin venganza de Lope de Vega
Authors: Carreño Antonio
Published: January 2014

El castigo sin venganza de Lope, una de sus últimas comedias, aclamada por la crítica como magistral, contó, al decir de Lope, con tan solo una representación que se vio envuelta en extrañas anomalías. Aclamada por los escasos espectadores que acudieron al primer opening , Lope satisface a los "tantos deseosos de verla," imprimiéndola fuera del reino de Castilla, en Barcelona. El presente ensayo trata de establecer y delucidar los posibles factores (históricos, políticos, literaríos, personales) que causaron la supresión de El castigo sin venganza como representación teatral. (AC)
La aurora en Copacabana: A Calderonian Tapestry
Authors: Engling Ezra
Published: January 2014

Even as we approach the quincentenary of Columbus's arrival in America, Calderón's only drama americano has not received the crítical and bibliographical appreciation which it deserves. La aurora en Copacabana (c. 1661), is based on the Spanish conquest and christianization of Peru, its major sources being the chronicles of Fray Ramos Gavilán and the Inca Garcilaso. Anchored firmly in the traditions of the comedia and the auto sacramental , the play incorporates the thematic and dramatic features of Calderón's honor, philosophical and mythological dramas into its historico-religious framework. La aurora has enjoyed some critical attention in at least two doctoral theses (excluding my own which forms the basis of this discussion) and a number of shorter studies. These, however, largely confine themselves to the religious and historical motives of the drama. Nobody seems to have noticed the composite nature of the play, and the critics have not succeeded in classifying it. The truth is that La aurora defies classification, and is best seen as the essential Calderonian play. This discussion will present the play, as one which comprehends all aspects of the poet's concerns and dramatic craft.
Alejandro y Diógenes: Inversión e ironía en El villano en su rincón de Lope de Vega
Authors: Martínez Christine D.
Published: January 2014

This study considers how the classical anecdote of Alexander the Great and Diogenes, recalled by the king of France in admiring Juan Labrador's lifestyle, underscores the monarch's ideological role in El villano en su rincón . Although the anecdote may appear to be an insignificant element, its importance can be clarified by comparing it to the inverted still-life paintings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In these religious paintings materiality, elaborately displayed in the foreground, ironically underscores the spiritual elements that are relegated to a tiny portion of the background. Similarly, in Lope's play, admiration of Juan Labrador's material wealth and peaceful lifestyle dominate the comedia , while the monarchy, although remaining in the background, is central to the ideology of the play. The reference to the classical anecdote and then the reversal of the historical account in act 3 emphasize the centrality of the monarchy and demonstrate that Juan Labrador's philosophy of social autonomy is detrimental to the concept of the Absolute Monarchy of Golden Age Spain. (CDM)
Amor, honor y poder: Tres valores renacentistas en el teatro tragico de Lope de Vega
Authors: Rodríguez Baltanás Enrique J.
Published: January 2014

El presente artículo trata de contextualizar la problemática del amor, el honor y el poder, tal y como se presentan en las tragedias de Lope de Vega, en la época y en la cultura del Renacimiento. En este sentido, las tragedias de Lope de Vega pueden parangonarse con las de Shakespeare en cuanto que la obra de ambos dramaturgos expresa la disolución del mundo feudal y medieval y la aparición conflictiva y a menudo trágica de nuevos valores. El amor aparece como fruto de la libertad del individuo, el honor es asociado a la dignidad esencial de todo ser humano, y el poder muestra la doble cara del absolutismo monárquico, justiciero a veces y a veces injusto, y el que lo ejerce padece la soledad y el aislamiento obsesivo, víctima él mismo de la inmensidad de su poder. Amor, honor y poder son los temas básicos del teatro trágico de Lope de Vega.
A Nativity Play for the Catholic Monarchs
Authors: Stern Charlotte
Published: January 2014

On Christmas Eve, 1487, in the church of San Salvador, Zaragoza, a Nativity play was performed before an audience that included Ferdinand and Isabella and their children. To date the play has aroused only scant interest, mainly because information about it is limited to a string of bookkeeping entries recorded in the church ledger. Yet these entries enable us to reconstruct a skeletal outline of the play, which can then be elaborated by appealing to other fifteenth-century Christmas celebrations. What emerges is a full-blown opera that goes beyond the traditional scene of Mary, Joseph and the Christ Child to include the shepherds, the prophets of antiquity and the hierarchy of angels who, by means of revolving wheels perform the mystic ring dance as God the Father looks on. Unlike Encina's plays, the Zaragoza piece re-creates the biblical moment as the contemporary, historical, and spiritual worlds render homage to the Son of God. Apparently the play is no amateur production but the creation of a seasoned director and an accomplished scriptwriter, both supported by professional actors and musicians. Its language may well have been Castilian; whereupon it emerges also as a fitting tribute to the Queen of Castile. (CS)
La función poética del "almario:" la alquimia y los procesos de figuración de lectura y escritura en La dama boba de Lope de Vega
Authors: Carrión María M.
Published: January 2014

Este estudio intenta revelar una relación fundamental que une a la Alquimia y el lenguaje en la construcción del quehacer poético en La dama boba . En una de las últimas escenas de la obra, Finea acuña un término ("almario") que, al ser examinado en su contexto más inmediato y en sus vertientes tanto lingüísticas como conceptuales demuestra un enorme potencial polisémico que sobrepasa la reacción inicial de catalogarlo como un mero error ortográfico o un desvarío de la voz emisora. Este análisis revierte, por un lado, en toda una serie de analogías entre el personaje de Finea y distintas labores alquímicas: la búsqueda de valores materiales y espirituales ininteligibles tales como la transmutación de metales-base en oro, lo oculto, la integración de la personalidad y la unión de facciones opuestas en el ser humano. Por otro lado, y en parte como consecuencia de esta búsqueda física, lingüística, filosófica y espiritual que se puede identificar en el personaje de Finea, el "almario" es también un comentario crítico al quehacer poético en general, tanto en su faceta de la escritura como en la de la lectura. Por medio de este raro vocablo, Lope —y, gracias a las maravillas del metateatro, la propia Finea— trata de catalizar un ansia de lectura activa, un agente que suscite en los lectores de su obra el querer detectar la mayor cantidad posible de significados en el texto literario. (MMC)
The "context of situation" in Tirso's La mujer por fuerza
Authors: Halkhoree P. R. K. , de la Haza J. M. Ruano
Published: January 2014

This article was written by the late Premraj Halkhoree over twenty years ago as an Appendix to his Ph.D. thesis on "Social and Literary Satire in the Comedies of Tirso de Molina." The dissertation, directed by A. A. Parker and submitted to Edinburgh University, has now been published, newly edited and abridged, by Henry W. Sullivan and myself, under the same title, as volume 5 of Ottawa Hispanic Studies (Ottawa: Dovehouse, 1989), 293 pp. Taking as his starting point Malinowski's idea that "...the situation in which words are uttered can never be passed over as irrelevant to the linguistic expression," Halkhoree shows that the comic effects of La mujer por fuerza depend mainly on the fact that certain characters deliberately interpret literally words which are not intended to be taken at face value. The play also exemplifies the conventional use of the dramatic device of the female page, taken in this comedy to its absurdly logical conclusion. The article also deals briefly with questions concerning the play's authorship, female characterization and other related matters.
The Crucible of Love in Góngora's Las firmezas de Isabela
Authors: Collins Marsha S.
Published: January 2014

This article explores one of the least studied aspects of Gongora's experimentation and innovation, his engagement with the comedia . The pervasive, unifying theme of ser and parecer in Las firmezas de Isabela (1610) serves as the point of departure for an analysis of the play's numerous discontinuities between surface appearance and underlying reality. Examination of the text reveals the presence of a fundamentally conflictive dynamics between comedy and tragedy, the conventions of the comedia de enredo and the language of culteranismo , and an appeal to passive identification and the insistent demands of a hermeneutic imperative. Ultimately, the reader-spectator of Las firmezas is drawn into a confrontation of epistemological methods, a struggle that pits strict empiricism against the inner light of faith. The development and resolution of this philosophical issue in the play provides new insight into Gongora's poetry and poetics.
Divine Providence and Human Morality: The Ironic Perspective of La venganza de Tamar
Authors: Albrecht Jane W.
Published: January 2014

The deuteronomist editors of the book of Samuel provide two narrative perspectives in the points of view of divine providence and individual morality. In La venganza de Tamar Tirso uses the Biblical story of David familiar to the audience yet changes the emphases in order to magnify each of the two narrative perspectives. He alters II Samuel 13 in order to influence the audience's perception of the characters: David, Amón, Tamar and Absalón are all made guilty in part for the crimes committed in the play. The spectator simultaneously perceives not only the two different biblical points of view in the story but also the difference between the biblical story and what is happening on the stage. Tamar is both an enactment of the working of divine providence and a meditation on the human sources of the tragedy.
Nota sobre el fondo de conflicto exogámico-endogámico en El caballero de Olmedo
Authors: Rodriguez A. , García Sprackling S.
Published: January 2014

El estudio pretende destacar el fondo de conflicto antropológico, exogámico-endogámico, que subyace en El caballero de Olmedo . La vigencia de ese milenario conflicto se puede observar en la alteración, en esa dirección y probablemente efectuada por el pueblo a través del romancero, de los datos históricos en que se funda el tema de la comedia; y el consciente intento de recoger esa alteración popular y dramatizarla, por parte de Lope, en las numerosas referencias textuales al conflicto exogámico-endogámico que contiene su obra. (AR y SGS)
Adding to the Biography of Diego Jiménez de Enciso
Authors: Pike Ruth
Published: January 2014

Despite the erudite efforts of Emilio Cotarelo y Mori in what is still the classic analysis of the life and work of Diego Jiménez de Enciso, the biography of the Sevillian dramatist remains to be completed. In a recently published article I demonstrated, on the basis of documents from the Spanish archives, that Enciso came from a family of converso lineage. His family, with others of similar origin, formed the Sevillian elite of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. My objective in this note is to further enrich the biography of the dramatist by providing additional information about his life, once again derived from heretofore unused archival sources. (RP)
Stage Darkness in the Early Plays of Lope de Vega
Authors: Hicks Margaret R.
Published: January 2014

This study examines the plays of the Cuarta parte de las comedias de Lope de Vega (1614) for evidence of the techniques used in staging night scenes in the public theaters during the 1590s and first decade of seventeenth century. With a preponderance of balcony scenes, these plays reveal a combination of staging strategies in which verbal cues and visual effects unite to convey the ilusion of darkness on the open-air platform stage. Explicit stage directions supply facts concerning costumes and props such as candles and torches, but the dialogue proves a richer source of information about staging. Descriptive passages provide imaginary scenery that would have aided in transforming the bare, sunlit platform—at least in the minds of the spectators—into a darkened room or a street at midnight. Reports and comments made by the characters themselves are often the only references to actions and gestures, such as stumbling, walking stealthily or even lying down as if asleep, that were obviously meant to be represented onstage. Supplying multiple cues for the invocation of conventional darkness, these texts disclose the process by which visual effects and stage business were used to underscore and enhance the spoken word in performances in a corral de comedias .
The Textualization of Tradition: El vizcaíno fingido and the Development of the Entremés as a Literary Genre
Authors: Schuessler Michael Karl
Published: January 2014

The publication in 1615 of Miguel de Cervantes' Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses nuevos, nunca representados , marks the year in which the entremés evolves from the position of an unwritten expression of popular Spanish lore in the form of a dramatic representation to the level of the written work. Through the textualization of the entremés , Cervantes has created a literary genre that is not a prisoner of its own period due to its exclusively dramatic — thus ephemeral — form, but an open, enduring work that because of its textual realization, precludes closure and becomes an infinite text, thus liberated from the social and historical constraints of its time. At the same time, by removing the entremés from its traditional framework provided by the comedia , the author disassembles a once intimate relationship and builds a new dramatic context around his work, one that, to a great extent, is the reader's job to provide. In order to accomplish this, Cervantes employs within the entremés a cast of traditional figures inspired by oral tradition, folklore, and particularly those popularized by Lope de Rueda. These well-known characters are then coupled with allusions to actual historical events that would be immediately recognized by Cervantes' contemporaries. However, Cervantes takes this new framework one step further by incorporating characters that are not traditionally part of the entremés and consequently lack the body of connotations that characterize more traditional figures. In the case of El vizcaíno fingido , the entremés is recreated by means of an illusory but apparently omniscient character, Solórzano, who works within the entremés itself in order to carefully and deliberately orchestrate the events that transpire through the course of the play.
El Testamento de Luis Quiñones de Benavente
Authors: Lobato María Luisa
Published: January 2014

Luis Quiñones de Benavente testó el 17 de agosto de 1651, ocho días antes de su muerte, en Madrid ante Nicolás Martínez Serrano, escribano de su Majestad y de Provincia. Dejó como testamentarios a Joseph González de Escalante, Secretario del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición, y al Maestro Francisco Aguado, Teniente cura de la Santa Iglesia Parroquial de Señor San Sebastián. Tuvo por testigos a los Contadores Diego García de Armesto y Andrés de Ibarra, así como a Bartolomé de Castillejo, Alonso Martín y Miguel de Ontiveros, vecinos y estantes en la villa de Madrid. El testamento revela la pobreza en que muere el gran entremesista del Siglo de Oro español, que apenas deja más que deudas a doña María de Turienco, a quien nombra su heredera universal en agradecimiento a los ciudados que le prestó durante largo tiempo. Además del testamento, se incluye una carta de pago y noticia de la visita al testamento, así como el estado de la cuestión de las investigaciones realizadas en Archivos Parroquiales de Toledo, en busca de su partida de bautismo, cuya localización —aún no lograda— pudiera arrojar luz sobre la fecha de su nacimiento y el nombre de sus padres. (MLL)
Powerless or Empowered?: Women in Guillén de Castro's Las mocedades del Cid and Las hazañas del Cid
Authors: Ratcliffe Marjorie
Published: January 2014

Guillén de Castro y Belvis was the author of two plays that deal with the Cid theme: Las Mocedades del Cid and Las Hazañas del Cid . Castro's attitude to women and marriage is reflected in these two plays. Jimena, in Las Mocedades del Cid , is the powerless young woman incapable of forging her own destiny. In Las Hazañas del Cid , the more mature, empowered Zaida decides her future for herself. Las Mocedades del Cid has been praised for its universal values and the exemplary nature of its protagonist who is a good son, a good vassal, a good warrior, and a good Christian. The play can, however, be seen as a triumph of manly will over womanly submission. In the medieval ballads, Jimena does not capitulate. In this Renaissance text, the message given to Jimena, as a good daughter and wife, is to submit. Jimena is neither forced into marriage nor does she resist. She succumbs to the destiny which the men around her have chosen for her. Las Hazañas del Cid shows how Zaida, like the Cid, achieves her own salvation. In accordance with Counter-Reformation values prevalent in Spain, Zaida is saved by her faith and her good deeds. The hero of this second play, according to many critics, is the city of Zamora as the symbol of a new Numancia or metaphor for the endurance of Spain itself. Zaida is, however, a better symbol than the inanimate city. It is she who, by virtue of her courage, loyalty, and faith, saves herself, King Alonso and the nation. Her strength is all the more apparent when contrasted to Jimena's weakness.
Lope and the Moriscos
Authors: Case Thomas E.
Published: January 2014

While there are certain pitfalls in studying Golden-Age dramas for purposes of analyzing sociological themes, some social attitudes seem to show through the literary text. In his dramas, Lope dramatizes Spanish history from the viewpoint of the cristiano viejo . For Lope and his public, the Morisco was basically not dramatizable, but the Morisco theme is dealt with in a few plays. In Lope's plays, the noble Moor often emerges as a hero, but the lowly Morisco remains a social problem. Because of religion, Lope defends the expulsion of the Moriscos, while maintaining a sympathetic view of some Moriscos from the human point of view.
Love Melancholy in La quinta de Florencia
Authors: Ames Debra Collins
Published: January 2014

Written at a time when many significant treatises on melancholy had just appeared in Spain and the rest of Europe, La quinta de Florencia explains the pathological behavior of its protagonist-turned-antagonist in light of humoral theory and faculty psychology. Specifically, it suggests that Cesar's rape of a peasant girl is attributable to the humoral imbalances and adustion brought on by his scholarly work and his excessive fixation upon a painting of Venus and Adonis. The intense mental exertion of these activities adversely affects his imagination and memory, two faculties upon which rational thought was believed to depend. Also contributing to his madness is the retention of excess seed, a potentially dangerous condition that was thought to bring on erotic ambitions considered socially and morally unacceptable. In choosing to explore love within the context of Renaissance theories on behavior and thought, Lope deviates from the traditions that informed his prose sources for the play: love is shown to be both an aesthetic response, arising from perceived beauty, as well as a physiological one, arising from humoral disposition and way of life.
Asymmetry and the Spectator's Experience in Calderóns El médico de su honra
Authors: Johnston Robert M.
Published: January 2014

Read as poetic text, El médico de su honra has always seemed an especially problematic comedia . As an alternate approach, this study focusses on two aspects which may have had a strong effect on an audience actually viewing the play: 1) the affinity felt with the individual characters and 2) the visual representation of the action on the level of the scenes or cuadros . In El médico , Calderón leads the spectator to an impasse where none of the initially most attractive characters justifies full sympathy. The visual patterns created by the characters' entrances and exits also draw attention to the drama of Gutierre and Mencía. At the same time, secondary patterns suggest the lesser characters, particularly Leonor, as an alternate perspective from which to view and interpret the horror of the main action. The spectator's alienation from the main characters and the resulting search for a new locus of values with which to identify provoke a process of introspection and self evaluation, which is seen here as the main point of the play. (RMJ)