bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
La Aventura de la roca de la competencia de Marte y Minerva . Una folla cortesana desconocida del siglo XVII
Authors: Ocaña Antonio Cortijo , Ocaña Adelaida Cortijo
Published: January 2014

Esta obra de ambiente cortesano, que se conserva en el volumen 170 de varios de la Fernán Núñez Collection en la biblioteca Bancroft de la Universidad de California Berkeley, nos ofrece un documento interesante para la historia del teatro del siglo XVI. También de interés en esta obra de tema mitológico-alegórico es el hecho de que fue escrita para ser representada delante de los reyes Felipe III y Margarita de Austria y en ella figuran como actores el duque de Hijar, don Jorge de Heredia y don Francisco de Palafox.
Court Culture and Moreto's El lindo don Diego : Are You In, Or Are You Out?
Authors: Leoni Monica
Published: January 2014

This paper examines two views of court life, as outlined in Il Cortegiano and El oráculo manual y arte de prudencia , by Baldassar Castiglione and Baltasar Gracián, respectively. In these "etiquette manuals" these two writers clearly illustrate the Renaissance's preoccupation with ideals and appearances. Although Castiglione and Gracián differ in terms of their personal views of court life, each writer ultimately reaches the same conclusion: social success depends on one's ability to function within the ruling class. To achieve such success, it is essential that the individual, in our case, the courtier, understand the dynamics at work and his position within them. Not to act in a manner deemed proper and ideal by those in power will bring about the downfall of the impostor who dares not follow the rules. Agustín Moreto's El lindo don Diego offers a perfect example of the would-be galán , whose attempts to enter Madrid high society fail miserably as he proves himself incapable of understanding the role he is to perform. The figurón 's inattention to self guarantees his demise as the foolish figure who is excluded from the desired society which crystallizes at the play's end. His exclusion is acceptable, it is argued, not only because he is a laughable character, but also because his behaviour and ignorance are an affront to the etiquette of the period. More important, however, is the degree of responsibility granted to the spectator in the rejection of the figurón . We as members of the audience are essentially challenged to accept and therefore meet the expectations of court society; it is this acceptance which will guarantee our inclusion and justify the figurón 's exclusion. What is technically comedy on stage is actually irony in its reception, as the audience's desire to be seen as one of the "chosen few" mirrors the goal of the figurón . Indeed, our participation in the machinations against the odd character secures our own entry into the final society and spares us the comical wrath of those who are at its doors. (ML)
Honor y libertad: El perro del hortelano de Lope de Vega
Authors: Fernández Jaime
Published: January 2014

Entre bromas y veras Lope hace en esta obra una profunda disección del honor estamental, en su aspecto de honor 'opinión.' La idea fija, obsesiva e irracional del honor exterior, estamental, hace de la figura principal de la comedia, la condesa Diana, una esclava, un ser carente de libertad, y, al mismo tiempo, paradójicamente, una tirana que priva de la libertad a las figuras de su entorno. El honor de Diana está vacío de contenido. Carente de discreción ética, Diana es una víctima de su idea del honor hasta el mismo final de la obra. Y hace que a su ritmo dancen como marionetas todas las otras figuras dramáticas. El final 'feliz' solo lo es en sentido epidérmico, al estar manipulado y construido sobre el vacío de una falsedad. El tratamiento de Lope es tan ácido que no deja lugar en la obra para el honor 'virtud,' de forma que ni siquiera aparece como una fuerza con la que aquél pueda ser cotejado. La maestría de Lope hace entrar en conflicto las esferas conceptuales de la razón, la pasión y el humor, posibilitando a la vez en el espectador el placer estético y una seria reflexión sobre sí mismo y la realidad de su entorno social. (JF)
La presencia del ideario de Saavedra Fajardo en Bances Candamo
Authors: García-Castañón Santiago
Published: January 2014

Entre la producción dramática de Francisco Bances Candamo, la crítica ha destacado unánimemente El esclavo en grillos de oro y La piedra filosofal como sus obras maestras. En ambas obras son abundantes las alusiones políticas, lo cual parece haber sido la causa que provocó la dimisión de Bances Candamo como dramaturgo de cámara del rey. Además de ser una obra teatral de notable calidad, El esclavo en grillos de oro admite una lectura como "tratado de educación de príncipes." En este artículo se extraen y comentan algunas de las sentencias más relevantes de esta comedia y se establece una conexión entre la Idea de un príncipe político cristiano , de Saavedra Fajardo, el Theatro de los theatros de Bances Candamo y la mencionada comedia de este dramaturgo. (SG-C)
Contextuality and Intertextuality in Lope's Virtud, pobreza y mujer
Authors: Case Thomas E.
Published: January 2014

Lope de Vega was first and foremost a dramatist interested in providing entertainment for the corral public. While it can be stated that he supported the status quo of Spanish politics, he really did not intend to write propaganda. During the reign of Philip III, he was an active participant in court circles and enjoyed poking fun at the foibles and failures of the Lerma court. He did this indirectly by showing the inadequacies of the noble class. In Virtud, pobreza y mujer , Lope contrasts an extremely self-sacrificing poor wife with her disreputable noble husband. This comedy of reversals takes us from the noble circles of Toledo, where Don Carlos murders another noble in a brothel, to the enslavement of Spaniards in North Africa. Besides the contextuality of the court and its failures in 1615, Lope also creates intertextuality with other plays of his which deal with slavery in North Africa and with the plays of Cervantes, most notably El gallardo español . (TEC)
Los "apartes alternos" en algunas comedias de Calderón
Authors: Déodat-Kessedjian Marie-Françoise
Published: January 2014

Este estudio del aparte en el teatro calderoniano se centra exclusivamente en los llamados "apartes alternos" o encadenados de dos o más personajes. En él se lleva a cabo un análisis pormenorizado de dichos apartes en nueve obras de Calderón (seis tragedias, dos dramas y una comedia). Expresión de lo que no se puede decir o se debe callar al interlocutor —sentimientos, dudas, confusión, etc.— estos apartes nos permiten acercarnos a las interrelaciones de las dramatis personae con un nuevo enfoque. Se observa que Calderón se vale del recurso tanto para crear una concordancia subterránea, silenciosa, entre dos protagonistas de una comedia como para aislar a cada uno —en el caso de una secuencia de apartes repartidos entre varios personajes— poniendo de realce enfonces puntos de vista y preocupaciones distintos. Indagar sobre este tipo de aparte permite asimismo cuestionarnos sobre la puesta en escena (virtual) y la repartición de los personajes en el escenario. La mirada de los personajes entre sí y las reacciones de cada uno a lo que ve hace eco a la problemática recurrente en todo el teatro calderoniano de la oposición entre lo aparente y lo real, a la dualidad de la "realidad" que conlleva situaciones teatrales ambivalentes y complejas. (M-FD-K)
The Heretical and the Herethical in Ángela de Azevedo's Dicha y desdicha del juego y devoción de la Virgen
Authors: Gascón Christopher D.
Published: January 2014

Julia Kristeva's concept of "herethics" posits a relationship between mother and child which leaves out, at least momentarily, the symbolic father of traditional psychoanalysis. In a similar way, Ángela de Azevedo's Dicha y desdicha del juego y devoción de la Virgen appears to come dangerously close to heresy, as defined by the Counter Reformation, at certain moments in the play when the author presents the Virgin Mary not so much as the agent of God's symbolic law but as an embodiment of symbolic authority in her own right, independent of God the Father. Although the child in Kristeva's Oedipal scheme eventually submits to symbolic authority, Kristeva suggests that the mother's love plays a more vital role than the stern father's rivalry in the subject's transition from the imaginary to the symbolic. Similarly, Azevedo's play avoids heresy through sufficient mention of God the Father as the ultimate symbolic authority, yet it remains clear that the protagonist of the story would have maintained his psychotic structure and rejected God if not for the love and mercy of the Virgin, a surrogate for his deceased mother. Dicha y desdicha can be interpreted as a vindication of the maternal and a protest against the patriarchal domination of religious ideology, societal institutions, and the psychic formation of the subject.
Talking Black in Spanish: An Unfinished Black Spanish Glossary
Authors: Beusterien John
Published: January 2014

With the exception of Baltasar Fra Molinero, few non-linguists have been interested in the dramatic and literary representation of black Spanish in the Golden Age theater. "Black Spanish" or habla de negro was a stock way of speaking that playwrights commonly attributed to black characters in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. The unfinished black Spanish glossary presented here attempts to unveil this unique non-standard form of Spanish, not only for scholars interested in Spanish theater and race studies, but also for theater troupes that might wish to present these plays.
Los tres problemas de Segismundo: Acción dramática y existencial en La vida es sueño
Authors: Suárez Juan Luis
Published: January 2014

El objeto de mi trabajo es mostrar que el recorrido de Segismundo a lo largo de La vida es sueño se puede interpretar mejor como el proceso para la consecución de un ser (como el paso del noser al ser), que reduciéndolo a sus extremos meramente políticos. Mi hipótesis es que a Segismundo se le plantean tres problemas principales, cuya solución teórica está perfectamente ensamblada con la organización de la acción dramática por parte de Calderón. Estos asuntos son: un problema de identidad, un método práctico con el que dirigir su comportamiento sin riesgos de ser encerrado y, sintetizando los anteriores, la consecución de una vida que vivir. A la vez, me propongo señalar la modernidad de los problemas filosóficos que preocupan a Calderón, poniéndolos en relación no sólo con las teorías antiguas y renacentistas, sino principalmente con las direcciones que el pensamiento moderno asumirá a partir del siglo XVII. Pensamiento científico, experimentalismo, escepticismo, racionalismo práctico e instrumental son algunas de las diversas posibilidades teóricas que Calderón ensaya dramáticamente en los distintos personajes; ensayos que conducirán a una concepción precaria de la capacidad cognoscitiva del ser humano y a un decidido recurso al individuo como última instancia fiable de la realidad. Creo que para Calderón las teorías pasadas no eran ya suficientes para explicar "el confuso abismo" en que consistió el tránsito al mundo moderno, y las diversas pruebas teóricas que necesitaba quedan perfectamente unidas a las posibilidades dramáticas de la obra.
Felix Culpa: Allegory and Play in Calderón's Autos
Authors: Pratt Dale J.
Published: January 2014

In the Calderonian auto , worship and festival unite in playful allegory to celebrate the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. Play manifests itself in the auto on three levels: in the characteristics of theatrical art in general, in the playful variations of the autos on the primary theme of the genre, and in the transgressive, supplementary play of sin within each auto . Sin's exuberant freedom within the autos , and the multi-tiered workings of play throughout the creation and performance of the allegories, argue against over-interpreting the scope of meta-allegory in the autos . I conclude by stressing that the dual nature of allegory should remain foremost in considering the autos . Because play takes such a fundamental role in the autos , the texts must not be shackled to a logocentric vision of meaning and held to strict readings of their allegories. Rather, they should be appreciated as carefully blended mixtures of sacred worship and secular play, where sin plays freely alongside the promise of salvation, and multifarious meaning springs out of ostensibly arid allegory.
Dramatic Activity in the Streets: A Documentary Analysis of the Auto Sacramental in Seventeenth-Century Segovia
Authors: McGrath Michael J.
Published: January 2014

The study of the circumstances of performance of Golden Age dramatic activity is relatively recent. Studies of actors, the physical disposition of the playhouses, the contractual obligations of the acting companies, and the routes companies followed through Spain have made significant contributions to the understanding of Golden Age drama. Many of the same autores and acting companies that performed in the playhouses performed autos sacramentales in the streets during a city's celebration of Corpus Christi. Unpublished and unedited manuscripts from the seventeenth century describe the circumstances surrounding these performances. A transcription and detailed study of several documents, including contracts, from the seventeenth century provide us detailed accounts of performances in Segovia. The documents inform us about the companies that performed, the staging of the performances, and the financial and contractual responsibilities of a performance. The discovery and study of this information contributes one more piece to the unfolding history of theater and society in Golden Age Spain.
Ana Caro's El conde Partinuplés and Calderón's La vida es sueño : Protofeminism and Heuristic Imitation
Authors: Weimer Christopher B.
Published: January 2014

This essay argues that Ana Caro appropriates and rewrites elements from La vida es sueño in El conde Partinuplés in order to engage in a protofeminist dialogue with the earlier play. Caro departs from her chivalric sources for Partinuplés and creates obvious parallels with Calderón's play, utilizing the intertextual practice that Thomas M. Greene has termed "heuristic imitation," in which a text calls attention to its relationship with a predecessor for the purpose of also calling attention to deliberate distances established between the two. In El conde Partinuplés , Caro includes numerous plot devices from La vida es sueño , including the catalytic paternal horoscope, the palace trial undergone and failed by the male protagonist, the dangers of war on a national scale, and the various characters' ultimate fates. In every case, though, she reworks these devices to contradict the patriarchal ideologies that shape Calderón's play. In opposition to this now-canonical work and its philosophical underpinnings, El conde Partinuplés asserts values associated by feminist thinkers with women's perspectives and beliefs. (CBW)
De caricaturas y figurones: El lindo don Diego de Moreto
Authors: Torres David Gómez
Published: January 2014

Este ensayo se centra en la consideración de don Diego como una caricatura y como un figurón, partiendo de la distinta visión que, en este sentido, existe sobre este personaje. El análisis se ha hecho tomando como base el retrato que el gracioso Mosquito hace de don Diego y en cuya elaboración la exageración, el exceso y la conformación de don Diego como un ente de carnaval son esenciales. El objetivo es mostrar que lo que se presenta a la audiencia se ajusta efectivamente a lo que es una caricatura y a lo que se considera un figurón, tanto por las constantes alusiones al vocablo figura como por ceñirse a la definición de figurón que establece Robert Jammes. También se incide en que la causa de la exclusión final de don Diego es la necedad. Esta necedad, además de aparecer como una característica esencial del personaje, funciona como el motor de su comicidad.
Comedia Texts as Political Propaganda in Castro's Cuba
Authors: Kirby Carol Bingham , Kirby Steven D.
Published: January 2014

This essay documents and explicates an interesting case of the propagandistic use of a little-known anthology of Lope de Vega's plays published in Cuba in 1977. The selection of works included reveals a constant preoccupation with a strong leader who pays benevolent attention to the problems of his subjects. The analogy between the conduct of the monarchs in Lope's dramas and that of Castro in Cuba cannot be accidental, we believe. Given that the six plays included in the anthology do not constitute a truly representative sample of Lope's dramatic output, we believe that we have shown that this anthological work starts from a clearly propagandistic premise. We cite pertinent bibliography in support of our argument. (CBK and SDK)
La inauguración del corral de comedias de Salamanca: una crónica sobre el auge escénico en la Castilla la Vieja de Felipe III (1603-1607)
Authors: Búrdalo José Domínguez
Published: January 2014

La labor investigadora llevada a cabo en los últimos años por profesores como Richard Kagan, Bernardo García, Antonio Feros y Magdalena Sánchez, entre otros, ha permitido que comience a revisarse la imagen de decadencia general con que por lo común se afronta el gobierno de Felipe III. En la misma línea revisionista, este artículo enmarca el sorprendente despunte dramático vivido entonces en tierras de Castilla la Vieja dentro de un contexto histórico-cultural de sensibles cambios. Tomando como primera fuente documental la edición que en 1975 hiciera George Haley del Diario de un estudiante de Salamanca , en la primera parte del artículo propongo el 8 de septiembre de 1603 como fecha de inauguración del corral de comedias salmantino. Como es sabido, no es el único que en el primer decenio del s. XVII vería la luz en la región. No por casualidad, esta ansia de comedia que aquí vamos a ver encarnada en Salamanca ha de ser interpretada, al menos en parte, gracias al asentamiento de la corte en Valladolid en 1601. La presentación de diversas fuentes documentales-publicadas unas, inéditas otras-permitirá atestiguar no sólo que desde fecha tan temprana como 1564 era práctica común la representación de comedias en la corte, sino también que a partir de entonces la interacción entre ambas se iría afianzando, intensificándose el recíproco interés durante el reinado de Felipe III. De este modo, el artículo se propone también como punto de partida con el que comenzar a revisar la idea de que el patronazgo cortesano de la comedia ha de aguardar a la llegada del rey-actor Felipe IV. Noticias sobre autores, dramaturgos, costumbres sociales, precios de entrada y arquitectura del corral de Salamanca conforman el resto de esta primera parte. En la segunda, recopilo y estudio las ciento ochenta y cinco comedias condensadas en el diario. Entre los datos más relevantes aquí aportados se encuentra el de una datación más aproximada de estas piezas de teatro, especialmente útil para el caso de Lope de Vega, rey indiscutable en el panorama teatral castellano en estos primeros años del s. XVII. (JDB)
The Wallenstein Play of Calderón and Coello, Las proezas de Frislán, y muerte del Rey de Suecia [?] (1634): Conjectural Reconstruction
Authors: Sullivan Henry W.
Published: January 2014

The study attempts to reconstruct the lost Buen Retiro court play written by Pedro Calderon with Antonio Coello and mounted in February I 634. It celebrated the career and exploits of the Catholic Commander-in-Chief of the Thirty Years' War, Albrecht von Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland (1583-1634). Though all traces of any MS, prompt copy, or suppositious suelta have disappeared, it is possible to form a remarkably clear idea of the play from contemporary reactions to Wallenstein' s career, historical facts concerning the progress of the War in the year 1634, as well as from two priceless eye-witness testimonies to performances of the play in late February and/ or March of 1634. The first is from the pen of the then Tuscan Ambassador, one Serrano, in a dispatch from Madrid dated March 4, 1634. The second is from the memoir (Stuttgart, 1658) of the Lutheran traveler and diarist, Hieronymus Welsch (1610-1675?), which recalled his twelve-month stay in Spain (1633-1634) and gave a German-language account of the play in question. Since Wallenstein was known in Spain by his hispanized ducal title of Frislán (a corruption of Friedland), I speculate that the play probably bore the title Las proezas de Frislán , with the subtitle Y muerte del rey de Suecia . The study has an Appendix conjecturally reconstructing a suppositious suelta , designed to summarize everything claimed about the play and its characters in the main article (with some invented octavas reales and romance modeled on Calderon's El sitio de Bredá ). The study builds on two articles of Václav Cerny from 1962, one in Czech ( Sbornik historicky the other in French ( Revue de Littérature Comparée ), which have received little attention to date. Cerny assumed a fluent knowledge of Renaissance Italian and archaic, seventeenth-century German in his readers, factors which helped put these magnificent contributions to Calderon studies beyond the reach of most students of the comedia .
Reassessing the Nahua Autos: A Propos of Jerry M. Williams's El teatro del México colonial: Época misionera
Authors: Stern Charlotte
Published: January 2014

In sixteenth-century Mexico, the Nahuas of the central highlands possessed two remarkable theaters. One was indigenous, rich in pre-Columbian characteristics. The other, introduced and encouraged mainly by the Franciscan friars, consisted largely of religious autos , pageants, processions, singing, and dancing. The theater blended indigenous and Hispanic features and became an important manifestation of Nahua Christianity. This paper summarizes Jerry M. Williams's overview of both theaters. It then explores the extent and diversity of the Nahuatl autos , as well as some of the problems that arise in the study of the extant playscripts and relevant historical documents. The bulk of the essay considers several Spanish contributions to the autos , with special attention to the feast of Corpus Christi and the Christmas and Epiphany celebrations. Apparently, the popularity of the autos was due in part to the long recognized effectiveness of visual imagery in religious instruction. Yet the autos also satisfied the Nahuas' spiritual yearning at a time when indigenous approaches to the sacred were no longer permitted. We still need to clarify, however, the extent of Hispanic influence on the autos before we can describe how the Nahuas accommodated these foreign materials to their own culture. The frequency and the scope of the Nahua autos suggest that the Franciscan friars were acquainted with a far richer theatrical tradition in early sixteenth-century Spain than the extant Iberian evidence shows.
Los márgenes del poder, el poder de los márgenes: el marco narrativo en La gloria de Niquea de Villamediana
Authors: Miñana Rogelio
Published: January 2014

La gloria de Niquea , comedia palaciega del Conde de Villamediana, se representó el 15 de mayo de 1622 en las Fiestas de Aranjuez que se celebraron por el diecisiete cumpleaños del Rey Felipe IV. Esta obra encierra un doble enigma, geográfico y literario. Por una parte, Villamediana es asesinado sólo tres meses después de la representación, en agosto de 1622, y por motivos que varios investigadores han asociado a La gloria misma. Por otra parte, la obra se edita siete años después, en 1629, enmarcada por un texto en prosa de autor anónimo. Este trabajo estudia las relaciones entre el marco narrativo y la pieza teatral de Villamediana. Así, mediante el análisis del poder de los márgenes (el marco como elemento subversivo frente a la obra enmarcada), se reflexionará también sobre los márgenes del poder (los motivos que llevaron al asesinato del Conde ). (RM)
Beyond Performance: Cervantes's Algerian Plays, El trato de Argel and Los baños de Argel
Authors: Stackhouse Kenneth A.
Published: January 2014

Reading Cervantes's Algerian plays, El trato de Argel and Los baños de Argel , in the light of available information about Cervantes's experience with the theaters of Madrid in the 1580s and thirty years later in 1615, suggests that Los baños de Argel was written without the expectation of an actual performance, as an exploratory text to test the limits stagecraft as Cervantes knew it. While El trato de Argel and La Numancia were performed before live audiences, the autores never chose to stage Los baños de Argel apparently because there are many elements in the script which made it very difficult and, in the autores' opinion, perhaps unwise to bring before an audience. More than a strong response to Lope de Vega's appropriation of the theme for his own Algerian play entitled Los cautivos de Argel , Cervantes's Los baños de Argel disregards the limitations that, according to Cervantes, live performances impose on dramatic texts, in order to direct the attention of readers to a lack of public concern with a problem that persisted, the enslavement Spaniards in North Africa. While acknowledging in Los baños the foolhardiness of an armed attack against Algiers, Cervantes dramatizes for his readers the need for continued public support of the Mercedarian Order's efforts in seeking donations to pay ransoms. Unique in this regard among Cervantes unperformed Ocho comedias, Los baños de Argel presents staging difficulties which evidently appeared to be insurmountable to the directors of theatrical productions.
Psychoanalysis and the Comedia: Skepticism and the Paternal Function in La vida es sueño
Authors: Egginton William
Published: January 2014

The essay advances a pragmatist approach to psychoanalytic criticism, one that eschews using psychoanalysis as a framework within which to read a text, preferring rather to consider it as a vocabulary in which to pose a question to a text or a literary tradition. In considering La vida es sueño , this approach leads the author to the question, "How does one found a moral order in a skeptical universe?" His analysis leads to the conclusion that what psychoanalysis can learn from Calderón is that, in the modern world, individual identity is founded on a sense of obligation to the law, which in turn is established in the individual through an acceptance of a fundamental skepticism with regard to the most basic issues of power and identity.
Cervantes's Critique of Verisimilitude as Intertext for the "New Comedy"
Authors: Martin Vincent
Published: January 2014

This essay attempts to outline the intertextuality between Cervantes's critique of verisimilitude and Spain's "new comedy," which culminates in the skepticism and meta-representation of Calderón's stage. Cervantes's attachment to the neo-Aristotelian precept of verisimilitude is ironic, paradoxical, and equivocal, forcing the reader to distinguish between the writing of presumably verisimilar texts ( Numancia ) and the writing of texts that are presumably implausible ( Coloquio ). The author's interweaving of the verisimilar and the implausible challenges the reader to enter a world of writing that lies beyond the boundaries of truth and falsehood imposed by contemporary preceptists. Spain's "new comedy" would reread the Cervantine practice of verisimilitude as a stage between truth and falsehood. It would also amplify the sense of self-reflexivity and self-parody that abounds in Cervantine texts by constructing a stage that became fully meta-representational. The essay ultimately hopes to demonstrate how intertextuality as a function of verisimilitude may offer a theoretical possibility toward a better understanding of Cervantes's role as interlocutor with Spain's "new comedy." (VM)
Issues of Female Rule in Lope de Vega's El mejor mozo de España and La discordia en los casados
Authors: Ostlund Delys
Published: January 2014

In 1611, Lope de Vega composed two plays that center on the issue of the inheritance of a crown by a female: La discordia en los casados and El mejor mozo de España . The works have not previously been studied together. Discordia seems to highlight the defects inherent in female rule while Mozo emphasizes its potential. It is my contention that, in spite of the seemingly different conclusions each draws on the issue, these plays were intended as companion pieces. Further, only by a comparative study can we truly begin to understand Lope's views on the subject of female governance. This article explores the issues of female rule raised by these two works, primarily the choice of mate, the qualities each husband embodies, and the behavior of the females themselves. Early scenes in both plays deal with the question of the marriage of a future female head of state. In Discordia , the fictional Elena, Duchess of Cleves, has inherited the Duchy at the death of her father. She marries Albano, King of Frisia, because her subjects want a king. Mozo , in turn, is a dramatized account of the historical events leading Isabel of Castile to choose Fernando of Aragon as her mate. This account, however, is more poetic than historic, in Aristotelian terms; the fictional Elena and Albano in Discordia are in many ways a truer reflection of the historical Isabel and Fernando than are the dramatic renderings of them in Mozo . Taken together, these plays present "imágenes desdobladas" of both Isabel and Fernando. Criticism is made of the "fictional" king and queen, not the "historical" ones, yet through the criticism Lope, in fact, censures the historical Catholic Monarchs. In the final analysis, Lope makes clear that in order to be a successful head of state, a woman must remain within the boundaries of accepted female behavior and have at her side a worthy, humble man in a union sanctioned by God. (DO)
Crossing the Gendered "Clothes"-Line: Lanini y Sagredo's El parto de Juan Rana
Authors: Thompson Peter
Published: January 2014

The entremés and its actors played an important role, both financially and thematically, in the theater of the baroque period. Many critics have overlooked this historical fact. The analysis of the entremés and its distinctive mundo al revés sheds new light on the hitherto-perceived seventeenth-century theater production and baroque society in general. The infamous Juan Rana was the star of this genre, and during his long and successful career he collaborated with the most important entremisil and comedia companies of the time. His arrest in 1636, for el pecado nefando , served as a thematic point of departure for the many entremesistas who wrote specifically for him. Such is the case of Lanini y Sagredo's gender-bending El parto de Juan Rana . Here, the emasculated and hen-pecked protagonist is put on trial and sentenced to appear in public, dressed as a woman. Juan Rana's well-advanced pregnancy, symbolizing the exaggerated extent of his irregular behavior, serves as a histrionic and hysterical parody of the societal constructs and constrains enforced by the powers that be. The climactic and much celebrated birth of Juan Ranilla represents the acceptance of the other, of difference by his peers. Ultimately, El parto de Juan Rana embodies an unabashed and over-the-top critique of patriarchal authority that still rings true today.
El discurso sartorial y el conflicto amoroso social en El caballero de Olmedo
Authors: Juárez Encarnación
Published: January 2014

This article examines the manifestation of love as a private and spontaneous impulse against social restrictions, through the abundant imagery of clothing in Lope de Vega's El caballero de Olmedo . The love relationship between Don Alonso and Doña Inés is frustrated in this tragicomedy, due to its conflictive insertion in a society whose codes and traditions form the background from which the love springs and develops. The signs related to clothing, material full of symbolic value, underline the social tensions within the play, functioning both at the structural and thematic levels. Clothing is, thus, closely connected to the cultural practices and to the ideological systems of the time.
Dreams of Reason Create Monsters of Culture: La vida es Sueño
Authors: Presberg Charles
Published: January 2014

This essay explores how the life that Calderón equates metaphorically with the work of the dream in La vida es sueño coincides less with the life of nature than with our contemporary understanding of character and culture in the secular order. It coincides, in other words, with the quasi-poetic undertakings of personal and collective identity or with the human world that we fashion out of the natural one, in response to our physical and psychological requirements. The framework for my analysis derives from the title of Francisco de Goya's celebrated etching, El sueño de la razón produce monstruos . For, like Goya after him, Calderón portrays the absurdity of granting sovereignty to discursive reasoning that lacks any real basis in sense experience, including the eminently reasonable experience of passion and appetite. When judged from within such an analytical framework, Calderón's most renowned drama reveals how rationalistic dreams—or the fantasmagoria of unbridled reason—beget what I argue to be the necessary, evolving monstrosities of character and culture in a fallen yet redeemable world.
El mayor monstruo del mundo and the Subject of Tragedy
Authors: Friedman Edward H.
Published: January 2014

The essay focuses on the subject position of Queen Mariene in El mayor monstruo del mundo . The thesis is that the queen occupies an intermediate space between the female protagonists of the Calderonian honor plays and the precociously assertive heroine of Elizabeth Cary's The Tragedy of Mariam (1613). Because in El mayor monstruo Calderón takes recourse to the fate of classical antiquity, Mariene is doomed from the start, but she gains a victory of sorts by separating herself from her husband Herod and by speaking her mind. An analysis of the particular rhetoric of Mariene's discourse reveals an incipient subjectivity, lacking in the women of the honor dramas, who cannot cease to be functions of their husbands' (and society's) obsessions. Using essentially the same plot materials, Cary, for her part, moves beyond the spiritual triumph to draw attention to key feminist issues of her own time and place. (EHF)
Gender, Tyranny, and the Performance of Power in La hija del aire
Authors: Quintero María Cristina
Published: January 2014

Calderón's La hija del aire may be said to be about the feminization of the body of the king. Not only is Semíramis a supreme example of a mujer varonil because she literally becomes king when she impersonates her son, but all the male rulers in the play are presented as examples of debased or "feminized" masculinity and kingship. Of particular interest is the identification, throughout the play, of the characters' gender dissonance with theatricality and the dangers of tyranny. La hija del aire offers a performance of monarchy as a deeply unstable institution.
Staging Calderón with the TESO Data Base
Authors: Allen John J.
Published: January 2014

The data base called Teatro Español del Siglo de Oro (TESO, Chadwyck-Healey, 1997-2000, httn://teso.chadwyck.com ) comprises nearly 900 sixteenth- and seventeenth-century dramatic works, including some 85 comedias and 60 autos by Calderón. The capacity to restrict the search to stage directions alone greatly facilitates the study of Golden Age staging, both at court and in the corrales . The present study illustrates Calderón's corral staging practices, use of the vestuario and tablados laterales , machinery, action above and below the stage, indications of stage position, theatrical terminology, etc.
Calderón Incorporated: Hands and Speech in Las tres justicias en una and El postrer duelo de España
Authors: Ganelin Charles
Published: January 2014

Calderón's Las tres justicias en una and El postrer duelo de España both treat the nature of kingship, but also focus to a surprising degree on the use of hands, suggesting ways in which the body is incorporated into the dramatic texts. Recent writings in cognitive science point to a relationship between "precision hands and precision intelligence." Calderón seems to have intuited the ties between hand use and ability in speech; a character's poor use, or misuse, of a weapon is related to an incapacity to speak forthrightly. The monarchs in the two plays, as literal and figurative heads of state, resolve dilemmas by reincorporating the body with society, by establishing that the tactile is inseparable from the spoken recognition of objects and what they represent.
Capricho's Clock: Time in Calderón's Comedies
Authors: Blue William R.
Published: January 2014

Several of Calderón's plays situated in Madrid focus on time. For the purposes of this study, I have considered time in two aspects: first, a chronological time that governs schedules, meetings, personal interests, short-term desires, in a word, the exigencies of everyday life, and, second, cyclical time that concerns the larger issues and rhythms of life. I explore the contrast between these two notions in several of Calderón's plays and two paintings of Christ in the House of Mary and Martha, one by Pieter Aertsen and the other by Velázquez.
"¡Notable sujeto!" Terms of Dismemberment in EL médico de su honra
Authors: Fox Dian
Published: January 2014

Twenty years ago, Nancy J. Vickers wrote a seminal essay on Petrarch's use of the Actaeon myth in which the hunter, spying the goddess Diana naked, is transformed, in retaliation, into a stag, and is torn to pieces by his own hounds. Vickers contends that Petrarch's poetry esthetically fragments his beloved Laura to protect his own subjectivity against the female's threatening gaze. In this article, I suggest that El médico de su honra , which also cites Actaeon, can be taken as a literalization of the Petrarchan lover's figurative dismemberment of the love object. Gutierre undertakes the defensive action in order to protect his manhood, to suppress domestic and political subversions, and to obtain sexual pleasure. To varying degrees and for related reasons, Enrique, Ludovico, and King Pedro participate in Gutierre's exceptional adventure.
Interpreting Ideas: Court Theatre's Production of Life's a Dream
Authors: Wilks Kerry
Published: January 2014

This article gives a "behind-the-scenes" look at Court Theatre's 1999 production of Calderón's Life's a Dream . JoAnne Akalaitis directed the John Barton and Adrian Mitchell adaptation. The translation itself is analyzed, as well as Akalaitis's personal interpretation of the script during the rehearsal process. Photographs of the production are included.
Eunuchs and Empty Houses: Coquíns Tragic Joke in El médico de su honra
Authors: Cruz Anne J.
Published: January 2014

When the ill-fated King Pedro demands that the gracioso make him laugh in El médico de su honra , Coquín relates instead a most unfunny joke about a eunuch who tries to hide his lack under a mustache-guard. What the king does not know-and critics have not investigated-is that, rather than make Pedro laugh, the joke's tale of hairless eunuchs and empty houses is meant to make him think. Just as the play's imagery of daggers and bloodied hands imbues it with its sense of tragedy, the signifiers of Coquín's puzzling joke constitute an integral part of its structural logic by what they instead repress. My essay intends a Lacanian reading of the subversive function of the joke's signifiers to uncover their censored meaning within the textual unconscious. In voicing the castration symptom, Coquín gives expression to the play's unconscious message, its warning to the king, as to Gutierre, of their impending loss. (AJC)
Segismundo/Philip IV: The Politics of Astrology in La vida es sueño
Authors: De Armas Frederick A.
Published: January 2014

La vida es sueño points to three specific celestial events in the casting of Segismundo's horoscope: the 1605 solar eclipse in Scorpio, the 1604 nova in the constellation of Ophiuchus, and the 1603 Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in Sagittarius. The many prophecies related to these events pointed to the new king. Some claimed that a new tyrant would arise; others hailed this new ruler as heaven-sent. Calderón's play refers to these events and prophecies in order to point to the birth and future rulership of Philip IV of Spain. La vida es sueño , then, is built upon a rather thorny premise—that Segismundo/Philip IV will reflect the heavenly writings, both positive and negative. The play is an astro-political experiment that looks at the predictions years after the event, when Segismundo has grown up, when Philip IV has become king.
Historia y creación literaria en don Pedro Calderón de la Barca
Authors: Valbuena-Briones Angel Julian
Published: January 2014

La biografía de Calderón es difícil de valorar, porque no hay un epistolario de su vida personal. El escrutinio sistemático de su itinerario y el examen de las transacciones legales y de las memorias de la puesta en escena de sus piezas revelan su modus vivendi . Fue un producto de la cultura de su tiempo. Dotado de una perspicacia psicológica extraordinaria, supo utilizarla para ascender en la escala social, primero ganando la confianza del Conde-Duque de Olivares y luego obteniendo la protección de Felipe IV y de su sucesor. El poeta colaboró en las fiestas teatrales, organizadas por el marqués de Heliche, y continuó su trayectoria literaria hasta el final de sus días. Su idiosincrasia fue propia de un individuo fiel a sí mismo, cuya aspiración consistió en ser el primer dramaturgo de su época. Su relación con su maestro, Lope de Vega, la amistad que mantuvo con Pérez de Montalbán, la colaboración con otros escritores manifiestan una ambiciosa disposición en una línea de superación y de nuevos ensayos artísticos. Su religiosidad, que se había deteriorado durante su juventud, volvió a surgir tras la crisis de la mitad de la vida y creció en la soledad íntima de su vejez. Su orgullo en el menester poético le dió una razón de existencia y su constante aplicación le confirió su modernidad.
Talking About Talking: Word and Deed in Calderón's El alcalde de Zalamea
Authors: Larson Catherine
Published: January 2014

Through its abundant references to discourse and its emphasis on the relationship between speech and action, Calderón's El alcalde de Zalamea makes manifest the links between self-conscious language and self-conscious theater. Calderón exploits virtually every possible way of talking about talking, presenting discourse itself as the central structuring device and organizing principle for the drama. As his characters constantly exhort one other to speak, the dramatist highlights the performative nature of language, underscoring issues such as the power of both speech and silence and the impact of wordplay that functions as virtual swordplay. Rhetorical skill plays a particularly significant role at the conclusion of El alcalde . Pedro Crespo, who has illustrated throughout the drama that he can adapt discursively to any situation, eliminates his interlocutor and then justifies his actions to the king and Don Lope, emerging as the dramatist, director, and protagonist in a play of his own-making. Crespo's deeds are not separate from his words but seem to derive from them in a kind of symbiotic union. Calderón continuously points us towards this discursive paradigm by filling his text with numerous direct references to the act of speaking. As his characters talk about talking, he reminds the readers and spectators of the drama that El alcalde de Zalamea not only explores honor, justice, and social upheaval but also self-consciously examines the making of meaning.
Lope de Vega's Drawing of the Monte Stage Set
Authors: Kenworthy Patricia
Published: January 2014

The physical appearance and placement of the stage décor used to represent mountains for performances in Golden Age corrales has puzzled modern comedia scholars. Their analyses of textual evidence of the period (stage directions, repair documents, account books) have resulted in a series of hypothetical models of the monte . This essay introduces graphic evidence against which these hypotheses can be tested: a drawing by Lope de Vega in the autograph manuscript of El cardenal de Belén (signed 27 August 1610) which illustrates a stage direction that calls for two montes . This marginal sketch is the only known seventeenth-century illustration of the intended appearance of a corral stage during a performance and deserves the same prominence that has been accorded to illustrations of the staging of court performances in histories of the Spanish Golden Age theater.
The Recreation of a Spanish Playhouse: Segovia's Hospital de la Misericordia
Authors: McGrath Michael
Published: January 2014

The number of studies related to Spanish Golden Age playhouses has increased significantly since the 1950s when John Varey and Norman D. Shergold began to conduct research in the archives of Madrid. Together with those in Madrid, documents from the archives of Tudela, Alcalá de Henares, and Córdoba have served as the foundation for groundbreaking studies of the playhouses in these cities. The research initiated by Varey and Shergold, and later continued by John J. Allen and María Teresa Pascual Bonis, among others, inspired me to search for information related to Segovia's Hospital de la Misericordia playhouse in this city's Archivo Municipal and Archivo Histórico Provincial. Although the performance contracts and repair contracts upon which my article is based are not as numerous as those found in other cities, they do provide ample information to produce the most complete recreation of the Hospital de la Misericordia playhouse to date. (MM)
La Soldadesca de Bartolomé de Torres Naharro: "Hibridismo" en la Italia Española del Renacimiento
Authors: Salvi Marcella
Published: January 2014

Durante años los críticos han debatido el origen de la obra dramática de Torres Naharro, tratando de delimitar un "espacio" cultural específico, español o italiano, en el que insertar la producción del dramaturgo español. Por otro lado, algunos críticos han llamado la atención sobre la presencia de elementos heterogéneos en las comedias de Torres Naharro que hacen difícil determinar con certidumbre su pertenencia a un espacio cultural específico. Partiendo de estas últimas consideraciones, mi objetivo es el de presentar la obra de Torres Naharro como producto cultural fronterizo que refleja los intercambios político-culturales entre la Italia y la España de principios del siglo XVI. Torres Naharro se encontraría, pues, en posición liminal entre las dos tradiciones culturales. Entre sus comedias, la Soldadesca (1510) es quizá la que mejor documenta esta "liminalidad" al presentarse explícitamente como texto "híbrido," es decir, como "espacio" en el que se representan las tensiones y conflictos provocados por el encuentro de culturas diferentes. En su dramatización de la realidad fronteriza italo-española, Torres Naharro señala el problema endémico del imperio español representado por la figura marginal del mercenario. Este personaje, que vive al margen de la sociedad, podría verse como síntoma del carácter ilusorio de los objetivos hegemónicos tanto de los Reyes Católicos como del Papado.