Golden Age / Early Modern Theater: Comedia Studies at the End of the Century

Author(s): Barbara Mujica

Source: Hispania, Vol. 82, No. 3 (Sep., 1999), pp. 397-407
Published by: American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/346279
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 SPECIAL SECTION:
COMEDIA STUDIES AT THE END
OF THE CENTURY
Prepared by Barbara Mujica

Golden Age I Early Modern Theater:

Comedia Studies at the End of the Century
Barbara Mujica
Georgetown University

In Memoriam
John Varey (1922-1999)

Abstract: During the first half of the century, comedia criticism was dominated by Marcelino Menendez y
Pelayo, who was a product of realism and saw Golden Age drama as an authentic representation of society.
Preferring the works of Lope, which he saw as more realistic, he condemned Calder6n for his hyperbole and
for advocating wife-murder in his honor plays. The New Critics of mid-century subjected comedias to meticu-
lous textual analysis and argued that Calder6n actually condemned the practices he depicted. During the same
period, theater historians such as J. E. Varey began investigating Golden Age theaters from a social and eco-
nomic perspective. During the last decades of the century, postmodernism, stressing the pluralistic and popu-
lar aspects of culture, spurred critics to adopt the multidisciplinary approach of Early Modern Studies. This
led to a broadening of the canon to include new authors, including women, and to an exploration of the perfor-
mative aspects of the comedia.

Key Words: Early Modern stage, comedia criticism, Golden Age theater, New Criticism, theatrical semiotics
Parker (Alexander A.), Varey (J. E.), postmodernism, theater history, performance theory

of tragedias de honor, advocated husbands'

During the first half of the twentieth
century, comedia criticism waskilling wives suspected of adultery. As a
result, Menendez y Pelayo condemned the
dominated by commentators who
honor plays on moral grounds (229). Fur-
saw theater as a reflection of society.
Headed by Marcelino Menendez y Pelayo, thermore, he thought Cader6n's comedias
these critics often preferred Lope tode capa y espada frivolous and most of his
Calder6n because of the former's ability religious
to plays overblown and overrated.
These
create intriguing plots and characters in a views thwarted comedia studies for
decades.
setting viewed as "realistic."1 The prevailing
theatrical aesthetic, strongly influenced by Emilio Cotarelo y Mori was another
influential early critic. His Ensayo sobre la
nineteenth-century Realism and repre-
sented by popular dramatists such asvida y obra de Calder6n, which represents
the "life and works" approach to criticism
Benavente, was hostile to the more "spec-
popular at the beginning of the century, was
tacular" comedic genres-that is, those that
considered the "most nearly definitive
relied on spectacle (stage devices, music,
elaborate costuming, etc.)-for example, study" of Calder6n for decades (Hesse 174).
His book was an important source of infor-
the comedia mitol6gica. The realistic orien-
mation on the seventeenth-century theater,
tation of Menendez y Pelayo and his follow-
particularly on court drama, for decades. It
ers caused them to take the honor plays for
expressions of popular ideas and assume served as a source for Everett W. Hesse's
that Calder6n, the most celebrated author
Calder6n, which was published by Twayne

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398 HISPANIA 82 SEPTEMBER 1999

in 1967, and for Eugenio Frutos Cortes's on La vida es suenio. Calder6n's best known
Calder6n de la Barca. Cotarelo also did im-
philosophical play, La vida es suenio lends
portant research on the zarzuela. itself to the kind of meticulous textual analy-
However, in the 1950s and 60s, British sis promoted by New Criticism with a mind
critics revolutionized the field by introduc- toward discerning the transcendental impli-
ing the techniques of New Criticism, which cations of the work. Bruce Wardropper sees
advocated close reading and detailed tex- Segismundo's emergence from the tower as
tual analysis. Their work was encouraged a kind of symbolic parturition ("Apenas
and facilitated enormously by the publica- Ilega" 244); thus Segismundo is a kind of
tion of Calder6n's Obras completas in new Everyman thrust into the world to face the
editions by Angel Valbuena Prat and Angel inevitable ambiguities. Parker, who, as in
J. Valbuena-Briones. his work on the honor plays, looks for in-
In his ground-breaking study The Ap- sight into the issues of free will and deter-
proach to the Spanish Drama of the Golden minism, which were fundamental to the
Age (1957) and articles such as "Toward a Counter Reformation, asks to what extent
Definition of Calderonian Tragedy" (1962) Basilio's decision to incarcerate his son
and "The Spanish Drama of the Golden influences Segismundo's character. He con-
Age: A Method of Analysis and Interpreta- cludes that although the father's cruelty can
tion" (1970), Alexander A. Parker subjected predispose his offspring toward rebellion,
the texts of Calder6n's honor plays (as well it cannot force him to perform criminal acts
as that of Lope's Castigo sin venganza) to an ("Father-Son" 108-09). A. E. Sloman and
in-depth examination. By tracing the web of William M. Whitby explore Rosaura's role
cause-effect relationships embedded in the in Segismundo's achievement of self-deter-
dramatic action, Parker concludes that mination. R. D. F. Pring-Mill provides an
Calder6n (and occasionally Lope) created overview of the contributions of the British
honor heroes not as role models, but as school in "Los calderonistas y La vida es
examples of socialized man's tragic predica- sueio: MBtodos del andlisis temdtico
ment. Rather than in triumph, these char- estructural. "
acters' stories end in defeat. Men such as New Criticism made an enormous con-
Don Lope (A secreto agravio, secreta tribution to Hispanism, revitalizing comedia
venganza) and Don Gutierre (El medico de studies and stimulating future generations.
su honra) are both "individualized from all Some of the most influential articles were
other men yet in intimate solidarity with gathered into collections, notably Critical
them" ("Towards a Definition" 236) As Essays on the Theatre of Calder6n, edited by
such, they are both victims and perpetua- Bruce Wardropper, and Calder6n y la
tors of the honor code, for they are bound critica: Historia y antologia, edited by
to a system which they did not create and Manuel Durfin and Roberto Gonzalez
which they emphatically condemn, but to Echevarria. The latter includes not only
which they nevertheless yield. Spanish translations of the articles by
For Parker and others of his generation, Parker, Wardropper, Wilson, and others
Calderonian theater is not merely a reflec- mentioned above, but also outstanding con-
tion of society, but an exploration of the tributions by Spanish critics using the meth-
human condition. In another highly influen- ods proposed by New Criticism.
tial study, "Honor and the Christian Back- Around the same time the New Critics
ground in Calder6n," Peter Dunn likens began to scrutinize comedia texts, theater
honor to a religion with rites that require historians were revamping our notions of
sacrifice and bloodshed. E. M. Wilson also early Spanish stagecraft. Hugo Albert
emphasizes this religious, sacrificial aspect Rennert's The Spanish Stage in the Time of
of the honor plays in "La discreci6n de Don Lope de Vega, published in 1963, provides
Lope de Almeida." Not surprisingly, this valuable information on theater life in
generation produced a plethora of studies Madrid and Seville, including construction

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 COMEDIA STUDIES AT THE END OF THE CENTURY 399

and operation of corrales, the use of stage

from one royal site to another, according to
the season. Shergold and Varey show
machinery, issues relating to costumes,
prices of admission, the role of women-
where plays were performed and how the
itinerant court impacted local economies.
spectators and actresses-, and the salaries
and living conditions of actors, as well
Furthermore,
as the book helps scholars fix
attitudes toward them. Rennert draws on the date of composition of Golden Age
extensive documentation, shedding light on plays. Los libros de las cuentas de los corrales
government regulation of the theater andde comedias de Madrid: 1706-1719, which
the opposition of the clergy to public spec- Varey wrote with Charles Davis in 1992,
tacle. N. D. Shergold contributes to our un- reproduces account books from the eigh-
derstanding of these issues and places theteenth century. By providing information on
Golden Age stage in a broader historical actual performances, Varey and Davis help
context in his 1967 study, A History of the to clarify the fate of the corrales under the
Spanish Stage from Medieval Times until theBorbons and put to rest the notion that ba-
End of the Seventeenth Century. Containingroque theater simply vanished after the
actual plans and facsimiles, this book pre-death of Calder6n.
sents concrete evidence of theater practices As a founder in 1962 of Tamesis, a Brit-
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. ish publishing house devoted to Hispanism
John Varey, to whom this special edition and, in particular, to theater studies, Varey
of Hispania is dedicated, was instrumentalpromoted research on the history of the
in unearthing a wealth of documentation onSpanish stage. Many scholars have followed
theater life in the sixteenth and seventeenthin his footsteps, producing studies that have
centuries. In collaboration with Shergold, in greatly increased our knowledge of Golden
the early 1970s Varey published the Teatros Age theater practices. Teatro y vida teatral
y comedias en Madrid series, a collection of
en el Siglo de Oro a travys de las fuentes
books providing documentation on thedocumentales, edited by Luciano Garcia
regulation of theaters, including royal de-Lorenzo, contains a number of essays based
crees that reveal information on theater on a archival data that elucidate, among
other matters, the financing of theatrical
administration, the participation of hospital
brethren in the development of the corral,productions. Varey's own contribution is a
financial outlay for productions, and the study of the Consultas de Viernes, minutes
of the Consejo de Castilla that met in
monarchy's attempts to control the conduct
of actors and actresses and impose norms Madrid on Fridays to resolve diverse prob-
of public morality. In Genealogia, origenlems.
y The archives show that during the
years 1576 to 1593, poverty and disease
noticias de los comediantes de Espaia, pub-
lished in 1985), Shergold and Varey offer were rampant in Madrid, putting serious
considerable biographical information on pressure on public hospitals. In the 1560s
actors, as well as data on financial and so-
the hospitals had already begun to increase
cial issues relevant to the theater. In their income by sponsoring theater produc-
Representaciones palaciegas, 1603-1699,
tions, and in the following decades, hospi-
tal brethren such as the Cofradia de la
Shergold and Varey reproduce documents
itemizing costs for everything from Pasi6n,
re- the Cofradia de la Soledad, and the
hearsal space to candles, lamp oil, paper,
Cofradia de los Nifios Exp6sitos rented or
and food. The data on expenditures forconstructed
stag- corrales, using the revenue
ing, sets, costumes, and administrative
from theater productions for their chari-
functions augment our understanding ofendeavors. In 1989, Jose Maria Ruano
table
the operation of the Teatro del Buen Retiro,
de la Haza edited a Festschrifl to Varey, El
in particular, and the day-to-day manage-
mundo del teatro espaiol: ensayos dedicados
a John Varey, which includes articles by
ment of the economy of seventeenth-cen-
scholars
tury Spain in general. After the Court was from both sides of the Atlantic.
officially established in Madrid, it moved
Another important contribution to the study

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400 HISPANIA 82 SEPTEMBER 1999

of the history of the corral is John J.today's

Allen'scritics are questioning long-held
The Reconstruction ofa Spanish Goldenassumptions
Age about validity of the traditional
comedia canon, the authenticity of tradi-
Playhouse, which includes detailed informa-
tionaldel
tion about and diagrams of the Corral historical knowledge, and the rela-
Principe. More recently (1997), Jane tionship of text to context. They are explor-
ing popular reaction to the comedia and a
Albrecht published an article on the Golden
wide
Age theater-going public that revisits manyrange of public spectacles, such as
of the issues elucidated by Varey carnival
and his celebrations, jdcaras, and
contemporaries. mojigangas, as well as Corpus Christi perfor-
mances,
John Varey sat on the editorial boards of including processions, loas,
a number of journals, some of which he
entremeses, and autos sacramentales.
These alterations have been accompa-
helped to found. These include Segismundo,
Themes in Drama, Teatro del Siglo de niedOro,
by a new terminology. Increasingly,
Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Revista deprefer the term Early Modem to
scholars
Literatura, and Cuadernos de Teatro Cldsico.
Golden Age, a switch that is neither gratu-
This last journal devotes each issue
itousto a insignificant. In Spain, the Early
nor
particular topic of interest to theater Modern
special- period encompasses the last de-
cades of the fifteenth as well as the six-
ists. For example, the issue entitled Corrales
y Coliseos en la Peninsula Iberica, edited
teenthbyand seventeenth centuries, when the
Jose Maria Diez Borque, contains archival new, self-aware hombre moderno begins to
information on and diagrams of the casas emerge.2
de This is the period that generates
comedias and corrales de comedias in the par-
sense of selfhood that will characterize
ticular cities-Madrid, Sevilla, Valencia, Western thinking until our own time. To see
Oviedo, and C6rdoba-including specifics this period through the lens of the Early
related to the stages, dressing rooms, and Modem implies a new conceptual configu-
seating areas. ration; it is, as Leah Marcus explains, "to see
The current generation of Hispanists is the concerns of modernism and
indebted to the innovative scholars of the postmodernism.in embryo-alienatio
1960s and 70s for unveiling the intellectual disjunction from origins, profound skep
complexities of the comedia and for disen-cism about the possibility for objectivity
tombing vast amounts of historical docu- an emphasis on textual indeterminacy
mentation on the workings of theaters. opposed to textual closure and stability,
However, the last two decades of the cen- an interest in intertextuality instead
tury have seen a shift in focus as youngerfiliation" (43).
scholars move beyond the parameters set One of the objections to the term Renais-
by their predecessors. Postmodernism hassance, which Hispanism generally applies
called into question the boundaries be- to the first decades of what is traditionally
tween "high" and "low" forms of expression,called the Golden Age, looks backward at a
stressing the pluralistic and popular aspects classical period that is "reborn" in works
of culture. Derrida's sensitivity to the prob- such as La Celestina and the Eglogues of
lem of the central vs. marginal has come to Garcilaso. This view reinforces the attitude
dominate intellectual thought at the end of that the Middle Ages are a time of darkness
the century and has ushered in the age ofand backwardness from which Europe
"post-modernity." Concerned with needed to be "reborn." We speak of appro-
"decentering" culture, Derrida sought to priations of Seneca in La Celestina and of
move away from the traditional focal points Garcilaso's use of Virgil as evidence of a
of Westemrn civilization-Truth, Ideal Form, return to a more enlightened era. However,
etc.-toward an unmasking of the question-the New Medievalism has called into ques-
able nature of "centers" and an explorationtion the notion of medieval benightedness,
of the marginalized or repressed Other. alleging that the Middle Ages should be
Spurred by postmodern literary theory, seen as different from, rather than as infe-

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 COMEDIA STUDIES AT THE END OF THE CENTURY 401

wife-murder,
rior to modernity-that is, as a period with Heiple draws on the debates
its own dynamic of cultural expression
of and
the period on the legitimacy of killing a
forms of representation (Nichols). The term
wife suspected of adultery, showing that the
Early Modem avoids this judgmental practice
posi- was validated by canon law. Simi-
larly,
tion. Instead of looking backward, it Renato Barahona researched actual
looks
forward toward the advent of a new outlook
lawsuits of the period to elucidate the com-
that will characterize modernity. plexities of estupro-seduction and aban-
Like the New Medievalism, Earlydonment-a
Mod- key issue in many comedias.
em Studies connotes eclecticism. While the These critics break down the barriers be-
term Golden Age is traditionally used to tween traditional literary studies and social
refer to literary investigations, Early Mod- history; in fact, some depart so much from
em Studies is multidisciplinary, comprising New Criticism that they hardly mention
a wide range of fields that include culturalcomedia texts at all. Others, such as William
anthropology, sociology, economics, and R. Blue, combine close reading techniques
the physical sciences. Furthermore, Goldenwith historical research. In Spanish Comedy
Age implies a canonical approach-the and Historical Contexts in the 1620s, he pro-
study of works that are "golden"-, while vides pertinent information about the
Early Modern Studies proposes a reexami- economy, legal practices, urban environ-
nation of the canon with an eye toward ment, and concepts of self and authority in
broadening and revitalizing it. Everett W. early seventeenth-century Spain and,
Hesse, who began studying the comedia inthrough textual analysis, shows how these
the forties, provided much of the impetusrealities are reflected on the stage.
toward opening up the field in the eighties. Today's critics are rejecting the notion of
If his first major book, Calder6n de la Barca, "definitive" interpretations of the comedia
represents a continuation of the "life and suggested by Parker's article, "The Ap-
works" approach, it also introduces the then proach to the Spanish Drama of the Golden
new ideas of Wardropper and Parker. Hesse Age." New trends such as reader-response
soon moved to the cutting edge of comedia theory, supported.by the open-ended nature
studies. In 1948 he had founded Los of many comedias, have stimulated new and
Comediantes, an international group unconventional
de- readings. Our heightened
voted to Golden Age theater, and the awareness follow- of the impossibility of recon-
ing year, the Bulletin of the Comediantes, structing the past and our realization that
still one of the most important journals in
our interpretations of all historical literature
the field. Hesse began exploring innovative reflect our own perspectives as much as-
critical approaches in New Perspectives or more
in than-those of the period, have
Comedia Criticism (1980) and moved made us wary of "conclusive" statements
clearly toward post-modernity in Theology, about literary texts. The article by William
Sex and the Comedia and Other EssaysR. Blue included here illustrates our new
(1982) and La mujer como victima en mindfulness
la of the fluidity or instability of
Comedia y otros ensayos (1987). texts, described by Roland Barthes in his
1979 article "From Work to Text." Blue ex-
It is within this context that scholars ap-
proach the comedia in the nineties. Even plores diverse readings of El medico de su
those who continue to use the term Golden honra, showing how the inconclusive end-
Age have expanded their horizons, drawing ing and other aspects of the play make a
for their research from multiple disciplines. definitive reading impossible.
As a result, modemrn scholars are question- While traditional literary studies glorify
ing many of the conclusions of the New the author, stressing "life and works" inde-
Critics, who tended to judge the comedia pendent of the cultural context that pro-
from a moral perspective that, as Daniel duces them, postmodern criticism de-em-
Heiple has shown, was not necessarily that phasizes the author. When Foucault speaks
of the seventeenth century. In his article on of the death of the author, he is simply as-

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402 HISPANIA 82 SEPTEMBER 1999

Chamizal National Memorial Theater, in El

serting that the author is not a transhistori-
cal being, but the product of a collective
Paso, Texas, scholars began to focus more
mentality that needs to be explored. The
on the performative aspects of the comedia.
text is independent of the authorAin the of Walker Reid, working in col-
project
sense that it reflects the values of the laboration with Franklin Smith, supervisor
people-the intellectual and power elite- of the Chamizal, the Golden Age festival
who have made it canonical. Foucault's brought together theater troupes from all
"What Is an Author" and Barthes's "The over the world to perform works by the
Death of the Author," both published in the
great playwrights of the sixteenth and sev-
enteenth centuries. In 1981, as part of the
late seventies, were influential in the move
away from the author-based approach and tricentennial celebration of the death of
toward the broader-based cultural-studies Calder6n, Reid and Smith called on the
approach. University of Texas at El Paso to organize
An important impetus in the reinterpre- a symposium in conjunction with the festi-
tation of the comedia is the new awareness val, thereby making the Chamizal perfor-
that the comedia was meant to be per- mances an academic tool to spur discussion
formed, not read. Because New Criticism, of the comedia in performance. The success
having derived from a method of poetry of the festival in the academic community
analysis developed in the 1920s, was con- was due in large part to the efforts of Donald
cerned above all with text, its practitioners Dietz, then a professor of Spanish at Texas
for the most part overlooked the perfor- Tech University, who founded and became
mance aspects of the plays they analyzed. the driving force behind the Association for
It should be noted, however, that these crit- Hispanic Classical Theater (AHCT), an or-
ics were not entirely oblivious to perfor- ganization devoted to the performance as-
mance issues. While combing theatrical pect of Golden Age theater. Dietz and other
texts, they sometimes found clues on stag- academics conceived of the idea of videotap-
ing. In The Allegorical Drama of Calderdn, ing the plays performed at the festival and
for example, Parker provides many insights making the videos available to scholars.
into the staging of the autos sacramentales, Today, the video library, now at the Univer-
including information on the placement of sity of Arizona in Tuscon, houses hundreds
carts and characters as well as on costum- of tapes. The publication of Keir Elam's The
ing. In fact, even earlier generations hadSemiotics of Theatre and Drama (1980) and
shown some interest in staging. Eugenio books such as Richard Schechner's Perfor-
Hartzenbusch gives a detailed account of amance Theory (1988), which combines the-
performance of El mayor encanto, amor inater semiotics and cultural studies, pro-
his 1918 edition of Calder6n's comedias. vided comedia scholars with the tools and
methods to analyze actual performances of
Still, the New Critics were concerned prima-
individual plays.
rily with the text and its metaphysical and
moral dimensions, which is undoubtedly The growing awareness of the performa-
why they were more drawn to the philo- tive aspect of the comedia focused critics'
sophical, religious, and social plays thanattention
to on the incomplete nature of the
the more "spectacular" mythological plays.written text. The performance text would
Even theater historians like Varey were necessarily include paralinguistic compo-
concerned primarily, although not exclu- nents such as set design, blocking, costum-
sively, with archival data rather than with
ing, sound effects, visual effects, music, and
actual performance. lighting, either real or implied.3 As part of
the wider field of Early Modern Studies,
Stimulated by influential theater theo-
rists of the 1960s and 1970s such as J. comedia
L. performance studies is a
Styan, Peter Brook, and Martin Esslin, and,
multidisciplinary field that draws on a wide
especially, by the creation in 1976 of the
range of areas, from technology to econom-
annual Golden Age Theater Festival at theics, from law to psychology.

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 COMEDIA STUDIES AT THE END OF THE CENTURY 403

Performance studies can be grouped into the script as they rehearsed, experi-
altered
two categories: those that focus on comedia
menting with different wordings, an issue
performance in the sixteenth and that
seven-
modem scholars are beginning to ad-
teenth centuries and those that focus on dress. Manuel Delgado has investigated
modern productions of the comedia. The misunderstandings that have arisen regard-
former elucidates such areas as how par-
ing Calder6n's La devocidn de la Cruz, re-
ticular types of scenes were performed, thesulting from our reliance on the
role of the developing stage technology ofHartzenbusch edition. Marc Vitse com-
bines the tools supplied by close reading
the seventeenth century in the creation of
and theatrical semiotics with extensive
special effects, the functions of the two lev-
els of the corral and the "discovery space,"4manuscript research in a study of La dama
or the use of different elements of costume duende, in which he shows that our lack of
as dramatic signifiers. The latter focuses onauthentic texts of this play has hindered our
specific modern performances, including understanding of its original staging and led
the mechanisms through which Early Mod-to significant staging errors in our own
ern theater can engage and speak to thetime. Isaac Benabu's close reading of
modern audience. Varey, whose early re- Calder6n's El midico de su honra leads to
search focused, as we have seen, on the an understanding of how the playwright
social history of the theater, began explor-encodes the "imagined act of theater" in the
ing specific staging problems in the 1980s, written words and how the modern direc-
publishing a number of articles on how thetor, confronted with a dearth of knowledge
architecture of the corral stage could be about Early Modern performance practices,
must decode the "hidden text" in order to
used to mount certain scenes, as well as is-
sues involving costume and stage effects.
mount the play in a way that is faithful to its
His Cosmovisirn y escenografia and a seriesessence.
of articles published in the eighties repre- Catherine Connor has broadened the
sent this new direction in his work. parameters of performance studies by fo-
Critics researching performance issues cusing in a number of articles on the recipi-
are not hostile to textual analysis and, inents of performance, the audience. Building
fact, have scoured comedia texts in an effort
on the work of critics who have analyzed
to understand the mechanics of staging.spectator response within the framework of
Margaret Hicks' work on the use of theat- other theater traditions, Connor focuses on
rical synecdoche in Lope's early plays the heterogeneous nature of the comedia
(1993) and in those of the Cuarta parte public. In the essay included here, she ar-
(1999), and Anita Stoll's study of the use ofgues that early-modern spectators did not
"spoken scenery" or implicit stage direc- react uniformly to comedia productions and
tions in Calder6n's Los cabellos de Absal6n, that modern critics, who have often as-
show how modern critics have profited sumed orthodox and homogeneous audi-
from the methods of the New Critics as well ence reception, have failed to take into ac-
as from theatrical semiotics. count the socio-economic and other factors
Because the concept of the inviolability that might have influenced spectators' im-
of the text was different in Early Modern pressions of a play. If traditionally the au-
Europe than it is now, editors and printersthor has been considered a kind of god with
often altered texts as they worked. As a re- extraordinary creative powers whose works
sult, modern scholars have difficulty ascer-were considered exemplary or "golden,"
taining the reliability of the editions they Connor's approach stresses that the play is
as much the creation of the spectator as of
use. This is especially true for theater schol-
ars, since playwrights like Lope de Rueda, the dramatist and the director.
Shakespeare, and even Lope de Vega and By calling into question the "golden" es-
Calder6n had no notion of creating text. sence of Golden Age literature, postmod-
Then, as now, playwrights and directors ernists challenge the very concept of canon.

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404 HISPANIA 82 SEPTEMBER 1999

Critics such as Paul Julian Smith have calledliterature whose theater is practi-
baroque
for a widening of parameters, findingcally unknown. Hernandez shows how, in
tradi-
tional perspectives too restrictive and
this elit-
mockery of court adulation, Quevedo
ist. However, even staunch defendersbuilds
of theon his experience and talent as a poet
canon such as Harold Bloom recognize that a play whose dramatic impact de-
to create
the canon is a dynamic corpus, ever grow-
rives, curiously, from its stasis.
The tendency to reconsider canonical
ing and changing. Most comedia scholars
have continued to respect the canon while
plays from untraditional perspectives is
clearly evident in the trend toward post-
at the same time broadening and enriching
it with research on heretofore little studied
Freudian psychological approaches. The
plays. If the New Critics were hardly at-
postmodern view that the very notion of
tracted to plays whose spectacularity
canonwas
is elitist has lead to a de-emphasis of
their very essence, modern researches, es- in favor of methods of literary
the author
analysis based on psychological schools
pecially those interested in the performative
aspects of the comedia, have found that the
question the autonomy of the indi-
hagiographic and mythological plays vidual.
to beJung, Foucault, Lacan, and Deleuze
a treasure chest. Elma Dassbach's exten- have all been major influences in comedia
sive research on the stage machinery in- studies at the end of the century. This ap-
volved in the comedias de santos as well as proach tends to stress the archetypal nature
on other aspects of these plays such as cast- of the characters and situations of the plays
ing and the influence of painting has en- or to see them as cultural constructs. How-
hanced our understanding of the complex- ever, there has also been a tendency to rec-
ity of the seventeenth-century stage. In ad- oncile this post-Freudian perspective with
dition, Dassbach has shed light on several the notion of selfhood and free will, which
works by Lope and Calder6n that critics emerged in the Early Modem period. In his
have virtually ignored until now. In this is- contribution to this issue Angel J. Valbuena-
sue Dassbach explores the conflict between Briones applies Jungian methods to the
magic and miracle in the comedias de santos comedia without abandoning the focus of
and shows that, because these plays neces- earlier critics on text.
sarily support Church orthodoxy, miracle The questioning of the canon has led
inevitably triumphs. scholars to study a broader range of plays,
Comedia criticism in the nineties often authors and characters. Studies such as
approaches canonical works from untradi-Baltasar Fra Molinero's La imagen de los
tional perspectives. For example, El sitio denegros en el teatro del Siglo de Oro and Rob-
Bredd is usually considered an exaltation of ert Shannon's Visions of the New World in
the Spanish victory in the wars of Flanders. the Drama of Lope de Vega focus on blacks
However, in his article on this comedia, in- and Indians in Early Modern Spanish the-
cluded here, Frederick de Armas suggests ater, respectively, while Sidney E. Donnell's
that Calder6n was inspired by Botticelli'swork on sexual ambiguity and transvestit-
Primavera to construct a subplot that soft- ism in Calder6n's La puirpura de la rosa
ens the play's bellicose spirit and conveys reflects a new interest in gay studies. How-
a message of harmony. In so doing, the play- ever, the field devoted to a marginalized
wright humanized the image of the Span- group that has impacted most profoundly
iard, who had a reputation for brutality, as on comedia research is women's studies.
well as that of the enemy. In addition, theThe 1980s and 1990s have witnessed a
nineties have seen a new interest in unca- plethora of investigations, both of women's
nonical plays by canonical writers. For ex- writing and writing about women in the
ample, Susana HernAndez Araico's study of Early Modern period. Lola Luna's ground-
Quevedo's C6mo ha de ser el privado, also breaking work on Ana Caro, which included
included here, contributes to a broader un- editions of Caro's plays, Valor, agravio y
derstanding of one of the giants of Spanish mujer and El conde Partinupls, and Teresa

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 COMEDIA STUDIES AT THE END OF THE CENTURY 405

ten to reveal some surprising or shocking image.

Soufas's Women's Acts, an Anthology ofEarly
Modern Spanish Women Playwrights, have
1 WORKS
made texts by dramaturgas available to CITED
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