A Companion to Early Modern Hispanic Theater [1 ed.] 9789004263017, 9789004234567

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A Companion to Early Modern Hispanic Theater

The Renaissance Society of America Texts and Studies Series Editor-in-Chief

Craig Kallendorf

Texas A&M University

Editorial Board

Margaret Ezell, Texas A&M University Paul Grendler, Emeritus, University of Toronto James Hankins, Harvard University Gerhild Scholz-Williams, Washington University (St. Louis) Lía Schwartz Lerner, CUNY Graduate Center

Volume 2

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/rsa

A Companion to Early Modern Hispanic Theater Edited by

Hilaire Kallendorf

Leiden | boston

Cover illustration: San Cristóbal, by Mateo Pérez de Alesio in 1584. Catedral de Sevilla, Courtesy artehistoria. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A companion to early modern Hispanic theater / edited by Hilaire Kallendorf.   pages cm. — (The Renaissance Society of America texts and studies series)  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 978-90-04-23456-7 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-26301-7 (e-book) 1. Spanish drama—Classical period, 1500–1700—History and criticism. I. Kallendorf, Hilaire, 1974– editor of compilation.  PQ6105.C652 2014  862’.309--dc23

2013036178

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 2212-3091 ISBN 978 90 04 23456 7 (hardback) ISBN 978 90 04 26301 7 (e-book) Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Global Oriental and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

To the memory of my late grandfather Louis Girard, who travelled as a child with a family vaudeville troupe and still loved to dress up in costume as an adult, to the delight of his grandchildren—all of whom he imbued with a flair for the theatrical.

Contents List of Contributors ......................................................................................... List of Figures ....................................................................................................

xi xv

Introduction ......................................................................................................

1

PART ONE

ORIGINS Celestina as Closet Drama ............................................................................. . Enrique Fernández Rivera

7

Courtly Love and the Comedia .................................................................... . Robert Bayliss

19

The Comedia and the Classics ..................................................................... . Frederick A. de Armas

33

Spanish Sacramental Plays: A Study of Their Evolution ..................... . J. Enrique Duarte

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PART TWO

THEMES Honor/Honra Revisited ................................................................................... . A. Robert Lauer

77

The Wife-Murder Plays .................................................................................. . Matthew D. Stroud

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’Til Play Do Us Part: Marriage, Law, and the Comedia ......................... 105 . María M. Carrión Onstage/Backstage: Animals in the Golden Age Comedia .................. 127 . Adrienne L. Martín

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Entremeses and Other Forms of Teatro Breve ......................................... 145 . Ted L. L. Bergman  PART THREE

PLACES On Speed and Restlessness: Calderón’s Urban Kaleidoscope ............ 165 . Enrique García Santo-Tomás The New World in Lope de Vega’s Columbus and St. Christopher: El nuevo mundo descubierto por Cristóbal Colón ............................................................................................. 185 . Maryrica Ortiz Lottman The Quest for Spiritual Transcendence in the Theater of Gil Vicente .................................................................................................... 217 . Manuel Delgado Morales Lope de Vega and The Martyrs of Japan ................................................... 229 . Christina H. Lee PART FOUR

INTERSECTIONS Picaresque Sensibility and the Comedia ................................................... 249 . Edward H. Friedman Emblems at the Golden Age Theater ........................................................ 267 . Ignacio Arellano Science, Instrumentality, and Chaotics in Early Modern Spanish Drama ............................................................................................ 283 . Cory A. Reed Melancholy, the Comedia, and Early Modern Psychology .................. 299 . Teresa Scott Soufas 



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Jacques Lacan and Tragic Drama in the Golden Age of Spain .......... 311 . Henry W. Sullivan Chapter Summaries ......................................................................................... 337 Select Bibliography .......................................................................................... 347 Index .................................................................................................................... 371

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Hilaire Kallendorf is Director of Graduate Studies and Professor of Hispanic and Religious Studies at Texas A&M University. Her research and teaching deal with many aspects of religious experience, especially as belief relates to literature and culture. She is the author of three academic monographs—Exorcism and Its Texts, Conscience on Stage, and Sins of the Fathers—and is general editor of A New Companion to Hispanic Mysticism, which won the Bainton Prize for Reference Works from the Sixteenth Century Society in 2011. Enrique Fernández completed his Ph.D. in Spanish Literature at Princeton University. He is the head of the department of French, Spanish and Italian at the University of Manitoba, Canada. He has published the scholarly edition of a 17th-century Neo-Latin translation of Celestina and co-authored the scholarly edition of Celestina comentada. Robert Bayliss is an Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Kansas and author of The Discourse of Courtly Love in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Theater. His research focuses on early modern Spanish literature and culture as well as Comparative Literature. Frederick A. de Armas is Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Service Professor in Romance Languages and Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on early modern Spanish literature from a comparative perspective. His most recent books include: Cervantes, Raphael and the Classics; Quixotic Frescoes: Cervantes and Italian Renaissance Art; and Don Quixote among the Saracens: A Clash of Civilizations and Literary Genres. J. Enrique Duarte is a member of GRISO (Group for Research on Golden Age Literature) at the University of Navarra (Spain). He has prepared critical editions of Calderón de la Barca’s sacramental plays such as El divino Orfeo, La devoción de la misa, Los misterios de la misa, and A Dios por razón de Estado. He is also secretary of La Perinola, a journal devoted to the study of the work and the figure of Francisco de Quevedo. As a Golden Age Spanish Literature critic, he has studied different aspects of works by Tirso de Molina, Quevedo, Calderón, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and Francisco Antonio Bances Candamo.

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A. Robert Lauer is Professor of Spanish Golden Age Studies at The University of Oklahoma. He has published five books and 95 articles on Early Modern Studies, mainly on Calderón and Cervantes. Matthew D. Stroud is Murchison Term Professor of Spanish at Trinity University. He specializes in early modern Spanish drama, and his most recent published monograph is Plot Twists and Critical Turns: Queer Approaches to the Spanish Comedia. María M. Carrión is Professor of Spanish and associated faculty in Middle Eastern Studies and Religion at Emory University. She specializes in the cultural and literary production of 16th- and 17th-century Spain, with a particular focus on dramatic theory and performance, legal writings and practices, and architectural theory and history. She is the author of numerous publications, including Arquitectura y cuerpo en la figura autorial de Teresa de Jesús and Subject Stages: Marriage, Theatre, and the Law in Early Modern Spain. Adrienne L. Martín is Professor of Spanish Literature and Associate Vice Provost for International Programs at the University of California, Davis. Her scholarship and teaching focus on Golden Age literature (all genres), Cervantes, women writers, sexuality and erotic literature, theater and performance, and animal studies. Ted L. L. Bergman is Associate Professor of Spanish at California State University, Fresno, where he teaches Golden Age Literature. His areas of specialization include humor in Golden Age theater, early modern law enforcement, and representations of criminality on stage. Enrique García Santo-Tomás is Professor of Spanish at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and Senior Fellow at the Michigan Society of ­Fellows. He is the author of over 100 publications on early modern Spanish literature, and is currently at work on a study of Galileo’s presence in 17th-century Spanish satire. Maryrica Ortiz Lottman is an Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. Her articles and interviews focus on the Spanish comedia and have appeared in Cervantes, Romance Quarterly, Comedia Performance, The Bulletin of the Comediantes, and elsewhere. She specializes in the representation of gardens and landscapes in early modern Hispanic literature.



list of contributors

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Manuel Delgado Morales is Professor of Spanish at Bucknell University and holds degrees from the University of Granada, the University of Saint John the Lateran (Rome), and the University of Texas at Austin. He has authored or co-authored a number of books and articles on Spanish Golden Age authors such as Gil Vicente, Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Vega, Guillén de Castro, Ruiz de Alarcón, and Cervantes. He has also written on contemporary Spanish authors, among them Federico García Lorca and José Luis Alonso de Santos. His approach to the literature of the Spanish Golden Age is grounded in the fields of philosophy, religion, ethics, the history of ideas, and political issues. Christina H. Lee is Associate Research Scholar of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Cultures at Princeton University. Her research focuses on East-West encounters and the perception of ethnicity and class in the early modern period. Her publications include the first critical edition of Lope de Vega’s Mártires de Japón, the collection of essays Western Visions of the Far East in a Transpacific Age, 1522–1657, and peer-reviewed articles in Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Cervantes, Hispania, Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, among others. She is currently completing a monograph on Early Modern Spanish representations of lowborns, conversos, and moriscos. Edward H. Friedman is Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of Spanish, Professor of Comparative Literature, and director of the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. He has served as president of the Cervantes Society of America and editor of the Bulletin of the Comediantes. His primary field of research is early modern Spanish literature, with emphasis on the picaresque, Cervantes, and the comedia. His research also covers contemporary narrative and drama. Ignacio Arellano, Profesor Catedrático at the University of Navarra and a visiting professor at many universities around the world (North ­Carolina, Duke University, Dartmouth College, Pisa, Toulouse, Oxford, etc.), has published some 150 authored and edited volumes and close to 400 scholarly articles. A corresponding member of the Chilean and Bolivian Academies of Language, and President of the Asociación Internacional Siglo de Oro (1996–1999), in recent years he has focused on interdisciplinary projects such as expeditions to the jungles of Madidi (Bolivia). He has also published books of original poetry such as Vivir es caminar breve jornada, Canto solo para Lisi, and Los blues del cocodrilo.

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Cory A. Reed is an Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Texas at Austin, where he has received the President’s Associates Teaching Excellence Award. His research interests include Cervantes, the drama of early modern Spain, and Transatlantic Studies. He is the author of The Novelist as Playwright: Cervantes and the entremés nuevo and several journal articles on Cervantes and early modern drama. Currently he is completing a book on scientific and technological imagery in Don Quijote. Teresa Scott Soufas is Professor of Spanish at Temple University, where she also serves as Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. She has published numerous scholarly articles on 16th- and 17th-century Spanish literature and is the author of Melancholy and the Secular Mind in Spanish Golden Age Literature, Dramas of Distinction: A Study of Plays by Golden Age Women, and the edition of dramas, Women’s Acts: Plays by Women Dramatists of Spain’s Golden Age. Henry W. Sullivan was educated at Oxford and Harvard and is currently Professor of Spanish & Portuguese at Tulane University in New Orleans. His recent publications include Death Threats from British Petroleum & Life Beyond the Grave (original poetry) and Calderon in der deutschen Literatur, 1654–1980.

LIST OF FIGURES Figures 1–3 accompanying the article of Frederick A. de Armas 1. Titian (c. 1488–1576), Venus and Adonis. Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain. Photo Credit: Scala / Art Resource, NY .................. 2. Titian (c. 1488–1576), Danae, 1553–1554. Oil on canvas, 128 × 178 cm. Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain. Photo Credit: Scala / Art Resource NY ........................................................................... 3. Correggio (1489–1534), The Abduction of Ganymed, 1530. Oil on canvas, 163.5 × 70.5 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria. Photo credit: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY ................

45 49 54

Figures 1–5 accompanying the article of Maryrica Lottman 1. Mateo Pérez de Alesio, Saint Christopher (1584), Cathedral of Seville. Courtesy of Arte Historia ..................................................... 2. Theodore de Bry (1528–1598), Christopher Columbus receives presents from the Cacique Quacanagari on Hispaniola (currently Haiti). Engraving, Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BnF), Paris, France. Photo Credit: Snark / Art Resource, NY ...... 3. Spanish School, Christopher Columbus (1451–1506). Portraitgalerie, Schloss Ambras, Innsbruck, Austria. Photo Credit: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY ................................ 4. Jusepe de Ribera (1588–1656), Saint Christopher, 3rd-century Martyr (c. 1637). Museo del Prado, Madrid. Photo Credit: The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY ................................................... 5. Pordenone (c. 1483–1539), Giovanni Antonio de’ Sacchis, Madonna of Mercy with Saints Christopher and Joseph (1515). Duomo, Pordenone, Italy. Photo Credit: Alinari / Art Resource, NY .........................................................................................

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198 200 203

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INTRODUCTION Hilaire Kallendorf There is no current, up-to-date guide to research in this field. What is needed is a serious, panoramic, state-of-the-art handbook in English to chart a course for future work. This has been the goal for the current ­volume. While there seem to have been a cluster of “companion” volumes in the early 1970s—Margaret Wilson’s Spanish Drama of the Golden Age (1969), Sturgis Leavitt’s An Introduction to Golden Age Drama in Spain (1971), and E. O. Wilson and Duncan Moir’s The Golden Age: Drama, 1492–1700—the only major one for the rest of the last century was Melveena McKendrick’s magisterial Theatre in Spain, 1490–1700, published by Cambridge in 1989. Since the millennium two relevant books are of particular note: Jonathan Thacker’s A Companion to Golden Age Theatre (2007) and Laura Bass and Meg Greer’s Approaches to Teaching Early Modern Spanish Drama (2006), written for the popular MLA series. But the first of these, while extremely valuable, necessarily presents the perspective of only a single author; and the second, which includes an astounding 24 essays, is primarily pedagogical in focus. Hence the need for the present work. The first section, ‘Origins,’ begins with the birth of the early theater in Spain. An essay on closet drama, particularly the Celestina, by Enrique Fernández highlights both similarities and differences with dramatic works meant to be read versus those that were intended to be performed on stage. Another essay by Robert Bayliss looks at continuities with courtly love songs performed by troubadours, while still another by Frederick de Armas assesses to what degree the classical tradition remained relevant for the ‘new’ genre of comedias heralded by Lope de Vega in his Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo (1609). This section is rounded out by J. Enrique Duarte in an essay on the Spanish sacramental plays and their evolution. The second part, ‘Themes,’ explores some commonly-discussed subject areas for comedia research: honor (Robert Lauer), wife murder (Matthew Stroud), marriage (María Mercedes Carrión), etc. To these frequent topics for commentary are added some more unusual ones such as animals (Adrienne Martín) and burlesque entremeses, or comic interludes (treated

2

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by Ted Bergman), which were written to be performed between the acts of more standard comedias but are often excluded from modern critical editions. Part III, ‘Places,’ examines the physical spaces in which comedias were performed as well as places re-created on the stage (for example, the cities and gardens described so vividly by Enrique García Santo-Tomás). It also reaches geographically beyond Spain to other parts of the Hispanic world, including Portugal—where Gil Vicente’s theater is explored by Manuel Delgado—and the American colonies, which make their appearance in Maryrica Lottman’s essay on Lope de Vega’s representations of Columbus and Saint Christopher. Finally, this section ends with an essay by Christina Lee on imaginary geographies and exoticized representations of far-off places like Asia. Here we see radical Otherness intrude into the consciousness of both dramatists and audiences in early modern Spain, much as the Spaniards themselves intruded into the countries they tried to conquer and evangelize. Finally, Part IV, ‘Intersections,’ finds points of contact between the comedia and other genres and fields of inquiry, such as the picaresque, emblems, science, medicine, and psychoanalysis. Here Ed Friedman astutely analyzes what he terms a shared picaresqe “sensibility,” while Ignacio Arellano rehearses an immense repertoire of emblems appearing on stage. Cory Reed traces new developments in science and technology during this period as those were reflected in different plays written and performed at the court and in the corrales. In a metacritical turn, Teresa Scott Soufas takes the opportunity to reflect upon current debates over periodization as she uses the motif of melancholy to claim for Spain its rightful place in the broader European transition to modernity. As the volume draws to a close, Henry Sullivan gets to have the last word on the topic of Jacques Lacan and the tragic drama, an under-studied ­phenomenon in a field perhaps wrongfully labeled “comedia studies.” This volume is destined to be cited often. It will serve as a port of entry for scholars and advanced graduate students who wish to survey recent developments in this field. The sheer star power of the lineup of contributors is compelling, and makes the book worthy of the honor of inclusion in the new Renaissance Society of America’s Texts and Studies Series. That almost all of the authors accepted their commissions/topic assignments instantly would seem to indicate that, as our esteemed Brill editor Julian Deahl put it, we had really hit a nerve. Across the board, the contributors also completed their essays in record time. This book is as multifaceted as the field it purports to introduce, and of course (in the best tradition



introduction

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of postmodernity) it is still open-ended. But it is my fervent hope that the essays presented here will inspire a whole new generation of comedia scholars, for this is hands-down one of the most fun and rewarding fields within which to be working in early modern studies today. Enjoy the performance!

PART one

ORIGINS

CELESTINA AS CLOSET DRAMA Enrique Fernández Rivera The (Tragi)comedia de Calisto y Melibea, or Celestina as it is also known, belongs to a variety of dramatic literature written to be read aloud, viva voce, by one or several persons in front of a small audience, rather than to be performed by actors on stage. This variety of dramatic literature, which never reached the same success as onstage theater in early modern Spain, is referred to as “closet drama” in English. This expression tries to convey the intimacy of the reading by a group of friends in closed quarters.1 The vocalized reading of the dramatic text in front of a reduced audience is one of the distinguishing characteristics of the specific genre to which Celestina belongs: the humanistic comedy, a genre that dates back to the Middle Ages and has strong roots in antiquity. But Celestina introduced new conventions to the genre. Eventually, Celestina constituted itself as the founder of a new genre, the celestinesca, which did not remain confined to its dramatic origins.2 The medieval disappearance, mostly on moral grounds, of the GrecoRoman tradition of theater played by actors on the stages of permanent buildings open to the general public does not mean that all dramatic activity disappeared. In spite of the scarcity of documentation, accounts of other dramatic spectacles survived in many European countries. In the case of Spain, we know of representations of sacred scenes in churches

1  The term closet drama appeared at the beginning of the 19th century and was used often in a negative context by authors who complained about the impossibility of finding stages to represent their dramatic creations; see Jonas Barish, “The Problem of Closet Drama in the Italian Renaissance,” Italica 71.1 (1994): 4–31, at p. 28, note 1. Today, the term is normally used to refer to 16th- and 17th-century English plays that were not meant to or could not be put on stage; it is also used for some English plays written by women in the Romantic period that were not staged. For an overview of the concept of closet theater and an introduction to its study in English literature, see Marta Straznicky, “Recent Studies in Closet Drama,” English Literary Renaissance 28 (1988): 142–60, and Straznicky, “Closet Drama,” in A Companion to Renaissance Drama, ed. Arthur F. Kinney (Oxford, 2002), pp. 416–29. In German, the expression Lesedrama or Buchdrama is used for a varied corpus of creations from different periods, such as Goethe’s Faust. In Spanish, there is no specific word to refer to this kind of theater but the ambiguous teatro para leer, or the more recent and imprecise novela dialogada, which has been often applied to Celestina. 2 Pierre Heugas, La Celestine et sa descendance directe (Bordeaux, 1973).

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and other spaces. Also, through the repeated condemnation of religious and civil authorities we know of some sort of improvised laymen’s spectacles that could take place on improvised stages, sometimes even in the churches. These events implied a combination of sacred and profane elements, such as performances by actors pretending to be shepherds who recited ludicrous lines. But to judge from the surviving testimonies, these dramatic spectacles and their texts—if they were not improvised, as was probably most common—were artless shows that paled in comparison to the elaborate pieces that the theater of antiquity had produced.3 Besides these pious and popular spectacles, beginning in the 14th century more sophisticated dramatic texts that connected directly with the Roman tradition were produced at universities and in humanistic circles. The variety that interests us here is the one referred to as humanistic comedy (comedia humanística in Spanish; commedia umanistica in Italian).4 Although the plays of this type were not homogenous, they presented enough common characteristics to qualify as a genre. They were written between the 14th and the 16th centuries by university professors, students, and members of circles associated with the humanistic revival of the period. These plays can be found in several parts of Europe, but they thrived especially in Italy, perhaps as a reflection of the early onset of humanism in that area. The influence of Roman comedies, especially those of Terence, is noticeable in their form and content. As in their

3 Another form of dramatic performance was the Eclogae, which combined the bucolic tradition of antiquity, the religious traditions of the Nativity scenes, and some of the more realistic shepherds of the contemporary popular theater. A detailed description of all these manifestations of medieval and early modern theater in Spain can be found in some of the manuals that deal with this period. In English, a classic manual is N. D. Shergold, A History of the Spanish Stage: From Medieval Times until the End of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1967). More recently, one can see Ronald E. Surtz, The Birth of a Theater: Dramatic Convention in the Spanish Theater from Juan del Encina to Lope de Vega (Princeton, 1979); and Charlotte Stern, The Medieval Theater in Castile (Binghamton, 1996). 4 The classic analysis of Celestina within the tradition of previous forms of theater, such as the Roman comedy, the elegiac comedy, and the humanistic comedy, can be seen in María Rosa Lida de Malkiel, La originalidad artística de La Celestina (Buenos Aires, 1962), pp. 27–78, where the debates about the genre of Celestina are also summarized. For the description of the humanistic comedy in the subsequent sections I follow, besides Lida de Malkiel, José Luis Canet Vallés, De la comedia humanística al teatro representable: Égloga de la tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea, Penitencia de amor, Comedia thebayda, Comedia hipólita, Comedia serafina (Valencia, 1993). See also a shorter and more recent version in Canet Vallés, “Género y dramaturgia en La Celestina,” in La dramaturgia de La Celestina, ed. José María Ruano de la Haza and Jesús G. Maestro (Vigo, 2008), pp. 27–42; and Keith Whinnom, “The Form of Celestina: Dramatic Antecedents,” Celestinesca 17.2 (1993): 129–45.



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Roman models, the typical plot of a humanistic comedy was that of a young man who has to confront an older figure of authority to pursue his amorous interests. Often, the intervention of a resourceful servant, the servus fallax of the Roman comedy, helps the young man succeed. But in spite of their debt to Roman comedy, the humanistic comedies tend to deal with contemporary reality and their themes tend to deviate considerably from those of the classical tradition. Some deal with historical events of a near or distant past; others, with goliardic elements, such as criticism of contemporary customs, including the misconduct of members of the church, the foolish behaviors of lovers, etc. Lida de Malkiel encapsulated the humanistic comedies’ relation to the Roman comedy by describing them as shallow imitations of Plautus and Terence that were very influenced by realistic humor, the Italian humanists’ ambience, and practices and themes of medieval theater.5 The medieval inheritance is clearly noticeable, for instance, in the inclusion of thematic elements taken from fabliaux, novelle, and other popular narratives of the period.6 Humanistic comedies present also many points in common with another learned genre of the medieval theater, the elegiac comedies, which were short dialogues, influenced by Ovid’s elegies, written in Latin distichs in the 12th century. The humanistic comedies, however, are longer and can be written in verse or in prose. Most of them are written in Latin, but some are written in the vernacular. The fact that the vast majority of humanistic comedies were written in Latin results from their being the product of universities and humanist circles, where Latin was the language of instruction, study, and the international exchange of ideas. Members of the intellectual elite wrote the comedies not to be played by actors in spectacles open to a general public, but to be read aloud in more or less restricted gatherings of their erudite peers. Most of the comedies were probably written by professors or students as examples or exercises for the courses of rhetoric, which were an important component of the curriculum at universities of the time. As a matter of fact, the humanistic comedies that circulated the most through Europe and reached the greatest popularity were precisely texts originally written as scholarly exercises, such as Dolos, Poliscena, Poliodorus, or Philogenia.7 Their pedagogical origins are manifest in highly elaborate

5 Lida de Malkiel, La originalidad, p. 42. 6 Canet Vallés, De la comedia humanística, p. 16. 7 Ibid.

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debates in which the characters repeatedly resort to traditional rhetorical figures, intermixed with quotations from classical sources, to prove their arguments. The results are didactic plays loaded with erudition in which long and convoluted monologues abound. The levels of rhetorical artifice are such that the characters’ verisimilitude may be affected, as when servants and other lowly characters are presented speaking like very learned persons. Also, so much space is taken up by erudite rhetorical content that the plots are compelled to be simpler than in the Roman comedies, in which continuous misunderstandings change the course of action repeatedly and, after many vicissitudes, lead to unexpected endings. The characteristics of the humanistic comedy can be illustrated with the example of Celestina. To begin with, Celestina fulfills the condition of being created in an erudite ambience since it is the product of the leading intellectual center of early modern Spain, the University of Salamanca. In the prefatory letter that Fernando de Rojas added to Celestina in the 1500 Toledo edition, he writes that, when he studied law at the University of Salamanca, he ran into some “papers” with the first act of what later would be Celestina, which he finished during 15 days of school ­vacation.8 Whether this statement is true, or instead perhaps we are dealing here with some form of authorial modesty, has been debated by critics. ­Assuming that Rojas’s statement is true, as most critics are inclined to believe today, the first act of Celestina was an incomplete humanistic comedy, the product of a very learned person who, although he wrote in Spanish, had to be quite familiar with the classical sources of antiquity and with recent humanist writings in their original Latin form.9 From a pedagogical point of view, the ideal of docere et delectare was clearly present in these papers, as Rojas emphasizes in his prefatory materials. The contemporary plot is 8 Fernando de Rojas, La Celestina, ed. Dorothy S. Severin (Madrid, 1997), p. 69. 9 Theories about the authorship of Celestina are many and complex. Today, critics tend to believe Rojas’s statement about the genesis of the play. A theory that emphasizes its scholarly genesis is that Celestina is the product of a group of erudite members of the Salamanca community, a kind of literary workshop; see Gustavo Illades Aguiar, La Celestina en el taller salmantino (Mexico, 1999). Charles B. Faulhaber, “ ‘Celestina de Palacio’: Rojas’s Holograph Manuscript,” Celestinesca 15.1 (1991): 3–52, identifies the manuscript traditionally known as the “Celestina de Palacio,” which contains only the first act of Celestina, as a holograph by Rojas’s hand. Other critics consider this copy a testimony of a parallel manuscript line in the reception of Celestina. For a summary of the debate about this manuscript, see Antonio Sánchez Sánchez-Serrano, “Otro punto de vista sobre el ‘Manuscrito de Palacio’ Ms. 1520” in La Celestina, V Centenario (1499–1999): actas del Congreso Internacional (Salamanca, Talavera de La Reina, Toledo, La Puebla de Montalbán, 1999), ed. Felipe B. Pedraza Jiménez, Gemma Gómez Rubio, and Rafael González Cañal (Cuenca, 2001), pp. 273–81.



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in the most pure tradition of Roman comedy and humanistic comedy: the piquant story of a noble young man who encounters obstacles to fulfilling his amorous pursuits, but, with the help of one of his servants, enlists the assistance of an old bawd to gain access to the girl of his dreams. The conversation between the characters is full of colores rhetorici, and of allusions to religious and classical auctoritates that are thrown back and forth by the interlocutors in their efforts to persuade or dissuade each other. Furthermore, many of these rhetorical techniques are artfully abused since well-known maxims and quoted passages are forced to express the opposite of what they intend in their original context. For instance, many sentences of Seneca about the brevity of life are used by Celestina not in their traditional role of memento mori and the consequent call for good acts, but to convince Melibea to enjoy her youth by giving in to Calisto’s request. The intended readers, those versed in rhetoric and those studying it, would identify and enjoy these and other sophisms that Celestina and the other characters often use in their argumentations.10 That Celestina—both the original first act and Rojas’s continuation— was conceived as dramatic literature in spite of its didactic purpose and highly rhetorical content is evident by the fact that it is written in pure dialogue. However, the word comedia that is part of the title page in the first edition is insufficient proof of Celestina’s dramatic nature because, at the time, the word comedia was not necessarily used to mean a theatrical play. Comedia often alluded to any literary creation with a happy ending and in which the characters were not kings or nobles but common ­people.11 Dante’s Divina commedia, which was never intended for a dramatic production, is a good example of how loosely the term could be used. In the prologue to the extended 21-act edition of Celestina, Rojas confesses that, having found from some of its readers that the word come­ dia was not appropriate for the sad ending of his play, he had renamed it tragicomedia. Once again, although this is also a term strongly associated with the Roman theater, it is not being used here in the meaning of a theatrical play to be performed onstage, but instead to indicate a plot that mixes sad and happy events. Over the following centuries the title of the 10 The intentional alteration and misplacement of maxims and proverbs in Celestina has been interpreted variously as a form of parody, or as a subversive practice. See Louise Fothergill-Payne, Seneca and Celestina (Cambridge, 1988), for the use of Senecan sentences in the book as a parody of the neo-Stoic trend of the period; for the parody of religious elements, see Manuel da Costa Fontes, The Art of Subversion in Inquisitorial Spain: Rojas and Delicado (West Lafayette, 2005). 11  Canet Vallés, De la comedia humanística, p. 17.

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book underwent several changes. Libro de Calisto y Melibea soon became common, a title that predisposes readers to believe that they are going to encounter a narrative book, even a novel. In other documents of the period, such as Rojas’s will, the book is referred to simply as Calisto. Eventually, the name of Celestina, the most picturesque character in the book, took over; and her name by itself, or accompanied by other qualifying words, became the standard form to refer to it, as is customary today. As we have said, the exclusively dialogical format of the book is the main feature that reveals its original dramatic nature. The text does not contain any didascaliae or stage directions, but this absence does not prevent one from following the plot since the many changes of scene are easily understood by the irruption of new characters and by references in their words to where the action is taking place.12 However, the 16 acts into which the first edition of the play divides the action—not to mention the 21 acts of the extended version—are clearly not suitable for a conventional representation on stage since too many interruptions and changes of scene are necessary. But this was not a problem for the type of dramatized reading for which the play was intended. In the prologue that Fernando de Rojas added to the 1514 Valencia edition, referring to how the book is to be read, he writes: “quando diez personas se juntaren a oír esta comedia” (when ten people gather to listen to the reading of this play).13 This clearly indicates that the type of “consumption” Rojas had in mind for his creation was some form of public reading in front of a small, intimate group of people, not a conventional performance with actors on a stage in front of a larger audience. Rojas goes on to explain that, even among this reduced group of listeners, different reactions are to be expected: some will pay attention to the common proverbs in the play and praise them; some will enjoy the plot. The best listeners, however, will be those who, while enjoying the plot and the witticisms, will pay careful attention to the many sententiae by famous philosophers embedded

12 The location of the action at the beginning of the play is an exception to the clarity of where the action takes place in the other scenes. Although the plot summaries added later indicate that the first scene takes place in a garden, some critics think that Rojas misunderstood the papers he found and that the scene takes place in a church. See Martín de Riquer, “Fernando de Rojas y el primer acto de La Celestina,” Revista de filología española 41 (1957): 373–95; and, more recently, Theodore Beardsley, “Celestina Act I: ‘Ubi Sunt?’,” Hispanic Review 52 (1982): 335–41. 13 Rojas, pp. 80–81.



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in the text and memorize them for later use.14 This last group seems to be the ideal audience: a small group of learned individuals who are able to recognize the many sayings and anecdotes from wise men of antiquity that, often without their originator being mentioned, pop up in the dialogues of Celestina.15 For this intellectual task, the lack of a conventional stage and theatrical machinery, as well as the relaxed ambience fostered by a small group of acquaintances, are assets because the listeners are not distracted from their assignment of extracting wisdom, a job which exceeds pure esthetic enjoyment.16 Celestina’s originally intended dramatic nature is also hinted at in the format in which Rojas reports to have found the first act that he later developed. The papers he found were most likely a manuscript copy appropriate for a close group of players/readers to share in a reading performance. It is possible that these papers were one of several copies resulting from similar previous readings since, given the moderate extension of the text contained therein, several copies could have been made for the use of those involved in the performance. Rojas’s finished product, La (Tragi)comedia de Calisto y Melibea, is a much larger version that became a printed book, which immediately enjoyed enormous success. A considerable number of editions followed, even translations into

14 The important role that rhetoric plays in Celestina has been duly pointed out in many studies, such as Charles F. Fraker, Celestina: Genre and Rhetoric (London, 1990). To the modern reader, so far removed from the use of classical rhetoric, the many proverbs and sentences in Celestina are tiresome erudition, a mere hindrance to the development of the plot. This material, however, was important in the 16th century not only from a doctrinal point of view, i.e., the wisdom it contained, but also from a pragmatic one. For their writing, learned people of the period used to resort to auxiliary instruments, especially compendiums that contained sentences and examples from antiquity. In some cases, the editions of classical works included an appendix in which some of the most memorable phrases were listed alphabetically or thematically. A book like Celestina had for the reader of the period the added value of serving as a quasi-compendium, given the multitude of sentences it contained. 15 More detailed information on public readings of the Celestina can be seen in Isidro J. Rivera, “Performance and Prelection in the Early Printed Editions of Celestina,” Celesti­ nesca 22.2 (1998): 3–20; Ivy A. Corfis, “Celestina as Drama: Commentary by a 16th Century Reader,” Romance Philology 48.1 (1993), 33–45; and Françoise Maurizi, “ ‘Dize el modo que se ha de tener leyendo esta (Tragi)Comedia’: breve aproximación al paratexto de La Celes­ tina,” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies (Liverpool) 74 (1997): 151–57. 16 There was also an old tradition of considering tragedies, especially Seneca’s, as pieces intended not to be staged but to be read. This practice emphasized the didactic/cathartic value that was often associated with tragedy, especially Seneca, who had been co-opted by Christianity as a precursor. To read instead of staging helped to obviate the graphic scenes of violence, rape, and gore that Senecan tragedies contained; see Jonas Barish, “The Problem of Closet Drama,” p. 7.  

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other languages. A hint that the buyers of the early printed Celestina were expected to perceive their acquired volume as dramatic literature can be assumed from the fact that it included illustrations taken from the very successful 1493 Lyon edition of Terence’s complete works.17 Although the format of the book is not exclusively associated with the narrative genres, the connection established in later centuries between books and narrative, especially the novel, has tended to eclipse the clearly dramatic origins of Celestina. As the 16th century progressed, dramatic literature found its natural medium in the public theaters; but, in spite of the existence of printed collections of plays, they never had the printing success of novels and other genres. However, this situation did not apply when the first editions of Celestina came out early in the century, a period in which the printed novel had still not known the success of later days and dramatic literature was not yet confined to performance in public theaters. Unfortunately, no testimonies of public readings of Celestina have survived. Besides, the frequency and exact form of dramatized readings are difficult to ascertain today because the contemporary testimonies we have are often disfigured by the impact of inaccurate preconceptions of how theater was performed in antiquity. In his enormously influential Ethymologiae, the medieval archbishop Isidore of Seville (died 636) had given several erroneous indications of how Roman theatrical plays and other spectacles were performed. Isidore transmitted Patristic hostility toward all Roman public spectacles and grouped the theater with the circus and similar entertainments. Most importantly, he misunderstood several passages by ancient writers and grammarians, and claimed that the Roman plays were put on stage not by actors but by performers who simply mimed the actions that a reader, normally the author, read in front of the audience from a pulpit. Part of this confusion may originate from the fact that Isidore did not distinguish between the genres of theater and satire in Rome, the latter being where mimes were most common. The result is that Isidore’s misconceptions often influenced contemporary descriptions of dramatized performances from early modernity, rendering these accounts of little use to us.18 17 Publius Terentius Affer, Opera (Lyon, 1493). For a detailed comparison between the Lyon 1493 illustrated edition of Terence’s comedies and the Burgos 1499 edition of Celes­ tina, see David Rodríguez-Solás, “A la vanguardia del libro ilustrado: El Terencio de Lyón (1493) y La Celestina de Burgos (1499),” Bulletin of Spanish Studies 86.1 (2009): 1–17. 18 Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive Originum Libri XX, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford, 1911). See also Joseph R. Jones, “Isidore and the Theater,” Comparative Drama 16.1 (1982): 26–48.



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Given the lack of reliable testimonies, the words of Alonso de Proaza, professor of rhetoric at the University of Valencia and the corrector (proofreader) of the 1501 Toledo edition of Celestina, are the best indication we have of how these readings went. At the end of his edition, Proaza added six stanzas that are descriptively headed, “Dize el modo que se ha de tener leyendo esta tragicomedia” (On how to read this tragicomedia): Si amas y quieres a mucha atención / leyendo a Calisto mover los oyentes, / cumple que sepas hablar entre dientes, / a vezes con gozo, esperança y pa­­ ssión, / a vezes ayrado con gran turbación / finge leyendo mil artes y modos, / pregunta y responde por boca de todos, / llorando y riyendo en tiempo y sazón.19 (If you want to move your audience / when you are reading this play / make sure you know how to mutter, / to talk with joy, or with hope and passion, / sometimes as if you were irate and disturbed. / Assume all kind of voices and tones, / when asking or answering, / laugh and cry at the right moment.)

The stanzas describe a performance in which a single reader incarnates all the different roles in the play, lending his or her voice to all the characters. This monophonic reading is, however, only one of the forms in which this kind of play could be performed. There are testimonies that suggest that in some performances, the lines corresponding to each character in a play would be assigned to different readers. Most readers in the early modern period probably excelled at this task since, in spite of the recent arrival of the printing press and the subsequent popularization of books, they were still part of a highly oral culture of medieval origin. Although by the early modern period private silent reading was well established, a widespread penchant for reading aloud can be seen as reminiscent of vocalized reading, the common form of reading during the Middle Ages.20 If until this point we have emphasized aspects in which Celestina conforms to the conventions of humanistic comedy, we must now point out the crucial areas in which it deviates from it. Although, as we said before, humanistic comedies written in the vernacular exist, the vast majority of them are written in Latin. Furthermore, some of the vernacular plays often adduced as examples, such as La venexiana, were actually written after Celestina and show its influence. Furthermore, the singularity of Celestina 19  Rojas, p. 345. 20 Roger Chartier, “Leisure and Sociability: Reading Aloud in Early Modern Europe,” in Urban Life in the Renaissance, ed. Susan Zimmerman and Ronald F. E. Weissman (Newark, 1989), pp. 103–20.

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is more noticeable if we take into account that Spain did not produce many humanistic comedies. Celestina can be considered, then, the highest achievement of the genre of the humanistic comedy, but in an unexpected language and from an unexpected country. The factor that makes Celestina outshine and distance itself from all other humanistic comedies is its exceptional artistic quality. Celestina resembles the conventions of humanistic comedies in many formal aspects—its use of prose, of medieval and not classical division of action, of impressionistic space and time, of the many asides, etc.21—but is clearly superior to them in quality. So much attention and praise has been heaped on Celestina over the centuries that we cannot doubt its status as a masterpiece. Contrarily, the humanistic comedies that have survived have languished in oblivion and are only known to a few specialists. Celestina’s influence on later literature has reached beyond the dramatic genres. Its most direct followers—Segunda Celestina (1534), Tercera parte de la tragicomedia de Celestina (1536), etc.—constitute a genre by themselves, the celestinesca, in which didactic aspects are downplayed, while piquant adventures and descriptions of a meretricious ambience are emphasized. Some of these descendants, such as Francisco Delicado’s La lozana andaluza (1528), may not contain the word Celestina in their title page, or even anywhere in the whole book, but their debt to this precursor is undeniable. Another more distant member of the ­celestinesca family is Lope de Vega’s La Dorotea (1632), which is an acción en prosa written as dialogue, but not intended to be performed on stage. The picaresque novel that developed in the 16th century and continued in the 17th century is also related to Celestina, if not in form, at least in shared ambience and characters. Due to this varied progeny, one must not be surprised by the inclusion of Celestina in Menéndez Pelayo’s Orígenes de la novela series at the end of the 19th century. This critic saw in this play the features that later would become trademarks of the novel. His position has been defended by many scholars, but this does not alter the fact that Celestina was born as a dramatic piece.22 Some 16th- and 17th-century Spanish comedias contain characters inspired by Celestina, but it would be very farfetched to find direct formal influences in these pieces, which are written in verse and are neither especially didactic nor rich in senten­ tiae or erudition. The character Celestina reappeared also in the popular

21  Lida de Malkiel, La originalidad artística, p. 48. 22 Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, Orígenes de la novela, vol. 3 (Madrid, 1962).



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sainetes and other forms of short theater of the 18th and 19th centuries. An example is Hartzenbusch’s Los polvos de la madre Celestina (1841), which is a comedia de magia that only recovers some amusing aspects of the character Celestina, completely ignoring her tragic overtones.23 More recently, theatrical plays loosely inspired by Celestina, like Alfonso Sastre’s Trage­ dia fantástica de la gitana Celestina, are so removed from Rojas’s book that any kind of formal, or even thematic, influence would be difficult to ascertain.24 The many direct adaptations of Celestina that have been performed on stage (and on screen) in the 20th and 21st centuries have shortened the monologues and the debates, and eliminated the sententiae so that the story can be conveniently staged in two hours.25 The oblivion into which the humanistic comedy fell does not mean that theater created to be read instead of staged disappeared completely. The closet drama that we mentioned at the beginning flourished as a genre written by women in England during the Romantic period. Goethe’s masterpiece Faust (1790) is called “a tragedy” on its original title page, even if it is a Lesedrama clearly not intended to be represented but read. In Spanish, however, the formula of the teatro para leer has not been very prolific, placing Celestina in a peculiar niche of its own, an isolated masterpiece of a genre that has not survived and whose inheritance has been co-opted both by theater and the novel. This peculiar situation was perfectly encapsulated by Lida de Malkiel, who called Celestina the outstanding representative of a forgotten species.26

23 Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch, Los polvos de la madre Celestina, in Teatro de Juan E. Hartzenbusch, vol. 2 (Madrid, 1890), pp. 127–298. See also Enrique Fernández Rivera, “La Celestina en la comedia de magia: Los polvos de la madre Celestina (1841) de Hartzenbusch,” Theatralia 10 (2008): 89–104. 24 Alfonso Sastre, La taberna fantástica; Tragedia fantástica de la gitana Celestina (Madrid, 1992). 25 Many modern adaptations, new versions, and other plays and performances inspired by Celestina have been regularly reviewed by Joseph Snow and others in the journal Celesti­ nesca since its inception in 1976. 26 “Celestina no es, como el ave fénix, el individuo único de una especie única, sino el individuo egregio de una olvidada especie” (Lida de Malkiel, Originalidad, p. 77).

Courtly Love and the Comedia Robert Bayliss Despite the broad array of theatrical activity in early modern Spain, the mainstays of the professional theater industry’s popular success were the modes of secular comedy and tragicomedy developed during the 16th century and popularized by Lope de Vega heading into the 17th. These comedies, including comedias de enredo and comedias de capa y espada, invariably build plots based on a mode of representing heterosexual love and desire that was hardly new to early modern Spain. Courtly love, originally developed by 12th-century Provençal troubadours, exercised a decisive influence on both lyric poetry and prose and verse narrative throughout Western Europe from the Middle Ages through the early modern period.1 Understanding its role in Spain’s theatrical “golden age” is therefore a convenient angle from which to perceive the ways in which the comedia connects with broader European literary traditions, but more importantly, this approach can contribute to current efforts among scholars to explain why the popular theater of early modern Spain generated considerable controversy.2 Despite its privileged status today as a canonical field of study among theater historians and Hispanists, the popular secular theater of early modern Spain did not originally enjoy such cultural prestige. A great deal of attention has been paid in recent years to the tenuous social standing of the theater industry in the late 16th and early 17th centuries: to the frequent indictments from the pulpit and from the pens of numerous arbitristas for its corrupting influence on the public, to its occasional prohibition and the constant campaigns to ban it permanently, and to the

1  The seminal study tracing the development of Spanish representations of desire as they relate to broader European movements in the Middle Ages and early modern period remains Otis Green, Spain and the Western Tradition: The Castilian Mind from El Cid to Calderón (Madison, 1963). For a more recent analysis that is in step with this chapter’s conceptualization of courtly love, see Robert Bayliss, The Discourse of Courtly Love in ­Seventeenth-Century Spanish Theater (Lewisburg, 2008). 2 Emilio Cotarelo’s Bibliografía de las controversias sobre la licitud del teatro en España (Madrid, 1904) remains an essential source for documentation of this controversy. Recent studies building on that documentation to explain the question of the “licitness” of the comedia include Thomas A. O’Connor’s book Love in the ‘Corral’: Conjugal Spirituality and Antitheatrical Polemic in Early Modern Spain (New York, 2000).

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general disrepute ascribed to its professional practitioners.3 What these issues share in common is a cultural discomfort with how popular comedies of the period both represented and stimulated desire, in other words, with their onstage performances of desire and with the effects of those performances on the viewing public. If popular Spanish comedy’s verbal and visual performances of desire generated controversy, an analysis of how such performances drew upon and in some ways reinvented courtly love is well worth our attention. The fact that such attention has yet to be paid by many comedia scholars is less an oversight than a consequence of literary historiography. The academic notion of a courtly love tradition developed in the last years of the 19th century and into the early 20th, just as many academic fields and disciplines as we know them (including those of “national” literatures) were taking shape.4 Because courtly love was understood at that time as a code of amorous conduct along the lines of Andreas Capellanus’s Ars amatori, its presence beyond medieval France became a question of the extent to which the code was obeyed or maintained.5 Many of the conventions and tropes that we now associate with the tradition—love from afar, love-as-suffering, the idealization of the lady, and so on—came to constitute a sine qua non list of attributes without which the term courtly love was considered inapplicable. The periodization of literary fields further contributed to this problem, as courtly love was considered to be (and still is by many) a strictly medieval phenomenon. Of course, none of these disciplinary and institutional concerns have any bearing on the extent to which courtly love inspired early modern Spanish playwrights, but they do suggest that rethinking courtly love itself is needed in order for us to explore its contribution to the comedia. A more productive way of conceiving the notion of a courtly love tradition is to consider it as a mode of discourse, originally of medieval origin, that dominated the lyric traditions of Western Europe from the 3 See, for example, Ursula L. Heise, “Transvestism and the Stage Controversy in Spain and England, 1580–1680,” Theatre Journal 44.3 (1992): 357–74; and José Luís Suárez García, “La controversia sobre la licitud del teatro en el reinado de Carlos V,” in Looking at the Comedia in the Year of the Quincentennial (Proceedings of the 1992 Symposium on Golden Age Drama at The University of Texas, El Paso), ed. Barbara Mujica and Sharon D. Voros (Lanham, 1993), pp. 235–43. 4 See Gaston Paris, “Lancelot du Lac, II: Le Conte de la Charrette,” Romania 12 (1883): 459–534; C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition (Oxford, 1936); and Denis de Rougemont, L’amour et l’Occident [Love in the Western World] (Paris, 1939). 5 Andreas Capellanus, Ars Amatoria [The Art of Courtly Love], trans. John Jay Parry (New York, 1985).



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“high” Middle Ages through the 17th century. The public theater of early modern Spain, whose playscripts were also generally written in verse, borrows from the courtly love tradition in numerous ways, including the ­characterization of its protagonists, the words chosen to express desire and persuade the would-be lover, and the ways in which plot and action are conceived to privilege the plight and realization of heterosexual desire. A discourse of courtly desire is apparent at all of these levels and more, and critical theory has equipped us well to move beyond early 20th-century understandings of the phenomenon and to treat it as such. Michel Foucault, for example, has taught us to recognize the power of discourse to organize its subjects and subject-positions along lines of race, class, and gender.6 Gender studies in particular offers productive critical tools for studying courtly love’s treatment of the sexes, especially in terms of its use by one sex to objectify and characterize the other. In short, we may now be able to access discursive features of courtly love regardless of its geographical or historical circumstances, and to recognize the discursive legacy of the medieval troubadours in early modern Spanish theater. Because of its diffusiveness and ubiquity, arriving at a hard definition of the discourse of courtly love is a challenge. We may begin to do so by identifying the discursive paradigm first established by the troubadours: a male subject reflects upon his experience of desire, which is generally inspired by a passive, silent, and absent female object. While some poets (most notably Petrarch) would later develop a stronger capacity for physical and spiritual descriptions of the female object of desire, the troubadours’ indelible legacy fixes the attention of courtly discourse squarely on the male subject and his experience of that desire. In this sense the agonizing and pining of Calisto in the opening act of Celestina, notwithstanding Sempronio’s comical commentary on it, serves as an excellent example: whom Calisto loves, at least while he suffers from afar, is far less important than the fact that it so devastates him.7 Self-absorption is a key element to the discourse of courtly love, and (as in Celestina) it is often exploited in Golden Age drama for comic effect. This self-absorbed discursive dynamic allows considerable room for how and to what extent the object of desire is explicitly treated. As her physical presence is not required (some scholars would go so far as to say

6 See especially Michel Foucault, Les mots et les choses: une archéologie des sciences humaines [The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences] (Paris, 1966). 7 Fernando de Rojas, La Celestina (Madrid, 1968).

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that her absence is required), she is thus described metaphorically and abstractly. Physical desire may inspire an erotic depiction, as when Jean de Meun’s Romance of the Rose poet describes opening the petals of his coveted rosebud, spilling seed, and watching it swell as a result; but the discourse of courtly love is equally capable of depicting the poet’s desire in platonic and spiritual terms, as Dante depicts Beatrice and as Don Quijote parodically imagines Dulcinea.8 There is indeed in the courtly love tradition considerable oscillation between the erotic and the spiritual, which may in part explain much of the confusion that the term courtly love has inspired over the years. During the last quarter of the 20th century, in fact, the very existence of a “courtly love tradition” was treated with considerable skepticism. The ethical orientation of the medieval “cult of Mary,” in which the virgin mother of Jesus is spiritually revered in language that borrows heavily from courtly love, and the subversive eroticism of texts such as the Romance of the Rose lie on what appear to be opposite ends of a moral spectrum. How, then, can they be treated as co-participants in a literary tradition? It is only when courtly love is identified as a discursive mode capable of being employed for diametrically opposed ethical ends that an answer is possible. In short, courtly love’s focus on the poet’s self-absorbed treatment of his experience of desire for an absent object inherently allows its discourse to be applied to innumerable contexts and for a variety of purposes. This discursive framework is anything but static and repetitive over its centuries of evolution: what was originally a playful mode of performance through which court poets exchanged love songs (with often thinly veiled erotic content) would eventually develop through the creative imaginations of such European writers as Dante, Boccaccio, Jean de Meun, Marie de France, Chrétien de Troyes, Petrarch, and Shakespeare. Virtually all of the major medieval and early modern lyric poets in Spain, from Garcilaso and the petrarquistas to Góngora and Quevedo, would also engage the topoi and discourse of courtly love in some way. Lope de Vega’s own career as a lyric poet reflects an evolving understanding of and attitude toward courtly discourse, from the more traditional Rimas (1602) to the more satirical Rimas humanas y divinas del licenciado Tomé de Burguillos (1634).9 8 Jean de Meun and Guillaume de Lorris, Le roman de la rose [The Romance of the Rose] (Paris, 1974); Dante Alighieri, La divina commedia [The Divine Comedy] (Milan, 1988); Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha (Asheville, 1998). 9 Félix Lope de Vega Carpio, Rimas humanas y otros versos, ed. Antonio Carreño (Barcelona, 1998); Rimas de Tomé de Burguillos, ed. Antonio Carreño (Madrid, 2003).



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Clearly, despite our historiographical tradition, courtly love is not an exclusively medieval phenomenon. It has proven to be malleable and adaptable enough to persist as a mainstay for writers intent on representing the subjective experience of desire despite the myriad social, cultural, and geopolitical changes that occured in Europe between the 12th and 18th centuries. For medieval and early modern Neoplatonists like Dante, courtly love allows the personal experience of desire to be mapped according to a divine cosmology, or to serve as a metaphor for one’s love of God. For more satirical writers like Boccaccio and Juan Ruiz, however, the abstract discourse of courtly love allows for representations of desire that are more erotic and subversive of established Christian doctrine. With a wink and a nudge, the desiring subject may engage the discourse of courtly love to allude indirectly to the unspeakable and even the censurable. One should not, however, simply dismiss courtly love as a kind of secret code for illicit subject matter; while avoiding the red-herring issue of the poet’s “sincerity,” it can be said that sexual innuendo is apparent in some instances of courtly discourse, but in many others it clearly is not. As exemplified by the poetry of Dante, Petrarch, and Garcilaso, courtly ­discourse also sublimates desire and allows the male subject to channel his cupidity toward a more spiritual, disembodied plane. To apply the lexicon of the Libro de buen amor, the discourse of courtly love is equally capable of good and bad.10 When one considers that early modern Spain’s popular theater sought to entertain the masses while eluding censorship, its utility becomes apparent. A final point should be made before concluding this introduction to the nature of courtly discourse and moving on to examine its presence in the comedia. To this point I have described the discursive paradigm of courtly love in gendered terms—male desiring subject and silent female object—because the legacy of this discourse was by and large a consequence of the male-dominated literary canon. As best we can tell, Dante, Petrarch, Garcilaso, and Lope de Vega were all admirers of the maleauthored texts that constituted the courtly love tradition. However, it is inaccurate to describe this discourse as an exclusively male-authored phenomenon. From the very beginning, women writers have responded to the discourse of courtly love and adapted it to fit their own expressive needs. The trobairitz, or women troubadours, in 12th-century Provence were the first of a long line of women writers to have participated in the courtly

10 Juan Ruiz, Libro de buen amor (Madrid, 1992).

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tradition.11 Unfortunately their works were not disseminated or published in the same way as were those of male writers. One of the great contributions of literary criticism in the last four decades is the discovery, recovery, and publication of works by female writers whose efforts had for centuries been marginalized by the patriarchal institutions that defined the literary canon. Women writers in medieval and early modern Europe certainly did engage the discourse of courtly love; some perpetuated its preestablished gender roles, while others questioned and subverted it. The theater of early modern Spain is no different in this regard, as dramaturgas like Ana Caro, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and María de Zayas demonstrate.12 But to consider their contributions to the comedia in terms of how they engage the discourse of courtly love (whether to affirm or to challenge it) can only make sense in light of the male-authored patriarchal discourse to which they respond. Following a brief analysis of how courtly discourse functions in a canonical male-authored comedia—namely, Tirso de Molina’s El burlador de Sevilla—we will return to the different perspective offered by women writers. El burlador de Sevilla is a strong example of how the discourse of courtly love can function on multiple levels in the comedia. Don Juan’s sexual escapades have been examined by scholars from virtually every angle imaginable, and the consensus opinion appears to center around the “poetic justice” of his eventual demise as the consequence of his immoral and socially destructive behavior throughout the play.13 Because speech is action, as it is with all drama, a closer look at Don Juan’s verbal performances suggests the importance of how he strategically deploys the discourse of courtly love in order to achieve his nefarious goals. Both J. Douglas Canfield and Shoshana Felman have argued that the fundamental problem posed by Don Juan is that his words do not match his deeds, or that his speech acts are in themselves acts of deception that undermine the honor code upon which early modern Spanish society was founded.14 And while some of the antihero’s exploits involve his posing as another in order to gain access to his victims, what all of his encounters 11  Meg Bogin, ed. and trans., The Women Troubadours (New York, 1980). 12 Theresa Scott Soufas, ed., Women’s Acts: Plays by Women Dramatists of Spain’s Golden Age (Lexington, 1997). 13 See, for example, Shoshana Felman, The Scandal of the Speaking Body: Don Juan with J. L. Austin, or Seduction in Two Languages, trans. Catherine Porter (Stanford, 2003), p. 19. 14 J. Douglas Canfield, “The Classical Treatment of Don Juan in Tirso, Molière, and Mozart: What Cultural Work Does It Perform?” Comparative Drama 31.1 (1997): 42–64; Shoshana Felman, The Scandal of the Speaking Body.



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with the opposite sex share in common is his successful manipulation of the discourse of courtly love in order to seduce his prey. Courtly love, however distorted and morally bankrupt it may be when deployed by him, is at the very heart of Don Juan’s success and of the threat to society that he poses. Unlike the discursive isolation of the courtly lyric poem, wherein the first-person poetic voice dictates and controls the extent to which he engages social concerns, Tirso de Molina’s Don Juan acts in a dynamic society whose faults and fault lines he exploits to achieve his amorous conquests. Don Juan’s use of the discourse of courtly love therefore must be situated within the broader ethical, moral, and especially social scope of El burlador de Sevilla. As critics have noted for decades, the play offers a critique of the social structure that permits and, some would argue, encourages Don Juan’s behavior. His deceptions and conquests are made possible by a system of justice, both in Naples and in Spain, that is more concerned with covering up scandal than with punishing the guilty or repairing the losses suffered by innocent victims. Don Juan’s opening escapade (with which the play opens in medias res) ends as Isabela realizes that she has just surrendered her honor to a stranger posing as her beloved, the Duque Octavio. Her initial reaction is to call out for help and, it should be noted, to call upon the king himself to administer justice. The king’s initial response is a telling aside—“Esto en prudencia consiste”— reinforced by a directive to his minister of justice, Don Pedro Tenorio, to deal with the matter quietly: “Mirad quién son estos dos. / Y con secreto ha de ser, / que algún mal suceso creo; / porque si yo aquí los veo, / no me queda más que ver.”15 The king’s prioritization of discretion over justice is shown to be the systematic policy of his regime after he leaves the stage. After Pedro Tenorio initially urges the palace guard to overtake Don Juan, the stillunidentified intruder indicates to Pedro, who happens to be his uncle, that discretion would be prudent. Once the guards remove Isabela and themselves from the room, Don Juan reveals his identity to his uncle and appeals for mercy in terms that again reflect the patriarchy’s complicity in his crimes: “Tío y señor, / mozo soy y mozo fuiste; / y pues que de amor supiste, / tenga disculpa mi amor.”16 As we will see that Don Juan’s “amor”

15 Tirso de Molina, El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra [The Trickster of Seville] (Binghamton, NY, 1994), lines 24 and 32–36. 16 Tirso de Molina, El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra, lines 61–64.

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throughout the play is the fruit of his successful manipulation of courtly discourse in order to deceive his victims, his implication here that all men commit such indiscretions in their youth casts that discourse as a common instrument of early modern Spanish masculinity. This same implication also persuades Pedro to allow Juan to escape so as to avoid dishonor to his family, but not before we learn that this was not his nephew’s first such indiscretion: Don Juan’s presence in Naples is in fact the result of a similar escapade in Spain, the consequence for which his father had him hastily sent across the Mediterranean to escape. Don Juan’s serial behavior is thus introduced from the beginning of the play less as sexual deviance than as a function of his male identity, operationalized by the discourse of courtly love. What is deviant is that his libido is not held in check by the moral and social institutions and ideologies of church and state that normally restrict and temper sexual desire. More importantly, while some of his successful burlas are owed in part to his sexual magnetism, his disingenuous acts of seduction are invariably dependent on his powers of persuasion and deception—powers that are themselves dependent on a patriarchy willing to look the other way whenever possible. As John Varey and Everett Hesse (among many others) have rightly pointed out, the “trickster” is allowed to inflict damage by a society that tacitly condones private behavior that, once made public, can do irreparable harm to a family’s honor and reputation.17 Don Juan does not take his victims by force, nor is it sex or seduction that make his actions transgressive; instead, his tricks are achieved through imposture and false promises to marry. They are tricks, in other words, that depend upon the language of courtly love being misappropriated by a scoundrel who undermines the sincere emotional commitment with which his victims associate it. Presumably, then, at least two of Don Juan’s victims (Isabela and Ana) are persuaded through the discourse of courtly love to satisfy the sexual desires of men to whom they are emotionally committed. Ana has invited the Marqués de Mota to a clandestine nocturnal encounter in a message intercepted and altered by Don Juan (so that he may go in his friend’s place), but we are first introduced to her character by the Marqués himself as he boasts of her beauty to Don Juan in the superlative ­abstractions

17 Everett Hesse, “Gender and the Discourse of Decay in El burlador de Sevilla,” Bulletin of the Comediantes 47.2 (1995): 155–63; John H. Varey, “Social Criticism in El burlador de Sevilla,” Theatre Research International 2 (1977): 197–221.



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t­ ypical of courtly discourse: she is “la mayor belleza / que los ojos del sol ven” (lines 1272–3) and in her creation “se estremó la naturaleza” (line 1269). We are not privy to how the Marqués speaks to her face-toface, but the lady’s absence does allow for the hyperbolic and idealized (if rather lacking in detail) portrait of her to be made, just as courtly discourse had functioned since the troubadours as a competitive exchange between male subjects. Here Don Juan wins the competition by pretending to be his competitor, both in word and deed; we are left to assume that had Mota himself been with Ana, his sexual conquest of her would have been little different. Prior to losing this competition, Mota’s superlative and courtly description of Ana comes just after a spirited discussion with Don Juan about Seville’s best prostitutes and brothels, and the contrast could not be more clear: the burlador’s would-be victim is placed on the proverbial pedestal by the Marqués in contrast to the other sevillanas that he considers sexual playthings. But for Don Juan, the very pedestal upon which courtly discourse places Ana is precisely what attracts him to her. While a prostitute may satisfy a sexual urge, it is an honorable woman that whets his appetite. The burla consists of sexual conquest under the false pretenses established by the language of courtly love, and in this case it is incited by Mota’s own use of that language while describing his lady to his friend. The rhetorical force of courtly discourse, in other words, can persuade men to seduce just as it can persuade women to be seduced. Where Don Juan differs from his friend, however, is his disregard for the social and moral obligations that normally temper such powers of persuasion. Without such restraints, Don Juan sees little difference between persuasion and deception, the mainstay of the antihero’s strategy for seducing his victims. Apart from extolling their physical beauty and virtue in the hyperbolic discourse of courtly love, he repeatedly promises to match his words with deeds—marriage—as proof of the sincerity of those words. Don Juan’s first escapade in the play consists of Isabela surrendering herself to a false Duque Otavio after his (i.e., Don Juan’s posing as Otavio’s) promise to marry her; indeed, the first lines uttered by Don Juan in the play express precisely this promise: “Duquesa, de nuevo os juro / de cumplir el dulce sí.”18 The pattern of wooing through promises to marry extends as well to the cases of Tisbea and Aminta, both of whom are persuaded to surrender 18 Tirso de Molina, El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra, lines 3–4.

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their virginity to Don Juan after procuring such promises. In Tisbea’s case Don Juan chooses not to reveal his identity, presumably to protect himself from the consequences of jilting her. After Tisbea rescues him from drowning at sea (and after his servant Catalinón has already told her his master’s name), Don Juan’s return to consciousness is rife with superlative praise of his savior’s beauty. Tisbea’s initial response to his advances is striking: “Muy grande aliento tenéis / para venir soñoliento, / y más de tanto tormento!”19 The nobleman’s impressive “aliento” is of course a reference to his verbal dexterity, to his powers of discursive persuasion. His ensuing speeches to Tisbea oscillate between the kind of praise that his friend Mota had heaped upon Ana and the poetic description of his experience of desire for her. Both rhetorical strategies are central tenets of the discourse of courtly love, but it is his self-absorbed depiction of love-as-suffering that seems to most profoundly affect Tisbea, against her better judgment (reflected in her repeated admonition that he had better not be lying to her: “¡plega a Dios que no mintáis!”).20 At various points during this exploit, Don Juan explains to his victim that he wished he had drowned, so as not to have to die from his desire for her; that she paradoxically burns him despite being cold as ice; that her hair has wrapped itself around his soul; that he would gladly die in service to her; that her eyes kill him with desire when they look upon him.21 Tisbea proves unable to resist the persuasive force of courtly discourse, despite her initial misgivings that Don Juan’s socially superior status makes his alleged intention to marry her doubtful. After she falls under the influence of his courtly discourse, Don Juan’s insistence on his commitment to marriage is a lie that Tisbea is all too willing to believe. Don Juan’s conquest of the rustic Aminta echoes that of Tisbea in that she too is his social inferior. In this episode, an excellent example of how courtly love often intersects with other social and moral discourses in the comedia,22 Don Juan exploits his social status to gain access to the would-be bride of the poor Batricio, who must cede his seat beside the bride to the nobleman, as his very presence at their wedding is a ­special 19  Ibid., lines 601–03. 20 Ibid., line 624. 21  Ibid., lines 625–28, 633–36, 930–32, 941–42, and 946–48. 22 For an extended discussion of how the discourse of courtly love collides with other contemporary discourses in early modern Spanish theater, see chapter 3 (“Discursive Interplay: The Ethics of Courtly Love, Decorum, and Interpretation”) in Robert Bayliss, The Discourse of Courtly Love in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Theater (Lewisburg, 2008), pp. 132–221.



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honor. Indeed, this encounter, Don Juan’s last before being forced to face the consequences of his transgressions, is replete with references to the social tensions caused by Don Juan’s presence in this rural town. The frustrated Batricio explains in a monologue how Don Juan has usurped his place beside his bride, in part by referring to the frustrated would-be husband’s attempts to reclaim her attention as “groserías.” The urban libertine strategizes his burla through abusing the social deference paid to him by the rural peasant community as he systematically removes each obstacle standing between him and Aminta’s bed. After erroneously telling Batricio that he has already slept with her, thus convincing him to abandon his fickle fiancée through a lie that the misogynist Batricio is all too willing to believe, Don Juan procures the blessing of Aminta’s father to wed her and thus ascend from her family’s humble social station to live among the noble elites of Sevilla. All that remains, then, is to trick the wary bride herself, which he must do through a combination of insistent promises to marry her and lavish descriptions of the aristocratic life awaiting her. Predictably, this final act of persuasion depends upon Don Juan’s ability to deceive through the discourse of courtly love, for it is the impassioned expression of his desire (couched again in the courtly language of love-as-suffering) that convinces her that his commitment to marriage is sincere: “Víte, adoréte, abraséme, / tanto que tu amor me obliga / a que contigo me case.”23 As was Tisbea, Aminta remains wary of his intentions (“No sé qué diga, / que se encubren tus verdades / con retóricas mentiras”)24 until a final promise to marry persuades her to give in to his advances. What the verbal depictions of and exchanges with all of these women share in common, whether offered by their legitimate lovers or by Don Juan, is an idealized portrait of physical beauty and especially a selfabsorbed focus by the male speaker on how his desire for her afflicts him. But the “proof ” of sincerity (the lifetime commitment of marriage)—in other words, the performative speech act that grounds the discourse of courtly love in concrete social action—is necessary for him to close each deal. Tirso insists upon linking the courtly performance of desire with the performative speech act of the marriage vow, in order to leave no doubt as to the very real social and moral consequences of his protagonist’s philandering. In the process, the friar-dramatist implies that the blame for

23 Tirso de Molina, El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra, lines 2104–06. 24 Ibid., lines 2119–21.

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Don Juan’s transgressions should at least be partly shared by all, including the system of justice that tacitly condones the (discreet) manipulation of courtly discourse by young men for self-serving cupiditous ends, not to mention Don Juan’s female victims themselves, who fall prey to courtly discourse despite appearing to know better. Of course the lion’s share of the blame falls on the protagonist himself, not because he feels desire or speaks the language of courtly love, but because he uses that language to fulfill such desire in a socially destructive way. One may read the play’s denouement, then, as the inevitable moral and social consequence of Don Juan’s cumulative efforts to dishonor the women he meets. On the moral plane, of course, is the divine punishment delivered by the tombstone statue of Gonzalo (father to Ana). As he grasps Don Juan’s hand and engulfs him in the fires of hell, Gonzalo makes explicit that the false promises and empty rhetoric with which he tricked his victims have condemned him: “Ésta es justicia de Dios,/ quien tal hace, que tal pague.”25 Meanwhile, the social denouement plays out at the palace: his victims have gathered together to appeal to the king for justice. The king has already proven ineffective at dealing with the threat to the social order posed by Don Juan, but Catalinón arrives in time to explain to him and to his desperate subjects that God has already administered justice and taken the antihero’s life. The social consequences of Don Juan’s behavior are then neatly resolved by the king, who matches each victim with a socially acceptable suitor. This moral-social duality is maintained, I would argue, at least in part to sustain the play’s social critique of the patriarchal honor code that had allowed Don Juan to thrive in the first place. It also neatly divides the consequences of Don Juan’s abuses into two distinctive categories. The discourse of courtly love, then, is the weapon of choice for an antihero guilty of crimes against both humanity and God. Its abuse as a means to a cupidinous and self-serving end is thus rendered in a cautionary tale for a viewing public well familiar with its tropes and rhetorical excesses. The frequency with which courtly discourse is deployed to represent heterosexual desire in the comedia explains, I would postulate, one reason why Tirso de Molina felt that such a cautionary tale was appropriate for his early modern Spanish audience. His discreet treatment of the social and moral consequences of Don Juan’s abuse of courtly discourse, however, reflects a decidedly masculine and patriarchal point of view: the 25 Ibid., lines 2876–77.



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real sin for which he is damned consists of breaking his word in a patriarchal system that depends on the stability of what Canfield calls “wordas-bond.” That his female victims are distraught is a separate matter, it would seem, and one that the morally impotent authorities of Spanish society are better equipped to handle. The neat and formulaic pairing of betrothed couples by the king would suggest that Don Juan’s female victims are “made whole” by simply returning what was taken from them: prospects of a socially profitable marriage. However, when one examines the production of women dramatists of the period, such a conclusion does not seem as satisfactory. Comedies like Ana Caro’s Valor, agravio y mujer and María de Zayas’s La traición en la amistad do not “settle” for punitive damages assessed to an abusive male; instead they portray the courtship process as one in which male and female subjects alike deploy the discourse of courtly love, sometimes for good and sometimes for ill. The problems caused by Don Juan’s disingenuous self-absorption in Tirso’s play are caused by both men and women behaving badly, with the clearest example of the latter being Zayas’s Fenisa. When she and Liseo cross paths, each is equally well versed in the “donjuanesque” practice of expressing desire through the disingenuous abuse of the self-absorbed discourse of courtly love in order to conquer as many lovers as she or he sees fit. Their fortunes head south when the would-be victims of Liseo’s and Fenisa’s respective ­philanderings—the friends Marcia, Belisa, and Laura—plot their undoing. Sisterhood is indeed powerful in Zayas’s play, and amistad trumps the traición engendered by courtly discourse. Both male and female antiheroes are rendered impotent and helpless, as Liseo is tricked into marrying Laura (who had earlier fallen victim to false promises and lofty courtly rhetoric) and Fenisa is the only character left without a mate when the final curtain falls. Ana Caro also recasts courtly love as a game that is decidedly coed, in this instance by adopting the convention of the cross-dressed woman intent on repairing the damage done to her honor by a disingenuous philanderer who (coincidentally?) is named Don Juan. Caro’s Don Juan is treated less as a threat to the social and moral order and more as a typical courtier whose deft abuse of courtly discourse is outdone by a woman in drag. Leonor inserts herself as Leonardo into Juan’s next would-be conquest and outdoes him by stealing Estela’s heart. But beyond out-donjuaning Don Juan, Leonardo at the same time manages first to emasculate Juan, rendering him a disconsolate and dishonored shell of his former self, and then to revive his memory of Leonor. At the end of the play, Don Juan

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is not only punished but reformed, and Leonor’s agency has fixed not only the problem of her dishonor but indeed the problematic character of him who had caused it. As these two examples demonstrate, the discourse of courtly love can take on radically different functions when penned by a woman. For 21st-century scholars, the recent publication of such anthologies as Theresa Scott Soufas’s Women’s Acts provides a timely opportunity to reexamine the legacy of courtly love in the comedia. Women writers, beyond the merit of studying their work for its own sake, can offer an important alternative perspective to the patriarchal courtly tradition that would render her a silent, passive, and absent object of male desire. Such a counter-voice has proven similarly profitable for scholars interested in other national and formal traditions influenced by courtly love, and in our case it promises a powerful counterweight to a tradition of comedia scholarship that has long assumed that the patriarchal canon constitutes a complete reflection of early modern Spanish society. In short, it promises to reveal the genderinflected nature of all discourse, whether written by men or women. This more complete vision of how the comedia simultaneously critiques and entertains early modern Spanish society is desperately needed as we continue to search for answers regarding why what we now consider literary classics were in their original performances considered a threat to the stability and health of the early modern state. How, for example, can female-authored comedias illuminate the tensions and fears that their male counterparts inspired? If a frequent indictment of the anti-­theatricalists of early modern Spain was that the comedia feminized Spain’s male citizenry, can women writers offer a critique of early modern Spanish masculinity that reflects those same concerns? Can fears of the discourse of courtly love’s dangerous representation and incitement of desire be better understood when seen through the prism of a gender-inclusive, comparative approach? To be sure, the assumed answers of the previous century are ripe for our reconsideration.

The Comedia and the Classics Frederick A. de Armas Spanish Golden Age theater is known for its rejection of the classics. And yet, before the advent of Lope de Vega, during the late 16th century many plays were written in imitation of classical tragedy. After a brief glance at these early plays and how they inadvertently paved the way for the future of the comedia, this essay will turn to Cervantes’s Numancia, the one canonical play from this period, so as to understand how it differs radically from the new comedy as established by Lope de Vega (1562–1635). This essay will then analyze Lope’s famous treatise Arte nuevo de hacer comedias [New Art of Writing Plays] to determine the reasons utilized for the rejection of the classics and to uncover within this very work a more subtle insertion of the ancients. A similar frisson can be found in Lope’s plays. While these works reveled in innovation, denying the authority of the ancients, at times they followed theories of tragedy or techniques of comedy that derive from the antique. And the very language of these comedias was consistently “adorned” with allusions to classical mythology. While seemingly ornamental, some of these citations reveal a significant mythical substructure latent in these plays. The reader or audience is alerted to this pattern through foregrounding. Keir Elam explains: “Linguistic foregrounding in language occurs when an unexpected usage suddenly forces the listener or reader to take note of the utterance itself, rather than continue his automatic concern with its ‘content.’ ”1 A similar pattern can be seen in those who followed Lope, such as Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, Tirso de Molina and many others. Perhaps a clearer yet more subtle pattern of mythical foregrounding can be gleaned in the second generation of playwrights led by Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600–81). Linguistic foregrounding can be expanded to include situational foregrounding. We can thus label some of the manners in which these myths call attention to themselves: contrastive repetitions, forbidden terms, macabre tales, mistaken myths, mysteries of naming, ominous icons, role

1 Keir Elam, The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama (London, 1989), p. 17.

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reversals, planetary puzzles, and prophetic frenzies.2 In this essay, we will encounter forbidden terms such as the hippogryph, mysteries in naming such as Astraea, planetary puzzles such as that of Saturn, ominous icons such as the painting of Venus and Adonis, and role reversals as in the Cupid and Psyche myth. In addition, the later Calderón is also known for his court spectacle plays, where mythology and the gods of the ancients acquire new prominence. And in this last period, some playwrights like Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla (1607–48) even veered away from the comedia pattern to write tragedies.3 It would be impossible to study the full range of acceptance to rejection of the classics in this essay. In order to understand this constant conflict between the uses of the ancients and the desire for the new, I will discuss four distinct questions. I will begin with the early classicizing plays and use Cervantes’s La Numancia as a salient example. I will then turn to the conflict between Cervantes and Lope de Vega. A third section will explore some of the ways in which classicizing elements of comedy survived in this period, comparing Terence and Lope de Vega. The fourth part of the essay will focus on tragedy and how Lope turned to Italian art for his models, an art that in turn reflected the classics. A final section will briefly show how Lope’s new art continues to develop in the next generation of playwrights led by Calderón de la Barca. I. From the Early Tragedians to Cervantes’s La Numancia (1582) During the last half of the 16th century, before the advent of Lope de Vega, a Renaissance classicizing theater flourished in Spain. While Fernán Pérez de Oliva wrote prose translations from the Latin of Greek tragedies such as Sophocles’ Electra and Agamemnon, as well as Euripides’ Hecuba, other playwrights preferred to follow the Senecan tradition, although transformed in order to conform to a new audience. The most salient tragic authors of this period were Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola, Jerónimo Bermúdez, Juan de la Cueva, Andrés Rey de Artieda, and Cristóbal de Virués. Each in his own way transforms the classics and, unbeknownst

2 Frederick A. de Armas, “The Necromancy of Imitation: Lucan and Cervantes’s La Numancia,” in El Arte Nuevo de Estudiar Comedias: Literary Theory and Spanish Golden Age Drama, ed. Barbara Simerka (Lewisburg, 1996), p. 247. 3 Raymond R. MacCurdy, Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla and the Tragedy (Albuquerque, 1958).



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to them, erases their place in the canon. Elements from classical theater begin to disappear, as these early playwrights strive to come up with a formula that will succeed. One of the first classical elements to disappear is the chorus. The number of acts fluctuates rather than preserving the classicizing five. Prologues are introduced that expound on different topics. A portent of things to come is found in Cristóbal de Virués’s Atila furioso, where the prologue rails against classical mythology. The many innovations encountered in these early tragedies pave the way for the new art of Lope de Vega. Not that their works abound in masterpieces: none except Cueva and perhaps Virués is able to create rounded characters. Their tragic heroes and heroines often lack verisimilitude and a lifelike quality, while their register at times falters, moving from a high to a low style without good reason.4 Indeed, lack of verisimilitude is necessary to the construction of the plots, which today seem excessively contrived and full of violence and horror for their own sake. And yet, Enrique García Santo-Tomás argues for a contemporary rereading of Cristóbal de Virués. Since Virués was a soldier, this critic seeks to understand the importance of a veteran of war as writer. Virués, he argues, meditates on the chivalric model of the soldier; on the role of a new courtly society in the relaxation of martial qualities; and on the value of prudence at a time when transformation is in the air—all this as Virués combines the tragic mode with military treatises.5 There was, however, a poet-soldier who surpassed Virués and the many tragedians of the late 16th century. Miguel de Cervantes stands between the old and the new. His Numancia is considered one of the most impressive examples of Spanish tragedy. Raymond MacCurdy, for instance, assesses the work in this manner: “Despite certain technical deficiencies, it surpasses all previous Spanish tragedies in its warm interest and nobility of sentiment.”6 Willard King agrees: “Of all those ambitious classicizing dramas written in Spain during the second half of the sixteenthcentury . . . only Cervantes’ Numancia has truly survived.” She points to the praise it has received over the centuries by “poets and philosophers like Goethe, Shelley and Schopenhauer.”7 And Alfredo Hermenegildo asserts: 4 Alfredo Hermenegildo, La tragedia en el Renacimiento español (Barcelona, 1973), p. 28. 5 Enrique García Santo-Tomás, “Virués nuestro contemporáneo,” in Hacia la tragedia áurea: lecturas para un nuevo milenio, ed. Frederick A. de Armas, Luciano García Lorenzo, and Enrique García Santo-Tomás (Madrid, 2008), pp. 35–55. 6 MacCurdy, Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla, p. 12. 7 Willard King, “Cervantes’ Numancia and Imperial Spain,” MLN 94 (1979): 200–21, at p. 200.

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“A mi modo de ver, La Numancia es la mejor tragedia aparecida en España, no ya en los tiempos anteriores a Lope de Vega, sino en toda la historia de nuestra literatura.”8 The plot is simple, the action is visually stunning, and the conflict is poignant and epic in nature. Numancia, a small Celtiberian city, has for many years defied conquest by Rome. The Senate then sends its war-hero Scipio Africanus to continue the siege and take the city by any means. Scipio’s cleverness and his hubristic approach to the city contrast with the simple valor of its inhabitants. Once the Numantians come to understand that there is no other way, they destroy their riches, burn their possessions, and commit mass suicide so as to deprive Scipio of a triumph. At the end of the work, with the suicide of the last remaining youth in the city, the reader or audience witnesses the lament of the Roman general and the appearance of the figure of Fame, who grants the city immortality. Cervantes thus constructs a myth of origins for the Spanish Habsburg empire of the 16th and 17th centuries, pointing to the sacrifice of the city. Paradoxically, this myth of origins also serves to question the hubris and expansionist policies of Philip II. It points to the causes for the rise and fall of all empires, adding a cautionary note to Spanish triumphalism. The complexity of the work is evident from the many critical debates about it, as carefully summarized by Veronika Ryjik.9 These questions include the laudation of empire or its subversion, allusions or models to be found in other sieges or wars, the significance of allegory, the construction of the plot, the role of women in the play, notions of genre, etc. Indeed, for many it is not clear who is the tragic hero of Cervantes’s play. Do we have a collective protagonist in the city of Numancia, which sacrifices itself or is destroyed at the end of the play? Or, is Scipio, the Roman general, the tragic protagonist? By committing mass suicide the inhabitants of the city deny him a victory, and thus his hubris is chastised. There are even some critics who cast doubt on the tragic structure of the work and bring it closer to what was to be Lope de Vega’s idea of the comedia. Paul Lewis-Smith, for example, admits that Scipio can be seen as a typical protagonist of a “Tragedy of Error where some highly fortunate person suffers a fall when a flaw in his character causes him to make a mistake,

8 Hermenegildo, La tragedia, p. 370. 9 Veronika Ryjik, “Mujer, alegoría e imperio en el drama de Miguel de Cervantes, El cerco de Numancia,” Anales cervantinos 38 (2006): 203–19.



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or error of judgment.”10 However, he feels that tragedy is lacking since Scipio’s fall is thoroughly justified. Tragedy turns to tragicomedy (a mixed genre advocated by Lope) when the collective suicide of the inhabitants of the city, the true protagonists, deprives Rome of victory and immortalizes the city through fame. While readers today may criticize La Numancia as a work lacking in action, but representing instead a series of tableaux, this is precisely one of the traits of classical tragedy. At the same time, the monumentality of events serves to add a grandeur that is often lacking in later works, while the allegorical figures can be equated to the Chorus in Greek tragedies. Rey de Artieda would write in the prologue of his Los amantes de Teruel [The Lovers from Teruel] that the use of the Chorus had become outmoded. Cervantes, aware of new trends, transforms it in his first act into a dialogue between two allegorical figures. Indeed, if we look at Numancia as an imitation of Aeschylus’ The Persians, we can come to understand how Cervantes carefully followed the classics. Although the Greek tragedy serves to praise the victory against the Persians at Salamis, it makes of the “enemy” the tragic hero. The tragedy takes place in Sossa, capital of the Persian Empire, at a time when Atossa, mother of Xerxes, and the chorus of elders await news of the battle. A messenger arrives and recounts the destruction of the Persian fleet. The ensuing laments, even though intoned by the enemy of the Greeks, can be seen as tragic. Xerxes’ hubris, his boastfulness, and his yoking of the Hellespont are seen as the causes of the catastrophe, even though the Persian protagonist is, in many ways, presented as admirable and valorous. The Persians and La Numancia both deal with a crucial battle. In Aeschylus, the Greeks win the battle and the tragedy is that of the Persians. In Cervantes, the Romans win the battle and the tragedy is that of Numancia. And yet, the figure of Fame at the end of the comedia reverses this loss. This figure makes clear that Scipio is the loser: he even intones a tragic lament like that of Xerxes. The apparent difference between the two plays vanishes: Aeschylus, an Athenian, writes a tragedy of the defeat of the Persians (the enemy), while Cervantes, a Spaniard, composes a tragedy dealing with the defeat of Numancia’s enemy Rome. Both imperial powers are seen at the brink of disaster, humiliated by a small but valiant city or cities.

10 Paul Lewis-Smith, “Cervantes’ Numancia as Tragedy and as Tragicomedy,” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 64 (1987): 15–26, at p. 16.

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When composing La Numancia Cervantes was also well aware of the comparison made by Aristotle between tragedy and the epic, something that was later highlighted by Aelius Donatus in the 4th century. Cervantes not only follows Aeschylus, but imitates the epic as part of his tragedy, paradoxically anticipating Lope’s own musings about the relation between epic and theater in his Arte nuevo.11 Indeed, critics have argued that the play is contaminated by the epic genre: Carroll Johnson points to Virgil; Emilie Bergmann points to the future projections as deriving from epic; my own work shows the presence of opposing epics, i.e., Virgil’s Aeneid and Lucan’s Pharsalia; while Barbara Simerka argues for generic instability and the counter-epic.12 The result is that “ideological fault lines are revealed through the deployment of conflicting generic forms.”13 Cervantes’s work is contaminated with a series of classical texts that often stand in opposition to each other, thus enriching the meanings of the work. Indeed, we can view each of the four acts of the play as representing one of the four elements in creation; they also foreground a different classical text. The first act, with its fluvial imagery, can be related to the element of water and to the prophecy of the river Duero, which has its model in Virgil’s Aeneid and the Fourth Georgic. The prophecy of the future Spanish Empire is as protean as the changing Proteus in Virgil. The second act turns to the element earth, as a necromantic resuscitation is borrowed from that of the witch Erichtho in Lucan’s Pharsalia. Lucan’s epic of the defeated thus serves as a contrast to Virgil’s triumphalism. Act three and most of act four center on the element of fire, the fire of the city’s destruction. The fires of La Numancia evoke ekpyrosis, that is, the destruction and purification of the land, so that a new universal empire could arise. Against Virgil’s vision that does away with universal destruction before the establishment of Augustus’s empire, Cervantes’s play presents the need for purification and thus evokes Senecan horror, the apocalyptic images of Hercules Oetaeus. But the play ends with the ideal of Fame (the element of air), which will serve as the foundation of the Spanish Empire. Here, Cervantes turns to 11  Félix Lope de Vega, Arte nuevo de hacer comedias, ed. Enrique García Santo-Tomás, (Madrid, 2006), lines 88–90. 12 Carroll B. Johnson, “La Numancia y la estructura de la ambigüedad cervantina,” in Cervantes: Su obra y su mundo, ed. Manuel Criado de Val (Madrid, 1981), p. 311; Emilie Bergmann, “The Epic Vision of Cervantes’ Numancia,” Theater Journal 36 (1982): 85–96, at p. 88; Frederick A. de Armas, Cervantes, Raphael and the Classics (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 116–53; Barbara Simerka, Discourses of Empire: Counter-Epic Literature in Early Modern Spain (University Park, 2003), pp. 87–95. 13 Simerka, Discourses of Empire, p. 90.



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Cicero and Macrobius’s commentary on his Dream of Scipio, where earthly glory and fame are questioned. Thus Fame speaks against herself, having as origins the lessons Scipio learned in his dream. Numancia is a tour de force that pits different genres and ideologies against each other as a way to meditate on questions of imperialism and republicanism, vengeance and freedom, the eternity or evanescence of empires, the role of the tragic hero, and the ironic foundations of empire. If Rome was built out of the ashes of Troy, and the Spanish Empire out of the ashes of the Roman destruction of Numancia, what then is the role and fate of the Spanish Habsburgs? Numancia, then, is an epic tragedy that questions the very underpinnings of both of these genres as it seeks new answers and aims to surpass Aeschylus, Seneca, Virgil, and Lucan. It represents the height of classicism in Spanish theater, a feat that would never be equaled. II. A New Art against the Classics? Lope de Vega versus Cervantes If Cervantes’s Numancia is a play that is anchored in classical works; if it cannot be fully comprehended without envisioning its complex architecture of genres and authorities; if it reveals through imitation an archeology of empire whose very foundations are so varied that it would take endless study to sort out its protean message; then it is as if nothing else can be said in this vein. Innovation requires that the past be erased, much like Scipio attempted to destroy Numancia. In order to become the most canonical of playwrights, Lope de Vega had to discard the anxieties of a classicizing past and propose a new art for writing plays in Spain. His famous treatise on Golden Age theater, Arte nuevo de hacer comedias, has aroused much attention in recent years.14 A cursory look at the text shows that it proclaims a new art in contradistinction with antique theater and classical precepts. Lope de Vega would “lock up” Terence and Seneca, representatives of classical comedy and tragedy;15 and he would reject the unities of Aristotle. At the same time, the poem constantly calls upon the classics. At the very start of Lope de Vega’s treatise, the playwright 14 Felipe B. Pedraza, Rafael González Cañal, and Elena E. Marcello, eds., El Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en su contexto europeo: congreso internacional (Almagro, 29, 29 y 30 de enero de 2009) (Cuenca, 2010); Germán Vega García-Luengos and Héctor Urzáiz Tortajada, eds., Cuatrocientos años del Arte nuevo de hacer comedias de Lope de Vega: actas selectas del XIV Congreso de la Asociación Internacional de teatro español y novohispano de los Siglos de Oro (Olmedo, 20 al 23 de julio de 2009) (Valladolid, 2010). 15 Lope de Vega, Arte nuevo, line 174.

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c­ ompares the Spanish Academy with those of Plato and Cicero. Indeed, while proclaiming the new, Lope must tread somewhat carefully since his work is a speech given to an erudite academy. Thus he tells his audience that he already read the classical precepts when he was ten years old, but that he must discard them since he has to follow the “gusto,” or taste, of the people.16 He also includes long passages derived almost verbatim from Francesco Robortello (1516–67), the famous interpreter of antiquity and professor at a number of Italian universities, whose treatise on ­Aristotle’s Poetics (1548) became extremely popular throughout 16th-­century Europe. From him Lope borrows a brief history of tragedy and comedy. Lope also uses Donatus and Cicero to add to the learned style of his speech. Indeed, the main section of his speech follows the different parts of classical rhetoric: composition, allocution, invention, and peroration. Lope also lists a number of classical rhetorical figures that should be followed, from anaphora to apostrophe, and from irony to repetition. Many of these figures come to him through the grammar of Jiménez Patón’s La elocuencia española en arte [Spanish Eloquence in Art] (1604). While professing knowledge of the antique, Lope veers away from it. After all, his art is new and is geared to the people. In order to provide theoretical grounding to his new anti-Cervantine vision, Lope subtly refers to what Thomas M. Greene has called “Leonardo’s heresy,” that is, the artist’s dictum that “one must never imitate the manner of another, because as an artist he will be called the grandchild and not the son of Nature.”17 Following Leonardo, Lope de Vega states quite clearly that he chooses to imitate nature rather than classical texts. This allows him to turn away from the classics and from Cervantes’s theatrical practices. No need to spend hours poring over ancient texts to come up with new insights or rules for art. After all, if one imitates nature, then it follows that Aristotelian principles are wrong. In nature, in everyday life, the tragic and the comic are mixed, and so they should be in the plays of the period. Spaniards wish to see in two hours events that transpire in many places and centuries, even from Genesis to the Last Judgment, thus rejecting the unities of place and time.18 The separation of tragedy and comedy is thus an artificial construct that must be discarded in favor of tragicomedy. What Cervantes may criticize as inconsistencies are actually the patterns of nature, which trumps

16 Ibid., lines 45–48. 17 Thomas M. Greene, The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (New Haven, 1982), p. 44. 18 Lope de Vega, Arte nuevo, line 208.



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ancient art by exhibiting its variety. Although Lope accepts the unity of action, he rejects the unities of time and place. In fact, Lope flaunts his art by calling it monstrous: “aunque sea / como otro Minotauro de Pasifae.”19 He goes further than everyday nature, producing monstrous works for the theater—and the monster is a creature that is rarely produced by nature. Monster comes from monstrare, to show off. And this is precisely what Lope de Vega is doing so as to exhibit his virtuosity and relegate classicizing plays to oblivion. It should be added that the monstrous requires a labyrinth and that he speaks of the Minotaur. Thus his works can be labyrinthine, leading the audience to closely follow the plot, to hold on to Pasiphae’s thread so as to emerge victorious after having enjoyed the twists and turns, the love intrigue, and the violent elements of the action. The denouement should be surprising, withheld until the last scenes, so as to keep the attention of the public.20 And the language should be accessible to all, while at the same time exhibiting a number of verse forms. Even though Lope has turned away from the Aristotelian rules, they are very much present in his treatise; and even though he has veered from the classics, the main imagery utilized for his new art comes from classical mythology: the labyrinth, the Minotaur, and Pasiphae’s thread. It is thus that the Spanish plays of Lope de Vega, while turning away from the rules and creating works in three acts that defy the ancients, still include a subtle mythical pattern, which he foregrounds through techniques outlined above. He bequeaths this new art with its mythical foregroundings to his contemporaries and successors such as Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, Tirso de Molina, and Calderón de la Barca. No wonder that Cervantes felt defrauded and impotent when Lope de Vega became the leading playwright of his time, penning hundreds of comedias that were greeted with enthusiastic applause. Cervantes spent many difficult years writing little except his pastoral Galatea (1585) and finding it difficult to have his plays performed. Even before Lope published his treatise on the new art, Cervantes inserted what seem to be his own views on theater into chapter 48 of Don Quixote (1605). Here the Canon defends classicizing plays in opposition to modern dramas that are “espejos de disparates, ejemplos de necedades e imágenes de lascivia.”21 He further 19  Ibid., lines 175–76. 20 Ibid., lines 234–35. 21  Miguel de Cervantes, El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, part 1, ed. Luis Andrés Murillo (Madrid, 1978), p. 570; Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, trans. Charles Jarvis with an introduction and notes by E. C. Riley (Oxford, 1998), p. 428.

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criticizes these comedias for lacking in decorum, for breaking the unities of time and place, for defying historical facts, for blatant anachronisms and for the lack of probability in the action. The fault, he argues, is not with the common people, but with playwrights who compromise their art for monetary rewards. Studying the Canon’s words, Enrique García SantoTomás claims that Cervantes sees the comedia in the manner of Lope as: “elitista, servil y vergonzosa.”22 Even sections of the Prologue to the 1605 Don Quixote can be read as attacks against Lope’s pomposity. Cervantes seems to be arguing that Lope delights in including classical citations, but these are without purpose, and done by a poet with less learning than Cervantes. Imitation of the classics should be done subtly, with a mind to engage the reader in a dialogue between the new text and the antique. This is what Cervantes strove to do in his literary work. It should not surprise us, then, to find that the Canon in the novel includes among the plays to be praised Cervantes’s own Numancia. Toward the end of his career, Cervantes published Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses [Eight Plays and Eight Interludes] (1615). In the prologue he claims that these have never been performed because Lope’s formula for writing plays has now become the standard for Spanish theater. He praises Lope de Vega for his innovations, for having become the model to follow. He is thus generous toward his rival. At the same time, he reserves the right to construct an alternative literary history. In the words of García Santo-Tomás, Lope has a product that is popular but imperfect.23 Thus Cervantes chooses to criticize Lope’s formula from within the plays and interludes he has published in this volume. In El retablo de las maravillas [A Theater of Wonders], theater is viewed as a way of deceiving the masses. It is lacking in verisimilitude and decorum. The gullible peasants who claim to believe in honor contrast very clearly with the idealized villagers of Lope’s plays. Michael Gerli asserts of this metatheatrical piece: “these theatrical producers are clearly portrayed as tricksters . . . purveyors of lies to an eager, paying clientele. . . . In its subtle way, then, Canfalla’s show portrays the Spanish theater’s cynical capitulation to the groundlings (vulgo), and the latter’s naïve desire for novel, entertaining performances.”24 I would like to stress that the producers’ and audience’s use of garbled classical citations can also be seen as an attack against Lope’s classicizing erudition, which is viewed as false and pompous. 22 Lope de Vega, Arte nuevo, p. 65. 23 Ibid., p. 71. 24 Michael Gerli, Refiguring Authority: Reading, Writing and Rewriting in Cervantes (Lexington, 1995), pp. 98 and 107.



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While today readers may not read Cervantes’s classicizing tragedy, they continue to delight in his prose masterpiece, Don Quixote. Lope’s new art triumphed, albeit flaunting what for some were facile classical references while delighting his audiences with the popular, the new, and the ­monstrous. III. Comedy: Terence and Lope de Vega While Cervantes, proud of his subtle and complex imitation of the classics, rails against Lope de Vega’s superficial and inept use of the classics, the latter takes the stance that his new art is part of Leonardo’s heresy. Thus, if he were to write a comedy, he would not follow the principles of Plautus and Terence. Lope rails against Terence, not only in his Arte nuevo, but also in a number of plays. In Lo fingido verdadero Terence is discarded as old stuff; while in Porfiando vence amor the rules and rigors of the Roman playwright’s works are criticized. At the same time, Lope is not averse to citing him. In El divino africano [The Divine African] he inaccurately cites Terence’s Eunuchus act four, line 5, where the Roman playwright affirms: Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus (without Venus and Bacchus, love [Venus] freezes). But Lope goes beyond just citing Terence. He cleverly imitates a pictorial technique from the Eunuchus. He conjoins this technique with his deep interest in Titian’s mythological paintings in order to fashion one of his early comedies. After studying La viuda valenciana (circa 1600), we will turn in the next section to another early work by Lope, La quinta de Florencia. In both of these works, Terence and Italian art come together, but in a different manner. In the latter, the comic is tinged with tragic overtones, fully exposing Lope’s interest in the mixing of registers in the fashioning of tragicomedy. This second play will lead us to briefly reconsider Lope and the tragic. Throughout his works, Lope de Vega alludes with unexpected frequency to Titian’s paintings. This allusive preference reflects the fact that in three Spanish palaces starting with the reign of Philip II—the Alcá­ zar in Madrid, the monastery of El Escorial, and the country villa of El Pardo—there could be found, according to Fernando Checa, “la mayor concentración de pintura veneciana en Europa (con la sola excepción de Venecia).”25 Among the many paintings by Titian, there was a group of mythological paintings supposedly destined to fashion an erotic camerino

25 Fernando Checa, Tiziano y la monarquía hispánica (Madrid, 1994), p. 27.

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for Philip II.26 Out of this grouping, Lope became fascinated with Titian’s Venus and Adonis (fig. 1).27 He first utilizes the Italian canvas in La viuda valenciana (1595–99), thus using the technique of iconic foregrounding of myth. This delightful comedy has as its protagonist Leonarda, a widow from Valencia who is tired of being alone in her home and who wishes to become involved in an affair of the heart. At the same time, she is exasperated by the three suitors who pursue her, wanting to marry her. At the very beginning of the play her waning desire to be a pious widow is represented by a religious painting that she owns, executed by Francisco Ribalta. Her maid, Julia, questions why she paid so much money for the painting. This question, as well as that of collecting art, is important to the plot. Once Leonarda moves from the spiritual to the physical, she will give her male lover many precious gifts. She pays for a beautiful sacred painting, but also for a handsome man’s company. Thus the link between the sacred and the erotic is highlighted. Leonarda’s move from sacred devotion to corporeal desire is foreshadowed when the maid brings her a mirror instead of the painting. As she looks at her own beauty, we grasp the value of this object as symbol of vanity and desire. Desire is also viewed through Leonarda’s many suitors, who try to woo her and enter her home under a number of disguises, particularly that of merchants of books and merchants of prints. Otón, disguised as a book dealer, displays four main books, while Valerio, pretending to be a print merchant, exhibits four images. The first reproduces Titian’s Venus and Adonis while the second seems to be based on ­Raphael’s fresco, The Triumph of Galatea. From Valerio’s words, it is very difficult to ascertain the subject of the last two, attributed to the Flemish Martin de Vos and the Italian Federico Zuccaro. Lope thus allows us to view her and associate her with the erotic through a museum of art. She herself becomes an object of merchandise as the suitors, disguised as merchants, vie for her beauty and her “tres mil ducados de renta.”28 And the play itself attains value and authority by representing famous art: Spanish religious art and Italian and Flemish mythological subjects. Thus, classical subject matter adds the authority of the ancients and an erotic flavor that comes

26 Filippo Pedrocco, Titian (New York, 2000), p. 222. 27 Frederick A. de Armas, “Lope de Vega and Titian,” Comparative Literature 30 (1978): 338–52; Frederick A. de Armas, “Adonis y Venus: hacia la tragedia en Tiziano y Lope de Vega,” in Hacia la tragedia áurea: lecturas para un nuevo milenio, ed. Frederick A. de Armas, Luciano García Lorenzo, and Enrique García Santo-Tomás (Madrid, 2008), pp. 97–115. 28 Félix Lope de Vega, La viuda valenciana, ed. Teresa Ferrer Valls (Madrid, 2001), line 202.



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1. Titian (c.1488–1576), Venus and Adonis. Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain. Photo Credit: Scala / Art Resource, NY.

with a mnemonic art that seeks to reawaken erotic images in the readers and audience. Of the four mythological paintings presented, the one that is discussed at length is the first one, as Valerio, disguised as a merchant, shows Leo­ narda Titian’s Venus and Adonis. Valerio thus presents himself as a most handsome youth, implying that the widow ought to be his Venus. The fact that Venus is nude and embracing Adonis is meant to arouse passion in Leonarda and impel her to amorous pursuits. It also praises her as the most beautiful of women, a human who looks like the goddess of love. What Valerio does not realize is that the painting impels Leonarda toward an erotic adventure, but not with him. In fact, the painting mirrors the relations with Leonarda’s true love. She had seen a man named Camilo and contrived with her servants to have him come to her apartments, where they met in darkness so that she would not be recognized and thus could preserve her honor. Although based on Ovid’s myth, ­Titian’s

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­ ainting reverses it. According to Erwin Panofsky: “It was Titian who p invented what may be called ‘The Flight of Adonis.’ ”29 In Titian, Adonis is recalcitrant (he wishes to go hunting) while Venus tries to persuade him to remain in her amorous embrace. In the original myth he had been acquiescent and did not even consider the hunt until after Venus had left him to attend to divine business. Lope clearly recognizes Titian’s painting as an innovative take on the myth and uses it to show how Leonarda is the active figure in the affair. She must pursue her Camilo. Indeed, the play is imbued with mythology, its language, structure, and plot taking cues from classicizing art and ancient myths and foregrounding two antique tales in particular. The myth of Venus and Adonis becomes intertwined with that of Cupid and Psyche.30 Although enjoying the adventure, Camilo, in darkness, wants to see his lady. His servant suggests that he take a lantern, to which the male protagonist replies: Podráme costar la vida, Floro, aqueste atrevimiento; que si Psique vio al Amor, a quien ascuras gozaba, perdió la gloria en que estaba, y negoció su dolor.31

Darkness was an essential quality in the myth of Cupid and Psyche, as the god of love met his beloved in the darkness of his amorous palace without revealing his identity and ordering Psyche never to look at him. In Apuleius’s story, Psyche’s curiosity led her to bring a lantern to view her lover. Amazed at his beauty, she let a drop of wax from the candle fall on his body. Awakening, Cupid banished her from his sight. Once again, we have in Lope the knowledge and reversal of a myth. Here it is the man who is curious and will bring the light, gazing upon a beautiful sight. While in the myth Psyche gazes upon Cupid, here Camilo looks upon a woman who had been compared with Venus. Thus the myths fit tightly together and create an ambience of wonder taken from antique images and tales. Lope de Vega, then, is far from being a poor student of the classics who turns to mythological allusions for mere adornment or to ­authorize his

29 Erwin Panofsky, Problems in Titian, Mostly Iconographic (New York, 1969), p. 152. 30 Frederick A. de Armas, The Invisible Mistress: Aspects of Feminism and Fantasy in the Golden Age (Charlottesville, 1976), pp. 72–74. 31  Lope de Vega, La viuda valenciana, lines 1827–32.



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works. La viuda valenciana is one of many examples where he writes comedies in which different myths are intertwined in new ways. But we began this section speaking of Terence. The use of art to arouse the passions finds its first expression in his play Eunuchus. Chaerea is a youth seeking to satisfy his erotic desires. He views a young woman and decides to follow her. He soon comes to the conclusion that she must be a slave at the service of Thais, a professional courtesan. Parmeno, a slave, advises Chaerea to disguise himself as a eunuch so as to be able to enter Thais’s home and consort with the woman he desires. After his ­encounter with her, Chaerea explains what occurred: “She sits in her room, in the middle of all this bustle inspecting a picture on the wall. A famous subject: Jupiter launching a shower of gold into Danaë’s lap. I began to inspect it myself. It repaid attention. Encouraging: here was a god long ago, who’d played almost the same game. . . . I might be only human, but couldn’t I do the same?”32 A painting has transformed the lover’s intentions; it has impelled him to rape Pamphila as she sleeps. While a god can force a mortal in antique mythology, a citizen can enjoy a slave in antique culture. In antiquity, this would not only be acceptable practice, but a good omen since, according to Michel Foucault, “the word soma, which designates the body, also refers to riches and possessions; whence the possible equivalence between the ‘possession’ of a body and the possession of wealth.”33 Chaerea’s action turns out to bring him good fortune. At the play’s denouement, Pamphila is revealed as the long-lost daughter of a citizen of Athens, and thus Chaerea can court her and eventually enjoy her body and her family’s wealth. Lope de Vega, although seemingly opposed to imitating the classics, takes his cue from Terence, a writer he would have read at school. Valerio shows Leonarda a painting so that she may be emboldened to desire him. The painting may arouse her passion, but it is directed at Camilo. She, in a sense, treats him as if he were her slave, commanding him to do whatever she desires. Once again, Lope has reversed roles to present us with a complex and alluring imitation. Indeed, the uses of mythological art as erotic or passionate stimulus will pervade his comedias. Lope’s denial of Terence as model may serve to hide a kind of anxiety of influence; to conceal that much of what is new in his plays comes 32 Terence, Eunuchus, in The Comedies, ed. Palmer Bovie, trans. Palmer Bovie, Constance Carrier, and Douglass Parker (Baltimore, 1992), 3.3, lines 584–88, 591. 33 Michel Foucault, “The Care of the Self,” in The History of Sexuality, vol. 3 (New York, 1988), p. 27.

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from a careful transformation of classical models. And his constant use of antique tales to fashion his works echoes the uses of the Minotaur in his Arte nuevo, where he was paradoxically trying to distance himself from the ancients. The device of ekphrasis to kindle the passions as well as mythological substructures that enrich and complicate his plots and themes will be picked up by his contemporaries and successors from Tirso de Molina to Calderón de la Barca. IV. Lope’s Tragedies: Myth and Ekphrasis Lope de Vega’s uses of Titian’s Venus and Adonis are found not only in comedies but also in tragicomedies and tragedies. It may be that his fixation on this painting derives from an ancient tradition, picked up by the moralists of early modern Spain, one that rails against the evil effect of lascivious art. From Augustine to Juan de Pineda and Juan de Mariana we find a condemnation of Terence’s use of a painting of Danae to influence Chaerea’s desires and lead him to take sexual advantage of Pamphila. Both Carlo Ginzburg and Pierre Civil have noted that this image was considered the epitome of the erotic.34 It may not be a coincidence that Jupiter’s rape of Danae was also the subject of the first of Titian’s mythological paintings that were given to Philip II even before he became king. When the Venetian painter sent the Venus and Adonis to the Spanish king, it was to serve as a companion piece to the Danae (fig. 2): “It gave occasion to show the forms from the back where the Danae showed them in front view.”35 Exhibiting his knowledge of art and mythology, Lope de Vega turns from the epitome of eroticism, the Danae, to Venus and Adonis so as to include an erotically charged image without entering into the debates that condemned Danae. And, in so doing, he could also play with the reversals of myth, as we have seen in the discussion of La viuda valenciana. In Lope’s La quinta de Florencia (1598–1603) César relaxes in an opulent villa and dozes off while watching a painting of Venus and Adonis: Miraba a Venus y Adonis una tarde en una siesta, él con el bozo dorado

34 Carlo Ginzburg, Clues, Myths and the Historical Method, trans. John and Anne C. Tedeschi (Baltimore, 1989), p. 81; Pierre Civil, “Erotismo y pintura mitológica en la España del Siglo de Oro,” Edad de Oro 9 (1990): 39–50, at p. 46. 35 Panofsky, Problems in Titian, p. 150.



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2. Titian (c.1488–1576), Danae, 1553–1554. Oil on canvas, 128 × 178 cm. Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain. Photo Credit: Scala / Art Resource NY. y ella con doradas trenzas . . . . Dióme deseo de amar una mujer como aquella.36

The opulence of the dreamlike vision is underlined by the emphasis on golden objects. Jupiter’s golden appearance in Terence’s play has been replaced by yet another luminous scene. And, the viewer’s response to the ekphrasis clearly derives from Terence: like Chaerea, Lope’s César wants to possess such a woman.37 The problem is that when he discovers her, Laura is no goddess, but a peasant woman, a washerwoman, and the daughter of a miller. César deems it impossible to marry her, given class differences in a hierarchical society. This dilemma establishes the building-blocks for a tragedy. Like Chaerea, César decides he must possess her even against her 36 Félix Lope de Vega, La quinta de Florencia, ed. Debra Collins Ames (Kassel, 1995), lines 297–300, and 309–10. 37 Frederick A. de Armas, “Lope de Vega’s Speaking Pictures: Tantalizing Titians and Forbidden Michelangelos in La quinta de Florencia,” in A Companion to Lope de Vega, ed. Alexander Samson and Jonathan Thacker (London, 2008), pp. 171–82, at pp. 176–77.

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father’s and her own desire. He pursues her and locks her up in a room in his villa. In Terence, the possibility of comedy would still be present, since slaves were considered possessions. César also considers that he can possess a peasant woman, but Lope in many of his peasant honor plays foregrounds the honor of the laborers and condemns the nobility that wishes to possess a woman of the lower classes through gifts and force. In the case of La quinta de Florencia, tragedy is averted when the Duke of Florence arrives and as a deus ex machina restores order. Lope’s text foreshadows his later honor plays while at the same time foregrounding the potential of myth to portray transgressive desires. A third interpretation of Titian’s canvas appears in an overtly mythological play, Adonis y Venus (1597–1603). This is the first work that Lope actually calls a “tragedy.” Critics have puzzled over this label since its tone and ambience are far removed from the tragic mode. There is comedy, pastoral laments, the humor of foolish rustics, and even a game played by children in the land of Arcadia. The proliferation of myths in the play gives it an aura of excess. Michael McGaha believes that the mixture of gods and shepherds recalls Italian pastoral dramas such as La favola di Orfeo [The Fable of Orpheus], where Virgil’s Eclogues and Ovid’s myths coexist.38 I would add that Lope seeks to portray the mythical abundance that pervades the pastoral landscapes and thus turns to Virgil, Ovid, and the many mythographers who brought together myths of antiquity so that he can craft a play where both nature and myths can express the joy of abundance. Here, Camila and the shepherds move from temple to temple in Arcadia, while wondrous theophanies, curious and copious ekphrases, a playful Eros, and a fatal destiny are intermixed to create a new genre.39 Mythical figures intermingle or are recalled: Venus and Adonis, Apollo and Mars, Hippomenes and Atalanta, Cupid and Ganymede, Diana and Acteon, Andromeda and Europa, etc. These plays of abundance utilize what Thomas Greene calls eclectic, or exploitative, imitation: “The art of poetry finds its materials everywhere, materials bearing with them the aura of their original contexts, charged with an evocative power implanted by the poet.”40 In this “modern” Arcadia fashioned by Lope’s new art, the deities are humanized while contact between humans and gods seems the 38 Michael McGaha, “Las comedias mitológicas de Lope de Vega,” in Estudios sobre el Siglo de Oro en homenaje a Raymond R. MacCurdy, ed. A. González, T. Holzapfel, and A. Rodríguez (Madrid, 1983), pp. 67–82, at pp. 73–74. 39 De Armas, “Lope de Vega’s Speaking Pictures,” pp. 200–01. 40 Greene, The Light in Troy, p. 39.



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order of things in a playful world that recalls both a mythical Golden Age and a courtly entertainment. In spite of the playfulness of the play, a fatal destiny is carefully crafted through the profusion of prophecies. Indeed, five of the six prophecies intoned by Apollo are negative. And a petty and vengeful Cupid furthers the tragic conclusion. But it is the allusion to not one, but many paintings by Titian destined for his erotic camerino that adds not only to the abundance of myth, but also to the tragic ambience. A clue as to how Lope was able to fashion this new type of tragedy through Titian’s canvases can be found in Thomas Puttfarken, who clearly explains that these paintings by Titian, while explicitly erotic, also contain a tragic component that is hidden or mitigated. Venus and Adonis, for instance, presents a pastoral landscape, a new Arcadia, where the couple is consumed by affairs of love and of the hunt—but there is in the background a definite sign of what is to come: the death of Adonis, and Venus’s tears for her beloved. Et in Arcadia ego: even in Arcadia do we find death. For Puttfarken, Adonis’s tragic hubris is to be found in his disdain for Venus’s love and his determination to go hunting in spite of her pleas and lamentations.41 Titian hides the tragic outcome, casting a tenuous light upon a place in the forest where Adonis is mortally wounded. If we look carefully at the sky in the painting we can also discover Venus’s chariot in front of the rays of the sun. The goddess is seeking her wounded beloved. Like the painting, Lope foregrounds scenes of love, desire, and playful Eros; but he also includes a death in Arcadia. While Venus’s determination to enter a convent after Adonis’s death may seem risible, the transformation of the beautiful youth into a flower is fully exploited by Lope so as to highlight the metamorphic quality of a wondrous world in which death is but a transition in form. And so is this play a transition to a new form of tragedy, a spectacle of the marvelous mutability of things of this world.42 In later tragedies such as El caballero de Olmedo [The Knight of Olmedo] (1620–25), Lope will rein in his exuberance without giving up the ability to mix the comic and the tragic. Early critics used to complain about the lack of unity in the work, where the first act is pure comedy while the last yields a strikingly tragic denouement. But Lope once again carefully crafts his work including anticipatory, prophetic, and hubristic elements from the comedia’s inception so that the play can move from a happy love

41  Thomas Puttfarken, Titian and Tragic Painting (New Haven, 2005), p. 164. 42 De Armas, “Adonis y Venus: hacia la tragedia,” pp. 109–12.

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(with overtones of doom) in the first act, to the dangers of the second act and the ominous moments of the third, where touches of clairvoyance, cledonomancy, and the appearance of a ghost signal the fatal conclusion. Alonso’s dream of a goldfinch and a hawk at the end of the second act are a signal that tragedy is soon to ensue.43 While the work is based on the death of Juan de Vivero in 1521—which gave rise to a Spanish ballad, a song, an earlier play, and a legend—it is still suffused with mythology. The abundance of the mythical is carefully veiled by the action, but characters cannot resist the comparisons to mythological figures and motifs. Indeed, the work begins with a discussion of Eros (love), Anteros (returned love), and Himeros (unrequited love). The protagonist, Alonso, wishes that a woman he has recently seen would return his affections. But in order to ascertain that his love is true, Alonso hires a go-between, a witch, thus debasing what he once referred to as a platonic love, one that should create an “animal perfeto” [perfect being], the circular form of the completed and perfect lover as described in the Symposium.44 In Alonso’s imagination Inés, a noble lady who disguised herself as peasant to go to the town’s festivities, becomes a “labradora Venus” [peasant Venus].45 In this manner, she recalls the peasant Venus of La quinta de Florencia. But here, love becomes mutual, as she accepts the offices of the go-between. The tragic consequences are further cemented when Inés says nothing to her father about Alonso, even when he promises her in marriage to another. When Alonso calls himself a new Leander who must go from Olmedo to Medina as Leander must swim to see his beloved Hero, the audience would consider the perils of this exalted love that ends in tragedy.46 And indeed, Alonso will eventually die traveling this route, just as Leander was drowned trying to reach one too many times the abode of his beloved across the Hellespont. When the witch Fabia praises Alonso as a new Hector and a new Achilles, not only is the age of legend brought back, but with it comes the foreboding of a tragic death at the siege of Troy.47 And Inés is the walled city: she is Troy. Both the Trojan Hector and the Greek Achilles will die in the war, just as her promised husband and her secret lover will eventually perish in her pursuit. And when Alonso is praised as

43 William McCrary, The Goldfinch and the Hawk: A Study of Lope de Vega’s Tragedy, El caballero de Olmedo (Chapel Hill, 1968), pp. 113–24. 44 Félix Lope de Vega, El caballero de Olmedo, ed. Francisco Rico (Madrid, 1997), line 8. 45 Ibid., line 828. 46 Ibid., lines 920–26. 47 Ibid., lines 856 and 859.



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a new Adonis, we recall that his Inés was viewed as a Venus.48 Through this mythological foregrounding we come to know that Lope is once again drawing from the tragic tale of Venus and Adonis as told by Ovid and painted by Titian. The festive brushstrokes of erotic love hide a tragic denouement. The mythical stays with Lope until the end. His last tragedy, El castigo sin venganza [Punishment without Revenge] (1631), may not be drawn from the myth and painting of Venus and Adonis, although Casandra is described as a new Venus.49 It turns instead to the myth of Phaedra and Hippolytus, weaving a tragedy as powerful as Jean Racine’s. While Racine is elegant but terse in his classicizing rhetoric, Lope, even here, does not cease to interweave art and myth to craft a fascinating play, where a licentious, alluring, and quasi-pagan love is quashed in such a violent and cruel manner that a feeling of tragic doom pervades the work and overwhelms any desire for justice, thus making the title an ironic commentary on the tragedy. Here Lope clearly points to the licentious nature of the affair between Federico and his stepmother when he compares himself to ­Jupiter’s eagle, who abducted Ganymede. For the early modern period, sodomy, incest, and other forbidden sexual practices were often conflated. Thus, Federico, in a striking ekphrasis of Correggio’s Ganymede (fig. 3), becomes the licentious lover who desires what he should not have.50 And in order to contrast pagan customs with the justice of his day, Lope evokes the tale of Herasistratus, the physician who discovers the malady that affects Antiochus, that is, the love for his future stepmother.51 On learning of this, the father, King Seleucus, instead of punishing Antiochus, permits him to fulfill his longings. Federico is silenced instead and made to kill his own stepmother without knowing the identity of the figure he is ordered by his father to murder. Lope may have called on Leonardo’s heresy, may have insisted that the imitation of nature should be held above the imitation of classical texts. And yet, a reading of his plays reveals that they are deeply imbued with a paganism that arose out of Lope’s instincts to paint and praise passion. He may not have followed the rules of art as asserted by the antique ­writers, 48 Ibid., line 861. 49 Félix Lope de Vega, El castigo sin venganza, ed. Antonio Carreño (Madrid, 1990), line 643. 50 Frederick A. de Armas, “From Mantua to Madrid: The License of Desire in Giulio Romano, Correggio and Lope de Vega’s El castigo sin venganza,” Bulletin of the Comediantes 59.2 (2007): 233–65. 51  Lope de Vega, El castigo sin venganza, lines 1891–1906.

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3. Correggio (1489–1534), The Abduction of Ganymed, 1530. Oil on canvas, 163.5 × 70.5 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria. Photo credit: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.



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but he did go on to question the repression of eros in his own time by turning to the abundant and joyful nature of passion as depicted by the ancients and as portrayed in Renaissance art which imitated the myths of the past. V. Conclusion: Calderón and the Classics The third generation of playwrights of the Spanish Golden Age, that is, Calderón de la Barca and his contemporaries, continued to shy away from the overt classicism of the first generation (Cervantes and Virués), the one exception being Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla, who returned to the tragic but in a much more “modern” fashion in works such as Lucrecia y Tarquino, Los áspides de Cleopatra, and his reworking of the Numancia legend.52 But in general, this new generation solidified the new comedy into a formula that would last throughout the 17th century and beyond. They also took Lope’s early mythological plays and, following Lope’s lead, turned many of them into courtly spectacle plays, where playwrights and scenographers brought from Italy (such as Cosimo Lotti and Baccio del Bianco) created magnificent visual performances for the nobility that included elaborate mechanical devices. Margaret Greer explains: “The effectiveness of the court spectacular relied not only on dazzling the eyes of the audience but on serving a feast for all the senses with music, dance, and even olfactory delights.”53 These spectacles, whose purpose it was to praise the monarchs and the court as incarnate gods, made ample use of antique myths. Although the abundance of Lope’s Adonis y Venus is curtailed so as to present a more coherent and organic product, the ambience is equally playful, although at times more solemn. Over the past 20 years these spectacles have attracted new interest, since critics now debate whether they are simply laudatory pieces or perhaps might also conceal criticisms of the policies and figures of the court in works such as El mayor encanto, amor and Los tres mayores prodigios.54 52 Ann L. Mackenzie, Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla y Augustín Moreto: análisis (Liverpool, 1994), pp. 60–67. 53 Margaret Rich Greer, The Play of Power: Mythological Court Dramas of Calderón de la Barca (Princeton, 1991), p. 16. 54 Frederick A. de Armas, “Claves políticas en las comedias de Calderón: el caso de El mayor encanto, amor,” Anuario Calderoniano 4 (2011): 117–44; Santiago Fernández Mosquera, “El significado de las primeras fiestas cortesanas de Calderón,” in Calderón y el pensamiento ideológico y cultural de su época: XIV Coloquio Anglogermano sobre Calderón (Heidelberg, 24–28 de julio de 2005), ed. M. Tietz and G. Arnscheidt (Stuttgart, 2008).

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But in this last section I would like to discuss, as a way of concluding, how Calderón both followed and veered away from Lope in terms of the classics, using as an example the most famous of his plays La vida es sueño (c. 1630). Here as elsewhere, Calderón follows Leonardo’s heresy and Lope’s new art in that he mixes the comic and the tragic, the high and low registers, thus turning away from the classical imitation of specific genres. Calderón’s La vida es sueño thus becomes what Lope calls a “monster” that combines different tones and forms. In writing it, Calderón seemed to foresee that his play would be one of his best remembered pieces and placed it as the first work in the first part of his Obras. It is no coincidence that the first word of this first comedia is “hipogrifo.”55 Hippogryph was a term abjured by Lope de Vega, who denounced it in at least two instances, including his Arte nuevo, where he lists it as one of the “vocablos ­exquisitos” [pretentious terms] that should be avoided.56 Rosaura’s initial term, where she calls her horse a hippogryph, seems to be a direct challenge to Lope’s prohibition. Thus Calderón sets himself up as a rival to Lope de Vega, as one who is going to write something that is new and different. And yet the hippogryph is as much a monster as the Minotaur cited by Lope as representative of his new art. There is one crucial difference: whereas the Minotaur was a monster derived from classical antiquity, the hippogryph is a beast invented by Ludovico Ariosto and included in his Orlando furioso. At the same time, Ariosto had turned to antiquity to fashion this beast. It was said that horses abhorred griffons. Ariosto imagines a monster that is formed from an impossible union. Calderón then seeks to transform and challenge Lope by using a modern term with ancient connotations.57 The use of a modern beast with ancient origins points to Calderón’s further tampering with ancient myths, veering away from their many assigned plots and meanings. And his use of a “precious” term calls attention to the fact that, in contrast to Lope’s simpler yet highly lyrical style, Calderón will employ a more Baroque and complex rhetoric in the manner of Góngora. At the same time, Calderón will continue to foreground myths in order to add complexity and depth to his works. Ignacio Arellano lists some of the major themes utilized by Calderón: these include generational ­battles, 55 Pedro Calderón de la Barca, La vida es sueño, ed. Ciriaco Morón Arroyo (Madrid, 1990), line 1. 56 Lope de Vega, Arte nuevo, lines 265–68. 57 Frederick A. de Armas, “The Critical Tower,” in The Prince in the Tower: Perceptions of La vida es sueño, ed. Frederick A. de Armas (Lewisburg, 1993), p. 4.



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the father-son conflict, honor, power, ambition, destiny vs. free will, etc.58 The father-son conflict in La vida es sueño is based on the SaturnJupiter conflict in mythology. Just as Saturn had ordered the death of all his progeny so as to avoid a prophecy that he would be dethroned, Basilio orders the secret incarceration of Segismundo, his child, at birth, while announcing to the world that the infant did not survive. Curiously, it is mainly the placement of Saturn in Segismundo’s chart that causes the king to act in this cruel and deceptive manner, since it is “el planeta más impío” [the most destructive planet].59 Ironically, this inhumane behavior makes Basilio into an image of the very planet that threatens him and his kingdom. Calderón, then, is utilizing astrology and its myths to create varied characters and actions: imprisonment is one of the results of a malefic Saturn. Furthermore, this generational Saturn-Jupiter conflict can be read as a conflict between two literary generations. Basilio can stand for Lope de Vega, the “father” of Spanish theater, while Calderón, his successor, feels as if he were imprisoned by his predecessor’s new art in an early example of anxiety of influence. The play shows how Segismundo/Jupiter/ Calderón free themselves from the past by reinventing themselves. Rosaura’s hippogryph is the first sign of rebellion, the first indication that Calderón wishes to refashion the comedia nueva. Rosaura’s arrival coincides with Segismundo’s first liberation from the tower. At court she will take the name of Astraea, the goddess of justice whose return to earth, according to classical myth, signals the return of a Golden Age in the world. Here, the Spanish playwright turns to Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue, where he prophesies the perfectibility of Augustus’s empire, one that will bring about a perfect world. Calderón is certainly praising Philip IV as a new Augustus with this allusion; but more than that, he is praising his own Virgilian theater, one that can flourish in an age of perfection. Calderón’s comedia can be viewed as a classical epic that means to instruct those in power as to the ways in which justice and ideal rulership can be reinstated in a declining nation. In addition, his play brings back in a rejuvenated manner Lope’s old comedia nueva. Indeed, this new-new formula for writing was so successful that Calderón is said to have created at least ten sets of characters in the mode of Basilio and Segismundo. Through a different set of myths, through a different formula that preserves Leonardo’s heresy

58 Ignacio Arellano, El escenario cósmico: estudios sobre la comedia de Calderón (Madrid, 2006), p. 25. 59 Calderón de la Barca, La vida es sueño, line 789.

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while delving into the ancients, Calderón continues to pursue the matter of mythology and even the imitation of ancient writers in new ways. While Lope was particularly concerned with the erotics of paganism and the abundance of pleasure, Calderón is more intent on a political renovatio that will give new relevance to the comedia nueva in an age when the Count-Duke of Olivares is bent upon reforming morals and customs. The uses of the classics, then, were diverse and successful in the plays of three generations of Golden Age poets as exemplified by Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Calderón.

Spanish Sacramental Plays: A Study of Their Evolution J. Enrique Duarte The genre of the sacramental play can be considered one of the most important genres in the literature developed in Spain during the 16th and 17th centuries. Scholars have pointed out that the sacramental play is a mixture of two main tendencies of the Spanish theater of that moment: the popular theater represented in the corrales de comedia to amuse people, and the courtly theater designed to entertain the king and his court. This courtly tendency is characterized by the magnificence and complexity of stage machinery. Scholars have tried to define the main features of this genre, although this effort has been complicated by the magnitude of hundreds of works represented during the existence of this kind of theater. Lope de Vega, in the Loa entre un villano y una labradora, defined the autos sacramentales as “Comedias a honor y gloria del Pan / que tan devota celebra / esta coronada villa: / porque su alabanza sea / confusión de la herejía / y gloria de la fe nuestra / todas de historias divinas.”1 This definition is interesting because it provides the reader with some clues: first of all, Lope stresses that the sacramental play is a kind of theater, which means that there is an aesthetic consciousness. It is also remarkable that the sacramental play has a double function: it is represented to praise this sacrament of the Eucharist and to combat heresy. And finally, Lope considers that this genre takes its plots from biblical stories. Later on, Calderón tries his own definition in the Loa para el auto [de] La segunda esposa, where a character disguised as a peasant makes an effort to explain what an auto sacramental could be: “Sermones / puestos en verso, en idea / representable cuestiones / de la sacra Teología / que no alcanzan mis razones / a explicar y comprender / y el regocijo dispone / en aplauso de este día.”2 Here Calderón emphasizes the educational role of the genre. In Calderón’s words, a sacramental play is a staged sermon

1  Lope de Vega, Loa entre un villano y una labradora, in Obras de Lope de Vega, vol. 6: Autos y Coloquios I, ed. Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo (Madrid, 1963), p. 143. 2 Calderón de la Barca, Obras completas, vol. 3: Autos sacramentales, ed. Ángel Valbuena Prat (Madrid, 1952), p. 427.

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to teach people Catholic doctrine, showing abstract ideas (Faith, Truth, Hope) upon the stage. But also, it must be underlined from his definition that the Corpus Christi day was a feast, a joyful moment to celebrate people’s faith and their belonging to a Catholic community. From the 18th century to the 20th, critics paid almost no attention to this genre. For instance, Jovellanos considered the sacramental plays a superstitious practice, and Leandro Fernández de Moratín thought they were absurd compositions. We must reach the year 1924, when Ángel Vabuena Prat published an essential and complete study of Calderón’s sacramental plays, to begin a new tendency of recognition for this genre and what it meant in the society of the 17th century.3 Apart from Ángel Valbuena Prat, who later edited the almost 80 sacramental plays written by Calderón, one of the most important scholars in the study of the Spanish sacramental play is Alexander Parker. He distinguished between two elements in the genre,4 as Calderón de la Barca did previously in his introduction to his Primera parte de los autos sacra­ mentales, published in 1677: the first idea is the asunto (the theme) and the second is the argumento (the plot). The asunto is always the same in all sacramental plays, because it has to do with redemption. This theme (the redemption of human beings) can be expressed with many and different plots, such as a story from the Old Testament, as in La cena del rey Baltasar or Primero y segundo Isaac. It could also be a mythological story such as El divino Orfeo or Psiquis y Cupido, or it may even develop a contemporary and well-known event, as in El nuevo palacio del Retiro, where Calderón describes the festivals to inaugurate the new Palace of the Retiro built by Olivares for King Philip IV. We can consider here even those autos whose plots deal with the Virgin Mary. The auto sacramental is a liturgical theater marked by the theme of the Eucharist, or rather, by the topic of human redemption. Actually, the Eucharist is linked to redemption in Catholic theology. A sacramental play dealing with the Virgin Mary’s story is also strictly a sacramental or Eucharistic play, because Mary is a door, a beginning to the story of human salvation, a necessary step toward the Eucharist. In this way, many authors took advantage of these aspects to underline their own intentions. For example, Lope de Vega defended the doctrine of the Virgin Mary’s

3 Ángel Valbuena Prat, “Los autos sacramentales de Calderón: clasificación y análisis,” Revue hispanique 61 (1924): 1–302. 4 See Alexander Parker, Allegorical Drama of the Golden Age (Oxford, 1943), pp. 58–109.



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purity and exemption from original sin in the sacramental play Concep­ ción de la Virgen, written in a crucial moment when the discussions over the Immaculate Conception were taking place. It may even be said that the play forms a part of the campaign supporting the doctrine. A particularly important element, as has been underlined by many critics, is the perception that the auto sacramental is closely joined to feast and liturgy. For example, José María Díez Borque has analyzed the example of a sacramental play entitled La segunda esposa by Calderón. As the auto sacramental shows always the same asunto, this has a close relation with the ideological intention, because this is very close to the teaching of a dogma. Enrique Rull has pointed out that it does not seem to be very necessary in Calderón’s time to teach any point of Catholic doctrine, so this scholar considers these plays instead as a liturgical genre.5 This means that people do not attend the spectacle to learn the essential truths of a religion, but to participate in an action similar to a mass, where they enjoy a theatrical and religious ceremony. In the sacramental plays, it is essential to communicate some emotions to the audience: they seem together to be forming part of the same community. In many cases, critics have discussed whether people watching the performance could understand the theological richness and doctrine that an auto sacramental carries.6 It is sure that there were different levels of understanding, because a peasant or a craftsman of this period could hardly assimilate the same aspects as a professor or an expert of theology could reach. For example, it is evident that many people could not decode all the references dealing with quotations belonging to the Fathers of the Church; but they all attended the sacramental spectacle, and this performance communicated with them on a more emotional level. There have been many theories proffered to explain the beginning of this genre in the period known as Baroque Spain. Many critics, such as José Manuel Aicardo,7 Eduardo González Pedroso, Nicolás González Ruiz, 5 Enrique Rull Fernández, “Instrucción y concelebración populares en el auto sacramental,” in Actas de las jornadas sobre el teatro popular en España, ed. Joaquín Álvarez Barrientos and Antonio Cea Gutiérrez (Madrid, 1987), pp. 53–63. 6 We deal here with the concept of “pueblo teólogo” defended by Bruce W. Wardropper in his Introducción al teatro del Siglo de Oro (Salamanca, 1980), pp. 94–95. This theory is rejected by Ricardo Arias in Autos sacramentales: el auto sacramental antes de Calderón (México, 1988), p. xxv, and by José María Díez Borque, “El auto sacramental calderoniano y su público: funciones del texto cantado,” in Calderón and the Baroque Tradition, ed. Kurt Levy, Jesús Aras, and Gethin Hughes (Ontario, 1985), p. 50. 7 José Manuel Aicardo, “Autos anteriores a Lope de Vega,” Razón y fe 6 (1903): 20–33, 201–14, and 446–58, at p. 454.

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Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, and Ángel Valbuena Prat, have defended the auto sacramental as a weapon against heretical practices. They understood this kind of theater as a defense against heresy in relation to the Counter-Reformation and the Council of Trent. Bruce Wardropper also insisted on that idea, explaining that Corpus Christi was a day to mobilize Catholic troops against an ideological enemy.8 There are remarkable differences between the autos sacramentales of different periods. But if we examine the Códice de autos viejos, a collection of 95 works published by Leo Rouanet and studied by Mercedes de los Reyes Peña,9 we can appreciate that only three of them contain a reference to heresy. The references to heterodoxy will grow more numerous in later years. Marcel Bataillon criticized this theory, explaining that the first sacramental plays appeared many years before the problem of the Protestant Reformation arose.10 Gregory Andrachuck also explained that the genre of the sacramental play was of great importance for delivering the ideas and doctrines fixed at the Council of Trent. While this literature may not have been a weapon against Protestantism, it was a way to communicate and spread certain values.11 Emilio Cotarelo and Miguel Ángel Pérez Priego also approved this theory. What seems important to recognize is the role the Catholic Church played in Spanish society during this period. Catholic authorities were concerned with the performances that took place around the processions. In many cases the clergy tried to reduce the euphoria and control it by imposing a rule that the text to be performed was to be presented a month beforehand for approval. It has not yet been proven that the Catholic bishops could have directed these early performances surrounding a Eucharistic theme. But we can observe the increase of catechisms after Trent, which stressed the importance of devotion to Christ instead of the saints. We must also understand, as Marcel Bataillon did, that the economy played a great role in the development of this genre. The Catholic Church   8 See Bruce W. Wardropper, Introducción al teatro del Siglo de Oro (Salamanca, 1980), p. 89.   9 See Leo Rouanet, Colección de autos, farsas y coloquios del siglo XVI (Hildesheim, 1979). See also Mercedes de los Reyes Peña, El “códice de los autos viejos”: un estudio de historia literaria (Seville, 1988), 3 vols. 10 Marcel Bataillon, “Ensayo de explicación del ‘auto sacramental’,” in Varia lección de clásicos españoles (Madrid, 1964), pp. 189–90. 11  Gregory Andrachuck, “The Auto Sacramental and the Reformation,” Journal of His­ panic Philology 10 (1985): 7–38.



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immediately discovered the disadvantages of public festive spectacles inside its cathedrals, as is shown in different documents and provincial councils around 1565. Soon the town councils decided to patronize these plays and they began to compete against each other in their desire to organize the best festivals. That meant that theatrical companies could increase their activities, because Corpus Christi representations were a great opportunity to raise funds. Local authorities also preferred professional actors, because that way the play achieved authenticity, rigor, and all that accompanied a sacramental feast: a mass spectacle, plus a huge effort to astonish audiences with rather complicated stage machinery. Nobody knows exactly how the first auto sacramental appeared. Scholars suspect that they came from little texts such as the Ordo prophetarum or the Quem queritis, which offered guidance for people to understand some moments of liturgical importance such as Christmas and Holy Week. In fact, they were small performances to show people what was being celebrated, where the priests and some parishioners were dressed up. Later on, they decided to organize religious processions outside churches where we can find small representations, a seed of what later was going to be the auto sacramental. Fernando González Ollé has studied what are considered to be the two first sacramental plays: the Farsa sacramental by Fernán López de Yanguas and the Farsa sacramental of 1521.12 Ricardo Arias has also paid attention to different plays of the moment when the Eucharist begins to appear within the dramatic script.13 Obviously, the main core of this genre is the festival of Corpus Christi, established by Pope Urban IV in September 1264 to fight against different heresies. This Eucharistic feast was later used by the Council of Trent to combat Luther’s influence. The Catholic hierarchy encouraged the celebration of processions, where a combination of profane and sacred elements were mixed. There were grotesque figures, such as giants, a dragon or large snake called the tarasca, different dances, and short theatrical representations. As we could easily imagine, these profane activities were important to accompany the sacrament through the streets, and the auto sacramental was only one component of a spring feast where music, theater, dancing, food, and drinks were also present. 12 In two articles: Fernando González Ollé, “El primer auto sacramental del teatro español,” Segismundo 3 (1967): 179–84; and “La Farsa del Santísimo Sacramento, anónima, y su significación en el desarrollo del auto sacramental,” Revista de literatura 35 (1969): 127–65. 13 Ricardo Arias, The Spanish Sacramental Plays (Boston, 1980), pp. 40–50.

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In order to describe these processions, Bruce Wardropper focuses on two areas: Catalonia and Castile. In Catalonia and the Spanish Levant, the processions were formed by carts, where a passage of the Bible was represented using statues. These carts were called pasos, roques, or entramesos. Later, actors who played some actions or sang melodies replaced these statues. In Castile, the tradition of the carts in the procession was not very significant. Instead, the performances concentrated on a theatrical representation after the procession. In Seville in 1579, it was impossible to hold a representation in the cathedral, so it was played outside the church in a public square. Norman Shergold explains that the real revolution took place around 1530 or 1540, when the actor Lope de Rueda designed stages over three carts, one used as a flat platform where the actors moved and the other two to transport the scenery: ships, palaces, mountains, etc.14 The great advantage of this system is that the carts could easily move everything with the help of animals. Another interesting aspect is the decoration of the whole town, especially the streets where the procession took place. This cleaning and decoration of the town has been studied by anthropologists and evidently is something that happens in all cultures. It has the value of “decontaminating” and purifying a place where God is going to pass through.15 Madame d’Aulnoy described the city of Madrid during her journey to Spain, where people hung banners in the windows and balconies and painted and decorated their facades. In 1677 the Town Hall of Madrid even changed the itinerary of the procession because it was especially sunny on one street, although an awning had been installed over it.16 The ground was covered with flowers and aromatic plants. And the residents of these neighborhoods were allowed to prepare altars with cloths and candelabras. Lope de Vega in La carbonera describes the decoration of the city of Seville: Juncia, espadana y mastranzos servían al suelo de afombras; de telas y terciopelos toda ventana se entolda. Por sus cercos adornaban naranjos con verdes hojas 14 Norman D. Shergold, A History of the Spanish Stage from Medieval Times until the End of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1967), p. 110. 15 Joan Prat Canos, “Aspectos simbólicos de las fiestas,” in Tiempo de fiesta: ensayos antropológicos sobre las fiestas en España, ed. Horacio M. Velasco (Madrid, 1982), p. 160. 16 See Norman D. Shergold and John E. Varey, Los autos sacramentales en Madrid en la época de Calderón, 1637–1681 (Madrid, 1961), pp. 323–24.



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entre cuyo azahan pendían ya limones, ya torojas. . . . En mirar calles, ventanas, altares, paños, historias y pinturas que adornaban se me pasaron dos horas.17

Such contemporaneous accounts bear witness to the elaborate preparations made for these festivities. The main resource of an auto sacramental is allegory. Without it, there is no sacramental play.18 Actually, allegory joins two levels: on one side the historical (showing a story) and on the other, the allegorical or theological (showing the real meaning). These two levels bear a close relationship to the asunto and the argumento, because allegory allows the playwright to use any plot he desires to express the same theme: human redemption. This effort of joining a plot or story to a theological message is achieved using etymologies, personification of abstract ideas (such as Faith, Religion, Truth, Sin, or Envy), their costumes, movements of characters over the stage,19 etc. So the allegory offers the first historical level (or plot) where it deals with a story taken from different sources (the adventures of a pilgrim, the story of the world as a great market, the loving relation between Psyche and Cupid, the wedding of two lovers, the problems of a beekeeper with a bear that attacks his beehive, etc.). And this first step is also connected to the allegorical or theological level (the theme) where the plot reveals its deep doctrinal meaning, which is theological and ­sacramental. The use of allegory was very common in preaching since the Middle Ages, and it could have trained the minds of these audiences. In other words, early preaching could have hastened the later development of the sacramental play. If we consider the autos written before Calderón, we will see a desperate search for a formula that is only fully achieved in Calderón’s works. 17 See Lope de Vega, La carbonera, ed. Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo (Madrid, 1969), pp. 240–41. 18 Barbara Kurtz and Louise Fothergill-Payne have studied this aspect. See Barbara E. Kurtz, The Play of Allegory in the Autos Sacramentales of Pedro Calderón de la Barca (Washington, 1991); and Louise Fothergill-Payne, La alegoría en los autos y farsas anteriores a Calderón (London, 1977). 19 See J. Enrique Duarte, “Prosémica y colocación en los autos de Calderón: valores dramáticos y simbólicos,” in Espacios de teatro áureo: texto, espacio y representación (actas selectas del X Congreso de la Asociación Internacional de Teatro Español y Novohispano de los Siglos de Oro), ed. Aurelio González (Mexico, 2003), pp. 353–76.

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In fact, it is very common to talk about two kinds of allegories: allegoria in verbis and allegoria in factis. The first one is the rhetorical allegory that can be defined as a chained metaphor: in this way, the playwright shows an abstract idea (Faith, for example) personified in a character dressed in a very particular way. The second, which Miguel Ángel Pérez Priego calls figuration, is the interpretation of facts described in the Old Testament as things (res, facta) that are similarly symbolic. But the sacramental play is a difficult genre, raising a challenge for its writers. The main problem is how a joining of the historical and theological levels is reached, or how the playwright can express theological ideas with a fictional story. During a long period of time, authors improved different techniques such as the scenic movement of characters along the stage, the costumes (some of them very connected to allegory), actors’ makeup, the way they speak, or even how they were able to compose on the stage pictures or images very similar to the ones found in churches. These elements all contributed to a possible decoding of plot to reach the allegorical level. In this way, people could understand the negativity of a character like the demon, always dressed in black, with a sword, always persecuting the inoffensive representative of mankind (or the human soul) that cannot be helped by anybody except for Jesus Christ. We find battles between good (virtues, sacraments, saints) and evil ­characters (vices, demons, monsters) that are won by the positive figures. In this way the audience could correctly interpret the final message of the auto sacra­ mental: human redemption and the role of the Eucharist in that process. But we can find other attempts to connect these plays to catechetical injunctions toward religious adherence. We can also observe a clear and progressive intention to mythologize the Habsburg dynasty that happens at the moment when Calderón de la Barca writes his autos sacramentales. Rull and Neumeister have studied this process.20 The use of the sacramental play to glorify the ruler is not strange in a period and a country where church and state maintain so close a relation. We can find many examples such as El nuevo palacio del Retiro, El valle de la zarzuela, La segunda esposa, El lirio y la azucena, El segundo blasón del Austria, etc. Calderón usually melds the allusions to Christ and the Habsburgs, mixing 20 Sebastian Neumeister, “Escenografía cortesana y orden estético-político del mundo,” in La escenografía del teatro barroco, ed. Aurora Egido (Salamanca, 1989), pp. 141–59; and Enrique Rull Fernández, “Hacia la delimitación de una teoría político-teológica en el teatro de Calderón,” in Calderón: actas del Congreso Internacional sobre Calderón y el teatro espa­ ñol del Siglo de Oro, ed. Luciano García Lorenzo (Madrid, 1983), pp. 759–67.



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sacred history with human or political history. This author normally has a vision of history ruled by God, where the Habsburgs are the natural representatives of God’s desires on earth who incarnate the order established by God. One essential ingredient is the story of Rudolf of Austria, who personifies a very well-known legend to explain the later success of Spanish Habsburgs. Once when Rudolf of Austria was hunting, he met a priest who was carrying the viaticum to an ill peasant. Rudolf then dismounted his horse, led it to the priest and escorted him toward the village. This legend is also found in many sacramental plays such as El lirio y la azucena and El segundo blasón del Austria, and it can be found in different books such as Monita et exempla by Justus Lipsius, Corona virtuosa written by Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, and Emblemas regiopolíticos by Juan de Solórzano Pereira. This incident was converted into an excuse to glorify the Habsburgs, whose political power and greatness were presented as a reward for their piety. The different monarchs of this dynasty tried to imitate Rudolf ’s action whenever possible. Charles II met a priest with the viaticum in January 1685 and let him enter his carriage. As Rubens painted a picture of Rudolf ’s legend, Romaine de Hoogue designed another one with the episode of Charles II, and it was even celebrated by a romance written by Francisco Antonio Bances Candamo. In his glorification of Spanish monarchs, Calderón took as reference a passage from the Bible, Habakkuk 3:3: Deus ab Austro veniet (God is coming from Edom). The key term is here Austro, which is interpreted by Calderón as “God is coming from [the dynasty of] Austria or Habsburg” or “God is coming from the South.” This imaginative translation is also supported by other different references. In the Bible, it is said that Satan will place his kingdom in the “Aquilon,” which is translated by Calderón as the North (as seen, for example, in this passage from Daniel 11:8: Et provocatus rex austri egredietur et pugnabit adversus regem aquilonis). This reference is very clear: the South is Spain, and its king (a Habsburg monarch) will prevail against the king of the North. The northern part of Europe at that time meant satanic heresy, while the southern part (Spain) denoted Catholicism. The sacramental plays reflected many problems of their community: its social structures, religious or cultural conflicts, political and civil practices. All the complex human world of this time is an essential part of the genre. But this framework of relations is also closely connected to a spiritual world through the help of allegory. The connection between the sacramental plays and the Bible is also worth considering. We have previously analyzed the example of the

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g­ lorification of the Habsburg monarchy, but many other examples could be cited. It is indispensable to remember that many mechanisms of allegory coincide with ways of expression that the exegesis of the holy scriptures has applied to the Bible. Allegorical interpretation was initiated by Philo of Alexandria and widely used by the Church Fathers. It considers the facts, characters, and institutions of the Old Testament as historical realities designed by God to prefigure the person of Jesus Christ and his works. The exegete always tries to go further than the literal meaning, seeking one of deeper spiritual significations. Taking that procedure into account, we can perceive a coherent continuity from biblical interpretation to the sacramental play. In many cases, the auto sacramental uses the interpretation given by the Church Fathers, tradition, or even the liturgy without forgetting poetry. The employment of Sacred Scriptures in the autos sacramentales shows different and ample nuances. In many cases, one character of a sacramental play incorporates a sentence, an expression, or an image that comes from the Bible. These references connect the two worlds of the allegory, placing the events and characters distributed over the stage within a religious universe. Calderón employs some appalling images described in the holy scriptures to create scenes of great effectiveness. One remarkable example is the description of the hydra of seven heads, a motif that is found in the Book of Revelation. This motif is very common among the verses of many sacramental plays, but on some occasions, we find scenic materializations of this beast (in many cases related to the tarasca used in the processions). It is capable of movement, a mechanical animal that bears on its back a woman characterized as Sin, as it is shown in El valle de la zarzue­ ­la. In A María el corazón, each head of this beast represents a Deadly Sin. Opposed to that reference is the example of Christ represented as a lamb or a lion. In the holy scripture, Jesus is shown as a lion of Judah or a lamb capable of cleaning all impurities. In Triunfar muriendo, the text calls Christ the “Lion Lamb.” But the best performance is found above the stage in this auto sacramental, when the scenery shows a great lion that later is opened to reveal a lamb in its interior. This passage is built according to the rules of emblems, where we find an illustration above the stage, and the verses of the auto sacramental are presented as explanation for that image. It is impossible to understand the doctrinal and artistic universe of the auto sacramental without taking into consideration the sacred scriptures. In its aim of reaching emotional marvel and the provocation of audiences to dogmatic exaltation, the sacramental play employs lavish ­scenery



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that contributes pedagogically to the transmission of communicated doctrines. The sacramental play is represented upon carts, which were described by the traveller Antoine Brunel as little painted houses over wheels where the actors dressed themselves up. In the first half of the 17th century, they made use of only two carts, one called a medio carro, attached to another one used as a platform to perform the dramatic action, known as a carrillo. Normally the dramatic feast consisted of the performance of four sacramental plays. In 1647 the system changed, because the year before the autos sacramentales had been cancelled.21 But the Town Hall of Madrid was very interested in their celebration, because the feast connected to a sacramental play was a way to raise funds for the hospitals of the city. That year, in 1647, the king authorized a performance on the 7th of June, along with the feast to be celebrated on the 20th. There were barely two weeks to write the autos, rehearse them, and prepare the scenography. The people in charge were so pressed for time that they decided to perform only two sacramental plays with a more spectacular mise en scène, composed of four carts each. From 1647, this would be the normal strategy for performing the autos sacramentales. The cart used as a stage (the carrillo) was later substituted by a great wooden platform. This was a stage where the magnificence of this genre could develop fully. Also, around this large platform the Town Hall gave orders for the building of a wooden structure with rows of seats for authorities and members of different councils and their wives. The carts were well-thought-out stage machineries that allowed changes similar to those produced in the courtly theater. They were also spectacular. In fact, during the years 1653 to 1656, the Italian engineer Baccio del Bianco was responsible for their design. He was also in charge of the representations that took place in the Royal Palace of the Retiro. The playwright had to submit a report (the memoria de apariencias) with a detailed description of the appearance of the cart and the essential movements that the machinery of this cart should have. In the sacramental plays composed by Calderón de la Barca, there is symmetry between the first cart and the fourth, placed upon the corners of the stage. The same effect is achieved by the second and third carts. For example, if the first cart represents the ship of the church, the fourth will simulate a diabolical ship. The second and third carts used to be the most spectacular, because they were placed

21 See the article by Norman D. Shergold, “A problem in the staging of Autos Sacramen­ tales in Madrid: 1647–1648,” Hispanic Review 32 (1964): 12–35.

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in front of the audiences, and their appearance was discovered at the end of the performance. We can read many of these memorias de apariencias, or stage directions, written by Calderón.22 A quick look at these reports shows different and impressive sceneries, such as ships, palaces, mountains, temples, clouds, and gardens. Another important aspect of this genre has to do with the actors who performed the autos sacramentales. They were professional men and women who earned their living with this job. They seemed to be better than amateur actors, and Bruce Wardropper suggests that in Spain actresses were not persecuted as in other countries due to their work on the sacramental plays. Madrid was the court, and the Town Hall tried to employ the best actors of the moment; so they paid a great amount of money to help them travel as far as the royal residence to rehearse the sacramental plays. As soon as the actors had arrived in the city, the authorities communicated to them the prohibition of going away. If they suspected they might abandon their duty, the Town Hall ordered the confiscation of all their property. If one of them tried to escape his responsibility, he was imprisoned. We can distinguish between two ways of acting: the first one is mimetic, but there was also a second one that could be called allegorical. In the mimetic style, all the costumes can be interpreted in a double way. For example, a dress with feathers can mean that it belongs to a soldier. But also, the feathers imply the sin of arrogance and vanity, if we come near to the allegorical level. In some cases, it is very easy to describe a character: this happens, for example, when we find peasants, kings, merchants, soldiers, or shepherds. The difficulty comes in when the playwright wants to portray an allegorical character such as God, Truth, Sin, or the devil. For instance, the writer uses the tradition and appearance of his characters to coincide with what we can see in pictures from this period. Other times, the writer has to appeal to emblem books. For example, it is very common to describe Faith as she appears in many emblems, with a bandage around her eyes, meaning that she is blind because she believes what she cannot see. Other examples can be found in depicting saints, where the writers confined themselves to established iconographic representation that was very well known in a religious society.

22 They all are published in Lara Escudero Baztán and Rafael Zafra, Memorias de apari­ encias y otros documentos sobre los autos de Calderón de la Barca (Kassel, 2003).



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The evil agents were not so codified. At the very beginning of the genre, the devil appeared wearing masks, beard, and horns, although Calderón removes all of these grotesque elements, to let the devil take another appearance: he is dressed up as a soldier, with feathers, baton, and a black (or dark) cloak. However, the main character is always Humanity, revealed in different ways depicting the human soul, the mind, the will, or the human body. Manhood is always confronted by appetites, disguised as insane people. He will be the center of all action, while the other characters will fight to control him. A very common costume is one made from furs, resembling a savage or a cannibal. The furs represent a state of nakedness, of necessity and abandonment. They are used to illustrate somebody far away from civilization or abandoned by his reason. In other cases, such as Saint John the Baptist, fur symbolizes the contrary: asceticism and penance. Humility and Penance usually are dressed up in furs also. To conclude, the costumes in the sacramental plays show that this genre opens up some of the better possibilities for artistic exploration, due to its flexibility, freedom, and polyvalence. There is no feast without music, and songs played a great role in sacramental plays. The first autos sacramentales were characterized by the use of a villancico at the end, giving a short summary of what had happened and the ideas developed on the stage. Later, the function of music increased so far that some critics have defined these works as sacred operas.23 ­Calderón is inspired by the theory of the music of the spheres, a hypothesis initiated by Pythagoras, which contends that music rules the relations between elements, as well as the assembly of the whole universe. Following Saint Augustine’s doctrines, Calderón also differentiates between two kinds of music: divine and false. On many occasions, false music provokes a character to sin and temptation, but it is immediately counteracted by divine music, the song of Grace. Music not only has an ornamental dimension, but also it is a fundamental part of the work. An important sound in it is that of chirimías, which are defined by ­Covarrubias as being made with a kind of trumpet:24 this cue announces 23 Alice M. Pollin, “Calderón de la Barca and Music: Theory and Examples in the Autos (1675–1681),” Hispanic Review 41 (1973): 362–70. There are other examples, such as Jack Sage, “Calderón y la música teatral,” Bulletin hispanique 58 (1956): 275–300; and José María Díez Borque, “El auto sacramental calderoniano y su público: funciones del texto cantado,” in Calderón and the Baroque Tradition, ed. Kurt Levy and Jesús Aras (Ontario, 1985), pp. 49–67. 24 Sebastián de Covarrubias, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española (Madrid, 2006), pp. 520–21.

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the ­presence of God or the deity. But as Díez Borque has studied, music performs further functions, including prayer, praise, worship, and doctrinal explanation. The greatest writer of autos sacramentales was Pedro Calderón de la Barca. He wrote almost eighty of these works, which have been edited and published by GRISO [Grupo de Investigación del Siglo de Oro] of the University of Navarra. Calderón reached the highest aesthetic level, using the improvements of many previous writers such us Diego Sánchez de Badajoz, Juan Timoneda, Antonio Mira de Amescua, Luis Vélez de Guevara, Juan Pérez de Montalbán, José de Valdivielso, and Felipe Godínez. Many other playwrights tried to compete with Calderón’s autos: Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla, Agustín Moreto, Francisco Antonio Bances Candamo, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.25 But arguably none of them ever reached the heights of his eloquence or dramatic dexterity. A very interesting author, and one who perhaps does reach the height of achievement represented by Calderón, is Lope de Vega. Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo has published around 50 of his sacramental plays, although there is a great philological task ahead to edit them critically. Many works of his production have been lost, because Lope did not provide a list with his religious works. He wrote sacramental plays to solve his economic problems, and nobody cared about them in comparison to his comedias. But some of the critics who have studied them assure us that Lope’s works are a great introduction to Calderón’s production, and many elements developed later by Calderón were already present in Lope’s plays.26 During Lope’s life, he published four autos sacramentales in his book El peregrino en su patria: El viaje del alma, Las bodas entre el Alma y el Amor divino, La Maya and El hijo pródigo. Ángel Valbuena Prat analyzed Calderón’s sacramental plays and distributed them into different categories. Some of them were called philosophical, such as El gran teatro del mundo, where human life is compared to a theater. The director of the company is God and he has to distribute different roles such as the king, the peasant, a beautiful woman, the church, and the child. At the end of the play, they all are called to be judged. El gran mercado del mundo is another philosophical auto where human 25 A more detailed study of this author can be seen in the book by Ignacio Arellano and J. Enrique Duarte, El auto sacramental (Madrid, 2003), pp. 89–160. 26 For example, Agustín de la Granja, in his edition of Lope Félix de Vega Carpio, El bosque de amor / El labrador de la mancha (autos sacramentales inéditos) (Madrid, 2000).



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life is compared to a market, where buyers can obtain good ­products or ruin themselves. Calderón also composed mythological sacramental plays, where he took inspiration from ancient mythology. A clear and beautiful example is El divino Orfeo. Jesus is the new and divine Orpheus who has to descend to hell in search of his lover, the human soul, bitten by a snake in the Garden of Eden. With his new musical instrument, the cross, Jesus enters hell, rescuing human nature and giving it the new ship of the church, where it will be able to find all the sacraments. Other sacramental plays are inspired by stories found in the Bible, such as La cena del rey Baltasar. But Calderón also used daily life to create his works. An example would be the sacramental play El nuevo palacio del Retiro, where human events and the divine world join to produce this work. The editor of this play, Alan Paterson, sees in it a criticism of a policy developed by the CountDuke of Olivares, the royal favorite, protecting Portuguese bankers. The work is inspired by the events celebrated to inaugurate the palace built by Olivares for the king. There are many other examples: La segunda esposa refers on the historical level to the wedding of King Philip IV to Mariana of Austria, after the death of his first wife, Elizabeth of France. But on the theological level, the second wife is naturally the Catholic Church, after the disappointment of God with the Jewish people, who played the part of his first wife.27 The heyday of this genre came to a close in June 1765, when Charles III banned the sacramental plays by law. This fact can be explained by the change of mentality that happened at the beginning of the 18th century, especially in a social class composed by learned people, where they took as model what had been happening in other nations such as France. This erudite French model was opposed to the lowbrow tastes of the Spanish people, about which the cultural elites found the theater a way of educating the masses. In fact, the learned people of the 17th century were bicultural: they shared popular culture with the masses at the grassroots, but they also enjoyed their own high-level culture. During the 18th century, in contrast, the cultural elites became monocultural: they scorned popular culture, which they considered to include examples of brutality.

27 The best book for understanding the complexity of Calderón’s auto sacramental is by Ignacio Arellano, Estructuras dramáticas y alegóricas en los autos de Calderón (Kassel, 2001).

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The sacramental play was then seen by the upper classes as an uncivilized testimony of a past period that was better forgotten.28 Moreover, the Catholic Church hierarchy was also against the auto sac­ ramental, because it considered that in this genre the sacred mysteries were presented and performed unsuitably. Although we can find autos sacramentales in the 20th century, they are only poor testimonies of a glorious past. During the 1920s, many poets and dramatists were interested in the sacramental plays, although these examples cannot be considered to form a new period of the auto sacramental. It is worth remembering examples such as Angelita by Azorín, El hombre deshabitado by Rafael Alberti or Quién te ha visto y quién te ve by Miguel Hernández, which is commonly considered a work very close to Calderón’s autos. * * * * * The auto sacramental, as I have tried to show, is a fundamental genre of Spanish literature of the 17th century. In fact, we cannot understand the Spanish Baroque and its mentality without taking into account this kind of dramatic representation. From the early manifestations around 1520 to the end of the genre in 1765, the auto sacramental developed an allegorical structure that reached a summit of perfection in the work of Calderón de la Barca. The auto is a complex literary expression formed by a mixture of different ingredients. It is composed of elements and techniques not only belonging to the popular theater, but also represented in the court. Music played an important role in this genre, where it was used to emphasize certain ideas and moments. However, the musical component of these representations is not always well studied because we have lost almost all the relevant musical scores. Nevertheless, it remains a fundamental feature of the sacramental plays, which constitute a research field unto themselves. In this area as in so many others, we are still seeking to expand our knowledge.

28 See Víctor García Ruiz, “Los autos sacramentales en el siglo XVIII: un panorama documental y otras cuestiones,” Revista canadiense de estudios hispánicos 19 (1994): pp. 61–82.

PART two

THEMES

Honor/Honra Revisited A. Robert Lauer Dedicated to Hilaire The term honor, from the Greek timē and the Latin honōs or honōris, is an ambiguous term. In Greek, timē may mean honor, esteem, worth, value, price, dignity, power, prerogative, estimate, compensation, and reward. In addition, this and related terms like timōrema connect this concept with vengeance, revenge, and punishment.1 Moreover, timē is at times linked with aidōs (shame) and hubris (pride). In Latin, honōs denotes, when referring to persons, honor, repute, esteem, reputation, praise, and distinction; when associated with things, honor, esteem, and value. Likewise, it signifies preferment, public honor (including that offered in funeral rites), official dignity, and an office or post, as in the case of a magistrate. Additionally, it stands for ambition and glory, especially military. It may indicate a mark of honor, respect for a person or a deity, reverence, a sacrifice, an honorary gift, a prize, a reward, an acknowledgment, a recompense, and a fee. The term may also be used in reference to an ornament and a decoration, and it may be employed to denote grace, charm, and beauty.2 In English, honor corresponds to many of the above meanings, including the one used to refer to property or a seigniory of several manors held under a baron or lord paramount in a hereditary fashion and granted originally by a king. In this sense, honor suggests the idea of a fee, gift or recompense. Moreover, in UK English, honor at times implies an allegiance of an individual to moral principles, as in the phrase “to be obliged in honor.”3 In a similar vein, Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged includes as a 7th acceptance the idea of chastity and purity and, in its 8th acceptance, a keen sense of ethical conduct or

1  Henry R. Hamilton, A Greek-English Lexicon, 2 vols. (London, 1871), p. 274. 2 Charlton Thomas Lewis, “Honōs,” An Elementary Latin Dictionary (New York, 1915), p. 369. 3 “Honour, honor,” The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, 2 vols. (Glasgow, 1971), 1:367–69.

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integrity.4 For reasons political, Webster’s excludes the Oxford English Dictionary meaning of seigniory, appropriate only in a seigniorial context. In Spanish, the term honor and its equivalent honra are synonymous, as Sebastián de Covarrubias Orozco indicates in his 1611 Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española: “HONOR. Vale lo mismo que honra.”5 Moreover, Covarrubias equates three concepts under this term: “reverencia, cortesía que se hace a la virtud, a la potestad; algunas veces se hace al dinero.” The 1732 Diccionario de la lengua castellana, known as the Diccionario de autoridades, includes this same definition for honor under honra, thus confirming the synonymy of both terms, although it assuages the third element found in Covarrubias: “HONRA. S. f. Reveréncia, acatamiento y veneración que se hace à la virtúd, autoridad ò mayoría de alguna persona.”6 For his part, Joan Corominas, in his Diccionario crítico etimológico de la lengua castellana, reveals that honor, which first appeared in Spanish as honore ca. 950, originally meant, as in Latin and UK English, a land inheritance: “heredad, patrimonio y usufructo de las rentas de alguna villa o castillo realengos,” as one finds in the Poema de mío Cid.7 By analogy, it also meant “lote, suerte” (Berceo, Milagros, 94d) and “alta posición” (Berceo, Milagros, 841d).8 Additionally, by the 14th century, the derivative term honrado meant “ilustre” (Milagros, 737c) and “rico” (Milagros, 318c), as in the Covarrubias entry.9 Other derivatives like honorable and honesto, the latter drawn from the Latin honĕstus and initially meaning respectable or noble, originate from the same root as honōs. In addition, honestum, also deriving from honōs, denotes honesty, integrity, virtue, and beauty.10 Passim Corominas, honor in Spanish dates from 950 (Glosas Emilianenses, 89). Honra (ondra, onrra, onra), although a later term that Corominas dates   4 “Honor,” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, . 7 Jan. 2012.   5 Sebastián de Covarrubias Orozco, “Honor,” Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, ed. Felipe C. R. Maldonado, rev. Manuel Camarero (Madrid, 1994), p. 644.   6 Real Academia Española, Diccionario de autoridades, 3 vols. (Madrid, 1963), 2:173.   7 J. Corominas, Diccionario crítico etimológico de la lengua castellana, 4 vols. (Bern, 1954), 2:938. Cf. Poema de mío Cid, ed. Ramón Menéndez Pidal (Madrid, 1971), p. 155: “honores e tierras” (1.47.887); p. 284: “tierra e onor” (3.l49.3413).   8 Corominas, Diccionario, 2:938. Cf. Gonzalo de Berceo, Milagros de Nuestra Señora, ed. Michael Gerli (Madrid, 1989), p. 87: “dessent qual mereciesse, recibrié tal onor” (94d); p. 215: “e tornar lo yé luego en toda su onor” (886d [841]).   9 Corominas, Diccionario, 2:938. Cf. Gonzalo de Berceo, Milagros de Nuestra Señora, ed. Michael Gerli (Madrid, 1989), p. 200: “queriénlo todos mucho, era omne onrrado” (782c [737]); p. 126: “rico e muy onrrado / [. . .] de precio muy granado” (318c–d). 10 Charlton Thomas Lewis, “Honestum,” An Elementary Latin Dictionary (New York, 1915), p. 368.



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ca. 1074, became by the 16th century more popular than honor, as attested by Juan de Valdés in the Diálogo de la lengua.11 The 21st edition of the Diccionario de la Real Academia defines honor and honra similarly.12 However, only honor, similar to the UK term honour, may be used to mean land inheritance or patrimony. As one can see from the above definitions, there seems to be one type of honor, which here I will call honra,13 associated with the idea of surplus, ambition, property, wealth, power, high office, war, and culturallyspecific masculine values. This kind of honor is partly innate and partly acquired. On account of the robust effort demanded in the pursuit of this mark of distinction, physical health and strength are deemed essential. King Alphonse X’s Second Partida, title 21, is quite specific on the qualities required of carefully selected men who excel in the kingdom and become its knights and defenders: they must be strong and capable of endurance in war and battle, they must be practiced in the use of weapons, and they must show no pity towards the enemy. Physically, these men must have well-made limbs and be strong, powerful, and active. It stands to reason that the original knights or defenders were mountain hunters, carpenters, blacksmiths, stonecutters, and butchers, “because they were used to killing living animals and to scattering their blood.”14 However, brute force and a lack of pity, although indispensable, were not the only essential attributes of these extraordinary men who differed from priests, who prayed, and laborers, who cultivated the land. These men must also

11  J. Corominas, Diccionario, 2:938. Juan de Valdés, in Diálogo de la lengua, ed. José F. Montesinos (Madrid, 1964), p. 112 indeed states that he prefers the term honor in poetic discourse and honra in prose: “lo mesmo digo de honor, por honra.” It should be noted, moreover, that Valdés does not make a semantic distinction between these terms. Interestingly, on p. 125, Valdés equates the terms hidalgo and gentiles hombres (gentlemen): “A los que acá llamáis gentiles hombres, en Castilla llamamos hidalgos.” Originally, the former was a less distinguished term than the latter. 12 Real Academia Española, Diccionario de la lengua española, 21st ed., 2 vols. (Madrid, 1992), 2:1121. The distinction made by Peter N. Dunn in “Honor / Honra,” Diccionario de la comedia del Siglo de Oro, ed. Frank P. Casa, Luciano García Lorenzo, and Germán Vega García-Luengos (Madrid, 2002), pp. 166–67, between honor as social category and honra as reputation is a complementary opinion. 13 As already mentioned, there is no difference in Spanish between honor and honra, as we saw in Valdés. Honra, however, tends to appear in titles of 16th-century treatises on honor like Jerónimo Jiménez de Urrea’s Diálogo de la verdadera honra militar (Venice, 1556); the term honrado, likewise, is used early on in Spanish to denote rank or wealth, as we saw in Berceo: hence my choice. 14 Las siete partidas, trans. Samuel Parsons Scott, ed. Robert I. Burns, 5 vols. (Philadelphia, 2001), 2:418 (2.21.2).

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be “naturally susceptible to shame” (ibid.).15 Shame (vergüenza) was what prevented these defenders from taking to flight in battle, thus enabling them to win a war and conquer the enemy. This sense of shame, an ethical or moral feature, in conjunction with physical strength and a lack of pity, gave these menfolk a certain distinction or quality that set them apart from others. These “sons of quality” were the original fijosdalgo (ibid.). The fijosdalgo, through lineage, their knowledge, and their superiority in habits and manners, were subsequently called gentlemen (gentiles), “which means nobility of excellence” (ibid.).16 Strength and shame were the qualities that set these gentlemen apart from others. Other qualities or virtutes, like prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice, were good habits that such men should aim to possess. A logical development would be for these men to imagine that innate and acquired abilities or virtues would be passed to their descendants. Since shame and strength are manly virtues, it stands to reason that the physical and moral inheritance would be passed from father to son, both physically (strength) and culturally, since knowledge of arms and good habits are acquired. The idea of descent, hence, became important. Gentlemen would marry fidalgas, women of their own rank, in order not to diminish or impair their lineage. Marriage to a woman of inferior rank would diminish the descent, although the child born of that union would still be a fijodalgo. However, such a child would not be considered a gentleman. Likewise, a child born of a fidalga and a man of lower rank would not be considered noble, since he would not inherit a noble father’s blood.17 Hence, marriage by rank became institutionalized. Men who could recall noble (patrilineal) descent as far back as the fourth degree would be considered of higher honor and nobility.

15 Aristotle, The ‘Art’ of Rhetoric, trans. John Henry Freese (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 210–11, defines shame as a pain or uneasiness a man suffers in respect to past misdeeds, like cowardice, which tend to bring dishonor (2.6.2–4). 16 It is important to emphasize that nobility is not something one is born into; it is an acquisition recognized by a king or a superior on account of a man’s virtue, defined here, passim Webster’s, as his valor (his manly strength and courage), merit (a commendable quality or trait like shame), and potency (a capacity to act): see Webster’s definition of virtue in its fourth, fifth, and sixth acceptances. Jerónimo Jiménez de Urrea (c. 1510–73), in his Diálogo de la verdadera honra militar (Madrid, 1992), p. 127, explains this idea better: “De estos [the hidalgos] descienden las hidalguías, porque ninguno nació hidalgo, sino que alcanzó la nobleza por propia virtud, y los primeros nobles la dejaron a sus ­descendientes.” 17 Partidas, 2:419 (2.21.3).



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It is vital to realize that only a king, an emperor, or a lord could grant the privilege of nobility to a defender of the realm, thus making him a gentleman. A man, no matter how naturally strong, brave, fearless, merciless, or virtuous, could not make himself honorable in a legal sense. He needed to be recognized by a superior. The Second partida is very clear on this point: “But no one but an emperor, king, or other lord . . . has the right to give . . . rewards,” including the right to confer nobility “where the party has none by descent,” or the power “to raise men from a low condition and place them in a better one.”18 This is what 14th-century Italian humanist Bartolus of Sassoferrato calls “civil nobility” (as distinguished from theological and natural) in De insigniis et armis. Nobility for this lawyer in effect rests ultimately on princely recognition.19 Similarly, the Burgundian diplomat Olivier de la Marche (1425–1502), a plebeian later knighted, states that a prince may ennoble any man he wishes on account of his virtuous living or his riches: “ancient nobility comes from ancient riches.”20 In the 16th century, the Aragonese nobleman Jerónimo Jiménez de Urrea would follow suit: “Parece que en cuanto a no poder ser caballero si no se es hijodalgo, se engañan los que tal dicen porque la ceremonia en la que el rey arma caballero al hijodalgo y el privilegio que le da, puede hacerlos igual con un villano.”21 Hence, even ancient lineage and wealth had to be recognized by a higher authority to determine dignity and status. This legal recognition is of the utmost importance. Technically, it enabled anyone (villeins, plebians, nobles, the poor, the wealthy, and even outsiders) to be worthy of honra, thus minimizing the idea of blood and descent. Hence, even in the case of the well-known 15th- to 17th-century limpieza de sangre statutes, “blood” (which depended on regal recognition) could be legally bypassed or “purified” by royal decree. In the 17th century, Philip III granted Pedro Osorio de Velasco a habit of the Order of Santiago, in spite of the latter’s “stained” descent. Previously, Pope Clement VIII had cleared Velasco’s name, bypassing the candidate’s maternal lineage. Albert A. Sicroff argues perversely in stating that royal ­concessions, which 18  Partidas, 2:502 (2.27.6). 19  Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven, 1984), p. 149. 20 Keen, Chivalry, p. 150. It should be noted that even great wealth as a factor of ennoblement must be recognized by a monarch. The determining factor here, however, is virtue: “And he is the happier, and is to be more esteemed, who commences his nobility in virtue, than he who brings his to an end in vice” (ibid.). 21  Jerónimo Jiménez de Urrea, Diálogo de la verdadera honra militar (Madrid, 1992), p. 127.

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in effect turned a converso into a cristiano limpio, “no pesarían mucho en la opinión pública española que exigía . . . una limpieza de sangre absoluta.”22 More pertinent would be his statement that “[p]or lo que concierne al teatro, es muy interesante observar que ningún dramaturgo escribió nunca una pieza en que el tema central fuera abiertamente la limpieza de sangre.”23 One often forgets that blood purity laws did not necessarily refer to lineage (blood) but to the cultural practice of faithfully observing the rites of the Christian (Catholic) faith. Antonio Domínguez Ortiz states clearly that the decrees of 4 and 21 September 1501 forbade the children and grandchildren of heretics from exercising an oficio de honra; however, the prohibition was not absolute, was limited to the heirs of the first and second generation, and could be bypassed altogether by a licencia real.24 Inclusion, not exclusion, was the final aim of limpieza. After the expulsions of practicing Jews and Muslims from Spain, instead of ghettoizing or persecuting the conversos, “se ordenaba que los moros y judíos recién convertidos no formaran grupos, sino que se dispersaran entre los cristianos viejos para llegar a una más rápida fusión con ellos.”25 Even the virulent Castilian humanist Bartolomé Ximénez Patón, who judges Jews, Muslims, and Lutherans (Reformed Christians) as unworthy of high ecclesiastical posts, expresses great admiration for Old Christians who married recently converted Jews and, hence, helped prevent them from relapsing: “Los Christianos viejos que con ellos emparentaron, y assi los conseruan, su premio tendran en Dios.”26

22 Albert A. Sicroff, Los estatutos de limpieza de sangre: controversias entre los siglos XV y XVII, trans. Mauro Armiño (Madrid, 1985), p. 346, n148. 23 Sicroff, Limpieza, p. 345. 24 Antonio Domínguez Ortiz, Los conversos de origen judío después de la expulsión (Madrid, 1955), p. 32. 25 Domínguez Ortiz, Conversos, p. 31. 26 Bartolomé Ximénez Patón, Discvrso en favor del santo y loable estatvto de la limpieza (Granada, 1638), p. 8. As José Antonio Maravall indicates in “La función del honor en la sociedad tradicional,” Ideologies & Literature 2.7 (1978): 9–27, in Spain “eran quince veces más los excluidos por razones estamentales que por razones de ‘limpieza’ ” (p. 19). Furthermore, a nobleman did not lose his rights if it was later discovered he had “unclean” descent: “No conozco ningún caso de que nadie viera derogados estos derechos de noble, por reconocérsele un factor de sangre manchada en su ascendencia” (p. 23). Melveena McKendrick’s belief, as quoted by Peter N. Dunn, “Honor / Honra,” Diccionario, p. 167, that “el tema de la honra sería un ejemplo de desplazamiento de las verdaderas angustias de una sociedad paranoica por el tema irrepresentable de la pureza de sangre” seems to be an overstatement. Even nations with racialist practices made exceptions based on rank and necessity. Bryan Mark Rigg, Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers (Lawrence, 2002), pp. 18–19, points out that Mischlinge (half-castes) like Field-Marshall Erhard Milch, who was half-Jewish,



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Besides honra, there is another kind of honor, which I shall simply call by this name, and which differs from the former in several respects. Unlike honra, which is an external good similar to health, beauty, strength, stature, fitness for athletic contests, a good reputation, good luck, (active) virtue, noble birth, friends, and wealth,27 honor, as here defined, seems to be an internal good of the mind. This kind of honor is not acquired or sought, as property or wealth would be. It does not require bodily strength since it is not connected with surplus. It is a free gift common to all; hence, it is not proprietary. As an inner and spiritual endowment, it would not depend on lineage and rank, which are outer physical manifestations of honra. Honor is associated with internal passive qualities like modesty, virtue, dignity, beauty, and grace. Since it consists of submissiveness rather than achievement, it is associated with what is culturally-determined as the feminine and the unranked. On account of its universality, it is usually associated with Christianity (a spiritually “democratic” religion) rather than with classical paganism, which tends to be male-centered, exclusivist, and hierarchical. If honra is seen as the highest worldly good, honor is the patrimony of the soul. This particular form of honor, as distinct from honra, which requires words (praise), deeds (bowing, saluting), and external signs (gifts, statues, property), is internal and concerned only with a person’s excelling goodness. It is a metaphysical, not a physical concept. As St. Thomas Aquinas argues, “Before God, Who is the searcher of hearts, the witness of one’s conscience suffices; wherefore honor as far as God is concerned, may consist of the mere internal movement of the heart.”28 Consequently, both honor and honra require the recognition of others: whether God, in the first case, or people, in both instances: “Therefore, men who wish to be honored seek a witnessing to their excellence, according to the Philosopher” (Ethic. i. 5, viii. 8) (ibid.). For honor, God himself suffices as a witness, since only he can judge human hearts completely. However, praise,

were declared Aryan by the Führer; Milch was later awarded the Ritterkreuz (the highest military award in Germany) for his service in the 1940 Norwegian Campaign. 27 Aristotle, Rhetoric (1.5.4), pp. 48–49. 28 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 5 vols. (Westminster, 1981), 3:1632 (2.2.103.1). Those who are virtuous and in God’s grace are honorable, as Diego de Valera (1412–88) states in his treatise, Ung petit traicté de noblesse, in Arjo Vanderjagt, Qui sa vertu anoblist: The Concepts of Noblesse and Chose Publicque in Burgundian Political Thought (Groningen, 1981), p. 241: “Et tous deulx sont nobles de celle noblesse qui sunt en sa [God’s] grace.” Like Bartolus, Valera distinguishes theological from natural and civil nobility.

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which is included in honor, is offered by the people in acknowledgment of a person’s goodness as it “becomes clear to the knowledge of many” (ibid.). Thus, the opinions of others matter with respect to both honor and honra: for the former, God’s judgment suffices for salvific purposes; for the latter, only the king’s estimation is legally binding; for either one, public opinion may weigh in; for neither one, would a personal opinion or a matter of conscience matter. In sum, “nothing in human and corporal things can be greater than honor” (ibid.). Since the final arbiter of honor is God, a superior may honor a social inferior without opprobrium: “Private individuals are sometimes honored by kings, not that they are above them in the order of dignity but on account of some excellence of their virtue.”29 An iniquitous superior is also honored (given honra) on account of his social worth, since this would be recognized by others (a superior, God, or the community): “A wicked superior is honored for the excellence, not of his virtue but of his dignity, as being God’s minister, and because the honor paid to him is paid to the whole community over which he presides” (ibid.). Demons are excluded from honor, albeit they are superior in the order of nature, because of their irremediable wickedness; hence, they must be treated like enemies (ibid.). On the other hand, reverence (dulia) may be given even to irrational creatures like the wood of the Holy Cross or a king’s garment, for in so doing, one offers (metonymic) servitude to a superior: “As to the Cross of Christ, the honor we pay to it is the same as that which we pay to Christ, just as the king’s robe receives the same honor as the king himself.”30 Moreover, honor is due “to the good and the beautiful” and, hence, “honor is said to be the reward of virtue.” Early modern and contemporary dictionary definitions of honor follow suit. Covarrubias, under honrado, includes men and women who are virtuous, have a good reputation, and “buenas partes.”31 Autoridades, under the fourth acceptance of honor, includes “la honestidad y recato en las mugéres.”32 Under honesto, this dictionary includes the idea of modesty, virtue, and chastity (2:172). Furthermore, under honestidad, one finds the concepts of composure, moderation, and purity, “contraria al vicio de la luxuria” (2:172). The OED, under the third acceptance of honour / honor, and referring solely to women, includes the idea of chastity, purity, virtue, 29 Aquinas, Summa, 3:1633 (2.2.103.2). 30 Aquinas, Summa, 3:1634 (2.2.103.4). 31  Covarrubias, Diccionario, p. 644. 32 Real Academia Española, Autoridades, 2:173. Further quotations follow the text.



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reputation, and a good name.33 The DRAE, under the third acceptance of honor, includes “honestidad y recato en las mujeres, y buena opinión que se granjean con estas virtudes.”34 Finally, Webster’s (op. cit.), under its seventh acceptance, includes the idea of chastity and purity in women. One observes in the above definitions that honor, in its third, fourth, and seventh acceptances, is defined as a metaphysical moral quality that has nothing to do with acquisition, privilege, or rank, the usual domain of honra. On account of their common origin (honōs), honra, and honor, although different, share things in common. Both partake of the concept of shame.35 An honorable man may feel dishonored and disgraced and either commit suicide, like the classical hero Ajax, or join his monarch in a disastrous mission, like the Baroque Don Lope de Almeida in Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s A secreto agravio, secreta venganza. An honorable woman may feel shamed and either slay herself, like the memorable Lucretia, or request her own death, like Blanca in Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla’s Del rey abajo, ninguno. When in the 17th century Félix Lope de Vega Carpio writes that “los casos de la honra son mejores / porque mueven con fuerza a toda 33 Oxford English Dictionary, 1:367. 34 Real Academia Española, Diccionario, 2:1121. 35 Shame or loss of prestige in relation to the concept of honor is common to men and women in contemporary Greek mountain communities, as J. K. Campbell points out in Honour, Family, and Patronage (New York, 1974), pp. 270, 310. In a Spanish rural context, shamelessness (being sin vergüenza) is an external wrong that faces the world or the community at large; guilt is merely a personal matter of conscience (Julian A. Pitt-Rivers, The People of the Sierra [Chicago, 1971], p. 113). This is not always understood in non-traditional societies, wherein personal guilt is often synonymous with shame (cf. guilt and shame in Webster’s). It would be a mistake, however, to see shame and guilt (in reference to honor) as attributes solely of Spanish or Mediterranean cultures. One may find similar concepts in Bedouin communities, as Lila Abu-Lughod points out in Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (Berkeley, 1988). However, “all societies have their own forms of honour and shame,” as J. G. Peristiany points out in Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society (London, 1965), p. 10. In this respect see Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor: Ethics & Behavior in the Old South (New York, 1982), wherein honor in the antebellum U. S. South was based on self-worth, public (moral) reputation, race, and land (with slaves). The concept of honor (and shame) can only be understood in relation to a community since shame and honor are public, not personal, notions. A person who would believe, like psychiatrist Fritz Perls, that “I am not in this world to live up to other people’s expectations, nor do I feel that the world must live up to mine,” would be considered mad in a traditional society (as quoted in Elsie Jones-Smith, Theories of Counseling and Psychotherapy: An Integrative Approach [Los Angeles, 2012], p. 253). He would be an outcast, “ ‘Tribeless, lawless,’ [. . .] compared to an isolated piece at draughts,” for persons are by nature “gregarious animals” and “the state is by nature clearly prior to the family and to the individual” (Aristotle, Politics, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon [New York, 1941], 1129).

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gente,” one often forgets the significance of the next two lines: “con ellos las acciones virtuosas, / que la virtud es dondequiera amada.”36 Cases of honor move to virtuous deeds. Moreover, honor is universal and not only the property of a social class. If that had been the case, the average theatergoer would not have been entranced by such cases and Lope de Vega would not have written or recommended them. Another significant fact is that Lope uses the word casos. The term caso, from Latin casus, meaning fall, denotes a fortuitous or accidental happening: one not expected. From this word one gets casuismo (casuistry), the science or resolving cases of conscience. I believe Lope used caso in this sense when dealing with matters of honor. In fact, honor comedias of the Spanish Golden Age are capable of stirring the emotions not because they deal with something familiar but, on the contrary, precisely because they do not.37 One may sense initially that one knows what these plays are about, but as the works progress, one realizes that one is dealing with something exceptional, unforeseen, accidental, unexpected. Some of these twists have to do with the ambiguity in the use of the terms honor / honra, which might mean dissimilar things to different speakers, as in Lope de Vega’s Fuenteovejuna. Other turns have to do with the irresoluble clashes between these two concepts, leading at times to acute violence, as in Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s El garrote más bien dado (better known as El alcalde de Zalamea). Other developments deal with the resolution of honorable conflicts in a temperate way, as in Lope de Vega’s El comendador de Ocaña (Peribáñez). In these cases, the arbitration of a king is fundamental. In Lope de Vega’s Fuenteovejuna, one clearly observes that honor and honra mean different things depending on the speaker. When Fernán Gómez de Guzmán, Knight Commander of the village of Fuenteovejuna, tells his superior, Rodrigo Téllez Girón, Master of the Order of Calatrava, “debéisme honrar,” he is talking about rank (honra), as explained immediately afterwards: “que he puesto por vos la vida” (in war).38 When Mengo, a villein, asks Laurencia, a peasant, “¿Amas tú?” she replies “Mi propio honor” (p. 101). Clearly, she is not talking about rank (honra) but about her 36 Lope de Vega, Arte nuevo de hacer comedias, ed. Enrique García Santo-Tomás (Madrid, 2006), p. 149 (lines 327–30). 37 Matthew D. Stroud, in Fatal Union: A Pluralistic Approach to the Spanish Wife-Murder Comedias (Lewisburg, 1990), demonstrates clearly that one subgenre of the honor play, the uxoricide drama, is capable of many permutations. 38 Lope de Vega, Fuenteovejuna, ed. Francisco López Estrada (Madrid, 1996), p. 72. Subsequent citations follow the text.



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self-worth (honor) or dignity as a virtuous woman and (Old) Christian. To believe that Fernán Gómez would tell a superior that he ought to show respect for him, an inferior, would have been a show of hubris that the Master would not have tolerated. To imagine that Laurencia is talking about rank (honra) would make her sound pretentious, even though she has just criticized Frondoso for having called her and the other peasant women “damas” (p. 89). Honor and honra here, hence, do not mean “la categoría social y la preeminencia propias de la nobleza de sangre o de título (honor)” or “la fama o reputación en que se es tenido (honra),” as Peter Dunn defines these terms.39 Moreover, when Fernán Gómez informs Esteban, a peasant, that he is interested in his daughter, Esteban replies “no lo digáis, que no es justo / que nos quitéis el honor” (p. 146). Honor for Esteban means the dignity and worth that all men and women have in the eyes of God: theological, not civil honor. When the Commander asks speciously, “¿Vosotros honor tenéis? / ¡Qué freiles de Calatrava!” Esteban replies, “Alguno acaso se alaba / de la Cruz que le ponéis, / que no es de sangre tan limpia” (p. 146). For the Commander, honor means rank (honra), hence the ironic comment; for the peasant, it is the quality of worthy (Old) Christians: a moral, not a social, value. Moreover, when the Commander tells Esteban that the village women would be honored by their (sexual) union with him, “De cualquier suerte que sea, / vuestras mujeres se honran,”40 Esteban replies, “Esas palabras deshonran” (p. 147). Here, honran, in the Commander’s statement, would mean rank; deshonran, in Esteban’s response, an offense against the moral dignity of good people who wish to live “debajo de vuestro honor” (p. 145), that is, under the Commander’s tutelage in a hierarchical legal sense. This is the realm of irony. At times, honor and honra may clash in an irremediable way, lending to a play a tragic sense. Such is the case in Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s El garrote más bien dado. Here, honor and honra are, at best, not distinguished clearly; at worst, considered identical or even (both) superior in value. Hence, they collide irremediably. Pedro Crespo and his son Juan are proud and wealthy villeins. In a squabble with Don Álvaro, a nobleman, Juan responds arrogantly, as if he were equal in rank to the captain. In answer to Don Álvaro’s query, “¿Que habíais de hacer?” Juan responds: 39 Dunn, “Honor / Honra,” in Comedia, p. 166. 40 If male children are born of this union, they would be hidalgos on account of the father’s noble blood. Hence, Fernán Gómez is using the term honran in civil terms (as rank). Theologically, of course, the women would be dishonored (sin honor).

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“[. . .] Perder / la vida por la opinión.” When Don Álvaro asks, “¿Qué opinión tiene un villano?” Juan replies, “Aquella misma que vos; / que no hubiera un capitán, / si no hubiera un labrador.”41 These are fighting words as well as exaggerated sentiments that would have led to violence if Don Lope de Figueroa, a superior, had not intervened. Pedro Crespo’s famous words, “Al Rey la hacienda y la vida / se ha de dar; pero el honor / es patrimonio del alma, / y el alma sólo es de Dios” (p. 101), not only distinguish other people’s honra (hacienda) and status from his honor; they also claim superiority. In effect, honorable pride prevents Crespo from getting a certificate of hidalgüía (honra) that might have prevented the eventual dishonor of his daughter and the tragedy that ensues. This pride makes him talk to the captain “man to man” instead of mayor to captain when he states, “un honor os pido” (p. 168), reminding him nevertheless of the consequences of his refusal: “Mirad que puedo tomarle [honor] / por mis manos, y no quiero, / sino que vos me lo deis” (p. 168). Pride also makes Juan wound the captain in the name of honor: “que fue en honrada defensa / de tu honor” (p. 176). Pride makes Crespo sacrifice his daughter for the sake of honor. She asks him, “¿Tú, que quisiste ocultar / nuestra ofensa, eres ahora / quien más trata publicarla?” (p. 178). Pride makes him treat the captain, a social superior, in a disrespectful and humiliating manner (garroting him instead of beheading him), all in the name of honor: “¿Vos sabéis cómo atrevido / robó en un monte mi honor?” (p. 182). In so doing, a villein bypasses the law, the captain’s immediate superior, and the appropriate military tribunal, shocking even the prudent Philip II: “Pues ¿cómo así os atrevisteis?” (p. 187). The king’s final arbitration on moral, not legal, grounds, and the peasant’s appointment for life to a difficult post for which he claims to lack experience—thus becoming an onus for him more than an award—turn this play into a scabrous work wherein honor develops into a misguided and misunderstood concept that gives rise to much evil and suffering. This is a true tragedy. Finally, seemingly irremediable clashes between honor / honra may be amicably resolved by the appropriate legal and moral arbitration of royalty. In Lope de Vega’s Peribáñez, a flawed and melancholy military Commander attempts to seduce a married peasant woman. Here, rank (honra) tries to overwhelm dignity (honor). The peasant husband Peribáñez kills Don Fadrique before an imminent sexual assault takes place, appealing to

41 Pedro Calderón de la Barca, El garrote más bien dado o El alcalde de Zalamea, ed. A. J. Valbuena Briones (Madrid, 1991), p. 95. Subsequent quotations follow the text.



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honra (here meaning dignity or honor), which is seen as the opposite of rank, represented by the Commander: “Perdonad, Comendador; / que la honra es encomienda / de mayor autoridad.”42 Although on moral (theological) law grounds Peribáñez’s murder of a nobleman may be exonerated since he acted in defense of another person at the moment of aggression, on legal (civil) grounds, the peasant deserves death, as King Henry III (the Just) exclaims: “Basta. ¡Qué! Los azadones, / ¿a las cruzes de Santiago / se igualan? ¿Cómo o por dónde?” (p. 195). What saves Peribáñez is the intervention of the Queen, who is able to entertain the moral aspect, while the King judges solely the legal offense. Moreover, Peribáñez is legally spared by his recently acquired status, for he had been knighted previously by the Commander. The civil ennoblement by a legal superior does not go unnoticed by the King, who names Peribáñez captain of a regiment, thus reinforcing his new social standing. Also, both Peribáñez and Casilda enjoy a “natural” nobility (wealth and valor in the former; beauty and virtue in the latter) recognized by peers and superiors: “que si un villano [Peribáñez] / por la paz del alma es rey, / que tú [Casilda] eres reina está llano, / ya porque es divina ley, / y ya por derecho humano” (p. 61). They, along with the other villeins in Ocaña, also possess theological honor on account of their Old Christian status, which makes them “fuertes labradores” when compared to the allegedly Jewish “hidalgos cansados” (“¡Qué piensen estos judíos / que nos mean la paxuela!” [pp. 168–69]). Hence, in the final analysis, an offense against dignity is mitigated by civil status (honra), social worth, and natural and moral honor (grace). In the end, the collision of honor and honra was only apparent. Thanks to regal intervention, what prevails in the drama is a sense of ethical tranquility and a comedic ending. These are, hence, the usual conflicts one finds with respect to honor / honra in the Spanish theater of the Golden Age.43 Colophon: As one can see, the terms honor/honra, although historically and etymologically equivalent, have caused much ambiguity when applied to

42 Lope de Vega, Peribáñez y el Comendador de Ocaña, ed. Juan María Marín (Madrid, 1987), p. 186. Subsequent quotations follow the text. 43 Two contemporary works dealing with honor in the Spanish Golden Age are Jesús López-Peláez Casellas, ‘Honourable murderers’: el concepto del honor en “Othello” de Shakespeare, y en los “dramas de honor” de Calderón (Bern, 2009), and Scott K. Taylor, Honor and Violence in Golden Age Spain (New Haven, 2008).

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early modern Spanish drama. A reason for this is, first, the modern critical practice (passim Dunn) to differentiate, speciously, between honor (seen exclusively as blood and rank) and honra (perceived primarily as fame and reputation), when both are similar in meaning; second, to imagine that blood and rank are immutable instead of acquired cultural values; third, to separate shame from guilt, when the latter is merely a private extension of the former in traditional (communal) societies; and fourth, to exclude from the above terms civil, natural, and theological senses that evolved since antiquity. In this revisitation of the above concepts, I ascertain that honor and honra are similar expressions that are often used to designate, concurrently, rank (honra) and self-dignity (honor). The first referent tends to denote usually active and “masculine” ethical (“pagan”) values, including those associated with rank, war, privilege, property, and social (and personal) worth; the second seems to connote more passive and moral “feminine” (“Christian”) standards, especially those that comprise chastity, dignity, personal (and social) worth, parity, and equanimity. It is precisely because of the indistinctness of these terms, which may be used in one or another sense, that Spanish Golden Age drama is so rich and varied in its presentation of casos de honor, as evinced in plays like A secreto agravio, secreta venganza, Del rey abajo, ninguno, Fuenteovejuna, Peribáñez, and El garrote más bien dado. Early modern Hispanic theater would not seem to be, as previously imagined, monolithic or fossilized drama; on the contrary, it often is pluralistic, novel, and surprisingly contemporary.

The Wife-Murder Plays Matthew D. Stroud Few subgenres of the Spanish comedia have garnered as much critical attention as those plays in which a husband kills, or conspires to kill, his wife. As a group, these plays are intensely interesting, not only because of their common focus on violence at the heart of the marital relationship but also because they serve as splendid examples of Baroque theatrical art: they embody the principle of imitation with the purpose of surpassing the original, they combine fast action with sketchy characterization, and they frequently challenge the reader on a number of levels by pressing the credulity of the reader or spectator, by offering some morally repugnant or intensely ambiguous scenarios, and by wrapping the entire edifice in a thick layer of historical and mythological reference, dense and often impenetrable poetry, an epistemological haze that frequently prevents us from knowing exactly who is to blame for the tragedy, and a tone intended to produce a visceral reaction rather than rational clarity. Despite the rigorous application of a variety of critical approaches over the decades, three stereotypes about these plays still persist: that they are somehow unique to Spanish theater, that they accurately reflect the reality of Spanish marital law and history, and that there is one paradigm for all the wife-murder plays, that is, that they are all “honor plays” with similar characters, plot structures, motivations, actions, and moral lessons. As is the case with most stereotypes, there is some truth to these assertions, but it is the purpose of this study to dispel their general validity and to place the plays where they belong, at the heart of Baroque stagecraft. There is no doubt that the sheer number of wife-murder comedias (31 by my count), the fact that the comedia drew upon a great deal of earlier Spanish literature from the Corbacho to Conde Lucanor to the roman­ cero, 1 and the critical attention paid to four of them—Lope’s El castigo sin venganza and Calderón’s El médico de su honra, El pintor de su deshonra, and A secreto agravio, secreta venganza—have created the impression that 1 For a more complete discussion of wife-murder in the antecedent texts from medieval and early modern Spain, see Matthew D. Stroud, Fatal Union: A Pluralistic Approach to the Spanish Wife-Murder Comedias (Lewisburg, 1990), pp. 34–49.

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the Spanish had more interest in the topic than writers of other national literatures, but the assertion that the genre is somehow uniquely Spanish flies in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary. From Seneca’s Hercules furens to Hardy’s Procris and Dolce’s Marianna, to Shakespeare’s Othello, it is clear that the murder of a spouse was considered worthy of theatrical treatment in many different places and over a great span of time. An even more compelling argument for the universality of wife murder as an interesting plot is the number of these plays that draw upon non-Spanish sources. There are four versions of the story of Herod and Mariamne, and another four plays based upon the myth of Cephalus and Procris. Lope’s masterpiece, El castigo sin venganza, was based on Italian history (as retold in Bandello 1.44),2 and Moreto’s La fuerza de la ley focuses on Antiochus and Seleucus. Virués’s Atila furioso focuses on the excesses of Attila the Hun in an imitation of Seneca’s Hercules furens, and Calderón and Zabaleta’s Troya abrasada is inspired by Helen’s lack of marital fidelity to Menelaus in Homer’s Iliad. And these examples do not even take into consideration less specific antecedents, such as Seneca’s Octavia and Giraldi Cinthio’s Hecatommithi that dealt with similar scenarios in ways not unlike those found in the comedias. The fact that so many wife-murder plays drew upon so many different historical and literary traditions spanning more than two millennia may tell us that wife murder as a theatrical plot was not unique to Spain, but what of those plays based upon incidents recorded in Spanish history? Considerable criticism has sought to establish connections between these plays and Spain’s past,3 especially the influences of Visigothic,4 Jewish,5 and Muslim6 cultures in the development of the nation, in order to assert 2 Matteo Bandello, Le quattro parti de le Novelle del Bandello: riprodotte sulle antiche stampi di Lucca (1554) e di Leone (1573), ed. Gustavo Balsamo-Crivelli, 4 vols. (Turin, 1924), 2:65–72. For a full discussion of the provenance of Lope’s masterpiece, see Amado Alonso, “Lope de Vega y sus fuentes,” in El teatro de Lope de Vega: Artículos y estudios, ed. José Gatti (Buenos Aires, 1962), pp. 193–218. 3 Arnold G. Reichenberger, “The Uniqueness of the Comedia,” Hispanic Review 27 (1959): 303–16, at p. 311; A. Julián Valbuena Briones, Prologue to Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Dramas de honor, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1956), 1:xi–civ, at pp. xiv–xv, xxxv. 4 Donald Clive Stuart, “Honor in the Spanish Drama,” Romanic Review 1 (1910): 247–58, 357–66, at p. 251; Claudio Sánchez Albornoz, España, un enigma histórico, 2nd. ed., 2 vols. (Buenos Aires, 1962), 1:617; and Alfonso García Valdecasas, El hidalgo y el honor, 2nd. ed. (Madrid, 1958), p. 157. 5 Donald McGrady, “The Comic Treatment of Conjugal Honor in Lope’s Las ferias de Madrid,” Hispanic Review 41 (1973): 33–42, at p. 36. 6 See, for example, Américo Castro, De la edad conflictiva: crisis de la cultura española en el siglo XVII, 4th ed. (Madrid, 1976), p. 178; and Gerald E. Wade, Letter to the Editor, Bulletin of the Comediantes 33 (1981): 89–92.



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that wife murder was a well-known, perhaps even common, feature of medieval and early modern Spanish society. Archival research into the historical accuracy and legal validity of the wife-murder plots reveals both that there were occasional cases in which a husband killed his wife or had her killed,7 and that there were laws that allowed a man to defend the sanctity of his marriage by violence, at least under certain conditions.8 It is also true, however, that the actual number of cases of wife murder was very small. So rare, in fact, was the murder of a wife, for honor or any other reason, that it was notable precisely because it was so unusual. In addition, a husband was almost never permitted to kill his wife without suffering some sort of punishment, much less be held up as a model of Spanish marital behavior.9 Moreover, the law was anything but consistent; not only did laws differ from place to place, but both the laws and their enforcement changed considerably over time. Perhaps the best argument against interpreting the existence of these comedias as mirrors of real life in medieval and early modern Spain is the fact that, indeed, at most only four real-life husbands appear as protagonists in the wifemurder comedias—the Veinticuatro of Córdoba, Fernán Ruiz de Castro, Garci-Fernández, and Juan de Urbina—and even in these few instances, the literary versions took significant liberties with the historical facts. Just as in today’s societies, spousal murder did exist, but an audience would probably have deemed the actions of the husbands in these plays to be unusual, extreme, and probably archaic, and for that reason would have no doubt found them to be most engaging as dramatic plots.10

  7 Matthew D. Stroud, “Further Considerations of History and Law in the Wife-Murder Comedias,” Hispanic Journal 8 (1987): 21–38. See also Castro, De la edad conflictiva, p. 29, and Sánchez Albornoz, España, un enigma histórico, 1:620–24.   8 Stuart, “Honor in the Spanish Drama,” pp. 251–52; Jenaro Artiles, “La idea de venganza en el drama español del siglo XVII,” Segismundo 3 (1967): 9–38, at pp. 22–23.   9 Such historical evidence does not dissuade those who insist on the historical accuracy of the plays. José María Díez Borque (Sociología de la comedia española del siglo XVII [Madrid, 1976], pp. 61, 63, 98–99), while admitting that honor killings were not everyday occurrences, still believes that these comedias reflect an aspect of Spanish social history and were an attempt at propaganda on the part of the establishment. 10 The criticism against the historicity of these plays is as vast as that in support. Representative studies include Melveena McKendrick, “Honour / Vengeance in the Spanish ‘Comedia’: A Case of Mimetic Transference?” Modern Language Review 79 (1984): 313–35, at pp. 314–15, 317; C. A. Jones, “Honor in Spanish Golden-Age Drama: Its Relation to Real Life and to Morals,” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 35 (1958): 199–210, at pp. 200, 208–10; Bruce W. Wardropper, “Poetry and Drama in Calderón’s El médico de su honra,” Romanic Review 49 (1958): 3–11, at p. 11; Hans Jörg Neuschäfer, “El triste drama del honor: formas de crítica ideológica en el teatro de honor de Calderón,” in Hacia Calderón: Segundo Coloquio AngloGermano (Hamburgo, 1970), ed. Hans Flasche (Berlin, 1973), pp. 89–108, at p. 101; Stroud,

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The third misconception involves seeing these plays as of a single type, easily subsumed by a single rubric. It is not unusual for the wife-murder plays to be referred to as comedias de honor, a much more general term that applies to any play in which an honorable man, faced with either the fact or the appearance of dishonor, will go to great lengths to erase the cause of alleged stain or to keep it a secret. Honor is, of course, a prevalent theme in the comedia in general and in the wife-murder plays in particular, but the causes of the perception of dishonor are so varied—and in a significant number of the plays honor has little or no bearing on the tragedy—that it can scarcely be said that these plays are mere variations on a single theme. If one were statistically inclined, it would be quite possible to represent the wife-murder plays on a scatter plot chart with two axes; one axis would represent the primary attributes of the husband, from virtuous, noble man of honor to depraved, bloodthirsty tyrant; the other, of course, would represent the character and actions of the wife, from innocent, blameless victim on one end of the spectrum, to licentious adulteress on the other. Few plays can be said to present characters at the four points where the outer limits of the two axes intersect, but a brief discussion of four extreme scenarios will demonstrate the variety of wife-murder plots. The first scenario presents a virtuous husband and an innocent wife in which marital infidelity plays no role whatsoever; the tragedy is brought about by fate, fortune, and the involvement of the gods in the lives of a couple, both of whom can be said to be victims of forces beyond their control. Four plays, more than 10 percent of the total, retell the myth of Cephalus and Procris that first appeared in Ovid11 and was reworked more contemporaneously by Boccaccio.12 In Calderón’s Celos aun del aire matan,13 the direct cause of the death of Pocris is the wife’s jealousy, but she is only made jealous by the workings of supernatural intervention and the vengeful goddess, Diana. When a nymph, Aura, falls in love with Eróstrato, Diana condemns Aura to death. Another nymph, Pocris, supports Diana’s decision, and Aura condemns Pocris to fall in love as well. “Further Considerations”; and Stroud, Fatal Union, pp. 13–15, 146, the last of which contains a more complete bibliography of both sides of the debate. 11  Book 7, lines 756–960 in Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Stanley Lombardo (Indianapolis, 2010), pp. 196–202. 12 Giovanni Boccaccio, Concerning Famous Women, trans. Guido A. Guarino (New Brunswick, 1963), pp. 56–57. 13 Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Celos aun del aire matan, ed. and trans. Matthew D. Stroud (San Antonio, 1981).



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Céfalo, a hunter, comes to Aura’s aid just as Venus intercedes to transform Aura into a breeze. In the confusion, Diana drops her spear that cannot miss its mark, and Céfalo retrieves it. Céfalo and Pocris meet, fall in love, and marry, again incurring the wrath of Diana, who instills in Pocris an overwhelming jealousy and confuses Céfalo’s judgment. Pocris grows jealous of all the time Céfalo spends hunting, so she follows him in disguise. Hot and tired, Céfalo rests, calling upon the breeze, Aura, to cool him, but Pocris believes that he is calling to the nymph of the same name. When Céfalo comes upon what he believes to be a ferocious beast, Pocris, afraid for Céfalo to confront such a monstrous creature, stands between Céfalo and his target just as the hunter hurls the infallible spear, killing Pocris instead. Diana is delighted at the outcome, but Aura appears to turn Pocris into a star and Céfalo (“zephyr”) into a breeze. The lovers ascend to heaven with Aura. The death of Pocris can be interpreted in two different ways. Because there is such a long tradition of depicting women as troublemakers, it could be said that, regardless of how they got that way, it was the jealousy, revenge, and manipulation of the women that set the stage for the tragedy. On the other hand, given the pervasive influence of divine intervention and the power of supernatural forces, especially when coupled with the final apotheosis of the victims of Diana’s wrath, it is just as likely, if not more probable, that the theme of the play is the powerlessness of human beings in a world of forces beyond their control.14 The second scenario at the extremes of the two axes involves an innocent wife and a husband notorious for such tyrannical, repellent behavior

14 Enrique Rull, “Celos humanos y divinos en Calderón: en torno a Celos aun del aire matan,” in Memoria de la palabra: actas del VI Congreso de la Asociación Internacional Siglo de Oro, ed. María Luisa Lobato and Francisco Domínguez Matito, 2 vols. (Madrid and Frankfurt, 2004), 2:1555–68, discusses the connections between divine and human jealousy at length, and not only finds neither Céfalo nor Pocris guilty (p. 1565) but asserts that Pocris is the most sympathetic and attractive character of the entire play (p. 1562). Both Lope and Salazar also wrote versions of this same myth: La bella Aurora and El amor más desgraciado, respectively. Their adaptations allow for more human error in the events that lead to the tragedy, including the jealousy of Aurora, Diana, and Procris (called Floris in Lope’s version), Aurora’s deceitful manipulation and calumny, Céfalo’s inconstancy, jealousy, and readiness to believe the worst about women, or the actions of unfaithful servants. In Calderón’s burlesque parody, Céfalo tells Pocris that he is killing her specifically because she is jealously spying on him, and the king pardons Céfalo (Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Céfalo y Pocris, ed. Alberto Navarro [Salamanca, 1979], pp. 87 and 89–90). There has been a tendency to exclude these four plays from this group precisely because honor is not a consideration (Donald R. Larson, The Honor Plays of Lope de Vega [Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1977], p. 3), but if one wishes to discuss the wife-murder plays as a group, it is impossible to see how they should not be included.

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that he can in no way be considered a moral example of how men ought to act in marriage. Three plays present Herod’s murder of his wife, Mariamne, drawing on both historical and Biblical traditions, as well as more contemporaneous versions found in Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris15 and Dolce’s Marianna.16 In Tirso’s La vida y muerte de Herodes,17 the title character is not just the tyrannical king of Judea; he is a cruel, conniving, impulsive man who takes for himself his brother’s intended spouse; a jealous, suspicious husband who assumes that all women, including his wife, are untrustworthy and ultimately seditious; and an inept politician who creates more enemies than friends.18 The difference between the loathsome Herodes and his exemplary wife could not be more stark. Mariadnes is a paragon of virtue and nobility, beautiful beyond compare, and faithful to her husband despite his lack of trust in her. Their marriage, fraught with problems from the inception, is further complicated by Herod’s absence as a prisoner of Mark Antony, during which he orders his wife to be killed if anything should happen to him while he is away. A principal cause of the tragedy is the meddling intervention of Salomé, Mariadnes’s antithesis as the evil, destructive woman who falsifies a letter that plays on Herod’s prejudices and fears by implying that his wife has been unfaithful. Tirso takes full advantage of the reputation of the protagonist as a monster to end his play in an appalling display of madness and violence in which the death of his wife is followed immediately by his order to carry out the slaughter of the innocents for which he has been condemned in Christian tradition. The fact that the wife-murder plot is overwhelmed by the story of the birth of Christ in no way alters the fact that Mariadnes is not guilty of anything, even of a wayward desire or imprudence; the responsibility for the tragedy lies exclusively at the feet of her contemptible husband and the immoral Salomé.19 Neo-Senecan spectacles that offer awe-inspiring plots full of violence and confusion and drench the scene with blood also provide the theatrical 15 Boccaccio, Concerning Famous Women, pp. 189–91. 16 Lodovico Dolce, Marianna, in Teatro italiano antico, 10 vols. (Milan, 1809), 5:193–316. 17 Tirso de Molina, La vida y muerte de Herodes, in Comedias de Tirso de Molina, ed. Emilio Cotarelo y Mori (Nueva Biblioteca de Autores Españoles) 9 (Madrid, 1907), pp. 173–207. 18 See Maurice Valency, The Tragedies of Herod and Mariamne (Columbia University Studies in English and Comparative Literature) 145 (New York, 1940), p. 29. 19 Lozano’s Herodes Ascalonita follows the basic outline of Tirso’s play, but Calderón’s El mayor monstruo del mundo (alternatively titled El mayor monstruo los celos) presents fate and accident as such important elements of the plot that the audience is invited to pity Herodes even as it condemns him.



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motivation for the third extreme scenario. The guiding principle in these plays is clearly admiratio; the audience is supposed to be shocked by the actions not only of a husband whose cruelty and immoral nature completely overwhelm any sympathy the spectator might have had for a husband dealing with marital infidelity, but also of a wife whose behavior is so licentious and debauched that in no way can either spouse be said to represent anything like a model of proper marital behavior. Cristóbal de Virués, who deserves more credit for the creation of the comedia than he usually receives, was among the first playwrights to introduce a husband’s murder of his wife as a plot element. In Atila furioso,20 an overthe-top drama that draws significantly upon Seneca’s Hercules furens and Thyestes,21 Virués creates a married couple so depraved and barbarous that an audience struggles in vain to find any redeeming quality in either character. Atila not only eliminates a series of enemies, but kills two wives, and engages in acts of extraordinary licentiousness. A good deal of the violence is provoked by the actions of a calumniator, Flaminia, who, dressed as a man (and appearing to embody the worst traits of both sexes), becomes the Hun’s privado and hints at a homosexual relationship with the wicked Queen of Hungary. Despite the fact that Atila is as far from a model of honorable masculine behavior as one can imagine, he rationalizes his violence by frequent mention of honor, revenge, and the righting of wrongs, and he proudly owns his well-deserved reputation for ferocity and the fear and hatred he instills in others: “Aborrézcame el mundo, i aborrezcan / mi nombre a mi presencia mis vassallos.”22 The last of the four extreme scenarios presents the plot used so frequently to support the notion that a virtuous husband had the right to kill his guilty wife in defense of his honor. These plays depict the wife’s guilt as clear justification for both his suspicions and his actions, and, at

20 Cristóbal de Virués, Atila furioso, in Poetas dramáticos valencianos, ed. Eduardo Juliá Martínez, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1929), 1:92–117. 21  Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Six Tragedies, ed. and trans. Emily Wilson (Oxford, 2010). For more on Seneca and Virués, see William C. Atkinson, “Seneca, Virués, Lope de Vega,” in Homenatge a Antoni Rubió i Lluch, 3 vols. (Barcelona, 1936), 1:111–31, at p. 124. Another wifemurder play similar to Atila furioso in terms of neo-Senecan blood and horror is Leonardo de Argensola’s Alejandra, a play characterized by Jean-Louis Fleckniakoska (“L’Horreur morale et l’horreur matérielle dans quelques tragédies espagnoles du XVIe siècle,” in Les Tragédies de Sénèque et le théâtre de la Renaissance, ed. Jean Jacquot [Paris, 1969], pp. 61–72, at p. 72) as the height of neo-Senecan horror. The principal difference between the two plays lies in the innocence of the wife, in fact if not in desire, and her conscious actions to prevent the commission of adultery. 22 Virués, Atila furioso, p. 97.

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least within the context of the play itself, the husband is held up at the end of the play as a model of masculine virtue. Perhaps the most unambiguous example of a wife-murder play intended to condemn the actions of a faithless wife and glorify the response of the honorable husband is Lope’s Los comendadores de Córdoba.23 Based on an historical event subsequently rendered into romances,24 there is never any doubt that the wife is guilty of adultery, and the play insists that Beatriz deserved her punishment. The principal evidence of her infidelity is a diamond ring that the king had given to the Veinticuatro, who entrusted it during his absence to Beatriz, who gave it to Don Jorge, her paramour, on whose finger the king himself spied it by chance. The Veinticuatro never wavers in his certainty that he knows the facts and that his actions are justified, not just because he has what he considers to be concrete proof of her adultery but because she is a woman: “¡Pese a la infame, / injusta, mal nacida y sin vergüenza! / ¡Es mujer que bastaba!”25 Full of righteous fury, the Veinticuatro not only kills his wife, her lover, and the servant, but he slaughters a great many innocent people and even animals as well. From a modern perspective, such collateral damage might constitute some disapproval of the revenge for adultery.26 There is a brief glimmer that the Veinticuatro believes that 23 Lope de Vega, Los comendadores de Córdoba, in Obras escogidas, ed. Federico C. Sainz de Robles, 3 vols., 3rd. ed. (Madrid, 1967), 3:1226–59. Cubillo’s adaptation, La mayor venganza de honor, was written a couple of decades later. It hews more closely to the legend than does Lope’s version (Shirley B. Whitaker, The Dramatic Works of Álvaro Cubillo de Aragón [Chapel Hill, 1975], p. 69). Other plays that present situations quite similar to those in Los comendadores de Córdoba are Lope’s La contienda de Diego García de Paredes y el capitán Juan de Urbina and Aguilar’s La venganza honrosa. 24 Numbers 1032–36 in Agustín Durán, ed., Romancero general, 2 vols. (Biblioteca de Autores Españoles) 10 and 16 (Madrid, 1945), 2:71–77. See also Margit Frenk, “Un desconocido cantar de los Comendadores, fuente de Lope,” in Homenaje a William L. Fichter, ed. A. David Kossoff and José Amor y Vázquez (Madrid, 1973), pp. 211–22; Melveena McKendrick, “Celebration or Subversion?: Los comendadores de Córdoba Reconsidered,” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 61 (1984): 352–60, at pp. 354–58; and Jaime Fernández, “Los comendadores de Córdoba: ¿Un caso de honor recobrado?” Bulletin of the Comediantes 38 (1986): 55–62, at p. 56. 25 Lope de Vega, Los comendadores de Córdoba, p. 1252. 26 McKendrick, “Celebration or Subversion?” pp. 354, 357; Fernández, “Los comendado­ res de Córdoba,” pp. 55–62. Elements that detract from an unalloyed approval of the husband’s actions are significantly more prominent in the remaining play that presents a wife who is unambiguously guilty of adultery, Lope’s El castigo sin venganza. Not only does the Duke carry out his punishment (or revenge) in secret, thus preventing the kind of thirdparty approbation seen in Los comendadores de Córdoba, but considerable debate both within the play and in critical studies of it has revolved around whether or not the Duke of Ferrara returns after his absence not just having put his womanizing ways behind him but righteous enough to carry out the punishment of his wife and son without prompting an accusation of hypocrisy. Representative of the point of view that the Duke is a barbaric



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such bloodletting might not have been the proper response to marital infidelity when he presents himself before the king to receive a death sentence for his evil but necessary actions, but the king holds him up as a moral example, takes personal responsibility for the justice that has been done, and allows the Veinticuatro to remarry.27 These fourteen plays represent the extremes of good and bad character and behavior on the part of both husbands and wives, and, with a few notable exceptions, tend toward facile melodrama, neo-Senecan horror, moral examples, and sentiment and pathos. Because theater thrives not just on conflict, but on shades of gray, presenting the audience with ambiguity and ambivalence of interpretation, the majority of the most interesting plays should and do fall not at the four extremes but somewhere in the middle. These 17 remaining wife-murder comedias28 together reflect the development of many of the main aspects of Baroque stagecraft: the lack of correspondence between appearance and reality; the challenges to free will in a world dominated by fortune and accident; the conflict between marriage for love on the one hand and for reasons of state, security, the joining of estates, and other further reasons on the other; marriages marked not by trust and devotion but by suspiciousness that leads husbands either to suspect the worst or to spend most of their time trying to test their wives; pressures put upon a marriage by a husband’s absence and the interference of other characters, especially persistent former lovers, unfaithful servants, and well-meaning but meddlesome friends and family members; and, ultimately, motivations and actions of the murderer and a hypocrite is T. E. May, “Lope de Vega’s El castigo sin venganza: The Idolatry of the Duke of Ferrara,” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 37 (1960): 154–82, while an excellent study accepting the Duke’s change of character and upholding his right to punish crimes of his wife and son is to be found in Geraldine Cleary Nichols, “The Rehabilitation of the Duke of Ferrara,” Journal of Hispanic Philology 1 (1977): 209–30. 27 Bruce W. Wardropper (“El problema de la responsabilidad en la comedia de capa y espada de Calderón,” in Actas del Segundo Congreso Internacional de Hispanistas, ed. Jaime Sánchez-Romeralo and Norbert Poulussen [Nijmegen, 1967], pp. 689–94, at p. 693) asserts that in the comedia a comedy is frequently distinguished from a tragedy by the happy ending with a wedding. In this and other cases, the final wedding might be said to constitute an invitation to the audience to view the outcome of the play as just, moral, and socially validating. 28 In addition to the plays still to be discussed, these remaining plays include Pedro Calderón de la Barca, A secreto agravio, secreta venganza, El pintor de su deshonra, and Troya abrasada (co-written with Juan de Zabaleta); Andrés de Claramonte, La infelice Dorotea; Agustín Moreto, La fuerza de la ley; Antonio Enríquez Gómez, A lo que obliga el honor; Lope de Vega, El buen vecino, La desdichada Estefanía, La locura por la honra, El sufrimiento del honor, El toledano vengado, La vitoria de la honra; Luis Vélez de Guevara, Los celos hasta los cielos; and Cristóbal de Virués, La cruel Casandra.

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characters that can be interpreted in multiple and sometimes contradictory ways. Let us complete this overview of the variety of wife-murder plot with a discussion of the epitome of Baroque theater, Calderón’s El médico de su honra.29 At virtually every turn, Calderón presents the audience with a series of gaps “between the literal and the metaphorical, the straightforward and the ironical, statement and intention, continuity and discontinuity, and the signifier and the signified,”30 all of which together heighten the difficulty of ascertaining who is to blame for the tragedy, how the events led to the death of Mencía, how the larger society is to process her murder, and whether or not the actions of the play reflect justice, revenge, both, or neither. Both the husband and the wife have had prior relationships that continue to inform and cause problems for their marriage. Gutierre was engaged to Leonor but saw another man leave her house by the balcony one night. Although he was never able to prove anything at the time, the mere suspicion of her infidelity led him to call off the wedding. Abandoned, Leonor sought the aid of the king in restoring her lost honor, and Don Arias, the third party in question, appeared to clear both his name and that of Leonor. King Pedro could not help Leonor because Gutierre was already married to Mencía, who had a prior amorous relationship with the king’s half-brother, Prince Enrique (and the future Enrique II), whose accidental fall from his horse at the beginning of the play brought him back into contact with Mencía, causing great anxiety and frustration for Gutierre. Thus we have three love triangles (Gutierre, Leonor, and Mencía; Gutierre, Mencía, and Enrique; and the one imagined by Gutierre: Gutierre, Leonor, and Don Arias), a marriage between a husband who is perhaps overly sensitive to any perceived slight and a woman who is still emotionally attached to her former lover despite her resolve not to do anything that will provoke her irascible, inquisitorial31 husband, the persistence of Leonor and Enrique who are unable to fulfill their desires, and the fateful reunion of Enrique and Mencía at 29 Pedro Calderón de la Barca, El médico de su honra, in Dramas de honor, ed. Ángel Valbuena Briones, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1956), 2:11–118. Calderón’s work is clearly a reworking of Lope’s earlier play of the same name; Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla’s provides his own version of the plot in Casarse por vengarse. 30 William R. Blue, “El médico de su honra and the Politics of Reading,” Hispania 82 (1999): 408–16, at p. 412. 31  For Georgina Dopico Black (Perfect Wives, Other Women: Adultery and Inquisition in Early Modern Spain [Durham, 2001], p. 113), Gutierre is an “over-zealous Inquisitor who reads (and more often writes) an illicit text upon an innocent body.”



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Gutierre’s estate,32 all taking place against the backdrop of the royal conflicts between Pedro and Enrique. There are many aspects of the play that make El médico de su honra extraordinary. The wife murder here occurs not as a punishment for wrongdoing, because not only is Mencía innocent, but she has gone out of her way to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Nor is Gutierre a husband who mistakenly believes that he has been wronged: he cannot really claim to be acting as an agent of justice or that he is acting in God’s name because he is quite aware of Mencía’s innocence. It is also difficult to view Gutierre’s decision to have Mencía killed as supporting some greater social good since her death is, as María Carrión has noted, “openly illegal in the play’s text and context”33 despite the king’s approval. Those who struggle mightily to find some moral compass in the play ascribe the cause of the tragedy to imprudence. Gutierre acts rashly; in his relationships with both Leonor and Mencía, he assumes the worst and privileges his honor and reputation over any feeling that he might have for his fiancée or wife, and even over the truth. Mencía has been accused of “lies and subterfuges”34 in defense of her honor; O’Connor believes that since Mencía was innocent, she should not have written the letter to Enrique or even talked to him, because she created the appearance of adultery when none existed.35 These accusations against Mencía seem to ignore the claustrophobic world in which such a wife lived, a world in which a mere suspicion, created by people and circumstances utterly beyond her ability to control, could produce precisely the kind of overreaction that might lead to even more dire circumstances. Since there is no effective

32 The importance of fate in the play has not gone unnoticed. Wardropper (“Poetry and Drama in Calderón’s El médico de su honra,” p. 9) believes that Enrique was born unlucky (1:244–45) even though he did end up reigning as Enrique II. Frances Exum (“ ‘¿Yo a un vasallo . . .?’: Prince Henry’s Role in El médico de su honra,” Bulletin of the Comediantes 29 [1977]: 1–6, at p. 4) writes that Enrique may in fact be “the instrument of divine punishment for Gutierre’s earlier abandonment of Leonor on the mere suspicion of inconstancy”; and A. A. Parker (“ ‘El médico de su honra’ as Tragedy,” Hispanófila special number 2 [1975]: 3–23, at pp. 12–13) believes that the play communicates a sense of inexorable fate in the contrast between what the characters want and the lives they are obliged to live as they respond to chance events beyond their control. 33 María M. Carrión, “The Burden of Evidence: Performances of Marriage, Violence, and the Law in El médico de su honra,” Revista canadiense de estudios hispánicos 27 (2003): 447–468, at p. 448. 34 Edward M. Wilson, “Gerald Brenan’s Calderón,” Bulletin of the Comediantes 4 (1952): 6–8, at p. 7. 35 Thomas A. O’Connor, “The Interplay of Prudence and Imprudence in El médico de su honra,” Romanistisches Jahrbuch 24 (1973): 303–22, at pp. 313–15.

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way to prove that one has not committed a particular act, there really is no way for Mencía to put to rest the doubts and fears of her husband. Indeed, one can just as easily argue that the actions that Mencía took, which for the most part were intended to dissuade Enrique from pursuing her further and to conceal any evidence that might give Gutierre the wrong idea, were, in fact, quite prudent. As Hesse notes,36 much of the misunderstanding and tragedy derive from Mencía’s prudent concealment of details that she knew Gutierre would misconstrue as evidence of dishonor. The play ends by tying up loose ends in the most morally ambiguous way possible. With Mencía now out of the picture, Gutierre is available to marry the woman he had earlier abandoned. Any sense that his marriage to Leonor will end better than his marriage to Mencía is undercut by Gutierre’s threat to his new bride that he has not forgotten how to deal with a troublesome wife: “Mira que médico he sido / de mi honra. No está olvidada / la ciencia” (3.898–900).37 Even the fact that the marriage is arranged by the king is fraught with irony and foreboding because the king’s motives stem from his earlier promise to aid Leonor in her quest to restore her honor. Known variously as “el cruel” and “el justiciero” (thus adding yet another layer of ambivalence to the play), King Pedro deliberately undercuts his role as “justiciero” by shifting the dénouement away from the realm of justice that demands transparency and into the murkier and more capricious realm of vengeance and politics. As we know from history, he will soon face defeat at the hands of Enrique, Mencía’s lover.38 What could have been seen as a just resolution in the service of social

36 Everett W. Hesse, “A Psychological Approach to El médico de su honra,” Romanistisches Jahrbuch 28 (1977): 326–40, at p. 340. 37 Calderón, El médico de su honra, pp. 117–18. 38 As is the case with almost every aspect of this play, critics differ greatly regarding the role of King Pedro in it. A. Irvine Watson (“Peter the Cruel or Peter the Just? A Reappraisal of the Role Played by King Peter in Calderón’s El médico de su honra,” Romanistisches Jahrbuch 14 [1963]: 322–46, at pp. 325, 331, 334), for example, asserts that Pedro el Justiciero encourages the spectator to view the ending of the play as the embodiment of justice, while Don W. Cruickshank (“Calderón’s King Pedro: Just or Unjust?” Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kultursgeschichte Spaniens 25 [1970]: 113–32) notes the injustice of his approach to the situation presented to him by Gutierre, Mencía, and Leonor (p. 130), the generally negative view of Pedro el Cruel in popular ballads (pp. 113–20), and that he was defeated at Montiel. More recently, Gabriela Carrión (“The Song of History in Calderón’s El médico de su honra,” Bulletin of the Comediantes 59 [2007]: 89–108) has noted the moral ambiguity regarding Pedro’s role in Mencía’s murder by the inclusion in the play of a ballad, “Para Consuegra camina” (3.586–89, p. 109), at the very moment that the king enters to discover, and then cover up, Gutierre’s crime.



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order, if not a statement in favor of marriage as a partnership of equals based on love, is transformed, in Neuschäfer’s description, into a horrible mask of happiness on the face of monstrosity.39 The wife-murder plays, as a subgenre of the Spanish comedia, have little in common beyond the basic plot element of a husband who kills his wife or has her killed. The genre is not unique to Spanish literature, nor does it reflect some peculiarity of the Spanish national character that cannot be found elsewhere, nor are these plays mere variations upon a single plot element or theme. As a whole, they are not little summae, “calculated to demonstrate conclusively a sacred or secular truth,”40 nor is their sole purpose to serve as travesties or parodies of religious doctrine.41 Rather, what binds them together as a coherent genre is what they share with Baroque stagecraft in general. They are dense thickets of familiar themes (love, honor, fate, free will, reason, passion, justice, revenge) woven together to produce works of Baroque admiratio intended to produce shock and awe in the audience.42 Golden Age literature, building upon centuries of precursor texts dealing with similar plots, found in the permutations of the relationship between sexual behavior and honor a virtually inexhaustible trove of plots that appealed to a paying public. Especially as Spanish theater ripened into Baroque excess, it discovered (or rediscovered) ways to provoke and unsettle the spectator and produce the strongest reaction possible, and plots involving wife murder represent the height of this Baroque stagecraft.

39 Neuschäfer, “El triste drama del honor,” p. 99. 40 Bruce W. Wardropper, “On the Fourth Centenary of Lope’s Birth,” Drama Studies 2 (1963): 117–29, at p. 118. 41 Don W. Cruickshank, “‘Pongo mi mano en sangre bañada a la puerta’: Adultery in El médico de su honra,” in Studies in Spanish Literature of the Golden Age Presented to E. M. Wilson, ed. R. O. Jones (London, 1973), pp. 45–62, at p. 49; see also T. E. May, “Lope de Vega’s El castigo sin venganza,” p. 169. 42 W. J. Entwistle, “Honra y duelo,” Romanistisches Jahrbuch 3 (1950): 404–20, at p. 418.

’Til Play Do Us Part: Marriage, Law, and the Comedia María M. Carrión True comedy must its own end embrace Like every sort of poetry, in this case To imitate men’s actions and display A portrait of the customs of the day. Poetic imitation all must be Composed of elements that number three: Discourse, and pleasant verse, and harmony, All three of these are also to be found In tragedy, but comedy is bound To deal with humble and plebeian themes, While tragedy seeks royal and high extremes. Now see if in our plays the flaws are great. Lope de Vega, New Art of Writing Plays1

The dramatic mise en scène of marriage in the comedia created a space to engage playfully marital institutionalization—a central tenet of absolutist monarchy, Spanish nationalism, and their most significant academic mirror, the field of Spanish Golden Age studies.2 This premise goes against the grain of a literal reading of Spain’s first professional theater, which translates the concluding multiple wedding scene as an endorsement of religious orthodoxy.3 The comedia created places of resistance facilitated

1 Félix Lope de Vega y Carpio, The New Art of Writing Plays, trans. Marvin Carlson, in Theatre, Theory, Theatre: The Major Critical Texts from Aristotle to Zemi and Soyinka and Havel, ed. Daniel C. Gerould (New York, 2000), p. 137. 2 This study continues the central argument of my book Subject Stages: Marriage, Theatre, and the Law in Early Modern Spain (Toronto, 2010), to which I refer readers for further exploration of this complex correspondence between marriage, law, and the comedia, or first professional theater in Spain. 3 Federico Regueiro, in “Textual Discontinuities and the Problem of Closure in the Spanish Drama of the Golden Age,” in Cultural Authority in Golden Age Spain, ed. Marina Brownlee and Hans Gumbrecht (Baltimore, 1995), pp. 28–50, and Sidney Donnell, in Feminizing the Enemy: Imperial Spain, Transvestite Drama, and the Crisis of Masculinity (Lewisburg, 2003), have argued for the need to engage these weddings differently, by understanding that they signal the text’s sense of closure in highly emblematic fashion. The literal reading of these theatrical finales corresponds to another limiting reading of this theater, namely, that it existed primarily as propaganda for the Habsburg nobility. Margaret Greer, in “A Tale of Three Cities: The Place of the Theater in Early Modern Madrid, Paris and London,” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 77 (2000): 391–419, effectively refuted this once-central assumption of

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in part by the substantial growth of marital legislation and litigation that took place in the Peninsula during the 16th and 17th centuries. It did so along the lines of the bizarre and subliminal cultural production with which certain television series such as Law and Order or The Good Wife now inform (and have been informed by) various imaginaries of marriage and the law in the beginning of the 21st century in the United States and, in translation, in many other countries where these shows are broadcast. In the above-cited words by Lope de Vega, the comedia meant to “imitar las acciones de los hombres / y pintar de aquel siglo las costumbres” (imitate men’s actions and display / a portrait of the customs of the day).4 More precisely, the comedia sought to imitate “las acciones humildes y plebeyas” (humble and plebeian themes), a fitting complement to tragedy’s aims that worked interactively with the development of marital legal theories and practices. The critical lens will focus here on the “humble and plebeian themes” not of men but, rather, of women who by law needed license from their husbands in order to be able to perform legal actions, such as entering a contract. As we shall see in brief, despite the clarity with which legislation prescribed the juridical dependence of women on a male legal proxy, many a woman in playhouses and in their own houses negotiated their own voice and capacity to reason, install, and perform such contracts. ’Til Death Do Us Part: Legislation and Its Discontents The process of drafting, publication, and implementation of marital legislation in 16th-century Spain was a complex and protracted affair. The mores of marital legislation that came out of the Council of Trent, and more particularly the Tametsi Decree, which stipulated how the wedding ceremony was to take place, yielded the first industrial (if precapitalist) wave of modern marriage bureaucracy and ceremonies.5 In the strictest comedia studies: “For Maravall, 17th century theater was a deceptive mirror that blinded and controlled a populace that saw itself contained in the dazzling theatrical reflection, a cultural institution that served an authoritarian state to restrain and repress the popular energy liberated in 16th century Spain by the optimistic humanism of the Renaissance. While this is an understandable perspective given Maravall’s historical situation under the Franco regime, it is based on a peculiar assortment of texts and an insensitivity to the plurality of potential interpretations available in most powerful dramatic texts” (407). 4 Lope de Vega, The New Art of Writing Plays, p. 137. 5 Two chapters of Subject Stages, “Marital Law and Order in Early Modern Spain” (pp. 15–31) and “Marriage Scenes in the Archives” (pp. 32–52), explore the complex net-



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sense of legislation, the most important text produced in the 16th century was the Recopilación de las leyes destos reynos (Compilation of the Laws of These Kingdoms), first printed in Alcalá de Henares in 1567 by Andrés de Angulo.6 Book 5 contained the bulk of marital legislation in ten Titles: Title 1: “De los casamientos” [On marriages] (fol. 310). Title 2: “De las dotes, arras y joyas” [On dowries, wedding coin sets, and  jewelry] (fol. 312). Title 3: “De las mugeres casadas y solteras” [On married and single women]  (fol. 313). Title 4: “De los testamentos” [On wills] (fol. 314). Title 5: “De los lutos” [On mourning] (fol. 316). Title 6: “De las mejorias de tercio y quinto” [On meliorations of the third  and fifth] (fol. 317). Title 7: “De los mayorazgos” [On estates] (fol. 318). Title 8: “De las herencias y partición dellas” [On inheritances and their  distribution] (fol. 321). Title 9: “De las ganancias entre marido y muger” [On profits between  husband and wife] (fol. 323). Title 10: “De las donaciones y mercedes que los reyes han hecho y hizieren  y otras personas” [On donations and gifts made or to be made by kings  and other persons] (fol. 324).7 work of cultural products into which marital legislation translated, along with entries in the Tesoro de la lengua by Sebastián de Covarrubias or first dictionary of the Spanish language, and in the Recopilación or first centralized Spanish code of law. Other topics include the “Cretan labyrinth” of lawsuits and litigants, to borrow Richard Kagan’s apt term for the complex web of application of legislation in Spanish courthouses; bureaucratic objects, such as the facultades de mayorazgo, or foundations of estates, and capitulaciones matrimoniales or prenuptial agreements; and a variety of litigation cases pertaining to marriage. A third chapter, “The Birth of the Comedia and the Bride Onstage” (53–76), analyzes the correspondence of the Tametsi Decree with the theatrical installation of marriage and its most important raison d’être in the context of the Catholic Universal Monarchy, i.e., reproduction both biological and ideological. 6 The 1581 edition, printed also in Alcalá by Juan Íñiguez de Lequerica, contained further edicts and laws added to the texts as appendices. By 1640 King Phillip IV ordered a reprint in three volumes in which the titles of each law reflected the additions. In 1725 a fourth volume was necessary in order to incorporate all the new laws. Studies by Antonio Matilla Tascón (“La verdadera edición príncipe de la Nueva Recopilación,” Revista de derecho notarial 99 [1978]: 11–17) and José Manuel Pérez Prendes and Muñoz de Arraco, “La Recopilación de las leyes de los reinos castellano-leoneses: esbozos para un comentario a su libro primero,” in Felipe II y su época: actas del simposio (San Lorenzo del Escorial [Madrid, 1998]), pp. 127–215) offer textual commentaries to the Recopilación. Quotations from this legal code are drawn from Recopilación de las leyes destos reynos, hecha por mano de su Magestad Catholica del Rey don Phelippe Segundo nuestro Señor (Alcalá de Henares, 1598). 7 Other Books, Titles, and Laws in this document referred to matters pertaining to marriage, as we shall see later in this study. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine.

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The topics covered in this segment of the legal code, overwhelmingly concerned with the fair and just assignment of marital property, were based on two foundational premises: one, the irrevocability and indissolubility of the marital contract, tangible in Title 1, which concentrates significantly on the prohibition of clandestine marriage and the importance of both subjects entering the marital state willingly; and two, the hegemony of the male partner, most tangible in Title 3.8 The Second Law in this Title, “Que la muger sin licencia de su marido no pueda hazer casi contrato, ni estar en juyzio, ni apartarse de contrato” [That the wife without license from her husband can neither enter a contract, nor be part of a hearing, nor leave a contract] reads as follows: La muger durante el matrimonio, sin licencia de su marido, como no puede fazer contrato alguno, assi mismo no se pueda apartar ni desistir de ningun contrato que a ella toque, ni dar por quito a nadie del, ni pueda fazer casi contrato, ni estar en juyzio, faziendo, ni defendiendo sin la dicha licencia de su marido: y si estuuiere por si, o por su procurador, mandamus que no vala lo que fiziere. (While married, a wife who has not been granted license by her husband, since she cannot enter a contract, likewise she cannot leave or desist from a contract that binds her, and neither can she free anybody from such binding, nor can she enter herself in a contract, nor can she be part of a legal hearing, neither doing nor defending without such license by her husband: and whether she represents herself, or is represented by an attorney, we order that none of what she does is legally binding). (fol. 313)

Conversely, as stipulated in Law 3 in this Title, the wife who bears such license has the power to act in full ownership of her juridical persona: Mandamos, que el marido pueda dar licencia general a su muger para contraher y para hazer todo aquello que no podia fazer sin su licencia: y si el marido se la diere, vala todo lo que su muger hiziere, por virtud de la dicha licencia. (We order that the husband can give general license to his wife to enter a contract and to do all that which she cannot do without his license; and if the husband were to grant such license, all that she does is legally binding, by virtue of such license). (fol. 313) 8 I thank Anne Cruz (review of Subject Stages: Marriage, Theatre, and the Law in Early Modern Spain, in Law and History Review 29 [2011]: 640–42) for pointing out a significant blind spot in Subject Stages, which did not acknowledge how the regulation and fierce prosecution of clandestine marriages protected women against bigamy and loss of honor: “By forbidding clandestine marriages, the Tridentine doctrine actually protected women from abuse in situations when it was their word against a man’s” (642).



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Were the husband unwilling to grant such license, Law 4 said that a judge could intervene: El juez con conocimiento de causa legitima o necessaria, compela al marido, que de licencia a su muger para todo aquello que ella no podria fazer sin licencia de su marido: y si compelido no se la diere, el juez solo se la puede dar. (A judge with knowledge of a legitimate or necessary cause may compel the husband to give license to his wife to do all that which she would not be able to do without license from her husband; and if after being compelled he refused to grant her that, the judge alone could grant her such license). (fol. 314)

According to Law 5 in this Title, if the wife proceeded to act without such license, the husband could validate her actions: El marido pueda ratificar lo que su muger ouiere fecho sin licencia, no embargante que la dicha licencia no aya precedido, ora la ratificacion sea general o especial. (The husband can ratify what she had done without license, without regard from such license having been granted before hand, and without regard for the ratification being general or special). (fol. 314)

The Sixth Law in this Title also stipulated that the judge could intervene if the husband was absent and a legal action had to be taken before his return to the home. Laws 7 through 10 in this Title ordered the various instances when the wife could be imprisoned (by royal command) or not (by debt or other delinquent actions performed by her husband). The final law in this Title, number 11, stipulates that no woman (single, married, or in any other civil status or legal condition) was to cover her face, a transgression punished with a costly fine of 3,000 maravedíes. This compact body of six laws greatly limited the capacity of women’s legal self-fashioning, and regulated the relations between the husband and wife in such a way that there would be no doubt as to who was the juridical subaltern in the marital union.9 Furthermore, the limitation on this capacity mirrored the collaborative tradition that legal codes had forged with conduct handbooks, which were quickly disseminated throughout Europe. As Emilia Navarro notes, new economic practices during the Renaissance generated by the creation of an urban middle class were at the heart of the first European literary boom and its relation to law: “Within

9 María José Muñoz García, La capacidad de obrar de la mujer casada, 1505–1975 (Cáceres, 1991).

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this context, it is easy to understand the necessity, the proliferation, and the power of the ‘how to’ books of conduct, which added yet another layer to the regulatory fictions already extant, namely the legal, medical, and religious texts, and their prescriptive and proscriptive discourses” (18).10 Furthermore, as Georgina Dopico Black has argued, the complicity of legal codes and conduct handbooks translated into an overwhelming exposure of women’s bodies as ‘visible signs’ subject to surveillance, a symbolic and physical plateau that significantly compromised the development of women’s subjectivity and agency, as well as their capacity to find their way to design their own terms of marital and social visibility.11 Historical evidence from the considerable bureaucracy generated by the institutionalization of marriage in Spain during the latter part of the 16th century and thereafter illustrates the premise of irrevocability of marriage by creating a clear and present semantic field with its forensic rhetoric. The verbs engaging the names of the marital actors in the formulaic expression of documents such as the facultades de mayorazgo (licenses to found an estate or entailed property), escrituras de censo (census deeds), and capitulaciones matrimoniales (prenuptial agreements) betray a contract ridden with a signification of rigidity: ayuntar ( join), asentar (settle), concertar (arrange), and tratar (contract).12 Furthermore, this emerging bureaucratic culture validated the subaltern positioning of women in a patrilineal marriage culture, preserved by law since Roman antiquity by linking their subjectivity to the ‘natural’ cause of bloodlines or, in more precise terms from that period, their lineage:

10 Emilia Navarro, “Manual Control: Regulatory Fictions and Their Discontents,” Cervantes 13.2 (1993): 17–35. 11  “The analogy Self:Other::Male:Female that inscribes sexual differences as a fundamental binarism,” says Georgina Dopico Black (Perfect Wives, Other Women: Adultery and Inquisition in Early Modern Spain [Durham, 2001]), “is firmly rooted in the founding discourses of both philosophy (in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, for example) and religion (in the text of Genesis 2 that inscribes woman’s ancillary creation). Albeit spuriously, it is nonetheless the ubiquitousness of this dialectic that makes gender relations—and particularly marriage—such a useful and economic master trope for figuring relations of power and inequality in early modern Europe” (29). 12 In “The Tall Order of Bureaucracy” (Subject Stages, pp. 36–44) I have argued that underneath the rigid scheme of these formulas there lies a theatrical infrastructure; alas, one that—differently from the comedia—lead to the reiteration and installation of the two irrevocable spousal roles. In turn, the political theatrics of this bureaucracy constitute a key intertext for the parodic representation of marriage in litigation and onstage.



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ttodos los dias de vuesttra vida, ê despues de vos vuesttro hijo varon maior ligitimo, y no ligitimado salvo si no fuese por subsiguiente mattrimonio, y despues del su hijo y nietto, y visnietto varones ligittimos maiores de dias, y ansi de uno en ôttro de varon, en varon perpettuamentte para siempre jamas sin diferenca de quartta, ni quintta generacion, ni de ôttra alguna, ê àfalta de vuestros hijos varones legittimos, queremos, y es nuestra voluntad, que suzeda en estta dicha donacion è maiorazgo vuestra hija maior ligitima la qual goze del usofructo del dicho maiorazgo por sus dias, y en fin de ellos suzeda el hermano sigundo de vos el dicho Don Diego Vela nuesttro hijo si fuere vivo, è si no lo fuere susceda su hijo varon maior lexitimo prefiriendo en este caso el tio maior, que fuere bivo ô su hijo varon maior a los hijos, ô hijas de la dicha su sobrina vuesttra hija, è nuesttra nietta porque la dicha vuesttra hija, que suscediere en estte maiorazgo por falta de varon, queremos que solamente sea usufructo- mania del dicho maiorazgo por sus dias nomas. (every single day in your life, and after you, your oldest legitimate son, and not legitimated except for the subsequent matrimony, and after him his son and grandson, and great-grandson all legitimate males of legal age, and so forth and so on from one male to the other, in male perpetually forever and ever without difference of either fourth or fifth generation, or any other, and if there was a lack of legitimate male sons we want, and it is our will, that in this donation and mayorazgo our oldest legitimate daughter become the heir, who will then enjoy the usufruct of such said mayorazgo for the rest of her days, and at the end of them she is to be succeeded by the second brother of yours, the said Don Diego Vela our son, were he to be alive, and if not may his oldest legitimate male son, preferably in this case the oldest uncle alive, or his oldest male son, succeed the sons or daughters of the said his niece, your daughter, and our granddaughter because such said daughter of yours, who would be the heir to this mayorazgo if there is no male for it, we wish that she receive the usufruct of the mayorazgo for the remaining days of her life and not any longer.) (AHN Diversos Gral Leg. 157, No. 1, fols. 15r–16v)

In line with the above-cited legal prescription of the Recopilación, which placed women in a state of legal dependency on their husbands, the language of bureaucratic documents such as the facultades deployed a reiterative, formulaic rhetorical structure that placed male subjects in the legal position to act as the first and foremost capable spouses when it came to executing the holding, possession, and succession of the title and property of a married couple. In the comedia, however, this legal scheme was not installed literally. True, historical evidence shows that the regulation of theater found a strange bedfellow in the regulation of gender; thus, for instance, the vast majority of critiques of theater placed the brunt of the alleged malice

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of the comedia as a cultural phenomenon on the shoulders of women.13 Differently from the legislation that regulated English stages, women were not banned completely from the stage in Spain. Instead, their legal capacity to perform onstage was simultaneously conditioned by two critical premises: they were to practice acting in a decorous manner, meaning, in a fashion that would not violate the standards of the Catholic faith; and they could not appear in the theaters unless they were married and their husbands were present there.14 For the comedia, this was the exact translation of Laws 2–6 in Title 3, Book 5 of the Recopilación, and it placed a burden on female actors in the profession of theater that has only recently begun to be gauged in more precise historical terms. The monumental archive by E. Cotarelo y Mori shows that in 1596 and 1599 the Consejo de Castilla (Castile Council) published two Ordinances to ban women from the stage.15 As Teresa Ferrer Valls correctly points out, however, regulations such as these managed neither to close the theaters nor to ban women from the tablas or stages. However, they place the theatrical profession, and more concretely, the comediantas or women in the theatrical profession, in a rather precarious social and cultural location.16 13 Teresa Ferrer Valls, “La incorporación de la mujer a la empresa teatral: actrices, autoras y compañías en el Siglo de Oro,” in Calderón entre veras y burlas: actas de las II y III Jornadas de Teatro Clásico de la Universidad de La Rioja, ed. F. Domínguez Matito and J. Bravo Vega (Logroño, 2002), pp. 139–60 reviews the precise steps through which the appearance of women onstage took place in the latter part of the 16th century in Spain. 14 Ferrer Valls (“La incorporación”) cites these Ordinances: one, in the words of one of the Ordinances, that every actor “representase en su genero y figura, el hombre con el habito de hombre y la muger con habito de muger,” and two, in Ferrer Valls’s words, that “las actrices estén todas casadas y trabajen en la misma compañía de sus maridos” (143). She bases her conclusions on the evidence compiled by Ch. Davis and J. E. Varey (Los corrales de comedias y los hospitales de Madrid, 1574–1615: estudio y documentos, in Fuentes para la historia del teatro en España, vol. 20 [Madrid, 1997], pp. 125–26), as well as C. Sanz Ayán and B. J. García García, “El oficio de representar en España y la influencia de la comedia dell’arte (1567–1587),” Cuadernos de historia moderna 16 (1995): pp. 475–500 and 498–99. 15 E. Cotarelo y Mori, Bibliografía de las controversias sobre la licitud del teatro en España (Granada, 1997), pp. 163–64, 620–21. 16 “Aunque esta corriente en contra del teatro no llegó a determinar el cierre definitivo de los corrales o la expulsión de la mujer de la escena, la mala reputación que pesaba sobre la vida de los actores se refleja en algunas de las Ordenanzas emitidas por el Consejo Real sobre la organización de las compañías de título, a través de las cuales el Estado trataba de controlar la conducta moral de los actores” (Although this current against theater did not manage to translate into the definitive closing of theater, and neither did it manage to expel women from the stage, the bad reputation that weighed over the life of actors was incorporated in some of the Ordinances published by the Royal Council, about the organization of professional theater companies, through which the State tried to control the moral conduct of actors) (“La incorporación,” 148). As Ferrer Valls (149) and



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These ordinances, and the voluminous literature of moralistas condemning the presence of women in the theater (and the claim that such presence was almost singlehandedly responsible for the corruption of their profession) called for the silencing of women.17 Another byproduct of marital legislation, which placed women in the position of depending singlehandedly on the good will of their husbands, the pressure from these regulatory fictions corresponded interactively with the way women played. ’Til Play Do Us Part: Arguing a Different Case on / of Marriage in the Comedia Despite such pressures, recent critical literature has acknowledged the work of women in two public arenas: literature and theater.18 This larger context presented a series of particular ramifications pertaining to what Ferrer Valls has conceived as the triad of “actrices, autoras y compañías” (actresses, female owners of theatrical companies, and such companies). A key element in this respect is summarized by Ferrer Valls in three questions she poses for her evidence: in the matter of women’s professional theatrical activity and, more concretely, that of their ownership and running of theatrical companies, “¿Cuáles eran las vías de acceso de esta incorporación? ¿A partir de qué momento se produce esta incorporación? ¿Podían ser las mujeres autoras de título, es decir, podían dirigir compañías de las nombradas por el Consejo de Su Majestad?” (Which were the access routes for women in such incorporation? When does such

Joseph Oehrlein (El actor en el teatro español del Siglo de Oro [Madrid, 1993], pp. 270–76) have argued, the foundation of actors’ guilds such as the Cofradía de Nuestra Señora de la Novena in 1634 sought to achieve a more respectable social standing for the theatrical profession. 17 For a comprehensive analysis of how this issue of women’s silencing worked in the context of women and the comedia, see Teresa Ferrer Valls, “La ruptura del silencio: mujeres dramaturgas en el siglo XVII,” in Mujeres, escritura y lenguaje, ed. S. Mattalía and M. Aleza (Valencia, 1995), pp. 91–108. 18 A few studies offer some basics on the significant contribution of women to these two areas of cultural production in early modern Spain. See, among others, The Perception of Women in Spanish Theater of the Golden Age, ed. Anita Stoll and Dawn Smith (Lewisburg, 1991); Engendering the Early Modern Stage: Women Playwrights in the Spanish Empire, ed. Amy Williamsen and Valerie Hegstrom (New Orleans, 1999); Gender, Identity, and Representation in Spain’s Golden Age, ed. Anita Stoll and Dawn Smith (Cranbury, NJ, 2000); Teresa Soufas, Dramas of Distinction: A Study of Plays by Golden Age Women (Lexington, 1997); and María M. Carrión, “Portrait of a Lady,” MLN 114.2 (1999): pp. 241–68.

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incorporation begin to take place? Were women able to become autoras de título, that is to say, could they be directors of companies appointed by His Majesty’s Council?).19 The access route, evidence shows, began with the long road to the stage, in which Italian companies such as the one owned and run by Ganassa (for which documentation shows petitions to stage plays as early as 1574) and Los Confidentes (1587) played key roles in legitimizing the profession of theater.20 In that same year, on the 20th of March, in a memorial (petition) signed by fourteen actresses, led by Mariana Vaca and Mariana de la O, a group of women speak up for the first time in recorded history in Spain, in order to vindicate what Ferrer Valls aptly characterizes as “su derecho a permanecer en los escenarios solicitando el levantamiento de la prohibición impuesta en 1586” (their right to stay on the stages and to request that the 1586 prohibition [which kept women from working in the theater] be removed).21 Not only did these women argue their case on their own behalf; they were savvy enough to adopt, as Ferrer Valls puts it, “un tono moralizante, sabiendo como sabían que las principales razones esgrimidas en su contra eran de orden moral” (a moralizing tone, knowing full well that the most important reasons presented against them were organized around moral tenets).22 The memorial, in a brilliant stroke of reading the laws of the Recopilación, argued that their most dire need to stay in the theater was connected to their desire to keep their marriages in functional form, given that the absences of their husbands, also workers of the craft, led them to the dangers of adultery and transvestism. That such a group of women had the clarity to come together and argue such a case substantiates the idea that, although legislation and other regulatory fictions wished them silent and subjugated to their husbands, they knew how to appropriate forensic rhetoric to turn the tables in their favor.23 Although the memorial did not bring about an immediate change 19  Ferrer Valls, “La incorporación,” p. 140. 20 On the Ganassa petition, see Bernardo J. García García, “La compañía de Ganassa en Madrid (1580–1584): tres nuevos documentos,” Journal of Hispanic Research 1.3 (1993): 355–70. Further references to the petition by Los Confidentes can be found in C. Pérez Pastor, Nuevos datos acerca del histrionismo español en los siglos XVI y XVII, primera serie (Madrid, 1901), pp. 20–23. 21   Ferrer Valls, “La incorporación,” p. 142. 22 Ibid., p. 142. 23 The destabilizing power of women in public spaces was no secret to the crown. As Melveena McKendrick (Woman and Society in the Spanish Drama of the Golden Age: A Study of the Mujer Varonil [Cambridge, 1974]) notes, before Isabel de Borbón died in 1644 she attempted to reform Spanish society by decreeing that “no unmarried woman or widow



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in legislation, the petition by Los Confidentes led to the removal of the ban in November. As Ferrer Valls notes, “a la hora de conceder la licencia a la compañía italiana los del Consejo mostraban haber tomado buena nota del escrito de las actrices sobre la cuestión del travestismo, al prohibir no sólo que las mujeres representasen disfrazadas de varón, sino también que los muchachos lo hiciesen disfrazados de mujer” (when time came to grant the license to the Italian Company, the members of the Council showed they had taken good notes from the women’s document in the matter of transvestism, which lead to the banning of women disguised as men as well as the prohibition of men in women’s clothing).24 An interesting end result of this kind of argumentation by women, as Ferrer Valls acknowledges, was that despite the legislation that required women to be married, evidence shows that in the theater there were “contratos con mujeres que se declararan mayores de edad y solteras” (contracts with women who declared themselves of legal age and single).25 This larger context of the profession of theater is reflected in the playful ways in which female characters represented their roles as women and wives onstage. Four speech acts illustrate this resistance to death by playing: that of Finea in Lope de Vega’s 1613 La dama boba (The Lady NitWit); Mencía in Calderón de la Barca’s 1637 El médico de su honra (The Surgeon of his Honour); the lettered irruption of the authorial voice in a stage quotation in María de Zayas’s La traición en la amistad, ca. 1618–20 (Friendship Betrayed); and Don Juan in Ana Caro’s undated Valor, agravio y mujer (Bravery, Injury, and Woman).26 This selection of texts for the was allowed to appear on stage, and no gentleman was permitted to visit an actress more than twice. Similar legislation had been passed before, and was to be reenacted later, to little effect” (34). Jean Howard (“Women as Spectators, Spectacles, and Paying Customers,” in Readings in Renaissance Women’s Drama: Criticism, History, and Performance 1594–1998, ed. S. P. Cerasano and Marion Wynne Davies [New York, 1998], pp. 81–86) questions the common assumption that audiences were essentially supportive of masculinist schemes, and argues that women in Tudor England participated in the spectacle of theater in multiple, complex, and problematic fashion: “Even when this theater, through its fictions, invited women to take up the subordinate positions masculine ideology defined as proper for them, the very practice of playgoing put women in positions potentially unsettling to patriarchal control” (85). 24 Ferrer Valls, “La incorporación,” pp. 143–44. 25 Ibid., p. 143. 26 Quotes from these four dramatic texts are drawn from the following editions in Spanish and English. Some refer to the line numbers and some to the page numbers, which will be indicated with the letter “p.”: Lope de Vega, La dama boba, ed. Diego Marín Molina (Madrid, 1976), translated as The Lady Nit-Wit (trans. William Oliver [Tempe, 1995]); Pedro Calderón de la Barca, El médico de su honra, ed. D. W. Cruickshank (Madrid, 1989), translated as The Surgeon of His Honour (trans. Roy Campbell [Madison, 1960]); Ana Caro

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purpose of close reading is not intended to impose any canonical frame on this matter; rather, it is intended to suggest alternative methods for reinterpreting the ways in which the comedia installed the parodic nature of representation of marriage by virtue of women’s voices, movements, and gestures onstage. These readings, in turn, may help us understand the performance of alternative voices by women in the representation of marriage offstage, to which we will come back in the concluding remarks of this chapter. Before seeing these women’s performances of marriage and trying to visualize their installation of such acts onstage, two theoretical points can help readers understand the implications of these acts more clearly, particularly the impact they may have on contemporary readings of marriage, law, and the comedia. The relationship between power (in the case of the comediantas emblematized by the regulatory fictions aforementioned) and public performances (illustrated by the deployment of their voices, movements, and gestures for public audiences to see, hear, and share) poses puzzling questions for the reading of and writing about women in early modern Spain. The multiple strategies that inform even the most innocuous acts of social intercourse—kissing, shaking hands, bowing— can hide subversive or noncompliant agendas: as a result, they have the potential to generate great artistic and political commentary.27 The speech acts you are about to read must not be taken at face value; instead, they should be considered above all for how they mobilize playing as theatrical discipline.28 Mallén de Soto, Valor, agravio y mujer (Madrid, 1993); and María de Zayas, La traición en la amistad / Friendship Betrayed (Bilingual edition, trans. Catherine Larson [Cranbury, NJ, 1999]). 27 The performance of civility, as Erwin Panofsky has demonstrated, reached iconological status in European history during the Renaissance (Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance [Boulder, CO, 1967]). Panofsky’s analysis of these acts of social performance is limited to their aesthetic meaning, an exclusionary critical tactic that fails to see what these gestures might mean in a context of production of playful subjects, such as the theater. 28 I am following here the set of philosophical meditations and physical exercises entitled Brincos y saltos: el juego como disciplina teatral (Leaps and Jumps: Play as Theatrical Discipline) by Rosa Luisa Márquez (DVD, Río Piedras, Puerto Rico, 2010). In this seminar for actors and non-actors, Márquez mixes principles of theatrical discipline theorized and practiced by collaboratives such as the Bread and Puppet Theater and Augusto Boal, in an attempt to release the creative energies that can be generated on- and offstage by playing and playfulness. Antonio Martorell, who for years has been one of the most engaged interlocutors of Márquez in this matter, calls the happening of Brincos y saltos “an essay in convivencia (cohabitation, contiguity, conflict negotiation and resolution), democratic practice that can change both theater and life itself ” (cited on the back cover of the DVD).



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Furthermore, acts performed in public can speak not only for, but also of, the subject who performs them, especially in the case of subordinate subjects—not so much for what acting in such fashion might say about their submission to the dominant, but because it can harbor powerful critiques of the very systems of domination that, in principle, exclude them from access to the expression of their voice and agency. As James Scott says, “the greater the disparity in power between dominant and subordinate and the more arbitrarily it is exercised, the more the public transcript of subordinates will take on a stereotyped, ritualistic cast.”29 This “thick mask” of resistance to dominant ideologies and practices was a key element in the development of the Spanish comedia, most tangibly in its critical staging of the pervasive strategies deployed by the monarchy in 16th- and 17th-century Spain in order to control and regulate marriage. However, the destabilizing and culturally productive power of these dramatic texts in this respect remains virtually unexamined. In parallel to what director Ingmar Bergmann captured in the 20th century as his filmic subjects’ voicing of their own “scenes of a marriage,” the four speech acts analyzed below illustrate a disparate range of perspectives engaged by comediantes in the staging of an emergent consciousness.30 These instances of public acting, bearers of what Scott calls “hidden transcripts,” signal a will to underscore various points of dissention with certain dominant ecclesiastical ideologies. Félix Lope de Vega y Carpio’s La dama boba represents in Finea, the central agon of the play, a female version of Lucius in The Golden Ass— 29 The terms public and hidden transcripts, as defined by James Scott (Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts [New Haven, 1990], p. 3), constitute key discursive tools in my reading: “Public here refers to action that is openly avowed to the other party in the power relationship, and transcript is used almost in its juridical sense (procès verbale) of a complete record of what was said. This complete record, however, would also include nonspeech acts such as gestures and expressions” (ibid., p. 2); and, “If subordinate discourse in the presence of the dominant is a public transcript, I shall use the term hidden transcript to characterize discourse that takes place ‘offstage,’ beyond direct observation by powerholders. The hidden transcript is thus derivative in the sense that it consists of those offstage speeches, gestures, and practices that confirm, contradict, or inflect what appears in the public transcript. . . . This is not to assert that subordinates have nothing more to talk about among themselves than their relationship to the dominant. Rather it is merely to confine the term to that segment of interaction among subordinates that bears on relations with the powerful” (ibid., pp. 4–5). 30 Ruth El Saffar amply demonstrated the occurrence of this consciousness. See her studies Beyond Fiction: The Recovery of the Feminine in the Novels of Cervantes (Los Angeles, 1984); “The Woman at the Border: Some Thoughts on Cervantes and Autobiography,” Hispanic Issues 2 (1988): 191–214; and “Literary Reflections on the ‘New Man’: Changes of Consciousness in Early Modern Fiction,” Revista de estudios hispánicos 22 (1988): 1–23.

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a curious and odd subject who gradually awakens, in her own terms, to the reality of living amid complex social, political, and religious structures. She chooses to do this against the designs of her father, Octavio, like a child seeking to understand the world that surrounds her, and particularly the challenging subtleties she faces in the process of devising and carrying out her own marital plans. Indeed, Finea recites her desire to know the significant other of her choice, Laurencio, by teaching herself to read and write, two of the activities most heavily scrutinized by moralizing literature. As such, she is proactively reading Law 10, Title 1, Book 5 of the Recopilación, “Que no valga la carta del rey que donzella, o biuda case contra su voluntad” [That the King’s letter shall not have any power on the matter of a virgin or a widow marrying against her will], which stipulated that Si acaeciere, que por importunidad nos mandaremos dar alguna carta, o mandamiento para que alguna donzella, o biuda, o otra cualquiera aya de casar con alguno contra su voluntad, y sin su consentimiento, mandamus, que la tal carta no vala, y el que por ella fuere emplazado, que no sea tenudo de parecer ante nos, y por no parecer no incurra en pena alguna. (Were it to happen that by our importunity we were to give us a certain letter, or order, with the objective that some virgin or widow, or any other woman was to marry someone against her will, and without her consent, we order that such letter be deemed invalid [null and void], and the person summoned by it shall not appear in front of us, and in not appearing in front of us he shall not be punished). (fol. 312)

Law 11 further clarifies this point by stipulating that no master or father shall force his servant or daughter to marry against her will (fol. 312). Moving out from the depths of a highly comic and seemingly hopeless life of idiocy and misreadings, Finea beats all the odds (the intellectual brilliance of her learned sister, the financially motivated machinations of both her father and her beloved Laurencio) to finally speak to the audience in the desvanes (upper levels of seating in the corrales or public theaters) by creating a highly iconic wordplay with the term desván (attic) and Toledo, the place where she places her allegedly departed love Laurencio, and where she hides him so she can marry him on her own terms. Rather than the stroke of genius that Finea devises (like the twelve actresses signing the memorial did before her) to solve the conflict of her father wanting to give her away with a great dowry, a different set of verses may help readers see how her masked speech, denotative of the nitwit strategies that she fabricates to win over her learned sister, can hardly be read as submissive to any dominant ideology of marriage:



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por leer en tus papeles, libros difíciles leo, por responderte escribo (to read in your papers, I read difficult books, to respond to you, I write). (2469–71)

Finea’s slow but sure learning about marital negotiations and contracting is written by her as a leap-and-jump kind of commentary previously installed twice with her gesturing and bodily movements onstage—dance and reading lessons in which she clearly marks her territory of independence from a ruling man. In it, she voices the increasing necessity for marriageable men and women living in an emerging capitalist society to familiarize themselves with property law as thoroughly as they did in feudal societies with the ways of courtly love and, during the Renaissance transition, with Neoplatonic discourses. Laurencio, after all, sees in Finea a “renta con basquiña” (skirted income), a trait in this alchemist suitor that Finea plays—again, hardly in subordinate fashion—to her advantage in the race for his hand. Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s masterpiece on honor, El médico de su honra, brings readers a reminiscence of uncanny moments of marital terror like those seen in movies such as The Jagged Edge, Enough, Presumed Innocent, or Sleeping with the Enemy, thus clearly signaling a desire to stage the risks of violence incurred in a marital context. The fragment below conjugates the voices of Mencía and Gutierre together in a tragic performance of scrutiny, fear, and the dangers of reading and writing equivocally. The reading from the pertinent legal dictum in the Recopilación yields an uncanny turn of the interpretive screw posed by Mencía’s speech. Laws 1–5 in Title 20, Book 8 of the code stipulate the legislative parameters to administer justice in cases of adultery. Law 1 stipulates the fate of a wife engaged in an adulterous affair: Si la muger casada fiziere adulterio, ella y el adulterador ambos sean en poder del marido, y faga dellos lo que quisiere, y de quanto han, assi que no pueda matar al vno, y dexar al otro, pero si hijos derechos ouieren ambos, o el vno dellos, hereden sus bienes, y si por ventura la muger no fue en culpa y fue reforçada, no aya pena. (If a wife were to engage in adultery, she and the adulterer both are to be under the power of the husband, and he may do with them whatever he wants, and should, although he shall not kill only one and leave the other, however, if they have legitimate children, either one or both of them shall inherit their wealth, and if by chance the wife is not to blame and was forced to do this, she shall not be punished). (fol. 230)

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Law 2 says that the husband may not accuse only one of the two adulterers, if they are alive; he must accuse them both (fol. 230). A betrothed woman, according to Law 3, must meet the same punishment as the actual wife, for (as Law 4 stipulates) she does not have the excuse of saying that her marriage has not taken place and, hence, is null and void (fols. 230–31). Law 5, a key piece of legislation for the final scene of this theatrical text, ordered that if a husband were to kill the adulterers by his own authority and not by the authority of justice, he should not receive any of the assets from the marriage (fol. 231). In the last stages of El médico, Mencía, waking from a fainting spell caused by the terror that her husband’s fit of jealousy inspired in her, looks for a possibly incriminating letter she seeks to destroy—“El papel romperé” (I’ll tear that letter up)—only to discover that her letter has disappeared, and that what she is reading, almost against her will—“¿Pero qué veo?” (Heavens, what is this?)—is an eerie metamorphosis of her own writing into her death sentence: de mi esposo es la letra, y desta suerte la sentencia me intima de mi muerte. (Lee) “El amor te adora, el honor te aborrece; y así el uno te mata, y el otro te avisa: dos horas tienes de vida; cristiana eres, salva el alma, que la vida es imposible.” (My husband’s handwriting! Then this must be The sentence and the signature of death. [She reads aloud] “Though Love adores you, Honor must abhor you. Honor slays you, Love would give you warning and counsel. You have two more hours of life. You are a Christian: save your soul, since now It is impossible to save your life.”) (2493–95)

Three facts intensify this playful conflict: one, that the very man her husband brought into their house, the Infante, used to be her suitor; two, that the principal motive for father and husband-to-be when arranging her union with Gutierre was to preserve the honor of both families; and finally, that Gutierre had a history of violence with dishonor. These three facts contribute to the deterioration of the spouse’s ability to communicate well, which in turn translates into an impossible scenario of abusive domination, violence, and tragedy that characterizes the performances of the two spousal roles in El médico. That she is aware of such motive is patent in her oft-quoted verse, “tuve amor y tengo honor” (I had love



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and now have honor) (573), where she expresses her consciousness that her previous affair with the Infante Enrique was motivated by acts of her own will, while her married subjecthood is presently determined, from outside her will, by honor. The play nonetheless grants Don Enrique the fruit of the estate, by virtue of the king’s sanctioning of the execution, which without a doubt he carried out by not executing the Infante as well. Lineage trumps justice, but Mencía’s voice, gestures, and movements onstage remain for audiences to remember. María de Zayas, in highly sophisticated literary terms, wraps her playful dramatic text of La traición en la amistad (Friendship Betrayed) with a self-conscious narrative frame (uncannily similar to that of the twelve actresses signing the memorial in which they fought for theater as their lifeline), proclaiming the virtues of marriage and virginity immediately after the conventional “Fin” (The End): Alabado sea el santísimo sacramento y la limpia y pura concepción de la Virgen, sin mancilla concebida, sin mancha de pecado original. (Praised be the holy sacrament and the clean and pure conception of the Virgin, conceived without blemish, without the stain of original sin). (pp. 196–97)

The manuscript, as Valerie Hegstrom and Catherine Larson note, bears Zayas’s signature, which has been questioned along with her authorship of this play; the part of it with the wrapping remarks for the dramatic text has a 2-centimeter hole in the last folio, the result of an ink macula that in greatly significant fashion partially covers the words limpia (clean), mancilla (stain) and concebida (conceived), with a smaller spot sitting over the first three letters of the word mancha (Zayas, Friendship p. 14). The stained folio houses a voiced-over finale allegedly signed “Doña María de Zayas” following the public notice by the gracioso León who, in grand town crier fashion, announces that Fenisa, the female Judas, “sin amantes queda” (is left alone without a single lover) and, hence, remains at the mercy of any of the hombres del público (male members of the audience, so indicated in the stage direction) who might be unwise enough to want to pursue her publicly (p. 196). As if Zayas were signing a contract or a memorial, in excess of her own dramatic text, the self-referential epigraph reiterates four staple phrases in praise of the holy sacrament of matrimony and its necessary copula with the sacred essence of woman. The micro-loa invokes the ultimate dominant speech for women, that of the religious invocation of the transcendent and redemptive purity of woman, placing it in stark contrast with the preceding vocal protest by Fenisa and León’s

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abusive and gratuitous public recrimination of her character. This narrative filter, publicly voicing the violence with which marital regulations paralyzed the staging of women’s subjects, voices a self-evident and highly self-conscious “hidden transcript” for all men and women to hear about the problematic convention of the multiple-wedding scene. The fourth and last speech act in which a consciousness of marriage, law, and theater emerges comes from Ana Caro’s untranslated and undated play, Valor, agravio y mujer, which could be loosely translated as Valor (bravery, courage), Injury (assault), and Woman (wife). This text provides actors with the opportunity to stage an overwhelming concern for subjects and legal theoreticians alike: that of the marital promise (which constitutes a marital contract to be performed and delivered, a marriage made with palabras de futuro or future words) and the oft-undelivered condition of such promise. The literature on donjuanismo is too vast to engage here, but what is clear from the following segment of Caro’s play is that jurists, judges, men, women, and even the king himself were invested in controlling the errant sexuality of the trickster. As was said earlier, clandestine marriage and one of its most important raisons d’être, bigamy, was extensively treated in theory and prosecuted in practice in early modern Spain.31 This brings about a different preoccupation for Caro than it did for her fellow male playwrights; but as the twelve actresses’ memorial claimed, a husband’s absence (a definitive first step for clandestine marriage, bigamy, and the abandonment of betrothed women) was a defining trait for comediantas. Against this labyrinth of intentions and unfairness, Valor raises the voice of none other than Don Juan, a simulacrum of any other trickster, to interpellate the potential futility of the marital promise. Subverting the powerful public performances of Don Juan in El burlador de Sevilla, the text of Valor, agravio y mujer puts on trial the archetypical figure of masculinity and one of his most salient traits, his entitlement to domination of women: Cansado y arrepentido la dejé, y seguí la fuerza, si de mi fortuna no, de mis mudables estrellas. (Tired and regretful I abandoned her, and I followed the strength

31 For an overview of this matter, see Enrique Gacto, “El delito de bigamia y la Inquisición española,” in Sexo barroco y otras transgresiones premodernas (Madrid, 1990), pp. 127–52.



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not of my fate, but of my changing stars.) (402–05)

Her portrayal of a star-crossed Don Juan presents a radically different angle from the subject stage of Don Juan in El burlador, who, utterly selfpossessed, boasts of the pleasure he derives from subverting the value of honor: Sevilla a voces me llama el Burlador, y el mayor gusto que en mí puede haber es burlar a una mujer y dejalla sin honor. (Seville shouts my name, the Trickster, and the greatest pleasure that there can be in me is to deceive a woman, and to leave her without honor.) (1313–17)

Furthermore, Caro’s speech in Valor returns to that other voice of Don Juan, also by Tirso, who—in the character of Don Martín disguised as Don Gil and tricked by none other than Don Gil himself (the one posed by Doña Juana, of course) in Don Gil de las calzas verdes—rehearses another angle of this subject: No digas más: basta y sobra saber por mi mal, Quintana, que murió mi doña Juana. Muy justa venganza cobra el cielo de mi crueldad, de mi ingratitud y olvido. El que su homicida ha sido soy yo, no su enfermedad. (Say no more: suffice it to know, to my disgrace, Quintana, of the death of my doña Juana. Heaven’s vengeance fits my cruelty, my ungratefulness, and oblivion. I am her murderer, and not her illness.) (2046–50)

In Valor, the voice of Don Juan travels beyond Don Martín’s mere confession of guilt, acknowledging a tired and repenting self that furthers the potential sowed in Tirso’s text to expose this dominant masculinist figure

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for all audiences (not only the father figure of the Convidado de piedra) to see and judge. It could be argued that Tirso was committing authorial suicide by weakening what promised (pun intended, this time he actually delivered) to be one of the most memorable characters in the comedia, that of the Burlador; the fact that Don Gil did not have as broad a reception among audiences may be attributed to a vulgo who endorsed dominant masculinist ideologies propagated by regulatory fictions of marriage. What evidence shows, however, is that the first fumbles of the play were due not to the weakening of Don Juan, but to the body of the actress contracted for the first production in the Mesón de la Fruta in Toledo.32 This notwithstanding, the play on marriage by the Tenorio, and Tirso’s own parody of his masterpiece in the splintering of the myth into so many characters in Don Gil, stand as evidence for readers to appreciate the ways in which theater raised a critique of marital legislation. In the case of Valor, the fact that the voice of the playwright is one of a woman who focuses on the act of repenting in Don Juan gives another turn to this playful screw. More critics than one have deemed the dictatorial father Octavio, the violent misogynist husband Gutierre, the inclement father figure of the Convidado de Piedra, and the character of Don Juan best in show, meaning that these are the characters worthy of standing ovations and the status of “classical theater” assigned to these dramatic texts. In fact, the image of audiences in the corrales reacting to the above-mentioned hidden transcripts by means of throwing spoiled food at the stage, or in coliseos and court stages with some other type of reprobatory gesture, seems more likely in this historical context than a women-friendly soirée like the saraos staged by Zayas in her Desengaños amorosos. The vulgo was a fickle entity, and perhaps we are finally ready (within or without the stages of the Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico in Madrid) for stagings of these plays that propose alternative readings of marriage, along with tales supporting the entrance of women onstage, and in this institution, otherwise. The assumption that comedia audiences merely desired and paid to see submissive renditions of Counter-Reformation dogmas constitutes a 32 Francisco de San Román (quoted in Don Gil de las calzas verdes, ed. A. Zamora Vicente [Madrid, 1990], p. 210) cites the contracts signed to stage this play in the Mesón de la Fruta (Fruit’s Inn) of Toledo in the year 1615, by Pedro de Valdés’s company; Valdés was married to the famed actress Jerónima de Burgos, on whose age and large frame the fiasco of opening night was blamed.



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romanticized reading of these destinataries, who no doubt sought both edification and entertainment in their theatrical experiences. Furthermore, the presence of women on- and offstage in theatrical productions was bound to destabilize any assumed hegemony of such masculinist constructs. As Meg Greer points out, “effective drama depends upon the presence of a convincingly forceful opponent, whose vigor and magnetism may not be contained by the reimposition of order and a didactic concluding pronouncement.”33 Reading these comedias as instances of mere endorsement of canonical marital regulations is, as Greer cogently argues, a product of listening to only one of a plurality of intertexts that these plays engaged. The copious acts of litigation that subjects in 17thcentury Spain, the comediantes amongst them, brought to the courts were, without a trace of a doubt, some of these intertexts.

33 Greer, “A Tale of Three Cities,” p. 11.

Onstage/Backstage: Animals in the Golden Age Comedia Adrienne L. Martín Animals are a significant and recurrent, if paradoxically effaced, presence in the study of all Golden Age Spanish literature, including the comedia. This should not surprise, since only in the waning of the 20th century did European literary scholars in any number turn to animals as a topic worthy of academic scrutiny. Nonetheless, in the early modern period animals were certifiably and historically central to mankind as sources of food, clothing, transportation, labor, and companionship. As Keith Thomas details in Man and the Natural World, animals were literally everywhere in early modern English towns and were often thought of as individuals.1 In the country and urban settings alike people kept dogs, cats, horses, chickens, goats, pigs, and cows, among other species. Perhaps this very proximity has led to animals’ historical invisibility, and the Spanish context turns out to be no different. In recent decades, however, scholarly interest in animals as subjects whose history is worthy of analysis has emerged from the convergence of growing concerns over the environment and animal welfare on one hand, and 20th-century interdisciplinary scholarship on previously marginalized social groups on the other. As a result animals have been identified as the latest addition to the roster of deferred Others whose time has come in our efforts to reconstruct and comprehend early modern culture, particularly as it is manifested in Spanish literature. Literature, of course, teems with works of fiction involving all species of animals: domestic, wild, and fantastic or mythical. This presence demonstrates how writers and artists have imagined, conceived, and represented them across cultures and history, with the often unstated but underlying goal of establishing lines of demarcation between the human and the animal.2 Consequently, over the past few years early modernist literary scholars are entering the multidisciplinary field of Animal Studies to 1 Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England, 1500–1800 (Oxford:, 1983), p. 95. 2 In this essay I generally simplify usage to “humans” and “animals,” rather than the currently favored “nonhuman animals,” for the sake of simplicity and to allow the term, and the animal, individual identity rather than existence solely in opposition to humans.

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address our complex, paradoxical, morally shifting, and ambivalent relationships with animals across our interrelated histories and times, focusing on the cultural capital of their portrayal in literature. In modern and contemporary scholarship animals have conventionally been viewed figuratively as simple tropes that function as positive or negative stand-ins, or models, for human behavioral traits. That focus notwithstanding, real animals with a material presence and history are found in significant numbers in early modern literature and were objects of ongoing fascination for writers at the time. In the Golden Age comedia, animals are present in several modalities and degrees. Live animals did appear on the stage with some frequency; animals are narrated in the manner of Aesopian beast fables, whose roots are found in the bestiary tradition, or in related off-stage episodes; fantastic and real animals (often from the emblem tradition) function symbolically;3 and, finally, they appear in the form of animal-human hybrids, or blendings, that scrutinize the humananimal divide, among other issues. This essay explores these exemplars as they occur in a series of representative plays by Lope de Vega, Luis Vélez de Guevara, and María de Zayas. My purpose is not to document definitively or provide a taxonomy of the presence of animals in the comedia: this would require a book rather than the pages afforded here. Instead, I have selected plays that exemplify the patterns outlined above in order to construct an expanded dialogue on animals’ presence in and contributions to drama in early modern Spain. To initiate the discussion with real animals, it should be noted that how and to what extent live animals appeared on the Golden Age stage is a question fraught with uncertainties. A great deal more research remains to be done on the materiality of playhouses, staging practices, and theatrical companies in order to “find” the animal. For example, were animals included as property in the hato of theatrical companies such as those enumerated by César Oliva and Francisco Torres Monreal?4 Were they hired or borrowed for performances? There is no question that they were present, since abundant stage directions call for their use, as will be seen shortly. Live animals were also often replaced by cardboard figures and

3 See, for example, Ignacio Arellano’s analysis of the allegorical, didactic dimension of animals in the auto sacramental in “Los animales en el auto sacramental. El divino Jasón de Calderón: ingenio y simbolismo,” Bulletin of the Comediantes 63.2 (2011): 127–38. 4 César Oliva and Francisco Torres Monreal, Historia básica del arte escénico (Madrid, 1990), pp. 197–98.



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puppets, as they are today, and they tended to be decorative or evocative elements rather than primary or secondary characters. It is evident that literature is always a rich source when reconstructing the historical past of “marginal” and voiceless groups such as animals. As a consequence, much can be gleaned about animals’ participation on the stage from works of prose fiction such as Cervantes’s novella El coloquio de los perros. In this exemplary novel the canine protagonist Berganza narrates his experiences as an “animal actor” on the early modern stage with typical Cervantine irony. Since this work contains so many penetrating historical observations and reflections on the materiality of dogs’ lives in early modern Spain, and given the fact that the Novelas ejemplares contain few fantastic elements, Berganza’s autobiography deserves consideration.5 Berganza is taken in by an autor de comedias and, he says, “en menos de un mes salí grande entremesista y gran farsante de figuras mudas.”6 In other words, he performs nonspeaking roles in comic dramatic interludes. Berganza continues, “Pusiéronme un freno de orillos y enseñáronme a que arremetiese en el teatro a quien ellos querían; de modo que como los entremeses solían acabar por la mayor parte a palos, en la compañía de mi amo acababan en zuzarme, y yo derribaba y atropellaba a todos, con que daba que reír a los ignorantes y mucha ganancia a mi dueño.”7 Given canines’ remarkable trainability and profitability to human endeavors, it is likely that dogs appeared with certain frequency on the stage in the type of farcical interludes to which Berganza refers, and that did tend to end in brawls. The modern-day equivalent of these performing dogs would be circus, television, and other comedic animal acts in which dogs cavort around the stage, performing tricks and inevitably getting the better of the human actors. To judge by their incidence on YouTube, for example, such acts remain as popular as ever. Nonetheless, I have yet to identify a Golden Age play in which a dog appears on stage as

5 I analyze the material aspects of this novella with respect to dogs’ functions in early modern Spain in “Cervantes y la canifilia renacentista en El coloquio de los perros,” in Peregrinamente peregrinos: actas del V Congreso Internacional de la Asociación de Cervantistas (Madrid, 2004), 2:1559–74. When I say that the Novelas ejemplares contain few fantastic elements, I mean that when such elements do occur (for example, in the Coloquio the witch Cañizares’s story of Berganza and Cipión’s transformation into pups at birth, and the fact that they can talk), they are presented as either suspect or doubtful. 6 Miguel de Cervantes, Novelas ejemplares, ed. Jorge García López (Barcelona, 2001), p. 615. 7 Cervantes, Novelas ejemplares, p. 615.

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a named character, as does the scene-stealing Crab in Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Another Cervantine text, the “Prólogo al Lector” from his Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses nuevos (1615), contains a brief reference to animals. While speaking about the mid-16th-century Spanish stage, Cervantes affirms: “No había en aquel tiempo tramoyas, ni desafíos de moros y cristianos, a pie ni a caballo.”8 It can be assumed from this comment that in Cervantes’s time (as opposed to Lope de Rueda’s) actors did in fact appear on horseback. In this regard, in numerous comedias horses, dogs, and birds of prey such as hunting falcons apparently appeared on the stage, although it is obviously difficult to confirm if or when these were live animals. For example, in act one of Lope de Vega’s El animal de Hungría (to which I will return), the King and Queen of Hungary are on a hunting expedition and the playwright’s stage directions indicate: “Éntrense y salgan con mucho acompañamiento por un palenque algunos cazadores con perros de traílla y otros con aves, y detrás en un sillón Faustina y el rey de Hungría a caballo; apéanse en el teatro.”9 It is possible that these could be live animals, at least the dogs and horses, that could negotiate the slope of a wide palenque or ramp without much difficulty, but it is also quite possible that the director simply disregarded the stage directions and the actors entered the stage on foot without animals of any kind. The intriguing question of to what extent live horses were used on stage is raised by another play, Luis Vélez de Guevara’s La serrana de la Vera. The original stage directions to the opening scenes are particularly detailed and instructive, since Vélez specifies that the play’s homonymous protagonist, Gila, make a spectacular entrance mounted on horseback: Suenen relinchos de LABRADORES, y vayan entrando por el patio cantando TODA LA COMPAÑÍA, menos LOS DOS que están en el tablado, con coronas de flores, y UNO con un palo largo y en él metido un pellejo de un lobo con su cabeza, y OTRO con otro de oso de la misma suerte, y OTRO con otro de jabalí. Y luego, detrás, a caballo, GILA, La Serrana de la Vera, vestida a lo serrano, de mujer, con sayuelo y muchas patenas, el cabello tendido, y una montera con plumas, un cuchillo de monte al lado, botín argentado, y puesta una escopeta debajo del caparazón del caballo, y lo que cantan es esto hasta llegar al tablado, donde se apea.10

  8 Miguel de Cervantes, Teatro completo, ed. Florencio Sevilla Arroyo and Antonio Rey Hazas (Barcelona, 1987), p. 8. 9 Lope de Vega, El animal de Hungría, in Comedias de Lope de Vega, vol. 9, coord. Marco Presotto, ed. Alberto Blecua and Guillermo Serés (Lleida, 2007), p. 711. 10 Luis Vélez de Guevara, La serrana de la Vera, ed. William R. Manson and C. George Peale (Newark, DE, 2002), pp. 86–87.



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After the song, and without considering the animal’s reaction to noise and people, the stage directions call for Gila to dismount, whereupon she directs Mingo, the play’s gracioso, to lead the horse away to its trough: “Lleva, Mingo, ese caballo / al pesebre, y del arzón / esa caza quite Antón.”11 It should be kept in mind that these types of stage directions increased in importance and specificity as theatrical performances evolved in the 17th century. As Oliva and Torres Monreal point out: En el siglo XVI, y aun antes, se tiene el concepto de poema dramático que el actor debe aprender. . . . Cuando el teatro se convierte en una carrera hacia el perfeccionismo escenotécnico, los poetas se meten cada vez más a carpinteros, y sus señales se transforman en sofisticadas acotaciones, en donde han de figurar no sólo el qué, sino el cómo se hace tal o cual ‘apariencia’. Los poetas, por consiguiente, sabían muy bien los requisitos técnicos de la puesta en escena, y, de forma más o menos explícita, dejaron en sus textos indicaciones suficientes para conseguir sus fines.12

Given playwrights’ expanding awareness of the possibilities for more complicated staging techniques, it is at best premature to dismiss their explicit references to animals as impossible, or to assume that the animals used were necessarily artificial. Furthermore, in his study of theatrical staging practices José María Ruano de la Haza claims that horses did enter the courtyard of the corrales, and that there were no obstacles to prevent a small horse from entering through the main door of the Corral del Príncipe or the Corral de la Cruz (Madrid’s main playhouses) to the central courtyard where the spectacles were held. Ruano de la Haza explains that the animal could pass through the rooms on the lower level of the corrales, which were about three-anda-half meters high. Once in the courtyard, the groundlings would part to allow the actors and the horse to approach the stage.13 To bring horses and other animals into urban theaters today, however, would be next to impossible for practical, structural, safety, and ethical

11 Vélez de Guevara, La serrana, p. 88. It will be remembered that in Calderón de la Barca’s La vida es sueño, Rosaura is thrown from her mount (the “hipogrifo violento”) before the play begins. Therefore, the runaway horse does not appear but instead is described in great metaphorical detail in the play’s initial verses: “rayo sin llama / pájaro sin matiz, pez sin escama, / y bruto sin instinto / natural. . . .” 12 Oliva and Torres Monreal, Historia básica del arte escénico, pp. 192–93. 13 José María Ruano de la Haza, La puesta en escena en los teatros comerciales del Siglo de Oro (Madrid, 2000), pp. 271–74.

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reasons.14 Thus no animals (real or figurative) appeared in the 2004 version of La serrana de la Vera directed by María Ruiz and staged by the Centro Nacional de Teatro Clásico in Madrid’s Teatro Pavón. In the opening scene of Ruiz’s production, Gila (played by Mia Esteve) walks onto an empty stage carrying only a shotgun and arrows. Thus the spectacular and perhaps more “realistic” visual impact of what might have been included in the original production is lost, particularly the audience’s perspective of Gila above their line of sight on horseback. The loss is even more important given the absence of the other animals that Gila has hunted and that hang from the pommel of her saddle. The remaining skins and heads of wild beasts (wolf, bear, and boar) nailed to poles evoke visually Gila’s prowess as a huntress, likening her to the mythical Diana in beauty and skill and providing an important subtext for character development. María Ruiz’s version eliminates these emblematic animals to rely instead on a spectacular mountain set on an elevated stage meant to convey the wildness of nature and of Gila’s temperament. Immediately after her entrance on stage in act one, Gila’s father Giraldo extolls her beauty in highly conventional poetic terms. Gila brushes off his comments and instead launches into a magnificent narration of the boar hunt that preceded her arrival (lines 273–330). Vélez foregrounds the boar’s savagery in a series of Baroque conceits worthy of a Góngora. Through this displacement of the beast by means of theatrical discourse, what cannot occur on stage is related and acted out by the protagonist in a manner that brings the narrated animals to life representationally, while extolling Gila’s horsemanship and courage. Gila is also deftly constructing her own character, her (self-)identity through her interactions with animals, without recourse to which her character would be indistinguishable from the innumerable other manly women in the Golden Age comedia. Furthermore, the narration of the boar episode is quite detailed and transmits to the audience the tension and danger involved in engaging with an enraged wild beast. Gila narrates in fast-moving redondillas how, while swiftly pursuing a deer on horseback in an idealized natural surrounding, she comes across a wild boar drinking in a fountain. The beast turns upon her and attacks her horse with tusks as sharp as knives: “el fiero animal montés, / de espuma 14 These considerations probably entered into the decision to use horse puppets in the award-winning play War Horse, which was adapted for the stage in 2007 by Nick Stafford. The horses in that production were created by Handspring Puppet Company, and each animal was operated by three actors.



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y sangre teñido, / desenvainó del cristal / de la huente los colmillos / que son mortales cochillos.”15 Gila is an expert rider, and by twisting and turning her mount she is able to repel the boar’s attack several times, thus protecting the horse’s flanks and chest, before finally shooting the boar between the eyes and killing it instantly: Tuerzo el cuerpo, y sobre el lado izquierdo pongo el cañón, corre el gatillo al fogón y al pardo plomo colado el sediento pedernal, y apenas sufre que ocupe la pólvora, cuando escupe contra el sangriento animal un rayo que le reciba por la vista y las orejas, y partiéndole las cejas di con él patas arriba.16

Throughout the play, Gila vaunts her domination of all sorts of animals, large and small, human and nonhuman, whom she relentlessly pursues in the type of ritual displays of physical power conventionally attributed to men. She drops the reins and stops a galloping horse using only her legs, vanquishes men in swordfights, wrestles a bull into submission with her bare hands, whips oxen into obedience, and murders men by tossing them off cliffs.17 Thus Gila’s character is constructed to a great extent through her interactions with a series of humans and animals that she overpowers with ease. In another scene Gila literally takes a rogue bull by the horns to overcome it offstage, while the characters’ reactions guide the audience’s comprehension. Gila cries out before racing backstage: “¡Escupiendo espuma al cielo / viene el toro! Yo me arrojo, / que si los cuernos le cojo, / le he de her [hacer] medir el suelo.”18 Don Nuño, a bystander to the action, informs the audience of what is happening out of sight as Gila overpowers the beast: “Por los cuernos asió ya / al toro feroz, y agora / le rinde como si fuera / una oveja.”19 The corresponding stage directions 15 Vélez de Guevara, La serrana, p. 89. 16 Vélez de Guevara, La serrana, p. 90. 17 I study the intersection of violence and eroticism in this play in An Erotic Philology of Golden Age Spain (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2008), pp. 160–68. 18 Vélez de Guevara, La serrana, p. 111. 19 Vélez de Guevara, La serrana, p. 111.

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indicate “Descúbrese agora entre los paños la cabeza del toro solamente, y ella echándole patas arriba.” Vélez most likely expected the bull’s head to be made of cardboard or another similar material, and audiences would freely accept the transmutation. Of course, the scene could also be staged without any sort of animal, with all the action occurring backstage. This is what happens in Ruiz’s minimalist adaptation: the action takes place out of sight and the audience only hears the crowd acclaiming Gila offstage. Gila’s domination of the bull harks back to blood sports commonly practiced in the Renaissance. Linda Kalof has shown that baiting was part of the cultural violence practiced against animals across Europe, in England, Italy, Spain, and France. A variety of animals would be tied to a stake and tormented (baited) by dogs, and bulls were particularly vulnerable to such practices given the desirability of their flesh as food.20 Vélez’s impetuous protagonist does not kill bulls: this will be taken care of in the ring from which this one has apparently escaped. However, the violence that Gila inflicts on them while forcing them to submit to her physically, or when hunting them for sport, does reveal contemporary sanguine attitudes toward the ritual domination and killing of animals in the early modern period. The twist to audience and readerly expectations in this play is that the violence is perpetrated by a woman, and it will escalate to killing men in revenge for her betrayal by the Captain don Lucas. For this Gila will be punished in a remarkably gruesome way—pierced through with arrows—at the play’s end. Thus she dies much as she lived, as a hunted wild beast.21 Keith Thomas asserts that because animals dwelled in such proximity to humans at that time, they were often thought of as individuals. Thus working animals were generally named and oxen “yoked together, bore stereotyped pairs of names, designed to sound distinct from each other when the ploughman called them out.”22 This observation is easily transposed to Spanish literature, in which animals are generally given names that reflect their color or temperament as well as their vocalizations. This onomastic is readily apparent in numerous early modern works such as El coloquio de los perros and Lope de Vega’s La gatomaquia and La dama boba (to which I will return soon), to mention only three. Thomas makes another interesting point when he notes that domestic beasts “were also 20 Linda Kalof, Looking at Animals in Human History (London, 2007), p. 89. 21  Instead of impaling Gila, Ruiz’s version casts a shadow image of her in profile upon a cross. 22 Thomas, Man and the Natural World, p. 96.



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frequently spoken to, for their owners, unlike Cartesian intellectuals, never thought them incapable of understanding.”23 As many people who observe and speak to their domestic animals know, most understand a quite functional vocabulary. This ability is captured in La serrana de la Vera in the plowing scene, in which Gila displays her extraordinary physical strength by manhandling (as it were), guiding, and intimidating her oxen into submission and obedience: ¡Aquí, Naranjo, ah, Bragado, malas adivas te den! ¡Cejar y dale también, o pues si dejo el arado, la guijada os he de her [hacer] entre los cuernos pedazos!, que ya conocéis los brazos que Gila puede tener.24

These verses and the following ones showcase Gila’s indomitable vigor and her arrogance. Her arm, she says, can cast stones with more force than a shotgun can fire a bullet, as the animals she drives are assumed to intuit. It is worth noting that “Naranjo” and “Bragado” (this last term applied to oxen whose inner flanks and legs are of a different color than the rest of their body) are colors associated with those other much-admired and respected bovines: brave bulls. Ultimately, these animal associations develop Gila’s characterization as powerful, spirited, and fierce. Lope de Vega also frequently incorporates animals into his plays, and in most of the modalities mentioned at the beginning of this essay. For example, El perro del hortelano is structured on the refrain and theme of the “dog in the manger,” which also has precursors in an ancient Greek and later Aesopian fable. In act three of Lo fingido verdadero, Rutilio enumerates a series of wild and fantastic animals that are to appear in a Roman amphitheater: leones . . . osos . . . un famoso jabalí . . . un cercopiteco indiano / que tiene barba y cabello / de hombre . . . un cinoprosopo / con la cabeza de perro . . . un lince de aguda vista . . . un bisonte que en la testa / tiene solamente un cuerno . . .  dos panteras . . . un tigre fuerte de Persia . . . un taranto . . . un Pegaso . . . un

23 Thomas, Man and the Natural World, p. 96. 24 Vélez de Guevara, La serrana, p. 115.

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adrienne l. martín pathaga . . . un onoventauro . . . un monopo . . . una hiena de dos sexos . . . un dragón.25

Such beasts, however, cede before another invincible fiera that is greater in ferocity and cruelty: love. While this interpolated narration provides a phantasmagoric and metaphoric zoology, a very different type of animal appears in Lope’s comedy La dama boba: Felis catus, the domestic cat. Rather than the mountains of Extremadura where Vélez sets La serrana de la Vera, Lope’s comedy takes the audience to an urban Madrid parlor. And if we judge by his works, it seems that Lope preferred cats to any other domestic animal. Besides La dama boba, he also integrates them into narrative episodes in Las almenas de Toro, and they rise to the prominence of protagonists in his feline mock-epic La gatomaquia. In the latter work and La dama boba, Lope’s cats reflect quite realistically the urban zoological landscape of 17thcentury Madrid, in which domestic felines were welcomed as rodentcatchers and pets. The “parto de la gata” scene in act one of La dama boba is a lively example of the modality in which animals appear in narrative interpolations. In lines 413–88, the maid Clara narrates to Finea, the play’s foolish protagonist, how the family cat has given birth to a litter of kittens. Her ballad provides a series of vivid folkloric images of the sights and sounds of early morning Madrid; and it is one of the most entertaining and comical animal episodes in Golden Age theater. The romance begins with a series of jokes that make fun of Madrid’s filthy and noisy streets, which echo with the cries of orange sellers and the ringing of pharmacists’ mortars as they mix their potions. As the city slowly awakens, the unnamed housecat’s time to deliver her brood arrives.26 Sighing a thousand sighs, she cries out: “¡Ay, ay, ay, ay! / ¡Que quiero parir, marido!”27 From this point on, the episode’s humor lies in its representation of animals in human terms. This type of anthropomorphization would eventually characterize animal humor in all media, from cartoons to films. 25 Lope Félix de Vega Carpio, Lo fingido verdadero, in Obras escogidas, vol. 3: Teatro (Madrid, 1974), pp. 193–94. 26 Clara calls the cat “nuestra gata la romana.” “Romana” could refer to her color (tabby), or it could be her name. José Herranz Martínez’ description of the “gato romano,” the most popular type of Spanish cat, follows: “La capa es atigrada con numerosas manchas cebroides transversales apretadas de color que oscila del gris al negro pasando por el amarillo y anaranjado. . .” (Los animales domésticos en la historia [Lorca: Ayuntamiento de Lorca, Colegio Oficial de Veterinarios, 2003], p. 190). 27 Lope de Vega, La dama boba, ed. Diego Marín (Madrid: Cátedra, 1985), pp. 81–82.



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The new father in Lope’s play, Hociquimocho (whose name reflects his conformation as a wide-skulled, short-nosed cat), rushes out to announce the impending birth to relatives, who speak in the typical falsetto (“en tiple de monacillos”) of “cat speech.” At this point the midwife arrives: “una gata vïuda, / con blanco y negro vestido /—sospecho que era su agüela—, / gorda y compuesta de hocico; / y, si lo que arrastra honra, / como dicen los antiguos, / tan honrada es por la cola / como otros por sus oficios.”28 This description anticipates the type of representations that Lope will refine in La gatomaquia and that project the physical and temperamental traits displayed by female cats onto women: the cat’s color reflects the black dress and white toque worn by widows, her luxuriant tail is a point of honor and pride, and her circumspect expression befits her age. In the remaining verses, Clara recounts the gathering of feline visitors to the new mother, the gifts they bring, and the subsequent celebration. The six kittens are “remendados y lindos,” in other words, pretty and white with splashes of another color, probably black. What would seem to be an insignificant detail is not without certain historical interest in the history of felines. The veterinarian José Herranz Martínez describes the general characteristics of domestic cats and points out that the “Gato holandés” is “una variedad de gato común que puede combinar en su capa dos colores de la manera siguiente: blanco y negro; azul y blanco; blanco y crema; y blanco y anaranjado. Es decir, siempre el blanco, con negro, azul, anaranjado o crema.”29 In other words, the combination of black with white is one of the most common coat colors for cats, and is to be expected in the indiscriminate breeding of domestic pets that occurred in early modern Spain. Clara goes on to name the visitors who descend from the neighborhood rooftops to greet the newborns. The names are comically descriptive (Lamicola, Arañizaldo, Tumbaollín, Rabicorto, Golosino), as well as sonorously imitative of the maullido and ronroneo of cats who vocalize in Spanish (Marramao, Miturrio). One—Zapaquildo—is the masculine version of the female progatonist of La gatomaquia, and the close relationship between this episode of La dama boba and that feline epic cannot be overstated. The callers arrive bearing delicious cat gifts: “Cuál la morcilla presenta, / cuál el pez, cuál el cabrito, / cuál el gorrión astuto, / cuál el simple

28 Lope de Vega, La dama boba, p. 82. 29 Herranz Martínez, Los animales domésticos, p. 184.

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palomino.”30 These cat treats reflect what lucky housecats might have been fed centuries before commercial cat food became an industry, or what they could steal from tabletops, as is depicted in Alexandre-François Desportes’s painting Still-Life with a Cat. The mention of sparrows and pigeons also indicates the avian prey available to the animal kingdom’s keenest hunter in a growing 17th-century metropolis. This generally sentimental episode ends on a comical note that once again employs anthropomorphization to convey the affection this particular cat inspires in its household. It should be noted that the fact that the family cat chose to birth her kittens indoors as opposed to outside reflects a degree of familiarity and sense of security that only pets enjoy. The episode concludes with Clara exhorting Finea to come and see the new members of the family and congratulate the mother: “Ven presto, que si los oyes, / dirás que parecen niños, / y darás a la parida / el parabién de los hijos.”31 This brief scene provides a humorous yet telling glimpse into the life of a pampered urban pet in 17th-century Madrid. It is in some ways a microhistory that illuminates a part of the cultural history of animals in early modern Spain. Relevant to that history, Bruce Boehrer notes that the influx of new animal species from the New World into Europe during the Renaissance produced a discourse of empirical observation that existed simultaneously alongside the inherited didactic bestiary idiom. Animals in the Renaissance come to serve as social signifiers for the human beings with whom they are affiliated.32 It is only as a result of the type of empirical awareness and observation to which Boehrer refers, combined with Lope’s evident affection for domestic cats, that they can be depicted as sympathetically as they are in Lope’s play, as well as in much early modern painting. María de Zayas utilizes a different, yet common, type of interpolated animal narration in La traición en la amistad: an instructive fable whose source is the medieval bestiary tradition. Bestiaries provided a rich and complex corpus of fabulous animal lore to subsequent periods, and Zayas’s play is a good example of how this corpus is mined by Golden Age dramatists.33 In this play, Fenisa enjoys seducing as many men as she 30 Lope de Vega, La dama boba, p. 83. 31   Lope de Vega, La dama boba, p. 83, my emphasis. 32 Bruce Boehrer, Animal Characters: Nonhuman Beings in Early Modern Literature (Philadelphia, 2010), p. 13. 33 For a fuller view of the influence of foundational bestiaries on the subsequent Spanish literary tradition, see Nicasio Salvador Miguel, “Los bestiarios y la literatura medieval



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can and insists that she loves them all. She betrays all her women friends, deceiving them and stealing away their lovers, only to be abandoned by everyone at play’s end. Before this, a variation on a well-known animal exemplum is told by Belisa to León, Liseo’s servant, in act three. The intertext is Aesop’s fable of the Lion, the Wolf, and the Fox, in which an aging and sickly lion is visited by all his subjects, except the fox. The wolf takes advantage of the fox’s absence to accuse him to the lion of not paying proper respect to the king of beasts; however, the fox overhears his words. Thus, when the lion roars in rage against him, the fox claims to have benefited the lion the most since he has traveled far and wide to consult physicians and has found the means of healing him, which is to skin a wolf alive and use the pelt as a wrap. As the wolf is taken off to be flayed, the fox communicates the moral of the story: “You should have moved your master not to ill, but to good will.” The fox, of course, appears often in fables and beast epics. In the tales of the Panchatantra and certain medieval collections, as well as in Aesop, the fox is the ruthless and cunning trickster whose foresight and circumspection often save him from danger. Zayas gives that tradition and Aesop’s Ur-text a twist by making the fox female, whereas in the original fable all the animals are male. Belisa tells León how the wolf “con la zorra / trae guerra trabada,” and tells the lion to cloak himself in the fox’s skin to alleviate his suffering from quartan fever: “traiga / la piel de la zorra / al cuerpo pegada.”34 But the vixen overhears his words and plans her revenge, astutely suggesting that the lion use the wolf ’s skin instead because hers is so small that it will not even cover one of his feet. When the lion skins the wolf, we read: “Estaba la zorra / contenta y ufana, / mirando el suceso / de una peña alta, / y con voz risueña, / desenvuelta y clara, / dijo. . . . / ‘Sabed que eso medra / quien en corte habla.’”35 Belisa ends her narration of the exemplary tale by addressing the servant: “¿Entiendes León? / Pues si entiendes, calla.”36 Belisa’s interpolated animal fable comes directly after León has engaged in a 96-verse harangue criticizing the corruption of the court during their time, which he describes as the Iron Age. His is a typically Baroque satirical romance in which he denounces flatterers, liars, fashion, carriages, poets, and especially venal castellana,” in Fantasía y literatura en la Edad Media y los Siglos de Oro, ed. Nicasio Salvador Miguel, Santiago López Ríos, and Esther Borrego Gutiérrez (Madrid, 2004), pp. 311–35. 34 María de Zayas, La traición en la amistad, ed. Michael J. McGrath (Newark, Delaware, 2007), p. 120. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid., pp. 121–22.

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women. Belisa’s warning (“Pues si entiendes, calla”) parallels the original fable’s advice to slanderous courtiers to cease and desist. Notwithstanding Belisa’s admonition to keep one’s mouth shut, however, the author is also engaging in criticism. Fenisa is characterized as a female Don Juan, the difference between her and the original being that she claims to love all her lovers, while Tirso de Molina’s Don Juan extracts pleasure precisely from tricking and deceiving women. But Fenisa’s worst crime, as portrayed by Zayas, is the betrayal of female friendship. The last modality I examine is the beast-human hybrid, commonly referred to in comedias as a savage, or fiera. The best-known example is of course Segismundo from Calderón de la Barca’s La vida es sueño, who recognizes in act two that he is “un compuesto de hombre y fiera.” But the beast/human also figures prominently in three lesser-read plays by Lope de Vega, whose protagonists are abandoned in the wild and suckled or raised by wild beasts: Leonido by a lioness in El hijo de los leones and Ursón by a bear in El nacimiento de Ursón y Valentín. Obviously the names reflect their bestial heritage. These characters subsequently fall in love and undergo a civilizing process, and are finally repatriated (rehumanized) and assume their true identity. El hijo de los leones, El nacimiento de Ursón y Valentín, and El animal de Hungría all contain variations on this basic pattern. In the remaining pages I concentrate on El animal de Hungría, which recounts the story of Teodosia, Queen of Hungary, who is falsely accused of adultery by her sister, Faustina. King Primislao abandons Teodosia in the wild to be devoured by animals and marries Faustina. In the meantime, Teodosia lives among and is nurtured by the forest beasts, dresses in animal skins, and sustains herself on bread stolen from villagers. Her legend grows and in the Hungarian peasants’ mind she becomes a deeply feared, although still partially human monster: “pues sabe correr y hablar, / y aun sabe forzar doncellas.”37 Her appearance is described as humanoid, with a face protruding forward, the shoulders pulled back, and a body like a giant: “Tiene el rostro hacia adelante, / las espaldas hacia atrás / y el cuerpo como un gigante.”38 However, when she is discovered by one 37 Lope, El animal, p. 713. 38 Lope, El animal, p. 714. The description dovetails perfectly with the legend of the “Monster from Buda,” published in Spanish chronicles and broadsheets before, during, and after Lope’s time. It is likely that one of these propagandistic texts is the inspiration for Lope’s play. The city of Buda was under Turkish dominion from 1541 to 1686, when Habsburg Spain was engaged in numerous military campaigns against the Ottoman Empire; thus it is likely that the monster figure was manipulated for political purposes.



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of the peasants, he is astonished by her beauty in typical Lopean fashion: “Campos, aguas, plantas, flores, / el que llamáis animal / merece ser dios de amores.”39 When Faustina gives birth to a baby girl, Teodosia steals the newborn and raises her in isolation in her cave: “harele fiera conmigo / lo que durare la mía [vida], / para tener compañía / y en mi pena algún testigo.”40 The child Rosaura becomes another feared feral beast, and is the animal to which the play’s title refers. Twenty years later, Rosaura encounters a Spanish nobleman, Felipe de Moncada, who had been abandoned in Hungary as a child, then rescued and raised by the peasant Lauro. He and Rosaura meet, the encounter sparks her desire and her intellectual curiosity, and through her conversations with Felipe she experiences the transformative effects of love, while learning about social mores and the tenets of Neoplatonic philosophy. Before all ends well with the restoration of Teodosia’s, Rosaura’s, and Felipe’s true identities and the requisite marriage, Rosaura inquires about and is instructed in the differences between beasts and man. She gradually metamorphoses into a cognizant and, most importantly in this play, a sentient being, a characteristic generally reserved for humans only at the time, or assumed for them.41 An example of her instruction occurs when, in order to discover why Teodosia refers to them both as fieras, Rosaura engages in a long and witty debate with her guardian that explores Renaissance natural philosophy regarding the nature of man, of beasts, and the soul as a distinguishing characteristic of humans. When Teodosia explains that of all the animals only man looks to God because He is the center of all things, Rosaura asks why, then, does Teodosia refer to them both as fieras: Pues siendo así, como dice, que nosotras somos fieras, si a Dios alaba y bendice en cosas tan verdaderas, ¿no ve que se contradice?

See discussion and illustrations of the legendary monster in Elena del Río Parra, Una era de monstruos: representaciones de lo deforme en el Siglo de Oro español (Madrid, 2003), pp. 167–73. 39 Lope, El animal, p. 717. 40 Lope, El animal, p. 719. 41  As Erica Fudge affirms, the human possession of reason places humans above animals in the natural hierarchy. See Brutal Reasoning: Animals, Rationality, and Humanity in Early Modern England (Ithaca, 2006), p. 3.

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adrienne l. martín Si a mí me llama animal, ¿para qué dice que el cielo es mi patria natural, y dice que deste velo se cubre un alma inmortal? Si alma tengo, y fue criada para el cielo, no soy fiera.42

Rosaura’s comment that she cannot be a beast because she has a soul reflects the commonly held belief in Renaissance Christian humanism that what separates man from the animals is the possession of an immortal soul. This doctrine was originally formulated in 1554 by the Spanish physician Gómez Pereira, and was subsequently updated by Descartes. According to this view animals were mere machines, or automata, thus incapable of reason or even sensations.43 Although both animals and men were similar machines, man had a rational mind and a separate soul, while animals were assumed to possess neither. Christianity’s anthropocentrism placed the human below God but at the center of the world: in this way humans’ dominion over nonhumans became naturalized. As we know, a similar issue had arisen regarding the souls of Amerindians after the Spanish conquest of the New World. Thus the early modern period separated the human from the animal in order to sanction the former’s domination of the latter. Hence the callousness with which animals were often (but not always) treated. These beliefs are summarized in Faustina’s remark later in the play that Rosaura (who at this point in the play is a captive in the royal palace) cannot be an animal because she speaks, feels and reasons: “ni pienso que es animal, / pues habla, discurre y siente.”44 Act three opens with Primislao and Faustina remarking on Rosaura’s beauty (“El monstruo es bello animal”)45 and her friendship with Felipe. This leads to a narrative interpolation in which they relate tales of animals’ (dolphins, dogs, elephants, horses) miraculous capacity for friendship and devotion to man. Faustina recounts the legendary tale of a dolphin who loved a young boy so much that when the child no longer came to

42 Lope, El animal, pp. 732–33. 43 The rationalist philosopher Nicolas Malbranche (1638–1715) carried Cartesian thought to an extreme, affirming that animals were non-sentient beings. Because animals purportedly could not feel pain, vivisection was performed on them without anesthesia. 44 Lope, El animal, p. 767. 45 Lope, El animal, p. 765.



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swim, the dolphin rose out of the sea to search for him and died of grief.46 The story of the dolphin’s constancy and the subsequent anecdote that Primislao tells, of the grateful lion that spares the slave who had removed a thorn from his paw, contrast with Faustina’s treachery and ingratitude. Faced with these ideal animal exempla, all of which have even older sources, she is forced to acknowledge her own monstrosity: Más fiera y crüel he sido, y ansí me castiga el cielo en no me dar sucesión, porque en malicia y traición he sido monstruo en el suelo.47

Faustina possesses a conjunction of qualities that characterize humans: covetousness, envy, malice, and the capacity for murder. In contrast, Teodosia, one of the play’s two “animals,” displays the Christian values of compassion and forgiveness. Could she be following the example of the wild beasts that protected and cared for her after she is left to die by her husband? Although she refers to herself as “humana fiera,” Teodosia recognizes that this appellative is incompatible with her innate worth and natural nobility as a woman. For this reason, when she happens upon Faustina, who has just delivered her daughter alone in the mountains and faints at the sight of the “animal de Hungría,” Teodosia renounces killing her sister: “Qué buen tiempo de vengarme / si en mi nobleza cupiera, / pero si me han hecho fiera, / fiereza podré tener; / pero no, que soy mujer / y he de ser lo que antes era.”48 The important point here is that Teodosia and Rosaura have been turned into beasts by the treatment they have received at the hands of humans. As Teodosia says to Rosaura at the opening of act two, “Eres fiera en ser tratada / como fiera y, donde quiera, / del hombre crüel buscada.”49 Rosaura’s savageness emerges justifiably when she is chained like an animal in a palace corridor and forced to defend herself and her beloved. Her combativeness—as with most animals—is a defense mechanism rather than the type of gratuitous aggression sometimes displayed by humans. While Teodosia and Rosaura are identified by others with the monstrous, 46 This tale from Pliny the Elder is retold in Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera’s Coloquio del conocimiento de sí mismo (1587). See discussion in Abel A. Alves, The Animals of Spain (Leiden, 2011), pp. 35–36. 47 Lope, El animal, p. 766. 48 Ibid., p. 719. 49 Ibid., p. 733.

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with untamed nature and the creatures that inhabit it, these two “animals” retain the human capacity for reason, forgiveness, and love. Their love and compassion rehabilitate them at play’s end and allow for their reintegration into the human fold. Teodosia renounces vengeance against her treacherous and murderous sister, and Rosaura is unchained, only to be bound by the shackles of love by her beloved Felipe, who says to his bride: “Y yo, mi adorada fiera, / te quiero hacer de mis brazos / otra más fuerte cadena.”50 Nigel Rothfels affirms, not surprisingly, that the way animals are understood is bound in time and place and that the careful scrutiny of that understanding reveals not only important limits to our knowledge of animals but important limits to our knowledge of ourselves.51 The Spanish comedia expands that idea as a showcase for both aspects of this historical and literary equation. It provides innumerable examples of how animals were perceived, utilized, represented, and valued, thus teaching about the mentality of the time. It also sketches the shifting boundaries between human and animal, between instinct and domestication, between the humanity of animals and the bestiality of men. As a consequence, while Aristotelian and Cartesian notions of what separates man from the animals focus on the soul and the capacity to reason, drama often destabilizes those categories by creating all-too-human characters who can possess reason but not empathy, or possess bestial instincts but also feel love. The Golden Age comedia’s emotion-laden characters do not always fall neatly within the Christian humanist binary of human versus animal. What is perhaps overlooked in that paradigm is the impulse of human passions, a force that overcomes reason and compels human drama. Whether the character be Calderón’s Segismundo or Lope’s Rosaura, bestial instincts are often caused by man, yet tempered by the civilizing effects of love. That human emotion is the intervening agent that changes beast into human in early modern theater. After all, as Rosaura the beast from Hungary acknowledges, “¿Quién pudiera, si no amor, / enseñar un animal?”52

50 Ibid., p. 798. 51  Nigel Rothfels, Representing Animals (Bloomington, 2002), p. xii. 52 Lope, El animal, p. 748.

Entremeses and Other Forms of Teatro Breve Ted L. L. Bergman Introduction Teatro breve refers to brief theatrical pieces, averaging between 150 and 350 lines in length, performed in and around the acts of a main play, usually a comedia or auto sacramental. The general term teatro breve is preferable to teatro cómico breve because while most pieces are comical, if only in their use of wordplay, there remain some that have no jokes at all. Since the publication of Eugenio Asensio’s Itinerario del entremés in 1965, countless studies have vindicated the teatro breve as varied, potentially complex, and not merely a primitive form of comic relief.1 The implication that teatro breve is inferior to the comedia (i.e., teatro menor) may come from its function as a supplement to the longer genre, whether the shorter piece be a sketch (entremés), a song ( jácara), a dance (baile), a monologue (loa), or type of parade (mojiganga). It is not incorrect to characterize the teatro breve as a supplementary genre that figuratively assists the comedia in its success as a spectacle, but the enormous number of teatro breve subgenres suggests that as a dramatic art form it developed far beyond the role of mere generic assistant. In 16th- and 17th-century texts we find the following common terms referring to short pieces: paso, entretenimiento, entremés, jácara, entremés cantado, mojiganga, loa, sarao, sainete, baile, baile entremesado, and danza. To simplify matters, this study will be divided into sections examining the subgenres of entremés, jácara, mojiganga, loa, and baile, always recognizing that these terms themselves vary in their definitions and that one subgenre can easily combine with another. We shall focus on the entremés because it is the most common subgenre and also clearly demonstrates the difficulties in tracing the teatro breve’s historical origins in general.

1 Compare Eugenio Asensio, Itinerario del entremés (Madrid, 1965), and Agustín de la Granja and María-Luisa Lobato, eds., Bibliografía descriptiva del teatro breve español (siglos XV–XX) (Madrid, 1999).

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ted l. l. bergman The Entremés

As the name implies, an entremés is a comic interlude most often performed between the acts of a comedia. As a theatrical phenomenon, interludes in general have a very long history, dating at least to Greek New Comedy.2 Though not theatrical per se, even the talk of Aristophanes’ hiccups in Plato’s Symposium can be considered an interlude, and a comical one at that.3 Although it is difficult to determine the precise impact of classical antecedents on early modern entremeses, there is an undeniable similarity between the exaggerated characterization found in Roman comedy (e.g., agelasts and parasites) and the comic types that populate the early modern teatro breve subgenre in question.4 The great paucity of extant dramatic material from the Iberian peninsula before the turn of the 16th century makes it very difficult to trace entremés antecedents further back. Gil Vicente’s early 16th-century Auto de los reyes magos, following a much older tradition of miracle plays, suggests that the comical intervention of pastores bobos (shepherd bumpkins) may have had medieval roots.5 Though not strictly dramatic, Fernando de Rojas’s Celestina demonstrates that by the end of the Middle Ages, lower-class and even criminal characters (a staple of the entremés) had found a prominent place in literature and that their brash and potentially comic behavior could be used as a foil against the more noble and elevated activities of their upper-class counterparts. Act nine of Celestina, filled with eating, drinking, quarreling, and sarcastic joking, approaches an entremés in the status and behavior of its characters, all lower-class.6 In Torres Naharro’s works from the beginning of the 16th century, stereotyped professions and nationalities begin to dominate the action of the entire play, and in one comedia, La Tinelaria, “all the characters are gluttons, cowards, thieves, rascals, blasphemers” quite similar to entremés stock figures found a century later.7 2 George Eckel Duckworth, The Nature of Roman Comedy: A Study in Popular Enter­ tainment (Norman, 1994), p. 99. 3 Michel Jeanneret, A Feast of Words: Banquets and Table Talk in the Renaissance (Chi­ cago, 1991), p. 145. 4 Ted L. L. Bergman, The Art of Humour in the Teatro Breve and Comedias of Calderón de la Barca (London, 2003), pp. 69, 127. 5 John Brotherton, The Pastor-Bobo in the Spanish Theatre, Before the Time of Lope de Vega (London, 1975), p. 21. 6 Fernando de Rojas, Celestina, ed. Dorothy Sherman Severin, trans. James Mabbe (Warminster, 1987), pp. 222–46. 7 George Henry Lewes, The Spanish Drama (London, 1846), p. 17.



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If any author can be credited with founding this subgenre, it is Lope de Rueda, whose pasos are nearly indistinguishable in content and style from pieces labeled entremeses in following centuries.8 A classic example of the form is Rueda’s Las aceitunas (1567), in which a rustic couple bickers over whether to plant or sell a harvest of olives.9 Beyond the laughable verbal sparring, there is a strong implication of physical comedy (another entremés staple) in the poor daughter who is pulled back and forth between mother and father as they argue over what she should do with the harvest. Other pasos such as La carátula (1567) and La tierra de jauja (1570) established the burla, or deception, as the most common plot device.10 These short comic pieces achieved an important generic status as full-fledged dramatic works with their publication alongside comedias in the editor Joan de Timoneda’s collections El deleitoso (1567) and Registro de representantes (1570).11 Miguel de Cervantes’s entremeses, inspired by Lope de Rueda’s use of the burla and stock figures, also improved upon this successful formula. Two of Cervantes’s eight extant entremeses are written in verse, a trend that became the norm in the early decades of the 17th century. At this time, an ending with “palizas” (beatings) is less common, instead replaced by a final dance routine, although beatings and chases about the stage (a further entremés staple) are still featured. Cervantes’s greatest contributions are the use of metatheater and greater thematic complexity, especially regarding the use of satire. The repeatedly anthologized El retablo de las maravillas (1615) offers the best example. In this entremés, haughty small-town leaders are duped by traveling charlatans who bring along a quasi-religious puppet show that relies entirely upon the audience’s imagination instead of actual puppets or painted backdrops.12 As the spectacle can only be witnessed by those of pure blood, the bumpkin authorities try their best to “see” the magical visions, lest they be accused of non-Christian or bastard ancestry. In this way, Cervantes produces a social satire that is  8 Joan Timoneda, a contemporary compiler of Rueda’s pieces, even used the terms entremés and paso interchangeably. See John J. Reynolds, Juan Timoneda (Boston, 1975), p. 78. 9 The titles given to these pieces came centuries later, as originally the pasos were only assigned numbers by the original editor Timoneda (Lope de Rueda, Pasos, ed. José Luis Canet Vallés [Madrid, 1992], p. 162). For the whole Paso de las Aceitunas, see Rueda, Pasos, pp. 162–67. The piece was originally listed as Paso séptimo. 10 Rueda, Pasos, pp. 121–30 and 146–53. 11  Rueda, Pasos, pp. 109–67 and 169–91. 12  Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Entremeses, ed. Nicholas Spadaccini (Madrid, 1982), pp. 215–36.

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more subtle than the typical (though equally comical) entremés sanctions against gluttony and avarice. Although they were “nunca representados,” Cervantes’s entremeses are likely the most studied and cited by scholars over the centuries.13 Entering the first third of the 17th century, with an increase in perma­nent theater venues, acting companies, and comedia playwrights, the search for novel forms of theatrical entertainment expanded while entremeses became more complex in their overwhelming use of verse and the incorporation of song and dance. This quest for novelty also demanded that the subgenre be more thematically oriented around specific professions, fashions, landmarks, foodstuffs, etc. With the advent of what Díez Borque calls the “teatro y fiesta en el barroco,” all manner of teatro breve pieces could form part of elaborate spectacles and were required to become more elaborate themselves.14 The culmination of this phenomenon is Calderón’s El triunfo de Juan Rana (1670), written not only to accompany his extravagant mythological play Fieras afemina amor, but also “as a tribute to the longevity of Juan Rana,” perhaps the century’s best-known comic actor.15 The elaborate stage directions for his entrance alone indicate how far the subgenre had developed since its humble origins.16 The piece also contains wordplay, physical comedy, absurd situations, a bit of singing, and the comic inversion of serious themes, all vital ingredients for a 17th-century entremés. Most entremeses, unlike El triunfo de Juan Rana, do not make reference to any specific auto or comedia, although they are often broadly metatheatrical. Thus modern scholars are usually left guessing if any specific parody or literary satire is present.17 Most extant entremeses are recovered from portable octavo-sized anthologies that became popular in the second half of the 17th century. Titles such as Laurel de entremeses varios (1660), Rasgos del ocio (1661),

13 Cervantes, Entremeses, p. 13. 14 José María Díez Borque, “Fiesta y teatro en la Corte de los Austrias” in Barroco espa­ ñol y austríaco: fiesta y teatro en la corte (Museo Municipal de Madrid, abril–junio 1994), ed. José María Díez Borque and Karl F. Rudolf (Madrid, 1994), pp. 17–18. 15 Peter E. Thompson, The Triumphant Juan Rana: A Gay Actor of the Spanish Golden Age (Toronto, 2006), p. 24. 16 Thompson, The Triumphant Juan Rana, pp. 32–33. 17 As with any generic classification, there are always exceptions. La mojigana de la muerte, cited later, is one. Calderón’s El golfo de las sirenas, subtitled “égloga piscatoria,” contains very precise literary satire in the form of an opening comic scene similar to a loa, along with a mojiganga at the end. As proof of the teatro breve’s past reputation as “teatro menor,” it is telling that Ángel Valbuena Briones expurgated Golfo’s shorter supplementary pieces from his 1966 edition of Calderón’s works. See Bergman, The Art of Humour, p. 98.



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Ociosidad entretenida (1668), Vergel de entremeses (1675), La mejor flor de entremeses (1679), Verdores del Parnaso (1668 and 1697), Ramillete de entremeses (1700), and Arcadia de entremeses (1723) reveal the contemporary editors’ belief that, while not serious literature, entremeses were not without value and beauty of some sort, if only to be found in the cleverness of their jokes. The practice of anthologizing many works of teatro breve gained serious ground with the publication of Jocoseria: burlas veras, o reprehensión moral y festiva de los desórdenes públicos (1645), whose frontispiece explains further that the work contains “doce entremeses representados y veinte y cuatro cantados. Van insertas seis loas, y seis jácaras, que los autores de comedias han representado, y cantado en los teatros desta corte.”18 The playwright, Luis Quiñones de Benavente, is undoubtedly the most successful innovator of the entremés subgenre. A sampling of his titles indicates how thematically varied entremeses had become by the middle of the century: La paga del mundo, Las civilidades, La muerte, El tiempo, El talego niño, La visita de la cárcel, El guardainfante, El murmu­ rador, La puente segoviana, La dueña, El doctor Juan Rana, La capeadora, and even El casamiento de la Calle Mayor con el Prado viejo. The quality, depth, and varied nature of Quiñones de Benavente’s works lend credence to the editor’s assertion in the prologue that if “el autor que tenía una mala comedia, con ponerle dos entremeses deste ingenio, le daba muletas para que no cayese, y el que tenía una buena, le ponía alas para que se remontase.”19 * * * The literary influences of the entremés subgenre are manifold, intertwined, and not attributable to a single tradition. Spanish folklore and the “cuentecillo” undoubtedly had an impact on early entremeses, especially those set in a rural environment. The bickering over a future harvest in Lope de Rueda’s Aceitunas, cited above, is reminiscent of the “cuento de la lechera” and similar to the folktale that gave birth to the expression “don’t count your chickens before they hatch.” Because entremeses thrive on comic inversion, by which lust and greed rule instead of love and honor, they must also owe something to the tradition of Carnival and “el mundo al revés,” even as the mojiganga subgenre more readily captures this cultural

18 Luis Quiñones de Benavente, Entremeses completos, vol. 1: Jocoseria, ed. Ignacio Arellano, Juan Manuel Escudero and Abraham Madroñal (Pamplona, 2001), p. 101. 19 Quiñones de Benavente, Jocoseria (Pamplona, 2001), p. 112.

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phenomenon as explained by Bakhtin and later Caro Baroja.20 The basic elements of inversion and distortion, whether carnivalesque or not, are always on display in entremeses, and these easily twist any element of cos­ tumbrismo, no matter how mundane the topic of the piece. Most entreme­ ses contain popular habits and speech patterns worth studying but, as Eugenio Asensio warns, “No podría compilarse, con pretensiones objetivas, una obra como Los españoles pintados por sí mismos.”21 The subgenre certainly presents many aspects of everyday life that are not included in comedias, but it would be a grave error to call it realistic since the main goal is most frequently to get a laugh, not necessarily to mirror reality. The clearest examples of this distorted mirroring are found in the many regional, ethnic, and racial stereotypes that populate all subgenres of teatro breve, including the entremés. Spain’s long tradition of prose satire, itself echoing classical antecedents, heavily influenced the characterization, plots, and settings for entremeses at the beginning of the 17th century. Asensio uses the term “Teofrasto del hampa cortesana” to describe Francisco de Quevedo as a satirist of social and professional types in his short comic pieces, and Susana Hernández Araico affirms that “varios de sus entremeses se alínean estrechamente a escenas sueltas de los Sueños, o la Vida del Buscón.”22 While Quevedo is the most obvious point of contact between any prose piece and teatro breve, one must also keep other writers with a satirical bent in mind, like Cervantes, Luis Vélez de Guevara, Salas Barbadillo, Castillo Solórzano, and Quirós, all of whom wrote entremeses. The subgenre has attracted attention from comedia scholars in search of theatrical satire because, line for line, much less societal critique can be found in the longer supplemental genre. This special satirical status granted to the entremés, possibly a product of carnivalesque permissiveness, reinforces its position as a supplementary form. Nevertheless, it is possible to overstate the entremés’s compensation for the comedia’s lack, as full-length plays can contain their own farcical interludes, and inevitably feature a gracioso figure. His quips can be as pointed as those found in the teatro breve, while both graciosos

20 See Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Bloomington, 1984), and Julio Caro Baroja, El carnaval: análisis histórico-cultural (Madrid, 1965). 21  Asensio, Itinerario del entremés, p. 140. 22 Asensio, Itinerario del entremés, p. 183; Susana Hernández Araico, “El teatro breve de Quevedo y su arte nuevo de hacer ridículos en las tablas: lego-pro-menos a una representación riescénica,” La Perinola 8 (2004): 201–34, at p. 210.



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and entremés characters certainly owe a debt to another genre, that of burlesque literature in prose and verse.23 Given many of its stock characters and humble settings, it is understandable that an entremés will often be compared to picaresque novels. The number of criminals, whether busconas, rufianes, capeadores, tahures, or occasional thieves, that populate the subgenre evokes the world of Lazarillo de Tormes, El buscón, or Guzmán de Alfarache. Luis Quiñones de Benavente alone wrote entremeses with titles like Los ladrones y el reloj (1625),24 La capeadora (1645, in two parts),25 and the Entremés cantado de la visita de la cárcel (1645).26 Just as the relatively low-status clérigo and buldero of Lazarillo de Tormes are the objects of derision, the entremés stock figure of the sacristán makes an easy target for anticlerical jokes without the playwright risking any retribution from the church hierarchy. Both prose and theatrical genres share a similar linguistic register, with brash language and colloquial expressions appearing in Lazarillo, but also earlier in Celestina and comedias by Torres Naharro. Irony and wordplay, perfected by Quevedo in El buscón, also see a parallel development in the entremés, especially as verse becomes the norm, and spoken conceptismo on stage can be stretched even further.27 Any complete taxonomy of the subgenre would be vast, even if it were merely based on characters, settings, and situations alone. On the other hand, in terms of plot, the typology of the entremés can be reduced to two basic forms: burla and procession. The burla is what drives the fast-paced action of most entremeses, and inevitably derives its humor and plotting from the ingenuity of a deceiver and the naïveté of a dupe. The burla, or deception, often provides a broad satire of foolish behavior in the folkloric tradition. In Cervantes’s La cueva de Salamanca (1615), a wife and her maid escape disaster with the help of a clever student who convinces an insufficiently suspicious husband that two lovers hiding in the house are actually spirits who will dance for his entertainment.28 This piece combines two typical entremés targets of satire (superstition and cuckoldry) 23 Ignacio Arellano and Celsa Carmen García Valdés, eds., Antología de entremeses del Siglo de Oro (Pozuelo de Alarcón, 2006), p. 13. 24 Luis Quiñones de Benavente, Nuevos entremeses, ed. Abraham Madroñal (Kassel, 1996), pp. 201–14. 25 Quiñones de Benavente, Jocoseria, pp. 419–31, 441–53. 26 Quiñones de Benavente, Jocoseria, pp. 209–16. 27 Ignacio Arellano and Celsa Carmen García Valdés, eds., Antología de entremeses del Siglo de Oro (Pozuelo de Alarcón, Spain, 2006), p. 16. 28 Cervantes, Entremeses, pp. 237–55.

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in one character. Cervantes includes yet another target in the wife’s lover, who is a sacristan and therefore a comically poor representative of the Church’s moral authority. The satire is also typical in its mockery of rigid comedia conventions concerning honor and the fear of losing it. While death, or even serious injury, is impossible in any entremés, the comic logic of the subgenre demands a certain level of danger to prompt actions such as running about, hiding, and adopting silly disguises. Robbing food, wine, or money—all continuously craved in entremés settings—provides ample motivation for characters to plan a burla. In Lope de Rueda’s Tierra de Jauja (1567), two thieves distract a simpleton by describing to him a land where honey-glazed donuts grow on trees, after which they exploit his reverie by stealing his crock of food.29 In Quiñones de Benavente’s El borracho (1645), a “galán” and a “soldado pícaro” conspire to rob a greedy old barber of his daughter and his wine by means of a scam that disguises the soldier as a free-spending noble.30 In Quiñones de Benavente’s El talego niño (1645), a master asks his servant to transport a moneybag in swaddling clothes. This initial burla, designed for evading thieves, is trumped by two ladies who use soothsaying and talk of food to distract the servant and rob the cash. This technique of a “burlador burlado” is one of many ways in which a playwright can add elements to intentionally complicate the basic structure of an entremés.31 Instead of deception, Calderón’s El mayorazgo (1642) starts with a rather extensive exposition about how the indebted “caballero ridículo” Don Cosme is in love with Don Pánfilo’s daughter, and has signed away his inheritance to the greedy father.32 Only by the middle of the piece does Don Cosme’s friend suggest that he literally play dead, after which the protagonist negotiates new marital and financial terms as a ghost before being “resuscitated.” Because the couple in El mayorazgo are seriously in love, and the institution of marriage itself receives relatively serious treatment, this particular entremés honors comedia conventions as much as it parodies them. Engaño—a staple theme of the baroque comedia—is not so different from burla, though each manifests itself with different degrees of joking and characters of differing social status, depending upon whether the play is full-length or teatro breve. 29 Rueda, Pasos, pp. 152–53. 30 Quiñones de Benavente, Jocoseria, pp. 503–22. 31   Quiñones de Benavente, Entremeses, pp. 189–207. 32 Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Teatro cómico breve, ed. María-Luisa Lobato (Kassel, 1989), pp. 61–78.



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Processional entremeses, the other type, generally lack a burla. They are essentially parades or gatherings of comic types, with little action beyond what is needed for a basic narrative frame. The stage becomes a figurative shooting gallery, with vice-ridden satirical targets shot down by the audience’s laughter. In Calderón’s Entremés del reloj y genios de la venta (1658), each gathered “genio” babbles meaninglessly about his obsessions.33 José de Villaviciosa’s Entremés de los poetas locos (1675) offers a more focused satire against poetasters.34 The action in the first part of Quiñones de Benavente’s Entremés cantado del guardainfante (1645) is framed by a criminal prosecution, but one quickly realizes that the complaints made by those “robbed” by the hoop-skirt’s owner are only a pretext for a systematic satire of a fashion synonymous with illicit pregnancies.35 Because most 17th-century entremeses are written in verse, when processional in nature they can almost resemble burlesque poems brought to the stage, only with silly costumes, more dialogue, and a moment or two of physical comedy. The amount of burla or procession that dominates an entremés’s plot structure can vary, and there are numerous ways to blend both elements, especially since the appearance of one figure after another can increase the comic tension related to a deception. In Los linajudos (1723), three men appear in succession to court a malmaridada, only to quarrel with each other and thus provide a bigger scandal upon the arrival of the jealous husband.36 Explicit generic variation can also dictate the weight of burla or procession in an entremés. On the whole, Quiñones de Benavente’s entremeses cantados do not prominently feature any burlas that, through physical comedy, would interrupt their stream of satirical commentary. Comparatively, a baile entremesado may contain more movement on the stage than an entremés cantado, but for dancing, not for any of the chasing or hiding typically related to a burla. A curious case is the paradoxically titled sub-subgenre of loas entremesadas, pieces performed before the main play, and whose entremés moniker indicates the presence of dialogue and metatheater more than it promises any burla or attendant action on stage.

33 Calderón de la Barca, Teatro cómico breve, pp. 127–39. 34 Vergel de entremeses (Zaragoza, 1675), pp. 85–94. 35 Quiñones de Benavente, Jocoseria, pp. 275–85. 36 Arcadia de entremeses (Madrid, 1723), pp. 105–18.

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This subgenre, also known as a “fin de fiesta,” is always performed at the conclusion of a longer work, generally a comedia or auto sacramental. “Fin de fiesta” has a double meaning because the mojiganga can mark the end of a “fiesta barroca” as described by Díez Borque, while it is also inherently celebratory in nature, converting the end of any performance into a party.37 Of all the teatro breve subgenres, the mojiganga is most closely linked to Carnival, especially in terms of costumes, “el mundo al revés,” themes of food and drink, and an overwhelming desire for revelry. In the 17th century, when such pieces regularly appeared in print, their content was derived as much from courtly masques as village traditions. Given the mojiganga’s variable generic context—from an exclusive palace play to Corpus Christi celebrations for all—it would be incorrect to call it a purely popular dramatic form. Regardless of context, the mojiganga is effectively a costumed dance or parade brought to the stage. This does not prohibit the inclusion of a burla or social satire, but mojigangas can happily function without these ingredients that are common entremés staples. Occasionally, some pieces have their generic designation changed over time. A prime example would be Los invencibles hechos de Don Quijote de la Mancha, called an entremés in a 1617 edition, but a mojiganga in 1697.38 Four synopses of Calderón de la Barca’s mojigangas will indicate the thematic variability of the subgenre along with commonly visible carnivalesque roots. Los sitios de recreación del rey (1663) is a mock-allegorical piece in which one actor after another appears on stage, dressed as a park, and sometimes literally singing the park’s praises.39 In this work, there is really little action to speak of, and certainly no burla or satire. Los gui­ sados (1664) is a mojiganga whose main action is framed by a tourney between dishes officiated by Bacchus, and that builds toward a stand-off between Menudo and Don Estofado, followed by an all-out battle between 37 Bergman, Art of Humour, p. 5. 38 Javier Huerta Calvo, Harm den Boer, and Fermín Sierra Martínez, eds., El teatro español a fines del siglo XVII: historia, cultura y teatro en la España de Carlos II, 2 vols. (Amsterdam, 1989), 2:554. 39 Calderón de la Barca, Teatro cómico breve, pp. 217–27. One actor dons a long beard and ivy to represent Aranjuez. Another uses a hobby horse to portray the Casa del Campo. The hunting grounds of El Pardo are represented by an actor wearing a boar’s head and carrying a portable gun mount. Some costumes are straightforward, as in the case of an actor wearing the insignia of La Torre de la Parada, while others involve wordplay, as when La Zarzuela is represented by an actor carrying a stew pot in reference to “zarzuela” as a type of dish.



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foodstuffs. Menudo’s attire, made of blood sausage and trotters, is undeniably carnivalesque. At the end, despite threats and insults hurled from either side, any possibility of death, let alone social satire, evaporates when Bacchus calls for peace and demands that “Que pues estamos / en forma de mojiganga / se fenezca cantando,” a worthy motto for the subgenre as a whole.40 La muerte (1673), also known as Las visiones de la muerte, is extremely metatheatrical. Its characters are mojiganga actors in costume who have just finished a mojiganga and are getting ready to travel to the next peformance.41 As an unintentional burla, one by one, “Demonio,” “Ángel,” “Alma y Cuerpo,” etc., appear in front of a drunken traveler. Upon seeing these “visions,” he refers to his wineskin as “La almohada sobre que yo estoy durmiendo todavía, pues estoy viendo que la vida es sueño,” a Calderonian reference that adds yet another layer of metatheatricality.42 Finally, El pésame de la viuda (1670) is grotesquely carnivalesque in the Bakhtininan sense as it presents a “contradictory and double-faced fullness of life” for comedic effect.43 In the piece, a “viuda alegre” stock figure is goaded by her comically unscrupulous friends to seek pleasure, whether through sex or chocolate, while she mourns the death of her husband. As evidence of how generic distinctions are easily blurred, El pésame de la viuda could be designated as an entremés were it not for the characters ironically repeating the refrain of “El diablo pensara de un pésame hacer una mojiganga.”44 The Jácara The jácara began as a purely sung genre called romance de germanía, a term meaning “ballad in criminal jargon.” Evidence taken from printed solo performances in both teatro breve anthologies and larger works throughout the 17th century suggests that the ballad was first brought to the stage by popular demand, and was mostly sung by female actors in the company. Demand was steady for these solo performances, while the same playwrights who wrote increasingly complex entremeses simultaneously developed a fully theatrical jácara subgenre with multiple actors, dialogue,

40 Calderón de la Barca, Teatro cómico breve, p. 328. 41  Ibid., pp. 351–65. 42 Ibid., p. 359. 43 Ibid., pp. 287–303; Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, p. 62. 44 Calderón de la Barca, Teatro cómico breve, pp. 290–91, 293–94, 297, 299–300.

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and movement about the stage. Quiñones de Benavente’s Jocoseria (1645) lists all of its pieces as jácaras without distinction, while other anthologies, such as Tardes apacibles (1663) and Verdores del Parnaso (1668), list Las flores y el zurdillo (by Francisco Avellaneda) and La pulga y la chispa (by Juan Bautista Diamante) respectively as jácaras entremesadas, suggesting an increased generic awareness among editors.45 Purely sung jácaras of the most traditional sort tell the tales of pimps, prostitutes, thieves, and brawlers who populate the underworld of Spain’s major urban centers. These ballads also tend to contain a high concentration of wordplay laced with irony and criminal jargon, as in the beginning of Quiñones de Benavente’s Jácara de doña Isabel, la ladrona que azotaron y cortaron las orejas en Madrid (1645), sung solely by the actor Francisca Paula. Included here is a substantial quotation so that the reader may get a feel for the jácara’s distinctive lexical register: En ese mar de la corte, Donde todo el mundo campa, Toda engañisa se entrucha Y toda moneda pasa; Donde sin ser conocidos Tantos jayanes del hampa Tiran gajes, censos cobran De las izas y las marcas.46

A more theatrical jácara may start with singing that is quickly interrupted by other actors onstage. This occurs in Calderón’s Jácara del Mellado (1668) in which a “Músico” only manages to recite four lines from a ballad before the jaque Mellado himself intervenes, along with his daifa La Chaves who bawls as her lover-pimp is led to prison before he is to be hanged.47 The two criminal characters quickly take over the action of the piece, forming a double-act that spouts melodramatic gallows-humor jokes. An alguacil finally interrupts their performance to retrieve the manacled Mellado, and the Músico is able to end this theatrical jacára with 20 lines of uninterrupted singing. Similar to the entremés and mojiganga, these particular jácaras can employ metatheater, as in Quiñones de Benavente’s Jácara que se cantó en la compañía de Ortegón, which begins with the stage directions that refer to the mosqueteros (groundlings) who demand the subgenre by 45 Tardes apacibles (Madrid, 1663), fols. 16r–19r; Verdores del Parnaso (Madrid, 1668), pp. 11–16. 46 Quiñones de Benavente, Jocoseria, pp. 575–76. 47 Calderón de la Barca, Teatro cómico breve, pp. 331–38.



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name.48 The beginning of the piece is dominated by a discussion among Rufina, Francisca, and Leonor about whether they should meet the raucous audience’s demands. When Leonor finally acquiesces, and launches into a ballad about the gangster Mallurde, Francisca interrupts to belittle the jaque, and Rufina rushes to his defense. This quarrel, a staple of jácara narrations, turns extremely self-referential when the actor Osorio, dressed as a valiente (“brawler”), fends for himself in the guise of Mallurde, threatening to smash his fist (like a “batán,” or fulling hammer) into Francisca’s face.49 As is the rule in all teatro breve, nobody gets seriously hurt; and in this jácara, peace is made between adversaries, an occasion never guaranteed in the strictly sung ballad form. In Francisco Avellaneda’s Jácara entremesada de las Flores y el Zurdillo (1663), the title characters—a pimp and prostitute—along with another gangster (El Narro), bicker and chat before listening to a number of criminal sentences read out by a “vejete.”50 El Zurdillo and Narro are listed among them, and La Flores ends the piece by singing a darkly humorous farewell ballad to all the convicts. In this particular jácara there is no threat of violence beyond the initial bragga­ docio of the jaques and the painful punishments listed by La Flores at the end. Though not physically manifest, the criminal violence inherent in the jácara sets it apart from other teatro breve subgenres. At the same time, its illicit and raucous reputation was shared by nonviolent dances and satires, and thus was also listed in theatrical prohibitions in the middle of the 17th century.51 The Baile Since several forms of teatro breve feature dance routines, the generic classification of the baile subgenre mainly depends upon the word baile in the title of the piece itself. In modern times it has also been called baile dramático to distinguish it from non-scripted dance forms that would similarly be performed between acts of a comedia. As with most teatro breve, the majority of extant bailes are found in printed anthologies. Information on actual movement about the stage can vary, as when

48 Quiñones de Benavente, Jocoseria, p. 685. 49 Quiñones de Benavente, Jocoseria, pp. 691–92. 50 Tardes apacibles (Madrid, 1663), fols. 16r–19r. 51   Emilio Cotarelo y Mori, Bibliografía de las controversias sobre la licitud del teatro en España (Madrid, 1904), p. 165.

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El gusto loco by Francisco Monteser (1668) contains very specific instructions with calls for “bandas,” “bajando,” “cruzados,” “puestos,” “bueltas,” “bueltas cruzadas de cuatro personas,” “cruzado y corro,” “vuelta cada uno con la suya,” “vueltas en sus puestos,” etc.52 On the other hand, a baile like Moreto’s Baile entremesado de los oficios (1663) contains no instructions related to dance, but does indicate that the characters fight on stage, making the piece similar to a jácara entremesada with baile in the title.53 Playwrights can acknowledge a baile’s integral musical component, but generally do so thoroughly by including a “músico” character, equipping actors with an instrument, or in a more simple manner by indicating whether they are “cantando” or “representando” their lines. Due to the extreme variability, in number or detail, of stage directions, a piece with only baile in the title as a generic marker can be quite similar to a piece listed as baile entremesado or entremés cantado. Cervantes’s Entremés del rufián viudo llamado Trampagos (1615), with no mention of baile in the title, features two “músicos” who, at the piece’s conclusion, sing and play a gallarda while the famous jaque Escarramán performs a dance named after himself.54 Calderón’s Mojiganga de la muerte (cited above) has no explicit stage directions for dancing, but ends with singing gallegos and gitanos, “instrumentos de mojiganga,” and a call for “bulla” that implies noisy chaos on stage, a sort of anti-baile or parody of the baile subgenre.55 Along with singing and dancing, bailes often entertain through costumes and wordplay based on their title. Like related teatro breve subgenres, 17th-century bailes can vary widely in their themes and can also be quite elaborate. The amount of satire generally depends on the theme, with fashions and professions being popular targets. Examples taken from one collection, Ociosidad entretenida (1668), demonstrate this variety. Francisco de Busto’s Baile del juego de trucos features a “gracioso cantando con un taco [billiard cue]” who leads four galanes and four damas in a dance as they trade quips about setting up and playing a game of billiards.56 Francisco de Avellaneda’s Baile de la batalla is a mock battle with bellicose wordplay, and one imagines that the indicated dance steps are made in imitation of attacks and retreats on the battlefield.57

52 Ociosidad entretenida (Madrid, 1668), fols. 68v–71v. 53 Tardes apacibles, pp. 78–81. 54 Cervantes, Entremeses, p. 140. 55 Calderón de la Barca, Teatro cómico breve, p. 363. 56 Ociosidad entretenida, fols. 4r–6v. 57 Ibid., fols. 15r–16v.



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This piece contains notable metatheater in the form of an offstage voice that tells the dancers to hurry up and finish or else the “patio,” i.e., the groundlings, “dirá que es muy malo.” Monteser’s Baile de los esdrújulos contains a slight narrative frame as one of the characters, Junípero, is facing execution, but the title’s conceit quickly takes over as actors seize every chance to use specially accented words. Even the characters’ names, Junípero, Mónica, Hipólita, and Íñigo, partake in the main joke.58 Don Pedro Francisco de Lanini’s Baile del hilo de Flandes features one “francés” (a peddler), three damas, and three galanes who wish to buy from him all manner of imported goods, whether French fans or Italian stockings.59 In Avellaneda’s Baile del tabaco, a “juez de las chanzas” performs a sort of verbal customs inspection of the other actors’ joking abilities before the titular dance can begin, creating a meta-joke about the subgenre’s constant mixing of choreography and wordplay. Along with stage directions for dance moves, the music in this piece is explicitly named a seguidilla, which—the Diccionario de Autoridades explains—“úsase frecuentemente en lo jocoso y satírico.”60 The Loa The word loa itself means praise, and the term retains the implication of flattery in the subgenre’s function as a captatio benevolentiae performed before the start of a longer theatrical piece. The word also has a double meaning, as the “praise” can also be directed toward any other possible subject that becomes the topic of a mock encomium in monologue form. A loa can function as a prologue, but most extant loas found in anthologies appear to contain subject matter independent of any specific comedia or auto sacramental. Loas began as simple monologues, but during the 17th century, the quest for novelty stretched the definition of the term. The title loa entremesada is often used, but as with jácaras, mojigangas, and even bailes, a piece with just loa in the title—with no qualifier— can still closely resemble an entremés without the burla. Luis Quiñones de Benavente’s Loa con que entró en la corte Bernardo de Prado (1668) can hardly be called a monologue, as the piece features an entire acting company onstage, gossiping about their profession and worrying about 58 Ibid., fols. 83r–86v. 59 Ibid., fols. 34r–36r. 60 Ibid., fols. 54v–56r.

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the groundlings poised to whistle their displeasure.61 Calderón’s loa for El golfo de las sirenas (1656) stars the famous comic actor Juan Rana, and has only a tenuous thematic link to the longer piece. Nevertheless, for a loa it is unusually integrated, as Juan Rana appears in both long and short pieces, performing the same role.62 Loas can be filled with joking, wordplay, and satire, but they are also exceptional as the only teatro breve subgenre that can incorporate serious elements of the auto sacramental. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s Loa sacramental for her Auto del divino Narciso (1690) is a fully realized allegorical piece with singing, dancing, and figures representing the contrast between forceful and peaceful evangelization in the New World.63 Although each example cited above contains elements of praise, the last two cited feature captive courtly audiences, and the need for captatio benevolentiae would seem superfluous. Thus the meaning of loa is reduced to “a short piece performed before the main one,” this being the only definition that can be consistently applied to the subgenre as a whole. Conclusion Emilio Cotarelo y Mori, writing more than 50 years before Asensio’s seminal Itinerario del entremés, did much to vindicate the genre, and his observations are still extremely valuable a century later. Based on evidence from teatro breve pieces themselves, he saw that in the beginning of the 17th century an overall theatrical spectacle went from two hours to two-anda-half hours of total performance.64 If we consider that a two-hour come­ dia generally contains between 2,500 and 3,000 lines, the extra half hour observed by Cotarelo would correspond to between 625 and 750 of lines of teatro breve text. This number is roughly equivalent to the combined lines of one loa, one baile, and one entremés, a count that leaves room for more pieces, depending on the amount of singing and dancing in each. If the main theater piece were an auto sacramental, the teatro breve would contribute even more lines to the spectacle as a whole. In short, the exclusion of teatro breve in the study of mid- to late 17th-century Spanish theater 61  Ibid., fols. 123r–27r. 62 Bergman, The Art of Humour, p. 98. 63 Gerardo Luzuriaga Sánchez, ed., Los clásicos del teatro hispanoamericano (Mexico City, 1975), pp. 155–66. 64 Emilio Cotarelo y Mori, Colección de entremeses, loas, bailes, jácaras y mojigangas: desde fines del siglo XVI a mediados del XVIII, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1911), 1:iii.



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would effectively neglect between 20 to 30 percent of dramatic literature in terms of performance. That these works were extensively anthologized is proof enough of their popularity and of the impression that they made on the public’s consciousness. Furthermore, characters in comedias themselves also speak of teatro breve and its playwrights as worthy of mention alongside examples of the longer genre. The gracioso de comedia Motín, demonstrating the Everyman aspect of his stock character, explains a typical scene at the local corral in Ruiz de Alarcón’s La culpa busca la pena: [. . .] porque pasando un amigo por allí, me convidó con lugar en la comedia, donde dos horas y media de pasatiempo me dio; [. . .] En esto salió a cantar la música de Vallejo, y luego, cada trebejo encajado en su lugar, la comedia se empezó, [. . .] La comedia felizmente aplaudida, al puerto llega; que era de Lope de Vega, y el baile de Benavente.65

The gracioso’s remarks remind us that it is impossible to understand fully the theater-going experience in Baroque Spain without considering the nearly constant presence of teatro breve alongside and intertwined with comedias, autos sacramentales, and palace performances.

65 Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, Comedias (Madrid, 1856), p. 202.

PART  three

PLACES

On Speed and Restlessness: Calderón’s Urban Kaleidoscope Enrique García Santo-Tomás I know well that many only care for antiquity, which they esteem so highly that they would like to locate it in heaven and condemn all those who are not like them and are not of their opinion. Others, since ages differ from one another and today the same things are no longer used as twenty years ago, believe that modern comedies should not be like those of sixteen hundred years ago or more, our lives not being like theirs. They say that in Greece or Rome people used another language, another way of life, other customs, other laws, and—which matters more—a religion entirely contrary to our Catholic Christianity. —Pierre de Larivey (1611)

Four hundred years after the publication of Lope de Vega’s groundbreaking Arte nuevo de hacer comedias (1609), scholars working on early modern Spanish literature are still discovering new and exciting plays that yield fascinating clues on the craft of writing and staging theater as well as on the contexts that witnessed and inspired its creation. Even though the national canon is opening up to new texts and voices, the field of comedia studies still suffers from a saturation of analyses on a very small number of authors and texts that very often eclipse a fascinating production that remains in an unfortunate state of oblivion. A cursory survey of the MLA Bibliography database shows how certain canonical texts like Lope de Vega’s Fuenteovejuna (The Sheep Well) and El caballero de Olmedo (The Knight of Olmedo), Calderón de la Barca’s La vida es sueño (Life is a Dream), El alcalde de Zalamea (The Mayor of Zalamea), and La dama duende (The Phantom Lady), and Tirso de Molina’s El burlador de Sevilla (The Trickster of Seville) overshadow to a great degree other pieces by these authors as well as works by other playwrights. In Tirso de Molina’s case, some of his best urban plays, like Los balcones de Madrid (The Balconies of Madrid) and En Madrid y en una casa (In a House in Madrid) have received very little attention. In other cases, the appeal of dramatic archetypes like the lindo or the serrana has somehow veiled the versatility of playwrights like Agustín Moreto (best known for El lindo Don Diego) and Luis Vélez de Guevara (author of the popular La serrana de la Vera). One of the greatest hermeneutic challenges of this new century is precisely the need to find a more appropriate balance between canonical and non-canonical texts—

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and, to that end, no better way to reach it than paying more attention to all the little-known gems of our national tradition. As some studies have taught us in recent times, the more a text is discussed—even if it is in a negative fashion—the more interest it triggers.1 As the author of a kaleidoscopic legacy, Pedro Calderón de la Barca has suffered from this tendency like very few comediantes have: it has only been in recent years that some of his lesser-known plays have started to be edited, translated, and staged successfully. The process of opening up the canon of his secular theater has also demanded a renewed attention to the context in which his works originated.2 With its unparalleled demographic growth in the last three decades of the 16th century, as David Ringrose and others have demonstrated,3 Madrid not only became the theater capital of Continental Europe, but also the scenario of a pivotal kind of drama, that of the comedia urbana.4 Calderón’s cloak-and-sword plays (comedias de capa y espada) demonstrate, in fact, that the urban milieu was paramount to the development of the genre as a whole in early modern Spain. The city provided multiple spaces for representing theater—private houses, patios, gardens, parks, and squares being the most common ones—while relentlessly inspiring playwrights in their depiction of the ever-changing present. Calderón’s dramatic production was heavily determined by the social conditions of Philip IV ’s Madrid (1621–65), in which power relations established the dynamics of an extremely volatile cultural field. During his early years as a playwright, a time in which several of his best urban plays were written, some of the most notorious

1 See, for example, my discussion of Lope de Vega’s critical fortunes in La creación del ‘Fénix’: recepción crítica y formación canónica del teatro de Lope de Vega (Madrid, 2000); and Jesús Pérez-Magallón, Calderón: ícono cultural e identitario del conservadurismo político (Madrid, 2010). 2 My analysis owes a great debt to Robert Ter Horst, Calderón: The Secular Plays (Lexington, 1982); Antonio Regalado, Calderón: los orígenes de la modernidad en la España del Siglo de Oro (Madrid, 1995); and most importantly, to Don Cruickshank’s Don Pedro Calderón (Cambridge, 2009). 3 See David Ringrose, Madrid and the Spanish Economy 1560–1850 (Berkeley, 1983); Alfredo Alvar Ezquerra, El nacimiento de una capital europea: Madrid entre 1561 y 1606 (Madrid, 1989). 4 I offer a thorough overview in my Espacio urbano y creación literaria en el Madrid de Felipe IV (Madrid / Frankfurt / Pamplona, 2004), pp. 19–72. A detailed account of Madrid’s role in early modern Spanish theater can be found in William Blue, Spanish Comedies and Historical Contexts in the 1620’s (University Park, Pennsylvania, 1996), pp. 85–135. See also Ivan Cañadas, Public Theater in Golden Age Madrid and Tudor-Stuart London: Class, Gender, and Festive Community (Aldershot, 2005); and Jodi Campbell, Monarchy, Political Culture and Drama in Seventeenth-century Madrid: Theater of Negotiation (Aldershot, 2006).



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episodes in the social chronicle of the court were defined by permanent rivalries among well-known ingenios: Francisco de Quevedo’s visceral dislike for Luis de Góngora, Tirso de Molina’s antipathy for Antonio Hurtado de Mendoza, and Lope de Vega’s constant puns about Ruiz de Alarcón’s deformed appearance exemplified the inner mechanisms of the literary field in the 1620s and ’30s. This cartography of violence and displacements was also the Madrid of Calderón’s upbringing, and would become the grid of his life: a crucible of literary ambitions, economic forces, and social interests. As Antonio Regalado has noted,5 to conceptualize the process of urbanization in Calderón’s work is as necessary a task as it is a fascinating one—indeed, numerous pieces of the 1620s and ’30s subscribe to this new perception of the city. In this critical overview that departs from the Baroque motif of the ‘dangers of Madrid’ (los peligros de Madrid), I would like to touch upon the emotional temperature of those coaches, fountains, balconies, and street corners that are all captured by the dramatic lens of Calderón’s urban theater.6 I will begin with a look at the moments in his plays that are most characteristic of Philip IV ’s Madrid, returning to certain topoi that have been often overlooked: the notion of territory, the idea of nostalgia for one’s origins, the sense of spaciousness, the spectacle of crowds either from afar or from within, the physical and/or emotional saturation of senses, the experience of perspective, and the individual feelings of time and speed. I will then explore the ‘experience of Madrid’ from the vertigo of its changes and the blind spots of its urban design as indicative of this relentless transition from medieval hamlet (walled, vertical, and organized around an agora) to modern city (horizontal, expansive, and yet more unequal). Following Jonathan Raban’s fruitful coinage of the “soft city,”7 I will thus read these urban plays from a threefold perspective:

5 Regalado, Calderón, vol. 2, p. 676. 6  See, for example, Miguel Herrero-García, El Madrid de Calderón: textos y comentarios (Madrid, 1926); and, by the same author, Madrid en el teatro (Madrid, 1963); and additionally, Juan Luis Suárez, “Piratas de agua dulce: La aventura urbana en las comedias de Calderón,” Laurel 4 (2001): 5–33. See also Edad de Oro 17 (1998) (monograph on Madrid and early modern literature), in particular the study of Quevedo by Pablo Jauralde on pp. 59–95. An interesting selection of Calderón’s entremeses that take place in Madrid can be found in Ángel Berenguer, ed., Madrid en el teatro, Vol. 1: Siglos de Oro (Madrid, 1994), pp. 83–116. 7 Raban defines the concept in opposition to the ‘hard city’: “The city as we imagine it, the soft city of illusion, myth, aspiration, nightmare, is as real, maybe more real, than the hard city one can locate on maps, in statistics, in monographs on urban sociology and demography and architecture”; see Jonathan Raban, Soft City (London, 1974), p. 2.

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as an homage to a complex, dynamic city, very distant from that sterile cliché of the decorado barroco de poder, or Baroque display of power; as a nuanced and informed personal expression of Calderón’s own experience; and as an exploration of material culture through the aesthetic use of clothing, food, and money. The city, I argue, is a continuous source of ideas as much as it is the object of desire—that ‘beast to be conquered’ through word, music, and image that, in the end, always remains elusive. I. A Sense of Space/A Space of the Senses Probably born in the home of his grandparents on Corredera de San Pablo, Calderón was baptized in the parish of San Martín, and grew up on the Calle de las Fuentes, which runs from the Plaza de Herradores down to the Calle del Arenal, where it enters the Plaza Isabel II—his family’s house was at the bottom end. He was schooled in the parish of San Ginés, and later moved to the Calle de Platerías at a time when Madrid was attracting the very best ingenios of the Spanish Golden Age.8 Lope de Vega, Vélez de Guevara, Ruiz de Alarcón, Suárez de Figueroa, and Salas Barbadillo were some of the first to establish themselves there, followed later by Mira de Amescua (1616), Góngora and Villamediana (1617), Quevedo (1618), Guillén de Castro (1619), and Tirso and Esquilache (1621). Calderón enjoyed many distinguished neighbors, including Lope, who immortalized the garden of his house in the Calle Francos (today Calle Cervantes);9 Góngora, who, as is recorded, had lived on Calle del Niño until 1619, before Quevedo arrived (and where today this street preserves his name); an elderly Cervantes who lived in Cantarranas (today Calle Lope de Vega), Salas Barbadillo on Calle Toledo, Ruiz de Alarcón on Calle de las Urosas, Francisco Santos on Calle del Olivar, Paravicino in the city’s Trinitarian Monastery, and My approach is also informed by two important works on geography: Michel Foucault, “Questions on Geography,” in C. Gordon, ed., Power / Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977 (New York, 1980), pp. 63–77; and David Harvey, “On the History and Present Condition of Geography: an Historical Materialist Manifesto,” Professional Geographer 36 (1984): 1–11. 8 On the place and circumstances of Calderón’s birth, see Cruickshank, Don Pedro Calderón, pp. 27–28. On the location of some of the major writers of the time, see Leonardo Romero Tobar, Madrid: barrio de los literatos, fascículo coleccionable 62 (Barcelona, 1979); and José Fradejas Lebrero, “El Madrid de Calderón,” Cuadernos del Sur: Suplemento Cultural del Diario de Córdoba 14.628 (30 March 2000): 24–25. 9 On Calle de Fúcar (the phonetic Spanish spelling of Függer, family name of the German bankers connected to the Castilian Hacienda in the 16th century) Lope rented a house in 1607 where he lived with Micaela de Luján and their two children.



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Tirso de Molina in the Mercedarian monastery near the Rastro flea market and the Duke of Alba’s palace. Most of these streets were located near (or at) the core of the artistic and bohemian quarters surrounding the two major playhouses, Corral del Príncipe and Corral de la Cruz, in which these playwrights spent many afternoons drinking, chatting and watching comedias. Madrid thus became a cultural Mecca, one that in the following years would also include a new cast of artists like Diego Velázquez, as well as famous engineers and stage designers like the Roman Giulio Cesare Fontana (1622) and the Florentines Cosimo Lotti, Pietro Gandolfi (1626) and Baccio del Bianco (1651). This influx of residents often caused enormous friction between political figures and the talents they sometimes sponsored and protected.10 The result of these clashes has produced literary testimonies of all kinds, even by well-established artists like Quevedo, who spent some time in jail; Lope de Vega, who suffered banishment in his early years; Salas Barbadillo, who was prosecuted for some of his works and unruly behavior; and Tirso de Molina, who was expelled from Madrid in 1625 because of political hostilities. In any case, by 1640 Madrid had acquired a basic structural anatomy that would be preserved for decades; this cartography was seen as symbolically relevant, and the city was sometimes defined as a “mother figure” (based on a supposed etymology of the word) in works like Marcos de Obregón by Vicente Espinel and Don Gil de las calzas verdes (Don Gil of the Green Breeches) by Tirso de Molina, among others. But the demographic growth of a largely mobile population, the velocity of the changes, and the continuous readjustments that provoked a phenomenon of this magnitude also triggered conflicts and crises not unlike those found in our modern cities. The city is then presented as a symbol of the cosmos and of the labyrinth, as the scenario of covert pleasures through the portrayal of flirtatious

10 See, for example, Thomas Acker, The Baroque Vortex: Velázquez, Calderón, and Gracián under Philip IV (New York, 2000); Alexander Vergara, Rubens and his Spanish Patrons (Cambridge, 1999); and Jeremy Robbins, Love Poetry of the Literary Academies in the Reigns of Philip IV and Charles II (Rochester, 1997). Similar processes were defining other European courts, as William J. Bouwsma reminds us in The Waning of the Renaissance (1550–1640) (New Haven, 2001): “The eccentric painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo directed entertainments at Rudolph’s court, which was also frequented by the scientists Johann Kepler and Tycho Brahe, a German and a Dane respectively, as well as by the English astrologer John Dee, previously in the service of Queen Elizabeth [. . .] Court masques, in which Ben Jonson collaborated with the architect Inigo Jones, glorified James I (1603–25) as the center of the universe who transformed winter into spring, reduced wilderness to order, made the earth fruitful, and restored the golden age. Charles I (1625–49), whose queen was French, was also surrounded by courtiers with cultural interests developed abroad.” (14)

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lads and damsels (escondidos and tapadas).11 These new circumstances define the urban setting of a piece like La dama duende (The Phantom Lady), perhaps Calderón’s best urban comedia, and an ideal place to start my journey.12 The play’s crucial moments take place in the interior of a noble house in the center of Madrid, where the clandestine passion of Doña Angela for Don Manuel, a guest of her brother Don Juan (who is visiting the city for business purposes), is gradually complicated by a series of encounters in the secret quarters of the lady’s home. In this fascinating grid of chambers, the spatial dynamics of renovation and accumulation are heavily determined by new urban realities, where personal comfort (or the lack of it) becomes the play’s most distinctive feature in its display of symbolic capital and social distinction. At a time when the young playwrights are coming up with new ideas for clandestine spaces in the domestic realm (tunnels, balconies, hidden doors) as well as in the public sphere (churches, dark alleys, leafy corners in the city’s parks), Calderón exploits the visual effects of a glass panel (alacena) that secretly connects Doña Angela’s chamber with that of the man she is pursuing. Once we know the device that allows her into the room of her brother’s guest, the comic features of the play reside in the fear and confusion that Don Manuel and his servant Cosme experience when personal objects are missing or misplaced. The making of this “phantom lady” is therefore shaped by several layers that protect her from the vision of her guests, her suitors, her neighbors and, ultimately, the audience, who is given the privilege, nonetheless, of witnessing her most intimate thoughts. But honor, like glass, can easily be broken, as Don Luis reminds us (lines 365–68); and thus Doña Angela is first defined by Calderón as a “viudita de azahar” (blossoming young widow) (line 410), and then—perhaps as the new theater itself, which Calderón questioned so often—as one of the “mujeres tramoyeras” (shameless, conniving wenches) (line 517). In its complex architecture, theatrical space and human psyche become one.13

11  For a fascinating reassessment of this phenomenon, see, for example, Laura Bass and Amanda Wunder, “The Veiled Ladies of the Early Modern Spanish World: Seduction and Scandal in Seville, Madrid, and Lima,” Hispanic Review 77. 1 (2009): 97–144. 12 For a more in-depth account of the uses of space in this play, see Marc Vitse, “Sobre los espacios en La dama duende: el cuarto de don Manuel,” RILCE: revista de filología hispánica 12.2 (1996): 337–56; and Maria Martino Crocetti, “La dama duende: Spatial and Hymeneal Dialectics,” in Dawn Smith and Anita K. Stoll, eds., The Perception of Women in Spanish Theater of the Golden Age (Lewisburg, 1991), pp. 51–66. 13 Catherine Larson offers an interesting reading of the “diabolical” qualities of the female protagonist in “La dama duende and the Shifting Characterization of Calderón’s



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But La dama duende is just the tip of Calderón’s prolific imagination. His plays, like many of those by his contemporaries, explore the powerful effects of what could be seen as an early form of capitalism at a time in which a new economy is radically transforming and establishing new ideas of time and space in social life, redrawing the boundaries of decorum and facilitating new lifestyles. The destabilizing nature of financial speculation, which has been thoroughly analyzed in recent studies,14 was already pointed out in 1961 by Lewis Mumford, when he wrote in his influential The City in History that Capitalism, by its very nature, undermined local autonomy as well as local self-sufficiency, and it introduced an element of instability, indeed of active corrosion into existing cities. In its emphasis on speculation, not security, upon profit-making innovations, rather than on value-conserving traditions and continuities, capitalism tended to dismantle the whole structure of urban life and place it upon a new impersonal basis: money and profit.15

More recently, it has been the British social theorist David Harvey who has fully expounded on the concept of capital. What he terms the “urbanization of consciousness” not only assumes the logical accumulative processes of capital and its resulting relations, but also carries a political conscience that values this process as a social, cultural, and therefore aesthetic, phenomenon.16 It follows that the study of all urbanization is measured by an analysis of “processes of capital circulation; the shifting flows of labor power, commodities, and money capital; the spatial organization of production and the transformation of space relations; movements of information and geopolitical conflicts between territorially-based class alliances; and so on.”17 Consequently, this dynamic of accumulation of Diabolical Angel,” in Dawn Smith and Anita K. Stoll, eds, The Perception of Women in Spanish Theater of the Golden Age (Lewisburg, 1991), pp. 33–50. 14 See, for example, Elvira Vilches, New World Gold: Cultural Anxiety and Monetary Disorder in Early Modern Spain (Chicago, 2010); and more generally, Robert S. Duplessis, Transitions to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1997). 15 Lewis Mumford, The City in History (New York, 1961), p. 416. 16 I refer specifically to The Limits to Capital (London, 1999); in the preface of Consciousness and the Urban Experience: Studies in the History and Theory of Capitalist Urbanization (Baltimore, 1985), Harvey affirms that he is permitted to pass from the discipline of history to a historical geography by license of what he calls “the integration of the production of space and spatial configurations as an active element within the core of Marxian theorizing” (xii). Thus, Harvey explains that Marxism has traditionally marginalized the established dimensions of spatiality, and as such his conception of space assumes an urban analysis of commerce, immigration, the building of factories, of schools, etc., and the possible territories that emerge from this development. 17 David Harvey, Consciousness and the Urban Experience, p. xviii.

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wealth creates processes of conflict (crisis, revolution, etc.), confusion and struggle—processes that, in some way or other, were already explored by all the great playwrights of the time: Tirso de Molina’s satires on the Duke of Lerma’s pompous palace, Lope de Vega’s concerns about the proliferation of gaming-houses, and Salas Barbadillo’s critique of greedy women are only some of the literary topoi of these new urban territories. The need to posit this theoretical balance, appropriately conceding more emphasis to space and less to time, overcomes a traditional historicism that has tended to hide, according to geographer Edward Soja, “the social production of space and the restless formation and reformation of geographical landscapes.”18 In this early modern Villa, whose center is precisely the social experience that triggers the development of a soft city, the inhabitants of Madrid fashion their worldview to perceptions and sensations as stimuli that are transformed into bustling urban activity associated with space and agency. Thus, it is with good reason that Alvar Ezquerra has insisted on the “malleable” character of this young city, one that is organized “to the likings of the king”19 under the initial orchestration of its architect Juan Bautista de Toledo.20 II. Madrid, terra incognita Can these urban plays of honor and seduction truly register the dynamics of their own contexts? If the past, in its secular and religious pretexts, is evidently less marketable for these urban audiences, is the present, in its ruthless ephemerality, a limit to the freedom of the playwright? The representation of the ever-changing urban landscape is one of the several tours de force that Calderón confronts. While he tries to transmit a certain sense of eclecticism regarding the nature of the object represented, he is 18 Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (London, 1999), p. 11. 19 Alvar Ezquerra, El nacimiento de una capital europea, p. 191. This process cannot be understood in all of its magnitude if we do not consider the details of the anonymous yet famous work titled Sobre las obras de la Villa de Madrid, where the projects that would be completed in the following years are described: the construction of a cathedral, a seminary, a hospice, a jail in the village, a wheat granary, and the pavement of Calle Real Nueva and adjacent streets; Alvar comments on this text in Nacimiento, p. 193. 20 Juan Bautista de Toledo, along with his disciple Juan de Herrera, was Philip II’s main architect from 1563 to 1584; their major work, the Monastery of El Escorial, became the symbol of the Spain of the Counter-Reformation. In this regard, see the very complete account by Jesús Escobar, The Plaza Mayor and the Shaping of Baroque Madrid (Cambridge, 2004).



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consciously drawing the borders that allow him to demarcate a coherent view—a view that is transferable to writing. The use of metonym becomes one of the primary tools of urban depiction, as when alluding to the doors of exit and entry to the city, to the famously beautiful Paseo del Prado, to the horse-drawn coaches along the Prado de San Jerónimo, to the river Manzanares, and to the popular fountain in the Plaza de la Cebada, just to name a few. This new sense of space becomes pivotal not only as an act of physical occupation but also as a stage of countless possibilities that have come to define the genre: seduction, robbery, duels, voyeurism . . . . Thus, while language aims at establishing the limits of the urban—both physically and symbolically—free reign is given to what blossoms in its interior, in this “pastelón de Madrid” (the meat pie of Madrid) and this “puchero humano” (human boiling pot), according to the witty assertion by Vélez de Guevara.21 The most emblematic scenes of this urban experience are outdoor scenarios in public spaces, frequently located in three or four very distinctive sites. The crowds that gathered to gossip on the day’s news in La Victoria and the Puerta del Sol (the geometrical centers of Madrid) are alluded to in Mañana será otro día (Tomorrow is Another Day) as essential components of a humorous plot in which the servant Roque follows two stolen suitcases that are carried through some of the most popular meeting places for the young and the idle: Antón Martín, San Andrés, Leganitos, Calle Preciados, and Calle del Carmen, bustling streets and corners where fast food, jewelry, and cosmetics could be purchased. In Casa con dos puertas mala es de guardar (A House with Two Doors is Difficult to Guard) the gallant Félix falls in love in the Gardens of Aranjuez, where he casually went to hunt, given that “que esto es fácil / todo el tiempo que no asisten / al sitio sus majestades” (entrance is easy / if their majesties are not in residence) (lines 288–90).22 Likewise, a large number of love scenes take place in the Calle del Prado (which at the beginning of the 17th century was deemed the Carrera de San Jerónimo), and in the famous stretch between the Fountain of Neptune and the Calle de Alcalá known as the Prado de San Jerónimo. Thus, in No hay cosa como callar (Silence is Golden) the quarrel at the beginning of the play takes place in 21 See Enrique García Santo-Tomás, “Artes de la ciudad, ciudad de las artes: la invención de Madrid en El Diablo Cojuelo,” Revista canadiense de estudios hispánicos 25.1 (2000): 117–35. 22 See, for example, John E. Varey, “Casa con dos puertas: Towards a Definition of Calderón’s View of Comedy,” Modern Language Review 67 (1972): 83–94.

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the Calle del Prado, and in El astrólogo fingido (The Fake Astrologer) the lover Antonio goes to the four corners of Calle del Lobo and Calle del Prado, “mentidero / de varones ilustres” (lines 1706–07) (the Tattle Hall of Fame / of men of great and noble name) (lines 1811–12). Mañanas de abril y mayo (Mornings of April and May) has Don Pedro as its protagonist, a lad who flirts in the “Park,” that is, a garden that went down to the edge of the Alcázar towards the Casa del Campo in the poplar grove of El Prado Nuevo de Leganitos. The famous meadow of La Florida, on the bank of the River Manzanares, is the location of Fuego de Dios en el querer bien (God’s Fire and Damnation on the Good Lover), a great satire of the urban customs of the time seen from the perspective of the servant. All these promenades, well known by madrileños, become the ideal settings for young flâneurs to observe and be observed, as well as familiar references that can be visually and thematically incorporated into the plot as the background of love affairs and random encounters. The notion of the “pleasure garden” is by no means exclusive to Madrid (think, for instance, of the Ranelagh Gardens in 17th-century London), and the pleasures are universal: displaying an atmosphere between the public and the clandestine, eating, drinking, flirting, and even copulating are part of the uses of these popular spaces. But this pleasant, springtime place that serves as a setting for many of these plays also assumes a well-deserved critical aspect, in part because of a dazzling sense of fleetingness, which inevitably leads to feelings of loss and mourning. This overwhelming presence of an ever-changing world translates into a very pessimistic reading of the urban milieu, one in which the famous ‘dangers of Madrid’ are frequently mentioned. Calderón’s portrayal, I would argue, is one of dead-ends and unsettledness: thus, in Dar tiempo al tiempo (Time Cures All) the poor state of the streets, the puddles that obstruct the pathway of pedestrians, the famous ¡agua va! full of trash and urine, and the mob of thieves and murderers that operate at night are some of the elements of the everyday experience. Cosme, the servant of The Phantom Lady, falls into a ditch and ruins his master’s suitcases (lines 714–18); similarly, Fuego de Dios en el querer bien (God’s Fire and Damnation on the Good Lover) alludes to the poorly lit nocturnal streets where gangs of hoodlums roam to harass stray pedestrians. We therefore see a landscape that shapes citizens as much as it perverts them: many of the lovers in this urban cycle arrive in Madrid fleeing from some crime that they have just committed, a theme certainly shared by contemporary peers like Tirso de Molina in countless urban plays.



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Through the portrayal of these youths of questionable ethics, Madrid turns into a cosmopolitan metropolis where everyone may go unnoticed: “freed from his sense of dependence upon corporation and neighborhood,” Lewis Mumford has written, “the ‘emancipated individual’ was dissociated and delocalized: an atom of power, ruthlessly seeking whatever power can command.”23 This restless sense of anonymity of an ‘atom’ in the urban ocean is alluded to in The Fake Astrologer (El astrólogo fingido) when Calderón emphasizes that “¡Que cosas Madrid encierra, / que los mismos que tratamos / aquí no nos conozcamos, / cuanto la ignorancia yerra! / quien se le ve tan compuesto / a él con su capa y espada, / dirá, que no sabe nada, / y es un rayo después desto” (lines 1653–60) (what you won’t find here in Madrid! / To think the people we deal with / right here we still don’t know. It’s proof / that ignorance can make one goof ! / When one sees him so debonair / with cape and sword and all of this, / you would swear there was nothing there, / still after all the man’s a whiz) (lines 1549–56). At the beginning of act two in No hay burlas con el amor (No Trifling with Love), when Inés goes out to see don Juan, she comments that “para haberte hallado, / he dado a Madrid mil vueltas” (I’ve scoured Madrid to find you) (line 506); and in No hay cosa como callar (Silence is Golden) the servant Barzoque remarks that people no longer know their neighbors (act one, lines 222–25), while Diego complains that the most emblematic feature of the city is its constant change (act three, lines 217–21).24 Sacred spaces can also serve as hiding places: in No hay cosa como callar (Silence is Golden) the lover Juan defends a stranger named Diego from being assassinated by enemies, finding refuge later in the picturesque Church of San Jorge. Many of these plays, in fact, begin with lovers who either flee Madrid (César in El escondido y la tapada), who return to the city to hide their crimes (Carlos in Cada uno para sí, Juan in Guárdate del agua mansa, and Juan from Mañanas de abril y mayo) or who disguise their quarrels within the same city. In Cada uno para sí (Everyman for Himself  ), Carlos tells Félix of his flight from Madrid, 23 Mumford, The City, p. 366. 24 We find the same observation, for example, in Lope’s Las bizarrías de Belisa (Belisa’s Derring-do); see my critical introduction to the play (Cátedra, 2004). For an informative reading of No hay cosa como callar, see Robert Sloane, “Calderón’s No hay cosa como callar: Character, Symbol, and Comedic Context,” Modern Language Notes 99.2 (1984): 256–69; Barbara Mujica, “The Rapist and His Victim: Calderón’s No hay cosa como callar,” Hispania 62 (1979): 30–46; and Lilia Strout Dapaz, “El casamiento ‘forzado’ y el silencio ritual en No hay cosa como callar,” Hispanic Journal 3.1 (1981): 7–22.

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alluding to it as a vast ocean in which nobody knows anyone and criminals are free to walk unpunished (lines 327–40). This last reference also paints an image of excess that is satirized in other works of the time, like Vélez de Guevara’s aforementioned El diablo cojuelo (The Limping Devil), a Menippean satire that also targets a flavorful ingredient of the city’s grid: the pervasive use of the carriage, humorously called a ballenato (a whale), to refer to those creatures of the ‘urban sea’ whose bellies hide their owners from public view. Movement, in fact, plays a pivotal role in the depiction of this new cartography. The horse-drawn coach becomes a medium of transport and the stage of seduction and even sexual favors, while representing a symbol of economic and social capital as well.25 Since its legalization in a decree of January 4, 1611 (and Tirso de Molina’s El melancólico [The Melancholic], for instance, already registers its impact), the carriage appears repeatedly in numerous texts, embodying pomposity and artifice in a spectacular presentation of city streets: El escondido y la tapada (Hidden Lover, Cover Lady) opens with the gallant César and his aide Mosquito, who have camped out to sleep in the famous park of La Casa del Campo, where a carriage has overturned because of the poor driving skills of the “chauffeur” Otáñez. Lisarda and her attendant Beatriz, who had been traveling in the coach, suffer a concussion when ejected from its interior, which allows Mosquito a humorous remark: “Ya la cerrada ballena, / para escupir sus Jonases / por un costado revienta” (So the closed whale, / in order to spit out its Jonahs / explodes on one side) (act one, lines 316–18). The costs of this ‘new’ city are very high, the topography is irregular, and the terrain (which isn’t always even) proves that traffic and geometry don’t always go hand in hand: in No hay cosa como callar (Silence is Golden) the protagonist’s carriage suffers a serious accident when driving into a ditch that had been opened to build a fountain, and its passengers bring the wounded Marcela inside to care for her because she has fallen unconscious (act two, lines 209–19). The outcomes, however, are different in each play. In El escondido y la tapada César rescues Lisarda from the overturned buggy, provoking her angry reaction. In No hay cosa como callar Marcela, the young girl with the concussion, doesn’t remember her identity upon awakening, leaving Diego wholly charmed by her mysterious beauty. In Guárdate del agua mansa (Beware of Still Waters), on the other hand, the use of the carriage

25 See Joaquín Álvarez Barrientos, “Literatura y legislación sobre coches en el Madrid del siglo XVIII,” Anales del Instituto de Estudios Madrileños 22 (1985): 201–24.



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turns out to be less dangerous: the young Eugenia complains of the urban bustle, asserting that the best way to see the city is, simply, from the comfort of one’s own coach (lines 809–14). This unique symbiosis was stressed several decades ago by French sociologist Henri Lefebvre when he indicated that even cars may fulfill the function of analogons, for they are at once extensions of the body and mobile homes, so to speak, fully equipped to receive these wandering bodies. Were it not for the eyes and the dominant form of space, words and dispersed fragments of discourse would be quite incapable of ensuring this ‘transfer’ of bodies.26

It comes as no surprise that this society came up with a new term for these women in cars—las encochadas, a frequent object of mockery and grotesque portraits by satirists of the time. Calderón’s view is therefore one of concern, given that physical and symbolic violence permeates everything. Such is the case, for instance, with the act of gambling, which had become the major pastime in Philip IV’s Spain, and a very common feature in these urban plays.27 One stretch of the city known for such dealings was the infamous Calle de Echegaray, formerly known as Calle del Lobo. Beginning with the famous words of Pedro Crespo to his son in El alcalde de Zalamea (The Mayor of Zalamea), Calderón treats the problem with great concern, portraying it as a plague that always leads to disastrous results. In this meeting of tricksters and gamblers, the dangers of the gaming houses persist in works like Cada uno para sí (Everyman for Himself ), where Carlos seduces a girl from Toledo and later wounds a man in a gaming house that he calls the escondite (hiding place) of Madrid (see also lines 327–40). In El astrólogo fingido (The Fake Astrologer), Antonio (lines 1800–11) ventures into a gaming house, spends his time chit-chatting with gamblers and onlookers, and ends the afternoon observing his favorite crowd in the theater, “donde / la más oculta cosa no se esconde” (lines 1806–07) (where it’s known that in effect / the darkest secret won’t be kept) (lines 1700–01). Defined by Harvey as

26 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford, 1991), pp. 98–99. 27 A very good assessment on the topic was offered by Ruth Lee Kennedy in her piece “The Madrid of 1617–1625: Certain Aspects of Social, Moral, and Educational Reform,” in Estudios hispánicos: homenaje a Archer M. Huntington (Wellesley, 1952), pp. 275–309. From a linguistic and literary perspective, see Jean-Pierre Étienvre, Márgenes literarios del juego: una poética del naipe, siglos XVI–XVII (London, 1990), pp. 56 n. 4, 136, 146, and 161 n. 48; and, more recently, my essay “Outside Bets: Disciplining Gamblers in Early Modern Spain,” Hispanic Review 77.1 (2009): 147–64.

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“a place of encounters,”28 the city becomes the stage of the unexpected and the mysterious, but also a universe of countless opportunities. From these ‘urban anxieties’ that privilege the experiential and emotional character of the city, the ability of the urban dweller to shape it in accordance to his or her needs is what interests Calderón the most. III. Urban Symptoms, Material Pleasures Despite some of its inevitable shortcomings, this Madrid in transition offers a brilliant spectacle, more specifically through the possibilities that are celebrated in leisure and in the city’s theatrical nature.29 For example, in many cases the spectator contemplates lovers drinking sorbets, lemonade or sour cherry refreshments, cinnamon drinks, and above all, the famous Oaxaca chocolate that was a favorite in Cuál es mayor perfección (Which is the Greatest Gift), or appeared as a treat served to placate Lisarda and Juan in El escondido y la tapada (Hidden Lover, Cover Lady). Speaking of this tendency to mix materials from different cultures, William J. Bouwsma has written that “the varied resources of Western culture presented themselves as a tempting feast from which, careless of the risks of indigestion, one could choose whatever looked appetizing.”30 Marks of distinction illuminate lovers’ assets, a preoccupation that is exhibited in almost all artistic representations of the period. In Casa con dos puertas mala es de guardar (A House with Two Doors is Difficult to Guard) Félix offers a detailed account of the physical attributes and unique features of the girl for whom he removes his hat: “ni bien de corte, ni bien / de aldea” (the dress she wore was neither court nor country, / but it was half and half: trimmed like a lady’s / but simply graceful like a village girl’s) (lines 370–71).31 The notion of style is yet more evident in El astrólogo fingido (The Fake Astrologer), where the lover-protagonist Juan is portrayed as a glamorous gallant: “llevaba un vestido airoso / sin guarnición ni bordado, / y con lo bien sazonado / no hizo falta lo costoso” (lines 5–8) (His dress 28 Harvey, Urbanization, p. 14. 29 See Margaret R. Greer, “A Tale of Three Cities: The Place of the Theatre in Early Modern Madrid, Paris and London,” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 77 (2000): 391–419. 30 Bouwsma, The Waning, p. 51. On the subject of tobacco and chocolate and their reception in early modern Spain, see Marcy Norton, Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World (Ithaca, 2008); and Fernando Rodríguez de la Flor and Germán Labrador Pérez, “Baroque Toxicology: Discourses on Smoke and the Polemics of Tobacco in 17th Century Spain,” South Atlantic Review 72.1 (2007): 112–42. 31  Calderón returns to the theme of clothing and fashion in this play (lines 1750–1825).



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was genteel, no ornamentation, / and if not expensive tastefully discreet) (lines 4–5). This celebration is not only visual, but also linguistic, as part of a “growing interest in ordinary experience, ordinary people, and the details of daily life [. . .] expressed in ordinary language.”32 Thus, in most of these plays, some fundamental dichotomies, like internal versus external anxiety, public versus private life, and darkness versus luminosity, all prove instrumental in commenting on matters such as the uneasiness caused by the crowded architectural space, the transition from space to place, the feeling of anonymity, new demands for linguistic communication, and the use of non-verbal languages. It is perhaps the play Guárdate del agua mansa (Beware of Still Waters) that incorporates the most interesting of these elements by celebrating the festivities in honor of Mariana of Austria’s wedding in 1649.33 The play introduces the paternal figure Alonso, an old colonial merchant who returns to his Spanish estate upon the death of his wife to educate his two daughters, who reside in an isolated convent. The aging man is determined to marry one of them to her cousin Toribio, a young redneck from the north with letters of nobility (ejecutoria) and with ample funds that will grant him rights to the estate of his brother. The comedy develops the theme of appearances from a somewhat fresh perspective, where the “still water,” or agua mansa, alludes to the deceiving behavior of this new breed of urban ladies, whose lifestyles and manners have become scandalous.34 Such is the case with the firstborn of Don Alonso, Clara, who successfully manipulates the other characters in the play. Clara’s role serves as a stark contrast to her younger sister, the difficult Eugenia, who at the end of the play seems to tone down her questionable behavior by marrying Toribio and moving to the mountains in Cantabria to cure her bad temper. The city of Madrid seduces its youth from the very beginning of the play (lines 118–23). Mari-Nuño, the maidservant, tells Don Alonso that Clara is obedient but Eugenia is difficult because “tiene a los libros humanos / inclinación, hace versos . . .” (she just reads trash, not religious / books; she 32 Bouwsma, The Waning, p. 49. 33 See William Blue, “Art and History in Calderón’s Guárdate del agua mansa,” Revista de estudios hispánicos 20.3 (1986): 15–35; Christine Whitbourn, “Unity and Dichotomy: the Fundamental Dualism of Calderón’s Guárdate del agua mansa,” Bulletin of the Comediantes 41.1 (1989): 75–87; and Ted L. L. Bergman, The Art of Humour in the Teatro Breve and Comedias of Calderón de la Barca (Suffolk, 2003), pp. 142–50. 34 For more on this phenomenon, see my essay “Calderón y las aguas revueltas de Guárdate del agua mansa,” Arbor: revista general de investigación y cultura 699–700. 177 (2004): 637–46.

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even composes verses) (lines 173–76), one activity among many to be considered a feminine “vice” associated with the city. Félix, a bachelor who courts one of the girls, admits “que en Madrid, cosa es notoria / que en las damas, la memoria / vive a espaldas del olvido” (for in Madrid it is well known / that women’s memory is prone / to be drowned by forgetfulness) (lines 364–66), and Eugenia soon becomes a clear example of misbehaving (lines 877–912). The last words of don Alonso to Eugenia and Clara with respect to marriage not only symbolize a generational gap between the father and his daughters, but also a geographical fault—this Madrid with its new styles, as a new and unknown urban space for the old man, would remain symptomatic of these changes. This lack of understanding may also be found in Toribio, the cousin, “a bizarre sight” (line 965) dressed in black, who doesn’t understand the codes of the court and turns into a vicious character after falling in love with the reserved Eugenia. The themes of fashion, clothing, and the numerous contrasts between the country and the city are emphasized continuously in the jealous simpleton (lines 1078–80, for example), who, according to Eugenia, doesn’t have “the knack” (el filis) to be her husband. And what is this “knack” so valued by these ladies? It is nothing but this ‘urban glamour’ that remains unnamed because it is radically new and intangible.35 Thus, Toribio’s monologue proves pathetic in exposing his eagerness to urbanize himself (lines 1969– 85).36 The poor cousin ends up begging them to “buy” him filis so that he can assume the identity he does not possess. This, of course, is terribly modern, a feat in the portrayal of this elusive milieu. Calderón’s scope also extends to view the vain courtier (lindo), as when an arrogant Félix admits, on more than one occasion, that “me quiero a mí más que a ellas” (I love myself much more by far) (lines 372–77, 718–25). Calderón pushes the theme further in No hay burlas con el amor (No Trifling With Love), where the young Alonso’s primary concern consists of having or not having money (as stated at the end of act two). Faced with this, the theme of love as an ennobling power is embodied in Don 35 Still relatively understudied, the cultural value of clothing in early modern Spain is a topic of utmost importance in establishing notions of urban identity and behavior; Bouwsma, The Waning, reminds us how someone like Emperor Rudolph II (1576–1612), “who had spent much of his adolescence in Spain, continued to dress like a Spaniard, and liked to speak Spanish” (3). 36 In his seminal study The Country and the City (New York, 1973), p. 52, Raymond Williams commented on the same rural stereotypes, as seen in characters such as Blackacre, Hoyden, Mummerset, Tunbelly Clumsey, and Lumpkin who are just as ridiculous in their conduct in the city.



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Diego, who also courts one of the girls in a more “conventional” manner: “Cuando fue el saber sin tiempo. / Sepa una mujer hilar, / coser y echar un remiendo; / que no ha menester saber / gramática ni hacer versos” (For a woman / should know the way to spin, to sew, to darn, / but doesn’t need to know about stylistics, / nor how to write in verse) (act one, scene two). And, in a similar vein, Mañanas de abril y mayo (Mornings of April and May) delves into the new sexual mores, the so-called amor al uso that becomes the main theme in other pieces of the time. One such connoisseur of this carnal love is Hipólito, who pitifully believes that he has good fortune with women, but ends up ridiculed by his friend Luis. We see, then, how the new concentric structures of power stage continuous struggles and alliances that always point towards a symbolic center in which the acquisition of material and social capital transcends the aesthetic realm. Fundamentally emphasized, then, is a problematic relation with the court, stressing the concepts of center and periphery, and the privilege of belonging to the right social circles. That is to say, social capital often becomes a type of symbolic capital that should be acquired, preserved, and reproduced, as was expressed, perhaps like none other, by Francisco de Quevedo’s satirical poetry and grotesque narrations. The city of Madrid offers a real and metaphorical cartography that allows us to reflect on these cultural phenomena, the theater of Calderón being one of the most complete testimonies of this urban restlessness.37 Many of his best-known pieces reflect the growing preoccupation with maintaining personal appearances as much as with the absence of truth. At a time when churches had become sanctuaries of seduction, the prohibition of the tapadas by the Royal Decree of Philip IV in 1638 became a pivotal moment for the social mores of the time. And Calderón, of course, took notice: in the first scene of No hay cosa como callar (Silence is Golden) a reference is made to the masquerades that are celebrated in Madrid, much to the dislike of the French (act two, lines 70–90). Casa con dos puertas mala es de guardar (A House with Two Doors is Difficult to Guard) explores this theme through the curiosity triggered by those hidden or covered, be it in outdoor (as in this case) or indoor spaces (lines 1110–16).

37 See Alfredo Alvar Ezquerra, Estructuras socioeconómicas de Madrid y su entorno en la segunda mitad del siglo XVI (Madrid, 1988); and, by the same author, Demografía y sociedad en la España de los Austrias (Madrid, 1996), which offers a detailed study of Madrid beginning with an analysis of documents (acts of the parish, for example) referring to birth, mortality, and death; equally fascinating are the statistics on crime and safety gathered in the book.

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In El astrólogo fingido (The Fake Astrologer) the theme of the masquerade is associated with the need to find truth in a dangerously oscillating reality, as its character Diego indicates: “Morón, la buena mentira / está en parecer verdad” (lines 1471–72) (The true test that a lie is good / is that as truth it’s understood) (lines 1377–78). Antonio then affirms, “el mentir es gusto” (lying is pleasure) (line 1880). And in many cases the distraction of war serves as the most common alternative to the vices of the court, moving the dramatic conflict to the periphery of those territories socially and politically connected to Castile, like Flanders. Thus, the protagonist of El astrólogo fingido (The Fake Astrologer), Don Juan, decides to go to Flanders himself and die a hero (line 226) because he fears his love for María will not be reciprocated. Flanders, other than serving as an escape, proves to be the opposite of his expectations because “aquel / que está herido de un veneno / y otro veneno le cura” (he / who is hurt by a poison / is cured by another one) (lines 213–15). Thus, Calderón’s urban comedies become a permanent confrontation between the author and the new realities, an aesthetic negotiation with radically new lifestyles and ideas. The satire of certain customs, the contrast between laws of the nobility and the portrayal of servants, honor as seen from a comical perspective, the depiction of interiors and the city as labyrinth, the multiple plots that call wrongdoing a primary motive, and a lesson to be learned (given in the titles and in some of the works’ verses), all typify recurring themes in these plays. But weighing the many repetitive motifs in Calderón’s theater, as is the case with La dama duende (The Phantom Lady), his most successful play, we see that each text presents a unique message.38 Many plots depict a city of corrupt courtiers, charlatans, and thieves, all familiar to us through works like Quevedo’s humorous Buscón. Literary Madrid reads like a city of caricatures: of idle lads and dangerous rascals who live and die in these popular dramas, merciless scoundrels of the upwardly mobile class that long for the quick benefits of its new wealth, biting words on the effects of money and its pernicious nature, and allegories on greed and ambition. Certainly, numerous studies from all perspectives and eras exist that embody the representation of the city in literature and in visual arts. It is evident that the vision of Toledo in Renaissance poetry, the depiction of the River Tagus by Garcilaso, the Manzanares by Góngora, Lope, and

38 In Casa con dos puertas mala es de guardar Lisardo loves Marcela, who doesn’t want to completely reveal her identity while walking about the city.



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Quevedo, the Barcelona of Don Quixote, the Sevillian portrayal of the exemplary novel Rinconete y Cortadillo, the Rome of Francisco Delicado, the Naples portrayed by María de Zayas in La fuerza del amor, and the distant lands in Cervantes’s Persiles or in Calderón’s La vida es sueño (Life is a Dream) serve as loci for a coherent study of this urban stage of characters. But most interesting to me is just the opposite—instead, to consider how the existence of new buildings in the urban blueprint can incite commentary in some of these texts, how a church is converted into the stage of flirtation, or how a theater can be rewritten as a gallery of customs. These urban discourses also have a long literary tradition, like the River Manzanares, which serves as a basis for a wide array of fictions from the burlesque to the idyllic, from parody to exaggeration. Therefore, not only should we ask ourselves how they act as inspirations of aesthetic creation but also, and perhaps more interestingly, why these portraits are produced with such intensity during this period. I believe that the answer to this last question is embodied in the very thesis of this essay, one that refers to a certain “geographical anxiety” or restlessness of material and symbolic forces that the urban landscape imposes on its citizens. Essentially, it is for this reason that spatiality must always be seen as a social product, part of a second nature that integrates physical and psychological spaces into socialized and transformed ones. As a social product, urban space simultaneously mediates and is the result of these social relations. The structure of space and time in social life defines how social action and its relations are materially constructed into a problematic process fraught with contradictions and, at times, even open strife. The concrete spatialization—the actual human geography—transforms itself into a competitive space of struggles and thus achieves social production and reproduction. Therefore, I believe that the materialist interpretation of the history and geography of Madrid provides us with a useful optic through which to read the urbanite Calderón, allowing us to analyze more closely the relationship between the playwright and his milieu. From this premise I have examined the best his urban theater has to offer, so that it might allow us to uncover his Madrid and glimpse a city not too distant from our own.

The New World in Lope de Vega’s Columbus and St. Christopher: El nuevo mundo descubierto por Cristóbal Colón Maryrica Ortiz Lottman In act three of Lope de Vega’s El nuevo mundo descubierto por Cristóbal Colón (1614), King Ferdinand greets the mariner upon his triumphant return to Spain and elaborately compares him to his namesake, Saint Christopher. The iconography of this popular saint unites a number of motifs in the play. Like St. Christopher (whose name means “Bearer of Christ”), Columbus crosses a dangerous body of water to bring Christ to a new shore. St. Christopher traditionally carries a staff that is either a dead branch with its limbs severed or else a live tree, often a date palm bearing fruit. These opposing images and the legend of St. Christopher embody the Christian iconographical narrative of a dead tree made to blossom and bear fruit, a tradition that unites the Tree of Knowledge from the Garden of Eden with Christ’s death on the cross. In the mutiny scene at the beginning of act two, the sailors condemn Columbus and contrast him with the valiant Moses, but late in act three, during the triumphal baptismal scene at the royal court in Barcelona, King Ferdinand compares Columbus to St. Christopher. The identification of Columbus with this saint redeems him and links him to Moses through his staff, an attribute that appears in images of St. Christopher, Moses, and also of Columbus. St. Christopher is a patron saint of mariners, and like Moses he is famed for his victory over dangerous waters. Anthony J. Grubbs has documented St. Christopher’s immense and persistent popularity in medieval and early modern Spain, where his relics are still prized by cathedrals in Astorga, Toledo, Santiago de Compostela, and Valencia. In the last city the mystery play Lo misteri de Sant Christòfol (c. 1500) was popularly staged even in the 19th century.1 Indeed, St. Christopher’s popularity spread deep and wide across Europe, inspiring memorable iconography, and eventually migrated to the Americas. According 1 Anthony J. Grubbs, “Theatrical Representations of St. Christopher throughout the Crown of Aragon during the Middle Ages,” Catalan Review: International Journal of Catalan Culture 20.1 (2006): 273–89, at pp. 273, 276–78.

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to Jacobus de Voragine’s The Golden Legend (c. 1260), the cross plays a key part in the St. Christopher legend, for when a simple crucifix terrifies the Devil, the Canaanite giant Reprobus rejects the Evil One as too weak a master. A hermit then advises Reprobus to help travelers cross a treacherous river, and in this way he meets his greatest master, the Christ Child. As Reprobus carries the boy across the river, the Child grows so heavy that the giant feels he might as well be toting the weight of the whole world. Once they have reached the opposite bank, the Christ Child identifies himself and tells Christopher, the “Bearer of Christ,” that he has been carrying the weight of the whole world’s sins. Reprobus is converted to Christianity and his eventual Christ-like and gruesome martyrdom converts other pagans to the faith.2 In Christian iconography St. Christopher often holds a flowering staff, an attribute of St. Joseph and other saints, though St. Christopher is easily distinguished by the Christ Child he bears on his shoulder. The climax of El nuevo mundo relies on arboreal imagery. In this elaborate scene the Indians seize the large green cross that Columbus has planted on the New World’s shore and they throw it into the sea. But another cross immediately springs up in its place like a living plant (lines 2795–2801).3 This miracle converts the native onlookers and furnishes a climax for the play’s abundant images of cross, staff, and tree. According to Christian tradition, the Tree of Knowledge from the Garden of Eden underwent a number of transformations, providing a sturdy staff for Adam, a kind of magic wand for Moses, and—many centuries later—the wood of the True Cross; in turn, the True Cross was said to have borne fruit like a live tree.4 The play’s imagery of cross and tree incorporates St. Christopher’s staff as well. St. Christopher carries the Christ Child to the opposite riverbank; he then plants his staff, and the following day it miraculously blossoms, as recorded in The Golden Legend.5 José R. Ballesteros has made a convincing argument that the green cross that arises represents a botanical cure for syphilis. When the indigenous princess Tacuana addressed the 2 Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, vol. 2, trans. William Granger Ryan (Princeton, 1993), pp. 10–14. 3 Lope de Vega y Carpio, El nuevo mundo descubierto por Cristóbal Colón / The New World Discovered by Christopher Columbus, ed. and trans. Robert M. Shannon (New York, 2001). All citations to and translations of El nuevo mundo are from this edition. 4 Barbara Baert, A Heritage of Holy Wood: The Legend of the True Cross in Text and Image, trans. Lee Preedy (Leiden, 2004), pp. 289–349; Mirella Levi d’Ancona, The Garden of the Renaissance: Botanical Symbolism in Italian Painting (Florence, 1977), pp. 381–90. 5 Voragine, The Golden Legend, p. 12.



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miraculous green cross as “Palo santo,” at least some members of the audience would have understood her words as a reference to the guayaco or guayacán plant (guiacum sanctum), whose sap was widely used to cure syphilis. Reading Ballesteros’s interpretation of the play’s central symbol of the resurrected cross, we can better appreciate the multiple meanings inherent in early modern depictions of plants, especially botanical specimens brought from the New World.6 During Columbus’s triumphal audience with the Spanish monarchs in Barcelona, Lope’s King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella become godparents to the Indians and Ferdinand explicitly compares the future Admiral to St. Christopher. Lope’s heroic portrayal of Columbus includes abundant comparisons to colossal figures from the Bible and from the classical tradition. King Ferdinand compares Columbus with “los de la fama” (line 2859), referring to “the Nine of Fame,” a storied group of heroes that includes Alexander the Great.7 But Lope devotes more lines to the comparison of Columbus to St. Christopher than he does to the pairing of the mariner with any other heroic figure in the play. Ultimately, the Columbus figure created by Lope is nearly as saintly as his namesake. According to Francisco Ruiz Ramón’s comprehensive study of El nuevo mundo, Lope offers the audience various portraits of Columbus, then asks them to wonder whether the man is a “wise fool” or a visionary; but in the final analysis Columbus is a loco cuerdo (literally, a “sane lunatic”) who is visited by heavenly messengers.8 Certainly the personality of the loco cuerdo befits the Admiral’s saintliness.9 Columbus returns to Europe and is kept conveniently offstage during a major part of the play, as if to shield him from any unholy contamination during the scenes depicting the greed and lust of the Spanish soldiers. John Brotherton notes of Columbus: “He has brought the Cross to the New World, his mission is achieved. It is as if Lope wished to extricate the figure which he has constructed as the very Cristoferens or Bearer of Christ that

6 José R. Ballesteros, “Dales palo (santo) para que se curen: Lope encubre las bubas en El Nuevo Mundo descubierto por Cristóbal Colón,” in Actas del XVI Congreso de la Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas: Nuevos caminos del hispanismo (París, del 9 al 13 de julio de 2007), ed. Pierre Civil and Françoise Crémoux (Madrid, Spain, 2010), no pagination. 7 Robert M. Shannon, ed. and trans. Lope de Vega, El nuevo mundo, p. 293 note 58. 8 Francisco Ruiz Ramón, América en el teatro clásico español: estudio y textos (Pamplona, 1993), pp. 28–33. 9 Victor Dixon, “Lope de Vega and America: The New World and Arauco Tamed,” Renaissance Studies 6.3–4 (1993): 249–69, at p. 255; Jack Weiner, “La guerra y la paz espirituales en tres comedias de Lope de Vega,” Revista de estudios hispánicos 17 (1983): 65–79, at p. 67.

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Columbus aspired to be, before he can be contaminated by the antics of ordinary mortals.”10 Lope’s King Ferdinand expressly compares Columbus to St. Christopher. In The Golden Legend, Christopher safely carries pilgrims across a river that is allegorically imagined as the river of life. Historically, European mariners had turned to Christopher as a patron who could also transport them over an immense and churning ocean. King Ferdinand praises the renown Columbus has brought to his last name and notes that Columbus’s patron saint is St. Christopher, who carried pilgrims and the Christ Child over water just as Columbus carried God’s word and the sailors over the Atlantic: Vos, Cristóbal, como el santo, de estos mares ya vecinos, hoy pasáis los peregrinos en hombros que pueden tanto. Y no es como quiera el vuelo que con ellos podéis dar, pues pasándolos el mar, les dais el puerto del cielo. (lines 2871–78) (You, Christopher, like the saint whose name you bear, have borne these pilgrim souls across the seas on your mighty shoulders. And it is no ordinary journey that you have made with them across the sea because you have opened the doors of heaven to them.) (279)

In The Golden Legend, Christopher was a giant who ferried travelers and pilgrims across a dangerous body of water at night. So too Christopher Columbus has carried the word of Christ across unknown seas to the New World; and as Ferdinand notes above (lines 2873–78), he has also transported six Indians back to the Christian royal court in Barcelona. Lope’s sources, the chronicles of Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo and Francisco López de Gómara, record that these six Indians became the godchildren of Ferdinand and Isabella, an event dramatized in the baptismal scene.11 St. Christopher’s original name was Reprobus, meaning “outcast” or “outsider,” and similarly, as a foreigner in Spain, Lope’s Columbus suffers poverty, pleads for help, and is considered a mad fool. Like the St. Christopher of legend and like the historic Columbus, Lope’s hero is praised as a giant. Indeed, the historical Christopher Columbus was said to be a large man. 10 John Brotherton, “Lope de Vega’s El Nuevo Mundo descubierto por Cristóbal Colón: Convention and Ideology,” Bulletin of the Comediantes 46.1 (1994): 33–47, at p. 40. 11   Shannon, ed. and trans. Lope de Vega, El nuevo mundo, p. 294 note 63.



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The chronicler Oviedo describes Columbus as “Hombre de honestos parientes e vida, de buena estatura e aspecto, más alto que mediano, e de recios miembros”12 (A man of an honorable life and family, of a good appearance and stature, taller than average, and of strong limbs).13 This report echoes those of Christopher Columbus’s son Ferdinand, who records that his father was “a well-built man of more than medium stature,” and the words of Bartolomé de Las Casas, who describes the elder Columbus as “more than middling tall.”14 In Lope’s dramatization, the Reyes Católicos declare that Columbus has tremendous stature both morally and physically. For this reason, and for his wondrous exploits, King Ferdinand calls him a monstruo and a maravilla (a fantastic being; marvel) (line 2825): Por monstruo y por maravilla, sin primero, ni segundo le vea el mundo, pues dio un mundo a los Reyes de Castilla. (lines 2828–31) (He will be regarded as an anomaly and as a marvel with neither predecessor nor imitator because he has given a world to the Reyes Católicos of Castile.) (277)

Ferdinand and Isabel wittily praise him as a giant among men by joking that he and the entire New World he carries will not fit into the throne room. When a functionary announces that Columbus has arrived at the door, Ferdinand orders that it be thrown wide and that a wall be torn down if the gigantic Columbus and the world he brings still lack space: Abridla de en par en par, y si no, hacedle lugar, como en Troya al Paladión. Y será bien menester, ya que en la verdad se cae; que con el mundo que trae quizá no podrá caber. (lines 2833–39) (Open it wide. And if his greatness is too immense for him to enter through these doors, tear down the wall as it was done for the Palladium at Troy. And it may very well be necessary to do so now that we have all learned the

12 Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general y natural de la Indias, ed. Juan Pérez de Tudela Bueso (Madrid, 1959), p. 16. 13 All translations of Spanish texts other than Lope’s El nuevo mundo are my own. 14 Gloria-Gilda Deák, “Christopher Columbus and the Flowering of American Iconography,” Imprint: Journal of the American Historical Print Collectors Society 17.1 (1992): 2–37, at pp. 21–22.

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Both Ferdinand’s praises and Isabella’s additional comment (lines 2840– 43) employ the metaphor of doors thrown wide open to suggest unlimited possibility and a future full of promise. Spanish tradition has long located this meeting between Columbus and the Reyes Católicos in the Saló del Tinell, a 14th-century banquet hall whose grand arches (unsupported by any columns) make this magnificent space appear to greatly exceed its actual dimensions of 17 by 35.5 meters.15 The amazing immensity of this banquet hall, which was well known to Lope’s audience, makes Ferdinand’s witticisms all the more amusing, for it is hard to imagine that any giant, even a Columbus or a St. Christopher, could not fit under the high, elegant ceiling of the Saló del Tinell. Ferdinand’s joke about Columbus’s size may build on an established joke “told” to the gigantic images of St. Christopher painted in New World churches, for to him it was said “[eres] tan grande que no cabes sino en grandes templos”16 (You are so big you fit only in the biggest/greatest temples). Earlier in the play, Lope has prepared the audience for praise of Columbus as a gigantic strongman when he dramatizes a contest between the two indigenous chiefs, Terrazas and Dulcanquellín. They engage in several tests of strength, including a challenge to see who can hold a heavy log on his shoulders the longest. This athletic event is borrowed from Ercilla’s La Araucana (canto 2, strophe 35) and reappears in Lope’s Arauco domado.17 As Teresa J. Kirschner has explained, for Lope this particular contest had intrinsic ties to the sacred wood of the cross, for it appears in his Canto de la Araucana, an auto sacramental in which this feat of strength is paired with the three days of Calvary.18 The Catholic Monarchs’ repeated emphatic use of the word mundo (world) (lines 2830, 2838, 2857, 2865, 2886, 2922, 2954, 2971) helps widen the context of the play to include both a larger geography and a larger historical frame. The word mundo situates Columbus’s amazing exploit within the universal landscape of creation. His worldwide saintly stat15 Hugo Kliczkowski and Roger Casas, Guía de arquitectura de Barcelona (Barcelona, 2003), p. 26. 16 Manuel Rodríguez Mesa and Jesús Pérez Morera, La Laguna y San Cristóbal (San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Spain, 1996), p. 62. 17 Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga, La Araucana, ed. Marcos Augusto Morínigo and Isaías Lerner (Madrid, 1979); Lope de Vega y Carpio, Arauco domado, ed. Antonio de Lezama (Santiago de Chile, 1953). 18 Teresa J. Kirschner, Técnicas de representación en Lope de Vega (London, 1998), p. 108.



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ure is meant to contrast with Terrazas’s false accusation that Columbus resembles Lucifer, a prideful being who wanted to create a whole world: Este, pues, Luzbel segundo, como Dios se quiso hacer, y mirad en qué me fundo, que por mostrar su poder quiso formar otro mundo. (lines 1018–22) (This Columbus, a second Lucifer, wants to be like God. Just consider the proof: to demonstrate his power he wants to create a new world.) (143)

Ferdinand notes that Alexander the Great conquered the known world during his lifetime, but that Columbus has won a heretofore unknown and New World in only eight months (lines 2855–58). Columbus is so thoroughly heroicized by the Reyes Católicos that in some respects he can be said to surpass not only St. Christopher but even King Ferdinand himself, whose actions have marked Columbus as a saint. Inside the royal court at Barcelona, Columbus precedes both the king and queen in triumphal procession, as indicated by the stage directions: “Con música entre acompañamiento, fuentes y aguamanil, y los indios y los reyes detrás, y antes de ellos Colón con una bandera con sus armas, y una letra a la redonda” (after line 2950) (Enter the entourage with a baptismal font, a water jug, the Indians and the Monarchs at the end, and Columbus in front of them with a banner with his arms and motto on it [283]). According to Ricardo Castells, Lope includes the Granada episode in the play in order to demonstrate Ferdinand’s religious motives in conquering the Moors.19 Even the king’s single act of transforming a conquered mosque into a church would have made him a saint.20 For Castells, Ferdinand has a religious purpose in sending Columbus across the Atlantic.21 Therefore, Ferdinand’s comparison of Columbus to St. Christopher at the end of the play carries not only the weight of kingly authority but of saintly authority as well. Columbus’s virtues and heroics exceed St. Christopher’s and Ferdinand’s in a number of respects. St. Christopher required the light of the hermitage to guide him across the water, but inside the royal court Queen

19   Ricardo Castells, “Oro e idolatría en El Nuevo Mundo descubierto por Colón de Lope de Vega,” Neophilologus 84 (2000): 385–97, at p. 387. 20 Moisés R. Castillo, “Lope de Vega, Inventor de América: El Nuevo Mundo descubierto por Cristóbal Colón,” Bulletin of the Comediantes 54.1 (2002): 57–90, at p. 74. 21   Castells, “Oro e idolatría,” p. 387.

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Isabella calls Columbus himself a light: “Todo se debe a Colón, / luz deste mundo primera” (lines 2953–54) (All these honors are due to Columbus, the first light of the new world [283]). Her words imply that Columbus himself is a guiding light rather than a man who requires external illumination, and her pronouncement also links him to the brilliant cross he planted in the New World. We should also note that Columbus exceeds Ferdinand’s saintliness by his indifference to sexuality. He is even chaster than holy Ferdinand, for Columbus shows no interest whatsoever in the naked and sexually bold women of the New World and he is never tempted by the overpowering sensuality of the exotic environment. This seemingly asexual aspect of Lope’s Columbus contrasts with the poet’s portrayal of King Ferdinand. In act one, Lope calls upon an established topos and describes the monarch as a triumphant lover conquering the fortified garden-city of Granada (which means “pomegranate”) like a man conquering a woman. The Moorish ruler of Granada is warned that Ferdinand, head of the invading army, has sworn not to rest till the “pomegranate” (the city of Granada) is on his royal banquet table: Mira que ya tu Granada abre las puertas y calles, y es señal que están maduras, cuando las granadas se abren. Jurado Fernando tiene, que no ha de llegar el Martes sin ponerla por principio en sus manteles reales. (lines 343–50) (Behold how your Granada opens its doors and its streets; it is a sign that they are ripe when the pomegranates open. Ferdinand has sworn not to rest until he has this pomegranate as his main course on his royal tablecloth.) (87)

In this passage, the city of Granada is simultaneously imagined as a pomegranate, a woman, a walled garden, and a fortress. Granada, famed for the gardens of the Alhambra and the Generalife, is a garden-city enclosed in a fortress. The image of a woman inside this fortified garden-city is embedded in the above speech. Of course, the identification of woman with high-walled garden is a topos reaching back to Fernando de Rojas’s Celestina (1499) and beyond.22 In his dictionary of 1611, Sebastián de ­Covarrubias gives two etymologies for the name “Granada,” and together

22 Fernando de Rojas, La Celestina: comedia o tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea, ed. Peter E. Russell (Madrid, 2001).



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these word histories provide a narrative of the seduction and conquest of a female. According to the first etymology, Granada is named for a young woman hidden away in a cave.23 The second likens the local landscape to an open pomegranate.24 An open pomegranate, red and fleshy, can easily be imagined as a vulva, and the fruit’s many seeds, which make it an archetypal symbol of fertility, fit the picture of Granada as a highly populated city. E. C. Graf’s exploration of the role of the pomegranate in Don Quijote 1.8–9 also documents its minor role in Lope’s play Juan de Dios y Antón Martín.25 In act three, inside the royal court at Barcelona and during the baptism of the six Indians, King Ferdinand’s conquest of Granada is placed in a larger context and Columbus is portrayed as the greater saint and hero. Time has passed and the conquest of Islamic Spain now takes its place within a larger historical context and within world geography. King Ferdinand’s Christianization of the Moorish Garden of Love (once ruled by the boy-king “el Rey Chico”) is now seen as a precursor to Columbus’s conquest of an even greater number of souls and the acquisition of many more verdant acres of territory for Christian Spain. Columbus has brought into the Spanish empire a paradisal continent that is imagined as an entire world carried on the shoulders of this St. Christopher figure. The king’s own repeated use of the word mundo and his references to historical conquests place Columbus’s victory along a universal time line. An analysis of the iconography of St. Christopher enlarges our understanding of the audience’s notion of Columbus as dramatized by Lope. St. Christopher is often pictured with a staff. For this reason we will now focus on the significance of staffs in general and within the Christian iconographical tradition.

23 Sebastián de Covarrubias Horozco, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, ed. Ignacio Arellano and Rafael Zafra (Madrid, 2006), p. 603. 24 “Marineo Sículo, en la Historia de los Reyes Católicos, refiere dos etimologías; la una [. . .] una doncella [. . .] que en aquella parte moraba en una cueva, [. . .] la segunda es que quien considerare a la ciudad de Granada, poblada como antiguamente estuvo en aquellos dos cerros, y las casitas tan pintadas y tan apiñadas, parecía una granada abierta” (Marineo Sículo, in his History of the Catholic Monarchs, refers to two etymologies, one [. . .] a maiden [. . .] of the region who lived in a cave, [. . .] the second is that to whoever should look upon the city of Granada, populated as it was in olden times on those two hills, with its small painted houses crammed close together, the city seemed like an open pomegranate) (Covarrubias, Tesoro de la lengua, p. 995). 25 E. C. Graf, “Don Quijote and Christianity: The Pomegranate,” in Cervantes and Modernity: Four Essays on Don Quijote (Lewisburg, 2007), pp. 103–30, at pp. 113–14.

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The fantastic elements in the St. Christopher legend encourage the Baroque audience of Lope’s play to explore imaginatively the St. Christopher allusions, picturing for themselves the innumerable branchings of the Christian arboreal traditions and its implications for St. Christopher’s legendary flowering staff. In their ruminations theatergoers could call upon the many popular portraits of the saint, whose gigantic image figured in many churches since it was believed that any person who had seen the saint that day could not die. The sight of St. Christopher’s image was considered a protection against sudden death.26 Mateo Pérez de ­Alesio’s gigantic fresco of the saint (1584) in the Cathedral of Seville measures 33 feet in height, and the artist successfully exported this image to the cathedrals of Lima and Cuzco27 (fig. 1). In his dictionary, Covarrubias describes the iconographical St. Christopher: “le pintan comunmente en estatura de jayán con un pino por báculo y el Niño Jesús por su hombre izquierdo pasando un río. Todo esto es apócrifo”28 (He is usually portrayed as a giant with a pine tree for a staff while crossing a river with the Christ Child on his left shoulder. All this is apocryphal). Covarrubias follows the dictates of the Council of Trent when he notes that while Christopher was historically a saint and martyr, the legend of his crossing a stream while carrying the Christ Child is merely that—a legend.29 The St. Christopher story is well entwined with fantasy. The term jayán, used by Covarrubias to denote a giant, is most commonly found in the libros de caballerías (romances of chivalry).30 But the important detail of the flowering staff is even more fantastic. In the tale the Christ Child grows so heavy on Christopher’s shoulder that the giant is forced to break off a branch from a tree and use it for a staff. With difficulty, the two make it to the opposite bank. In order to prove his divinity the Christ Child tells Christopher to plant the staff in the ground, foretelling that the next day it will produce fruit and flowers. As promised, the miraculous tree appears and converts the giant Reprobus to the St. Christopher we know.

26 Louis Réau, Iconografía del arte cristiano, vol. 1 (Paris, 1955–59), trans. Daniel Alcoba (Barcelona, 1999), pp. 355–56. 27 Rodríguez Mesa and Pérez Morera, La Laguna, p. 62. 28 Covarrubias, Tesoro de la lengua, p. 632. 29 Marta Paraventi, “San Cristoforo, protettore dei viandanti e dei viaggiatori,” in In Viaggio con San Cristoforo: pellegrinaggi e devozione tra Medio Evo e Età Moderna, ed. Loretta Mozzoni and Marta Paraventi (Florence, 2000), pp. 53–82, at p. 70. 30 Covarrubias, Tesoro de la lengua, p. 1122; Diccionario de Autoridades (Madrid, 1726 fascimile edition), vol. 2 (Madrid, 1990), 2nd edition.



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Figure 1. Mateo Pérez de Alesio, Saint Christopher (1584), Cathedral of Seville. Courtesy of Arte Historia.

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The St. Christopher legend incorporates various features of the arboreal transformation of the cross. When the giant’s staff miraculously takes root, produces flowers, and in some versions develops fruit as well, it imitates the branch of the Tree of Knowledge, which, according to orthodox tradition, became Adam’s staff and eventually provided the wood for the True Cross. Historically, St. Christopher’s iconography became more boldly allied to arboreal imagery. After 1300 his staff was more frequently depicted as the trunk of a tree rather than as a mere branch.31 The fruit and flowers on the treelike staff recall that in numerous depictions of the Madonna and the Christ Child, fruit and flowers represent the inevitability of the Passion as the culmination of the Tree of Jesse.32 Fruit and flowers stand in for the brevity of life, for Christ’s sacrifice (in which his body is offered like the “first fruits”), and for the ultimate flowering of the cross when it once again becomes a tree. The image of Christ carrying his wooden cross as a burden stands in opposition to the image of St. Christopher carrying his wooden staff; Christopher’s staff is not a burden but instead supports him as he carries his own load. The St. Christopher image plays with the complex inversions of these objects. St. Christopher is toting the Christ Child, who often carries an orb with a cross on top. Such an obvious parallel between the cross of Christ and the staff of St. Christopher occurs in the painting The Virgin of Christopher Columbus, produced in Castile in the early 16th century.33 The painting shows the saint holding a staff and standing behind Columbus while the Christ Child on St. Christopher’s shoulder carries a small cross. Crosses are also placed upon the heads of the Child and the Virgin Mary. The same parallel between the cross of Christ and the staff of St. Christopher occurs in numerous Spanish images of the saint. The device of the staff is intrinsic to traditional meditations on the cross, all of which include the notion that every cross was once a tree and that every tree is potentially a cross. In his Discursos evangelicos (1600), Alonso de la Cruz states: “La Cruz es la vara: que sin rayzes en la tierra, sino cortada y por si, lleuo frutos de inmortalidad y ­gloria” (280)34 (The Cross is the rod that with no roots in the soil, cut off and alone, bore fruits of immortality and glory). In Saint Christopher Seated on 31   Réau, Iconografía, p. 359. 32 Suzanne L. Stratton, The Immaculate Conception in Spanish Art (New York, 1994), p. 13. 33  Web. 5 May 2007. 34 Alonso de la Cruz, Primera parte de los discvrsos evangelicos y espiritvales en las fiestas principales de todo el año (Barcelona, 1600), p. 280.



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the Bank (1515) by Albrecht Altdorfer, the Christ Child has climbed down from Christopher’s back and the saint’s staff appears to be at one with the many trees that populate the riverbank. This emphasis on the primacy of the staff and its relationship to the surrounding trees is also apparent in another composition by Altdorfer, the engraving San Cristoforo (1513).35 Alonso de la Cruz imagines that every Christian requires a metaphoric staff to speed him on his journey towards perfection and that every tree was once a mere varilla (sapling, stick): Considera, como poco a poco se camina al camino de la perfeccion, y no son todos perfectos de repente. Y por lo tanto los principios razonables no se han de despreciar, porque dellos se viene a parar en principalissimos fines. Que el arbol mas estendido debajo cuya sombra nos passeamos, luego que se planto, fue una varilla pequeña y delgada.36 (Consider how little by little one walks along the road to perfection, and not everyone is suddenly perfect. Therefore reasonable beginnings should not be slighted, since from them one arrives at highly principled ends. The largest tree beneath whose shadow we stroll was but a small and thin sapling when recently planted.)

Grubbs reports that in the Consueta de la passió de Saint Cristòfor, a minor theatrical piece performed in Mallorcan churches, Christopher wields his flowering staff to convert 400 knights.37 In the piece, Christopher’s torturous martyrdom evokes Christ’s crucifixion through a series of striking parallels that re-enact the saint’s life as recorded in The Golden Legend: The martyrdom of St. Christopher is long and bloody. He is whipped and then crucified on a tree while wearing a burning hot steel helmet. Some knights then attempt to shoot the giant with arrows but the missiles are deflected from him and one blinds the king, and the martyr is finally decapitated. The parallels between Jesus Christ and St. Christopher are unmistakable, and they include the similarity of their names, their passions and martyrdoms, all of which are underscored by the obvious Eucharistic symbolism seen in the play.38

In El nuevo mundo, the cross is explicitly compared to a staff when it is addressed as “Vara de Moisén divina” (line 1598) (divine staff of Moses [179]). Later, the cross is also compared to another staff—in this case, the 35 San Cristoforo, Albrecht Altdorfer, National Gallery, Washington, D.C., Risenwald Collection; Paraventi, “San Cristoforo,” p. 65. 36 Cruz, Primera parte, pp. 266–67. 37 Grubbs, “Theatrical Representations,” pp. 281, 284. 38 Grubbs, “Theatrical Representations,” p. 285.

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king’s scepter—when the Indian named Tapirazú declares to the cross: “Hoy, palo, el cetro has de ser / del rey de aquestos vasallos” (lines 2805– 06) (Today, oh trunk, you will be the ruler of these vassals [275]). During the mutiny scene on the high seas (lines 988–1132), Lope’s audience would have spotted many crosses among the ship’s rigging, and the staging of this scene up on the third level of the Baroque Spanish stage would have added to the celestial nature of these virtual crosses. The crosses help protect Columbus from a violent execution and the sailors from death by starvation. Similarly, in the St. Christopher legend, a strong staff helps keep the saint from drowning as he crosses the river at night. An early etching of Columbus landing on Hispaniola illustrates the same visual analogies between Columbus’s staff, his ships’ mast and rigging, and the cross planted by his men in the New World, an event central to Lope’s play (fig. 2).

Figure 2. Theodore de Bry (1528–1598), Christopher Columbus receives presents from the Cacique Quacanagari on Hispaniola (currently Haiti). Engraving, Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BnF), Paris, France. Photo Credit: Snark / Art Resource, NY.



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The very act of making a staff shares in the central paradox of the Christian arboreal cross. A staff is the product of pruning a tree. The branches of a tree are cut off in order to propagate it or concentrate its capacity for vertical growth. Moreover, eliminating the lower branches of a tree prevents them from being gnawed by animals, and as Alonso de Herrera reminds us in Libro de agricultura (1513), the gnawing of some branches can result in death for the whole tree: “Porque toda planta que es nueva tiene necessidad de crescer en alto hasta que esté tal que no la alcancen bestias a roer el cogollo”39 (Because every new plant has a need to increase in height until no beasts can reach up to rub their throats against it). The central paradox of harming a tree in order to improve or regenerate it reflects the Christian paradox of Christ’s dying in order that men and women might live. And another paradox emerges: the felling of a tree in order to make a cross (an instrument of death) will ultimately resurrect the life of that tree. As Augustine noted, “Death came by a tree, life by the cross.”40 While the Christian staff is an offshoot of the cross and symbolizes the peace, justice, and order that Christians should carry to foreign lands, in El nuevo mundo the Indian war club stands in opposition to this stage prop. When the indigenous chief Dulcanquellín kills the Spaniard Terrazas, the former is wielding a maza, an object that functions both as a war club and as a mace to denote high office.41 Earlier the Indians had assumed that the cross planted on the beach could be used like a staff and that it was the equivalent of a tribal scepter, as in Tapirazú’s address to the cross quoted above (lines 2805–06). When Tapirazú first appears he is high on a “mountain” on stage and he descends regally, carrying his maza (stage direction after line 1347). His stance serves as a counterpart to that of Columbus, who might have held a captain’s bastón (walking stick, baton) or vara (staff, pole) while commanding his ship on the upper level of the stage, just as do the military commanders in Zurbarán’s painting, The Defense of Cadiz Against the English (1634) or in Velázquez’s The Surrender of Breda (1634–35). Similarly, Columbus will triumphantly carry his banner and insignia inside the royal court at Barcelona (stage directions after line 2950), just as he does in many early modern prints and portraits (fig. 3). St. Christopher’s pilgrim’s staff and Columbus’s ­military 39 Gabriel Alonso de Herrera, Obra de agricultura (Alcalá de Henares, 1513), ed. José Urbano Martínez Carreras (Madrid, 1970), pp. 104–05. 40 Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, qtd. in Voragine, The Golden Legend, p. 209. 41    Diccionario de Autoridades.

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Figure 3. Spanish School, Christopher Columbus (1451–1506). Portraitgalerie, Schloss Ambras, Innsbruck, Austria. Photo Credit: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.



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baton are not incompatible, and though our modern eyes see one as pacific and meditative and the other as active and battle-ready, the two types of staffs were likely considered extensions of the same religious and imperialistic enterprise. A parallel example can be found in the figures of Santiago Peregrino and Santiago Matamoros (St. James the Pilgrim and St. James the Moorslayer). Stephen B. Raulston has shown that St. James’s pilgrim staff and his warrior’s sword were perceived as halves of a harmonious whole by the medieval Spaniards who viewed them in the same artistic composition.42 Lope’s dramatization of a miraculously reborn cross at the climax of El nuevo mundo is based on a historic event narrated by Oviedo.43 Immediately prior to Oviedo’s account of this planting of the cross on the beach, he describes an Indian war club. The prose narrative assumes some connection between cross and war club, and for Lope there probably existed a link as well. According to Oviedo, these Indians used macanas that were about three fingers thick, as tall as a man, and made of palm or other woods. He identifies them as those described by Pliny and notes that the Indians also engaged in combat using “varas arrojadizas como dardos” (throwable sticks like darts). These varas prove to be deadly missiles, for the palm wood splinters off in the wound and causes grave injury.44 The wood of such a vara has a treacherous nature, in contrast to the wood of the cross, which was praised throughout Christendom for its fragrance and for its healing, medicinal balm, just as it is in Lope’s text. The indigenous princess Tacuana addresses the cross, saying, “Árbol seco, así te veas / con fruto, si le deseas, / y más que mirra en olor” (lines 1863–64) (Bare tree, if you so desire, may your branches be laden with fruit whose aroma is more fragrant than myrrh [197]). The iconography of St. Christopher’s staff includes multiple stages in the growth of a staff-like tree. These include a dead or dying tree, a pruned tree, a tree in leaf or in flower, or a tree enjoying a miraculous combination of all these stages. Of course, the notion that a staff or large branch planted in soil could produce fruit and/or flowers is entirely fanciful and quite miraculous. Neither should a flowering branch be planted, for as 42 Stephen B. Raulston, “The Harmony of Staff and Sword: How Medieval Thinkers Saw Santiago Peregrino and Matamoros,” Corónica: A Journal of Medieval Spanish Language, Literature, and Cultural Studies 36.2 (2008): 345–67, at pp. 346–49. 43 “Lope has taken the information of the implantation of the cross on the shore from Oviedo” (Shannon, ed. and trans. Lope de Vega, El nuevo mundo, p. 217 note 44, citing Fernández de Oviedo, pp. 64–65). 44 Oviedo, Historia general, p. 64.

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Alonso de Herrera notes, “ninguna planta se debe poner después que ha brotado”45 (no plant should be propagated after it has blossomed). All of the aforementioned states in the evolution of a tree play an important part in the Christian iconographical narrative of indomitable regeneration, according to which a dead tree can be made to blossom and bear fruit. Furthermore, these stages of growth and regeneration allude to the details of the St. Christopher legend and to the paradox of eternal life achieved through death in the eventual martyrdom of the saint. The Christ Child tells St. Christopher to plant his staff in the soil, and the next day it does indeed produce fruit and flowers. Appropriately, a martyrdom such as St. Christopher’s is traditionally symbolized by a dead or severed branch that suddenly springs to life. This analogy resides in two biblical verses: “For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease” (Job 14:7) and “The righteous shall flourish as a branch” (Proverbs 11:28).46 Because St. Christopher used a tree branch as staff and because his staff grew miraculously, he was adopted as one of the patron saints of gardeners and was called upon to protect fruit trees.47 European art contains many examples of St. Christopher’s staff in various stages of growth, death, and regeneration. In the aforementioned painting The Virgin of Christopher Columbus, St. Christopher holds a staff that appears dead and lifeless, for the top has been lopped off. Jusepe de Ribera likewise painted St. Christopher with a staff that has been broken off, as is clearly visible in the original painting (fig. 4). Other artists chose to show St. Christopher’s staff as a pruned branch. For example, Christopher’s staff appears crudely pruned in a detail of the portrait of Columbus that decorates Juan de la Cosa’s justly famous world map of 1500. Still others depicted him as carrying a flowering fruit tree or an entire palm heavy with succulent dates, as will be explored in more detail. The images of St. Christopher carrying a pruned tree branch as a staff correspond to various three-dimensional Spanish and Catalan crosses that also appear pruned. These nearly life-size crosses populate the sculpture collection of the Museu Frederic Marès in Barcelona and they clearly depict the marks of pruning.48 St. Christopher and his leafy staff are also found in Spanish 45 Herrera, Obra de agricultura, p. 105. 46 Levi D’Ancona, The Garden of the Renaissance, p. 386. 47 Réau, Iconografía, p. 357. 48 Five sculptures, each titled “Crist Crucificat” and labeled MFM 759, MFM 760, MFM 765, MFM 774, and MFM 1593, respectively. Also, two sculptures titled “Calvari” and labeled MFM 749 and MFM 768, respectively. Museu Frederic Marès (Barcelona).



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Figure 4. Jusepe de Ribera (1588–1656), Saint Christopher, 3rd-century Martyr (c. 1637). Museo del Prado, Madrid. Photo Credit: The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.

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retablos, like the 15th-century Retablo de San Cristóbal now in the Prado and the Retuale de l’Epifania o del Conestable in the Palau Reial Major (Royal Palace) in Barcelona. Even within a relatively small sample such as the collection of 18th-century ex-votos in the Maritime Museum of Barcelona (to be discussed below), we can see a variety of dead, pruned, and prospering trees in depictions of St. Christopher’s staff. The iconography of St. Christopher participates in the well-established motif of a man depicted as an upside-down tree, with the tree’s origin and roots pointing skyward. Hans Baldung Grien’s Saint Christopher (c. 1511) shows a staff ending in obvious roots and sprouting root hairs.49 The roots of these treelike staffs are at the height of St. Christopher’s head and signal the saint’s desire to return to his spiritual roots in heaven, for the cosmic tree is often pictured as a tree with its roots among the stars.50 The symbolic inversion of the roots and crown of a tree characterizes the woodcut Saint Christopher (School of Albrecht Dürer, Boston MFA). Here the upper end of the staff has produced a twisted and gnarled growth that resembles the roots of a tree.51 Furthermore, Dürer has fashioned these roots to resemble the grasping fingers of an arboreal right hand, a hand that seems to be the obverse of St. Christopher’s left hand, raised on the opposite side of the composition and at about the same height. This similarity builds upon scriptural comparisons between the life of a tree and the life of a man, and it is sanctified by the gesturing of the Christ Child’s hand, his fingers raised in blessing. Christopher Columbus carries a staff in many of the 16th-century images collected in Iconografía colombiana (1991) by Gaetano Ferro and his coauthors.52 Whether ceremonial staff, battle standard, or lance, all of these tall wooden objects approximate the staff carried by St. Christopher and link him visually to Columbus. Columbus holds a ceremonial staff of office in the anonymous, possibly 16th-century portrait Columbus, which is now in the Galleria di Palazzo Biancoa, Genoa.53 In another anonymous portrait, the banner of his staff displays the Spanish coat of arms (fig. 3). And in the well-known print Christopher Columbus, Victor Over the Ter-

49 Lucia Bartocci, “L’arte minore dei santini,” In Viaggio con San Cristoforo: Pellegrinaggi e devozione tra Medio Evo e Età Moderna, ed. Loretta Mozzoni and Marta Paraventi (Florence, 2000), pp. 91–99, at p. 93. 50 J. E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, trans. Jack Sage, 2nd ed. (New York, 1995), p. 348. 51   Paraventi, “San Cristoforo,” p. 66. 52 Gaetano Ferro, et al., Iconografia colombiana (Rome, 1991). 53 Ferro, et al., Iconografia colombiana, pp. 158–59.



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rors of the Ocean (Philippe Galle, c. 1585), the Admiral’s standard displays the Crucifixion. Yet not only contemporaneous images but also historical accounts depict Christopher Columbus carrying a staff. According to Antonio de Herrera, Columbus carried a treelike green cross and a royal battle standard on his first landing in the New World: “El Almirante, con la barca armada, y el estandarte Real tendido salió a tierra, y lo mismo hizieron los Capitanes Martín Alonso Pinçón, y Vicente Yánez Pinçón, con las banderas de la empresa, que era una cruz verde con ciertas coronas, y los nombres de los Reyes Católicos”54 (In an armed boat and with the royal standard unfurled the Admiral departed for land, and so did Captains Martín Alonso Pinçón and Vicente Yánez Pinçón, with the flags of the expedition, which showed a green cross with certain crowns and the names of the Catholic Monarchs). In Lope’s El nuevo mundo, Columbus enters the throne room of the Reyes Católicos carrying a triumphal banner whose motto reads “Por Castilla y por León / nuevo mundo halló Colón” (lines 2960–61) (For Castile and for León has Columbus a New World found [285]). The leafy, flowering staff of St. Christopher is one of the ramifications of the complex Christian traditions of miraculously blossoming staffs. In the Old Testament, Aaron’s staff buds when placed in front of the Ark of the Covenant (Num 17:5–11). In the New Testament the miraculous behavior of Joseph’s staff signifies that he will be Mary’s spouse. In Christian iconography the flowering staff can allude to the Tree of Jesse or to the Virgin Mary as the botanical culmination of the Tree of Jesse, an arboreal symbol based on a pun on the Latin virga (staff or branch) and virgo (virgin).55 The flowering or regenerating staff has variously been attributed to saints Gregory, Bernard, Boniface, Polycarp, and Francis of Assisi.56 Italian paintings of the 16th and 17th centuries pair St. Christopher with various saints who also possess staffs or arboreal attributes, and these paintings serve as examples of sacra conversazione.57 By evoking Moses and St. Christopher and by alluding to the saintly actions of King Ferdinand, Lope places Christopher Columbus on stage in sacred conversation with his celestial peers. St. Christopher and his flowering staff appear alongside Saint Joseph in

54 Antonio de Herrera, Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos (Madrid, 1601), 1:26, qtd. in Dixon, “Lope de Vega,” p. 254 note 14. 55 Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, Encyclopedia of Women in Religious Art (New York, 1996), p. 136. 56 John Ainsworth, The Story of Saint Christopher (New York, 1928), pp. 96–97. 57 Paraventi, “San Cristoforo,” pp. 63–64, 71–72.

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Pordenone’s Madonna of Mercy with Saints Christopher and Joseph (1515) (fig. 5). Saint Joseph usually carries a flowering staff, but here it is only St. Christopher who carries a staff sprouting small white flowers. St. Christopher’s staff towers even over his own head, though he is a giant. In this respect the staff is like a tree in height, but despite its evident strength it is visibly bent under the weight of St. Christopher and the Child. The treestaff appears smoothly stripped of bark and therefore dead, but a single, leafy branch emerges at the top and sprouts small white flowers. As well as producing flowers, St. Christopher’s staff may also produce fruit, a phenomenon usually pictured as a flowering date palm also heavy with fruit—a frequent iconographic attribute of the saint, who as the patron saint of gardeners was often invoked to protect delicate fruit trees. Lope alludes to the fruitful flowering of St. Christopher’s staff when in the royal court Columbus offers six New World natives as “las primicias” (first fruits), implying that the first fruits of the voyage to the New World are being offered to God.58 The stage direction reads: “Colón, de camino, seis indios bozales, medio desnudos, pintados; un paje con un plato de barras de oro, y otro con papagayos y halcones” (after line 2843) (Enter Columbus in traveling attire, six newly arrived, half-naked and painted Indians, a page with a plate of gold bars and another with parrots and hawks [277]). While animals and minerals crowd this list, Indians take the place of New World plants. Such plants had enormous economic importance in Lope’s time and are prominent elsewhere in the play, as in the verses: “Pues de frutas y maíz, / cazavi, miel, cocos, chiles, / y otras, cuya agua destiles / de su sabrosa raíz” (lines 1244–47) (What can I say of the fruits and maize, cassava, honey, coconuts, peppers, and other plants from whose savory roots you will sip refreshing drink? [157]). Thus the absence of plants in this important baptismal scene calls attention to itself and points to the Indians as substitute “first fruits.” This identification of the Indians as “first fruits” was foreshadowed in the allegorical scene of act one, when Religion refers to the Indians as fruit: “De la Fe las Indias son. / Dios quiere gozar su fruto; / vuélvele, infame, el tributo” (lines 752–54) (The Indies belong to the Faith. God wants to enjoy his fruit. Oh vile one, return to Him His tribute! [115]). But inside Barcelona’s royal court, in a dazzlingly Baroque mixture of life forms, the Indians are also called strange, exotic birds: “pájaros peregrinos” (line 2947) (rare birds [283]) who take their

58 Covarrubias defines “las primicias” as “lo que se ofrece a Dios de los primeros frutos” (Tesoro de la lengua, p. 1376).



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Figure 5. Pordenone (c. 1483–1539), Giovanni Antonio de’ Sacchis, Madonna of Mercy with Saints Christopher and Joseph (1515). Duomo, Pordenone, Italy. Photo Credit: Alinari / Art Resource, NY.

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place among the “parrots and hawks” named in the stage directions. In the phrase “pájaros peregrinos” Lope also builds on the archetypal identification of the human soul with a winged creature, but he furthermore calls upon St. Christopher’s identity as patron of travelers and pilgrims since “peregrinos” means “pilgrims.” While Shannon has interpreted the above phrase simply as “rare birds,” it more likely suggests exotic migratory birds that have traveled from afar and are so colorful they can be compared to exotic fruits. In the scenes set in the New World, the Indian characters are expressive and individualized; but for dramatic and propagandistic purposes, in the royal court they must remain speechless subjects of the Reyes Católicos and passive recipients of the miracle of baptism, a holy sacrament that works a change in their natures. Shannon translates the word bozal as “newly arrived,” but according to Covarrubias, the word more accurately describes “el negro que no sabe otra lengua que la suya” (a Negro who knows no language other than his own). The giant Reprobus–St. Christopher once carried travelers on his back across a treacherous body of water, and many centuries later a new saint—Christopher Columbus— imitates this giant and transports new Christian converts across an ocean “en hombros que pueden tanto” (line 2874) (on your mighty shoulders [279]). The Indians are the first fruits of the arboreal cross planted by Columbus in the New World, and according to King Ferdinand their voyage will continue, for the saintly Christopher Columbus “les dais puerto del cielo” (line 2878) (opens the doors of heaven to them [279]). In Christian iconography, when St. Christopher is pictured holding a staff of a particular species, that species is most often a palm tree.59 The palm, as a symbol of martyrdom, foretells the Christ-like martyrdom of the pagan giant once known as Reprobus. Curiously, Covarrubias calls St. Christopher’s staff “un pino.” But perhaps he is using the word pino as a generic reference to a tall tree, for pine trees were known for their great height, just as in El nuevo mundo the Indian Tapirazú remarks of the Spaniards, “Eran hombres del altura / de un pino” (lines 1536–37) (They were men as tall as a pine tree [75]). Indeed, St. Christopher is often pictured carrying a staff that towers over his head, as if it were a tall tree. In the text of the play the word palma occurs only once, but it quite allusively coincides with King Ferdinand’s linking of Columbus to his namesake St. Christopher: 59 Réau, Iconografía, p. 359.



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Vos tenéis lauros y palmas de Capitán sin segundo; que a España habéis dado un mundo y a Dios infinitas almas. Cristóbal, vuestro apellido os da alabanza, Colón; que autor de tal redención algo de Cristo ha tenido. (lines 2863–70) (You are worthy of the laurels and titles of a captain without equal for giving this new world to Spain and infinite souls to God. Christopher, your very name praises you because the author of such an act as the redemption of the Indians could only possess the qualities of Christ.) (279)

Moreover, in the Oviedo passage on which Lope based Columbus’s planting of a green cross, a palm tree is aptly mentioned.60 Ferdinand’s allusions to the traits that Columbus shares with the martyred saint correspond to Alonso de Herrera’s description of the symbolism of the palm: “Son las palmas unos árboles muy nobles y antiguamente los usaban traer en las manos en señal de paz, y victoria, y aun a los santos mártires y virgines en señal de haber vencido y triunfado del mundo y concupicencias carnales, ponen ramos de palmas en las manos desmostrando sus victorias”61 (Palms are very noble trees and in ancient times they were carried in the hand as a sign of peace and of victory, and even holy martyrs and virgins carry palm branches as a sign of their victories and triumphs over the world and carnal concupiscence). The palm tree, a symbol of victory since classical times, became a Christian symbol of the martyr’s victory over death. It was considered a tree of paradise and numbered among the four trees that provided the wood of the cross.62 Alonso de Herrera advises the reader to plant them in one’s garden so as to have palms ready to carry on Palm Sunday.63 Renaissance paintings frequently show a palm tree bending downward to offer its fruit.64 St. Christopher is pictured carrying a date palm as his staff in one of the earliest examples of European printing, a hand-colored German woodcut called the “Buxheim” Saint Christopher (c. 1450).65 The

60 Oviedo, Historia general, pp. 64–65. 61   Herrera, Obra de agricultura, p. 192. 62 Levi d’Ancona, The Garden of the Renaissance, pp. 279, 282. 63 Herrera, Obra de agricultura, p. 192. 64 Levi d’Ancona, The Garden of the Renaissance, p. 280. 65 Manuscript with the “Buxheim” Saint Christopher, The John Rylands University Library, The University of Manchester, Ms. 366 (17249); Peter W. Parshall and Rainer

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adult Christ on the Cross and the infant Christ Child on the shoulder of St. Christopher are paired in Christ Crucified between Saints Jerome Penitent and Christopher in a Landscape;66 tellingly, Christopher’s staff is a remarkably young palm sapling that will surely mature into a mighty tree. We can also point to numerous Hispanic images of St. Christopher carrying a palm tree for a staff. These include the 1498 image inside an early printed book from Valencia and the gigantic fresco of the saint in the Cathedral of Seville (fig. 1), copies of which were exported to the cathedrals of Lima and Cuzco as well. Other such medieval and early modern images of a palm-toting St. Christopher are to be found in grand cathedrals and humble churches across Spain.67 Turning to the New World, we find examples in Cuzco, including inside the anonymous painting Corpus Christi Procession: Parish of S. Cristóbal (c. 1674–80; Museo de Arte Religioso, Cuzco). The fact that St. Christopher’s staff is a palm tree bearing fruit makes the miracle of its prosperity even greater, for as Alonso de Herrera observes, palm trees take a long time to produce fruit and some require up to a century.68 Moreover, any European or New World palm tree mature enough to give forth fruit would be too colossally heavy to be carried as a staff by anyone but a supernaturally strong giant.69 In El nuevo mundo the presence of Columbus’s staff links him not only with St. Christopher but with Moses. Columbus’s brother Bartolomé addresses the cross planted on the beach, saying: Vara de Moisén divina que dividió el mar Bermejo; farol, norte, luz, espejo por donde el hombre camina, en esta tierra, aunque indina, por no conocer al cielo, te planto, aunque con recelo, por ser destierro de Egito; pero si en fe no le imito veré el prometido suelo. (lines 1598–1607)

Schoch, Origins of European Printmaking: Fifteenth Century Woodcuts and Their Public (Washington, D.C., 2005), pp. 153–56. 66 Attributed to Perugino; Galleria Borghese, Rome. ARTSTOR. Web. 20 May 2007. 67  Web. 23 April 2012. 68 Herrera, Obra de agricultura, p. 194. 69 Kathy Musial, Curator of Living Collections, The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. San Marino, California. Interviewed at the Huntington on 23 May 2006.



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(Divine staff of Moses which divided the Red Sea; lantern, north star, light and reflection by which man travels through this contemptible land which does not know heaven. I plant you here although with fear, for this is our exile from Egypt. Although I do not equal Moses in faith, like him, I will see the Promised Land.) (179)

A staff numbers among Moses’s iconographical attributes, which also include the brazen serpent and the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments.70 Spanish devotional writing links Moses’s staff to the Cross, which—as we have seen—is intrinsic to the Baroque regard for St. Christopher’s staff. Alonso de la Cruz relates the prophet’s staff to the cross when he writes: “Y esta diuina Cruz es la vara de Moyses, con que obro tantas marauillas en Egipto: y el palo que hizo dulces las amarguissimas aguas de Mara”71 (And this divine cross is the staff of Moses, with which he worked so many miracles in Egypt: the rod that made sweet the bitterest waters of Mara). For medieval Europe, Moses’s staff was a foreshadowing of the New Testament cross. In the legend of the True Cross, the branch broken off by Adam becomes the staff of Moses.72 In Speculum ecclesiae (c. 1100), Honorius of Autun analyzes the wood of the Cross and identifies Moses’s staff as one of its prefigurations.73 Moses uses his staff to dramatic effect in the biblical episode of the Brazen Serpent. He also employs it in two other miraculous episodes involving water. With it he parts the waters of the Red Sea, allowing the Israelites to escape slavery but drowning Pharaoh’s army; and with it he also taps the rock in the desert, causing water to flow and appeasing the thirst of the impatient Israelites, as in the tapestry Moses Striking Water from the Rock (1560–70; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). The miracle of the water in the rock, which for Christian Europe presaged baptism, would have been alive in the minds of Lope’s audience as they watched a theatrical Christopher Columbus effect the baptism of the Indians in the Spanish court. Baptism was believed to contain the water of life, and this sacramental tradition links the staff of Moses with Columbus’s role in baptizing the Indians. The scene has a far more dramatic effect when we realize that for its Baroque audience a miracle was being re-enacted. Baptism is considered the miraculous cleansing of original sin. Moses’s staff contained wonder-working powers and was called

70 Chiara de Capoa and Stefano Zuffi, Old Testament Figures in Art (Los Angeles, 2003), p. 152. 71   Cruz, Primera parte, p. 280. 72 James Hall, Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art (Boulder, Co., 1979), p. 312. 73 Baert, A Heritage of Holy Wood, p. 290.

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the Wood of Paradise. Honorius of Autun tells us that the prophet’s staff was later found in the miraculously healing waters of the Piscina Proba­ tica, Honorius’s term for the pool described in John 5:2.74 Act two of El nuevo mundo opens with a mutiny scene in which the sailors compare Columbus with other leaders of dangerous journeys, Moses among them. Columbus is paired with the villainous Lucifer (lines 1018– 22), and through a sarcastic allusion to the Golden Bough he is paired with the heroic Aeneas (lines 1006–7). But the pointed exchanges between the sailors focus primarily on Columbus’s seeming impotence in the middle of the high seas in contrast to the efficacy of Moses in finally bringing the Israelites entirely across the desert. The sailor named Arana wonders if, like latter-day Israelites, the sailors will have to wander for 40 years (lines 1060–61). Terrazas contrasts the Israelites, who had manna from Moses, with the sailors who have nothing to eat but the ship’s boards (lines 1063–67). Moses led his people to the Promised Land, Pinzón pointedly reminds Columbus (lines 1055–57). Because the sailors are surrounded by waves but have no water to drink (lines 1073–79), Pinzón also taunts Columbus, calling him a “new Moses” and ordering him to dry the sea up with his staff and create a potable spring, just as the prophet tapped the rock in the desert. Here Pinzón may be pointing to a staff that the actor playing Moses carries on stage, a captain’s staff of office similar to the one held by the naval commander in Zurbarán’s The Defense of Cádiz against the English. In act two, the sailors view Columbus as a threat to their safety and the cause of their dire plight, and they nearly toss him overboard. But this negative image of Columbus is totally overturned when, late in act three in the baptismal scene in the royal court, Columbus is identified with St. Christopher. This new, sanctified Christopher Columbus redeems and transforms the sailors’ earlier, sarcastic comparison of him to Moses. Now Columbus steps into the shoes of the post-New Testament St. Christopher, and through analogy he can also presumably fill those of the Old Testament Moses. For the Baroque audience, both of these religious figures were powerful men who protected travelers. Moses was widely ­heroicized for leading the Israelites across the Sinai desert, and St. Christopher was one of the patron saints of mariners, a popular miracle-worker who could ensure their safe return to port.

74 Baert, A Heritage of Holy Wood, p. 290.



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Lope portrays Columbus as a prophet in the tradition of the Old Testament Moses. In boarding the Santa María, Columbus embarks upon a crusade, or more properly a cruzada, since the Spanish word cruz (“cross”) better displays the etymological parallels in these two terms. Moisés R. Castillo argues that in Lope’s play Columbus’s discovery of the New World initiates not a conquest but the re-conquest of a world that God has allowed to be dominated by Lucifer. Lope’s Columbus has foreknowledge of the New World, as is shown in the allegorical scene of act one, and because of his advance knowledge he approaches his voyage with certainty, persisting in his pursuit of expedition funds through many European courts, as is dramatized in act one. Castillo observes: que Dios lógicamente conocía y poseía ese Nuevo Mundo desde siempre; posteriormente permitió que la idolatría (demonio) reinara en él, ya que si no, se incurriría en el error teológico de pensar a un Dios no omnisciente u omnipresente, o dudar de su omnipotencia; por último, en el plan del Creador el imperio español figuraba como el elegido redentor de América para una mayor gloria de Dios.75 (logically, God knew and possessed that New World from eternity; later he permitted idolatry [the devil] to rein over it since otherwise there would have occurred the theological error of thinking that God is not omniscient or omnipresent, or of doubting his omnipotence; lastly, in the Creator’s plan the Spanish Empire figured as the chosen redeemer of America for the greater glory of God.)

Lope finds fertile ground in this watery allusion. Sailors along the Spanish coasts have always had a very real and concrete understanding of biblical passages relating to the dangers of a seafaring life; they know of Noah’s ark, the crossing of the Red Sea, Jonah and the whale, and Christ walking on water.76 On stage Lope exploits a sailor’s intimate relationship with maritime religious imagery. An historical overview of the development of St. Christopher’s iconography shows his connection to seafaring. Though according to legend the saint ferried pilgrims over a river at night, he was eventually called upon to ensure safety at sea. Beginning in the 14th century, the body of water crossed by the saint was more clearly identified as ­treacherous

75 Moisés R. Castillo, Indios en escena: la representación del amerindio en el teatro del Siglo de Oro (West Lafayette, 2009), p. 63. 76 Eric Reith and Alain Milon, Ex-voto marins dans le monde: de l’antiquité à nos jours (Exposition, Musée de la Marine, Palais de Chaillot, Paris, 1981) (Paris, 1981), p. 13.

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when it began to include monstrous sea creatures.77 St. Christopher was importuned to protect men against storms, floods, hail, and water.78 This tradition continued at least through the 18th century, when a number of ex-votos from the Ermita de Sant Cristòfol (and now at the Maritime Museum in Barcelona) portrayed St. Christopher as the patron of seafarers.79 One ex-voto shows a vision of the Crucifixion, St. Christopher with leafy palm staff, and ships with masts that resemble crosses, and moreover with a red cross on the sail and anchors that somewhat resemble crosses. This picture incorporates a number of the elements that have been the subject of this examination of St. Christopher’s iconography in El nuevo mundo. Conclusion In Lope de Vega’s El nuevo mundo descubierto por Cristóbal Colón, Christopher Columbus, the wise fool of act one and the leader of a mutinous ship in act two, is ultimately redeemed and figuratively canonized in the final scene of act three when he is fully lauded as another St. Christopher. Moreover, this comparison to St. Christopher provokes the audience to re-evaluate the sailors’ earlier belittling of Columbus as a failed Moses. The key to this re-evaluation is the staff that Columbus carries on stage, for a staff is an important attribute in the iconography of all three ­figures—St. Christopher, Moses, and Columbus—and it shares the sacred character of its wooden origin in the Christian arboreal cross. St. Christopher is a patron saint of mariners and, like Moses, he is famed for his protection of travelers. In the baptismal scene Columbus’s staff powerfully reappears, this time as a triumphal staff and banner emblazoned with a coat of arms. The further point can be made that by his position alongside King Ferdinand in this scene, Columbus is also being very favorably compared to this monarch, who would on stage carry a scepter, another variety of staff. Ferdinand elaborately compares Columbus to St. Christopher and lauds him for the New World he brings. Though Ferdinand’s conquest of Gra­

77 Réau, Iconografía, p. 359. 78 Rodríguez Mesa and Pérez Morera, La Laguna, p. 60. 79 Ex-votos from the Ermita de Sant Cristòfol (Vilanova i la Geltrú) in the Muséu Marítim, Barcelona. Catalogue numbers 687–95, 697–99, and 701–02.



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nada was great, the sheer magnitude of Columbus’s conquest of the New World can best be imagined by juxtaposing it with that of King Ferdinand. Noting the staffs in the hands of both Columbus and Ferdinand, the audience is also visually reminded that, within the context of world geography and world history, Columbus’s conquest of an entire New World exceeds Ferdinand’s conquest of Granada.

The Quest for Spiritual Transcendence in the Theater of Gil Vicente Manuel Delgado Morales Gil Vicente (1465–1536) must be considered one of the founders of early Spanish drama along with Juan del Encina and Lucas Fernández. With his theatrical production he contributed to the creation of the unique cultural triangle formed among Lisbon, Salamanca, and Badajoz, in conjunction with other dramatists such as Diego Sánchez de Badajoz, Bartolomé Torres Naharro, Luis de Miranda, and Micael de Carvajal. Reflecting on the importance of Gil Vicente in Peninsular drama, Horace Parker has rightly affirmed that it would be difficult, or impossible, to find a literary figure from the Iberian peninsula who would better represent Hispanic (Portuguese and Spanish) letters. . . . He has, in addition, I believe, the unique distinction of belonging almost equally to Spain, on the account of his place in the history of S­panish theater.1

Long before Parker, Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo also maintained that Gil Vicente belongs to “la grande y universal literatura hispánica, dentro de la cual son meros accidentes las divisiones políticas y aun las diferencias dialectales,”2 reminding critics that “[n]o colocándose en este punto de vista, es imposible entender a autores como Gil Vicente, cuya obra protestará eternamente contra el separatismo de una crítica infecunda.”3 In the same vein, John Lihani has also explained that Gil Vicente’s early works, especially his Auto pastoril castellano, were clearly influenced by Lucas Fernández and Juan del Encina.4 For my part, I would add that Gil Vicente’s themes and motifs are closely related not only to the theater of Juan del Encina and Lucas Fernández, but also to the broader cultural, intellectual, and religious issues of 1   Horace Parker, “Gil Vicente: A Study in Peninsular Drama,” Hispania 36 (1953): 21–25, at p. 21. 2   Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, Antología de poetas líricos castellanos desde la formación del idioma hasta nuestros días, vol. 7 (Madrid, 1898), p. 220. 3 Menéndez Pelayo, Antología, p. 219. 4 John Lihani, “Personal Elements in Gil Vicente’s Auto pastoril castellano,” Hispanic Review 37.2 (1969): 297–303.

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15th- and 16th-century Spain. In a comparative study on Gil Vicente and Juan del Encina, I have argued that the Portuguese dramatist developed a philosophical and religious discourse that was diametrically opposed to the one adopted by the Salmantine author.5 As I intend to demonstrate in this essay, Gil Vicente’s religious works are imbued with a deep sense of transcendence, a transcendence that characterizes medieval and Renaissance Neoplatonic and Christian ideas on the Soul, the Good, and the One (= God). As Ernst Cassirer has stated, “The Neo-Platonic system is dominated by the Platonic idea of transcendence, i.e., by the absolute opposition between the intelligible and the sensible.”6 Among the numerous definitions given of transcendence by philosophers and theologians, I consider Lucas Siorvanes’s to be one of the most appropriate for the present study, because this definition can help us understand the cultural, moral, and religious environment of Gil Vicente’s age, as well as his works themselves. According to Siorvanes, Neo-Platonic transcendence has at least two senses. To transcend meant to walk from one place to another (metabasis), or to rise above (hypairein). For Proclus (and Porphyry) our soul ascends through every level of being. The last step is ambiguous and poignant: the psyche wishing “to be attached to that which is ineffable and beyond all being” (synapteshai tôi arrêtôi kai pantôn epekeina tôn ontôn) “terminates its ascent in the principle of beings” (aniousa teleutêsêi tên tôn ontôn archên).7

I shall argue that this transcendence, much like that portrayed by Pedro Calderón de la Barca more than a century later in such philosophical plays as La vida es sueño, El mágico prodigioso, El príncipe constante, and Los dos amantes del cielo, is present in the theater of Gil Vicente. In the case of the Portuguese dramatist, a close reading of his religious works will demonstrate that many of his protagonists want “to be attached to that which is ineffable and beyond all being.” As I have already pointed out in the case of his Christmas plays, characters like Gil in the Auto pastoril castellano, as well as the Fraile and the Caballero in Auto de los Reyes Magos, actively

5 Manuel Delgado Morales, “Gil Vicente y Juan del Encina: cara y cruz del Renacimiento luso-castellano,” in Gil Vicente 500 anos depois, ed. Maria João Brilhante, José Camões, He­­ lena Reis Silva, and Cristina Almeida Ribeiro, vol. 2 (Lisbon, 2003), pp. 31–43. 6 Ernst Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy, trans. Mario Domandi (Chicago, 2010), p. 18. 7 Lucas Siorvanes, “Neo-Platonic Personification,” in Personification in the Greek World: From Antiquity to Byzantium, ed. Emma Stafford and Judith Herrin (Burlington, 2005), p. 94.



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seek God as the supreme good and even try to help others to find him.8 In the same manner, a significant number of the Portuguese dramatist’s works that were not written for the Christmas festivity—Auto de la Barca de la Gloria, Auto da Cananea, Auto da história de Deus, Auto da Alma, Auto da Fé, as well as the psalm Miserere—contain an array of dramatic situations whose main purpose is to show how Christians can ascend to God or draw nearer to him, or, in case they become entrapped in the things of this world, how they can return to the path that leads to salvation: to put it in Siorvanes’s words, to what is “ineffable and beyond all being.” In this regard, the theatrical challenge that Gil Vicente would have to meet in each of his religious works was to create the appropriate characters and theatrical situations that best illustrated the dangers that threatened the individual’s ascent to God or to salvation. In Auto da Alma, for example, Santo Agostinho admonishes the Christian soul that it will encounter “mui perigosos perigos . . . nesta triste carreira desta vida” (p. 72).9 Such dangers are described by the character Fé in Auto da Fé as “os perigos desta vida” (p. 156) and in Auto de la Barca de la Gloria threaten the salvation of the secular and religious powers of Gil Vicente’s age. The first and most dangerous enemy of the soul in the works of Gil Vicente is the Devil (= Diabo, Demonio, Satan, or Lucifer), described by the Angel in Historia de Deos as being extremely envious of Adam and Eve’s state of grace: Portanto, o exordio do auto presente começa tractando desta creação e como Lucifer tomou grã paixão de Deos criar mundo tam resplandecente. E assi a inveja e a sua malícia d’inveja sobeja por ver nossos padres assi nobrecidos feitos gloriosos tão esclarecidos que não pelos olhos lhe armárão peleja mas pelos ouvidos. (p. 146)

The Devil’s enmity towards men is not only manifest in Historia de Deos, but, as Manuel Calderón has explained, is featured in many of Gil ­Vicente’s religious works:

8 Manuel Delgado Morales, “Alegoría y tropología en tres autos de Navidad de Gil Vicente,” Bulletin of Spanish Studies 65 (1988): 39–48, at p. 44. 9 Citations of Gil Vicente’s works in Portuguese are taken from Obras de Gil Vicente, vol. 1, ed. Joaquim Mendes dos Remedios (Coimbra, 1907).

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manuel delgado morales Aun así, en los autos religiosos de Gil Vicente la apariencia del Diablo suele ser la del Enemigo declarado de los hombres (Breve Sumário da História de Deos), a quienes acoge en su funesta barca para leerles la cartilla o anticiparles las penas del Infierno (Barca de la Gloria), o bien la del taimado embaucador que vence, con trapacerías a las almas incautas (Auto da Feira).10

In this regard, in what is generally considered one of Gil Vicente’s best autos, Auto da Alma, the Guardian Angel warns the Soul—a feminine character in Gil Vicente in consonance with the word’s gender in the Portuguese language—against falling into the infernal snares and webs of sadness, “nos laços infernaes e nas redes de tristura” (p. 75). Since, according to the Angel, the Soul is a spiritual and incorruptible being, “alma humana formada / de nenhua cosa feita . . . de corrupçáo separada” (p. 73), i.e., with the same nature as the angels, she must produce virtuous acts while living in this world, or, as the Angel says, “celestes flores / olorosas” (p. 73). In terms of transcendence or ascent to God, the Soul must walk her path in this life, “andemos a estrada nossa” (p. 75), taking care not to turn back to worldly things, “olhae não torneis atráz” (p. 75). Nevertheless, and in spite of the Angel’s continuous warnings, the Soul falls into temptation and becomes a slave of such worldly things as the shoes, or “chapins de Valencia” (p. 77), which effectively help Gil Vicente show the Soul’s affection for vanity and pomposity. When the Devil, the Angel’s competitor who alternates with him in addressing and advising the Soul, sees her wearing these elegant shoes, he tells her that she is now as beautiful as the rose, “agora estais vós fermosa / como a rosa” (p. 77). Without a doubt, the Devil’s statement can be interpreted not only as a flattering compliment to the Soul as a woman, but also as an ironic warning of the vain and ephemeral status she has assumed. Rather than following the Angel’s advice, that she must produce “celestes flores olorosas” (p. 73), she becomes attached to worldly things and is likened to a worldly rose, the quintessential symbol of vanity according to such Baroque authors as Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Luis de Góngora, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. In my opinion, the contrast between the natural or worldly rose and the celestial flowers succinctly summarizes the opposition established by Cassirer with regard to the sensible and the intelligible worlds, an opposition that Gil Vicente thoroughly dramatizes in Auto da Alma with the series of contradictory advice the Guardian Angel and the Devil give the

10 Manuel Calderón, “Notas complementarias,” in Gil Vicente, Teatro castellano, ed. Manuel Calderón (Barcelona, 1996), p. 462.



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Soul. On the other hand, the continuous opposition of the mundane and the celestial worlds echoes the Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophy that I have already observed in Gil Vicente’s Christmas plays.11 In his attempt to explain the nature of the soul, Plato describes it as a “yoke-team of horses and their driver, all winged.”12 According to Plato, The natural faculty of the wing is to lead that which gravitates downward up into the higher region, which is the habitation of the gods; the wing is the corporeal element that has the greatest share of the divine, and which by nature tends to soar aloft and carry that which gravitates downwards into the upper region, which is the habitation of the gods. The divine is beautiful, wise, good, and all the like; and by these qualities the wingedness of the soul is most of all nourished, and brought to grow; but when fed upon evil and foulness and the opposite of good, it wastes away and perishes.13

During the Middle Ages the moral philosophy of Plato’s Phaedrus influenced Europe and the Iberian Peninsula through St. Augustine, the Pseudo-­Dionysius, the Franciscans, and Jewish philosophy, which, according to Menéndez Pelayo, was already Neoplatonic since the 11th and 12th centuries.14 Nevertheless, the 15th and 16th centuries would witness what Menéndez Pelayo has also described as Italo-Hispanic Neoplatonism, whose main figures are Marsilio Ficino, Cristoforo Landino, Pico della Mirandola, Judah Leon Abravanel (= León Hebreo), and Sebastián Fox Morcillo. Following Plato’s image of the charioteer, Marsilio Ficino distinguishes two opposing tendencies in the human soul, the expeditio and the impedi­ mentum, depending on whether these opposing tendencies raise the soul to the divine or if they make it fall into the sensorial or the material world.15 One of the most distinguished followers of Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, explains the nature of the soul in a similar way: Thou, constrained by no limits, in accordance with thine free will, in whose hand we have placed thee, shalt ordain for thyself the limits of thy nature. . . . Thou shalt have the power to degenerate into the lower forms of

11   Delgado Morales, “Gil Vicente y Juan del Encina,” pp. 31–35. 12 Plato, Phaedrus, in Selected Dialogues of Plato, ed. Hayden Pelliccia, trans. Benjamin Jowett (New York, 2000), p. 143. 13 Plato, Phaedrus, p. 144. 14 Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, Historia de las ideas estéticas en España, in Obras com­ pletas, vol. 3, 3rd ed. (Madrid, 1962), p. 10. 15 Marsilio Ficino, Commentum cum summis capitulorum, in Marsilio Ficino and the Phae­ dran Charioteer, trans. and intr. Michael J. B. Allen (Los Angeles, 1981), p. 148.

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The philosophical lucubration of the Italian humanists on the soul’s adscription to “the higher forms, which are divine” finds its counterpart in Spanish ascetics and mystics of the 16th century, such as Fray Juan de los Ángeles, Fray Luis de León, and San Juan de la Cruz. Before them, however, the protagonist of Auto pastoril castellano, Gil, shows a strong determination to escape “el torruño” or “el lugar” because he wants to withdraw from this world and to retire to the “sierras benditas” and the “abrigada.” Indeed, the shepherd Gil feels a strong urge to abandon this human world because he is convinced of its intrinsic vanity and error: Sólo quiero canticar repastando mis cabritas por estas sierras benditas. Ño me acuerdo del lugar quando cara al cielo oteo y veo tan buena cosa. Ño me parece hermosa, ñi de asseo zagalas de quantas veo. (lines 34–42)17

At the same time that the religious characters of Gil Vicente seek God as the supreme good, “Ó meu Deos, ó sumo bem” (p. 76), and, consequently, try to grow close to him, they distance themselves from the vain science of men, from the “transitoria y cansada” human nature (Auto da Alma, p. 72), from the “zagalas,” “amores de Sevilla” (Auto de los cuatro tiempos, pp. 158– 59), and, above all, from the pleasures that all of these worldly creatures can give to them. In accordance with the Christmas liturgy, the rejection of the worldly goods and the subsequent aspiration to “the higher forms, which are divine” lead the shepherds, the Magi, and Casandra to the Child born in Bethlehem. In the non-Christmas plays, however, the focus of this aspiration is simply Christ and, above all, the crucified Christ. It must be noticed, however, that these characters’ aspirations to the divine do not correspond to an automatic impulse of their souls. On the contrary, their quest for transcendence and for spiritual conversion is the result of a long process 16 Pico della Mirandola, On the Dignity of Man, trans. Elizabeth Livermore Forbes, in The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, ed. Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and John Herman Randall (Chicago, 1948), p. 225. 17 Citations of Vicente’s works in Spanish are taken from Gil Vicente, Teatro castellano, ed. Manuel Calderón (Barcelona, 1996).



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of reflection, meditation, and prayer, which in my opinion are intimately related to the Christian concept of asceticism, or askesis, a Greek term that according to the Catholic Encyclopedia means “exercise” or “training.”18 As we will see, this quest for transcendence is intimately related to the spiritual movements that took place in the Iberian Peninsula during the 16th century. In many instances, the spiritual exercise carried out by Gil Vicente’s religious characters is accompanied by the constant remembrance of death and by the moral conviction that earthly things and goods are intrinsically vain and transitory. As we have already seen in the case of Auto da Gloria, the Angel exhorts the Soul to set aside the “chapins” of Valencia because it would jeopardize her salvation for Death to surprise her while she is wearing those shoes, “Deixai esses chapins ora . . . nos vos tome a morte agora” (pp. 267–70). As can also be observed in works like Historia de Deos and the trilogy of Barcas, Death is a dramatic character who constantly reminds men of their mortal and sinful condition as a consequence of Adam’s fall. In accordance with the medieval tradition, Death also warns the noble and powerful men that when they die they will lose their worldly belongings, and that they will be judged according to their good deeds and their detachment from worldly possessions. In Auto de la Barca de la Gloria, for example, when the Duke dies and encounters the Devil, he talks to his own body, reminding it of its past beauty and how the body always ignored the Duke’s warnings on the certainty of death: Tu hechura, que llamavan hermosura y tú misma la adoravas, con su color y blancura, siempre vi tu sepultura y nunca crédito me davas. (pp. 159–64)

In my opinion, the continuous presence of death in Auto de la Barca de la Gloria, together with the idea of the vanity of earthly things—pleasure, power, the Emperor’s cruel victories over his enemies, the accumulation of gold, precious stones, brocades, silks, necklaces, and earrings—evinces the melancholic discourse of many of Gil Vicente’s religious characters. Taking into consideration the juxtaposition of characters like Death and the Devil with such noble people as the Count, the Duke, the King, and the Emperor, we can say that Auto de la Barca de la Gloria (1619) is to theater what Albrecht’s Dürer’s Knight, Death and the Devil (1513) is to 18 Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/.

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painting. Among other things, both works contain a powerful message on the brevity of life. Moreover, with his resort to the lessons of the Office of the Dead, or the Officium Defunctorum, and to the Stations of the Cross in Auto da Alma, Gil Vicente is clearly combining the images of death and of the cross, the two elements that some years later Albrecht Dürer will also introduce in his pictures of Saint Jerome. As is well known, these two elements will also be present in the Spanish and Italian Baroque paintings of Saint Jerome and his feminine counterpart, the repentant Mary Magdalene. With the skull and the cross accompanying them, these two saints perfectly embody the sentiment of vanity and religious melancholy that leads human souls to reflect and meditate on eternity, at the same time that they strive to draw closer to God. Thanks to the acclaimed work of Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy, we can now better understand the artistic legacy of Albrecht Dürer, especially in the realm of the vanity pictures of 16th- and 17th-century Europe. However, very little attention has been paid to the corresponding literature of the Iberian Peninsula and, more specifically, to Gil Vicente’s works that show a strong resemblance to the iconographic art of the German painter and his Southern European followers. In their analysis of the similarities and differences between Dürer’s Melancolia I and Domenico Feti’s Melancholy, or Meditation, the aforementioned Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl have concluded that The skull with its “memento mori” now gives the aimless grief of Dürer’s Melancholy a definite object, and what had been a vague and hardly explicit doubt as to whether human thought and activity has any meaning when faced with eternity, is now condensed into a plain question, which had to be answered by a decisive and unambiguous “No”. Melancholy now resembles the type of the repentant Magdalene. For Aristotle, the value of the melancholy disposition had been its capacity for great creative achievements in all possible fields; the blessing which the Middle Ages had seen in the “melancholy disease” had been a moral good rather than a practical one, in that it shielded one from worldly temptation. In the Renaissance, and with Dürer in particular, consciousness of human creative power became merged for the first time with a longing for religious fulfillment.19

In my opinion, this long quotation is fully applicable to Gil Vicente’s works in which the melancholic disposition is also present. In the Auto pastoral castellano, for example, this disposition leads the shepherd Gil to argue

19 Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy (New York, 1964), pp. 389–90.



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that he wants to devote his time to reflecting on the transitory nature of earthly goods and the everlasting supreme good to be found in solitude: Andando solo, magino que la soldada que gano se me pierde de la mano, soncas, en cualquier camino. Nesta soledad m’enseño que el ganado con que ando ño sabré cómo ni quándo, según sueño quiçá será d’otro dueño. (lines 43–51)

The withdrawal from this world, the pursuit of the supreme good, as well as the contemplation of divine truths and the Angel’s continuous exhortations for the Soul to set aside worldly goods, reveal a consciousness whose main objective is the pursuit of self-transcendence. This pursuit is at its peak in the Auto da Cananea and in the psalm Miserere, where the Canaanite woman and the repentant self fervently seek God’s mercy and salvation. In the Auto da Cananea in particular, Gil Vicente develops a dramatic discourse on prayer and meditation that portrays these activities as the spiritual force enabling men to seek the supreme good. This discourse reveals our dramatist’s affinity with the religious ideas that circulated throughout Europe and the Iberian Peninsula during the 16th century. Jesus’ recommendations to his disciples in Auto da Cananea on how they should pray, as well as his paraphrasing of the Pater Noster, constitute a powerful reminder of Girolamo Savonarola’s Sermone dell’oratione and Espositione sul Pater Noster, Erasmus’s Modus orandi and his commentaries on the Pater Noster, as well as of Fray Luis de Granada’s Libro de la oración. One of Jesus’ most remarkable recommendations is the one that emphasizes that the individual who prays must be “on fire” and his/ her “spirit transcended into the Sacred Divinity.” In addition to insisting that Christians must set aside all worldly things if they want to grow close to God, Auto de Cananea shows how the Portuguese author transcends Neoplatonic ideals with Christian spirituality: CHRISTO: Mas bento he o varão Que reza com coração E com alma e com sentido: Que o rezar não he ouvido, Nem he nada, Sem alma estar inflamada, E o spirito transcendido Na divindade sagrada. (p. 193)

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For reasons of space, I shall not fully analyze the possible similarities between Gil Vicente’s ideas on prayer and those of Erasmus and Savo­ narola, a subject that has been partly studied by Marcel Bataillon in an essay where he pointed out the influence of Savonarola on Gil Vicente’s Miserere.20 It is important to note, however, that most of the qualities assigned by Gil Vicente to the prayer of those who seek God’s mercy and salvation—rejection of worldly things, humility, repentance with “gemente tensão,” purity of the soul (Auto da Cananea, pp. 193–94), consciousness of one’s misery and insignificance (pp. 200–01), as well as the awareness of one’s incapacity to receive divine grace by deeds—are closely related to the ideas of such Erasmists as Juan de Valdés, Constantino Ponce de la Fuente, and, above all, Francisco de Osuna, whose spirituality has been described by Marcel Bataillon as recogimiento. Without a doubt, this rec­ ogimiento, which, according to Marcel Bataillon, flourished among the reformed Franciscans of Castile since Cardinal Cisneros,21 is also present in many of the religious works considered in this essay. As we have seen in Gil Vicente’s plays, this recogimiento is closely related to the melancholic condition of some of Gil Vicente’s characters who seek spiritual transcendence, leading them to a deep feeling of repentance, to withdrawal from this world, and, above all, to meditation and prayer. Ironically, however, this recogimiento, as well as all of its accompanying components, would become suspicious for the Portuguese Inquisition, which censored many of Gil Vicente’s works and put them in the Index librorum prohibitorum or Index of Forbidden Books. As I have tried to demonstrate, the theatrical endeavor of Gil Vicente represents a long journey in search of spiritual transcendence, a journey that started with his Christmas plays and ended with the performance of the Auto da Cananea in 1534, two years before the Inquisition was formally established in Portugal. His recourse to Neoplatonic ideals and to the most prevalent, innovative, and controversial ideas on prayer and spiritual transcendence portrays him as an outstanding figure of the Iberian Renaissance, fully engaged in the cultural, artistic, and religious climate of his time. Therefore, I fully agree with Joaquim de Carvalho that Gil Vicente possessed a significant theological and humanist preparation, as well as with Américo da Costa Ramalho, Stephen Reckert, and Eugenio 20 Marcel Bataillon, “Une source de Gil Vicente et de Montemayor: la méditation de Savonarole sur le ‘Miserere,’ ” Bulletin des études portugaises 3 (1939): 1–16. 21   Marcel Bataillon, Erasmo y España: estudios sobre la historia espiritual del siglo XVI, trans. Antonio Alatorre (Mexico, 1966), p. 167.



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Asensio, who have detected classical and humanist sources in his theater.22 Based on the spiritual ideas contained in his religious works, I also concur with Alonso Zamora Vicente and Stanislav Zimic, who have seen a strong resemblance between the protagonist of Comedia del Viudo and the internal Christianity defended by the Erasmists.23 Taking into consideration the spiritual discourse of Gil Vicente, as well as his dramatic and poetic craftsmanship, we can say that he fully embodies Marsilio Ficino’s and Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s vision of the melancholic genius of the Renaissance. Following the Aristotelian idea that “all those who have become eminent in philosophy or politics or poetry or the arts are clearly of an atrabilious temperament,”24 Agrippa concludes that when the mind of the melancholic genius “is wholly elevated into the understanding, then it becomes a receptacle of sublime spirits, and learns of them the secrets of divine things, such as the Law of God, the orders of Angels, and such things as belong to the knowledge of things eternal and salvation of souls.”25 As László F. Földényi has also pointed out with regard to Agrippa’s and Ficino’s melancholic genius, the religious craftsmanship of Gil Vicente “conduce hacia arriba . . . hacia la autonomía absoluta.”26 Without a doubt, the quintessential manifestation of this movement or impulse in Gil Vicente’s works is prayer, be it in the form of villancicos, the Stations of the Cross, the psalms, the Office of the Dead, or the unique poetic prayer he created in many of his works. To my knowledge, no other dramatist, Spanish or Portuguese, has ever placed prayer into theatrical form with such a “transcended spirit” as Gil Vicente.

22 See Joaquim de Carvalho, Os sermões de Gil Vicente e a Arte de pregar (Lisbon, 1948); Américo da Costa Ramalho, Estudos sobre a época do Renascimento (Coimbra, 1969); Stephen Reckert, Gil Vicente: espíritu y letra (Madrid, 1977); and Eugenio Asensio, “Gil Vicente y su deuda con el humanismo: Luciano, Erasmo, Beroaldo,” in Estudos portugueses: ho­­ menagem a Luciana Stegagno Picchio (Lisbon, 1991), pp. 278–99. 23 See Gil Vicente, Comedia del Viudo, ed. Alonso Zamora Vicente (Lisbon, 1962), pp. 11–16; and Stanislav Zimic, “Estudios sobre el teatro de Gil Vicente (Obras de tema amoroso),” Boletín de la Biblioteca Menéndez Pelayo 58 (1982): 5–66. 24 Aristotle, Problemata, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes, trans. E. S. Forster, vol. 7 (Oxford, 1927), p. 953. 25 Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, trans. J. F., book 1, part 1 (London, 1651), chap. 60, digital edition by Joseph H. Peterson, http://www.­ esotericarchives.com/agrippa/agrippa1.htm. 26 László F. Földényi, Melancolía, trans. Adan Kovacsis (Barcelona, 1996), pp. 121–22.

Lope de Vega and The Martyrs of Japan  1 Christina H. Lee Lope de Vega’s Los mártires de Japón (The Martyrs of Japan), c. 1621, is the only extant comedia from the Spanish Golden Age that dramatizes the presence of Spanish missionaries during what is known today as the Japanese “Christian Century” (1549–1639).2 This chapter introduces the reader to this little-known play, its major themes, and the historical context from which it sprouts. First, it briefly surveys the state of Japanese-Spanish relations at the turn of the 16th century as well as the circumstances under which Lope was commissioned to write the play. It then provides a critical synopsis of the comedia, focusing on Lope’s imaginative merging of two disparate historical events: the martyrdom of the Dominican Friar Alonso Fernández de Navarrete (1571–1617) and the forced exile of Toyotomi Hideyori (1593–1615). The last section analyzes the performative aspects of the play, concentrating on the visual and linguistic representations of Japanese identity. I. Context On 30 January 1615, the Japanese ambassador Rokuemon Hasekura, dressed in full samurai regalia, knelt down in front of Philip III and hailed him as “el sol que alumbra la mayor parte del mundo” (the sun that illuminates most of the world).3 According to his translator, the Franciscan Luis Sotelo, Hasekura had come to Spain from a land “que caresce de la luz del cielo” (which lacked the light of heaven).4 More specifically, he had come from the kingdom of Boxu (currently, Sendai) in Japan “buscando la luz,

1   This chapter is a translated and shortened adaptation of the “Introducción” to my edition of Los mártires de Japón (Newark, 2006), pp. 9–44. I thank Alani Hicks-Bartlett for her assistance with the translation. 2 We have no evidence that the comedia was published during the early modern period. The manuscript I found in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid—probably the property of an autor—was signed and dated Lisbon, 1637. For details on the dating of the comedia see my “Introducción” to Los mártires de Japón, pp. 35–38. 3 Institute of Historical Compilation, Dai Nippon Shiryo, 12 vols. (Tokyo, 1909), 12:142. 4 Ibid.

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después de auer passado muchos trauajos, encontrando con ella se allegra y recozija” (after many hardships, and happy and joyful to have found the light being sought).5 A few weeks after his first appearance at court, the samurai was baptized as Philip, after the name of the Spanish Monarch, in the chapel of the Descalzas Reales in the presence of the king himself and the queen. His godparents were the Duke of Lerma and the Countess of Barajas. This ceremony was memorialized in the history of the Spanish church as a miraculous spectacle in which, according to witnesses, “parecia la yglesia un Paraíso” (the church was turned into paradise).6 Madrileñan observers from all walks of life must have been greatly moved by the idea that nobility from the Far East converted to Catholicism and came to Spain in order to pay homage to their king.7 The relationship between Spain and Japan began in 1549 with the founding of the Society of Jesus in Kyushu by Francisco Xavier (Francisco de Jasso y Azpilicueta, 1506–52), a native of the kingdom of Navarre.8 Although the Jesuits attempted to maintain their sovereignty over the missions and prevent the entry of the mendicant orders, they were not successful.9 A papal brief issued in 1585 gave monopoly of the region to the Jesuits, but it did not stop the Friars Minor from sending their own missions to Japan. By the time Paul V passed a brief in 1608 officially allowing Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians to enter Japan, the mendicants had already accomplished the conversion of thousands of Japanese,

5 Ibid. 6 Michael Mathes, ed., Californiana: documentos para la historia comercial de California 1583–1632, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1965), 1:1046. For Sotelo’s political motivations, see Ángel Núñez Ortega, Noticia histórica de las relaciones políticas y comerciales entre México y el Japón, durante el siglo XVII (Mexico City, 1923), p. 94. 7 Hasekura had been sent by the feudal lord (daimyo) of Boxu (present-day Sendai), Masamune Date. Date, who was not a Christian, was interested in establishing trade relations with New Mexico and, possibly, Seville. Historian Charles Boxer’s assessment was: “The aims and objects of this party are best summed up by the Japanese historian, Tokutomi, who characterized it as a combination of those who wished to use the Kingdom of Heaven for Trade, and those who wished to use trade for the Kingdom of Heaven” (The Christian Century [Berkeley, 1951], p. 314). 8 Hasekura was the second legate from Japan to visit Spain. The first embassy, composed of four Japanese noble adolescents, was sent by the Jesuit Visitor Alessandro Valignano in 1582 and arrived in Spain in 1584 (see Christina H. Lee, “The Perception of the Japanese in Early Modern Spain: Not Quite ‘The Best People Yet Discovered,’ ” eHumanista: Journal of Iberian Studies 11 [2008]: 345–80). 9 The Dominican, Augustinian, and Franciscan orders were the only mendicant orders that sent missionaries to Japan.



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especially in the region of Nagasaki.10 The Japanese government did not intervene in the activities of the missions for the first 20 years as long as they did not get involved in subversive activities. Beginning in 1614, however, it forbade all Christian activities for fear that the believers would promote political disturbances in the Japanese empire, and the missionaries moved their activities underground.11 Despite the opposition of the Japanese government, the evangelization of the Japanese moved forth at a quicker speed than that of the Americas. According to missionaries, the Japanese converts were willing to die for their newly-found faith with the fervor of the early Christians of the Roman church. There are indications that Japanese Christians were indeed inclined toward embracing martyrdom. Some historians indicate that by the year 1630, there were as many as 760 thousand Japanese converts out of a population of 12 million.12 There is also evidence that between 1549 and 1639, the period known as Japan’s “Christian century,”13 more than 3,000 Japanese perished while defending Catholicism.14 The chronicles and accounts from Japan contained sensationalistic and, probably, exaggerated descriptions of Spanish friars pleading with the Japanese Christians to moderate their penitential practices and their hasty desire to die as martyrs.15 All of the accounts sent by the missionaries in Japan expressed a sense of urgent need for government and religious leaders in Spain to become aware of the miracles of faith that were occurring in those lands. Both friars and Jesuits also requested that more Spanish missionaries—from their respective orders—be sent to Japan. The numerous superlative accounts sparked a great deal of enthusiasm on the part of religious circles, though they did not captivate the attention of secular Spaniards.

10 For further discussion about the disputes between the Jesuits and the mendicants see John Nelson, “Myths, Missions, and Mistrust: The Fate of Christianity in 16th and 17th Century Japan,” History and Anthropology 13.2 (2002): 93–111. 11   Many edicts against Christianity were put forth between 1587 and 1614, but, with the exception of a few isolated instances, they were not implemented. 12 Miyazaki Kentaro, “Roman Catholic Mission in Pre-Modern Japan,” Handbook of Christianity in Japan, ed. Mark R. Mullins (Boston, 2003), pp. 1–18. 13 “The Christian Century” could be defined as starting in 1549, when the first mission was founded, and ending in 1639, which was when the Japanese government passed and implemented an edict that prohibited any kind of Japanese connection with Catholics. 14 Andrew C. Ross, A Vision Betrayed: The Jesuits in Japan and China 1542–1742 (Cambridge, 1994), p. 87. 15 Louis Delplace, “Japanese Martyrs,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, ed. Remy Lafort (New York, 1913–22).

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It was the hope of Pedro Fernández de Navarrete, a royal chaplain for Philip III, that the production of a comedia about the success of the mendicant missions in Japan would inform the general public about the presence of Spanish friars in the Far East, and more specifically, commemorate the martyrdom of his own brother, the Dominican Alonso Navarrete, in Nagasaki in June of 1617.16 In a letter dated 12 March 1618, Friar Francisco Morales gave news to Fernández Navarrete of the “glorious” death of his brother.17 Along with his letter, Morales included a drop of the martyr’s blood, the sword the Japanese authorities presumably used to decapitate him, a letter from the deceased, and an account he authored with specific details regarding Alonso Navarrete’s martyrdom. Morales made the suggestion to Fernández de Navarrete that a dramatic rendition be made of the information contained in his correspondence about his brother’s death.18 Morales also told Fernández de Navarrete that the dramatization of his brother’s martyrdom would help gain political support and financial assistance from the crown for the Dominican missions in Japan. Lope de Vega, the most successful playwright of the time, was the obvious choice for Fernández de Navarrete. Lope had strong ties with the Dominican missionaries in Japan: a few years earlier, he had written the historical account The Triumph of Faith in the Kingdoms of Japan (El triunfo de la fe en los reinos del Japón) (1618) about the Japanese converts who had been martyred between 1614 and 1615.19 Furthermore, Lope must have found the subject compelling for its performative potential, as he was living in Madrid at the time Hasekura had visited and had probably witnessed, or at least heard of, Hasekura’s spectacular parade to the court.

16 In his Conservación de monarquías (Madrid, 1626), Fernández de Navarrete refers to his brother as “el proto-mártir” of the order of Saint Domingo (Conservación de monarquías y discursos políticos, ed. Michael Gordon [Madrid, 1982], p. 347). 17 Alonso Navarrete had been decapitated along with the Augustinian Hernando de San José Ayala and a Japanese man named León (Diego Francisco Aduarte, Historia de la provincia del Santo Rosario de la orden de predicadores en Filipinas, Japón y China, 2 vols. [Madrid, 1963], 2:87–91). On 20 March, the Friar Alonso de Mena (cousin of the Navarrete brothers) also wrote a letter to his mother in which he recounts the martyrdom (Leon Pagès, Histoire de la religion chrétienne au Japon depuis 1598 jusqu’à 1651, 2 vols. [Paris, 1869–70], 2:188). 18 Pagès, 2:189–90. 19 In The Triumph of Faith, Lope makes it evident that Hasekura’s visit to the King had left an impression on Madrid. He says about Japan: “tan conocido de nosotros, como ignorado antiguamente” y añade “por los que al Rey Catholico vinieron tan deseosos de la Fe . . . en el año de 1615” (El triunfo de la fee en los reinos del Japón, ed. J. S. Cummins [London, 1965], p. 18).



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Lope wrote Martyrs with the primary objective of offering an appealing dramatization of Alonso Navarrete’s martyrdom for the general public. In order to make the comedia more compelling to secular audiences, Lope introduced a secondary argument. He imagined a narrative in which Navarrete had been martyred right after converting the heir to the Japanese throne, the character Tayco, to Christianity.20 The biographical details of Lope’s Tayco were based partly on the historical figure of Toyotomi Hideyori, who never met Navarrete and died two years earlier than the friar. Hideyori was the son of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–98), the imperial rector who was able to unify the Japanese kingdoms that were under his control after ten years of civil war. Upon his death, Hideyoshi left his six-year-old son and heir, Toyotomi Hideyori, under the tutelage of five regents. One of the five regents was Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543–1616). Ieyasu, who in Martyrs is represented in the character of the Emperor Daiso Sama, overthrew the other regents in 1600 and took absolute control of power. Young Hideyori was forced into exile with his mother at the fort of Osaka.21 In his stronghold in Osaka, Hideyori was protected by a group of vassals and military chiefs who remained loyal to him and attempted to mobilize a faction that could overthrow Ieyasu. The mendicant friars in Japan aligned themselves with Hideyori’s band. Ieyasu was becoming increasingly hostile toward the missionaries and, though there is little evidence that Hideyori was any more supportive of Christianity, the missionaries hoped that any regime change would be more favorable to their cause.22 But all hopes for the friars vanished when Ieyasu, fearing a siege from Hideyori’s band, attacked and seized the fort in Osaka. Hide­ yori and his mother chose suicide over the humiliation of being captured by Ieyasu.23 Hideyori left behind a small child, whom Ieyasu executed merely for the purpose of political symbolism. The fall of the castle of

20 Tayco is probably a hispanization for Taiko, which means “imperial rector” in Japanese. 21   Ángel Núñez Ortega, Noticia histórica de las relaciones políticas y comerciales entre México y el Japón, durante el siglo XVII (Mexico City, 1923), pp. 47–48. 22 Aduarte, 2:61. Would the missionaries have forgotten that it had been Hideyori’s father (Hideyoshi) who had passed the first edict regarding the expulsion of the missionaries in 1587, and subsequently ordered the sacrifice of the famous 26 martyrs of San Felipe? 23 The apparent act of suicide has many incompatible interpretations. Some historians say that he killed himself voluntarily, while others sustain that it occurred because of Ieyasu’s coercion (see Kenneth G. Henshall, A History of Japan From Stone Age to Superpower [Hampshire, 1999]).

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Osaka marks the official beginning of the Tokugawa dynasty that would remain in power until 1868.24 Spanish travelers appear to have been fascinated with the narrative of the imprisonment of the Japanese “prince” in the castle. The ambassador of New Spain, Sebastián Vizcaíno, wrote in a letter upon his return from Japan: “En la Usaca está el hijo de Taicosama . . . . Lo tienen ençerrado en la fortaleza, que es una de las mejores del imperio; no consiente que nadie le able, porque no le digan cossa de lo que tienen usurpado, y no aspire a hazer guerra al emperador” (The son of Taicosama is in Usaca . . . . They have him imprisoned in the fort, which is one of the best of the empire; they do not allow anyone to speak to him, so that no one tells him anything about what they have plotted against him, and so that he does not try to wage war on the emperor).25 Given that Hideyori’s imprisonment was reiterated time and time again in the numerous missionary accounts that arrived from Japan, and given that even Lope himself made mention of the event in his The Triumph of Faith, we know that it was a subject which had the potential to appeal to the general Spanish public. The martyrdom of Navarrete is dramatized from within this political context. Lope is likely to have chosen to develop the motif of the debased and imprisoned prince within the paradigm of the missions of Japan, because it was a theme with which the Spanish public was already familiar. Although the historical Hideyori was already deceased before Navarrete arrived in Nagasaki, secular Spanish audiences would not have noticed the lapse.26 Lope was able to exploit the motif of the overthrown prince, who is unaware of his identity and has been debased and alienated from power, for the purpose of entertainment.27 He was able to utilize conventional elements of the comedia de capa y espada (physical fights, conflicts arising out of misunderstandings, histrionic humor, etc.) while fulfilling the expectations of hagiographical plays (miracles, idealized representa24 Mary Elizabeth Berry, Hideyoshi (Cambridge, 1982), p. 237. 25 Quoted in Juan Gil’s Hidalgos y samurais: España y Japón en los siglos XVI y XVII (Madrid, 1991), p. 373. 26 As Frida Weber de Kurlat reminds us, one of the “associated sequences” that Lope established in the drama was that of the noble son who is brought up in a state of semisavagery, and who needs to recuperate the noble status to which he is heir (Frida Weber de Kurlat, “La formación de la comedia: ‘Lope-Lope’ y ‘Lope-Prelope,’ ” in Historia y crítica de la literatura española al cuidado de Francisco Rico, ed. Bruce Wardropper, 3 vols. [Barcelona, 1983], 3:329–36, at p. 335). 27 Calderón de la Barca’s La vida es sueño (1636) most famously developed this motif. There is no evidence that Calderón was aware of Lope’s Martyrs.



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tions of the saintly protagonist, Christian teachings, etc.). The setting in the Far East, furthermore, provided a pretext to style the characters’ physical appearance in eye-catching garb. II. Critical Synopsis of the Comedia The first act begins with the King of Siguén (or simply Siguén) confronting the Emperor (Daiso Sama) about the illicit means by which he usurped imperial power from Tayco. According to Siguén, Tayco was only six years old when his father, the former Emperor, died and left him under the tutelage of Daiso Sama. Instead of protecting Tayco, Daiso Sama had imprisoned him in a castle and had taken the throne of Japan for himself. Fifteen years have passed, and Tayco is believed to live in a “barbarian” state, unaware of his real identity. Tayco’s knowledge of the outside world is fully filtered through his guardian at the castle, Alcalde Lepolemo. After being challenged by Siguén, the Emperor begins to fear that Siguén might gather forces on behalf of Tayco and overthrow his government. In order to gauge the potential of an uprising headed by Tayco, the Emperor decides to visit the latter for the first time since his exile. Before the meeting, the Alcalde informs the Emperor that Tayco’s condition is closer to that of a beast than a human being:  No ha visto en su vida al Sol, ni sabe si hay noche o día, ni cómo su luz envía Con su dorado arrebol.  Nunca ha visto de la tierra los ejércitos de flores, Que a las fuentes con amores Publican gustosa guerra.  Nunca ha visto de la luna, señor, la inconstante cara, ni discurre ni repara en admiración ninguna.  Y porque llegues a ver lo bárbaro que ha vivido, en su vida ha conocido ni sabe lo que es mujer.  Que sólo en aquesto fundo su notable imperfección, Que sus ignorancias son las cuatro partes del mundo. (lines 285–309)

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When Tayco encounters the Emperor, he appears in a primitive state, dressed in animal skins. He is also hardly coherent, as all he speaks about is his fixation on desiring to touch the sun with his hand. After seeing Tayco, the Emperor realizes that if his subjects see his insanity, they will be less likely to rebel against his rule. Once the Emperor leaves the castle, however, it is revealed that Tayco had only been pretending to be mad and that he had done so at the behest of the Alcalde. It turns out that the Alcalde had been plotting with Siguén and other opponents in a campaign to overthrow the Emperor and restore Tayco to the throne without the latter’s knowledge of it. After Tayco is freed, the Alcalde reveals to him that he is the legitimate heir to the throne. Tayco receives the information humbly, and under the guidance of Alcalde, begins to train himself in the art of being a good emperor. Back at the Emperor’s court, the King of Bomura (or simply Bomura), a Christian renegade, explains to the Emperor that the Spanish friars are those culpable for the rebelliousness of the King of Siguén, and that they are working together in an attempt to overthrow him: Estos, al rey de Siguén y a todos los otros dicen: que eres tirano soberbio, y que injustamente asistes por señor de aqueste Imperio; que del trono te derriben, Pues no puedes poseerle mientras Tayco Soma vive. Son, señor, estos cristianos, en su condición terribles; soberbios, locos y altivos, y que fingiéndose humildes, solicitan tus vasallos con apariencias visibles, hasta que dejan su ley y la de Cristo reciben. (lines 151–66)

The Emperor responds by decreeing an edict that forbids Christians from staying on his land. Bomura informs Friar Navarrete that because of the new edict, he needs to leave Japan. Navarrete decides to leave, but before he does so he promises to return with Friars Francisco and Agustín disguised as Japanese men. Before leaving Japan, Navarrete gives a heartfelt goodbye to a Christian Japanese boy named Tomás, who remains inconsolable at the prospect of his departure. Tomás is the son of the widow and poor huntress, Quildora. When she sees the sadness that has come



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over her son, Quildora tries to console him, but Tomás replies that his unhappiness and misfortune are due to the fact that she is not a Christian. Unable to withstand her son’s sadness, Quildora then promises him that she will become a Christian, but only under a condition that she believes will never occur. She tells him that she will convert to Christianity if she ever becomes Empress of Japan: Cuando iguale mi poder al sol, que es padre del día.  Cuando yo emperatriz sea de este Imperio, siendo ahora una humilde cazadora. (lines 836–40)

Soon after, Tayco finds Quildora in a bucolic meadow, singing with some of her comrades. It is the first time he has ever seen women, and he refers to them as “beautiful animals.” Tayco immediately falls in love with Quildora and she herself also feels attracted to him, despite the fact that his appearance and behavior make him seem “ignorant” and “savage.” At the opening of the second act, the Alcalde—to whom Tayco refers as “father”—imparts advice to Tayco on how to gain political support from the people of Japan. He suggests that he should be, above all, modest in his actions. Tayco, however, seems to have lost interest in becoming emperor, and is rather distracted by his thoughts of Quildora. Incognizant of what it means to be in love, Tayco describes his feelings as being “de pena y alegría . . . vida y muerte” (of sorrow and happiness . . . life and death) (lines 1056–57). When the King of Siguén realizes that Tayco is enamored of Quildora, he tells Tayco that it is dangerous for him to fall in love. Too many kingdoms, Siguén says, have been ruined because men cannot control their passion for women (“amor / muchos reinos ha deshecho” [love has ruined many kingdoms] [line 1872]). As Tayco, the Alcalde, and Siguén are conversing, Quildora and her friend Nérea eavesdrop on their conversation and cannot understand why Siguén—a feudal king—is so reverent towards Tayco. They conclude that Siguén must have been jesting with him. In the following scene, Tayco sees the Emperor in an attempt to seduce Quildora and becomes so consumed by his emotions that he completely loses self-control and interrupts their conversation. As a result, the Emperor begins to become suspicious of Tayco’s motives and reasons that if he can feel jealousy, he cannot be as ignorant and primitive as he originally seemed:

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christina h. lee [. . .] que este simple tiene amor.  Siendo de celos capaz, no es simple, de donde infiero Que en estos reinos espero perturbación de la paz. (lines 1361–65)

The Emperor, fearful once more of an uprising, appoints Mangazil—the gracioso—as Tayco’s new guard. But Tayco is able to manipulate the simpleminded Mangazil and escape. In the next scene, the audience sees Navarrete and his two Spanish companions reenter Japan dressed as Japanese. Navarrete finds himself in the meadow when he catches sight of Quildora fleeing from the Emperor, who has the intention of sexually assaulting her. Navarrete suddenly acquires supernatural physical strength and is able to stop the Emperor from taking Quildora. The Emperor, confused about the friar’s sudden apparition and supernatural powers, retreats. Navarrete then explains to Quildora that he was able to overcome the Emperor because “el Dios de los españoles” (the God of the Spaniards) empowered him miraculously. Taking the opportunity to preach the Gospel, Navarrete explains to Quildora that this is the God who “en una cruz se puso / para dar vida a los hombres” (put himself upon a cross in order to give men life) (lines 1679, 1682–83). As Navarrete is speaking to Quildora, Tayco appears on stage and makes the assumption that Navarrete is the Emperor’s go-between. Upon overhearing Navarrete say to Quildora, “[s]i discurso / tienes de razón, Quildora / ama a este señor” (if in fact / you have reason, Quildora / love this man) (lines 1706–08), he becomes enraged. As Navarrete leaves the stage, a furious Tayco grabs the picture from Quildora and pins it to a tree with the point of his dagger. Quildora realizes that Tayco has misinterpreted Navarrete’s words and tries to explain that the picture he has just stabbed is not the Emperor’s but that of “el Dios de los cristianos” (the God of the Christians) (linev. 1773). As Quildora is speaking, Tayco sees that the picture he had staked to the tree is bleeding. Stupefied by the miracle, Tayco makes a promise to the “man” he sees in the picture that he will become a Christian, but that he will do so only if Christ helps him recover the Japanese throne. In the next scene, Siguén then arrives to show his devotion to Tayco and to inform him that they have gained a sizeable number of followers. The plot to overthrow the Emperor appears to be feasible. Quildora, who is eavesdropping again, overhears the conversation and becomes aware of Tayco’s real identity. The act concludes with a promise by Tayco and Quildora to love each other faithfully under any circumstance.



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In the third act, Bomura informs the Emperor that Tayco has been feigning idiocy in order to cover up his participation in the plot to depose him from the throne. A soldier comes forth, leading Friar Francisco in chains. Francisco informs the Emperor that Navarrete is the prodigious man who predicted that he would abuse Quildora. Francisco recounts a brief synopsis of the life and works of Friar Navarrete. The Emperor, as he becomes aware of the power that Navarrete receives in the name of Christ, decides that it is absolutely necessary to destroy him, and along with him, all other Christians. He confiscates all of the Christians’ pictures and rosaries and smashes them all in a large trap door. Suddenly Navarrete appears on the scene and throws himself into the bonfire; minutes later, he moves away from the fire—“the oven of Babylon”—carrying all of the pictures and rosaries intact (line 2191). When the Emperor’s soldiers try to capture Navarrete, Tayco intercedes to defend the friar. Although Navarrete escapes, Tayco is captured by the Emperor’s soldiers and placed in chains. With hopes of freeing Tayco, Quildora approaches the Emperor and tells him that—as an expression of her loyalty—she will kill Tayco on his behalf. The Emperor is relieved to see that Quildora is on his side and agrees. He then leaves Quildora alone with Tayco, so that she can shoot him with her bow and arrow. Quildora frees Tayco, but Tayco is still not convinced that she is not a pawn of the Emperor. Feeling hurt and betrayed, Tayco leaves Quildora as she is declaring her love to him. In the next scene, Quildora appears at the top of a tall mountain, at the verge of committing suicide by throwing herself down from the cliff. Tayco happens to catch her at this every moment and confesses his love for her. In the meantime, the Emperor has managed to arrest the Friars Navarrete and Francisco, as well as young Tomás. Lope introduces the next scene with a very precise stage direction: “aparece entre peñas Tomás crucificado; a los pies, Navarrete con la cabeza en las manos y un hacha que la parte; el franciscano al lado derecho de la cruz con una flecha en el pecho, y el fraile agustino al lado, atravesado con lanza” (a suffering Tomás is portrayed on the cross; at his feet is Navarrete, holding in his hands his head, which is cut through with an ax; the Franciscan who stands to the right of the cross has an arrow in his chest, and the Augustinian Friar to the side is pierced through by a spear). This scene of martyrdom is interrupted by the armed revolt of the men and women, who, led by the Alcalde and Quildora, yell: “¡Muera este tirano, muera! / ¡Viva Tayco! ¡Viva y reine!” (Die tyrant, die! Long live Tayco! Live long and rule!) (lines 2687–88). Tayco confronts the Emperor and throws him over a cliff. Before dying,

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the Emperor consoles himself by thinking that at least Friar Navarrete has not been able to see him dishonored. It is here where Navarrete puts into effect his last miraculous act. Not quite dead, Navarrete responds to the Emperor, letting him know that he has actually been able to witness his humiliation and demise. In the same scene, Tayco notices the sadness that Quildora feels when she sees her son crucified and tries to console her:    Si sientes La muerte de un hijo tuyo, Quildora, a un esposo tienes. Dame tu mano. Quildora:    Seré Tu obediente esclava siempre. (lines 2720–24)

But Tomás is not yet dead. From the cross, he is able to speak directly to his mother to remind her that she had promised to convert to Christianity if she became empress one day. Quildora reveals the promise that she had made to Tayco, and he responds that he had also promised to convert if he ever became emperor. The play, hence, concludes with the martyrdom of Navarrete and with the conversions of Tayco and Quildora to Catholicism. This ending proves that despite the sacrifice of Navarrete, along with that of Francisco and Tomás, “the God of the Spaniards” has triumphed in the Japanese empire. Ultimately, the play suggests that the new monarchs will be guided by the Spanish Friars, and consequently, by the Spanish Catholic crown. III. The Representation of Japanese Identity The scant representation of Japanese identity in Golden Age theater is a distinctive aspect of Martyrs that has yet to be studied in detail. The Japanese characters behave, feel emotions, and speak as if they were Spanish characters. The playwright devises the particularities of the characters following the prototypes that were established in the comedia nueva. In conjunction with the expectations of a hagiographic play with a secondary profane plot, the cast is composed of the tragic hero (Navarrete), the antagonist or demon (the Emperor or Daiso Sama), the protagonist (Tayco), the lady (Quildora), the old wise man (Alcalde Lepolemo) and the gracioso (Mangazil).28 Also, similarly to other comedic works of the genre, aside

28 For the hagiographical features of the play, see “Introducción,” Los mártires de Japón, pp. 27–33.



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from religion, the themes that catalyze the emotions and actions of the characters are those of honor, nobility of blood, jealousy, and sentimental love. In fact, the cultural representation of what is considered to be properly Japanese is solely limited to two aspects: the physical—extrinsic and immutable—and the religious—intrinsic and mutable. In the play, the Japanese distinguish themselves from the Spaniards through dress, religious practices, and a few unique customs (such as baring their feet indoors).29 This superficial attempt at representing the other is not surprising if we keep in mind that in the world of Golden Age Spanish theater, the differences between races and cultures—with the exception of blacks—were rendered distinct primarily by means of dress and the comportment of the actors.30 I conjecture that for the general public of the corrales, the most interesting part of the representations of nonSpaniards in these plays had to deal with visual stimulation. If we give consideration to the chronicles and accounts written about the Japanese visitors who filed through Seville and Madrid at the beginning of the 17th century, we may see that what attracted the attention of observers were the particularities of the clothes that they wore, as well as their hairstyles.31 In effect, in Martyrs, references pertaining to the Japanese dress or to certain aspects of Japanese culture are often used in order to spark admiration or humor in the audience. One may notice, for instance, that the name of the gracioso, Mangazil, makes reference to the exaggeratedly long and wide sleeves (mangas) of his supposed Japanese robe. The joke is that with such “wings” Mangazil should be able to fly. When he is summoned to stage by the King of Bomura, he announces his entry from afar by saying: “¡Voy volando! ¡Voy volando!” (I’m flying, I’m flying). When the king complains of his 29 The physical representation of the Japanese in the mise en scène differs from the descriptions of them found in the letters and accounts of the missionaries, in which they are described as manifesting a white or clear physiognomy. 30 In Lope’s plays, they are all grouped together as “indios,” whether they be Amerindians, Guanches (who were light-skinned), or Japanese. Many of the names of the characters, such as Quildora or Guale, recall Hispanicized Amerindian names. We call attention to the fact that in El arauco domado Lope names two of his indigenous female characters Quidora and Gualeya. In regard to the representation of black characters, the actors would paint their face and their hands (Ruth Sánchez Imizcoz and Rafael Ocasio, “Dinámica racial en la talía del siglo de oro,” in El texto puesto en escena, ed. Barbara Mujica and Anita K. Stoll [London, 2000], pp. 128–38, at p. 129). 31   “Hacían guarda a Hasekura un hombre cuarentón y rechoncho, cariancho y de recortado bigote, que iba trajeado de chamelote de seda, unos criados ceñidos con sus armas a la usanza de su tierra. Llamaba mucho la atención uno de los nobles [. . .] que se vestía a lo bonzo, con bonete de dos picos; y no se dejaba de advertir que los que eran soldados llevaban el pelo largo por detrás, ceñido como una coleta” (Gil, p. 395).

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t­ ardiness, Mangazil jokes: “¿No ve que vuelo despacio?” (Don’t you see that I’m flying slowly?) (lines 625, 653). The playwright shows little interest in faithfully representing Japanese attire but, as José María Ruano de la Haza states, the wardrobe of the actors of the play was not so much an attempt at presenting them as if they were characters from real life, but rather an attempt at shocking the public with unusual elements.32 It would certainly have been amusing for the public to see the actor playing the role of a friar appear unexpectedly in exotic kimono-like garb. This theatrical ruse is frequently used in comedias pertaining to saints, and particularly, when the exchange of dress occurs between saints and sinners (the sinners usually being the graciosos). Elma Dassbach thinks that one of the functions of the exchange, aside from a purely comic one, is to juxtapose the superiority of the saint with the mediocrity of the ordinary being.33 In Martyrs the contrast becomes even more apparent given that the exchange occurs between beings who are unequal both in terms of their culture and spirituality. In the first act, for example, the saint Navarrete decides to return to Japan in order to continue his evangelizing mission in secret. In order to do so, he finds himself forced to disguise himself as a Japanese man—a metamorphosis that, of course, is realized through a simple change of clothes. Navarette says:  Que procuremos volver en su traje disfrazados, y estemos disimulados como indios, para poner ánimo cuando nos echen. (lines 778–82)

Another exchange that is intended to be a source of comedy occurs when Mangazil dresses himself with the clothing that the friars (the Dominican, the Augustinian, and the Franciscan) leave behind for him because he 32 José Ruano de la Haza, “El vestuario en el teatro de corral,” in El vestuario en el teatro español del siglo de oro (Madrid, 2000), pp. 43–62, at pp. 43–47. Lope himself mentions the unfaithful representation of dress seen in theater costumes in his Arte nuevo: Los trajes nos dijera Julio Pólux, si fuera necesario, que, en España, es de las cosas bárbaras que tiene la comedia presente recibidas: sacar un turco un cuello de cristiano y calzas atacadas un romano. (“Arte nuevo de hacer comedias,” in Preceptiva dramática española, ed. Francisco Sánchez Escribano and A. Porqueras Mayo [Madrid, 1972], pp. 155–65, lines 346–51). 33 Elma Dassbach, La comedia hagiográfica del siglo de oro español (New York, 1997), p. 145.



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thinks that dressed this way, he can receive the same protection that the Spaniards receive from their God. He announces, “Dios haya piedad de Fray Mangazil” (Let God have pity on Friar Mangazil) (line 214). Clearly, as an opportunistic gracioso, rather than understanding the distinctions between the different styles of dress, Mangazil takes a piece of clothing from each different order. According to the stage directions, Mangazil leaves “con hábito negro, escapulario blanco y capilla de francisco” (with the black habit, the white scapular, and the Franciscan cape). Mangazil’s dress is a mixture of the clothes of the three orders: the Augustinian order, which is represented by the black habit; the Dominican order, betokened by the white scapular; and the Franciscans, represented by the brown scapular. The act of presenting a Japanese gracioso at first present himself in a suit with extraordinarily wide sleeves and later, in the most clumsily dressed manner with a mosaic of religious clothes, would be an easy comic trick used to produce hilarity in the viewers.34 Mangazil tries again to gain the audience’s laughter with another cultural reference made to the Japanese style of dress when he makes fun of what he considers to be the rustic and vulgar Japanese custom of removing one’s shoes: Descálzome para usar la japona cortesía;  más acomodada es la que al español ensalza que la cabeza descalza, y nosotros ambos pies.  ¿No es mejor quitar bonetes, sin mostrar de rato en rato trece puntos de zapato y catorce de juanete? (lines 656–65)

It is very probable that during the 17th century, the humor of this scene would have resided in the joke regarding the Japanese custom of putting their distasteful feet on public display. For today’s spectators, it is much more probable that laughter comes about because of how the gracioso confuses the Japanese custom of taking off one’s shoes before entering the interior of a house with the Spanish custom of removing one’s hat to greet people.

34 Needless to mention, clerics were opposed to having graciosos perform irreverent acts while dressed in the costumes of friars and saints (Robert Morrison, Lope de Vega and the Comedia de Santos [New York, 2000], p. 29).

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Aside from the physical appearance of the Japanese, the only element of their identity that distinguishes them from the Spaniards is their religion. The Japanese religion is represented quite differently from that of the Japanese in the play, particularly because it is only partially depicted. In this sense, the representation in Martyrs does not differ from how religions are portrayed in other works dealing with other indios, be they from Brazil, Chile, the Caribbean, or the Canary Islands. In Martyrs, just like in en El Nuevo Mundo, El arauco domado, El Brasil restituido, and Los guanches de Tenerife, indigenous spirituality is based on the worship of multiple gods, but principally the cult of the sun.35 Neither the Japanese pagans nor the Spaniards justify the superiority of their deity by means of complex theological reasons. The sun god of the Japanese—who is similar to the sun god of the aforementioned works—acquires some traits that are similar to that of the Christian god. According to the Japanese in the play, the sun god is like the Christian God: omnipotent, omniscient, and the creator of the earth. The task of Navarrete and the Japanese Christians is to demonstrate that the Spanish God is the only true deity by proving his supreme miraculous power. The power of the Christian God exhibits itself in concrete form: by means of Navarette’s miracles and by means of the extraordinary spirituality and physical force that the Christians exhibit by fighting against the Emperor. The moving conversion of Tayco to Christianity takes place in multiple stages. First it begins when he asks the image of Jesus Christ that he prove his deity with a manifestation of sovereign power: Dios del cristiano, en secreto un don os pienso pedir. Si me hacéis restituir este imperio soberano, tengo de hacerme cristiano. (lines 1809–13)

Tayco takes the next step when he recognizes the extraordinary “force” that the Spanish God concedes to his devout subjects. He is surprised to find that the mere desire to save Navarrete from the clutches of the Emperor grants him more physical strength. Before he uproots the trunk of a massive tree in order to protect Navarrete, he says: “es mi fuerza más inmensa, / pues que vengo a ser defensa / de quien defiende a su Dios” (my strength is even greater, because I am coming to defend / he who 35 In these plays, other idols and gods are recognized, but the sun god is always presented as the main deity.



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defends his God) (lines 2249–51). After freeing Navarrete, Tayco suddenly loses the physical strength that he had just acquired and falls prostrate at the Emperor’s feet. His sudden weakness manifests itself in the precise movement in which he vacillates as he recognizes that his strength has come to him from the God of the Spaniards. Tayco asks himself why he needs to defend “un Dios que tiene poder, / para defenderse a sí” (a God who has enough power, / to defend himself alone) (lines 2266–67). Yet finally Tayco accepts the Christian faith when he sees that the child Tomás is sacrificing himself as a martyr without any trace of fear:      ¿Qué he visto?  ¿Qué escucho? ¿Tanta alegría da al morir la ley de España? No se engaña, no se engaña quien tanto de Dios se fía.  Si temor no da la muerte a un niño, y morir estima por su Dios, su Dios le anima; su Dios es divino y fuerte.  La palabra cumpliré . . . . (lines 2581–90)

Tayco had tried to test God; but God is the one who ultimately tests Tayco. It is important to note that Tayco promises to fulfill “his promise” before overthrowing the Emperor. Or rather, Tomás’s spiritual power grants Tayco the certainty that God will grant him victory in the end. It should be reiterated that in the comedia, the demarcations between the Japanese and Spanish worlds are found in the contrast of appearances, shown by changes in dress, and in religious practices. The clothing of the Japanese characters is a source of spectacle and humor for the Spaniards; it causes admiration and entertainment without offending the social and moral sensibilities of the public. On the other hand, Japanese forms of spirituality are presented as unacceptable and need to be replaced with Christianity for the play to reach a definitive and satisfying conclusion. Thus we may see Tayco and Quildora’s new devotion to “the Spanish God” as both a spiritual transformation and as a process by which they are essentially Hispanicized. With their conversion, the interiority of these Japanese characters is rendered indistinguishable from that of the Spaniards. What is achieved by having supposedly Japanese characters voice the dominant discourse of the male Castilian Catholic? Robert Shannon’s argument about the depiction of the New World in the theater of Peninsular Spain is applicable to our play. According to Shannon, “the raison d’être of the alter on the Golden Age Spanish stage . . . [was] to recapture an

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identity which seventeenth-century Spanish society believed it was losing: a sense of social, political, racial order and stability.”36 The endowment of Japanese characters with Spanish traits and values serves the purpose of asserting the values and ideals of an incipient Spanish national identity.37 Indeed, in the last scene, the audience is compelled to look at Tayco and Quildora no longer as Japanese characters, but as the actors who are acting in the play: as Spanish subjects dressed in Japanese clothes.

36 Robert M. Shannon, “Introduction” to El nuevo mundo descubierto por Cristóbal Colón / The New World Discovered by Christopher Columbus, ed. Robert M. Shannon (New York, 2001), pp. 1–68, at p. 19. 37 Shannon, p. 5.

PART four

INTERSECTIONS

Picaresque Sensibility and the Comedia Edward H. Friedman “Pasaréis por mil oficios / trabajosos”  Cervantes, Pedro de Urdemalas

Picaresque narrative and the comedia nueva develop in Spain during approximately the same period, and both enjoy popularity and, in general, a strong critical reception. While I do not want to force connections between the two forms—one primarily narrative, the other dramatic—I hope that the juxtaposition can be engaging, revealing, and suggestive. This essay consists of three parts: a reflection on the structure, focal points, and sensibility of the picaresque; thematic junctures between the picaresque and the comedia; and consideration of a play with picaresque roots, Miguel de Cervantes’s Pedro de Urdemalas, and its ties to narrative. Although there are key precedents, including Francisco Delicado’s La lozana andaluza (1528), the picaresque tradition finds its seminal text in the anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes, first published in 1554.1 The picaresque genre, strictly speaking, takes shape when Lazarillo de Tormes is 1 Fundamental studies of the picaresque—although the list does not pretend to be complete—include Robert Alter, Rogue’s Progress (Cambridge, MA, 1964); Alexander A. Parker, Literature and the Delinquent (Edinburgh, 1967); Marcel Bataillon, Pícaros y pica­ resca (Madrid, 1969); Jenaro Taléns, Novela picaresca y práctica de la transgresión (Madrid, 1975); Richard Bjornson, The Picaresque Hero in European Fiction (Madison, 1976); Harry Sieber, The Picaresque (London, 1977); Peter N. Dunn, The Spanish Picaresque Novel (Boston, 1979) and Spanish Picaresque Fiction: A New Literary History (Ithaca, 1993); Alexander Blackburn, The Myth of the Picaro (Chapel Hill, 1979); Walter L. Reed, An Exemplary History of the Novel: The Quixotic versus the Picaresque (Chicago, 1981); Arnold Weinstein, Fictions of the Self: 1550–1800 (Princeton, 1981); José Antonio Maravall, La literatura picaresca desde la historia social (Madrid, 1987); Ulrich Wicks, Picaresque Narrative, Picaresque Fictions: A Theory and Research Guide (New York, 1989); Antonio Rey Hazas, La picaresca (Madrid, 1990); Anne J. Cruz, Discourses of Poverty (Toronto, 1999); David R. Castillo, (A)wry Views: Anamorphosis, Cervantes, and the Early Picaresque (West Lafayette, IN, 2001); and Juan Antonio Garrido Ardila, El género picaresco en la crítica literaria (Madrid, 2008) and Novela picaresca en Europa (1554–1753) (Madrid, 2010). For studies of the pícaras, see Edward H. Friedman, The Antiheroine’s Voice (Columbia, MO, 1987); Reyes Coll-Tellechea, Contra las normas: las pícaras españolas (1605–1632) (Madrid, 2005); José Delfín Val, La picaresca femenina: putarazanas, bujarrones y cornicantores (Valladolid, 2008); and Enriqueta Zafra, Prostituidas por el texto: discurso prostibulario en la picaresca femenina (West Lafayette, IN, 2009). Bruno M. Damiani has done extensive work in this area, notably on La lozana andaluza and La pícara Justina.

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linked with Mateo Alemán’s Guzmán de Alfarache, published in two parts, in 1599 and 1604, with an intervening spurious sequel that appears in 1602. Cervantes famously alludes to Lazarillo de Tormes and the picaresque genre in the presentation of the galley slave and autobiographer Ginés de Pasamonte in chapter 22 of part one of Don Quijote (1605).2 Francisco de Quevedo’s La vida del buscón (1626) offers a baroque version of the picaresque, and other major 17th-century Spanish works—from an impressive list—include Francisco López de Úbeda’s La pícara Justina (1605), a series of picaresque narratives by Alonso de Castillo Solórzano, and La vida y hechos de Estebanillo Gónzalez, set against the Thirty Years War. What I seek to do here is to project what might be termed the deep structure of the picaresque, without detailing individual texts or rehearsing polemics concerning the criteria for inclusion into the picaresque canon or the very existence of a picaresque genre. And my eye will be exclusively on early modern Spain. The picaresque brings literature and society together in striking ways. It reacts to idealistic narrative—chivalric, sentimental, and pastoral romance—by deflating, or deconstructing, the lofty principles, laudable gestures, and exaltation of love found in the earlier works. The noble, the upright, the beautiful, and, most notably perhaps, the heroic are elided, in favor of a down-to-earth depiction of the protagonist. The pícaro and pícara are products of the lower depths, at the absolute nadir of respectability, in a defiantly hierarchical society obsessed with class, lineage, ethnicity, and a rich array of protocols. The pícaros strive for upward mobility in a rigidly structured domain, and this will prove to be next to impossible. Authorial determinism and calculated irony always act against them. Exemplarity is a code word for literary idealism, whereas the picaresque is a model of negative exemplarity, a cautionary tale. Picaresque narrative not only transforms the hero(ine) into an antihero(ine), but it refashions the already fully-formed protagonists of romance into children on the path to adulthood. The mature pícaros who tell their stories are the end result of a process re-created on the pages of the text. Thus the written word and the lived experience follow a linear, cumulative pattern, and each is subject to poetic license. As they comment on their interactions with

2 “Es tan bueno—respondió Ginés—, que mal año para Lazarillo de Tormes y para todos cuantos de aquel género se han escrito o escribieren.” See Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quijote de la Mancha (Barcelona, 2004), p. 206.



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their fellow citizens and with society at large, the first-person narrators call attention to the composition proper, to their strategies in the story and in the discourse, and to the cause-and-effect relationship between the beginning and the denouement of their accounts. The pícaros are consistently thwarted in their attempts to challenge the status quo, blocked by obstacles beyond their control. They enter a competition that they cannot win. The social norm—something akin to the fate of classical antiquity— overrides their designs. Nevertheless, there is a victory of sorts in their loss. That the pícaro or pícara plays the leading role is itself the grand paradox of the genre, given that the books permit the outcasts to occupy a space that society denies them, even if they are ridiculed, mistreated, and ultimately unsuccessful in their pursuit of acceptance. Spanish society in its proclaimed Golden Age is all about positioning. Bloodlines, geography, gender, and access to education, among other factors, serve to foster or to eliminate opportunities. The picaresque repositions the marginal figure, who becomes the nominal author and lead character. What has previously been unexpressed—the perspective of the outsider—is now a story in itself. While the pícaros cannot vanquish the social institutions established to keep them in their place, they can do battle with the forces that would have them disappear, that would render them nonentities. The text gives them a presence and a voice, neither of which can be denied, but both of which are accompanied by considerable doses of irony. In the picaresque, idealism is supplanted by realism, a particular brand of realism that accentuates, and commits to print, a new dimension of society: its underside. The pícaro is not a supporting player or a figure of contrast or comic relief, but rather the agent of the proceedings, the reconfigured center. In the picaresque as in Don Quijote, realism is a function of satire (or vice versa), and satire is a double-edged sword, with subject and object operating in a dialectical mode. The pícaro, an object of scorn in society, becomes the writer and the subject of a book, yet frequently supplies derogatory or self-incriminating information. The picaresque simultaneously critiques the upstart and, through the rogue’s “progress” (more often a retrogression), demonstrates the corruptness, hypocrisy, and reliance on the appearances of mainstream society. Picaresque narrative has a sense of reverberation, a back-and-forth rhythm that may be due, first and foremost, to shifting bases of authority. The question arises: in whose hand is the pen? Were this autobiography, the question would be moot. In this brand of pseudo-autobiography, the power of the pen may be attributed to the intervention of the ­abstraction, classified by

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Wayne C. Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction as the implied author, an overwriter par excellence.3 The ventriloquism of the picaresque could be submitted as its dominant feature, the point around which a comprehensive range of elements rotates. Miscreants-turned-writers would appear to re-envision and embellish events in their lives to conform to preconceived schemes of—to use a term employed by Hayden White—emplotment, or disposition of the material.4 There are markers in the texts that would indicate a disparity between the thrust of the narration and the best interests of the narrator. In fictional self-writing, a second party breaches the premises of writing from memory. Pícaros who are formally inscribing their lives are the vehicles through which overriding stories are told; the narrators become puppets, and the broad bases of irony allow the reader to see the strings. Autobiographers routinely engage in self-promotion of one kind or another. Pícaros more commonly deal with failure than with triumph. The moral of their stories backs up society’s rules and regulations. The censorship that inflected life and artistic production in early modern Spain is replicated in the pages of picaresque narrative, in which an author voices the pícaro or pícara and thereby usurps the narrator/protagonist’s space. Nonetheless, irony has the habit of building upon itself, and the picaresque validates this thesis. The genre removes the protagonist from the margins, from rejection and oblivion, to front and center. The identity may be off-putting, but it is in full view. As they relate their stories of oppression and recourse to trickery, the pícaros—even the most delinquent, the most criminal—can be worthy of sympathy. They are, in essence, defeated at birth, defeated by birth, and forced into blind alleys. They choose notoriety over obliteration, and the texts memorialize their circumstances. Some authors seem to recognize the force of irony, while others do not. Still, the complexity of the narrative operations is palpable: the dynamics of past and present, the emphasis on causality, the struggle for control, the judgment of society from various angles, the motif of process, and so forth. Far earlier than Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas and anticipating Don Quijote, picaresque narrative involves the consumer of

3 For the initial presentation of the term implied author, see Wayne C. Booth, The Rhet­ oric of Fiction (Chicago, 1961), esp. pp. 71–76 and 211–21. Seymour Chatman, Susan Sniader Lanser, Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, Gérard Genette, Mieke Bal, Suzanne Keen, and Richard Walsh, among other theorists of narrative, have explored the role of the implied author. 4 See Hayden White, “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact,” in Tropics of Discourse (Baltimore, 1978), pp. 81–100, esp. p. 83.



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art in the act of interpretation and analysis. Reading passively is not a viable option. The situation of the narrator/protagonist of the picaresque emulates that of the lower-class citizen, trapped in a culture of exclusion and unable to break free from the strictures implemented by authoritarian codes. The point of view of the picaresque narrator is mediated from without, but the implied author’s hold on the narrator is, significantly, less than complete, as a character, a psyche, and a perspective evolve. The entrapment becomes a fundamental part of the story, and the satire is bidirectional, aimed against the pícaros and against the community that invents and ostracizes them. The supporting cast, from all rungs of the social ladder, typically includes far from noble souls with far from benevolent intentions. The atmosphere is unkind, unfeeling, unhealthy, dissolute, and, without a doubt, pessimistic. It must be noted, however, that the pícaro is a figure of derision, a laughingstock whose lowliness makes almost everyone else superior. The picaresque is filled with comic episodes and anecdotes, with the antihero(ine) as the butt of the jokes, yet the pícaros go down fighting, and they carry others with them. There is a vigor to the construction of picaresque narrative, with its dazzling display of mutable frames, parameters, and levels of empathy. The technical ploys and intricacies of the texts open the doors for the multiperspectivism and self-referentiality of Don Quijote and later novels, and time will judge and reevaluate the role of the social outsider. Self-fashioning applies to reimagining oneself, weaving a plot, describing encounters on the road of life, and devising rhetorical stratagems geared toward the reader. The picaresque paradigm is self-fashioning from a distance, from an ironic distance that divides authorship and that mediates from a number of vantage points and outlooks. Separating itself from the idealism of romance and the exemplarity of autobiography, the picaresque addresses the here-and-now of society, and the writers choose to do so with an upward glance. The pícaro customarily is peripatetic, moving from one location to another under the auspices of masters, mentors, and guides of varying degrees of reliability and integrity. The lessons—with respect to the character and the text— are likewise diverse. The picaresque as genre (or as a subgenre of narrative) encompasses social standing, characterization, attitude, message systems, and formal structure. The works linger in the margins to highlight protagonists who try in vain to insert themselves into the social center. Purity and goodness are the ideals of society. The pícaros can count on neither heredity nor environment to move them forward: they are doomed from the start. They

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learn to fend for themselves by depending on their wits, but their efforts at advancement bring them only stasis, or a measure of qualified success in self-preservation. The apprenticeship takes place in hostile and inhospitable sites, without the comforts of a permanent home and without the nurturing of a caring family. The pícaros find surrogates, but no affection, no encouragement, no exemplars. The narratives quite brilliantly show the products of social determinism, but the consequences of the protagonists’ training are hardly admirable, and the conclusions are seldom, if ever, upbeat. In most cases, the narrators endeavor to garner the compassion of the reader by stressing their inauspicious births and the odds that are stacked against them. They are aware of their vulnerability, and they search for understanding, for some type of secular redemption. Conversely, they are housed, so to speak, in documents purported to be of their own making yet evidencing voices-over. The ironic marginalization within the text matches society’s domination over the individual: literature becomes the analogue of repression, subjugation, and containment. The pícaro has numerous roles and purposes: reflector, refractor, scapegoat, jester, victim, victimizer, chronicler, and, last but not least, wordsmith. Borrowing from traditions dating from as early as classical antiquity, picaresque narrative conceives reality through a lens of realism: it forsakes the beauty, the loftiness, and the idealism of its predecessors by taking the reader into a “real” world—a unique mirror to life—but one that is replete with artistic and rhetorical flourishes. Because the pícaro or pícara by and large narrates in the first person, the aspect of creation is cleverly and conspicuously set forth. The texts are, then, metafictional, which means that the life-in-progress blends with a work-in-progress. The trials and tribulations that beset the narrators/ protagonists test their survival skills and their adaptability. The pícaros must conform to the demands of an assortment of masters while training themselves in the craft of self-protection. One of their salient traits is their capacity to adjust to whatever may surprise and threaten them. The pícaro is adept at mutability, and protean transformations become second nature. The pícara similarly reinvents herself in order to attract a wealthy suitor or, at the end of the rainbow, a husband. The fusion of metafiction and metatheater furnishes picaresque narrative with a consciousness of process and of imaginative thinking, alongside layers of social realism.5

5 The prefix meta- denotes self-referentiality. In comedia studies, the pivotal work in this area has been Lionel Abel’s Metatheatre: A New View of Dramatic Form (New York,



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This mix of realism and self-consciousness may be a primary legacy of the picaresque to Don Quijote and other works of Cervantes, the master of uniting process and product.6 The picaresque disputes not only the myth of objectivity but also the claim of a single perspective. Writing from memory and describing oneself are far removed from the real, the absolute, and the unmediated. The picaresque elevates point of view to an art. Its movement underscores the development of the subject in a conflictive society, and its structure relies on the reader to perceive, to discern, and to arbitrate, in short, to participate in the exchange and deciphering of data. The subject itself is a radically innovative creation, a social pariah with a heart and a soul, no matter how tarnished by adversity or ostensibly unworthy of sympathy. The concept of new perspectives is a quality— and, arguably, a trademark—of picaresque narrative, which opens the way for the exploration of uncharted territories, literary and social. The metatheatrical impulse is a prime facet of the comedia nueva, as exhibited by Lope de Vega in his critically acclaimed and commercially successful comedia nueva, and explained in the treatise Arte nuevo de hacer comedias (1609).7 Lope’s dramatic formula becomes the model for his contemporaries and successors Tirso de Molina, Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, Guillén de Castro, Juan de Zabaleta, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Agustín Moreto, Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla, María de Zayas, Ana Caro, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, among others, each of whom puts a personal signature on the plays. Within the backdrop of the great theater of the world, the dramatis personae of countless comedias turn into metaphorical dramatists who fabricate plots that propose to make them masters and mistresses of their destinies. Resorting to metatheater becomes synonymous with taking charge of one’s fate, with aggressively fighting to avoid disappointment or defeat. When life’s script is defective, a person can ­improvise an altered

1963). Richard Hornby, Stuart Davis, and others have examined self-consciousness in the theater. Thomas A. O’Connor, Stephen Lipman, Susan L. Fischer, and a large number of students of the comedia have explored the topic. Robert Alter (Partial Magic), Robert Scholes, Patricia Waugh, Linda Hutcheon, and Mark Currie are among those scholars who focus on metafiction. 6 The blend of realism and metafiction in Don Quijote and other narratives, from Laza­ rillo de Tormes to Miguel de Unamuno’s Niebla, is the unifying element of my study Cer­ vantes in the Middle (Newark, DE, 2006). 7 Lope de Vega, Arte nuevo de hacer comedias, ed. Enrique García Santo-Tomás (Madrid, 2009). See also Alexander Samson and Jonathan Thacker, eds, A Companion to Lope de Vega (Woodbridge, 2008). Helpful general studies of the comedia include works by Margaret Wilson, Charles Aubrun, Henryk Ziomek, Melveena McKendrick, and, more recently, Jonathan Thacker, A Companion to Golden Age Theatre (Woodbridge, 2007).

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version. Titles such as Calderón’s El médico de su honra convey the remedy and the metaphor, and in some plays every character seems to have metatheatrical moments. The need to combat inequity, injustice, and dishonor, a state worse than death, is motivation for histrionic behavior and manipulation. Deceptions, hoaxes, deliberate miscommunications, and disguises are intimately connected to metatheater, where ingenuity can help to resolve the gravest problems. Women regularly are the protagonists of comic works, in which saturnalian inversion trades realism for fantasy. They pursue the men of their dreams against the wishes of their fathers and brothers, obstacles to happiness and happy endings. Assertiveness pays off, as carefully outlined counterplots lead to betrothals and marriages and, paradoxically, to the end of the transposition of reality. With matrimony, comedy cedes to serious drama, as the patriarchal order is restored and wish-fulfillment is now off the table (or, con perdón, off the tableau).8 Playwrights can generate distinct points of view through dialogue, which in the comedia is forceful, persuasive, and, indeed literally, poetic. Theological, philosophical, political, social, domestic, and economic issues are argued and debated in polymetrical splendor. Class, race, and religion are never ignored. Lope specifies in the Arte nuevo that dramatists should respect linguistic decorum: a king’s speech should be distinguishable from that of a peasant, for example. The galanes and damas of the plays have lackeys and servants whose attachments and intrigues habitually and humorously parallel those of their social superiors. The gracioso, a figure associated with clowning and tomfoolery, can also be the bearer of solemn messages, but acted in character. Humble villagers may rise above their station, but their accomplishments and happy endings are meticulously charted and executed, so that they can be seen as exceptions rather than as rules. The influence of the Inquisition and the censorship that it upholds predispose the comedias toward conservative denouements. The hierarchies, intransigence, and institutionalized thought of church and state must be preserved. This does not mean, though, that the dramatists avoid criticism, controversy, or even subversion, only that they must be subtle in encoding their opposition to the reigning—and omnipotent—temperament. 8 Bruce W. Wardropper’s brief but insightful essay “Lope’s La dama boba and Baroque Comedy,” Bulletin of the Comediantes 13 (1961): 1–3, notes the distinction between unmarried women in comedies and married women in serious plays. The first group regularly finds happy endings, while the second does not.



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The playwrights of Spain’s Golden Age delve into psychology, social roles, demands on the individual, and the precariousness of success. They treat existential and religious matters, and they scrutinize the honor code with special intensity. Predictably, they must be cautious in their dramatization and assessment of sacred topics and of the aristocracy, the elite, and other privileged members of society. At the top of the list are the monarch and the royal family. There is a natural tendency for writers to criticize social mores and to respond artistically to the ills inflicted by people and institutions, but the extreme strictures of the day would have made the exercise difficult and dangerous. This may be the reason why many comedias seem to waver between subversion and conservatism, and probably why characters continually are beset by anxiety, anguish, and trepidation. A case in point is Lope’s Fuenteovejuna, from the second decade of the 17th century. The villagers of the eponymous town kill a tyrannical comendador—abuser of women, threat to men, traitor to Fernando and Isabel—and, accordingly, incur the wrath of the king and queen, who send ministers of justice to track down the guilty party. Torture notwithstanding, the villagers identify the assassin only as “Fuenteovejuna.” At the end of the play, Don Fernando firmly castigates the collective group, but pardons them from further punishment. His stance has not been affected by their action, but they have put him in a bind, and he prefers to give them a stern warning rather than to slaughter the entire population. The subversion of the villagers is central to the play, but the final speeches of the monarch make clear the resoluteness of the king, who is unyielding in his advocacy of the principles of totalitarianism. In an inspired touch, Lope has the villagers cry out, as they kill the comen­ dador, “Death to tyrants! Long live the Catholic Monarchs!”9 The avenging crowd differentiates between fairness and loyalty. The evildoer who has crossed the boundaries of lawfulness and decency cannot continue to deprive the villagers of their rights and dignity as human beings and as subjects of the king and queen. Fuenteovejuna never loses its allegiance to the sovereigns, but the people are guilty of murdering a nobleman. The seeds of sedition are planted, regardless of the way in which the crime is glossed over. Scholars of the comedia observe that playwrights employ a simple device to critique current politics and policies: they remove events 9 The character Mengo is heard to cry out, “¡Vivan Fernando e Isabel, y mueran / los traidores!” (lines 1867–68). The scene contains several variations on this theme. See Lope de Vega, Fuenteovejuna, in Diez comedias del Siglo de Oro, ed. José Martel, Hymen Alpern, and Leonard Mades (Prospect Heights, IL, 1985), pp. 71–142, at p. 125.

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in time and place. It is anything but rare to come across biblical, classical, mythological, medieval, legendary, and otherwise exotic rulers in the plays. Commentary can be incorporated indirectly, and censors can be distracted by distance. Considering points of contact between picaresque narrative and the comedia, I would argue that reallocation of perspective and accentuation of the margins are the most solid bonds. The pícaros are cast aside by fortune, discriminated against by their fellow men and women, and toyed with by their implied authors, but their stories are told, and their place in society and their points of view are inscribed into the record. Those without power and without a voice gain in the narrative negotiations, albeit ironically. The analogue of the pícaro in the realm of the theater may be the several categories of underlings and villanos, who move from unrepresented (or at least underrepresented) to important roles. For me, the most noteworthy correspondence would be with female characters in the plays: representatives of alterity, dependent on men for their status and their wellbeing, lacking the freedoms granted to their male counterparts. The dialogue is, in a sense, an equalizer. Women have voices, perspectives, standing, and, in scores of comedies, agency. Whether their luck be good or bad, and although they may be objectified and demeaned, women in drama have substance and symbolic value. The early modern Spanish pícaras are doubly disadvantaged: they are lower-class, without prospects, and the discourse is ventriloquized by male authors who stand in opposition to them. Still, the representation of marginalization is so prominent that the mediated voices acquire a strength and resonance of their own. The forgotten women may be bruised and shaken (or worse), and their ruses for naught, but they are still in the picture. In the plays of the dra­ maturgas, who follow Lope’s mold, the women’s speeches carry added weight and added symbolism, and the margins-as-centers are textured, elaborate, and perplexing.10 Women in these plays rarely can be themselves: they enter predetermined scenarios, and they must fight imposing adversaries, on the one hand, and the dogmas that encumber and inhibit them, on the other. The honor plays—most markedly, those that involve uxoricide—lay emphasis on the stifling conditions under which women

10 Representative plays by women dramatists include La traición en la amistad by María de Zayas, Valor, agravio y mujer by Ana Caro, and Los empeños de una casa by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.



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live.11 Like the pícaros and pícaras, female characters in serious dramas are destined to fail. They may succeed in the topsy-turvy world of comedy, but happiness is, alas, short-lived, as marriage brings a return to reality. The margins, multiperspectivism, identity, and self-referentiality interrelate within picaresque and dramatic texts of the Golden Age. The mechanisms and the motives may be widely divergent, but subordinated groups gain a voice, a point of view, and—in the main, ironically—a defense. Disguise and misrepresentation aid, respectively, the social climber in the narratives and the women who face freedom of choice or dishonor. In many instances, the comedia accommodates the common people, usually Old Christian villagers who act more nobly than the noblemen around them and who are rewarded for their ingrained decency and honorability.12 Society would have simple criteria for subjectivity, but literature and the theater interrogate the rights and the agency of the individual: they illuminate the preoccupations and expand the debates of a closed and heavily monitored system. The unbending rules of the social, political, and religious spheres impact not only the fictional entities but their creators, who must undertake their task with prudence and vigilance. The reader and spectator, in turn, can look for signs of subversion, and they should expect the signs to be discreetly placed. It could be said that semiotics keeps scholars and critics in business. Because texts are usually stable and interpretations are unstable, and because composition is bound by time and analyses are not, readers and directors can stray from the (elusive) original intentions of an author. The ambiguities and the shifting perspectives of the picaresque and the comedias clear a space for the reader and the audience to enter the frame, to react, and to render judgments. Even when the presentation has comic overtones, the humor has serious implications. The texts can be read as allegories of the plight of the individual versus society, a society of fear and denunciation in which few are secure and exempt from suspicion. Writers are emblematic of the conditions of the age: they transmit the weight of uncertainty as they live it, and their characters’ suffering and indecision may mirror their own. Although some

11   The most noted examples of the subgenre of uxoricide plays are four plays by Pedro Calderón de la Barca: El médico de su honra, El pintor de su deshonra, El mayor monstruo los celos, and A secreto agravio, secreta venganza. Lope’s prime example may be his late play El castigo sin venganza. Matthew D. Stroud, in Fatal Union (Lewisburg, 1990), provides a comprehensive view of the topic. 12 Examples would include Peribáñez y el Comendador de Ocaña and El villano en su rincón by Lope de Vega, as well as El alcalde de Zalamea by Pedro Calderón de la Barca.

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characters may seem to be the polar opposites of their creators, the tensions of the times unite them in unexpected ways. I would like to look briefly at two texts that exemplify the common denominators of picaresque narrative and the comedia: Quevedo’s Buscón, which may have circulated in manuscript some years before its publication in 1626,13 and Cervantes’s Pedro de Urdemalas, published in the Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses (1615) and acknowledging, if grudgingly, Lope’s model.14 Each author maneuvers from the margins in painting a portrait of society, with a close-up of an antisocial character and with nods to the creation of art and to self-creation. Pablos, the protagonist of the Buscón, is the offspring of a witch-­prostitute and a barber-thief. The exaggeratedly baroque language in which he narrates his story—despite euphemisms and extended conceits—cannot hide his roots, nor can bravado hide his shame. Pablos attempts to deny his blood, but he is unable to escape his origins. Losing his innocence at a tender age, he recognizes that he cannot eradicate the blemish of his birth and that he can succeed only through crime and pretense. He is a consummate poseur, inventing identities and wreaking havoc with social propriety. He is persecuted and humiliated time and again, which only makes him more determined to achieve his goal of advancement. Pablos attaches himself to stand-in families, but each lets him down. He assumes false identities as he tries to move upward, but he uniformly is exposed, excoriated, and raked over the coals. An ill-fated scheme to marry a lady of higher rank brings him face-to-face with his nemesis, his childhood friend and first master, Don Diego Coronel, and he is reduced to begging. Pablos makes his way to Toledo, where he becomes an actor and playwright. Dissatisfied with having to placate artists of the stage, he

13 Francisco de Quevedo, La vida del Buscón llamado Don Pablos, ed. Domingo Ynduráin (Madrid, 1998). 14 Miguel de Cervantes, Pedro de Urdemalas, in Teatro completo, ed. Florencio Sevilla Arroyo and Antonio Rey Hazas (Barcelona, 1987), pp. 632–720. See also Alban K. Forcione, “The Triumph of Proteus: Pedro de Urdemalas,” in Cervantes, Aristotle, and the Persiles (Princeton, 1970), pp. 319–37; Stanislav Zimic, “El gran teatro del mundo y el gran mundo del teatro en Pedro de Urdemalas de Cervantes,” Acta Neophilologica 10 (1977): 55–105; Edward H. Friedman, “Dramatic Structure in Cervantes and Lope: The Two Pedro de Urdemalas Plays,” Hispania 60.3 (1977): 486–97; Bruce W. Wardropper, “Fictional Prose, History and Drama: Pedro de Urdemalas,” in Essays on Narrative Fiction in the Iberian Pen­ insula in Honour of Frank Pierce, ed. R. B. Tate (Oxford, 1982), pp. 217–27; Ángel Estévez Molinero, “La (re)escritura cervantina de Pedro de Urdemalas,” Cervantes 15.1 (1995): 82–93; and Shawn O. Smith, “Pedro de Urdemalas: Contesting the Spanish Hapsburg Discourse of Blood,” Vanderbilt e-Journal of Luso-Hispanic Studies 2 (2005): 99–117.



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leaves the profession, but not before making a name for himself—he is called Alonsete—as a performer and poet. Quevedo places theater against metatheater by planting the protean character in the midst of professional performers. Pablos does not cease to act, for he next takes on the role of suitor of a nun, whom he tricks out of her possessions. In Sevilla, he joins a criminal brotherhood, his final substitute family in the narrative proper. Pablos promises a sequel about his adventures in the New World. The continuation does not materialize, but the pícaro has informed readers that a geographical change alone cannot reform the sinner.15 The Buscón is a supreme example of implied authorship. Pablos is the storyteller, but Quevedo’s touch is by no means light-handed. There is a wonderful balance between the plot of the narrative—the catastrophes of Pablos’s life—and the linguistic intensity supplied by Quevedo. Form and content both coalesce and stand apart. Society and the aristocratic and elitist author band together against the protagonist, whose discourse befits a baroque master. While it may be hard for Pablos to convince the reader that he is a stylist without equal, he does share his personal agony and his mortification at the insults heaped against him. Despite the linguistic trappings and the authorial traps, Pablos’s pain is manifest. He describes his tendency to overcompensate under pressure. As narrator, he overcompensates by trying to hide his grief and the scars from years of torment, but his words betray the silence, and his emotions show through the veil of criminality and indifference. As Edwin Williamson summarizes perfectly, “Pablos occasionally wriggles out of Quevedo’s coercive grasp.”16 Society wants to dehumanize him, but Pablos is a flesh-and-blood character, relegated to the bottom of any hierarchy, but a person of feelings who aches from a lifetime of struggles and misery. He yearns to relinquish his birthright, but that cannot happen. He does not find a reliable alternate family but, instead, more dysfunction. He concocts bogus names and identities, but none brings him the desired results. Quevedo and society are the agents of his fate, the agents of his programmed calamities, or 15 “[D]eterminé . . . de pasarme a Indias . . . a ver si, mudando mundo y tierra, mejoraría mi suerte. Y fueme peor, como v. m. verá en la segunda parte, pues nunca mejora su estado quien muda solamente de lugar, y no de vida y costumbres” (book 3, ch. 10). See Quevedo, Buscón, ed. Ynduráin, p. 308. 16 Edwin Williamson, “The Conflict between Author and Protagonist in Quevedo’s Buscón,” Journal of Hispanic Philology 2 (1977): 45–60, at p. 59. For a general bibliography on the Buscón, see Friedman, The Antiheroine’s Voice, pp. 237–39, as well as studies by Cesáreo Bandera, Victoriano Roncero López, Aldo Ruffinatto, Pablo Jauralde Pou, Tilman Altenberg, and Chad M. Gasta, to cite but a few.

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“desgracias encadenadas,”17 yet Pablos survives to tell a story that shows his complexities as well as his complexes, and that refuses to expunge him as a human being. Like the Buscón, Pedro de Urdemalas is about identity, class consciousness, protean instincts, and the metonymical significance of the theater. The character Pedro de Urdemalas, known for his roguish behavior and his tricks, is part of Spanish folklore and a precursor of sorts of the pícaro. Cervantes builds upon this figure and upon elements that he uses in the exemplary novella La gitanilla, as he develops a two-tiered plot built around shared and interrelated questions of subjectivity. Pedro de Urdemalas is a fascinating and compelling play that brings the parallel situations of Pedro and the gypsy girl Belica to the fore. As a container of ideas, it is commendably expansive. As a dramatic piece, it is appealing but cluttered and overdetermined, a miscellany that is strong in content but lacking elegant craftsmanship. It is one of the rare plays in which the lead character operates in the picaresque mold. In the first episode of Pedro de Urdemalas, Pedro aids Clemente, a friend in need, by devising a way to have the newly-appointed mayor approve of Clemente’s marriage to Clemencia, the mayor’s daughter. The pícaro is in full control here, as wit trumps the obstacles. Pedro proceeds to serve another suitor in distress. He advises Pascual, whose beloved insists that she must marry a man named Roque, simply to change his name. The “what’s in a name?” motif is ironic in this context, since Pedro de Urdemalas is in search of his true identity; he wants to make a name for himself. In act one, lines 600–60 and 664–767,18 Pedro narrates his life story to Maldonado, leader of the gypsies. Pedro has served a number of masters, but he has yet to discover his true calling. He is captivated by the prophecy of a certain Malgesí, who has said that he will be—in a partial list—a king, a friar, a pope, and a ruffian.19 Maldonado hopes to convince Pedro to join the band of gypsies and to lure him in by proposing a match between Pedro and Belica, the most beautiful and graceful—and the haughtiest—of the gypsy women. The visions of grandeur of Pedro and Belica become a connecting thread. 17 Pablos observes that “cuando comienzan las desgracias en uno, parece que nunca se han de acabar, que andan encadenadas, y unas traen a otras” (book 1, ch. 5). See Quevedo, Buscón, ed. Ynduráin, p. 145, and the study by C. B. Morris, The Unity and Structure of Quevedo’s Buscón: “Desgracias encadenadas” (Hull, 1965). 18 Cervantes, Pedro de Urdemalas, ed. Sevilla Arroyo and Rey Hazas, pp. 650–55. 19 Malgesí says to Pedro, “que habéis de ser rey, / fraile, y papa, y matachín” (lines 750–51). See Cervantes, Pedro de Urdemalas, ed. Sevilla Arroyo and Rey Hazas, p. 655.



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Pedro poses as a righteous blind man. He defrauds a widow by promising to rescue her family members in purgatory in exchange for a large quantity of money. In the episode, Cervantes integrates the themes of hypocrisy and the ironies of blindness and insight. Maldonado rebukes Belica for her excessive pride, but Pedro admires her self-confidence and compares her fantasies to his own. Belica’s ambition takes her to the upper echelon of society: dancing with other gypsies before royalty, she dares to flirt with the king as a jealous queen observes. Her premeditated fall at the king’s feet leads to her imprisonment by order of the queen. Pedro is restless, seeking a comfortable role in society. Belica acts out of character, for she intuits that she has been born to nobility. Pedro reveals that he will donate the earnings from his scam to Belica, so that she can enjoy the riches to which she feels that she is entitled. It turns out that Belica’s premonition is correct, that she is, in fact, a noblewoman, the daughter of a duchess, and that she had been entrusted to an old gypsy for her protection. Under her authentic name of Isabel, she is accepted by those who had scorned and maligned her. After committing further hoaxes—as if to confirm his gifts as a thespian—Pedro, calling himself Nicolás de los Ríos—aligns himself with a troupe of actors. He thus corroborates ­Malgesí’s prediction, just as Belica/Isabel has corroborated her inner sense of self. She reenters her rightful space, a regal and majestic space, while he consigns himself to the world of make-believe, which becomes a final and paradoxically definitive stage of his life. Pedro de Urdemalas is the protagonist of the play, but his devotion to Belica adds a dimension to the plot. The lead characters are outsiders: he is a solitary outcast, the staple of picaresque narrative, and she is an abandoned noblewoman living among the ostracized gypsies, yet certain that she is not one of them. The dualism gives Cervantes the chance to create a series of mirror effects and tableaux that draw attention to correlations of reality and fiction (and that busy the stage with characters and scene changes, as well). Pedro’s succinct narrative of his background closely resembles that of his fellow pícaros: an orphan at an early age, seemingly interminable poverty and hunger, service to various masters, thefts and deceptions, travel within Spain and to the New World without financial rewards, and more. His time with the gypsies increases his exclusion, whereas acting grants perfect relief (and release) from external and internal pressures. The unity of action is based on finding oneself, and the process gains in intensity through the doubling. The theatrical aspects of Don Quijote have been cited and praised, while Cervantes’s comedias, underappreciated in their time, have not—with few exceptions—received

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critical or popular acclaim.20 Each of the plays has considerable merit, I believe. Pedro de Urdemalas might be more pleasant for a theatergoer to watch than for a director and set designer to stage. It has a linear plot complemented by episodes that do not detract from the main argument, but that may, or may not, distract and confuse the spectator. The sensation of chaos may be deliberate and realistic, and disparate elements mesh at the end: there would seem to be method in the disorder. When one reads Pedro de Urdemalas, Cervantes’s handling of identity, characterization, interconnected plots, social hierarchies, the picaresque intertext, the metaphors of theater, and the substance of metatheater shine through. The presence of Pedro de Urdemalas—his display of wit and of concern for others, his awareness of society’s flaws and of his own weaknesses, his willingness to break the rules—follows the developmental patterns and the tempo of picaresque narrative. With respect to thematic emphasis, Cervantes chooses the imagination and self-image over love and an ironic success over defeat. The link between Pedro de Urdemalas and picaresque narrative obviously goes beyond the casual or indirect, but, as is his custom, Cervantes remakes precedent in a manner that is all his own. There is little question of the significance of the picaresque in literary history. From the publication of Lazarillo de Tormes, a new way of relating fiction to life takes shape. That modestly presented book, with guides from Spain and throughout Europe, from the Bible to spiritual autobiography and from folklore to the Italian novella, is a primer in perspective, subjectivity, ambiguity, social satire, semiotics, and humor taken seriously. The tensions of the time are inscribed into the text, which becomes a master class on the art of writing and on the act of reading. Lazarillo de Tormes leads to the breadth of Guzmán de Alfarache, La pícara Justina, La vida del buscón, and other works within the picaresque fraternity (and sorority), and also to the hyperbolic perspectivism and narratological depths of Don Quijote and later novels. The picaresque isolates individuals in order to study them in context, social and literary. The process of composition coincides with the movement from childhood to adulthood, and a distinct point of view mediates the communication and the commentary. 20 The drama/narrative dichotomy is somewhat paradoxical. Countless commentators have called attention to a theatrical consciousness in Don Quijote, yet Cervantes published his eight plays and eight interludes in 1615 bearing the subtitle nunca representados. Part of the explanation may lie in the author’s experiments with form in both genres and in the distinction between the imagined stage in narrative and the concrete stage in theatrical production. Cervantes brings picaresque motifs into the exemplary novellas Rinconete y Cortadillo and El coloquio de los perros.



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The selection of the margins—and of social marginalization—defines the mediation and directs the plot. In a sense, picaresque narrative removes the social subtexts and people seen as subhuman from the margins. In the picaresque, indictment functions in an all-inclusive manner, with the pursued and the pursuer as joint targets. The pícaros learn to be experts at adaptability, trickery, and fraud. In short, they specialize in metatheatrical ploys. In order to combat the menacing Other, they remake themselves into others, and acting becomes second nature to them. The picaresque addresses margins, metatheatrics, multiperspectivism, agency, and identity; attitude and critique are essential to the genre. Correspondingly, the comedia treats the same issues, as filtered through the particular recourses and conventions of the dramatic medium. The outsider position in the plays, as in society, is frequently assigned to women, but the plots are complex and open to interpretation. The picaresque and the comedia nueva offer variations on the theme of one’s place in the world. In Pedro de Urdemalas, one of the few plays with a full-fledged pícaro, Cervantes navigates both systems with his exceptional skill at borrowing and recreating. Like Pablos in the Buscón, Pedro finds at least momentary refuge in the theater. That seems poetically just.

Emblems at the Golden Age Theater1 Ignacio Arellano The presence of emblems and hieroglyphics is abundant in all the literature of the Golden Age,2 especially given the inclination of the humanists to this genre. The relationship between images and words and vice versa is constant, and, as G. Ledda writes, “codes feed each other, the stimuli are continuous, words and images influence each other.”3 The theater allows certain modes of emblematic presence, a phenomenon that is less possible in other, more purely literary codes. Theater is the only genre in which symbolic appearances, beyond textual references, can be adjusted on the stage. That means that the playwright can work with the position of actors, their movements, staging, costumes, etc. Among others, Rodríguez de la Flor underlines the richness of these aspects of Baroque theater: The title, which is close to the brevity of a lemma or motto; the staging, which uses objects as symbols; and finally the text itself, conceived as a kind of development or statement of the above elements: all this makes baroque theater a live and authentic emblem put into action, rich in pictures, statements, aphorisms and glosses extracted from the emblematic tradition itself.4

The intense flowering of emblems in the comedia5 can appear, therefore, in two fundamental ways: 1   The present work is supported by the sponsorship of TC-12, within the program Consolider-Ingenio 2010, CSD2009–00033, part of the National Plan for Scientific Research, Development and Technological Innovation of Spain. 2 See the studies included in the latest Proceedings of the Spanish Society of Emblematics, Emblemática trascendente, ed. Rafael Zafra and José Javier Azanza (Pamplona, 2011), with updated bibliography. 3 Giuseppina Ledda, “Los jeroglíficos en los sermones barrocos,” in Literatura emblemática hispánica (La Coruña, 1996), pp. 111–28, at p. 128. 4 See Fernando Rodríguez de la Flor, Emblemas: lecturas de la imagen simbólica (Madrid, 1995), pp. 75–76. 5 In this article I give just a few examples of significant value, but I cannot analyze in detail the modes of operation, or collect all cases. I refer for more examples and comments to some previous works in which I draw upon different sources than the ones mentioned here: Ignacio Arellano, “Motivos emblemáticos en el teatro de Cervantes,” Boletín de la Real Academia Española 77 (1997): 419–43; “Elementos emblemáticos en las comedias religiosas

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a) On one side, we can find those mentioned on a textual level, comparable to those appearing in any other literary genre (poetry or narrative). b) On the other hand, the plays exhibit on the stage some actions or movements conceived following emblematic models. This stage arrangement is conceived according to a particular emblem included in some emblem book, or can follow simple formulations without a concrete emblematic source.6 This category is strictly theatrical and finds its place in the theater. Most emblematic motifs of any category belong by origin to certain privileged areas or symbolic constellations. In this respect, most salient are the models taken from mythology, bestiaries, and plants. Some of the most popular references can be found in those relating to mythology. Most of these are quite lexicalized topics, with little visual dimension, although it is easy to see their relationship with the system of emblems. Cervantes, who is an author very much inclined to symbolic expression, provides many examples.7 In the encomium of Don Fernando, Arlaxa calls him “Atlas of Spain.”8 This happens to be a very topical assimilation of the image of the giant Atlas holding the sky over his shoulders. Horozco offers an emblem of Hercules holding the celestial globe while Atlas takes a break.9 However, other repertoires include precisely this image of Atlas, as Borja does. Borja comments: “Aunque la carga y pesadumbre que el mundo da a cada uno en su estado muchas veces oprima . . . no por esto debemos desmayar . . . que es lo que se da a entender por esta empresa de Atlas que fingía la antigüedad que tenía el mundo a cuestas” (Although the burden and grief that the world gives everyone press us de Calderón,” in Calderón: una lectura desde el Siglo XXI, ed. María Gómez y Patiño (Alicante, 2000), pp. 219–48; “La isotopía emblemática y su pertinencia genérica en El caballero del sol, comedia cortesana de Vélez de Guevara,” in Silva: studia philologica in honorem Isaías Lerner (Madrid, 2001), pp. 37–54; “Aspectos emblemáticos en los dramas de poder y de ambición de Calderón,” in Calderón 2000: actas del Congreso Internacional IV Centenario del Nacimiento de Calderón, ed. Ignacio Arellano (Kassel, 2002), vol. 2, pp. 21–34; and “Emblems in the Palace Plays of Calderón (The Symbolic Bestiary),” in In Nocte Consilium: Studies in Emblematics in Honor of Pedro F. Campa (Baden-Baden, 2011), pp. 15–41. 6 The abundance of repertoires, the multiplicity of sources and common quality of these materials make impossible in most cases the determination of the specific source, if any. 7 All quotes from Cervantes refer to his Teatro completo, ed. Florencio Sevilla and Antonio Rey Hazas (Barcelona, 1987). 8 Cervantes, El gallardo español, line 41. 9 Juan de Horozco, Emblemas morales (Segovia, 1589), vol. 2, fol. 9.



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down often in excess . . . we must not lose courage. . . .  That is the meaning of this emblem of Atlas, who had the world over his shoulders).10 The woman in love is compared to the chimera—a monstrous mixture of animals—in a passage of La entretenida, which also appears in the novel El celoso extremeño: Es de tal manera la fuerza amorosa que a la más hermosa la vuelve en quimera: el pecho de cera, de fuego la gana, las manos de lana, de fieltro los pies. (The power of love is so powerful that it converts the most beautiful into a chimera: chest becomes wax, the desire of fire the hands of wool, the feet of felt.)11

Fortune and Occasion, two symbols of instability and change, are central in this repertoire: the wheel and wings of Fortune are repeated, as we can perceive in the tuft of hair sticking out from Occasion’s forehead.12 La Fortuna, a great leitmotif in Renaissance thought,13 recurs in many books of emblems, almost always with the usual iconography, with her feet on a rolling sphere. In Alciato she is opposed to the stable Hermes, who is placed on a stone cube.14 Juan de Borja in his engraving reproduces the essential attribute of the wheel, with the motto Neque summum, neque infimum.15 That phrase expresses the variety of things in the world. The

10 Juan de Borja, Empresas morales, ed. Carmen Bravo Villasante, Madrid, 1981. This edition reproduces the one from 1680 which was prepared, with additions, by Francisco de Borja, who was the grandson of the author. The author himself had published the first edition in 1581. 11   Cervantes, La entretenida, lines 2344–51. 12 See El rufián dichoso, lines 696–97; La casa de los celos, line 497; El laberinto de amor, lines 654, 2127–29; Pedro de Urdemalas, lines 119–20, 204–05. 13 Jean Cousin published in Paris (1568) a collection of 200 drawings in his Liber Fortunae (Book of Fortune). 14 Andrea Alciato, Emblemas, ed. Rafael Zafra (Palma de Mallorca, 2003), emblem 98. 15 Juan de Borja, Empresas morales, pp. 152–53.

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best example of the entire Golden Age for perceiving this emblem is a comedy titled La rueda de la Fortuna (The Wheel of Fortune), by Mira de Amescua. This play is a privileged illustration of a compact group of plays within Mira de Amescua’s theater dedicated to the comedy of privanza (about royal favorites).16 Here we find that some symbols are repeated, such as the card game to express chance (No hay dicha ni desdicha hasta la muerte), or the peacock with its beautiful tail and ugly feet, symbol of vanity, arrogance and folly (in No hay dicha ni desdicha and El ejemplo mayor de la desdicha). Two emblems of the peacock can be found in Picinelli’s Ultima terrent and Exultat et plorat. Baños de Velasco and others also feature this image. A very expressive one is that of Peter Isselburg (Emblemata politica, 1640), with the motto Nosce te ipsum.17 In the play mentioned above, La rueda de la Fortuna, Filipo, general of the Emperor Mauricio, returns victorious and exalts the greatness of the monarch. In contrast to the triumph, the defeat of Leoncio is also represented. He has only brought one captive, with visual display of symbolic meaning: “Tocan cajas destempladas y trompa ronca y arrastrando un estandarte salen en orden Leoncio, detrás, de luto, armado, y lleva en la cabeza una corona de ciprés y un bastón quebrado, y Mitilene de cautiva” (They play discordant drums, and raucous horn, and Leoncio comes on stage, dragging a banner, mourning and armed; he carries on his head a crown of cypress and a broken stick, and Mytilene in captivity). In the first speech of the defeated general, the topic of Fortune appears with great intensity. This is useful to communicate to audiences the instability of Filipo’s victory: la Fortuna tiene siempre mudable la condición: vueltas de ruedas veloces, humo negro, tierna flor, blanca sombra, débil caña, cosas inconstantes son. No hay cosa firme y estable.

16 See Ignacio Arellano, “Poder y privanza en el teatro de Mira de Amescua,” in Mira de Amescua en Candelero (Granada, 1996), vol. 1, pp. 43–64, for these comedies and the emblems mentioned. 17 See Arthur Henkel and Albrecht Schöne, Emblemata (Stuttgart, 1976), col. 809. The peacock is common in the emblems of the time. Add to the above the book of Juan de Villava, Empresas espirituales y morales (Baeza, 1613), vol. 2, emblem 27, dedicated to the peacock, symbol of vanity. Cesare Ripa in his Iconology likens the proud to a peacock. See Iconología (Madrid, 1987), vol. 1, pp. 65, 90.



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(Fortune has always changeable condition: the wheel turns faster; black smoke, tender flower, white shadow, feeble cane are unstable things. Nothing is firm and stable.)18

Another important allegory is Fame, which appears in many comedies and sacramental plays, such as El gran mercado del Mundo by Calderón. This character is dressed with feathers and tongues. Fame’s appearance is annotated as a suscriptio by the following text: Pájaro, que al firmamento, lleno de lenguas y plumas, subes con tal movimiento . . . . (Bird, you climb to the sky full of tongues and feathers with such movement . . . .)19

Cesare Ripa provides relevant details. Fame is a “Mujer vestida con sutil y sucinto velo . . . que aparece corriendo con ligereza. Tiene dos grandes alas, yendo toda emplumada, poniéndose por todos lados tantos ojos como plumas tiene y junto a ellos otras tantas bocas y otras muchas orejas. Sostendrá con la diestra una trompa” (a woman wearing a delicate veil [who] runs quickly. She has two large wings, going all feathered and also has many eyes, mouths and ears. With the right hand [she] will hold a trumpet).20 The emblem of Hadrianus Junius collected by Henkel-Schöne is very significant also, with his Fame, dedicated to James Blondelio, Oculata, pennis fulta, sublimem vehens / Calamum aurea inter astra Fama ­collocat (in other words, full of eyes and feathers).21 But what seems interesting to me here is the metatheatrical comment added by the funny character of Innocence. She draws attention to the scenic mechanisms that allow Fame to fly:

18   La rueda de la Fortuna, in Dramáticos contemporáneos de Lope de Vega (Madrid, 1881), p. 4. 19 Pedro Calderón de la Barca, El gran mercado del Mundo, ed. Ana Suárez (Kassel, 2003), lines 6–8. 20 Ripa, Iconología, vol. 1, pp. 395–96. 21   Henkel-Schöne, Emblemata, col. 1536.

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ignacio arellano Pajarote, que con lazos de cera y cáñamo, apoya su vuelo, y en breves plazos; si te caes de la tramoya te harás cuatro mil pedazos. (Big bird: your flight is achieved with the help of ropes and wax, and in a short time if you fall off the machine you will break yourself in four thousand pieces.)22

Another basic constellation is composed of symbolic beasts. Cervantes, Mira de Amescua, Lope de Vega, and Calderón habitually use these fabulous animals to further their dramatic goals. Resigning myself to omit many examples, I am going to point out only the case of the deaf snake. This emblem is used to illustrate disdain for the lover. The loved one does not want to hear the complaints of the lover, as is shown in Cervantes’s El laberinto de amor: Tú a solas le relata la muerte con que amor mi vida mata, que no estará tan duro [. . .] cual está al conjuro del sabio encantador en cuevas hondas la sierpe . . . . (You, alone, tell him; the death with which love kills my life; because he will not be so hard [. . .] as the snake is to the spell of the snake charmer in deep caves . . . .)23

It was very common to say that the snake, in order to resist the spell, sealed his ears, crushing one into the ground and closing the other with his own tail. An emblem of Joachim Camerarius (Symbolorum et emblematum ex aquatilibus et reptilibus) represents very accurately the aspid in this practice.24 This action also appears in the Bible, Psalms 57:5–6: Aures obdurantis sicut surdae aspidis non exaudit vocem suas incantantis quae.

22 Calderón, El gran mercado del Mundo, lines 31–35. 23 Cervantes, El laberinto de amor, lines 1793–99. 24 Reproduced in Henkel-Schöne, Emblemata, col. 641.



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A very common emblem presents the butterfly burned by the fire, an example that Margarita uses in El gallardo español by Cervantes to express a suffering love situation that impels her to self-destruction: Soy mariposa inocente que despreciando el sosiego, simple y presurosamente me voy entregando al fuego de la llama más ardiente. (I am an innocent butterfly that neglecting calm, simple and in a hurry I get into the fire, in the hotter flame.)25

This butterfly, burned in the fire, appears as a symbol of love in Vaenius with the motto Brevis et damnosa voluptas;26 with other meanings but similar representations, it can be found in Borja, Empresas morales,27 which applies also to love (and other situations where reason is overcome by passions). Calderón is one of the dramatists who makes the most systematic use of this resource. Some emblems can be found easily in his works, such as, for example, the runaway horse, which expresses the blind instincts or passions of the characters. Runaway horses with different meanings are shown in Alciato, Covarrubias, Horozco, etc.28 Some examples are theatrically remarkable, especially those that are shown on the stage. The most surprising illustration can undoubtedly be discovered in Hado y divisa de Leonido y Marfisa, where a character called Leonido appears on a frightened horse: armado de todas armas, a caballo, cuyos movimientos se ejecutaron con tal primor que la atención engañada estaba temiéndole el despeño según lo desbocado del bruto y lo fragoso del terreno [. . .] Se vio despeñar con tan propio precipicio que se volvió en lástima la admiración . . . . (fully armed, on horseback, whose movements are executed with such precision that attention was deceived fearing the fall, due to the furious

25 Cervantes, El gallardo español, lines 1702–06. 26 Henkel-Schöne, Emblemata, col. 911. 27 Borja, Empresas morales, pp. 66–67. 28 See Antonio Bernat and John Cull, Emblemas españoles ilustrados (Madrid, 1999), numbers 260, 261, and 266.

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ignacio arellano animal and the rocky ground [. . .] He fell off a cliff and changed admiration into pity.)29

Calderón shows a great predilection for another animal: the fabulous phoenix.30 This emblem is very useful for expressing the idea of resurrection and immortality. In Los tres mayores prodigios, the Phoenix metaphor is ingeniously applied to Hercules,31 who was thrown into the fire to remove the poisonous tunic of the centaur Nessus. He is burned to the ashes, but later reborn—like the Phoenix—in the fame of his exploits. We can see another interesting Phoenix in La casa de los celos; in addition to the whole scenic composition, Marfisa carries an emblem painted on her shield: “trae por timbre una ave fénix y una águila blanca pintada en el escudo” ([she] brings a phoenix and a white eagle painted on the shield), animals whose significance is explained by the text: Y advierte que contigo llevas a la sin par sola Marfisa, que en señas y testigo de que es única en el mundo, la divisa trae de aquella ave nueva que en el fuego la vida se renueva. (And you must notice that with you Marfisa, unique in the world, alone goes, who, to show she is unique in the world, brings the emblem of that new bird which renews its life in the fire.)32

For the Phoenix, many examples of emblems can be found in Camerarius, Piero Valeriano, and Horapollo.33 Another image of rebirth is the silkworm.34 Cósdroas thoroughly develops this motif in Duelos de amor y lealtad by Calderón, when he induces 29 Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Obras completas: dramas, ed. Ángel Valbuena Briones (Madrid, 1987), p. 2099. All subsequent references to Calderón’s plays will be to this edition. 30 About the emblematic Phoenix see Henkel-Schöne, Emblemata, cols. 795–96. 31   “fénix será de su fama” (p. 1589). 32 Cervantes, La casa de los celos, p. 130, lines 887–92. 33 Joachino Camerarius, Symbolorum et emblematum ex volatilibus (1604); Pierio Va­­ leriano, Hieroglyphica (Basel, 1556), book XX, p. 144; and Horapolo, Hieroglyphica, ed. José María González de Zárate (Madrid, 1991), p. 224. See also Henkel-Schöne, Emblemata, cols. 795–96. 34 For full documentation on emblems with the silkworm, see Filippo Picinelli, El mundo simbólico: serpientes y animales venenosos, ed. Eloy Gómez Bravo, Rosa González



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the captives—forced to build a fortress—to rebel and escape from their prison and servitude, as the butterfly emerges from the cocoon.35 In the comedies of spectacle, represented in the royal palace, the eagle appears frequently with many different meanings. The eagle represents the heraldic emblem of the House of Austria, Jupiter’s animal, king of birds, the only one who can look at the sun face to face.36 Another especially significant animal is the chameleon,37 with its particularity of changing color and feeding on air. In Eco y Narciso, the chameleon is used to represent Echo, because this character changes appearance in each breath (air).38 Among other symbolic animals that proliferate, we can find varied poisonous snakes (asps, basilisks, hydras, and vipers). They have an extensive role within those dramas dealing with the problem of power and ambition, and in the sacramental plays too. In the series of allegorical figures (such as Fear, Suspicion, Envy, and Wrath) represented in La púrpura de la rosa by Calderón, each carries a symbolic element that identifies it. Envy carries a snake, following the meaning given by Ripa, where a snake represents precisely Envy,39 and it is described in the following manner: Mujer delgada, vieja, fea y de lívido color. Ha de tener desnudo el pecho izquierdo, mordiéndolo una sierpe [. . .] la serpiente [. . .] simboliza el remordimiento que permanentemente desgarra el corazón del envidioso . . . . (Envy is a skinny woman, old, ugly and of livid color. She must have one of her breasts naked, bitten by a snake [. . .]. This snake symbolizes the remorse that permanently breaks the heart of envious people. . . .)40

Even before Calderón, Cervantes had described a similar iconic staging in La casa de los celos. There, he shows some allegorical characters such as Fear, Jealousy, Suspicion, Despair, Good Fame, Bad Fame and Castile. All of them wear their own attributes, colors, symbols, etc.:

and Barbara Lucas Skinfill Nogal (Zamora, Mexico, 1999), pp. 247–68. Picinelli comments on the examples of Bargagli, Bovio, Marino, Caussin, Rancati, etc. that these authors have in their books various emblems of the silkworm, with different and interesting meanings useful for studying the Calderonian cases. See Bernat and Cull, Emblemas españoles, numbers 763, 764, 765, 766, 767, 768, and 1599. 35 Calderón, Duelos de amor y lealtad, p. 1481. 36 Calderón, La puente de Mantible, p. 1882. 37 Picinelli, El mundo simbólico, pp. 275–77. In Alciato the chameleon is a symbol of courtly flattery. 38 Calderón, Eco y Narciso, p. 1925. 39 Ripa, Iconología, vol. 1, pp. 341–44. 40 Calderón, La púrpura de la rosa, p. 1775.

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ignacio arellano Temor . . . con una tunicela parda ceñida con culebras[.] Sospecha, con una tunicela de varias colores[.] Curiosidad . . . con cien ojos en la frente[.] Con una soga a la garganta y una daga desenvainada en la mano sale la Desesperación[.] [L]os Celos . . . con una tunicela azul pintadas en ella sierpes y lagartos, con una cabellera blanca, negra y azul[.] (Fear . . . with brown clothes tied with snakes[.] Suspicion, with colorful clothes[.] Curiosity . . . painted with a hundred eyes on the forehead[.] Despair, with a rope around the throat and a drawn dagger in her hand[.] Jealousy . . . with blue clothes, and snakes and lizards on them, with white, black and blue hair.)41

And later on: [A]parece la Mala Fama . . . con una tunicela negra, una trompeta negra en la mano, y alas negras y cabellera negra[.] [P]arece la Buena Fama, vestida de blanco, con una corona en la cabeza, alas pintadas en varias colores y una trompeta[.] Sale por el hueco del teatro Castilla, con un león en la una mano y en la otra un castillo[.] (Bad Fame appears . . . with black clothes, black trumpet in hand, black wings and black hair[.] Good Fame, dressed in white, with a crown on the head, wings painted in various colors and a trumpet[.] Castile enters the stage, with a lion in one hand and a castle in the other.)42

It is not necessary to remember the meaning of colors such as black or white, the heraldic significance of the lion and the castle in the arms of the Kingdom of Castile, or the connotative value of blue ( jealousy).43 Good and Bad Fame are described by Ripa in terms similar to those used by Cervantes: “Mujer con una trompa en la derecha . . . una cadena de oro . . . alas en los hombros, siendo las mismas de un color blanquísimo” (Woman with a trumpet in the right hand . . . a gold chain . . . snow-white wings on the shoulders) and “Mujer que lleva un vestido sobre el que aparecen pintadas ciertas negras figurillas, como angelotes de alas negras, llevando además una trompa en la mano” (woman wearing a dress with certain

41   Cervantes, La casa de los celos, p. 144. 42 Cervantes, La casa de los celos, pp. 155–56 and 178. 43 Celos ( jealousy) sounds something like azul (blue), as Horozco says in Emblemas morales, vol. 1, fol. 101.



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black figures painted on her clothes as angels with black wings, carrying a trumpet in her hand).44 I would like to emphasize that the theatrical text is used to explain the characteristics of all of these figures, having then a structural value exactly the same as the commentary part of an emblem: Esta figura que ves es el Temor sospechoso . . . Esta es la infame Sospecha de los Celos muy parienta, toda de contrarios hecha . . . La vana Curiosidad es esta que ves presente, hija de la Liviandad con mil ojos en la frente[.] (This figure you see is Fear with suspicion . . . This is the infamous Suspicion, a close relative of Jealousy, made all of opposites . . . Idle Curiosity is this you see here, daughter of Frivolity with a thousand eyes on her forehead.)45

Among the pernicious monsters, the hydra has perhaps the greatest presence in Calderón’s sacramental plays. This monster derives mainly from Revelation 12:3, without forgetting the mythological hydra of Lerna. The seven heads symbolize the Seven Deadly Sins, as is clarified in A María el corazón: Ábrese el segundo carro, que será una montaña bruta, y sale de ella una hidra de siete cabezas coronadas, de cuyas bocas penderán unas cintas que traerán, como que vienen tirando de ella la Soberbia, la Avaricia, la Gula, la Lascivia, la Ira, la Envidia y la Pereza, y sobre su espalda la Culpa con una copa de oro en la mano.

44 Ripa, Iconología, vol. 1, pp. 396–97. 45 Cervantes, La casa de los celos, pp. 155–56 and 178.

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ignacio arellano (On the second stage a platform is opened [an inhospitable mountain], [and] a hydra with seven crowned heads comes out. From each of its mouths ribbons will hang which will be brought as they are pulled out by Pride, Avarice, Gluttony, Lust, Anger, Envy and Sloth. And on her back Guilt is shown with a golden cup in her hand.)46

It is not difficult to find other hydras in several sacramental plays and comedies, as well as in the repertoires of Alciato (Ficta religio), Heredia, Villava, Ortí,47 Camerarius (Symbolorum et emblematum ex aquatilibus et reptilibus), Covarrubias (Emblemas morales), Ripa (Icolonogía), etc. It is worth noting that the expressive mechanisms Calderón applies to the emblems are governed by three main criteria: 1) the systematically structured constellations of motifs, 2) the adaptation to the context through a reading guided by the Bible and patristic authors, and 3) ingenious development of the modes studied by Baltasar Gracián in his Agudeza y arte de ingenio. In the references localized in the theater, mentions of the palm branch predominate as an emblem of victory, triumph, and perseverance.48 The palm is considered to be more precious in its signification of virtue than any wealth, as expressed by Gilles Corrozet’s emblem (in Hecatongraphie), Vertu meilleure que richesse (virtue is better than wealth). In this emblem, the author uses a scale, where the palm wins the crown and the throne. In Calderón’s sacramental plays, the mention of palms is always associated with emblematic qualities, as when the the besieged Church is compared to the palm: the more this tree is pressed, the more it rises, as we can read in El segundo blasón del Austria: “la palma robusta tanto / resiste a las inclemencias / que aún con el peso oprimida / más que se agobia, se alienta” (the robust palm so resists inclemencies / that even when oppressed by weight / it recovers strength rather than succumbing to pressure).49 Emblematic repertoires collect this curious feature, which is also explained in different commentaries from the Church fathers.50 46 Pedro Calderón de la Barca, A María el corazón, ed. Ignacio Arellano, Ildefonso Adeva, Francisco Crosas and Miguel Zugasti (Kassel, 1999), line 145. 47 Bernat and Cull, Emblemas españoles, number 812. 48 Cervantes, El gallardo español, lines 1546, 1752, 1775; La casa de los celos, line 40; El rufián dichoso, lines 753, 2019. 49 Pedro Calderón de la Barca, El segundo blasón del Austria, ed. Ignacio Arellano and María Carmen Pinillos (Kassel, 1997), lines 727–30. 50 In emblem XXXVI of Alciato the palm means strength; the same image with the same symbolism is found in Ripa, Iconología, vol. 2, pp. 199 and 353. Many emblems of palms, sometimes associated with the laurel and flowers, are found in Bernat and Cull, Emblemas españoles, numbers 267, 390, 470, 625, 910, 1179, 1236, 1237, and 1254.



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The olive, a known symbol of mercy, also appears in many sacramental plays, often associated with the sword, symbol of justice, forming the symbolic shield of the Inquisition. An oval shield formed the emblem of the Holy Office with a wooden cross in the center. On the right, a sword with the handle down is drawn, and in the left an olive branch appears. Around this oval is written: Judica et domini causam Exurge Tuam. Psalmus 73. We can compare the sacramental play La inmunidad del sagrado: Cae el Lucero también a sus pies, y con los versos que dice la Justicia, atraviesa la espada en la cruz que ha sacado el Mercader, y la Misericordia el ramo de oliva; de manera que el Mercader esté en medio con la cruz, la Culpa y el Lucero postrados; la Justicia y la Misericordia triunfando, forman las armas de la inquisición, con la Cruz, la espada y la oliva[.] (Lucero [the Devil] also falls at his feet, and while Justice says her lines, the Merchant brings the sword and Mercy brings the olive branch. So that the Merchant is in the middle with the cross, Guilt and Lucero [are] defeated, Justice and Mercy triumphant and they all compose the heraldic arms of the Inquisition, the cross, the sword and the olive.)51

As a kind of subscriptio, the World says at this moment: “¡Cielos! ¿qué / jeroglífico han formado / la Cruz, la espada y la oliva, / y a sus plantas los contrarios?” (Heavens! What / hieroglyph formed / Cross, sword and the olive, / and at their feet their opposites?), and Justice responds: “El escudo de la fe” (The shield of faith).52 The grapevine embracing the elm is another image of long iconographical tradition. In emblem CLIX of Alciato, Amicitia etiam post mortem durans, we find both these vegetables together symbolizing lasting friendship. The image of the elm and the vine is also related to marital union.53 In this sense, the union of the vine (an image of the Virgin Mary and the Church) and the elm (Christ) signifies the marriage between Christ and His Church in El segundo blasón del Austria.54 Other more individualized motifs are integrated in their contexts with different objectives: the irony of the epithet applied to Escarramán (column of delinquency) in El rufián viudo by Cervantes55 can only be seen in its proper meaning when compared to the symbolism of the column: “sinifica

51   Pedro Calderón de la Barca, La inmunidad del sagrado, ed. José M. Ruano, Delia Gavela and Rafael Martín (Kassel, 1997), p. 184. 52 Calderón, La inmunidad del sagrado, lines 1335–37. 53 Ripa, Iconología, vol. 1, pp. 134–35. 54 Calderón, El segundo blasón del Austria, line 771. 55 Cervantes, El rufián viudo, line 270.

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apoyo, firmeza, sustento, estabilidad, inmutabilidad. Destas acepciones se sacan muchos símbolos y hieroglíficos” (it signifies support, firmness, stability, immutability. From this meaning are taken many symbols and hieroglyphics), as Covarrubias writes in his Tesoro de la lengua castellana.56 In Ripa this emblem of a column refers to supreme glory,57 and Saavedra Fajardo reproduces a firm column as emblem of the ­reputation of princes.58 Villava in Empresas espirituales y morales shows a strong, upright column as a symbol of a person who always looks directly to God.59 The political and symbolic dimension, essential in El villano en su rincón by Lope de Vega, provokes an intense symbolic conception, as is easily shown in several scenes, especially at the end, with three masked men carrying dishes with a scepter, a sword and a mirror, all objects carrying a strong emblematic tradition and symbolism. It is interesting to perceive the explanation given by the king for the mirror as a guide to the final interpretation of the play: Este espejo es el segundo, porque es el rey el espejo en que el reino se compone para salir bien compuesto. (This mirror is the second, because the king is the mirror, in which the kingdom composes itself to go out well-dressed.)60

At this point it is perhaps important to underline the importance of dramatic genre. Further research may uncover an abundance of symbols in the political and moral genres such as comedies of favorites or the sacramental plays, but a scarcity of them in the cloak-and-dagger comedies. The density of the mythological motifs in courtly spectacular comedy, festivals, operas, chivalrous and pastoral pieces, etc., is obvious. These motifs shine through clearly in a work with a seemingly disintegrated plot such as La fábula de Perseo by Lope de Vega. The first oracle introduces

56 Sebastián de Covarrubias, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, ed. Ignacio Arellano and Rafael Zafra (Madrid, 2006). 57 Ripa, Iconología, vol. 2, pp. 327–29. 58 Diego Saavedra Fajardo, Empresas políticas, ed. Sagrario López Poza (Madrid, 1999), emblem 31. 59 Villava, Empresas espirituales y morales, book 1, emblem 36. 60 Lope de Vega, El villano en su rincón, ed. Alonso Zamora Vicente (Madrid, 1961), lines 2898–2901.



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us to a symbolic universe with the apparition of Time, whose attributes are a clock and wings.61 In addition to this emblematic figure of Time, some others belonging to the symbolic bestiary are also shown, such as the pelican.62 However, many others can be reproduced, such as the emblem representing Occasion,63 ivy attached to the wall,64 the mirror on the shield of Pallas,65 cypress as a funeral symbol,66 or the opposition between Eros and Anteros,67 very frequent in the treatises on love and symbolic repertoires (this binary appears several times in Alciato and the Amorum emblemata of Vaenius, for example). In the comedy Venus y Adonis, also written by Lope, there are many emblems: the vine and the elm, symbol of love; the basilisk that kills when it looks; a butterfly that is burned in the fire (symbol of love); the struggle of Love and Interest; the almond tree and the mulberry tree (foolishness and prudence symbols, respectively, as shown in Alciato); the rock contrasted with a sea storm (half a dozen times this well-known motif appears in the Empresas morales of Juan de Borja), and so on. The emblem, closely related to heraldry, is a central resource of expression in all forms of court theater. El caballero del Sol by Vélez de Guevara provides the reader with a largely symbolic catalogue.68 At the beginning of the work, Diana’s lovers appear to bring her in a boat. They carry oars on which are engraved or painted several empresas that show the lady’s disdainful harshness. The form of these elements and the use of technical emblematic terminology demonstrate the importance of this nuclear expressive mode. The oars show the following paintings: Daphne fleeing from Apollo, with the motto “Más ofende quien más ama / cuando es ingrata la dama” (More offends he who loves more / when the woman is ungrateful); a mermaid with Fortune at her feet, with the motto “Ninguna / a vencella ha de bastar” (No one can conquer her); and Iphis hanging from a fence and Anaxarte turned into a stone, with the motto “Diana / aunque con más hermosura / nació desta piedra dura” (Diana / even more beautiful / was born from this hard rock). What is remarkable is the frequency of symbols denoting destruction (as the mermaid) or variability 61   Lope de Vega, La fábula de Perseo, ed. Michael McGaha (Kassel, 1985), lines 47–150. 62 Ibid., lines 637–40. 63 Ibid., lines 752–55. 64 Ibid., lines 1286–87. 65 Ibid., p. 110. 66 Ibid., lines 520, 2517. 67 Vélez de Guevara, El caballero del Sol, lines 1985–2010. 68 I use an edition from Seville, printed by Leefdael, no date.

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(Fortune and the Moon) and disdain (Anaxarte transformed into a stone). These emblems, engraved upon the oars, strictly adhere to the canonical model. But it is important to remember that they are hidden to the perception of spectators, who could hardly distinguish the drawings: for this, the playwright had a need to describe verbally the painted figures. The emblematic elements are equally protagonists of a poetic academy, which includes among other exercises the painting of the house of Jealousy or Envy with motifs such as the labyrinth, the lynx, the chameleon, the mole, or serpents and basilisks. The preceding accumulation of examples, necessarily partial, only suggests the enormous importance of symbolic aspects in the comedy of the Golden Age. It would be interesting especially to analyze the specific role that these emblems have, particularly the scenic ones. However, that requires a specific analysis of each of the plays and its complex organization. This is a work I cannot undertake on this occasion. I have centered my interest on a simple general description that, I think, has revealed the significant presence of emblematic motifs in Golden Age theater. It is clear that there is a quite systematic use of two levels of expression, the merely verbal (poetic) and the strictly theatrical (on stage). We should take into account the importance of genre when we study the presence of emblematic references. It is not a coincidence that interludes and cloak-and-dagger comedies virtually do not show this ingredient in their composition. Only plays with fantastic elements or allegorical dimensions allow for the presence of symbolic characters on stage. The genres related to court comedy, the dramas of ambition and power, the hagiographical, moral and political comedies, or the sacramental plays are fields of particular relevance at this point. It would be necessary to increase our knowledge about some authors where these special features seem to have a greater significance: for example, Cervantes and Calderón show a great inclination toward a symbolic mode of expression (rather naïve and inclined towards the exploitation of the colorful with visual effects in Cervantes; more organized and subject to the techniques of wit in Calderón). But, generally speaking, there is no Golden Age playwright who does not consider these components, and some comedies such as El caballero del Sol by Vélez de Guevara are almost continuous compositions of emblems.

Science, Instrumentality, and Chaotics in Early Modern Spanish Drama Cory A. Reed In this study, I analyze early modern Spanish drama in the context of the epistemological changes facing Europe at the turn of the 17th century known today as the Scientific Revolution. My approach is twofold. I present the comedia as a performative genre that responds to emerging scientific discourse and reflects Spanish society’s attempt to assimilate new ideas that are simultaneously forward-looking and threatening to existing ways of thinking. I also discuss the potential richness of contemporary theoretical approaches, such as chaos theory (or literary chaotics), in the analysis of structural and thematic aspects of the comedia that articulate the instability and uncertainty of the period. In order to illustrate these concepts, my analysis will focus on two plays by Pedro Calderón de la Barca: La vida es sueño and El médico de su honra. Both of these plays, composed within a few years of the 1633 trial of Galileo, are notable for their dramatization of social and political instability as well as their implicit or explicit reference to scientific debates as theatrical motifs and images that underscore unstable social orders. The early modern period, in Spain and throughout Europe, was characterized by a cultural fascination with mechanization resulting from the transformations ushered in by scientific and technological modernization. This period of epistemic crisis, which corresponds to what we now call the Scientific Revolution, fostered a change in outlook toward human relationships with the natural world and a cultural fascination with technology and machines.1 Caught between practical necessity in administering its empire and the desire to enforce Counter-Reformation Catholicism, Spanish intellectuals, clergymen, and artists found themselves grappling with the material benefits of technological advances that simultaneously held heretical implications. This paradoxical attitude toward scientific progress helps explain how Spain embraced an increasingly irrelevant, but 1 Complete discussions on the Scientific Revolution and the debate over its nomenclature may be found in Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution (Chicago, 1996), and A. Rupert Hall, The Revolution in Science, 1500–1750 (London, 1983).

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theologically acceptable, scholasticism in the face of an inevitable march toward empiricism and modernity whose hallmark was technological advancement.2 The first decades of the 17th century represent the culmination of a period of transition, begun a century earlier, that effected significant change in what we now call the scientific disciplines as well as in social, political, philosophical, and artistic contexts. The new Copernican cosmology reversed the centuries-old authority of the anthropocentric Ptolemaic-Aristotelian model nurtured by medieval scholastics and the church. The rise of humanism as an intellectual endeavor sought a reconciliation of classical authority with Christian doctrine by recuperating original Greco-Roman texts and abandoning the interpretations written by the schoolmen or by Muslim commentators. The development of mechanics promised greater efficiency in labor while increasing human domination of the natural environment. In politics, the era witnessed the advent of the modern nation-state, the consolidation of political power in the monarchs and their bureaucracies, and the development of a citizenry whose sense of national identity was participatory by way of the taxation and election of local officials. In many ways, Spain found itself developing and utilizing the practical applications of new scientific theories before Counter-Reformation theology discovered heretical possibilities lurking within them. For example, Salamanca was the only European university to actively incorporate the Copernican model into its curriculum in the mid-16th century, before the new system was understood as a heretical challenge to church doctrine and its traditional hold on education.3 Despite its increasing deference to dogmatic Catholicism, Spain remained in the forefront of technologies it found useful in pursuing its political interests and expanding its empire abroad. Spain was competitive in the development of artillery, navigational technologies, and the related field of cosmography, which sought to develop a comprehensive knowledge of the world through the methodical study of astronomy and geography, with an emphasis on the practical application of new scientific advancements. Several treatises on navigation date from this era, including Pedro de Medina’s widely translated and reprinted Arte de navegar 2 See José María López Piñero, La introducción de la ciencia moderna a España (Barcelona, 1969), and Carlos Valverde Mucientes, “La filosofía,” in El siglo del Quijote (1580–1680): religión, filosofía, ciencia, ed. Javier de Juan y Peñalosa and Nuria Esteban Sánchez (Madrid, 1996), pp. 161–247. 3 López Piñero, Introducción, p. 18.



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(1545, 1563) and Martín Cortés’s Breve compendio de la sphera (1551), both of which were considered so advanced that England, Spain’s growing imperial rival, used them for decades before developing its own navigational treatises. Spanish development of artillery, navigation technology, and other labor-saving machines was a practical response to the necessities of building an empire. José Cepeda Adán writes, [España] iba dando respuestas prácticas a los problemas técnicos que se le presentaban en la navegación, en el beneficio de metales, en las artes de la guerra, en el dominio de la distancia y el espacio, en el urbanismo. Es decir, estaba en la primera línea de lo que las necesidades de los tiempos exigían en la vida material con resultados tangibles y útiles.4

In an age of novelty, innovation carried Spain toward technological modernization at a time of theological resistance to change.5 It has become commonplace to assume that Spain failed to embrace the knowledge and technologies of the early modern period that culminated in the Scientific Revolution, while the rest of Europe surged forward toward the Enlightenment. The historical and cultural record, however, shows that early modern Spanish attitudes toward scientific and technological advancement were much more complex, and were fraught with the inconsistencies and tensions we might expect of a society that strove to achieve political and military advantage through technological innovation, while promoting a conservative theology that found the metaphysical implications of scientific progress to be heretical. It is important to remember that in the 17th century, what we now call science as a unique discipline did not exist. All areas of intellectual inquiry were considered equally sciences at the turn of the 17th century. Covarrubias, composing his Tesoro de la lengua castellana in the period, defines ciencia as “el conocimiento cierto de alguna cosa por su causa.”6 Calderón uses the word in this sense in La vida es sueño, when Basilio explains how Clotaldo has educated the imprisoned Segismundo with sciences that include law and religion, among others (“Éste le ha enseñado ciencias; / éste en la ley le ha instuído / católica” [lines 756–57]). The term

4 José Cepeda Adán, “Los españoles entre el ensueño y la realidad,” in El siglo del Quijote (1580–1680): religión, filosofía, ciencia, ed. Javier de Juan y Peñalosa and Nuria Esteban Sánchez (Madrid, 1996), pp. 37–38. 5 David R. Castillo has called this a “culture of curiosity” in Baroque Horrors: Roots of the Fantastic in the Age of Curiosities (Ann Arbor, 2010). 6 Sebastián de Covarrubias, Tesoro de la lengua castellana, o española (Madrid, 1611), facsimile ed. (New York, 1927), p. 65.

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science in early modern Spain commonly denoted any quantifiable field of knowledge.7 Natural philosophy, mechanical philosophy, and other sciences were the domain of all intellectuals and were firmly grounded in the observation of the material world. What we now term science, then, was not understood as separate from other philosophical questions, particularly in the context of the changing face of cosmology, for example, which had theological, metaphysical, political, and even artistic ramifications. The rise of mechanics was accompanied by a reordering of thinking during this period, which was itself mechanistic. Steven Shapin identifies four principal aspects of this reordering: the mechanization of nature (the development of useful technology), the depersonalization of knowledge (the growing separation of subject and object and the rise of “objectivity”), the mechanization of knowledge itself (the creation of rules and methods to regulate the production of knowledge), and the use of the resulting knowledge to achieve moral, social, and political ends, what Jessica Wolfe also refers to as “instrumentality” or the application of mechanized knowledge and methods to social and political realms.8 Following this definition, the Scientific Revolution witnessed the development of machinery to dominate and control nature, such as the windmill and, perhaps even more significantly, the clock, which transformed human management of time and came to symbolize the perceived inherent order of nature as a model for social and political stability.9 This era saw the advent of the scientific method and the rise of empiricism, which culminated later in the 17th century with the seminal works of René Descartes (1596–1650) and Isaac Newton (1642–1727). The emphasis on empiricism and direct observation challenged the traditions of scholasticism and its reliance upon textual authority and precedence, although Spain would embrace a return to scholasticism in the face of what it eventually came to associate with heresy. Early modern culture was fascinated with machinery and began to understand the world as a clockwork universe in which the careful, methodical application of human ingenuity could solve problems. Here it 7 Juan Huarte de San Juan’s Examen de ingenios includes what is perhaps the most often-cited catalogue of sciences in the period, organized by their affinities to the faculties of the soul. See Examen de ingenios para las ciencias, ed. Guillermo Serés (Madrid, 1989). 8 Shapin, The Scientific Revolution, p. 13; Jessica Wolfe, Humanism, Machinery, and Renaissance Literature (Cambridge, 2004), p. 1. 9 Shapin, The Scientific Revolution, pp. 33–36. Antonio de Guevara’s Reloj de principes (1529) serves as a Spanish example of clockwork instrumentality applied to a manual of princely conduct.



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is interesting to note the multiple meanings of Spanish words like ingenio and industria, which initially referred to activities of the human imagination but came to refer also to engines and mechanization. Consequently, cultural artifacts of this period show an artistic interest in machines that Kenneth J. Knoespel has called an aesthetic of instrumentality.10 The plastic arts, literature, and theater of this period represent images of machines that underscore an awareness of burgeoning modernity and its instrumental worldview. Notably, machines themselves were used to create theatrical illusion in dramatic performance, delighting audiences with mechanized special effects called tramoyas. The artistic production of this period, including the dramatic arts, participated in this aesthetic of instrumentality, representing the inherent instability of these changing times through themes, metaphors, and images of science and technology. One interesting cultural artifact of this period, the genre of pictorial machine books known as the theatrum mechanorum, showed the cultural fascination with machinery in its widespread circulation throughout Europe, including Spain.11 The theatrum mechanorum was as aesthetic manifestation of the interest in machinery, offering for visual consumption detailed illustrations of machines and ingenious devices in which numbered and lettered components guide the viewer’s gaze in order to assimilate how the pieces fit together, and how they function.12 Likewise, mechanical imagery appears frequently in the poetry of Golden Age Spain and images related to astronomy, astrology, navigation, and the solar system are frequently recurring themes in early modern literature.13 One need only recall the windmills episode in Don Quijote (as well as the novel’s portrayal of fulling mills, water wheels, artillery, printing presses, and ingenious devices like the cabeza encantada) to recognize the pervasiveness of the early modern consciousness of machinery and labor-saving mechanical devices.14 Images of machines 10 Kenneth J. Knoespel, “Gazing on Technology: Theatrum Mechanorum and the Assimilation of Renaissance Machinery,” in Literature and Technology, ed. Mark L. Greenberg and Lance Schaechterle (Mississauga, 1992), pp. 99–124. 11  Included in this genre are the works of Jacques Besson (c. 1540–73) and Agostino Ramelli (1531–c. 1608) in France, Vittorio Zonca (1568–1602) in Italy, and Juanelo Turriano (1501–85) in Spain. 12 Wolfe, Humanism, p. 238; Knoespel, “Gazing on Technology,” p. 100. 13 Daniel L. Heiple, Mechanical Imagery in Spanish Golden Age Poetry (Madrid, 1983). 14 See my “Ludic Revelations in the Enchanted Head Episode in Don Quijote,” Cervantes 24 (2004): 189–216, and “Scientific and Technological Imagery in Don Quijote,” in Don Quijote Across Four Centuries: Papers from the Seventeenth Southern California Cervantes Symposium (UCLA, 7–9 April 2005) (Newark, DE, 2006), pp. 167–84.

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and mechanized knowledge abound in early modern literature, evidencing the rise of mechanics and the epistemic change of the period, but also serving as metaphors that communicate motion, methodical operation, and human attempts to effect change in the natural or social environments. Such instrumental imagery is particularly effective in theatrical performance, where the construction of tramoyas to create artful illusions underscores the importance of mechanization. Even in the corrales, where such tramoyas were rarer, metaphorical references to celestial objects, astronomical and navigational equipment, machines, and the application of empiricism to method and knowledge create vivid images in the public’s imagination that underscore the plays’ themes of change and liminality. Calderon’s La vida es sueño is one example of a successful drama composed by a privileged member of the clergy, which nonetheless exhibits evidence of a society grappling with material and epistemological changes wrought by early modern scientific advancement. Set against the backdrop of war, political instability, and changing regimes, this highly philosophical drama presents life itself as transitory and underscores this central idea with pervasive imagery related to astronomy, astrology, heavenly bodies, and modern machinery. The play evinces an aesthetic of instrumentality in which characters self-consciously and deliberately adopt mechanized knowledge in the pursuit of truth or in the attempt to change the environment. Calderon’s drama opens with the representation of the world as a “confuso laberinto” (line 975) in which worldly appearances are illusory and our senses cannot be trusted. The play articulates a complicated relationship between order and disorder, in which the main characters all search for ways to find security amid the apparent instability of their existence and to escape the confusion of the labyrinthine world. Both Segismundo’s attempt to understand his humanity (and recover his princely title) through the exercise of free will and the secondary plot of Rosaura’s struggle to regain her honor evoke the instrumentality of the early modern period. These characters see themselves as instruments for bringing about change and justice, however differently and subjectively they may define their goals, eventually joining forces when each realizes the other is the key to achieving success. Rosaura, whose industria is evidenced by her adoption of both male and female roles at will, and whose agency is symbolized by the sword she carries, ultimately offers herself to Segismundo “con mi acero y mi persona” (line 2913). An instrument of equal value to her sword, Rosaura presents herself to be used by Segismundo to validate



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his true identity and prompt him to act. In exchange, Segismundo will be instrumental to her goal of avenging Astolfo through active deeds, not idle words (“porque quiero / que te hablen por mí mis obras” [lines 3010–11]). Additionally, the story of Segismundo’s search for self can be understood as a competition between two men, father and son, who attempt to change their perceived destinies, each adopting a different methodology. Segismundo’s approach is experimental and empirical, learning from experience and formulating conclusions a posteriori. Although at the end of the play, he still admits partial ignorance (“¿podré yo / que soy menor en las canas, / en el valor y en la ciencia, / vencerla?” [lines 3238–41]), he succeeds precisely because he learns to exercise free will to act in this world, the theological equivalent of the human agency emphasized by images of early modern instrumentality. Basilio, on the other hand, initially holds premodern, deterministic beliefs, but also applies experimental method with the aim of effecting empirical change. The problem with Basilio’s approach, as Segismundo later tells him, lies not in the experiment itself, but rather in the methodology he adopts, which is based on “injusticia y venganza” (line 3215) rather than “con prudencia y con templanza” (line 3219). The way both characters, in their multiple monologues and soliloquies, frame their examinations of self, destiny, and agency in terms of the application of logic and method likewise is characteristic of an age in which the nature of intellectual inquiry itself was a subject of debate. Couched in Counter-Reformation theological terms, Basilio’s fault lies in his attempt to play God with his son’s fate, depriving him of free will. Cast in terms that evoke early modern scientific epistemology, the initial conditions and hypotheses of Basilio’s experiment are erroneous, relying on his acceptance of a system of astrology that simply does not correspond to the laws of nature in the empirical world. Since his initial hypothesis is wrong, his subsequent experimental attempts produce unreliable results. Basilio subordinates his scientific method to a deterministic belief in astrology, and refuses to admit the possibility of human error, arrogantly contending that “por mi ciencia he merecido / el sobrenombre de docto” (lines 605–06). Basilio typifies the kind of bad scientist characterized in many Calderonian dramas, including El médico de su honra, who allow their emotions and egos to affect their purportedly scientific methods. It is significant that Calderón repeatedly uses images of celestial bodies, astrology, and astronomy to underscore the dramatic world of change and movement represented on the stage, paralleling (if not acknowledging directly) the shifting scientific epistemologies of the era in which he composed the play. Frederick A. de Armas has commented extensively

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on the astral-imperial mythologies inherent in the figure of Astraea, the name adopted by Rosaura in her disguise as a lady in waiting in act two.15 Estrella’s name also refers to the heavens and evokes the astrological aspects of the play as well as cultural attitudes toward modern astronomy. Basilio, of course, is the character who most completely identifies with astrology, and his reliance upon this system causes him to misinterpret the empirical world, precipitating a chain of cause and effect relationships that carry tragic implications. While Calderón never explicitly discusses the Copernican-Galilean controversy, the act of examining and critiquing models of celestial motions (both modern and premodern) characterized this decade’s intellectual climate. Without ever problematizing this debate (and as a priest, Calderón would have no interest in doing so), Calderón takes advantage of cultural associations with movement, motion, and instability inherent in astral-celestial imagery. Modern productions of this play have underscored the shifting epistemes of Calderón’s time by setting astronomical instruments on stage as props and scenic devices. Jonathan Munby’s 2009 production in London suspended an astrolabe above the audience.16 The Santa Fe Opera’s 2010 production of Lewis Spratlan’s operatic treatment of the play used telescopes onstage as props along with a complex matrix of moving machinery in order to evoke tension between the Copernican revolution and Basilio’s deterministic consultation of astrological prophecy.17 Such performance and design decisions see a rich potential for scientific and technological images to communicate a sense of movement and change that underscores the unstable social and political order of the play. It is also interesting to note that scientific imagery in this play is not limited to cosmological images; Calderón’s work also foregrounds images of modern war machinery that represent early modern technical advancement. Guns figure prominently in this play and Clarín’s death in act three is one of the few instances in early modern Spanish drama of a major character killed onstage by modern firearms. All of these images contribute to the audience’s perception that the dramatic world they see unfolding before them represents moments of social, political, and cultural upheaval and change.

15 Frederick A. de Armas, The Return of Astraea: An Astral-Imperial Myth in Calderón (Lexington, 1986). 16 Maryrica Ortiz Lottman, “Calderón’s Dream on the London Stage: A Conversation with Jonathan Munby,” Comedia Performance 8 (2011): 201–25. 17 Cory A. Reed, “Calderonian Engines of Change: Performance, Design, and Hybridity in Lewis Spratlan’s Opera, Life is A Dream,” Comedia Performance 9 (2012): 9–37.



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Anthony J. Cascardi describes Basilio as a scientist caught between medieval and Renaissance conceptions of scientific method.18 Christopher Soufas likewise reads La vida es sueño as representing a central discursive conflict between pre-Cartesian and Cartesian systems of thought.19 Modern performances of Calderón's play further emphasize this epistemic change, visually depicting conflict between medieval and modern systems of knowledge, and reminding the audience of metaphysical consequences of the emergence of the modern episteme during the time of Calderón. Viewed from this perspective, La vida es sueño is a play about changing times, instrumentality, and epistemic conflict, framed in the context of war (with its modern war machines), and offering a complex system of astronomical-astrological imagery that mirrors the conflicts of the period in which Calderón composed this play, a time of epistemological instability. In our own historical moment at the other end of the modern era, contemporary theoretical approaches that draw metaphorically on scientific discourse can be useful for analyzing epistemological instability in literary and dramatic works. Interdisciplinary approaches, including those that emphasize similarities among scientific, literary, and cultural forms of human expression, are particularly useful in this regard. Catherine Connor is among a growing number of early modern scholars who have found the insights of cognitive science rewarding for the analysis of literary and dramatic texts, identifying the complex mixture of mechanical, technological, astronomical, and biological references in early modern drama as a “scientific art of theater.”20 Another theoretical approach derived from scientific discourse is literary chaotics, or the teasing out of literary meaning through metaphors related to the postmodern science of chaos theory. Chaos theory arose as a discipline in the late 20th century, addressing unpredictability and nonlinearity in complex systems, challenging the deterministic assumptions inherent in classical Newtonian physics, and finding complex relationships between perceived order and disorder. Chaos theory postulates a universe characterized by spontaneity, instability,

18 Anthony Cascardi, The Limits of Illusion: A Critical Study of Calderón (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 13–15. 19 C. Christopher Soufas, Jr., “Thinking in La vida es sueño,” PMLA 100 (1985): 287–99. 20 Catherine Connor (Swietlicki), “The Scientific Arts of Theater: The Bio-Social WorldTheater with Examples from Lope, Calderón, and Others,” Bulletin of the Comediantes 58 (2006): 457–67.

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and unpredictability, and recognizes the importance of human subjectivity in our attempts to order a disorderly universe. While classical Newtonian physics portrays the perceived world as a composite of linear, stable systems, chaos theory suggests that large parts of the universe behave in a nonlinear, unpredictable way. Whereas classical science views small deviations from the norm as “rounding errors” that can effectively be disregarded, chaos scientists study these inconsistencies in detail, believing that small changes in the initial conditions of a system may lead to unpredictably large differences in outcome. Chaos theory studies disorderly dynamics (from turbulent motions of dripping faucets to cardiac fibrillation), as well as the irregular shapes of nature (from jagged coastlines to snowflakes), finding non-linearity and self-reflexivity ubiquitous in the natural world. As scientists have studied these complex systems, they have concluded that nonlinear systems are not completely disorderly after all, but that there is in fact an underlying order within chaotic behavior.21 Scientists of complex, nonlinear dynamics have subsequently distanced themselves from the word chaos because of its imprecision, but humanists have embraced the interdisciplinary and metaphorical possibilities inherent in the term.22 Katherine Hayles defends the term as useful for literary and cultural analysis “precisely because of the ambiguous meanings that inhere within it.”23 Of course, the application of chaos theory to the analysis of literature is not the same thing as conducting scientific research.24 Literary chaotics, as the humanistic appropriation is being called, employs chaos theory as a metaphor that is useful in the study of order-disorder relationships and in the analysis of modes of thinking that we consider modern. Chaos can denote emptiness, negativity, disorder, and formlessness in a variety of historical, mythical, literary, and cultural contexts: deconstruction and other postmodern cultural theories that address unpredictability and disorder are good examples of this.25 21 The rise of chaos theory, and its subsequent media popularization, is chronicled in James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science (New York, 1987). 22 See, for example, N. Katherine Hayles, Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and Science (Ithaca, 1990). 23 N. Katherine Hayles, “Introduction: Complex Dynamics in Literature and Science,” in Chaos and Order: Complex Dynamics in Literature and Science, ed. N. Katherine Hayles (Chicago, 1991), p. 2. 24 For a very sensible discussion of the appropriation of scientific discourse in literary criticism, see Dale J. Pratt, “Ingenious Examinations: Science, Golden Age Theater, and Twenty-First Century Criticism,” Bulletin of the Comediantes 58 (2006): 469–77. 25 Hayles, “Introduction,” pp. 7–11.



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Seen in the larger context of postmodernism, chaos theory offers a broad range of interdisciplinary possibilities that correspond to a more general reconsideration of existing literary and cultural paradigms at the turn of the 21st century. Emphasizing the relative unpredictability of nature and the subjectivity of human observation, chaos theory integrates science with literary and philosophical thought, and offers new insights for reading literature. Applying literary chaotics as a metaphorical system for the analysis of early modern literature is especially rewarding in that it reveals indelible connections between the dawn of modern thought and our own postmodern age. Bruce R. Burningham has proposed that we study the Baroque and our own postmodern period as “bookends” of a developing culture of modernity that begins with cultural attitudes in the early modern period that prefigure our own.26 Among other cultural affinities, the literature at both ends of modernity shares a recognition that the relative chaos or disorder of the world is a function of how people perceive it—and, by extension, how willing they are to find their way through the confusing labyrinth of life (the Baroque metaphor of choice) or to seek the underlying order within apparent chaos (to use the contemporary terminology of chaotics). El médico de su honra dramatizes characters who attempt to bring order to a disorderly world, set against a metaphorical backdrop of scientific and intellectual discourse that parallels the shifting epistemic attitudes of the early modern period.27 Written around 1635, during the immediate aftermath of Galileo’s 1633 tribunal and only 50 years before Newton first presented his Principia to the Royal Society of London, Calderón’s drama participates in the early modern cultural preoccupation with the intellect, the mechanization of knowledge, and the application of method in the investigation of empirical reality. Scientific metaphors occupy pivotal moments in this play, from the opening scene of Prince Enrique’s accident to Don Gutierre’s final warning to his new wife, Leonor: “no está olvidada la ciencia” (lines 2947–48). The central metaphor that constitutes the play’s title, that Don Gutierre is the surgeon of his honor, relies heavily on a carefully constructed medical conceit, describing the perceived 26 Bruce R. Burningham, Tilting Cervantes: Baroque Reflections on Postmodern Culture (Nashville, 2008), p. 3. 27 For a more detailed analysis of this play in the context of chaotics, see my article, “‘No está olvidada la ciencia’: Science, Chaos Theory, and Tragedy in El médico de su honra,” South Central Review 13 (1996): 26–39.

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threat to his reputation in clinical terms as an illness requiring diagnosis, a cure, and the eventual services of a bloodletter.28 Gutierre is a self-professed scientist who scorns emotional subjectivity and whose investigations purport to follow a logical, rational, even objective, scientific method. After observing what he perceives as curious, disorderly behavior in his wife, he hypothesizes that his honor is afflicted by a potentially life-threatening illness whose cause is Doña Mencía’s alleged romantic involvement with Enrique. Gutierre’s words to himself, “Pero vengamos al caso; / quizás hallaremos respuesta” (lines 1611–12), initiate a cognitive process by which he applies an analytical method to order the disorderly world he perceives around him. Not completely convinced by the evidence his eyes and ears perceive, Gutierre proposes a methodical procedure for testing his hypothesis, resolving to collect empirical evidence that might refute or support his contention: “Esta noche iré a mi casa / de secreto, entraré en ella, / por ver qué malicia tiene / el mal” (lines 1687–90). The scientific stance Gutierre adopts as a method of problemsolving exemplifies both the early modern aesthetic of instrumentality and Newtonian reductionism, breaking his problem into constituent parts and analyzing them in order to formulate his conclusions based on what he considers a deterministic system. Nevertheless, the actual procedure Gutierre uses (motivated by a need to confirm his suspicions rather than uncover the truth) violates his proposed method of investigation. Gutierre’s overactive imagination and jealousy overwhelm his avowed scientific logic, leading him to discard any possibility that his wife might, in fact, be innocent. Gutierre shows that his scientific method is susceptible to subjectivity and human error. While he acknowledges the risk of letting emotions interfere with a more objective evaluation (“cuando llega / un marido a saber que hay / celos, faltará la ciencia” [lines 1708–10]), his egotistical need to prove himself right overpowers any dispassionate attempt to make sense of the circumstantial evidence against Mencía. His claims to an enlightened, scientific mind are thus undermined by his actions and emotional reactions. Gutierre’s science falters because he reverts to a priori knowledge instead of pursuing the a posteriori investigation his putative empirical 28 For a detailed discussion of the play’s medical metaphor and its inherent contradictions, see Bruce Wardropper, “Poetry and Drama in Calderón’s El médico de su honra,” Romanic Review 49 (1958): 3–11; and Robert Y. Valentine, “The Rhetoric of Therapeutic Symbols in Calderón’s El médico de su honra,” Bulletin of the Comediantes 32 (1980): 39–48.



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method demands. He arbitrarily stops his analysis of a chaotic system before he is able to discern its underlying order. An objective study of the empirical evidence might prove that beneath the apparent chaos of his marital situation there lies a hidden order: his wife is innocent and his marriage remains intact. In order to understand the true nature of the apparent chaos in his life, Gutierre must be willing to continue his investigation until a deeper order is revealed. His personality, however, is not well suited for scientific investigation. Teresa Soufas describes Gutierre as an “overly contemplative individual” whose analysis is tainted by “the obsessive ruminations of a melancholy mind.”29 He is a suspicious, brooding, self-professed intellectual whose delusional thinking causes him to abandon the dispassionate reason he so vehemently insists he is using. Gutierre’s melancholy mind is incapable of objective perception; his uninformed conclusions decry his lack of discipline and suggest that he will always remain engañado—confused by appearances and unable to differentiate chaos from order. From the very beginning, Gutierre shows a tendency to perceive life in terms of elaborate metaphors. In one instance, he creates a complex astronomical system in which Mencía is the sun, which eclipses his once and future love, Leonor, the moon (lines 524–44). He presents this metaphorical solar system in scientific terms, postulating a theory (“Y escúchame un argumento” [line 525]) and then applying it to the case at hand (“Aplico agora” [line 535]). In constructing the medical metaphor of the play’s title, he follows the same binary model of proposing a hypothesis and then applying it to empirical evidence. First, he assumes the role of doctor and diagnoses a critical illness (“A peligro estáis honor, / no hay hora en vos que no sea / crítica” [lines 1659–61]). He then decides to cure the illness, prescribing a remedy that will contain the damage done: Y os he de curar, honor, y pues al principio muestra este primero accidente tan grave peligro, sea la primera medicina cerrar al daño las puertas, atajar al mal los pasos: y así os receta y ordena el médico de su honra

29 Teresa Scott Soufas, Melancholy and the Secular Mind in Spanish Golden Age Literature (Columbia, Missouri, 1990), p. 88.

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cory a. reed primeramente la dieta del silencio, que es guardar la boca, tener paciencia. (lines 1665–76)

Finally, he directs himself to the cause of the illness, and decides to treat it before it can spread (“luego dice que apliquéis / a vuestra mujer finezas / . . . porque el mal / con el despego no crezca” [lines 1677–81]). Gutierre is guilty of several lapses in his own scientific method. First, he makes an incorrect diagnosis based on a superficial consideration of imaginary symptoms (his wife has not committed adultery and his honor is not in jeopardy unless he himself publicizes his suspicions). He stops his investigation prematurely, accepting the small amount of circumstantial evidence he has gathered as enough, and then continues his analysis in his own mind, in isolation from his object of study, ultimately jumping to the wrong conclusion. Finally, he prescribes a cure inappropriately (and maliciously): a bloodletting designed to kill, not save, a human being.30 That Gutierre’s reasoning is flawed is supported thematically by the text’s continual allusions to hypochondria, which, like the malady afflicting his honor, is often an imaginary illness.31 Human attempts at understanding nature are by definition constrained by the limits of the intellect: human error is always a very real possibility. Gutierre practices bad medicine because he fails to realize this. It is significant that any recognition of order at the end of the play occurs in the audience, not the protagonists.32 The desengaño of this work extends outward to the viewing public, who possess the information Gutierre lacks and also are aware of the historical fate awaiting King Pedro, whose final seal of approval becomes the emblem of unstable order in the play. Any order perceived by the play’s characters is arbitrary at best, while Calderón allows his audience to perceive the true order underlying the chaotic sequence of dramatic events. The paradoxical concept of orderly disorder asserts itself in the very structure of the play as well. The plot of El médico and its treatment of tragedy anticipate chaos theory’s “butterfly effect”—the idea that very small differences in the initial conditions of a system (what classical science frequently dismisses as “rounding errors”) can lead to disproportionately 30 See Wardropper, “Poetry and Drama,” pp. 4–6; and A. A. Parker, The Mind and Art of Calderón (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 28–29. 31 Soufas, Melancholy and the Secular Mind, p. 98. 32 Anthony J. Cascardi, The Limits of Illusion: A Critical Study of Calderón (Cambridge, 1984), p. 74.



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large and unpredictable outcomes.33 In Calderonian tragedy, as in chaos theory, small errors can lead to large consequences. In El médico de su honra, none of the characters has a complete understanding of the events taking place. Gutierre’s suspicions, Mencía’s reactions, Enrique’s secret visits, lost and found daggers and letters, insubordinate servants, mistaken identities, and prison escapes all contribute to convince Gutierre of Mencía’s guilt while she is in fact innocent. Only the audience is allowed to see the big picture. The seemingly unimportant or insignificant actions of each character in the play combine to aggravate the dramatic situation and lead to Mencía’s unforeseen and unjust death. The collective nature of Calderonian tragedy also indicates the importance of perspective and the subjectivity of observation.34 Each character in El médico has access to partial information that, when combined, shows Mencía’s innocence. The problem is that each character is only allowed a narrow, subjective view of the ongoing events and a combination of perspectives is necessary to understand Mencía’s actions completely. Like the science of chaos, Calderón shows that observation is subjective and that perspective affects our understanding of complex systems. In representing his labyrinthine dramatic world, Calderón suggests that people are easily deceived by chaotic appearances in life, but that an understanding of a hidden order is always within reach. The search for order within chaos thus parallels the Baroque idea of desengaño— being able to discern the true order within the apparent disorder of the universe. The state of desengaño requires the kind of disciplined soulsearching more typical of Segismundo in La vida es sueño, a process that Gutierre illustrates by negative opposition. Because of his intellectual delusion, Gutierre cannot perceive the order of his disorderly world and thus not only falls short of reaching his desengaño, but also sets himself up for the likely repetition of his heinous crime with his new wife, Leonor. Nevertheless, we should not conclude that Calderón supported a chaotic view of the universe. As the foremost writer of religious, allegorical drama in Counter-Reformation Spain, Calderón would hardly have believed in a universe hopelessly enshrouded in chaos and disorder. Calderón’s depiction of order within chaos expresses the illusory and superficial nature of disorder and implies that an orderly purpose lies beneath any semblance

33 Gleick, Chaos, p. 20. 34 A. A. Parker analyzes the collective nature of Calderonian tragedy in “Towards a Definition of Calderonian Tragedy,” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 39 (1962): 222–37.

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of worldly chaos. The world itself is not chaotic: it only appears chaotic to those who refuse to look deeper. Reading early modern dramas, such as El médico de su honra and La vida es sueño, at the intersection of dramatic and scientific discourse helps demonstrate the problematical relationship between order and disorder that generates much of their dramatic action. These two plays by Calderón show that our actions may have unforeseen consequences and that our social circumstances bind us collectively, but that we ultimately have agency to effect change in confusing environmental circumstances. Taking advantage of a cultural awareness of, and fascination with, scientific and technological innovation, Calderón underscores the political, social, and epistemological instability depicted in his plays with images of and references to his society’s most available examples of motion, change, and instrumentality. While an understanding of early modern science or contemporary approaches like chaotics is not essential for the analysis of order-disorder relationships in these plays, acknowledging relationships between scientific and artistic thought at the dawn of modernity can be useful for considering early modern drama in the context of broader cultural tensions that characterized an age of innovation and epistemic change.

Melancholy, the Comedia, and Early Modern Psychology Teresa Scott Soufas The recent debates concerning the use of the terms Golden Age and early modern with regard to Spanish Renaissance and Baroque literary production reflect some of the issues inherent in a discussion of the frequent depiction of melancholy in literature of the period. In particular, the comedia with its representational connections to social, political, and religious currents held in common with its popular and royal audiences provides a useful example of such discursive and performative contributions to the appreciation of what was developing in the intellectual culture. Among the elements of life in mid-16th-century and into late 17thcentury Spain is the shift in epistemological grounding from the preceding relational model of likeness and resemblance to the evolving model of difference and individuality. Melancholy, a condition with various symptomologies and recognitions, is a hallmark representing this intellectual shift, and the comedia stage is especially rich with examples of its usefulness to playwrights in their depictions of the rising recognition of the hegemony of the individual intellect. Pursuing the argument about current terminology in the debate regarding Golden Age/Siglo de Oro or early modern, I have found very useful two recent articles, one by Margaret Greer1 and the other by Alison Weber.2 In companion pieces published in 2011 in PMLA, these scholars examine the usefulness for literary and cultural discussions of 16th- and 17th-century Spanish literature of these labels. Whether these terms are interchangeable is not an option in either study, but rather each presents a disentangling of the complex, and often overlooked, underpinnings of the two rubrics. Not only noteworthy is the clumsiness of the first name that signals more than 100 years of chronology, but likewise the difficulty of determining the exact beginning date of that period as well as its general application to the Spain of the time. Weber asserts: “For whom was

1 Margaret Greer, “Thine and Mine: The Spanish ‘Golden Age’ and Early Modern Studies,” PMLA 126 (2011): 217–24. 2 Alison Weber, “ ‘Golden Age’ or ‘Early Modern’: What’s in a Name?” PMLA 126 (2011): 225–32.

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the Golden Age an epoch of splendor, happiness, and justice? Clearly not for the soldiers, peasants, slaves, prostitutes, and indigenous peoples pressed into labor on New World encomiendas.”3 In this same critique of terms, Weber later opines: “While ‘Golden Age’ focuses our attention on the rediscovery of classical learning, ‘early modern’ favors other precipitating factors for demarcating a new age: political (the consolidation of monarchical power), social (urbanization and demographic growth), and technological (the introduction of the printing press).”4 Greer observes as well, remarking on assertions of José Maravall about the dissolution of the dream of a utopian “golden primeval happiness” based on reports about native peoples in the New World, that “[the] first challenge the Spanish Golden Age presents early modern studies, then, is dealing with the formulation of that [utopian] dream and the obstacles to its realization on either side of the Atlantic.”5 What has become the customary acceptance of the terms Golden Age/ Siglo de Oro further separates Spain and its intellectual and literary history from the rest of Europe. As Weber questions “whether replacing Golden Age with early modern will attract a broader audience of non-Hispanists,” she continues: I doubt I am alone in grumbling when I pick up a monograph or collection of essays claiming to treat a topic in “early modern Europe” and discover that Spain is mentioned only glancingly or not at all. It would appear that the Franco-era tourism board—“España es diferente” . . . —has been all too successful. Golden Age advertises Spain’s difference, but at what cost? Does an air of exoticism attract readers or give them permission to ignore our subject as peripheral?6

Turning specifically to critical appreciation of Spanish drama of the 16th and 17th centuries, she notes that the theater in Spain, as is also the case with Spanish poetry of this time period, was “originally intertwined with Italian models, in its early theorization” with such components as court drama and the traveling theatrical troupes. And she continues that when Lope de Vega “declared that he had locked away the theorists with Terence and Plautus and wrote for his paying public . . . Spanish theater had found its own voice and a cultural centrality equaled only by Athenian and

3 Weber, “What’s in a Name?” p. 226. 4 Ibid., p. 227. 5 Greer, “Mine and Thine,” p. 218. 6 Weber, “What’s in a Name?” p. 229.



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Elizabethan theater.”7 The many plays written from the 1570s and after numbered 10,000 and were translated into other languages. The Spanish drama influenced the theatrical and prose production of other nations, and “most famously [provoked] the Querelle du Cid and the French Academy’s imposition of classical rules for drama.”8 Enlightenment critics and literati in Spain and Europe, in general, dismissed Spanish Baroque drama or “reshaped it to suit their demands for the unities and separation of tragedy and comedy.”9 Greer continues with her summary of the rising and falling appreciation of Spanish Renaissance and Baroque theater and focuses on the renewed appreciation directed to it by the Romantics and Adolf Friedrich von Schack’s assessment of it as “el teatro más brillante de Europa.”10 In spite of such excitement about the drama, it is to be acknowledged that Spanish theatrical pieces from the period have not enjoyed the continuous performance that has made Elizabethan theater so accessible to an audience familiar with its dramatic conventions. Added to this is another fact that Greer recognizes: “The relatively small corpus of Elizabethan drama has been intensely studied from a great variety of theoretical approaches; the immense corpus of early modern Spanish drama offers a treasure trove for scholars, but its size makes theoretical generalization problematic.”11 * * * Turning then to the representation of melancholy in the comedia and in Spain’s literary output of the period as a whole, Roger Bartra asserts that since the end of World War II, many important works on melancholy have been written and disseminated, from the appearance of Saturn and Melancholy by Klibansky, Panofsky and Saxl, to the Histoire du traitement de la mélancolie des origins à 1900 by Jean Starobinski, to more recent books by Jackson, Kristeva, Lepenies, and others. However, the texts that set out to study the general history of this disorder give little or no attention to the subject of melancholy in the Spanish Golden Age, in spite of the enormous importance of Spanish thinking on the subject.12   7 Ibid.   8 Greer, “Mine and Thine,” p. 222.   9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11  Ibid. 12 Roger Bartra, Melancholy and Culture: Diseases of the Soul in Golden Age Spain (Cardiff, 2008), p. 1. See some of the studies on literature of the period and melancholy: Lawrence Babb, The Elizabethan Malady (East Lansing, 1951); Donald A. Beecher,

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What therefore is important to keep in mind as we confront the 16thand 17th-century literature of Spain, and in particular, the comedia, is the Spanish Renaissance and Baroque understanding of the European discursive shift from pre-Cartesian thinking to a more modern articulation of the nature of thought, an epistemological shift that, as I and others have argued, includes a variety of representations and investigations of humoral melancholy in more than one literary genre. The theater is one of the most fruitful sources for such representations and resultant examinations. The dialectical approach taken by numerous Spanish dramatists of this period, to respond to the then-newer evaluations and growing appreciation of independent human thought through their characterization of melancholy figures, depicts a dramatic type connected to Renaissance/ Baroque Europe’s intellectual shift toward the building embrace of individuality and difference. Melancholia allows a basis for depiction of figures who fit into this shift, as depicted on the Spanish stage, with great difficulties and often catastrophic results of their hyperactive thought or reliance on accepted appreciation of melancholic symptoms and tendencies. Melancholy boasts a long history of association with madness, lovesickness, and acedia, as well as a superior intellect. Thus, in keeping with what other scholars have noted, Aurora Egido asserts: “La historia de la melancolía, que en realidad equivale a la historia de la medicina, es “Lovesickness, Diagnosis, and Destiny in the Renaissance Theaters of England and Spain: The Parallel Development of a Medico-Literary Motif,” in Louise and Peter FothergillPayne, eds, Parallel Lives: Spanish and English National Drama (Lewisburg, 1991); Donald A. Beecher and Massimo Ciavolella, eds, Eros and Anteros: The Medical Traditions of Love in the Renaissance (Toronto, 1992); María Bolaños, Pasajes de la melancolía: arte y bilis negra a comienzos del siglo XX (Madrid, 1996); James F. Burke, “The Estrella de Sevilla and the Tradition of Saturnine Melancholy,” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 51.2 (1974): 137–56; Guillermo Díaz-Plaja, Tratado de las melancolías españolas (Madrid, 1975); Otis Green, The Literary Mind of Medieval and Renaissance Spain (Lexington, 1970); Otis H. Green, “El Ingenioso Hidalgo,” Hispanic Review 25 (1957): 175–93; Carlos Gurméndez, La melancolía (Madrid, 1990); Christine Orobitg, “Between Evil and Malady: Cures of Melancholy in the Spanish Golden Age,” in Conference on Healing Magic and Belief in Europe, 15th–20th Centuries, vol. 2; Christine Orobitg, Garcilaso et la mélancolie (Toulouse, 1997); Héctor Pérez-Rincón, “Reflexiones melancólicas (un paseo bibliográfico),” Ciencia y Desarrollo 28 (1995): 55–56; Gabriel A. Pérouse, L’Examen des Esprits du Docteur Juan Huarte de San Juan, sa diffusion et son influence en France aus XVIe et XVIIe siècles (Paris, 1970); Luciano Rubio, “El temperamento ‘melancólico’ de fray Luis de León y sus actuaciones prácticas,” in S. Álvarez Turienzo, ed., Fray Luis de León: el fraile, el humanista, el teólogo (Real Monasterio de El Escorial, 1992); Gill Speak, “An Odd Kind of Melancholy: Reflections on the Glass Delusion in Europe (1440–1680),” History of Psychiatry 1 (1990): 191–206, and also his “El licenciado Vidriera and the Glass Men of Early Modern Europe,” Modern Language Review 85 (1990): 850–65; and Mary Wack, Lovesickness in the Middle Ages: The Viaticum and Its Commentaries (Philadelphia, 1990).



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también la historia misma de la filosofía, la religion y el arte, habiendo sido trasladada en numerosas imágenes pictóricas, escultóricas y arquitectónicas a través de los siglos, aunque su territorio más frecuentado sea sin duda el de la literatura.”13 Carrying forward the insistence on locating Spanish works of this period within a European context, I draw attention to treatises on melancholia from three different then-current commentators. First, from the many Spanish voices raised on the subject, I cite Francisco López de Villalobos, a court physician to Charles V, who declares about love melancholics: Esta imaginativa adolesce algunas veces de un género de locura que se llama alienacion, y es por parte de algun malo y rebelde humor que ofusca y enturbia el espírito do se yacen las imágenes, fórmose allí la imágen falsa . . . . Los enamorados son desta material: que la imágen de su amiga tienen siempre figurada y fija dentro de sí esta imágen, y en las cosas anejas y tocantes á ella, están transportados y rebatados todas las horas; con ella hablan, della cantan y della lloran, con ella comen y duermen y despiertan, á ninguna cosa responden á propósito, ni piensen que puede hablar nadie en otra manera sino aquella.14

Tomás Murillo y Velarde, a later 17th-century physician, wrote a treatise on melancholy which contains the following description of lovesickness: “El heróico afecto, o amor, es género de melancolía, llámase vulgarmente heróico, y tiene peculiar curación y conceleridad” (fol. 137v).15 Likewise, Daniel Sennert, also of the 17th century, explains: The Delirium of Love may be referred to the Melancholy before mentioned. . . . It is a melancholy doting from too much love, for most Lovers by a blind sort of love, are carried from right Reason diversely, and sometimes it is so vehement that [it] deprives a man of Reason, and causeth a Delirium. . . . The first Cause in a strong impression of an amiable thing not 13 Quoted in Felice Gambin, Azabache: el debate sobre la melancolía en España (Madrid, 2008), p. 11. 14 Francisco López de Villalobos, “Anfitrión, comedia de Plauto,” in Biblioteca de Autores Españoles 36 (Madrid, 1926), p. 489. 15 Tomás Murillo y Velarde, Aprobacion de ingenios, y curacion de hipochondricos, con observaciones y remedios muy particulares (Zaragoza, 1672); Juan Huarte de San Juan, Examen de ingenios para las ciencias, ed. Guillermo Serés (Madrid, 1989). For a discussion of the term heroical love, see: John L. Lowes, “The Loveres Maladye of Hereos,” Modern Philology 11 (1912): 491–546; Scott C. Osborn, “Heroical Love in Dryden’s Heroic Drama,” PMLA 73 (1958): 480–90; Teresa Scott Soufas, Melancholy and the Secular Mind in Spanish Golden Age Literature (Columbia, Missouri, 1990), ch. 4; Andrés Velásquez, Libro de la melancolía (Seville, 1585); Juliana Schiesari, The Gendering of Melancholia: Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Symbolics of Love in Renaissance Literature (Ithaca, 1992); and Jennifer Radden, ed., The Nature of Melancholy: From Aristotle to Kristeva (New York, 2000).

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teresa scott soufas good not profitable but lascivious by which men are mad with Reason; for if the species of a man or woman received by sight or discourse be strongly imprinted upon the memory, and presented often to the imagination and mind, there is such a desire of the thing loved, that it changeth the party much, so that he can neither eat nor sleep, but is much troubled.16

In this context, it is interesting to read what Diego de San Pedro opines in his Cárcel de amor, where he extols the benefits of not being a sensitive and scholarly individual: Bieaventurados los baxos de condición y rudos de engenio, que no pueden sentir las cosas sino en el grado que las entienden; y malaventurados los que con sotil juizio las trascenden, los cuales con el entendimiento agudo tienen el sentimiento delgado; plugiera a Dios que fueras tú de los torpes en el sentir.17

And finally, turning to the 17th-century English doctor, Robert Burton, we find his own reliance on a Spanish source in his discussion of jealousy, an emotion strongly associated with love melancholy in the contemporary medical treatises and artistic literature. In his Anatomy of Melancholy, he cites a passage from Juan Luis Vives’s De anima that evinces the interchange of ideas and information between Spain and other nations in Europe: Jealousy, saith Vives, “begets an unquietness in the mind, night and day: he hunts after every word he hears, every whisper, and amplifies it to himself (as all melancholy men do in other matters with a most unjust calumny of others, he misinterprets everything is said or done, most apt to mistake or misconstrue,” he pries into every corner, follows close, observes to a hair.18

Turning then to what takes place on the Spanish stage of the 17th century, we find a contentious appreciation of the independent mind. Love melancholy is chosen from several other melancholy conditions that are also illustrative of the suspicious view of the dangers of such an intellect. Lovesickness is a major component of the understanding and portrayal of melancholia. This specific melancholic disorder was identified in the period under scrutiny as lovesickness, lovers’ melancholy, mal de amor, or amor hereos. The condition is portrayed in many comedias, including Lope de Vega’s El caballero de Olmedo, Tirso de Molina’s El melancólico, and El amor médico, for example. The latter contains the following description of the malady: 16 Practical Physick, translated by N. Culpepper and Abdiah Cole (London, 1662–64), 1:157–59. 17 Ed. Keith Whinnom (Madrid, 1971), p. 173. 18 Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy (Philadelphia, 1852), p. 575.



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También es enfermedad el amor, y aunque es afeto del alma, cuyo sugeto es señor, la voluntad; como obra por instrumentos corporales, y es pasión que asiste en el corazón, suelen los medicamentos hallar cura en la experiencia; que el alma spiritual presa en el campo mortal, obra siempre en su presencia. El pulso tenéis amante. (2.2334–45)19

Since ancient times, physicians and literary writers have recognized lovers’ melancholy as a mental imbalance leading to symptoms such as alternations in bodily temperature, changes in emotional display from joy (paired with physical heat) to despondency and a cold physiology, fear, and even violence. Taking Calderón’s protagonist Gutierre in El médico de su honra as an example of a character with an overactive melancholic lover’s mind, we can turn to his monologue in act two of the drama, where the protagonist articulates his struggle with his ethics, religious beliefs, love for his wife, and his intellectual overbearance of thought that takes him through what he can believe and what his melancholic mind supersedes in this realm. He is left with a focus on what may have happened—that is, that his wife Mencía may have been unfaithful to him—and the violence inherent in what he thinks he must do in retaliation. In this thought process, Gutierre speaks of his “agravios” and his “penas” (2.1589–90), only to rely on his ability to think through the suspicions to initially declare: “no pudiera / no estar culpada Mencía?” (2.1640–41).20 His hyperactive mind continues to ponder (as he “pries into every corner, follows close, observes to a hair”) the situation, as his overexcited melancholy lover’s thinking finally takes over his contemplation: Y así cortemos discursos, pues todos juntos se cierran en que Mencía es quien es, y soy quien soy; no hay quien pueda borrar de tanto splendor la hermosura y la pureza. 19 Tirso de Molina, Obras completas, ed. Blanco de los Ríos (Madrid, 1946). 20 Pedro Calderón de la Barca, El médico de su honra, ed. D. W. Cruickshank (Madrid, 1989).

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teresa scott soufas Pero sí puede, mal digo; que el sol una nube negra, si no le mancha, le turba, si no le eclipsa, le hiela. (2.1647–56)21

Such a phenomenon is also evident throughout all of Europe. The vogue of melancholy, inspired by the Neoplatonic re-appreciation of the melancholic mind as an instrument of genius and creativity, led many aspirants to such a positive reputation of intellectual brilliance to feign the well-known traits of melancholy: for instance, the wearing of dark clothing, the intense staring at books, the pining for love—real or otherwise— and insincere complaints of sadness or fear. In El médico de su honra, the gracioso Coquín carries on a conversation with Mencía’s maid, Jacinta. His reference is to hypochondria, a condition that receives attention from medical doctors in treatises on melancholy during this period. It is a syndrome associated with vapors trapped in a melancholic system and thought to cause pain in the side, even flatulence. Artistic renderings of such sufferers are found in Dürer’s self-portrait in which he holds his hand over his left side, and in the figure of Hypochondricus in Burton’s frontispiece to his Anatomy of Melancholy. Coquín’s remarks to Jacinta are thus inspired by this context: Metíme a ser discreto por mi mal, y hame dado tan grande hipocondría en este lado que me muero. . . . Es una enfermedad que no la había habrá años, ni en el mundo era. Usóse poco ha, y de manera lo que se usa, amiga, no se excusa, que una dama, sabiendo que se usa, le dijo a su galán muy triste un día: “tráigame un poco uced [sic] de hipocondría.” (3.2422–28)

The drama continues, though, more firmly based in the dangerous consequences of a melancholic mind obsessively mired in suspicion and sadness. The protagonist adopts a metaphorical identity in order to “cure” his imagined dishonor, and the foreboding of his gravely active mind is expressed late in act two: 21 See Soufas, “Calderón’s Melancholy Wife Murderers,” Hispanic Review 52 (1984): 181– 203, for a discussion of the melancholic minds and resultant behavior of Calderón’s two other famous wife murderers in El pintor de su deshonra and A secreto agravio, secreta venganza.



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En el mudo silencio de la noche, que adoro y reverencio, por sombra aborrecida, como sepulcro de la humana vida, de secreto he venido. (2.1861–65)

Calderón’s is a pessimistic depiction of the independent melancholy mind in the portrayal of a man who removes himself from the community and thinks himself into a crime of murder. The death of Mencía is accomplished by a surrogate killer, the barber who bleeds her to death, but it is Gutierre’s intellect that controls and maneuvers all aspects of the horrific outcome. Ironically, he ends the play with a future that looks as if it will be an exact sequel to the drama just presented, for he is married by royal decree to Leonor, his former lover whom he abandoned due to mistrust of her faithfulness to him in the play’s prehistory. His contemplation and autonomous thought are depicted as dangerous and deviant, effective evidence that Calderón understands the coming hegemony of the Cartesian model; but his conservative point of view does not let his melancholic thinker triumph. His wife-murder drama evinces the early modern evolution of what was to what was to be. Looking at another manifestation of affected melancholy traits in a work that depicts the downfall of the purported melancholic, we can consider Alonso in Lope’s El caballero de Olmedo. In his initial speech, Alonso reveals that he is in love but also that he is not a rejected lover. Having seen Inés at a carnival celebration, he declares to his servant, Tello: De los espíritus vivos de unos ojos procedió este amor que me encendió con fuegos tan excesivos. No me miraron altivos, antes, con dulce mudanza, me dieron tal confianza, que, con poca diferencia, pensando correspondencia, engendra amor esperanza. (1.11–20)22

Love melancholy, lovesickness, mal de amor, the malady of hereos, and amor heroico are among the terms used to describe the malady that in

22 Lope de Vega, El caballero de Olmedo, ed. Juan María Marín Martínez (Madrid, 1991).

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authentic sufferers can include such symptoms as excessive heat, sadness, sleeplessness, and superior (but deranged) mental faculties. The first two acts portray Alonso’s self-conscious, purposeful performance as a suitor pining for the unattainable love of the lady of his devotion. His recourse to a Celestinesque go-between is part of his wellplanned metatheatrics as a lovesick nobleman, a posture complete with verses written to his lady love. On such theatrics, Bridget Gellert Lyons has commented: “Because the medieval lover or Renaissance sonneteer had voiced his complaints in poetry, the love melancholic on the stage was ridiculed for his penchant for literature; the writing of sonnets . . . or the love of poetry or melancholy love songs were his inevitable, and therefore, comic marks.”23 Indeed, by act two, Inés has accepted Alonso’s first written affirmation of his love and acknowledges her reciprocal love for him: . . . yo diré a todo el mundo no, después que te dije sí. Tú solo dueño has de ser de mi libertad y vida; no hay fuerza que el ser impida, don Alonso, tu mujer. (2.1033–39)24

In addition, the comic value of the charade in which Inés and Alonso participate is heightened by the fact that Tello delivers his master’s love gloss to her with much declaration about the noble’s pronouncements of his passion to the flowers and radishes of Olmedo. He reiterates that “un amante suele hablar / con las piedras, con el viento” (2.1076–77). Their performance includes the sham of Inés’s intention to enter a convent, this in order to prevent the marriage to the nobleman Rodrigo, to

23 Bridget Gellert Lyons, Voices of Melancholy (New York, 1975), p. 25. 24 Lope includes in other dramas such mockery of the composition of poems by comic types. In La noche de San Juan, Tello the gracioso delivers a parody of the amorous poetry of so-called lovers. The clown Chacón in La niña de plata tells his master about his poetry (“Un soneto me manda hacer Violante”) and relates the castigation or applause his efforts attract (Lope de Vega Carpio, La niña de plata, in Obras escogidas, ed. Federico Carlos Sainz de Robles [Madrid, 1969], 2.647–87). Similarly, in Las bizarrías de Belisa, Don Juan asserts the basis of love upon which rests his writing of poetry: “¿Quién, señora, / no ha hecho malos o Buenos / versos amando, que Amor / fue el inventor de los versos?” (Lope de Vega Carpio, Las bizarrías de Belisa, in Obras escogidas, ed. Federico Carlos Sainz de Robles [Madrid, 1969], 1.1685–89). In his prose work La Dorotea, both Don Bela (“Dale este papel; que también a mí me haze el amor poeta,” [p. 257]) and Fernando (“amar y hazer versos todo es uno,” [p. 297]) proclaim love’s force to make them poets (Lope de Vega Carpio, La Dorotea, ed. Edwin S. Morby [Berkeley, 1968]).



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whom her father has promised her hand. What transpires in the drama, however, is the depiction of the fact that her father would have given his blessing to their preferred match. The consequence of the prolonged courting between Inés and Alonso is the building lovesickness in Rodrigo and the growing authentic melancholy of the protagonist. His performance of love melancholy leads him to prolong the courtship of Inés. Excessive thought and contemplation are Alonso’s real adversaries, making him a stellar example of the conservative presentations of the melancholy mind in the literature of this period. When Rodrigo’s band of men ambush and kill Alonso, and Rodrigo is condemned to death for the crime, the ruination of the contemplative melancholic is again the outcome. * * * And so the argument comes again to the point that Spain was part of the European context caught up in a variety of struggles between revival and collapse or, from a different perspective, “transformation and modernization.” Jose Antonio Maravall’s influence on our understanding of the term Baroque as a filter for understanding the 17th century opens an argumentative space for considering the full import of that term.25 Henry Kamen, as Weber contends, “led the way in consistently challenging the notion of Spain’s benightedness.”26 Likewise, Jeremy Robbins rejects the “intellectual black legend” that has resulted in the neglect of Spain’s 17th-century contributions to the philosophical revolution of early modern Europe.27 Contending with the terms Golden Age and early modern, Robbins thus asserts: The designation “early modern” implies a view of Spain during the Golden Age not always accepted, especially by non-Hispanists, namely that it was undergoing a decisive move toward modernity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is undeniable, however, that the culture of Golden Age Spain was produced during a protracted period of intense transformation which saw intellectual, social, and religious certainties gradually challenged and eventually changed by the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century and the scientific and philosophic revolutions of the seventeenth.

25 Weber, “What’s in a Name?” p. 230. See José Antonio Maravall, The Culture of the Baroque: Analysis of a Historical Structure, trans. Terry Cochran (Minneapolis, 1986). 26 Weber, “What’s in a Name?” p. 231n2. See Henry Kamen, Imagining Spain: Historical Myth and National Identity (New Haven, 2008). 27 Weber, “What’s in a Name?” p. 231n2.

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teresa scott soufas This process may have been slower in Spain than in some countries, but it occurred nevertheless.28

Thus the melancholic mind as depicted on the comedia stage serves as one of the markers of Spain’s trajectory toward modernity and the shift to the modern episteme that values the individual and his/her independent mind. Whereas the epistemological shift is part of the trajectory toward modernity in Europe, it cannot be denied that Spain was part of this transition from the early modern to the modern.

28 See Jeremy Robbins, “Renaissance and Baroque: Continuity and Transformation in Early Modern Spain,” in David T. Gies, ed., The Cambridge History of Spanish Literature (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 137–48, at 137–38. For other related studies on the history of ideas and thought, see Eric Clifford Graf, Cervantes and Modernity: Four Essays on Don Quijote (Lewisburg, 2007); Ruth Hill, Sceptres and Sciences in the Spains: Four Humanists and the New Philosophy (Liverpool, 2000); Hilaire Kallendorf, Conscience on Stage: The Comedia as Casuistry in Early Modern Spain (Toronto, 2007); James A. Parr, “A Modest Proposal: That We Use Alternatives to Borrowing (Renaissance, Baroque, Golden Age) and Leveling (Early Modern) in Periodization,” Hispania 84 (2001): 406–16; John O’Malley, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in Early Modern Spain (Cambridge, 2000); and Jonathan Sheehan, “Enlightenment, Religion, and the Enigma of Secularization,” American Historical Review 108.4 (2003): 1061–80.

Jacques Lacan and Tragic Drama in the Golden Age of Spain Henry W. Sullivan Our editor Hilaire Kallendorf requested from me a brief but general account of Lacan’s potential as theorist for any psychoanalytical approach to our reading of the Spanish Golden Age drama. It seemed to me to be a good idea to restrict my remarks, if possible, to a single play from the period. And clearly, if the planned collection were intended as a fresh guide to an already familiar corpus, it would make little sense to choose a play no one had read. I decided, therefore, to take up a much-studied work in the tragic canon—Don Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s El médico de su honra (c. 1628–29)—as an ideal test-case for the applicability of the Frenchman’s neo-Freudian psychoanalytic theories to the Spanish classical drama.1 In furnishing a psychoanalytical poetics of the comedia assigned along such lines, however, it seemed to me that the combination within a single essay of: psychoanalysis, the Golden Age theater, and the legacy of Renaissance critical tradition, would necessarily require some reevaluation of the psychological dimensions of Aristotle’s perennially relevant Ars poetica. On the other hand, avoiding the damnosa hereditas of that Renaissance tradition, I preferred to pole-vault the ancient Greek text’s ceaseless exploitation as a “how-to” manual (obsessed with puristic issues of dramatic form and structural organization alone) in favor precisely of the Poetics’ insightful and far-ranging observations on the human psyche. As to the claim that Aristotle may be identified with a psychoanalytical vein in literary criticism, the Philadelphia-born critic Albert Mordell once robustly stated: “Aristotle is the founder then of psychoanalytic interpretation of literature and is a forerunner of Freud.”2 There is more than a kernel of truth in Mordell’s statement, and catharsis—including the transference of guilt, as well as the emotions of pity and fear excited within the spectator—are certainly issues I wish to

1 The date 1628–29 for El médico de su honra is that assigned by Don W. Cruickshank on the authority of Norman D. Shergold & John E. Varey, “Some Early Calderón Dates,” p. 281. See Cruickshank’s Don Pedro Calderón (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 78, 358n41. 2 Albert Mordell, The Literature of Ecstasy (New York, 1921), p. 85.

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bring up in the course of these pages (especially the critical conundrum of Christian or “Catholic” catharsis in Spain). But I should like to scrutinize other Aristotelian preoccupations via a Lacanian lens as well, as these apply directly to Spanish tragic drama of the Golden Age. They include, in the first place, the basic issue of character and the idiosyncratic portrayal of subjectivity in Spain. Standing apart from contemporaneous practice in England and France, profound inwardness of character was less important in Spain than the complexity of the social field of forces and imperatives that defined or hindered a given character’s scope of action. Indwelling ethos in the case of Spain may therefore be better intuited, to paraphrase Aristotle, from the personage’s praxis. And a given character’s praxis—his or her choice of right or wrong actions with the concomitant scope for error therein—inevitably leads us to the Stagirite’s much-misunderstood notion of hamartia, thus inviting a review of the term’s lexical shifts in ancient Greek. I will argue that its frequent and botched rendering as “fatal flaw of character” has misled critics of Golden Age theater. I will suggest instead that the issue of hamartia turned for the Spaniards, as for Aristotle, upon a fatal error of judgment—and all the more so, since the potential for committing errors of judgment in drama was always underscored and vividly colored by Baroque playwrights’ blanket skepticism vis-à-vis surface appearances. Nor can we pursue the question of choice of right or wrong actions in Golden Age Spain and their degree of predetermination by forces external to the subject—as if by some ancient Greek “nemesis” reinterpreted in the broadest sense—without taking account of the Spanish quarrels on grace and free will during the De auxiliis debate on the one hand (c. 1581–1607), and Lacan’s four fundamental principles of psychoanalysis on the other (1964). Both sets of teachings posit some “influx” prior to action: of efficaciousness on the theologically divine plane, or repressed drive mechanisms on the human plane, neither source of motivation lying readily accessible to the consciousness of the subject. Also central to Lacan’s fundamental theory is his modification of Freud’s view of the Oedipus complex (usually abbreviated as l’Oedipe). Freud defined the Oedipus complex as a male child’s unconscious desire for the love of his mother. Said desire aroused jealousy toward the father and a wish for that parent’s death, as well as an unconscious desire for sexual intercourse with the mother. Lacan distanced himself from Freud’s account by substituting for it the notion of the phallus, here construed as the male or female child’s perception of what its mother desires. He reinterpreted the incestuous bond as the child’s earnest attempt to become for her a



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fully satisfying love-object. But the intervention of the father thwarts this Oedipal aspiration in the youngster’s fifth or sixth year, thus setting up the father as both rival and threat to the child’s own greatest longing. One stunning result of applying Lacan’s modified Oedipal model to Golden Age tragedy is the discovery that—by comparison with the tragedies of Greece, England, and France—the potentially deadly conflict between father and male offspring constantly becomes inverted in its outcome in Spain. Instead of the Sophoclean murder of the father by the son, fathers regularly triumph over their hostile and beleaguered sons in the comedia and—by play’s end—have them immolated. Elsewhere, in order to express the novelty of the inverted Oedipal principle underlying Spanish tragedy, I have invented the term “the Kronos complex.”3 The Spanish father’s societal indemnity for such filicide is refigured, moreover, in the Spanish husband’s parallel exemption for uxoricide (as our test-case El médico de su honra—and Calderón’s other wife-murder plays—clearly demonstrate). Finally, in yet another reappraisal of terms familiar within the Golden Age context, I wish to discuss anagnorisis (in terms of “recognition” or “agnition” in drama) and the matter of Hispano-Baroque poesis (in terms of dramaturgical aesthetics and a psychoanalytic poetics) as these apply in often unpredictable ways to Spanish tragedy. By essay’s end, I hope to have shown how the theories of Jacques Lacan dovetail in surprisingly fruitful fashion with the Greek philosopher’s 4th-century observations on ancient audience response. Both illuminate that complex traffic in human emotions across theater (or amphitheater) which tantalizingly seems to defy elucidation in the case of Spain even today. * * * It is notable that the “French Freud” has encountered a warm reception among Hispanists in the English-speaking world and in Hispanic countries more broadly speaking. In the contemporary United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, the following partial list of researchers in the field of Golden Age drama (or other Spanish medieval and early modern genres) invoking or working vigorously with Lacan tells its own story: David R. Castillo, Anne Cruz, William Egginton, Ruth El Saffar, Louise FothergillPayne, Raúl A. Galoppe, María Antonia Garcés, Michael Gerli, Margaret Rich Greer, Yvonne Jehenson, Catherine Larson, Melveena McKendrick,

3 Henry W. Sullivan and Isabel Crespo López, “Tragedia y naturaleza humana en el drama trágico del Siglo de Oro,” unpublished manuscript, 2010.

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Paul Julian Smith, Matthew Stroud, Catherine Connor Swietlicki, myself, and many more. To take just a few examples, David Castillo’s (A)wry Views: Anamorphosis, Cervantes, and the Early Picaresque (2001) was inspired by Lacan’s pioneering discussion of the Renaissance figure of anamorphosis in Holbein’s The Ambassadors in his lectures on psychoanalysis and art from The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (notably the split between the eye and the gaze, and Lacan’s idea of “looking awry”). Invoking Freud and Lacan in The Philosopher’s Desire: Psychoanalysis, Interpretation, and Truth (2007), William Egginton argued that interpretation (including literary interpretation), as outlined in the psychoanalytic theories of Freud and subsequently modified by Lacan, is already a fundamental aspect of all human experience. Matthew Stroud, in his The Play in the Mirror: Lacanian Perspectives on Spanish Baroque Theater (1996), offered an original application of Lacanian concepts to 10 Golden Age dramas, maintaining inter alia that the Lacanian perspective shares with Baroque Spain an anti-Cartesian view of the human condition, i.e., one not centered on the rational, autonomous human subject of common assumption. Since, in the collective opinion of these many scholars, Lacan’s theories have transparent relevance for multiple literary questions such as the aetiology and nature of the human subject, language, desire, alterity, the small other versus the big Other, gender identity, feminism, semiotics, film theory, the Baroque, and so on, their critical interest is not hard to understand. But a distinctly more hostile Anglo-American view of Lacan (as evinced over the last half century) may work usefully as a logical introit to our topic at hand. Why, we may ask, do other minds formed in the intellectual tradition of English and American thought find Lacan’s ideas unimportant or even absurd? There are many answers to this question, but the very concept of subjectivity is a good place to begin. The notion of a divided human subject proves problematic to many. The phenomenon Freud termed in his posthumous 1940 article “Die Ichspaltung” (and which Lacan subsequently rendered as la refente du sujet) seems counterintuitive: counterintuitive, that is, to an Anglo-American awareness variously constructed out of the triumph of nominalism, inductive reasoning and scientific method, Baconian and Lockean empiricism, skepticism towards Idealist systems, Benthamite utilitarianism, the pragmatism of C. S. Peirce and William James, behaviorism, logical positivism, to say nothing of the invocation—since the late 20th century—of DNA or genetics as the basis for a general drive theory, or even, in some extreme cases, of a neuroscience



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that denies the existence of the human mind completely.4 But the readily more intuitive idea of an autonomous ego, as against a divided subject, can clearly be traced back to early modern times. What may be observed in any broad comparison of the Spanish classical theater with its ElizabethanJacobean and French Neoclassical counterparts during the period 1580– 1680 is a much greater stress on the individual subject as a whole person, a person who becomes the center of the drama. Spanish protagonists, as stated above, display greater inner division as they struggle with the conflicting absolute imperatives of their neo-feudal society. Let us explore this comparison more closely. Character and Subjectivity in Golden Age Drama It is revealing to look at the works of three leading dramatists of Elizabethan and Jacobean England and three leading dramatists of 17th-century France with respect to their choice of play titles. There is an obvious cleavage in common practice between English and French playwrights of the late Renaissance and Baroque periods on the one hand and their Spanish counterparts on the other. The former nations regularly chose eponymous titles for their plays (or descriptive periphrases for the protagonist), since the main character dominated the action. Thus Christopher Marlowe called his works Doctor Faustus, Edward II, Tamburlaine the Great, and the periphrastically dubbed Jew of Malta. Shakespeare’s main tragedies are Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Anthony and Cleopatra, and King Lear. All of Shakespeare’s histories bear the name of the monarch in question: King John, Edward III, Richard II, Richard III, Henry IV, Henry V, and so on. Ben Jonson titled some of his plays after the main character, such as Volpone and Epicoene, or gave them periphrastic titles such as The Alchemist or The Magnetic Lady. In France, we find Pierre Corneille calling his stage-works Médée, Le Cid, Cinna, Horace, Polyeucte, Rodogune, Héraclius, Andromède, Agésilas, and Attila (among many others). 4 On the mind’s supposed nonexistence, the following observations of Brook and Stainton are pertinent: “Eliminative materialists did not just reject and criticize. They also have a positive proposal. Their proposal can be summed up in one word: neuroscience. They urge that to understand ourselves at any depth, we need to replace the theory that we have something called the mind with theories about what unquestionably does exist, namely the brain and its environment.” See Andrew Brook and Robert Stainton, Knowledge and Mind: A Philosophical Introduction (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2000), p. 98.

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Racine’s plays are almost entirely eponymous in title: Andromaque, Britannicus, Bérénice, Bajazet, Mithridate, Iphigénie, Phèdre, Esther, and Athalie. Finally, Molière titled some half of his works by the name of the protagonist, such as Tartuffe, Dom Juan, Amphitryon, Georges Dandin, or by the protagonist’s predominant character trait: L’avare, Le malade imaginaire, Le misanthrope, or Le bourgeois gentilhomme. When we turn to Spain, a very different picture emerges. To establish the basic historical point in the case of Calderón, for example, amid the whole corpus of 120 full-length plays left behind by the playwright, be they serious or comic, only one of them—Judas Macabeo—has an unqualified eponymous title. It is a fact, moreover, that not a single one of his 45-odd comedias de capa y espada bears a title which is the proper name of a protagonist. Some five longwinded titles among the 120 plays name pairs of lovers, either from Greek mythology or the Byzantine novels; while a few others, such as La gran Cenobia or Luis Pérez, el gallego, are qualified by adjectives whose full significance will only become clear by the end of the play. A quick mental survey of typical titles from the pens of Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, Rojas Zorrilla, Moreto, or Alarcón reveals the same striking pattern. And the reason for this marked difference between Spanish drama and the national theaters to the North is no accident, in my opinion. As I have stated elsewhere, the contrast in play titles faithfully reflects a contrast in worldview. In a Hispano-Catholic historical project intent on bolstering and restoring the two main bulwarks of medieval society (the feudal system and the Universal Church), Spain refused to accord such a salient autonomy and centrality of position to the individual human subject as post-Reformation Northern Europe had gradually begun to do.5 Play Titles and the Status of the Subject Calderón is at his most characteristically Spanish in just such titles as El médico de su honra. At first blush, the play title posted outside the theater is enigmatic and tells us very little. This is so in part because the protagonist is not named as such, and the meaning of the main metaphor is opaque when separated from its dramatic context. In fact, the title expresses a relationship between the subject and the signifier, in which 5 Henry Sullivan, “Jacques Lacan and the Golden-Age Drama,” in El arte nuevo de estudiar comedias: Literary Theory and Spanish Golden-Age Drama, ed. Barbara Simerka (Lewisburg, 1996), pp. 105–24, at p. 107.



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the signifier transcends—or eclipses—the subject. In this triangular pattern, the subject is the “surgeon” of the title, Don Gutierre, while the signifier is the societal value of “honor” and the genitive case + possessive binding them (“of his”) points to the relationship between them. In the Golden Age drama, it may be observed, honor stood third in a descending hierarchy of values that required absolute reverence for God, king, and honor, the bonds of love, the demands of friendship, and—perhaps in sixth place—duty to family. In contrast to our modern world, the criterion of money, though operative in many subtler ways, scarcely stood out tangibly and explicitly in this stock-convention hierarchy of stage values at all. Don Gutierre interprets his relationship to the hierarchical signifier of honor as personally dishonoring to him, based on his misperception of his innocent wife Doña Mencía’s “infidelity” to him. This erroneous judgment then sets the tragic action on its ineluctable course: first, Mencía’s floundering indiscretions and—ultimately—her fatal “bleeding” by a deputized surgeon. This would satisfactorily cleanse Gutierre’s public reputation according to the dictates of the honor code. But the three-way relationship set up in Calderón’s play title ultimately shows the protagonist to be at the mercy of the very cultural values that obsess him. In my opinion, this triangulated submission of the subject to a set of social signifiers, as against an autonomous ego who is master of all he surveys, underlined Spain’s continued fealty to transcendence in its world. The Protestant North increasingly viewed supreme values and the divine in terms of immanence (or the experience of God within us). Echoing said transcendence in psychoanalytic terms—by underscoring the neonate’s exposure to an always already existing human language (the cultural field of knowledge and the aggregate of all signifiers in the Symbolic order)— Lacan redefined the Saussurean signifier in the following fashion. He agreed with C. S. Peirce that “a sign means something for someone.”6 But, he added, “a signifier represents a subject for another signifier.” A ready example of this principle is at hand in El médico de su honra. I refer to the Prince’s dagger, which plays such an extraordinary role in the tragic outcome. What in a less insightful dramatic tradition might simply count as a prop—a dagger worn by some character for costume adornment or for use in a single scene—becomes in Calderón’s hands truly a signifier that circulates and shifts meaning continuously throughout the 6 Jacques Lacan, Écrits (Paris, 1966), p. 182.

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action, not merely an object of exchange in its crude material reality. Nor is it a Peircean sign that means something for someone: rather—in its function as a signifier that represents a subject for another signifier—it gradually succeeds in representing several subjects or characters in the course of the play. In the first place, when the heroine’s former suitor Prince Enrique accidentally leaves the weapon behind in Mencía’s apartments following his nocturnal visit, he is committing a blunder—but not a conscious one. His forgetting is a classic Fehlleistung, or bungled action (Lacan’s acte manqué). On the one hand, his leaving so personal an accouterment in Mencía’s private space expresses his unconscious desire to return to her presence, as Freud showed in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life.7 Even more importantly, the dagger represents Enrique in terms of his sexual intention. At a hermeneutic extreme, it expresses Enrique’s wish for penile penetration and the final satisfaction of his passion. And what in this day and age we might term the “phallic symbolism” of the pointed weapon is precisely what horrifies Don Gutierre. At this juncture the dagger as signifier suddenly represents the subject Gutierre for the signifer of his own threatened manhood or sexuality as a husband. He draws the worst of conclusions from this interpretation and then uses them as a basis for action. A bitter irony that runs throughout Calderón’s play, therefore, lies in the fact—known to the audience at all times—that the beleaguered Mencía is innocent of the adultery her husband imputes to her. The dagger as signifier therefore refers to no set of incriminating acts in the real world of events; it merely represents a subject for another signifier. It exerts its effect—in this second example of the husband—within the subjective circuit or signifying chain of Gutierre’s self-representations. As for King Pedro, the doom-laden signifier acquires a third subjective signification. It is with this instrument—presented to the King as a demonstrative exhibit or object at issue by Gutierre in their interview— that Enrique hints at regicide. Shortly after, as the Prince goes to retrieve the weapon as his own property, he nicks his royal half-brother in the wrist and draws blood (while the concealed Gutierre looks on). One could argue that this is yet another Fehlleistung on Enrique’s part, as though his repressed fratricidal impulses were breaking out on the surface. On the other hand, it could be a genuine accident and no more. But Pedro has no 7 Sigmund Freud, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, trans. A. A. Brill (New York, 1915), pp. 269–72.



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doubt about the dagger’s meaning. As signifier, it represents Pedro as subject for the spectral signifier of violent death at his half-brother’s hands. Here Calderón as dramatist intended a thinly veiled reference to the siege of Montiel in 1369. Pedro was lured to Enrique’s tent during the siege by a ruse and the Prince then engaged him in single combat armed with a knife. As Pedro gradually got the better of the struggle, Enrique of Trastámara’s accomplice intervened to assist his master and so Don Pedro was killed. The treacherous usurper thereupon became Enrique II of Castile. At this starkly premonitory moment in the play, however, Pedro’s loss of composure makes him forget consideration of Gutierre’s complaint completely and he flees the scene. And the unfortunate husband, thus bereft of royal remedy, is thrown back on his own devices once more. The fourth character configured as subject by the dagger’s shifting meaning is Doña Mencía herself. By the third act it is made clear to her that the price of her mild indiscretions will be death via the surgical tool hinted at in the play’s title. After the exchange between the two half-brothers referred to above, Gutierre emerges from his hiding place to pick up the dagger that Enrique has dropped for a second time. More convinced than ever that his wife is an adulteress, he now states explicitly that the instrument has been “returned to him” and will be the means of her death. He then wields it to threaten the barber-surgeon Ludovico’s life. For Ludovico—in the fifth place—the dagger represents his person as victim of coercion on the one hand and as unwilling conspirator or accessory before the fact on the other. The knife, Gutierre has already informed us, will be the same implement with which Ludovico must scientifically bleed the innocent spouse to death. As he performs his grisly operation, therefore, the dagger as signifier comes to represent all three subjects simultaneously—Mencía as the life slowly ebbs out of her, the barbersurgeon at his task, and the implacable husband taking his revenge—for yet another signifier: the demise of the heroine. Hamartia Aristotle’s use of the term hamartia in the Poetics—often misleadingly rendered as “tragic flaw,” “fatal flaw,” or “fault of character”—is also pertinent to dramatic subjectivity and remains one of his hardest concepts to pin down. Yet I am convinced that, carefully construed, it is an indispensable measure for understanding how the Spaniards conceived their tragedies. One good way to approach the term is by looking at how it was

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understood over historical time: in earlier Greek, in Aristotle’s use of it, and in its application to the New Testament—a period of about half a millennium. The present tense hamartáno (formed from the infinitive of the verb hamartanein) originally meant “I miss the mark” or “I go wide of the mark” (thus in Homer and Aeschylus). In this literal sense, it especially referred to throwing a spear or aiming an arrow that failed to connect with its target. Thus the projectile could be said to have “erred” in its trajectory. Hamartanein could also have the literal meaning of “to miss one’s road.” But the figurative possibilities of “going wide of the mark” or “erring” widened the verb’s application to characteristics in persons, such as “to fail of one’s purpose” or “to go wrong.”8 This critical shift engages the realm of Aristotle’s controversial literary usage of the term. Passages in the Poetics and the Nicomachean Ethics suggest the philosopher certainly intended his “going wide of the mark” to apply to human fallibility, but was it with the semantic force of a fatal “error of judgment?” J. M. Bremer, for example, argued in 1969 that hamartia meant “a tragic error” or “a wrong action committed in ignorance of its nature, effect, etc., which is the starting-point of a causally connected train of events ending in disaster.”9 In expressing this view, he had already been supported in 1963 by Isabel Hyde, who also rejected the popular reading of hamar­ tia as “tragic flaw” and advocated “tragic error” as the accurate meaning instead.10 After the era of Aristotle, a second shift of meaning took place. By the time we reach the New Testament and the Septuagint in the 1st century AD, hamartia had moved unequivocally into the Christian vocabulary of sin and was always used in an ethical sense. In these gospel texts, hamartia now referred to guilt or sin, concrete wrongdoing, or even the violation of God’s law.11 Indeed, the definition of hamartiology as the doctrine of moral wrong—or the branch of Christian theology that studies sin—shows how far hamartia had moved away from Aristotle’s interpretation of the term for tragic drama.

  8 Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, Greek-English Lexicon With a Revised Sup­ plement, 9th ed. (Oxford, 1996), p. 77a.   9 Jan Maarten Bremer, Tragic Error in the Poetics of Aristotle and in Greek Tragedy (Amsterdam, 1969), p. 63. 10 Isabel Hyde, “The Tragic Flaw: Is it Tragic Error?” Modern Language Review 58.3 (1963): 321–25, at p. 325. 11 G. Abbott-Smith, Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (1921), 3rd ed. reprint (Edinburgh, 1948), pp. 23–24.



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I am convinced the Spanish dramatists understood hamartia to be a fatal error of human judgment rather than a fatal flaw of human character. I have already argued above that deep study of character (and its sundry flaws or virtues) was not the main aim of playwrights like Lope de Vega or Calderón. By contrast, Shakespeare eloquently describes what has sometimes been called “Hamlet’s hamartia” in the first act of that great tragedy, turning the controversial concept quite unequivocally into a fatal flaw of character: So, oft it chances in particular men, That for some vicious mole of nature in them, As, in their birth—, wherein they are not guilty, Since nature cannot choose his origin— By the o’ergrowth of some complexion, Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason, As by some habit that too much o’erleavens The form of plausive manners, that these men, Carrying I say, the stamp of one defect, Being nature’s livery, or fortune’s star,— Their virtues else—be they as pure as grace, As infinite as man may undergo— Shall in the general censure take corruption From that particular fault. . . . Hamlet, Act 1, scene 4

This degree of character flaw, suggests Shakespeare, may have been determined at birth and, hence, the flawed man is not even guilty of his own “vicious mole of nature”—a view of congenital evil that comes close to predeterminism. This account of things would be inconceivable to Calderón and his contemporaries. Both he and Lope were trained by the Jesuits at the Colegio Imperial in Madrid and they subscribed in their plays to the Christian doctrine of free will (libre albedrío) as developed most crucially by Jesuits such as P. Luis de Molina (1535–1600) and P. Francisco Suárez (1548–1617). They rejected the “physical predetermination” of the Spanish Dominicans, as well as the notion of election or damnation prior to birth as advanced by Calvin. Indeed, it was the anti-Calvinist thesis of Tirso de Molina’s El condenado por desconfiado (performed by Roque de Figueroa’s troupe in 1621) that got him into so much trouble with his fellow Mercedarian Pedro Franco de Guzmán, since he attacked the latter in the doomed figure of Paulo the hermit. Spanish tragic heroes, I submit, do not perpetrate great crimes or go to their destruction because they are fundamentally

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evil people, but because they commit fatal errors of judgment that steadily compound one other. These errors are often made in reaction to false appearances (mistaken identity, confusion over some item of dress, a message meant for someone else), or dramatic effects of chance (a fall from a horse, a mirror breaking, a pistol accidentally going off ), such that the sinister synergy of human error committed by one or more characters and intertwined with sundry elements of chance gradually builds up and attains a point of critical mass, precipitating the catastrophe in the play’s tragic end. A. A. Parker described aspects of this latter phenomenon as “diffused responsibility.”12 Nor can the prevailing Baroque temper of the Spanish 17th century be left out of the equation. Writers from every genre during the period reveled in showing that appearances were illusory, that surfaces could project an engaño a los ojos, or even—in a paradox to the power of two—that things could sometimes be only what they appeared to be. Calderón, by invoking the criterion of the moral good in an attempt to square the epistemological circle of absolute skepticism raised by the action of his La vida es sueño, proffered Segismundo the famous guarantee: “que aun en sueños / no se pierde el hacer bien.”13 So far in our analysis of the tragic mechanism at work in El médico de su honra, however, we have not considered the role of the segunda dama, Doña Leonor. Gutierre’s prior relationship with Leonor acts (in terms of structure) like a pair of bookends, as both prelude and coda to the protagonist’s ill-fated marriage to Mencía—though Leonor’s stubborn prosecution of her case for breach of promise (with King Pedro as judge) keeps her in the audience’s mind for most of the play. Important aspects of this secondary relationship not only complicate the question of hamar­ tia under discussion, but also diversify the psychoanalytic underpinnings of the drama. In 1964, for example, Lacan defined his “four fundamental principles of psychoanalysis” as being transference, the unconscious, repetition, and the drive. There is no room in these pages to deal with the whole question of transference, though I have already made some reference to the workings of the unconscious in the play. Repetition, however, plays a striking role in the tragedy’s development and denouement. In the field of hamartia and Gutierre’s fatal errors of judgment, moreover, 12 A. A. Parker, “Towards a Definition of Calderonian Tragedy,” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 39 (1962): 222–37, at pp. 233–36. 13 Pedro Calderón de la Barca, La vida es sueño, act 2, p. 522a. All quotations of Calderon’s texts are taken from the edition of Ángel Valbuena Briones: Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Obras completas, vol. 1: Dramas, 5th ed. (Madrid, 1966).



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Lacan’s concepts of misrecognition (méconnaissance) and semblance (du semblant) are also highly germane. Essentially, the Leonor and Gutierre story is a foreshadowing of the Mencía and Gutierre story, while the latter is a reduplication of the former. The pathological jealousy and obsession with the code of honor (which the amorous Gutierre displayed in the first encounter) is repeated (with disastrous consequences) in the second encounter. We learn in retrospect from the long scene at the end of act one that Gutierre’s engagement to Doña Leonor had afforded him access to her house, but that on arriving there one night he heard a noise and saw a male figure (el bulto . . . de un hombre) leaping from her balcony. He pursued the man into the darkness (he informs the King), but could not in the end identify him. Gutierre explains that he was never entirely sure of his suspicion that his fiancée had another lover, but his apprehensions were sufficient to make him break off the engagement. At which point it is revealed that the man in question was actually Don Arias (present during the conversation), and Leonor (who now steps forward from her hiding-place) does not deny this. The motive of Arias for imprudently entering Leonor’s premises at night was the presence there of her unnamed woman houseguest, whom he truly loved and wished to marry (and who subsequently died a premature death). The fear of Gutierre’s imminent entry and these compromising circumstances, however, first obliged Leonor to hide Don Arias in another room, but then—alarmed at the sound of her fiancé’s voice—he swiftly left by the balcony. Sommes toutes faites, there was no fornication, adultery, or infidelity on anyone’s part, Doña Leonor was quite innocent, Arias was an honorable man, but Leonor ended up a victim of Don Gutierre’s breach of promise for all that. Inasmuch as these very same forces of deceptive appearances and false interpretations subsequently drive the Mencía and Gutierre story, however, it is quite inaccurate to say that this, or any other play by Calderón, exhibits a “double plot with the same theme” as claimed in previous criticism.14 It has what I have termed elsewhere a “split argument”: a typically Baroque inner reduplication (desdoblamiento) which seeks unity in duality or “splitting” (an aesthetic phenomenon that may also be seen

14 Edward M. Wilson, “La vida es sueño,” Revista de la Universidad de Buenos Aires, tercera época 4.3/4 (1946): 61–78; Alexander A. Parker, The Approach to the Spanish Drama of the Golden Age (London, 1957).

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in the novel or contemporary Spanish Baroque painting).15 Moreover, in tune with Lacanian theory, the truth here arises from misrecognition (méconnaissance) and the return of the repressed from the future (and not from the past, as Freud would have it). Gutierre is actually tricked by his unconscious, which tells him he is a cuckold. However, the truth of the Leonor incident was not unavailable to him. He merely stopped short in its pursuit (“Y aunque escuché / satisfacciones, y nunca / di a mi agravio entera fe, / fue bastante esta aprensión / a no casarme”).16 As I have written elsewhere, the personage in question is “overlooking” the truth (une bévue), where the French term bévue—derived from la vue or “looking”—also means a blunder.17 So Gutierre, as we have maintained all along, is guilty of unconscious “blunders,” or fatal errors of judgment, and therein lies his hamartia. What he has repressed and refused to recognize in the past, moreover, will now return from the future, as he enters into a new marriage with Doña Mencía and new events in the unfolding of the play fully reveal the truth of what he is capable of doing when the woman under suspicion is not merely his fiancée, but his faithful and loving wife. This is where the issue of Lacanian semblance enters the picture. In section 8 of his landmark Seminar Encore (1972–73), entitled “Knowl­ edge and Truth,” Lacan is eloquent on the subject of semblance (du semblant) and its relation to truth. Characterizing the object a as a semblance of being, Lacan clarifies that this is because it seems to give us the basis (supports) of being. But it dissolves in its failure to sustain itself in approaching the Real. Lacan goes on—in words that are directly applicable to Gutierre’s vulnerability to semblance and his dilemma in always “overlooking” the truth—as follows: The true, then, of course, is that. Except that it is never reached except by twisted pathways. To appeal to the true, as we are often led to do, is simply to recall that one must not make the mistake of believing that we are already at the level of semblance (dans le semblant). Before the semblance, on which, in effect, everything is based and springs back in fantasy, a strict distinction must be made between the Imaginary and the Real. It must not

15 For a discussion of Baroque desdoblamiento in the comedia, see my “Law, Desire & the Double Plot: Towards a Psychoanalytic Poetics of the Comedia,” in The Golden-Age Comedia: Text, Theory, and Performance, ed. Charles Ganelin & Howard Mancing (West Lafayette, 1994), pp. 222–35. 16 Act 1, p. 326b. 17 Sullivan, “The Oedipus Myth: Lacan and Dream Interpretation,” in The Prince in the Tower: Perceptions of La vida es sueño, ed. Frederick A. de Armas (Lewisburg, 1993), pp. 111–17, at p. 117.



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be thought that we ourselves in any way serve as a basis for the semblance. We are not even semblance. We are, on occasion, that which can occupy that place, and allow what to reign there? Object a.18

Here the objet petit a, a concept Lacan developed considerably over his career, can still refer to its Imaginary status. In Encore, however, objet petit a became less the object of desire, but rather its cause. As Dylan Evans observes: “From this point on, a denotes the object which can never be attained, which is really the cause of desire rather than that towards which desire tends; this is why Lacan now calls it ‘the object-cause’ of desire. Objet petit a is any object which sets desire in motion, especially the partial objects which define the drives.”19 Gutierre’s preconceived notion of the truth and the Real of his situation is anchored in this semblance of the truth structured by objet a and the desiring system of the honor code as an illusory support of being. Anagnorisis We observed above that the earlier Leonor and Gutierre story functions as a coda or ending to Calderón’s tragedy. But the precise nature of the ending of El médico de su honra teaches us much about repetition (in Lacan’s sense of its being a fundamental principle of psychoanalysis), as well as about the idiosyncratic way in which Calderón handled the issue of anagnorisis in this and other tragedies. Traditionally, Aristotelian anagnorisis refers to recognition of a different kind than that discussed just now, namely the sudden realization by the tragic hero or heroine of the real truth of their own circumstances, or else an end to misrecognition and a positive enlightenment as to their error(s) of judgment. Famous examples are the realization by King Oedipus at the end of Sophocles’ play that he himself is the assassin whom he had pursued at Thebes and hence the slayer of his own father Laius, while his wife Jocasta (the mother of their four children) is, in fact, his own mother. Oedipus gouges out his own eyes with a pin from the suicide Jocasta’s brooch in the psychic pain of self-recognition (or anagnorisis). Similarly, Othello the Moor—having just strangled Desdemona on their marriage-bed for an adultery she never 18 Jacques Lacan, Encore: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX (1975), ed. JacquesAlain Miller, trans. with notes by Bruce Fink (New York, 1999), p. 95. 19 Dylan Evans, An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (London, 1996), p. 125.

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committed—is stricken with infinite remorse on learning the truth. He thereupon unlatches the switch on a dagger he wears on his wrist and commits suicide by plunging it into his neck. But that said—at the end of El médico de su honra—does Calderón’s Don Gutierre de Solís undergo any anagnorisis or attack of remorse over Mencía’s death, similar to those in Sophocles and Shakespeare?20 The answer, of course, is no. He reveals no remorse whatsoever. Indeed, at the end of his long confessional exchange with King Pedro the Cruel in the last scene, the laxist monarch seems to absolve him of any crime.21 And in the denouement, Pedro’s decision to right the wrong that Leonor had complained of all along, by commanding Gutierre to marry her, literally drips with dramatic irony. The unrepentant surgeon of his honor, for his part, warns her that his hand—now being offered in marriage—is also bathed in blood. If she repeats Mencía’s indiscretions, he insinuates, she will share her fate. For her part, despite these terrible threats, Leonor is agreeable to the match since it restores her good name and standing in society, and that appears to be the only thing which matters to her. For his part, the King, in his strangely mixed rhetoric of cruel and rigorous Justicer in theory—as undermined by his lax and loosely probabilistic decision-making—feels that he has now “fixed” both problems: Gutierre’s complaint against Prince Enrique for attempted or actual seduction and the resultant crime the husband was forced to commit in order to cleanse his honor, and Leonor’s complaint against Gutierre de Solís for breach of promise and the damage to her public reputation. So, in point of fact, Don Gutierre has learned absolutely nothing from the play’s action. He is as blind and self-convinced at the end as he was in the beginning. There is no question of anagnorisis. Moreover, the fact that he will embark on another marriage on exactly the same terms as before, with the woman he already rejected once as seemingly tainted by 20 In the early 19th century, Josef Schreyvogel’s German version of the play for the Vienna Burgtheater (1818) illustrated the degree to which a foreign adaptor could not stomach Calderón’s ending. Schreyvogel termed it effective, but “Saracen.” In the altered ending, his Viennese Gutierre does indeed undergo abject remorse when he discovers his error. He takes the dagger that has played such a significant part in the action and commits suicide with it. See my Calderón in the German Lands and the Low Countries: His Reception & Influence, 1654–1980 (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 269–70. 21 Henry W. Sullivan, “The Problematic of Tragedy in Calderón’s El médico de su honra,” Revista canadiense de estudios hispánicos 5.3 (1981): 355–72, at pp. 360–65. This essay argues (contrary to all appearances in terms of the Jesuit-promoted moral probabilism often invoked during the Golden Age) that King Pedro, priding himself on his severity and “cruelty” as a judge, is in fact the laxist in the play, while Don Gutierre is the moral rigorist.



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the mere appearances of infidelity during their engagement, is a classic case of psychoanalytic repetition in the unconscious. The stakes, therefore, also remain the same. Impervious to experience in the conscious realm, the same message continues to insist, or—to quote Lacan—“never stops writing itself ” (ne cesse pas de s’écrire) in the unconscious realm.22 But, if we may say that none of the characters in the play appears to undergo any kind of moral awakening, recognition or “agnition,” does this mean there is no anagnorisis in Calderón’s tragedy at all? I, for one, believe that there is, but that it is sui generis to Golden Age tragedy in Spain. The anagnorisis lies not with the principals, but with the audience. The spectators in the theater (or the readers of the play over the generations) are those who feel the release from error and undergo the recognition. The anagnorisis pulsates and is, so to say, imbricated in the text itself. It is a communication between the playwright and his unknown destinatees without once being articulated as such by the tragic cast. We, therefore, are the ones who experience the terrible recognition of the truth. If there is any exception to this rule, it is firstly in the person of Coquín the gracioso, who recounts the facts of the whole affair to the King in a speech of just 27 lines (“Gutierre, mal informado / por aparentes recelos, / llegó a tener viles celos / de su honor”).23 But Coquín is a fool by trade who speaks in jests or riddles and—like some institutional Cassandra of the theater or many of Calderón’s other graciosos—one doomed never to be heeded even when he does tell the truth. The second exception is the brief statement to Doña Leonor by Don Arias, having more of a sententious air to it than any true quality of anagnorisis. He tells her: En mi vida he conocido galán necio, escrupuloso y con extremo celoso, que en llegando a ser marido no le castiguen los cielos.24

Catharsis The question of catharsis has had a long history not only in Aristotelian poetic theory, but also in the years prior to the invention of psychoanalysis. 22 Lacan, Encore, p. 94. 23 Act 3, p. 346b. 24 Act 2, p. 336a.

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As with hamartia, catharsis was a standard term that predated the Poetics, but that Aristotle endowed with a new psychological meaning. It was already a technical term in Greek religion, for example, and referred to rites of purification required of those burdened with any form of defilement before entering the temple precinct. It also referred to purges or laxatives used prior to initiation into the Eleusinian or other religious mysteries.25 In the famous crux contained in section 6 of the Poetics, however, Aristotle described tragedy as the imitation of an action “through pity [ἔλέος] and fear [φόβος] effecting the proper purgation [καθάρσις] of these emotions.”26 This concept was conveyed in translation, but not truly analyzed, by neo-Aristotelian critics writing in the heyday of the Spanish comedia. In 1596 López Pinciano described catharsis as “limpiar las pasiones del alma, no por enarración, sino por medio de misericordia y miedo.”27 In 1617, drawing straight from the Latin of Robortello, Francisco Cascales wrote that tragedy served “para limpiar las passiones del ánimo por medio de la misericordia y miedo.”28 In 1633, González de Salas gave his paraphrase as “Acción que mueva a Lastima, y a Miedo, para que el animo se purgue de los affectos semejantes.”29 The only true translation of the Poetics directly from Greek into Castilian was the Arte poética of Alonso Ordóñez das Seijas y Tobar in 1626. This now rare tome phrased the key passage as follows: “conduciendo la expurgación de los afectos no por narración, sino por vía de misericordia y terror.”30 We do not have to look far in El médico de su honra for loud echoes of this tragic vocabulary. They strongly suggest Calderón’s complete grasp of Aristotelian catharsis and its meaning. At the end of act two, Doña Mencía’s aside is full of rhetoric paraphrasing the term fear (phóbos): “Miedo, espanto, temor y horror tan fuerte / parasismos han sido de mi muerte.”31 In act three, the rhetoric of tragic catharsis comes thick and fast.

25 Henry W. Sullivan and Ellie Ragland-Sullivan, “Las tres justicias en una of Calderón and the Question of Christian Catharsis,” in Critical Perspectives on Calderón de la Barca, ed. Frederick A. de Armas et al. (Lincoln, 1981), pp. 119–40, at p. 120. 26 S. H. Butcher, Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, 4th ed. (London, 1923), p. 23. 27 Alonso López Pinciano, Philosophía antigua poética (1596), ed. Alfredo Carballo Picazo, 3 vols. (Madrid, 1953), 2:307. 28 Francisco Cascales, Tablas poéticas (1617), ed. Benito Brancaforte (Madrid, 1975), p. 185. 29 Edward C. Riley, “The Dramatic Theories of Don Jusepe Antonio González de Salas,” Hispanic Review 19 (1951): 183–203, at p. 191. 30 Alonso Ordóñez das Seijas y Tobar, La Poética de Aristóteles, dada a nuestra lengua castellana (1626), 2nd ed. (Madrid, 1778), p. 27. 31 Act 2, p. 339b.



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There Gutierre conceives his plan for the bogus bloodletting accident that will cause his wife’s death. He adds: “Pero antes que llegue a esto, / la vida el cielo me quite, / porque no vea tragedias / de un amor tan infelice.”32 In similar language, Gutierre appeals to the King in the final scene of the play: “A besar, señor, tus plantas; / y de la mayor desdicha, / de la tragedia más rara, / escucha la admiración, / que eleva, admira y espanta.”33 When Pedro sees the pallid cadaver of Doña Mencía lying on her deathbed, he exclaims: “Cubrid este horror que asombra, / ese prodigio que espanta, / espectáculo que admira, / símbolo de la desgracia.”34 Moreover, in a coauthored article of 1981, I cited passages from the endings of Calderón’s Las tres justicias en una, his A secreto agravio, secreta venganza and El mayor monstruo del mundo, which in similar fashion insistently repeat the terminology of tragedy, pity and fear.35 A very old objection to the notion that the Spaniards wrote—or could write—true tragedy lies in the contention that, in their devoutly Christian world, the wrongful death of the innocent could not be tragic. In dying, the Doña Mencías of such a dramatic universe would merely go to their heavenly reward where an omniscient and provident God was the ultimate Justicer. In other words, the idea of an ideologically “Christian catharsis” is itself a contradiction in terms and therefore nonsense. In the face of this line of argument, it would follow, Calderón and his cohorts a priori could never have composed tragedies. Critics who argue this iconoclastic case conveniently forget that Racine—a textbook tragedian—composed his tragic dramas in a predominantly Catholic France. Jean Racine was himself an avowed Jansenist of fatalist, neo-Augustinian bent, who as a Christian felt bound to reject the ancient Greek ethos of inescapable doom inflicted by the gods on unsuspecting humans and to reinterpret hamartia as the by-now-familiar “flaw of character” (in which the frenzy of unrequited love lay beyond the control of the protagonist and drove him or her in all lucidity to a disastrous end). And though he always held his confessional and political cards very close to this chest, Shakespeare too (it has been argued) was, in reality, a recusant Catholic. In other words, Shakespeare’s religious convictions, though not explicit, were not a nonexistent entity. And even had he been an Anglican or a Protestant of some other hue, one might reasonably surmise the Bard of Avon was still 32 Act 3, p. 341b. 33 Act 3, p. 347b. 34 Act 3, p. 348a. 35 Sullivan and Ragland-Sullivan, “Las tres justicias en una of Calderón,” pp. 123–25.

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a Christian dramatist. So who would be the first critic to put his head in a noose and claim that Shakespeare, as some brand of Christian believer, never wrote tragedy? The critic who has worked hardest on this question during his career is Francisco Ruiz-Ramón. He coined the term Christian catharsis in reference to Spanish tragedy in the early 1970s and he has made important contributions to the problem in writings from 1967, 1984, 1988, and 2002.36 These all merit study. For my part, I have found that the most useful elucidation of the difficulty comes, once again, from the realm of psychoanalysis. In a book entitled Catharsis in Literature (1985), the historian of ideas Adnan K. Abdullah painstakingly reviewed the concept’s evolution up to the time of Freud and then, in a brilliantly argued section, applied it to the issue of catharsis in tragic terms pertinent to drama. Though not himself familiar with the Golden Age theater, Abdullah found a solution that is entirely applicable to the tragic corpus of Calderón and his contemporaries which we have been discussing all along. He writes: “Throughout the study I will assume that catharsis presupposes an emotional arousal on the part of the audience. The emotional arousal ends in intellectual understanding or cognition.”37 Abdullah therefore divides catharsis into two parts: one having a strong initial, emotional impact, and one having an ideological, reflective aftershock. The first impact of a tragic event in his view (in this case the cold-blooded murder of an innocent woman) is

36 Ruiz-Ramón’s introduction to his edition of three Calderonian tragedies is a bold affirmation of Calderón’s status as a tragedian. As regards a Christian tragedy per se, RuizRamón wrote the following: “Calderón es el creador de una tragedia cristiana cuya raíz es común a la dramaturgia de nuestro Siglo de Oro, y que difiere de los modelos de la tragedia griega, isabelina o galoclásica, tanto en la solución de los conflictos como en su planteamiento y, sobre todo, en la construcción y la técnica” (Francisco Ruiz-Ramón, ed., Calderón de la Barca: Tragedias, I [Madrid, 1967], pp. 9–35, at p. 13). In Calderón y la tragedia, Ruiz-Ramón pursued the theme of the conflict between freedom and destiny in Calderón’s tragedies, especially where these coincide in the element of “chance” (el acaso) (Francisco Ruiz-Ramón, Calderón y la tragedia [Madrid, 1984], pp. 28–34; 128–30). In Celebración y catarsis, a collection of previous essays, he put the term catharsis firmly in the vocabulary of the Christian Spanish theater (Francisco Ruiz-Ramón, Celebración y catarsis [leer el teatro español] [Murcia, 1988], p. 21). In the more recent essay of 2002 on the formulation of a poetics of Calderonian tragedy, Ruiz-Ramón likewise returned at considerable length to Aristotelian principles in the Poetics and to Calderón’s utter compatibility with the late Renaissance tragedians of England and France as re-inventors of a genre (Francisco Ruiz-Ramón, “Cuestiones previas para la formulación de una poética de la tragedia calderoniana,” in Calderón: entre veras y burlas, ed. Francisco Domínguez Matito and Julián Bravo Vega [Logroño, 2002], pp. 79–90). 37 Adnan K. Abdullah, Catharsis in Literature (Bloomington, 1985), p. 8.



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something basically human to which all people can relate, irrespective of their intellectual or principled convictions. Having absorbed the initial impact, however, each person then attempts to make sense of the tragic event’s meaning in order to come to terms with it. This is where individual or group belief enters the picture (such as the Hispano-Catholic context of frequent reference). In other words, Spanish Golden Age audiences were no more immune to catharsis than an audience in Elizabethan England or 17th-century France, but they came to terms with the spectacle of tragedy in modes of Spanish thinking normal and natural for the day. As far as El médico de su honra in particular is concerned, Peter N. Dunn wrote in a seminal article about “honor and the Christian background” in the play, drawing special attention, for example, to the cross explicitly referred to in the text by Calderón. Ludovico describes the scene that awaits him in Mencía’s bedroom as follows: “Una imagen / de la muerte, un bulto veo / que sobre una cama yace: / dos velas tiene a dos lados, / y un crucifijo delante.”38 Against Gutierre’s inhuman act, therefore, stands the symbol of Christ’s sacrifice and his love for humanity. The symbol is an implicit contradiction of the overly rigorous and twisted logic of the killer. In terms of its principled convictions, the Spanish audience might reflect that Gutierre de Solís is not merely an evil and sinning Christian, but scarcely a Christian at all. Dunn argued, indeed, that Calderón here presented the honor code as an odious rival religion to Christianity and one to be condemned: a view that has often amused those present-day Spaniards who regard the play as a screed out of which Calderón speaks qua author from beginning to end.39

38 Act 3, pp. 344b–345a. 39 Valbuena Briones accused British and American critics of being “Puritans”—i.e. guilty of a “misappropriation of values”—in their view that Calderón voiced opposition to the honor code as portrayed in this tragedy. He writes: “Para envolver un poco más la cuestión se ha dicho recientemente que en realidad Calderón no aceptó en su fuero interno las leyes de honor y que El médico de su honra, por ejemplo, no significa la implícita aprobación del código, a pesar de la conducta del personaje Don Gutierre y de la actitud del rey don Pedro a este respecto. Aunque el punto parece convincente, el hacer de él el centro de entendimiento de la obra no es ni más ni menos que una malversación de valores . . . ¡Ay de los eruditos puritanos que persisten en esa idea al hablar de Calderón! Más les valiera dedicarse a otros asuntos” (Ángel Valbuena Briones, “Nota Preliminar” to Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Obras completas, Vol 1: Dramas, ed. Ángel Valbuena Briones, 5th ed. [Madrid, 1966], pp. 313–48, at pp. 313a–313b; Valbuena’s emphasis).

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At the opening of this essay I referred to the damnosa hereditas of the Renaissance critical tradition. By that, I meant the 16th century’s ad hoc blend of Aristotle mixed with elements of Horace’s Epistola ad Pisones to prescribe that any play conforming to “the rules of art” had in its content to display decorum, verisimilitude, class distinctions, no shedding of blood on the stage, etc., and, in its formal organization, the mythical three Unities, precisely five acts, no more than five stage entries per character per act, and so on and so forth. We need not insist on the obvious truth that the practicing playwrights of the Golden Age wrote in defiance of those academic criteria, the most celebrated manifesto of their dramatic nonconformism being Lope de Vega’s Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo (1609). On the other hand, it would be a mistake to assume, because the Spanish dramatists defied the conventions which the scholarly world wished to foist on them, that they did not invent a theater having clear aesthetic conventions of its own. Indeed, the Lopes, Tirsos and Calderóns of the period invented a Spanish Baroque dramatic poesis of stunning originality which has yet to receive the attention it truly deserves. In an essay on Moreto’s El desdén con el desdén from 1994, I tried to show that there were four interweaving continua at play in that comic work. But the remarks laid out there apply to the Golden Age comedia in general, and the four continua present in any full-length drama may be summed up in the following manner: the law argument, the desire argument, the comic argument, and the poetic imagery argument. We have already maintained above that the action of El médico de su honra displays a split argument with a reduplicated storyline: the tale of Leonor and Gutierre that tragically foreshadows the tale of Mencía and Gutierre. Another way of expressing the same thing is to say that there is a dialectic of law and desire at work in the play. And here I am using the terms law and desire with the force of their central relevance to the theories of Jacques Lacan. Lacan argued early on that desire arises from the split in being (manque-à-être) created by the division of the subject in the second year of life. The subject of being in the Imaginary order (Lacan’s moi) becomes subordinated to the subject of speech in the Symbolic order (Lacan’s je), but continues to exert its presence and force as a “pathetic” subject in the realm of desire. The subject of speech, however, or the socialized superego subject that has assimilated the injunctions of the Law of the Name-of-the-Father or cultural laws in general, can be successful only in part in reining in the demands of the pathetic Imaginary



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ego. This is because lack-in-being is a structural fact, and no particular object can ever permanently satisfy that lack. Human desire, we may say, is immortal and insatiable. Hence desire resists and fights against law, while law perpetually tries to master and tame desire in conformity with the norms and rules of a given society. In its essence, this is the dialectic at work beneath the surface of the full-length plays and tragedies of the Spanish Golden Age. Gutierre desires Leonor for his wife, but the social constraints of the honor code suddenly make her untouchable to him. Prince Enrique still desires Mencía, feels cheated that she is now married to someone else, but tries to contain himself. Desire gets the better of him in the end, however. He bribes his way into her presence and then commits the unconscious faux pas—the social offense—of leaving his dagger on the premises. Gutierre adores and desires his wife Mencía, but eventually feels he must become the very incarnation of the law in its most punitive form by having her put to death. King Pedro desires to merit the cognomen of the Cruel, an Atlas as severe Justiciero and personification of the law, but caves in easily to the desires of his subjects, using lax and probabilistic arguments to justify his actions.40 Paradoxically, then, desire tries to impose its own law, and law desires to triumph over desire. It is in this sense that the split argument of Golden Age plays functions as a dialectic of desire versus law. The actions of Spanish dramas are full of such dialectic and develop it more systematically and brilliantly than any other national dramatic tradition has ever done, including those of ancient Greece, England, or France. The third continuum in the schema outlined above is the comic argument. A standard complaint against the comedia in its day (and in the Neoclassical condemnations of a Voltaire) was the inclusion of comic elements in a serious play. It is still a thorn in the side of some critics of Golden Age theater even today. But the comic argument constructed mainly around the person of the gracioso has an integral function in the psychological effectiveness of the drama in general. As we have seen in the case of Coquín, the funny man often tells the truth that no one else dares to tell, but he also enjoys more broadly what we might term a “jester’s license” (from the German Narrenfreiheit). He can say whatever he likes without fear of punishment by the social order, because his social function is precisely to amuse by whatever means at his disposal. But as I claimed in 1994, the clash of desire and law produces anxiety and 40 Sullivan, “Problematic of Tragedy,” pp. 360–65.

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profound unease as its commonest consequence.41 What the comic argument achieves is a periodic release of this anxiety in laughter. Thus laughter, in a paradox entirely worthy of the Spanish Baroque, also achieves a catharsis of audience feelings of anxiety beyond the catharsis of pity and fear. The fourth continuum is the poetic imagery argument. Here I mean quite literally that the main metaphors and images employed by dramatists in their plays have an internal and deliberate consistency to them. They are not arbitrary or thrown out at random. As a general principle, I intuit that most full-length Spanish plays derive three base images from the fundamental storyline and then begin to develop them, extend them, complicate them and, eventually, start crossing them one with the other. In El desdén con el desdén, I suggested the three base images of the play were “the chaste goddess,” “festive celebration,” and “the fruit and vegetable orchard.”42 In El médico de su honra, I would suggest that the three base images are the surgeon’s knife, darkness versus light, and blood. The fundamental story line of the play states that the Prince entered Mencía’s house by night, that they were caught short by the husband’s surprise return, that she deliberately extinguished lighted candles to enable Enrique’s escape, but that he left his dagger behind by mistake; further, that Gutierre used this very weapon as a surgical tool to have his wife murdered, and that she died by a bloodletting. These images recur constantly. It is not only the signifier of the dagger that haunts the play. Leonor’s elaborate curse at the end of act one refers proleptically to Gutierre “bathed in his own blood.”43 King Pedro is wounded by his brother’s dagger and sees his own death portended in the trickle of blood from his wrist. The long scene in darkness at the end of act two, where Gutierre deliberately steals into his own house by night to test Mencía’s fidelity, is a re-run of the first night scene of light and darkness in act one. The scene where he surprised a male visitor to Leonor’s house, as recounted to the King, also occurred in darkness. Blood stains the covers of Mencía’s bed. Blood ends up staining the walls of Gutierre’s house; blood is on the hand he offers Leonor in marriage. Gutierre is “benighted” in his obsession with honor and men like him cannot see; it suffices that they imagine, that they suspect, that they take precautions, that they distrust, that they guess, and so on.44 An 41  Sullivan, “Law, Desire & the Double Plot,” pp. 227–28. 42 Sullivan, “Law, Desire & the Double Plot,” p. 232. 43 Act 1, p. 327b. 44 Act 2, 339b.



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exhaustive index of these three images in their manifold crossings and combinations would be a lengthy one indeed. Conclusion I hope to have shown in the course of this essay that Lacan’s theoretical teachings can provide a valuable key for the understanding of Calderonian tragedy and for the aesthetic mechanics of the classical Spanish drama more broadly speaking. Not only do Lacan’s theories illuminate the riddles of the Golden Age theater’s greatness, they reinforce and expand the psychological insights of Aristotle regarding tragedy from the 4th century BC. What emerges from the study of Aristotle as a psychoanalytic critic and of Lacan as a psychoanalyst whose ideas are pertinent to criticism is nothing less than a psychoanalytical poetics of the Spanish drama. The application of both thinkers in tandem to this corpus of drama demonstrates that the Spaniards cultivated tragedy as a genre and, moreover, knew exactly what they were doing. Further, that the Spanish tragic tradition did share many features in common with the tragic traditions of Greece, England, and France. But—lastly and most importantly—that many of the characteristics of Spanish tragedy were sui generis: the inversion of the Oedipus complex, hamartia as a fatal error of judgment, anagnorisis experienced by the audience, the split argument, the dialectic of desire and law, comedy as a catharsis complementary to the catharsis of pity and fear, subliminal poetic images as a continuum or dramatic argument in their own right, and so on. The comedia thus stands unveiled as one of the most brilliant achievements of Western dramatic history, not the botched hybrid monster that its detractors or myopic critics over the centuries have so often deemed it to be.

CHAPTER SUMMARIES Part I: Origins Celestina as Closet Drama Enrique Fernández In spite of the title of comedia—later tragicomedia—and of being written in dialogue, Celestina was never intended to be performed on stage. It belongs to a genre that was not cultivated often in Spain at the time: the closet drama, namely, dramatic pieces written to be read aloud, individually or by a small group of friends. Celestina belongs to a dramatic tradition that emphasizes didactic content through the careful use of rhetoric in the dialogue. Its model was the comedia humanistica, a variety of closet drama written in Latin by scholars during the 15th century in Italy. Only in later centuries, when the conventions of dramatic representations became more lax, could Celestina be performed on stage. Adaptations made for the stage meant that important aspects of the original disappeared, and what we can see on stage or in cinematic versions today is quite different from what the author intended. Courtly Love and the Comedia Robert Bayliss This chapter explores the utility of analyzing the popular comedies of early modern Spain in terms of their engagement with the tropes and discourse of the European courtly love tradition. After clarifying that my use of the term courtly love is primarily discursive, rather than a reference to a set of explicit rules or ethical guidelines for the would-be courtly lover, I apply this revised notion of courtly discourse to an analysis of El burlador de Sevilla as a case study. The goal is to demonstrate the insights of such an analysis for our understanding of the ways in which the dynamics of gender and class are negotiated on the early modern stage. The discourse of courtly love allows for a variety of subject positions to be strategically articulated in the comedia, and critical attention to it promises new insights into the gendered voices of both male and female playwrights.

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The Comedia and the Classics Frederick A. de Armas “Let us lock up the ancient precepts and banish the great classical writers such as Seneca and Terence,” Lope proclaimed in his Arte nuevo de hacer comedias. The ancients, he claimed, are not useful in the creation of modern plays. And yet this very poem where the 17th-century Spanish playwright attempted to foreground the originality of his art is deeply invested in the ancients. This essay will explore how early modern Spanish theater was forever conflicted in dealing with the classics. On the one hand, it strove for innovation—it strove to foreground “Leonardo’s heresy”; on the other, it was buttressed by theories of tragedy and techniques of comedy that derived from the antique. And the very language of the plays was consistently adorned with allusions to classical mythology. While seemingly ornamental, some of these citations would reveal the mythical substructure of the comedia. In order to understand this constant conflict between the uses of the ancients and the desire for the new, this essay will focus on four distinct questions. An introductory section will discuss the ambiguities embedded in Lope’s Arte nuevo, while a second section will explore how tragedy survived in this period. The third part of the essay will focus on Terence and how his techniques were utilized in comedies and tragicomedies. The last section will turn to mythological allusions. Spanish Sacramental Plays: A Study of Their Evolution J. Enrique Duarte The sacramental play is one of the most characteristic genres of the Spanish Baroque. It is impossible to understand the Spanish mentality of those days without realizing the importance of the sacramental play in the artistic expressions of Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries. We cannot find this genre in other European literatures. It can be described as a genre that supposes a mixture of different kinds of theater (popular and aristocratic), but with a certain complexity. Sacramental plays are formed by the combination of two different theaters: the popular, enhanced by Lope de Vega in his representations at the corrales de comedia, and another one, more aristocratic, based on representations that took place at the court. This synthesis can be found in aspects such as allegory, the use of theological arguments and sources, and complicated stage scenery, because the plays were performed upon mobile carts. The stage design is reminiscent of solutions favored at the court theater. In fact, the history of sacramental plays can be analyzed according to increasing formal



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and technical (i.e., staging) complexity. This evolution reaches its greatest peak in the works written by Pedro Calderón de la Barca. Part II: Themes Honor/Honra Revisited A. Robert Lauer Throughout the twentieth century, the concept of honor/honra as applied to Spanish Golden Age theater was viewed as an aberration, while its practitioners were judged as psychologically unstable. There are reasons for this. Late medieval Spain imposed the practice of limpieza de sangre for some royal and ecclesiastic posts in order to maintain economic power and status within the Old Christian population (those free of Moorish or Jewish descent): hence, to have a “stained” lineage “dishonored” a person. Moreover, the cultural historian Américo Castro propounded unique ideas about the Spanish character and its susceptibility to questions of honor (fame) and dishonor (soplo). In this essay I propose a revaluation of the concept honor/honra. Basing my argument on classical rhetorical sources like Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Cicero’s rhetorical treatises, and Quintilian’s Institutes of Oratory, I suggest that honor was originally viewed as a valued ethical good that was acquired, as well as a tangible possession (akin to property) that was sustained. This concept prevailed in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, both in Spain and in Europe (where the limpieza theme loses its virulence). In the Baroque period, this idea was identified with another signifier, namely, passion. Hence, an ethical concept originally associated with character, property, and subsequently lineage became a feeling (pathos) disassociated from these components. Consequently, it was then viewed as an aberration. The Wife-Murder Plays Matthew D. Stroud Criticism of the 31 Spanish wife-murder comedias has often perpetuated three stereotypes that the plays themselves do not support: that wife murder as a theatrical plot is unique to Spain, that wife murder in the comedias reflects Spanish history and national character, and that as a group the plays uniformly depict a husband obsessed with his honor and reputation that kills a wife who is guilty, or seems to be guilty, of adultery. All of these misconceptions are dealt with here, but most attention

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is given to the enormous variety of wife-murder plots in the comedia. Almost half of the wife-murder plays can be said to feature extreme examples of husbands and wives, both good and bad. In some cases, as in Calderón’s Celos aun del aire matan, the tragedy stems from fate, fortune, and divine intervention that causes virtuous husbands to kill their honorable wives. In others, tyrannical husbands, such as in Tirso’s La vida y muerte de Herodes, kill their wives in appalling displays of neo-Senecan horror. A third extreme scenario, as seen in Virués’s Atila furioso, presents a depraved husband who is so violent that it almost does not matter that his wife is licentious and debauched. The fourth extreme, exemplified by Lope’s Los comendadores de Córdoba, presents the plot most commonly associated with the genre, in which a man renowned for his honor kills his guilty wife to protect his reputation, and is then rewarded by the king. Not surprisingly, more than half of the plays fall somewhere within the confines of these four extremes, and involve flawed husbands who base their actions on misunderstanding, misperception, and misinformation, ultimately killing or conspiring to kill wives who may not be guilty of infidelity, but may themselves be the victims of circumstance, the actions of third characters, or their own imprudence. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Calderón’s El médico de su honra, perhaps the best reminder that these plays are not moral examples but instead the highest expression of Baroque stagecraft. ’Til Play Do Us Part: Marriage, Law, and the Comedia María M. Carrión This essay illustrates the interactive correspondence of marriage, law, and theater in early modern Spain. The New Art of Writing Comedies by Félix Lope de Vega Carpio argued that the first professional theater of Spain meant to “imitate the actions of men / and to paint the customs of their age”; more precisely, the comedia sought to imitate “lowly and plebeian actions,” a fitting complement to tragedy’s task that, as this essay illustrates, worked interactively with the development of marital legal theories and practices. Its critical lens focuses on the “lowly and plebeian actions” not of men but, rather, of women, who by law needed license from their husbands in order to be able to perform legal actions, such as entering a contract. Despite the clarity with which legislation prescribed the juridical dependence of women on a male legal proxy, many a woman in playhouses and in her own houses negotiated her own voice and capacity to reason, install, and perform such contracts. The first part of the essay



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analyzes the ways in which the Recopilación de las leyes destos reynos, or central legal code of this period, called for such dependency within marriage, as well as the ways in which this legal prescription did not translate literally in theatrical productions. The second part analyzes segments of four dramatic texts as a way to imagine the myriad ways in which marriage, law, and theater informed each other in the cultural production of early modern Spain. Onstage/Backstage: Animals in the Golden Age Comedia Adrienne L. Martín A realization that occurs when one studies animals in the early modern period is that, as Erica Fudge has pointed out in Perceiving Animals, the animal becomes the thing that the human is constantly setting itself against. Then even more than now, humans defined themselves as human in the face of the nonhuman animal. I explore this process of identification of the human in Lope de Vega’s remarkable comedia, El animal de Hungría (The Beast from Hungary). In this play the Queen of Hungary is betrayed and left for dead in the forest by her husband, who remarries. She subsequently steals the king’s newborn baby daughter and raises her in the wild, where both women are feared and hunted as wild beasts. I examine the play’s identification of women with the monstrous, with untamed nature, and the creatures that inhabit it. The literary animal functions here not only as a trope to express the characters’ abjection and alienation, but also to sketch the shifting boundaries between the human and nonhuman animal, and between instinct and domestication. Entremeses and Other Forms of Teatro Breve Ted L. L. Bergman This chapter will explain the form and function of short dramatic pieces that often accompanied performances of longer works such as comedias and autos sacramentales. Since the teatro breve often combines acting, singing, and dancing, there are many possible subgenres. While each piece is usually categorized as either a baile, entremés, jácara, loa, or mojiganga, dual designations, such as “entremés cantado,” are also possible. Each subgenre has its traditional form and function: loas serve as prologues or simply a manner to gain the audience’s attention before a play; entremeses are humorous sketches between acts; mojigangas provide a “fin de fiesta” with a carnival atmosphere. Jácaras and bailes mainly occur between acts and, despite their designation, may contain much dialogue and non-musical

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action as well. Though dominated by comic pieces, the teatro breve as a corpus enjoys a remarkable amount of stylistic and thematic flexibility, thanks to its precept-less burlesque, carnivalesque, and folkloric origins. The entremés is the most widely studied sub-genre, benefiting greatly from the popularity of Cervantes’ El retablo de las maravaillas among modern students and scholars. After the publication of Eugenio Asensio’s Itinerario del entremés in 1965, the sub-genre has received a great amount of study and has begun to shed its reputation as being merely a farcical “minor” counterpart to the weightier comedia. Recent studies have also shown that the teatro breve can embed itself in the comedia, and that the integration of shorter pieces within longer ones was a common dramatic practice in early modern Spain. Part III: Places On Speed and Restlessness: Calderón’s Urban Kaleidoscope Enrique García Santo-Tomás The city is paramount to the development of the comedia in early modern Spain. It provides multiple spaces for representing theater—private houses, patios, gardens, streets, and squares being the most common ones—while relentlessly inspiring playwrights in their depiction of the ever-changing present. With its unparalleled demographic growth in the last three decades of the 16th century, Madrid becomes not only the theater capital of the Iberian Peninsula, but also the scenario of a pivotal kind of drama, that of the comedia urbana. Through the eyes of Calderón de la Barca, this essay examines the ways in which urban space is dramatized in order to connect successfully with an audience that is always hungry for novelty. The city, I argue, is a continuous source of ideas as much as it is the object of desire—that “beast to be conquered” through word, music and image that, in the end, always remains elusive. The New World in Lope de Vega’s Columbus and Saint Christopher: El nuevo mundo descubierto por Cristóbal Colón Maryrica Lottman In act one of El nuevo mundo, Christopher Columbus is a wise fool; in act two he becomes the captain of a mutinous ship, but in the final scene of act three he is figuratively canonized. Inside the royal court at Barcelona, King Ferdinand compares Christopher Columbus to the legendary giant



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Saint Christopher. In Christian iconography, St. Christopher’s staff is depicted as either a dead branch or a live tree, usually the martyr’s date palm. These opposing arboreal images and the legend of St. Christopher’s martyrdom embody the Christian iconographic narrative of a dead tree made to blossom and bear fruit, a narrative that unites Eden’s Tree of Knowledge with Christ’s death on a wooden cross. Like St. Christopher (whose name means “Bearer of Christ”), Lope’s Christopher Columbus crosses a dangerous body of water to bring Christ to a new shore. The presence of Columbus’s staff links him not only to St. Christopher but to Moses, another powerful figure who protected travelers, including seafarers. In many 16th-century portraits, the historic Christopher Columbus also carries a staff. In Lope’s play, the emergence of St. Christopher’s iconographic staff is foretold by the use of props such as the Indian war club, the military baton, the royal scepter, and the large green cross that miraculously converts the Indians at the climax of the play. Ultimately, Columbus is so thoroughly heroicized that he surpasses in saintliness not only the martyred giant St. Christopher but also King Ferdinand himself, the holy conqueror of Granada. The Quest for Spiritual Transcendence in the Theater of Gil Vicente Manuel Delgado Morales Together with Juan del Encina and Lucas Fernández, Portuguese dramatist Gil Vicente is one of the founders of Peninsular theater. However, contrary to the theater of Juan del Encina and Lucas Fernández, Gil Vicente’s religious works are imbued with a deep sense of religious transcendence. In my opinion, this sense of transcendence is rooted in Judeo-Christian Neoplatonic ideas of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance about the soul, the supreme good, and God. At the same time, many of the religious characters who actively seek God as the supreme good are touched with the melancholy that, since Marsilio Ficino, was considered as a moral good and as a trait of the religious genius. Lope de Vega and The Martyrs of Japan Christina H. Lee Lope de Vega’s The Martyrs of Japan is the only extant comedia from the Golden Age that dramatizes the presence of Spanish missionaries during what is known today as the Japanese “Christian Century” (1549–1639). My proposed chapter will discuss the play within its historical context, as it relates to the cultural and political issues that arose as a result of the

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exchange between the Spanish and Japanese empires. It will also analyze the performative aspects of the play, focusing on the visual and linguistic representations of sanctity and Japanese identity. Part IV: Intersections Picaresque Sensibility and the Comedia Edward H. Friedman The development of an early modern national drama in Spain follows, by some 40 or 50 years, the origins of picaresque narrative. The essay deals with points of contact between what might be termed the reigning temperament of the picaresque novel and the comedia. One common element—marked by differences, as well—is the deployment of strategies of subversion in an age marked by censorship and by an unavoidable inquisitorial presence. The focus here will be on particular use of the margins, the significance of marginal characters, and the inscription of a discourse of the margins in each genre. Emblems at the Golden Age Theater Ignacio Arellano The emblem is a form of symbolic expression that mixes text and image, generally with educational objectives, and also as exhibition of ingenio, or wit. In the Golden Age drama emblematic expression takes several forms, from verbal references to scenic composition. This essay provides an overview of these emblematic modes of expression in various genres of comedy. Science, Instrumentality, and Chaotics in Early Modern Spanish Drama Cory Reed In this study, I analyze the Golden Age comedia in the context of the epistemological changes facing Europe at the turn of the 17th century, known today as the Scientific Revolution. My approach is twofold. I discuss the comedia as a performative genre that responds to emerging scientific discourse and reflects Spanish society’s attempt to assimilate new ideas that are simultaneously forward-looking and threatening to existing ways of thinking. I also discuss the potential richness of contemporary theoretical approaches, such as chaos theory (or literary chaotics), in the analysis of



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structural and thematic aspects of the comedia that demonstrate instability and uncertainty. My analysis will focus on Calderón’s La vida es sueño and El médico de su honra, but will also include comparative examples from other plays of the period. Melancholy, the Comedia, and Early Modern Psychology Teresa Scott Soufas Writing about the 16th- and 17th-century stage in Spain, scholars currently are considering from a conceptual/theoretical viewpoint as well as a discursive one the usefulness and even propriety of the terms Golden Age/Siglo de Oro or early modern when writing about and teaching from the genre. As has been established in other contexts, the epistemological shift toward the appreciation of the Cartesian thinking subject is apparent in Spanish letters of the period. In tracing evidence of this appreciation, although a reluctant one by Spain’s authors and intellectuals, it is helpful to consider the many depicted melancholics in the comedia. This medical category of imbalance allows playwrights to present unstable thinkers, obsessed lovers, and dangerous geniuses as they cope with their disproportions and act accordingly, typically with disastrous results. This essay considers the comedia’s melancholic characters as indicators of Spain’s place in the European transition to modernity. Jacques Lacan and Tragic Drama in the Golden Age of Spain Henry W. Sullivan This chapter purports to demonstrate the potential of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory for a renewed understanding of the Spanish comedia, particularly its tragedy. Taking Calderón’s canonical El médico de su honra as the test case, I first contrast the status of character and subjectivity in Golden Age drama with the contemporary theaters of England and France to the north, in order to show that striking individuality and the birth of the autonomous human subject in early modern Europe is not a model that fits the Spanish theater. Spanish character, in fact, lies much closer to the divided subject described by Lacan. The truth of this assertion may be glimpsed in comedia play titles that are non-eponymous and rarely if ever refer to a protagonist or a single individual. They are, rather, metaphysical or enigmatic titles that describe relationships between signifiers. I study the notorious dagger in Calderón’s play as a signifier that shifts meaning continually throughout the action and signifies very different things for

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five very different characters. In subsequent sections, Lacanian theory is employed to illuminate the Aristotelian categories of hamartia (to be understood in Spain as a fatal error of judgment and not a fatal flaw of character); anagnorisis (in this play not experienced by Don Gutierre, but by Coquín, King Pedro in part, the audience and/or the reader); catharsis (present both structurally and in the tragical rhetoric of pity and fear expressed in sundry passages and especially the ending), and poesis (construed here as a psychoanalytic poetics of the comedia in four continua of law, desire, comicity, and poetic imagery). Reference is also made to the inversion in Spanish drama of the Oedipal pattern, whereby the father triumphs over the son in the conflict between them and the son is immolated in the play’s ending (what I have dubbed here and elsewhere the “Kronos complex”).

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Friedman, Edward H. The Antiheroine’s Voice. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987. ——. Cervantes in the Middle. Newark, Delaware: Juan de la Cuesta, 2006. ——. “Dramatic Structure in Cervantes and Lope: The Two Pedro de Urdemalas Plays.” Hispania 60.3 (1977): 486–97. Fudge, Erica. Brutal Reasoning: Animals, Rationality, and Humanity in Early Modern England. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006. ——. Perceiving Animals: Humans and Beasts in Early Modern English Culture. New York: St. Martin’s, 2000. Gacto, Enrique. “El delito de bigamia y la Inquisición española.” In Sexo barroco y otras transgresiones premodernas. Madrid: Alianza, 1990. 127–52. Gambin, Felice. Azabache: el debate sobre la melancolía en la España. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2008. García García, Bernardo J. “La compañía de Ganassa en Madrid (1580–1584): tres nuevos documentos.” Journal of Hispanic Research 1.3 (1993): 355–70. García Ruiz, Víctor. “Los autos sacramentales en el siglo XVIII: un panorama documental y otras cuestiones.” Revista canadiense de estudios hispánicos 19 (1994): 61–82. García Santo-Tomás, Enrique. “Artes de la ciudad, ciudad de las artes: la invención de Madrid en El Diablo Cojuelo.” Revista canadiense de estudios hispánicos 25.1 (2000): 117–35. ——. “Calderón y las aguas revueltas de Guárdate del agua mansa.” Arbor: revista general de investigación y cultura 699–700.177 (2004): 637–46. ——. La creación del Fénix: recepción crítica y formación canónica del teatro de Lope de Vega. Madrid: Gredos, 2000. ——. Espacio urbano y creación literaria en el Madrid de Felipe IV. Pamplona/Frankfurt/ Madrid: Universidad de Navarra/Vervuert/Iberoamericana, 2004. ——. “Outside Bets: Disciplining Gamblers in Early Modern Spain.” Hispanic Review 77.1 (2009): 147–64. ——. “Virués nuestro contemporáneo.” Hacia la tragedia áurea: lecturas para un nuevo milenio. Ed. Frederick A. de Armas, Luciano García Lorenzo and Enrique García SantoTomás. Biblioteca Hispánica Áurea 55. Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2008. 35–55. García Valdecasas, Alfonso. El hidalgo y el honor. 2nd ed. Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1958. Garrido Ardila, Juan Antonio. El género picaresco en la crítica literaria. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2008. ——. La novela picaresca en Europa (1554–1753). Madrid: Visor, 2009. Gerli, Michael. Refiguring Authority: Reading, Writing and Rewriting in Cervantes. Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press, 1995. Gil, Juan. Hidalgos y samurais: España y Japón en los siglos XVI y XVII. Madrid: Alianza, 1991. Ginzburg, Carlo. Clues, Myths and the Historical Method. Trans. John & Anne C. Tedeschi. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. Gleick, James. Chaos: Making a New Science. New York: Viking, 1987. González de Salas, J. A. Nueva idea de la tragedia antigua, o ilustración última al libro singular de Aristóteles Stagirita [1633]. 2nd ed. Madrid: Antonio de Sancha, 1778. González Ollé, Fernando. “La Farsa del Santísimo Sacramento, anónima, y su significación en el desarrollo del auto sacramental.” Revista de literatura 35 (1969): 127–65. ——. “El primer auto sacramental del teatro español.” Segismundo 3 (1967): 179–84. Graf, Eric Clifford. Cervantes and Modernity: Four Essays on Don Quijote. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2007. ——. “Don Quijote and Christianity: The Pomegranate.” In Cervantes and Modernity: Four Essays on Don Quijote. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2007. 103–30. Granja, Agustín de la, and María-Luisa Lobato. Bibliografía descriptiva del teatro breve español (siglos XV–XX). Madrid: Iberoamericana, 1999.



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Sastre, Alfonso. La taberna fantástica: tragedia fantástica de la gitana Celestina. Ed. Mariano de Paco. Madrid: Cátedra, 1992. Schiesari, Juliana. The Gendering of Melancholia: Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Symbolics of Love in Renaissance Literature. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992. Schreyvogel, Josef. Don Gutierre [1818]. Vienna: J. B. Wallishausser, 1834. Scott, James C. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. Six Tragedies. Ed. and trans. Emily Wilson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. Cyrus Hoy. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1992. Shannon, Robert M. “Introduction.” In El nuevo mundo descubierto por Cristóbal Colón/ The New World Discovered by Christopher Columbus, by Lope de Vega. Ed. Robert M. Shannon. New York: Peter Lang, 2001. 1–68. Shapin, Steven. The Scientific Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Sheehan, Jonathan. “Enlightenment, Religion, and the Enigma of Secularization.” American Historical Review 108.4 (2003): 1061–80. Shergold, Norman D. A History of the Spanish Stage from Medieval Times until the End of the Seventeenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon, 1967. ——. “A Problem in the Staging of Autos Sacramentales in Madrid, 1647–1648.” Hispanic Review 32 (1964): 12–35. ——, and John E. Varey. Los autos sacramentales en Madrid en la época de Calderón, 1637– 1681. Madrid: Ediciones de Historia, Geografía y Arte, 1961. ——, and John E. Varey. “Some Early Calderón Dates.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 38 (1961): 274–86. Sieber, Harry. The Picaresque. London: Methuen, 1977. Sicroff, Albert A. Los estatutos de limpieza de sangre: controversias entre los siglos XV y XVII. Trans. Mauro Armiño. Madrid: Taurus, 1985. Las siete partidas. Trans. Samuel Parsons Scott. Ed. Robert I. Burns. 5 vols. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. Simerka, Barbara. Discourses of Empire: Counter-Epic Literature in Early Modern Spain. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003. Siorvanes, Lucas. “Neo-Platonic Personification.” In Personification in the Greek World: From Antiquity to Byzantium. Ed. Emma Stafford and Judith Herrin. Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 2005. 77–96. Sloane, Robert. “Calderón’s No hay cosa como callar: Character, Symbol, and Comedic Context.” Modern Language Notes 99. 2 (1984): 256–69. Sloman, Albert E. “The Structure of Calderón’s La vida es sueño.” Modern Language Review 48 (1953): 293–300. Smith, Shawn O. “Pedro de Urdemalas: Contesting the Spanish Hapsburg Discourse of Blood.” Vanderbilt e-Journal of Luso-Hispanic Studies 2 (2005): 99–117. Soja, Edward. Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory. London: Verso, 1989. Soufas, C. Christopher, Jr. “Thinking in La vida es sueño.” PMLA 100 (1985): 287–99. Soufas, Teresa. “Calderón’s Joyless Jester: The Humanization of a Stock Character.” Bulletin of the Comediantes 34 (1982): 201–18. ——. “Calderón’s Melancholy Wife Murderers.” Hispanic Review 52.2 (1984): 181–203. ——. Dramas of Distinction: A Study of Plays by Golden Age Women. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997. ——. Melancholy and the Secular Mind in Spanish Golden Age Literature. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1990. ——. Women’s Acts: Plays by Women Dramatists of Spain’s Golden Age. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997. Speak, Gill. “El licenciado Vidriera and the Glass Men of Early Modern Europe.” Modern Language Review 85.4 (1990): 850–65.

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Thacker, Jonathan. A Companion to Golden Age Theatre. Woodbridge, U.K.: Tamesis, 2007. Thomas, Keith. Man and the Natural World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. Thompson, Peter E. The Triumphant Juan Rana: A Gay Actor of the Spanish Golden Age. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. Tirso de Molina (Gabriel Téllez). La vida y muerte de Herodes. In Comedias de Tirso de Molina. Ed. Emilio Cotarelo y Mori. Nueva Biblioteca de Autores Españoles 9. Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, 1907. 173–207. Valbuena Briones, A. Julián. “Prologue.” In Dramas de honor of Pedro Calderón de la Barca. 2 vols. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1956. 1:xi–civ. Valbuena Prat, Ángel. “Los autos sacramentales de Calderón: clasificación y análisis.” Revue hispanique 61 (1924): 1–302. Valdés, Juan de. Diálogo de la lengua. Ed. José F. Montesinos. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1964. Valency, Maurice. The Tragedies of Herod and Mariamne. Columbia University Studies in English and Comparative Literature 145. New York: Columbia University Press, 1940. Valentine, Robert Y. “The Rhetoric of Therapeutic Symbols in Calderón’s El médico de su honra.” Bulletin of the Comediantes 32 (1980): 39–48. Valera, Diego de. Ung petit traicté de noblesse. In Qui sa vertu anoblist: The Concepts of Noblesse and Chose Publicque in Burgundian Political Thought. Ed. Arjo Vanderjagt. Groningen: J. Miélot, 1981. Valeriano, Pierio. Hieroglyphica. Basel: M. Isengrin, 1556. Valverde Mucientes, Carlos. “La filosofía.” In El siglo del Quijote (1580–1680): religión, filosofía, ciencia. Ed. José María Jover Zamora et al. Historia de España Menéndez Pidal 26. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1996. 1:161–247. Varey, John. “Casa con dos puertas: Towards a Definition of Calderón’s View of Comedy.” Modern Language Review 67 (1972): 83–94. ——. “Social Criticism in El burlador de Sevilla.” Theatre Research International 2 (1977): 197–221. Vega Carpio, Félix Lope de. Adonis y Venus. In Comedias. Ed. J. Gómez and P. Cuenca. Biblioteca Castro. Madrid: Turner, 1994. 9:283–352. ——. El animal de Hungría. In Comedias de Lope de Vega. Vol. 9. Coord. Marco Presotto. Ed. Alberto Blecua and Guillermo Serés. Lleida: Milenio, 2007. 2:680–816. ——. Arte nuevo de hacer comedias. Ed. Enrique García Santo-Tomás. Madrid: Cátedra, 2006. ——. Arte nuevo de hacer comedias. Ed. Felipe B. Pedraza Jiménez. Madrid: Teatro Español, 2009. ——. “Arte nuevo de hacer comedias.” In Preceptiva dramática española. Ed. Francisco Sánchez Escribano and A. Porqueras Mayo Madrid: Gredos, 1972. 155–65. ——. Las bizarrías de Belisa. Ed. Enrique García Santo-Tomás. Madrid: Cátedra, 2004. ——. El bosque de amor/El labrador de la mancha (Autos sacramentales inéditos). Ed. Agustín de la Granja. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2000. ——. El caballero de Olmedo. Ed. Francisco Rico. Madrid: Cátedra, 1997. ——. El castigo sin venganza. Ed. Antonio Carreño. Madrid: Cátedra, 1990. ——. Los comendadores de Córdoba. In Obras escogidas. Ed. Federico C. Sainz de Robles. 3rd ed. Madrid: Aguilar, 1967. 3:1226–59. ——. La dama boba. Ed. Diego Marín Molina. Madrid: Cátedra, 1976. ——. La dama boba. Ed. Diego Marín Molina. Madrid: Cátedra, 1985. ——. Fábula de Perseo. Ed. Michael McGaha. Kassel: Reichenberger, 1985. ——. The Lady Nit-Wit. Trans. William Oliver. Tempe: Bilingual Review, 1995. ——. Lo fingido verdadero. In Obras escogidas. Vol. 3: Teatro. Ed. Federico Carlos Sainz de Robles. Madrid: Aguilar, 1974. 165–99. ——. Lo fingido verdadero/Acting is Believing. Trans. Michael D. McGaha. San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press, 1986. ——. Fuenteovejuna. Ed. Francisco López Estrada. Madrid: Castalia, 1996. ——. Los mártires de Japón (1637). Biblioteca Nacional Ms. 17365. ——. Los mártires de Japón. Ed. Christina H. Lee. Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 2006.

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Index Aaron, 205 Abbott-Smith, G., 320n11 Abdullah, Adnan K., 330, 330n37 Abel, Lionel, 254n5 Abu-Lughod, Lila, 85n35 acción en prosa, 16 Achilles, 52 Acker, Thomas, 169n10 Acteon, 50 actress, 70, 112–14, 122, 124, 124n32, 155–56 Adam, 186, 196, 211, 219, 223 Adeva, Ildefonso, 278n46 Adonis, 34, 44, 45, 46, 48, 50, 51, 53 Aduarte, Diego Francisco, 232n17, 233n22 Aeneas, 212 Aeschylus, 37–39, 320 Aesop, 128, 135, 139 Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius, 227, 227n25 Aguilar, Gaspar de, 98n23 Aicardo, José Manuel, 61, 61n7 Ainsworth, John, 205n56 Ajax, 85 Alatorre, Antonio, 226n21 Alba, Duke of, 169 Alberti, Rafael, 74 Alcázar, 43, 174 Alciato, Andrea, 269, 269n14, 273, 275n37, 278, 278n50, 279, 281 Alcoba, Daniel, 194n26 Alemán, Mateo, 151, 250, 264 Alexander the Great, 187, 191 Aleza, Milagros, 113n17 Alhambra, 192 allegory, 36–37, 65, 67–68, 74, 128n3, 160, 297 Allen, Michael J. B., 221n15 Almeida Ribeiro, Cristina, 218n5 Alonso, Amado, 92n2 Alpern, Hymen, 257n9 Alphonse X, 79 Altdorfer, Albrecht, 197, 197n35 Altenberg, Tilman, 261n16 Alter, Robert, 249n1, 255n5 Alvar Ezquerra, Alfredo, 166n3, 172, 172n19, 181n37 Álvarez Barrientos, Joaquín, 61n5, 176n25 Álvarez Turienzo, Saturnino, 302n12 Alves, Abel A., 143n46

America, 2, 185, 213, 231, 314, 331n39 Amerindian, 142, 241n30 Amor y Vázquez, José, 98n24 anagnorisis, 313, 325–27, 335 anamorphosis, 314 Anaxarte, 282 Andrachuck, Gregory, 62, 62n11 Andromeda, 50 Anglican, 329 Anglo-American, 314 Angulo, Andrés de, 107 animals, 1, 64, 79, 85n35, 98, 127–44 Anteros, 52, 281 anthropology, 64 antihero, 24 Antiochus, 53, 92 Antón Martín, 173 Apollo, 50–51, 281 Apostolos-Cappadona, Diane, 205n55 Apuleius, 46, 117 Aquinas, Thomas, St., 83, 83n28, 84n29–30 Aragonese, 81 Aranjuez, 154n39, 173 Aras, Jesús, 61n6, 71n23 arbitrista, 19 Arcadia, 50–51 Arcimboldo, Giuseppe, 169n10 Arellano, Ignacio, 2, 56, 57n58, 72n25, 73n27, 128n3, 149n18, 151n23, 151n27, 193n23, 267–82 Argensola, Lupercio Leonardo de, 34, 97n21 argumento, 60, 65 Arias, Ricardo, 61n6, 63, 63n13 Ariosto, Ludovico, 56 Aristophanes, 146 Aristotle, 38–41, 80n15, 83n27, 85n35, 110n11, 144, 224, 227, 227n24, 284, 311–36 Ark of the Covenant, 205 Arnscheidt, Gero, 55n54 Arraco, Muñoz de, 107n6 Artiles, Jenaro, 93n8 Aryan, 83n26 asceticism, 71, 222–23 Asensio, Eugenio, 145, 145n1, 150, 150n21–22, 160, 226, 227, 227n22 Asia, 2 Astorga, 185

372

index

Astraea, 34, 57, 290, 290n15 astrology, 57, 169n10, 287, 290–91 asunto, 60, 65 Atalanta, 50 Athenian, 37 Athens, 47, 300 Atkinson, William C., 97n21 Atlantic, 188, 191, 300 Atlas, 268–69, 333 Attila the Hun, 92, 97 Aubrun, Charles, 255n7 Augustine, St., 48, 71, 199, 199n40, 219, 221, 329 Augustinian, 230, 230n9, 232n17, 239, 242–43 Augusto Boal, 116n28 Augustus, 38, 57 Austria, 67, 275 auto sacramental, 59–74, 128n3, 145, 154, 160–61, 190 Avellaneda, Francisco, 156–59 Avon, 329 Azanza, José Javier, 267n2 Azorín, 74 Babb, Lawrence, 301n12 Bacchus, 43, 154–55 Bacon, Francis, 314 Badajoz, 217 Baert, Barbara, 186n4, 211n73, 212n74 baile (see also dance), 145, 157–59 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 150, 150n20, 155n43 Bal, Mieke, 252n3 ballad (see also romance), 52, 102n38, 136 Ballesteros, José R., 186–87, 187n6 Balsamo-Crivelli, Gustavo, 92n2 Bances Candamo, Francisco Antonio, 67, 72 Bandello, Matteo, 92, 92n2 Bandera, Cesáreo, 261n16 Baños de Velasco, Juan, 270 Barajas, Countess of, 230 Barcelona, 183, 185, 187–88, 191, 193, 199, 202, 202n48, 204, 206, 214, 214n79 Bargagli, Scipione, 275n34 Barish, Jonas, 7n1, 13n16 Barnes, Jonathan, 227n24 Bartocci, Lucia, 204n49 Bartolus of Sassoferrato, 81, 83n28 Bartra, Roger, 301, 301n12 Bass, Laura, 1, 170n11 Bataillon, Marcel, 62, 62n10, 226, 226n20, 226n21, 249n1 Bautista de Toledo, Juan, 172, 172n20

Bayliss, Robert, 1, 19–32 Beardsley, Theodore, 12n12 Bedouin, 85n35 Beecher, Donald A., 301n12, 302n12 Bentham, Jeremy, 314 Berceo, Gonzalo de, 78, 78n8, 79n13 Berenguer, Ángel, 167n6 Bergman, Ted L. L., 1, 145–62, 179n33 Bergmann, Emilie, 38, 38n12 Bergmann, Ingmar, 117 Bermúdez, Jerónimo, 34 Bernard, St., 205 Bernat, Antonio, 273n28, 275n34, 278n47, 278n50 Berry, Mary Elizabeth, 234 Besson, Jacques, 287n11 Bianco, Baccio del, 55, 69, 169 Bible, 64, 67–68, 73, 96, 272, 278 Biblioteca Nacional (Madrid), 229n2 bigamy, 108n8, 122, 122n31 Bjornson, Richard, 249n1 Blackburn, Alexander, 249n1 Blecua, Alberto, 130n9 Blondelio, James, 271 Blue, William R., 100n30, 166n4, 179n33 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 22–23, 94n12, 96, 96n15 Boehrer, Bruce, 138, 138n32 Bogin, Meg, 24 Bolaños, María, 302n2 Bomura, 236, 239, 241 Boniface, St., 205 Booth, Wayne C., 252, 252n3 Borja, Francisco de, 269n10 Borja, Juan de, 268–69, 269n10, 269n15, 273, 273n27, 281 Borrego Gutiérrez, Esther, 139n33 Bouwsma, William J., 169n10, 178n30, 179n32, 180n35 Bovie, Palmer, 47n32 Bovio, Giovanni, 275n34 Boxer, Charles, 230n7 Boxu, 229, 230n7 Brahe, Tycho, 169n10 Brancaforte, Benito, 328n28 Bravo Vega, Julián, 112n13, 330n36 Bravo Villasante, Carmen, 269n10 Brazen Serpent, 211 Brazil, 244 Bread and Puppet Theater, 116n28 Bremer, Jan Maarten, 320, 320n9 Brilhante, Maria João, 218n5 Brill, A. A., 318n7 British, 171, 331n39



index

Brook, Andrew, 315n4 brothel, 27 Brotherton, John, 146n5, 187, 188n10 Brownlee, Marina, 105n3 Brunel, Antoine, 69 Buchdrama, 7n1 bucolic, 8n3 Buda, 140n38 Burgundian, 81 Burke, James F., 302n12 Burningham, Bruce R., 293, 293n26 Burns, Robert I., 79n14 Burton, Robert, 304, 304n18, 306 Busto, Francisco de, 158 Butcher, S. H., 328n26 Byzantine, 316 Calatrava, 86 Calderón, Manuel, 219, 220n10, 222n17 Calderón de la Barca, Pedro, 33–34, 41, 48, 55–58, 65, 72, 92n3, 163–84, 220, 255, 272, 277–78, 282, 332 A María el corazón, 68, 277, 277n46 A secreto agravio, secreta venganza, 85, 90–91, 99n28, 259n11, 306n21, 329 El alcalde de Zalamea, 86–88, 88n41, 90, 165, 177, 259n12 El astrólogo fingido, 174–75, 177–78, 182 Cada uno para sí, 175, 177 Casa con dos puertas, 173, 178, 181–82 Céfalo y Pocris, 95n14 Celos aun del aire matan, 94, 94n13 La cena del rey Baltasar, 60, 73 Cuál es mayor perfección, 178 La dama duende, 165, 170–71, 174 Dar tiempo al tiempo, 174 El divino Orfeo, 60, 73 Los dos amantes del cielo, 218 Duelos de amor y lealtad, 274, 275n35 Eco y Narciso, 275, 275n38 Entremés del reloj y genios de la venta, 153, 153n33 El escondido y la tapada, 175–76, 178 Fieras afemina amor, 148 Fuego de Dios en el querer bien, 174 El golfo de las sirenas, 148n17, 160 La gran Cenobia, 316 El gran mercado del Mundo, 72, 271, 271n19, 272, 272n22 El gran teatro del mundo, 72 Guárdate del agua mansa, 175–76, 179 Los guisados, 154 Hado y divisa de Leonido y Marfisa, 273, 274n29

373

La inmunidad del sagrado, 279, 279n51, 279n52 Jácara del Mellado, 156 Judas Macabeo, 316 El lirio y la azucena, 66, 67 Loa para el auto de La segunda esposa, 59, 59n2 Luis Pérez, el gallego, 316 El mágico prodigioso, 218 Mañana será otro día, 173 Mañanas de abril y mayo, 174, 175, 181 El mayor encanto, amor, 55, 55n54 El mayor monstruo del mundo, 96n19, 329 El mayor monstruo los celos, 259n11 El mayorazgo, 152, 152n32 El médico de su honra, 91, 100–03, 115, 115n26, 119–20, 256, 259n11, 283, 289, 293–98, 305, 305n20, 306, 311–36 La muerte, 155, 158 No hay burlas con el amor, 175, 180 No hay cosa como callar, 173, 175, 175n24, 176, 181 El nuevo palacio del Retiro, 60, 66, 73 El pésame de la viuda, 155 El pintor de su deshonra, 91, 99n28, 259n11, 306n21 Primera parte de los autos sacramentales, 60 Primero y segundo Isaac, 60 El príncipe constante, 218 Psiquis y Cupido, 60 La puente de Mantible, 275n36 La púrpura de la rosa, 275, 275n40 La segunda esposa, 61, 66, 73 El segundo blasón del Austria, 66–67, 278, 278n49, 279, 279n54 Los sitios de recreación del rey, 154, 154n39 Las tres justicias en una, 329 Los tres mayores prodigios, 55, 55n54, 274 Triunfar muriendo, 68 El triunfo de Juan Rana, 148, 148n15–16 Troya abrasada, 92, 99n28 El valle de la zarzuela, 66, 68 La vida es sueño, 56, 56n55, 56n57, 57, 57n59, 131n11, 140, 144, 165, 183, 218, 234n27, 283, 285, 288–91, 298, 322, 322n13 Calle Cervantes, 168 Calle de Alcalá, 173 Calle de Echegaray, 177 Calle de Fúcar, 168n9

374

index

Calle de las Fuentes, 168 Calle de las Urosas, 168 Calle de Platerías, 168 Calle del Arenal, 168 Calle del Carmen, 173 Calle del Lobo, 174, 177 Calle del Niño, 168 Calle del Olivar, 168 Calle del Prado, 173–74 Calle Francos, 168 Calle Lope de Vega, 168 Calle Preciados, 173 Calle Real Nueva, 172n19 Calle Toledo, 168 Calvary, 190 Calvin, Jean, 321 Camerarius, Joachim, 272, 274, 274n33, 278 Camões, José, 218n5 Campbell, Jodi, 166n4 Campbell, John K., 85n35 Campbell, Roy, 115n26 camerino, 43, 51 Canaanite, 186, 225 Canada, 313 Canary Islands, 244 Canet Vallés, José Luis, 8n4, 9n6–7, 11n11, 147n9 Canfield, J. Douglas, 24, 24n24, 31 cannibal, 71 Cantarranas, 168 Cañadas, Ivan, 166n4 Capellanus, Andreas, 20, 20n5 capitalism, 119, 171 Capoa, Chiara de, 211n70 Carballo Picazo, Alfredo, 328n27 Caribbean, 244 Carlson, Marvin, 105n1 Carnival, 149, 154 Caro, Ana, 24, 31, 115, 115n26, 116n26, 122, 124, 255, 258n10 Caro Baroja, Julio, 150, 150n20 Carreño, Antonio, 22n9, 53n49 Carrera de San Jerónimo, 173 Carrier, Constance, 47n32 carrillo, 69 Carrión, Gabriela, 102n38 Carrión, María Mercedes, 1, 101, 101n33, 105–26 Carvajal, Micael de, 217 Carvalho, Joaquim de, 226, 227n22 Casa, Frank P., 79n12 Casa del Campo, 154n39, 174, 176 Casas, Roger, 190n15 Cascales, Francisco, 328, 328n28

Cascardi, Anthony J., 291, 291n18, 296n32 Cassandra, 327 Cassirer, Ernst, 218, 218n6, 220, 222n16 Castells, Ricardo, 191, 191n19, 191n21 Castile, 64, 168n9, 182, 196, 205, 226, 276, 319 Castilian, 82, 245, 328 Castillo, David R., 249n1, 285n5, 313, 314 Castillo, Moisés R., 191n20, 213, 213n75 Castillo Solórzano, Alonso de, 150, 250 Castro, Américo, 92n6, 93n7 casuistry, 86 Catalan, 202 Catalonia, 64 catharsis, 13n16, 312, 327–31, 335 Catholic Monarchs (see also Reyes Católicos), 190, 257 Catholic Universal Monarchy, 107n5 Caussin, Nicolas, 275n34 Cea Gutiérrez, Antonio, 61n5 Celestina, 7–17, 21, 21n7, 308 celestinesca, 16 Celtiberian, 36 censorship, 23 Centro Nacional de Teatro Clásico, 132 Cepeda Adán, José, 285, 285n4 Cephalus, 92, 94–95, 95n14 Cerasano, Susan P., 115n23 Cervantes, Miguel de, 34–35, 40, 55, 58, 168, 268, 268n7, 272, 282 La casa de los celos, 269n12, 274, 274n32, 275–76, 276n41–42, 277, 277n45, 278n48 El celoso extremeño, 269 El coloquio de los perros, 129, 129n5, 134, 264n20 La cueva de Salamanca, 151–52 Don Quijote, 22n8, 41, 41n21, 42–43, 183, 193, 193n25, 250, 250n2, 252–53, 255, 255n6, 263–64, 264n20, 287, 287n14 Entremés del rufián viudo, 158, 279, 279n55 Entremeses, 147, 147n12, 148, 148n13, 150, 151n28 La entretenida, 269, 269n11 La Galatea, 41 El gallardo español, 268n8, 273, 273n25, 278n48 La gitanilla, 262 El laberinto de amor, 269n12, 272, 272n23 Novelas ejemplares, 129 La Numancia, 33–39, 42, 55 Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses, 42, 130, 130n8, 260



index

Pedro de Urdemalas, 249, 260, 260n14, 262–65, 269n12 Persiles, 183 El retablo de las maravillas, 42, 147 Rinconete y Cortadillo, 183, 264n20 El rufián dichoso, 269n12, 278n48 chaotics, 283–98 Charles I, 169n10 Charles II, 67 Charles III, 73 Charles V, 3030 Chartier, Roger, 15n20 Chatman, Seymour, 252n3 Checa, Fernando, 43, 43n25 Chile, 244 chirimías, 71 chorus, 37 Chrétien de Troyes, 22 Christ, 62, 68, 84, 185–228, 279, 331 Christmas, 63, 218–19, 221–22, 226 Christopher, St., 2, 185–216 Ciavolella, Massimo, 302n12 Cicero, 39–40 Cinthio, Giraldi, 92 Cirlot, J. E., 204n50 Cisneros, Francisco Jiménez de, 226 Civil, Pierre, 48, 48n34, 187n6 Claramonte, Andrés de, 99n28 Cleary Nichols, Geraldine, 99n26 cledonomancy, 52 Clement VIII, Pope, 81 closet drama, 1, 7–17 Cochran, Terry, 309n25 Cofradía de Nuestra Señora de la Novena, 113n16 Cole, Abdiah, 304n16 Colegio Imperial (Madrid), 321 coliseo, 124 Coll-Tellechea, Reyes, 249n1 Collins Ames, Debra, 49n36 colores rhetorici, 11 Columbus, Christopher, 2, 185–216 Columbus, Ferdinand, 189 comedia de capa y espada, 19, 99n27, 166, 234, 316 comedia de enredo, 19 comedia de magia, 17 comedia urbana, 163–84 Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico, 124 conceptismo, 151 El Conde Lucanor, 91 Los Confidentes, 114, 114n20, 115 Connor Swietlicki, Catherine, 291, 291n20, 314

375

Consejo de Castilla, 112 converso, 82, 82n24–25 Copernicus, Nicolaus, 284, 290 Corbacho, 91 Córdoba, Veinticuatro of, 93, 98–99 Corfis, Ivy A., 13n15 Corneille, Pierre, 315 Corominas, Joan, 78, 78n7–9, 79n11 Corpus Christi, 60, 62–63, 154 corral, 2, 59, 118, 124, 131, 161, 241, 281 Corral de la Cruz, 131, 169 Corral del Príncipe, 131, 169 Corredera de San Pablo, 168 Correggio, Antonio da, 53–54 Corrozet, Gilles, 278 Cortés, Martín, 285 Cosa, Juan de la, 202 Costa Fontes, Manuel da, 11n10 costume, 70, 154 Cotarelo y Mori, Emilio, 19n2, 62, 96n17, 112, 112n15, 157n51, 160, 160n64 Council of Trent, 62–63, 106, 108n8, 194 Counter-Reformation, 62, 124, 172n20, 283–84, 289, 297 courtly love, 1, 19–32 Cousin, Jean, 269n13 Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de, 71, 71n24, 78, 78n5, 84, 84n31, 107n5, 192–93, 193n23–24, 194, 194n28, 194n30, 206n58, 208, 273, 278, 280, 280n56, 285, 285n6 Crémoux, Françoise, 187n6 Crespo López, Isabel, 313n3 Criado de Val, Manuel, 38n12 Crosas, Francisco, 278n46 Cruickshank, Don W., 102n38, 103n41, 115n26, 166n2, 168n8, 311n1 Cruz, Alonso de la, 196, 196n34, 197, 197n36, 211n71 Cruz, Anne J., 108n8, 249n1, 313 Cubillo de Aragón, Álvaro, 98n23 Cueva, Juan de la, 34–35 Cull, John, 273n28, 275n34, 278n47, 278n50 Culpepper, Nicholas, 304n16 Cummins, J. S., 232n19 Cupid, 34, 46, 50–51, 65 Currie, Mark, 255n5 Cuzco, 194, 210 DNA, 314 D’Aulnoy, Madame, 64 Da Costa Ramalho, Américo, 226, 227n22 Da Vinci, Leonardo, 40, 43, 53, 56–57 Damiani, Bruno M., 249n1 Danae, 47–49

376

index

dance (see also baile), 145, 157–60 Dane, 169n10 Daniel, 67 Dante Alighieri, 11, 22–23 Daphne, 281 Dassbach, Elma, 242, 242n33 Date, Masamune, 230n7 Davies, Marion Wynne, 115n23 Davis, Charles, 112n14 Davis, Stuart, 255n5 De Armas, Frederick A., 1, 33–58, 289, 290n15, 324n17, 328n25 De Bry, Theodore, 198 fig. 2 De Burgos, Jerónima, 124n32 De Hoogue, Romaine, 67 De la Granja, Agustín, 72n26, 145n1 De la Marche, Olivier, 81 De la O, Mariana, 114 De los Reyes Peña, Mercedes 62n9 De’ Sacchis, Giovanni Antonio (see also Pordenone), 207 fig. 5 De Vos, Martin, 44 Deadly Sins, 68 Deahl, Julian, 2 Deák, Gloria-Gilda, 189n14 Dee, John, 169n10 Del Río Parra, Elena, 141n38 Delfín Val, José, 249n1 Delgado Morales, Manuel, 2, 217–28 Delicado, Francisco, 16, 183, 249, 249n1 Delplace, Louis, 231n15 demon, 66, 84, 219, 240 Den Boer, Harm, 154n38 Descalzas Reales, 230 Descartes, René, 135, 142, 142n43, 144, 286, 291, 302, 314 desdoblamiento, 324, 324n15 desengaño, 297 Desportes, Alexandre-François, 138 deus ex machina, 50 devil, 70–71, 186, 219–20, 223 Diamante, Juan Bautista, 156 Diana, 50, 94–95, 132, 281 Díaz-Plaja, Guillermo, 302n12 didascalia, 12 Díez Borque, José María, 61, 61n6, 71n23, 72, 93n9, 148, 148n14, 154 distich, 9 Dixon, Victor, 187n9, 205n54 Dolce, Lodovico, 92, 96, 96n16 Dolos, 9 Domandi, Mario, 218n6 Domingo, St., 232n16

Domínguez Matito, Francisco, 95n14, 112n13, 330n36 Domínguez Ortiz, Antonio, 82, 82n24–25 Dominican, 229–30, 230n9, 232, 242–43, 321 Don Juan, 19–32, 122–24, 140 Don Quijote (see also Cervantes, Miguel de), 22 Donatus, Aelius, 38, 40 Donnell, Sidney, 105n3 Dopico Black, Georgina, 100n31, 110, 110n11 Duarte, J. Enrique, 1, 59–74 Duckworth, George Eckel, 146n2 Duero, 38 Dunn, Peter N., 79n12, 82n26, 87, 87n39, 90, 249n1, 331 Duplessis, Robert S., 171n14 Durán, Agustín, 98n24 Dürer, Albrecht, 204, 223–24, 306 Eclogae, 8n3 Edom, 67 Egginton, William, 313–14 Egido, Aurora, 66n20, 302 Egypt, 211 ekphrasis, 48–55 ekpyrosis, 38 El Pardo, 43 El Saffar, Ruth, 117n30, 313 Elam, Keir, 33, 33n1 elegiac, 8n4, 9 Eleusinian, 328 Elizabeth I, Queen, 169n10, 301, 315, 331 Elizabeth of France, 73 emblem, 2, 68, 70, 267–82 Encina, Juan del, 217–18 encomienda, 300 England, 7n1, 17, 112, 115n23, 127, 127n1, 134, 169n10, 285, 304, 312–14, 330n36, 331, 333, 335 Enlightenment, 285, 301 Enrique II (Trastámara), 100, 101, 101n32, 319, 326 Enríquez Gómez, Antonio, 99n28 entramesos, 64 entremeses, 1, 145–62, 167n6 Entwistle, W. J., 103n42 epic, 38–39, 57 Erasmus, Desiderius, 225–27 Ercilla y Zúñiga, Alonso de, 190, 190n17 Erichtho, 38 Ermita de Sant Cristòfal, 214, 214n79 Eros, 50–52, 281 Escobar, Jesús, 172n20



index

Escorial, 43, 172n20 Escudero, Juan Manuel, 149n18 Escudero Baztán, Lara, 70n22 Espinel, Vicente, 169 Esquilache, Prince of, 168 Esteban Sánchez, Nuria, 284n2, 285n4 Esteve, Mia, 132 Estévez Molinero, Ángel, 260n14 Étienvre, Jean-Pierre, 177n27 Eucharist, 59–60, 62–63, 66, 197 Euripides, 34 Europa, 50 Evans, Dylan, 325, 325n19 Eve, 219 ex-voto, 214, 214n79 Extremadura, 136 Exum, Frances, 101n32 fabliaux, 9 Far East, 229–46 Faulhaber, Charles B., 10n9 Felman, Shoshana, 24, 24n13, 24n14 feminism, 314 Ferdinand, King, 185–216, 257 Fernández, Jaime, 98n24, 98n26 Fernández, Lucas, 217 Fernández de Navarrete, Alonso, 229, 232, 232n17, 233–34 Fernández de Navarrete, Pedro, 232, 232n16 Fernández de Oviedo, Gonzalo, 188–89, 189n12, 201, 201n43–44, 209, 209n60 Fernández Mosquera, Santiago, 55n54 Fernández Rivera, Enrique, 1, 17n23 Ferrara, Duke of, 98n26 Ferrer Valls, Teresa, 44n28, 112, 112n13–14, 112n16, 113, 113n17, 114, 114n19–22, 115, 115n24–25 Ferro, Gaetano, 204, 204n52–53 Feti, Domenico, 224 feudalism, 119, 237, 316 Ficino, Marsilio, 221, 221n15, 227 Figueroa, Roque de, 321 filicide, 313 film, 314 Fink, Bruce, 325n18 Fischer, Susan L., 255n5 Flanders, 182 Flasche, Hans, 93n10 Fleckniakoska, Jean-Louis, 97n21 Flemish, 44 Florence, 50 Florentine, 169 La Florida, 174

377

Földényi, László F., 227, 227n26 Fontana, Giulio Cesare, 169 Forcione, Alban K., 260n14 Forster, E. S., 227n24 Fothergill-Payne, Louise, 11n10, 65n18, 302n12, 313 Fothergill-Payne, Peter, 302n12 Foucault, Michel, 21, 21n6, 47, 47n33, 168n7 Fox Morcillo, Sebastián, 221 Fradejas Lebrero, José, 168n8 Fraker, Charles F., 13n14 France, 19–32, 73, 134, 287, 312–13, 315, 329, 330n36, 331, 333, 335 Francis of Assisi, St., 205 Franciscan, 221, 226, 229–30, 230n9, 239, 242–43 Franco, Francisco, 106n3, 300 Franco de Guzmán, Pedro, 321 Freese, John Henry, 80n15 French, 73, 159, 169, 177, 181, 311, 313, 315 Academy, 301 Frenk, Margit, 98n24 Freud, Sigmund, 311–36 Friars Minor, 230 Friedman, Edward, 2, 247–66 Fudge, Erica, 141n41 Függer, 168n9 Gacto, Enrique, 122n31 Galileo, 283, 290, 293 Galle, Philippe, 205 Galleria di Palazzo Biancoa, 204 Galoppe, Raúl A., 313 Gambin, Felice, 303n13 Ganassa, 114, 114n20 Gandolfi, Pietro, 169 Ganelin, Charles, 324n15 Ganymede, 50, 53–54 Garcés, María Antonia, 313 Garci-Fernández, 93 García García, Bernardo J., 112n14, 114n20 García López, Jorge, 129n6 García Lorenzo, Luciano, 35n5, 44n27, 66n20, 79n12 García-Luengos, Germán Vega, 39n14, 79n12 García Ruiz, Víctor, 74n28 García Santo-Tomás, Enrique, 2, 35, 35n5, 42, 44n27, 86n36, 163–84, 255n7 García Valdecasas, Alfonso, 92n4 García Valdés, Celsa Carmen, 151n23, 151n27 Garcilaso de la Vega, 22–23, 182 Garden of Eden, 73, 185–86 Garrido Ardila, Juan Antonio, 249n1

378

index

Gasta, Chad M., 261n16 Gatti, José, 92n2 Gavela, Delia, 279n51 Gellert Lyons, Bridget, 308, 308n23 Generalife, 192 Genesis, 40, 110n11 Genette, Gérard, 252n3 Genoa, 204 Gerli, Michael, 42, 42n24, 78n8–9, 313 German, 7n1, 168n9–10, 209, 333 Germany, 83n26 Gerould, Daniel C., 105n1 ghost, 52 Gies, David T., 310n28 Gil, Juan, 234n25, 241n31 Ginzburg, Carlo, 48, 48n34 Gleick, James, 292n21, 297n33 God, 23, 67–68, 70, 72–73, 83, 83n28, 84, 87, 101, 141–42, 191, 213, 217–28, 238, 240, 243, 245, 280, 289, 317, 320, 329 Godínez, Felipe, 72 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 7n1, 17, 35 Golden Bough, 212 Gómez Bravo, Eloy, 274n34 Gómez Rubio, Gemma, 10n9 Gómez y Patiño, María, 268n5 Góngora, Luis de, 22, 56, 132, 167–68, 182, 220 González, Aurelio, 50n38, 65n19 González, Rosa, 274n34 González Cañal, Rafael, 10n9, 39n14 González de Salas, José Antonio, 328 González de Zárate, José María, 274n33 González Ollé, Fernando, 63, 63n12 González Pedroso, Eduardo, 61 González Ruiz, Nicolás, 61 Gordon, Colin, 168n7 Gordon, Michael, 232n16 Gracián, Baltasar, 278 gracioso, 131, 150, 161, 240–43, 243n34, 256, 306, 308n24, 327, 333 Graf, Eric Clifford, 193, 193n25, 310n28 Granada, 191–93, 193n24, 214–15 Greco-Roman, 7, 284 Greece, 165, 313, 333, 335 Greek, 34, 37, 52, 77, 85n35, 135, 146, 223, 311–13, 316, 320, 328–29 Green, Otis H., 19n1, 302n12 Greenberg, Mark L., 287n10 Greene, Thomas M., 40, 40n17, 50, 50n40 Greer, Margaret Rich, 1, 55, 55n53, 105n3, 125, 125n33, 178n29, 299, 299n1, 300, 300n5, 301, 313 Gregory, St., 205

Grien, Hans Baldung, 204 GRISO, 72 Grubbs, Anthony J., 185, 185n1, 197, 197n37–38 Guanche, 241 Guarino, Guido A., 94n12 Guevara, Antonio de, 286n9 Guillén de Castro y Bellvís, 168, 255 Gumbrecht, Hans, 105n3 Gurméndez, Carlos, 302n12 gypsy, 262–63 Habakkuk, 67 Habsburg, 36, 39, 66–68, 105n3, 140n38 Hacienda, 168n9 Hall, A. Rupert, 283n1 Hall, James, 211n72 hamartia, 312, 319–25, 328, 335 Hamilton, Henry R., 77n1 Handspring Puppet Company, 132n14 Hardy, Alexandre, 92 Hartzenbusch, Juan Eugenio, 17, 17n23 Harvey, David, 168n7, 171, 171n16–17, 178n28 Hasekura, Rokuemon, 229, 230n7–8, 232, 232n19, 241n31 Hayles, N. Katherine, 292, 292n22–23, 292n25 Hector, 52 Hegstrom, Valerie, 113n18, 121 Heiple, Daniel L., 287n13 Heise, Ursula L., 20n3 Helen, 92 hell, 73 Hellespont, 37, 52 Henkel, Arthur, 270n17, 271, 271n21, 272n24, 273n26, 274n30, 274n33 Henry III, 89 Henshall, Kenneth G., 233n23 Herasistratus, 53 Hercules, 268, 274 Heredia, Juan Francisco Fernández de, 278 heresy, 62, 67, 82 Hermenegildo, Alfredo, 35, 35n4, 36n8 Hernández, Miguel, 74 Hernández Araico, Susana, 150, 150n22 Hero, 52 Herod, 92, 96, 96n15–19 Herranz Martínez, José, 136n26, 137, 137n29 Herrera, Antonio de, 205, 205n54 Herrera, Gabriel Alonso de, 199, 202, 202n45, 209, 209n61, 209n63, 210, 210n68 Herrera, Juan de, 172n20



index

Herrero-García, Miguel, 167n6 Herrin, Judith, 218n7 Hesse, Everett W., 26, 26n17, 102n36 Heugas, Pierre, 7n2 Hicks-Bartlett, Alani, 229n1 Hideyori, Toyotomi, 229, 233, 233n22, 234 Hideyoshi, Toyotomi, 233, 233n22 Hill, Ruth, 310n28 Himeros, 52 hippogryph, 34, 56–57, 131n11 Hippolytus, 53 Hippomenes, 50 Hispaniola, 198 Hitler, Adolf, 82n26, 83n26 Holbein, Hans, 314 Holy Week, 63 Holzapfel, Tamara, 50n38 Homer, 92, 320 homosexual, 97 honor, 1, 24, 26, 50, 57, 75–90, 91–104, 108n8, 120–21, 317, 331 Honorius of Autun, 211–12 Horace, 10, 332 Horapolo, 274, 274n33 Hornby, Richard, 255n5 Horozco, Juan de, 268, 268n9, 273, 276n43 Howard, Jean, 115n23 Huarte de San Juan, Juan, 286n7, 303n15 hubris, 36–37, 51, 77, 87 Huerta Calvo, Javier, 154n38 Hughes, Gethin, 61n6 humanism, 7–17, 106n3 Christian, 142 Hungary, 97, 130, 140, 144 Hurtado de Mendoza, Antonio, 167 Hutcheon, Linda, 255n5 Hyde, Isabel, 320, 320n10 hydra, 68, 277 Ieyasu, Tokugawa, 233, 233n23 Illades Aguiar, Gustavo, 10n9 Immaculate Conception, 61 incest, 53 Index librorum prohibitorum, 226 Indian, 185–216, 241n30 Inquisition, 100n31, 122n31, 226, 279 Íñiguez de Lequerica, Juan, 107n6 Iron Age, 139 Isabel de Borbón, 114n23 Isabella, Queen, 187–90, 192, 257 Isidore of Seville, 14, 14n18 Islamic, 193 Israelite, 211–12 Isselburg, Peter, 270

379

Iswolsky, Hélène, 150n20 Italian, 8, 9, 40, 50, 69, 81, 92, 114–15, 159, 205, 222, 300 art, 34, 43–44, 224 Italy, 8, 55, 134, 287n11 jácara, 145, 155–57, 159 Jackson, Stanley W., 301 Jacquot, Jean, 97n21 James I, 169n10, 315 James the Moorslayer, St. (see also Santiago Matamoros), 201 James the Pilgrim, St. (see also Santiago Peregrino), 201 James, William, 314 Jansen, Cornelius, 329 Japan, 229–46 Jarvis, Charles, 41n21 Jasso y Azpilicueta, Francisco (see also Francisco Xavier), 230 Jauralde Pou, Pablo, 167n6, 261n16 Jeanneret, Michel, 146n3 Jehenson, Yvonne, 313 Jerome, St., 210, 224 Jesuit (see also Society of Jesus), 230, 230n8, 231n10, 321, 326n21 Jesus, 22, 66, 68, 73, 197, 225 Jew, 82, 82n24–25 Jewish, 73, 82n26, 89, 92, 221 Jiménez de Urrea, Jerónimo, 79n13, 80n16, 81, 81n21 Jiménez Patón, Bartolomé, 40 Job, 202 John the Baptist, St., 71 Johnson, Carroll, 38, 38n12 Jonah, 213 Jones, C. A., 93n10 Jones, Inigo, 169n10 Jones, Joseph R., 14n18 Jones, R. O., 103n41 Jones-Smith, Elsie, 85n35 Jonson, Ben, 169n10, 315 Joseph, St., 186, 205–06, 207 fig. 5 Jovellanos, Gaspar Melchor de, 60 Jowett, Benjamin, 221n12 Juan de la Cruz, San, 222 Juan de los Ángeles, Fray, 222 Juan y Peñalosa, Javier de, 284n2, 285n4 Judah, 68 Judas, 121 Judea, 96 Juliá Martínez, Eduardo, 97n20 Junius, Hadrianus, 271 Jupiter, 47–49, 53, 57, 275

380

index

Kagan, Richard, 107n5 Kallendorf, Hilaire, 310n28, 311 Kalof, Linda, 134, 134n20 Kamen, Henry, 309, 309n26 Keen, Maurice, 81n19, 81n20 Keen, Suzanne, 252n3 Kennedy, Ruth Lee, 177n27 Kentaro, Miyazaki, 231n12 Kepler, Johann, 169n10 King, Willard, 35, 35n7 Kinney, Arthur F., 7n1 Kirschner, Teresa J., 190, 190n18 Klibansky, Raymond, 224, 224n19, 301 Kliczkowski, Hugo, 190n15 Knoespel, Kenneth J., 287, 287n10, 287n12 Kossoff, A. David, 98n24 Kovacsis, Adan, 227n26 Kristeller, Paul Oskar, 222n16 Kristeva, Julia, 301 Kronos, 313 Kurtz, Barbara, 65n18 Kyushu, 230 Labrador Pérez, Germán, 178n30 Lacan, Jacques, 2, 38–39, 311–36 Lafort, Remy, 231n15 Landino, Cristoforo, 221 Lanini, Pedro Francisco de, 159 Larivey, Pierre de, 165 Larson, Catherine, 116n26, 121, 170n13, 313 Larson, Donald R., 95n14 Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 189 Last Judgment, 40 Latin, 9–10, 15, 34, 77–78, 328 Lauer, Robert, 1, 75–90 Lazarillo de Tormes, 151, 249–50, 250n2, 255n6, 264 Leander, 52 Leavitt, Sturgis, 1 Ledda, Giuseppina, 267, 267n3 Lee, Christina, 2, 229–46 Lefebvre, Henri, 177, 177n26 Leganitos, El Prado Nuevo de, 173–74 León, 205 Leon Abravanel, Judah (see also León Hebreo), 221 León Hebreo (see also Judah Leon Abravanel), 221 Lepenies, Wolf, 301 Lerma, Duke of, 172, 230 Lerna, 277 Lerner, Isaías, 190n17 Lesedrama, 7n1, 17 Levant, 64

Levi d’Ancona, Mirella, 186n4, 202n46, 209n62, 209n64 Levy, Kurt, 61n6, 71n23 Lewes, George Henry, 146n7 Lewis, Charlton Thomas, 77n2, 78n10 Lewis, Clive Staples, 20n4 Lewis-Smith, Paul, 36, 37n10 Lezama, Antonio de, 190n17 libros de caballerías, 194 Lida de Malkiel, María Rosa, 8n4, 9, 9n5, 16n21, 17, 17n26 Liddell, Henry George, 320n8 Lihani, John, 217, 217n4 Lima, 194, 210 limpieza de sangre, 81–82, 82n22–26 lindo, 165, 180 Lindsay, W. M., 14n18 Lipman, Stephen, 255n5 Lipsius, Justus, 67 Lisbon, 217, 229n2 Livermore Forbes, Elizabeth, 222n16 loa, 145, 153, 159–60 Lobato, María Luisa, 95n14, 145n1 Locke, John, 314 Lombardo, Stanley, 94n11 London, 174, 290 Royal Society of, 293 Lope de Vega, Félix, 1, 2, 19, 23, 33–37, 57–58, 128, 161, 166n1, 167–68, 168n9, 169, 172, 182, 260, 272, 316, 321, 332 Adonis y Venus, 50, 55 Las almenas de Toro, 136 El animal de Hungría, 130, 130n9, 140–44 Arauco domado, 190, 190n17, 241n30, 244 Arte nuevo, 33, 38, 38n11, 39, 39n15, 40n18, 41, 41n19–20, 42, 42n22–23, 43, 48, 56, 56n56, 57, 85–86, 86n36, 105, 105n1, 106, 106n4, 165, 242n32, 255, 255n7, 256, 300, 332 La bella Aurora, 95n14 Las bizarrías de Belisa, 175n24, 308n24 Las bodas entre el Alma y el Amor divino, 72 El bosque de amor, 72n26 El Brasil restituido, 244 El buen vecino, 99n28 El caballero de Olmedo, 51–52, 165, 304, 307, 307n22, 308–09 Canto de la Araucana, 190 La carbonera, 64, 65n17 El castigo sin venganza, 53, 53n49–51, 91–92, 92n2, 98n26, 259n11 Los comendadores de Córdoba, 98, 98n23–26



index

Concepción de la Virgen, 60–61 La contienda de Diego García de Paredes y el capitán Juan de Urbina, 98n23 La dama boba, 115, 115n26, 117, 134, 136–38 La desdichada Estefanía, 99n28 El divino africano, 43 La Dorotea, 16, 308n24 La fábula de Perseo, 280–81 Lo fingido verdadero, 43, 135, 136, 136n25 Fuenteovejuna, 86, 86n38, 90, 165, 257, 257n9 La gatomaquia, 134, 136–37 Los guanches de Tenerife, 244 El hijo de los leones, 140 El hijo pródigo, 72 Juan de Dios y Antón Martín, 193 El labrador de la mancha, 72n26 Loa entre un villano y una labradora, 59, 59n1 La locura por la honra, 99n28 Los mártires de Japón, 229–46 La Maya, 72 El médico de su honra, 100n29 El nacimiento de Ursón y Valentín, 140 La niña de plata, 308n24 La noche de San Juan, 308n24 El Nuevo Mundo descubierto por Cristóbal Colón, 185–216, 244 El peregrino en su patria, 72 Peribáñez, 86, 88–89, 89n42, 90, 259n12 El perro del hortelano, 135 Porfiando vence amor, 43 La quinta de Florencia, 43, 48–55 Rimas, 22 Rimas humanas, 22 El sufrimiento del honor, 99n28 El toledano vengado, 99n28 El triunfo de la fe en los reinos de Japón, 232, 232n19, 234 Venus y Adonis, 281 El viaje del alma, 72 El villano en su rincón, 259n12, 280, 280n60 La vitoria de la honra, 99n28 La viuda valenciana, 43–48 López de Gómara, Francisco, 188 López de Úbeda, Francisco, 250 López de Villalobos, Francisco, 303, 303n14 López de Yanguas, Fernán, 63 López Estrada, Francisco, 86n38 López-Peláez Casellas, Jesús, 89n43 López Pinciano, Alonso, 328, 328n27 López Piñero, José María, 284n2–3 López Poza, Sagrario, 280n58 López Ríos, Santiago, 139n33

381

Lorris, Guillaume de, 22n8 Lotti, Cosimo, 55, 169 Lottman, Maryrica Ortiz, 2, 185–216, 290n16 Lowes, John L., 303n15 Lozano, Cristóbal, 96n19 Lucifer, 191, 212–13, 219 Lucretia, 85 Luis de Granada, Fray, 225 Luis de León, Fray, 222 Luján, Micaela de, 168n9 Luther, Martin, 63 Lutheran, 82 Luzuriaga Sánchez, Gerardo, 160n63 MLA Bibliography, 165 MacCurdy, Raymond R., 34n3, 35, 35n6 Mackenzie, Ann L., 55n52 Macrobius, 39 Mades, Leonard, 257n9 Madrid, 43, 64, 69–70, 124, 131–32, 136, 138, 163–84, 230, 232, 232n19, 241, 321 Madroñal, Abraham, 149n18 Maestro, Jesús G., 8n4 Magi, 222 Malbranche, Nicolas, 142n43 Mallorca, 197 Mancinc, Howard, 324n15 Manson, William R., 130n10 manuscript, 10n9, 13, 121, 229n2 Manzanares, River of, 173–74, 182–83 Mara, 211 Maravall, José Antonio, 82n26, 106n3, 249n1, 300, 309, 309n25 Marcello, Elena E., 39n14 Mariamne, 92, 96 Mariana of Austria, 73, 179 Mariana, Juan de, 48 Marie de France, 22 Marín, Diego, 136n27 Marín Martínez, Juan María, 89n42, 307n22 Marín Molina, Diego, 115n26 Marineo Sículo, Lucio, 193n24 Marino, Giambattista, 275n34 Mark Antony, 96 Marlowe, Christopher, 315 Márquez, Rosa Luisa, 116n28 marriage, 1, 27, 29, 80, 91–126 clandestine, 108n8, 122 Mars, 50 Martel, José, 257n9 Martín, Adrienne, 1, 127–44 Martín, Rafael, 279n51 Martínez Carreras, José Urbano, 199n39

382

index

Martino Crocetti, Maria, 170n12 Martorell, Antonio, 116n28 Marxism, 171n16 Mary Magdalene, 224 Mathes, Michael, 230n6 Matilla Tascón, Antonio, 107n6 Mattalía, Sonia, 113n17 Maurizi, Françoise, 13n15 May, T. E., 99n26, 103n41 McCrary, William, 52n43 McGaha, Michael, 50, 50n38, 281n61 McGrady, Donald, 92n5 McGrath, Michael J., 139n34 McKendrick, Melveena, 1, 82n26, 93n10, 98n24, 98n26, 114n23, 255n7, 313 McKeon, Richard, 85n35 Mecca, 169 medicine, 2 medieval, 9, 19–32, 91n1, 139, 167, 201, 211, 284, 316 Medina, Pedro de, 284 medio carro, 69 melancholy, 2, 295, 295n29, 299–310 memento mori, 11 memoria de apariencias, 69–70, 70n22 Mena, Alonso de, 232n17 Mendes dos Remedios, Joaquim, 219n9 mendicant, 230, 230n9, 231n10, 233 Menelaus, 92 Menéndez Pelayo, Marcelino, 16, 16n22, 62, 217, 217n2–3, 221, 221n14 Menéndez Pidal, Ramón, 78n7 Menippean satire, 176 Mercedarian, 169, 321 Mesón de la Fruta, 124, 124n32 Meun, Jean de, 22, 22n8 Middle Ages, 7, 15, 19–32, 65, 146, 221, 224 Milch, Erhard, 82n26, 83n26 Miller, Jacques-Alain, 325n18 Milon, Alain, 213n76 mime, 14 Minotaur, 41, 48, 56 Mira de Amescua, Antonio, 72, 168, 270, 270n16, 271n18, 272 Miranda, Luis de, 217 Mischlinge, 82 mise en scène, 69, 105, 241n29 misogyny, 29, 124 Moir, Duncan, 1 mojiganga, 145, 148n17, 149, 154–56, 159 Molière, 316 Molina, Luis de, 321 monologue, 10, 17, 180, 289 Monteser, Francisco, 157–59

Montesinos, José F., 79n11 Montiel, 102n38, 319 Moor, 191–93 Morales, Francisco, 232 Moratín, Leandro Fernández de, 60 Morby, Edwin S., 308n24 Mordell, Albert, 311n 311n2 Moreto, Agustín, 72, 92, 99n28, 158, 165, 255, 316, 332, 334 Morínigo, Marcos Augusto, 190n17 Morris, Cyril Brian, 262n17 Morrison, Robert, 243n34 Moses, 185–86, 197, 205, 210–14 Mozzoni, Loretta, 194n29, 204n49 Mujica, Barbara, 20n3, 175n24, 241n30 Mullins, Mark R., 231n12 Mumford, Lewis, 171, 171n15, 175, 175n23 Munby, Jonathan, 290, 290n16 Muñoz García, María José, 109n9 Murillo, Luis Andrés, 41n21 Murillo y Velarde, Tomás, 303, 303n15 Museu Frederic Marès, 202, 202n48 Musial, Kathy, 210n69 music, 71–72, 74, 159 Muslim, 82, 92, 284 mystery play, 185 mysticism, 222 Nagasaki, 231–32, 234 Naples, 25–26, 183 Nativity, 8n3 Navarra, 230 University of, 72 Navarro, Alberto, 95n14 Navarro, Emilia, 109, 110n10 Negro, 208 Nelson, John, 231n10 Neoclassical, 315, 333 Neoplatonism, 23, 119, 218, 221, 225–26, 306 neo-Stoic, 11n10 Neptune, Fountain of, 173 Nessus, 274 Neumeister, Sebastian, 66, 66n20 Neuschäfer, Hans Jörg, 93n10, 103, 103n39 New Comedy, 146 New Mexico, 230n7 New Spain, 234 New Testament, 205, 211–12, 320 New World, 138, 142, 160, 185–216, 261, 263, 300 Newton, Isaac, 286, 291–94 Nieremberg, Juan Eusebio, 67 Noah, 213 nominalism, 314



index

Northern Europe, 316 Norton, Marcy, 178n30 Norwegian Campaign, 83n26 novel, 12, 14, 16–17 novela dialogada, 7n1 novella, 9, 129, 129n5 Numbers, Book of, 205 Núñez Ortega, Ángel, 230n6, 233n21 O’Connor, Thomas A., 19n2, 101, 101n35, 255n5 Oaxaca, 178 Ocaña, 89 Ocasio, Rafael, 241n30 Oedipus, 325 complex, 312–13, 335 Oehrlein, Joseph, 113n16 Office of the Dead, 227 Old Christian, 259 Old Testament, 60, 66, 68, 205, 213 Oliva, César, 128, 128n4, 131, 131n12 Olivares, Count-Duke of, 58, 60, 73 Oliver, William, 115n26 O’Malley, John, 310n28 Ordóñez das Seijas y Tobar, Alonso, 328, 328n30 Orobitg, Christine, 302n12 Orpheus, 73 Ortí, Marco Antonio, 278 Osaka, 233–34 Osborn, Scott C., 303n15 Osorio de Velasco, Pedro, 81 Osuna, Francisco de, 226 Ottoman Empire, 140n38 Ovid, 9, 45, 50, 53, 94, 94n11 Pagès, Leon, 232n17–18 painting, 34, 43, 48, 51 Palacio del Buen Retiro, 60, 69 Palau Reial Major, 204 Palladium, 189 Pallas, 281 Palm Sunday, 209 Panchatantra, 139 Panofsky, Erwin, 46, 46n29, 48n35, 116n27, 224, 224n19, 301 Paraventi, Marta, 194n29, 204n49, 204n51, 205n57 Paravicino, Hortensio Felix, 168 El Pardo, 154n39 Paris, Gaston, 20n4 Parker, Alexander A., 60, 60n4, 101n32, 249n1, 296n30, 297n34, 322, 322n12, 323n14

383

Parker, Douglass, 47n32 Parker, Horace, 217, 217n1 Parr, James A., 310n28 Parry, John Jay, 20n5 Parshall, Peter W., 209n65 Paseo del Prado, 173 Pasiphae, 41 pasos, 64, 147 Passion, 196 Pater Noster, 225 Paterson, Alan, 73 Patristic, 14 Paul V, 230 Paula, Francisca, 156 Peale, C. George, 130n10 Pedraza Jiménez, Felipe B., 10n9, 39n14 Pedro el Cruel / el Justiciero, King, 100, 102n38, 296, 318–19, 322, 326, 326n21, 331n39, 333–34 Pedrocco, Filippo, 44n26 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 314, 317–18 Pelliccia, Hayden, 221n12 Pereira, Gómez, 142 Pérez de Alesio, Mateo, 194, 195 fig. 1 Pérez de Montalbán, Juan, 72 Pérez de Oliva, Fernán, 34 Pérez de Tudela Bueso, Juan, 189n12 Pérez-Magallón, Jesús, 166n1 Pérez Morera, Jesús, 190n16, 194n27, 214n78 Pérez Pastor, Cristóbal, 114n20 Pérez Prendes, José Manuel, 107n6 Pérez Priego, Miguel Ángel, 62, 66 Pérez-Rincón, Héctor, 302n12 Peristiany, John George, 85n35 Perls, Fritz, 85n35 Pérouse, Gabriel A., 302n12 Persian, 37 Perugino, Pietro, 210n66 Peterson, Joseph H., 227n25 Petrarch, Francesco, 21–23 petrarquista, 22 Phaedra, 53 Pharaoh, 211 Philadelphia, 311 Philip II, 36, 43–44, 48, 88, 172n20 Philip III, 81, 229–30, 232 Philip IV, 57, 60, 73, 107n6, 166–67, 177, 181 Philo of Alexandria, 68 Philogenia, 9 Phoenix, 274, 274n30–31 picaresque, 2, 16, 247–66 Picinelli, Filippo, 270, 274n34, 275n34, 275n37 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, 221, 222n16

384

index

pimp, 156–57 Pineda, Juan de, 48 Pinillos, María Carmen, 278n49 Pinzón, Martín Alonso, 205 Pinzón, Vicente Yánez, 205 Pitt-Rivers, Julian A., 85n35 Plato, 40, 52, 146, 218, 221, 221n12–13 Plautus, 9, 43, 300 Plaza de Herradores, 168 Plaza Isabel II, 168 Pliny, 201 the Elder, 143n46 Pocris, 92, 94–95, 95n14 Poema del mío Cid, 78, 78n7 poesis, 332–35 Poliodorus, 9 Poliscena, 9 Pollin, Alice M., 71n23 Pólux, Julio, 242n32 Polycarp, St., 205 Ponce de la Fuente, Constantino, 226 Pordenone (see also Giovanni Antonio de’ Sacchis), 206, 207 fig. 5 Porphyry, 218 Porqueras Mayo, Alberto, 242n32 Porter, Catherine, 24n13 Portugal, 2, 217–28 Portuguese, 73, 217–28 Poulussen, Norbert, 99n27 Prado Museum, 204 Prado de San Jerónimo, 173 Prat Canos, Joan, 64n15 Pratt, Dale J., 292n24 prayer, 72 Preedy, Lee, 186n4 Presotto, Marco, 130n9 Proaza, Alonso de, 15 probabilism, 326n21 Proclus, 218 Promised Land, 211–12 prostitute, 27, 156–57 Protestant, 317, 329 Reformation, 62, 309, 316 Proteus, 38 Provençal, 19 Provence, 23 Proverbs, 202 Psalms, 272, 279 Pseudo-Dionysius, 221 Psyche, 34, 46, 65 psychoanalysis, 2, 311–36 psychology, 299–310 Ptolemy, 284 pueblo teólogo, 61n6

Puerta del Sol, 173 Puritan, 331n39 Puttfarken, Thomas, 51, 51n41 Pythagoras, 71 Quevedo, Francisco de, 22, 150, 150n22, 151, 167, 167n6, 168–69, 181–83, 250, 260, 260n13, 261, 261n15–16, 262, 262n17, 264–65 Querelle du Cid, 301 Quiñones de Benavente, Luis, 149, 149n18–19, 151, 151n24–26, 152, 152n30–31, 153, 153n35, 156, 156n46, 157n48–49, 159, 161 Quirós, Francisco Bernardo de, 150 Raban, Jonathan, 167, 167n7 Racine, Jean, 53, 316, 329 Radden, Jennifer, 303n15 Ragland-Sullivan, Ellie, 328n25, 329n35 Ramelli, Agostino, 287n11 Rana, Juan, 148, 148n15–16, 160 Rancati, Carlo, 275n34 Randall, John Herman, 222n16 Ranelagh Gardens, 174 rape, 13n16, 47–48, 88 Raphael, 44 Rastro, 169 Raulston, Stephen B., 201, 201n42 Réau, Louis, 194n26, 196n31, 202n47, 208, 214n77 Reckert, Stephen, 226, 227n22 recogimiento, 226 Recopilación de las leyes destos reynos, 107, 107n5–6, 111–12, 114, 118–19 recusant, 329 Red Sea, 211, 213 redondillas, 132 Reed, Cory, 2, 283–98 Reed, Walter L., 249n1 Regalado, Antonio, 166n2, 167, 167n5 regicide, 318 Regueiro, Federico, 105n3 Reichenberger, Arnold G., 92n3 Reis Silva, Helena, 218n5 Reith, Eric, 213n76 Reprobus, 186, 188, 194, 208 Revelation, 68, 277 Rey de Artieda, Andrés, 34, 37 Rey Chico, 193 Rey Hazas, Antonio, 130n8, 249n1, 260n14, 262n18–19, 268n7 Reyes Católicos (see also Catholic Monarchs), 189–91, 205, 208



index

Reynolds, John J., 147n8 rhetoric, 9–11, 13n14, 15, 19–32, 40, 56, 80n15, 83n27, 111, 114, 328 Ribalta, Francisco, 44 Ribera, Jusepe de, 202, 203 fig. 4 Rigg, Bryan Mark, 82n26 Riley, Edward C., 41n21, 328n29 Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith, 252n3 Ringrose, David, 166, 166n3 Ripa, Cesare, 270n17, 271, 271n20, 275, 275n39, 276, 277n44, 278, 278n50, 279n53, 280, 280n57 Riquer, Martín de, 12n12 Rivera, Isidro J., 13n15 Robbins, Jeremy, 169n10, 309–10, 310n28 Robortello, Francesco, 40, 328 Rodríguez, Alfred, 50n38 Rodríguez de la Flor, Fernando, 178n30, 267, 267n4 Rodríguez Mesa, Manuel, 190n16, 194n27, 214n78 Rodríguez-Solás, David, 14n17 Rojas, Fernando de, 7–17, 21n7, 146, 146n6, 151, 192, 192n22 Rojas Zorrilla, Francisco de, 34, 55, 72, 85, 90, 100n29, 255, 316 Roman, 8–11, 14, 37, 43, 110, 135, 146, 169, 231 Senate, 36 romance (see also ballad), 67, 98, 98n24, 136, 155 romancero, 91, 98n24 Romanticism, 7n1, 17, 301 Rome, 36–37, 39, 165, 183 Romero Tobar, Leonardo, 168n8 Roncero López, Victoriano, 261n16 roques, 64 Ross, Andrew C., 231n14 Rothfels, Nigel, 144, 144n51 Rouanet, Leo, 62, 62n9 Rougemont, Denis de, 20n4 Ruano de la Haza, José María, 8n4, 131, 131n13, 242, 242n32, 279n51 Rubens, Pieter Paul, 67 Rubio, Luciano, 302n12 Rudolf II of Austria, Emperor, 67, 169n10, 180n35 Rudolf, Karl F., 148n14 Rueda, Lope de, 64, 130, 147, 149, 152, 152n29 Ruffinatto, Aldo, 261n16 Ruiz, Juan, 23, 23n10 Ruiz, María, 132, 134, 134n21 Ruiz de Alarcón, Juan, 33, 41, 161, 161n65, 167–68, 255, 316

385

Ruiz de Castro, Fernán, 93 Ruiz Ramón, Francisco, 187, 187n8, 330, 330n36 Rull Fernández, Enrique, 61, 61n5, 66, 66n20, 95n14 Russell, Peter E., 192n22 Ryan, William Granger, 186n2 Ryjik, Veronika, 36, 36n9 Saavedra Fajardo, Diego, 280, 280n58 Sabuco de Nantes Barrera, Oliva, 143n46 sacramental plays (see also autos sacramentales), 1, 59–74, 277–78 Sage, Jack, 71n23, 204n50 sainete, 17, 145 Sainz de Robles, Federico Carlos, 98n23, 308n24 Salamanca, 10n9, 217–18, 284 University of, 10 Salamis, 37 Salas Barbadillo, Alonso Jerónimo de, 150, 168–69, 172 Salazar y Torres, Agustín, 95n14 Saló del Tinell, 190 Salomé, 96 Salvador Miguel, Nicasio, 138n33, 139n33 Sama, Daiso, 233, 235, 240 Samson, Alexander, 49n37, 255n7 San Andrés, 173 San Felipe, 233 San Ginés, parish of, 168 San Jorge, Church of, 175 San José Ayala, Hernando de, 232n17 San Martín, parish of, 168 San Pedro, Diego de, 304 San Román, Francisco de, 124n32 Sánchez Albornoz, Claudio, 92n4, 93n7 Sánchez de Badajoz, Diego, 72, 217 Sánchez Escribano, Francisco, 242n32 Sánchez Imizcoz, Ruth, 241n30 Sánchez-Romeralo, Jaime, 99n27 Sánchez Sánchez-Serrano, Antonio, 10n9 Santa Fe Opera, 290 Santiago de Compostela, 185 Matamoros, 201 Order of, 81 Peregrino, 201 Santos, Francisco, 168 Sanz Ayán, Carmen, 112n14 Saracen, 326n20 sarao, 145 Sastre, Alfonso, 17, 17n24 Satan, 67, 219 Saturn, 34, 57

386

index

Saussure, Ferdinand de, 317 Savonarola, Girolamo, 225–26 Saxl, Fritz, 224, 224n19, 301 scenery, 68 Schaechterle, Lance, 287n10 Schiesari, Juliana, 303n15 Schoch, Rainer, 209n65 scholasticism, 284, 286 Scholes, Robert, 255n5 Schöne, Albrecht, 270n17, 271, 271n21, 272n24, 273n26, 274n30, 274n33 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 35 Schreyvogel, Josef, 326n20 science, 2, 283–98, 314 Scientific Revolution, 283–98 Scipio Africanus, 36–37, 39 Scott, James, 117, 117n29 Scott, Robert, 320n8 Scott, Samuel Parsons, 79n14 Scott Soufas, Teresa, 2, 24n12, 32, 113n18, 295, 295n29, 296n31, 299–310 Seleucus, 53, 92 semiotics, 314 Sendai, 229, 230n7 Seneca, 11, 11n10, 13n16, 34, 38–39, 92, 96–97, 97n21, 99 Sennert, Daniel, 303–04, 304n16 sententiae, 12, 17 Septuagint, 320 Serés, Guillermo, 130n9, 286n7, 303n15 sermon, 59 serrana, 165 servus fallax, 9 Seven Deadly Sins, 277 Sevilla Arroyo, Florencio, 130n8, 260n14, 262n18–19, 268n7 Seville, 27, 29, 64, 183, 222, 230n7, 241, 261 Cathedral of, 194, 195 fig. 1, 210 Shakespeare, William, 22, 92, 130, 315, 321, 326, 329 Shannon, Robert M., 186n3, 187n7, 188n11, 201n43, 208, 245, 246n36–37 Shapin, Steven, 283n1, 286, 286n8–9 Sheehan, Jonathan, 310n28 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 35 Shergold, Norman D., 8n3, 64, 64n14, 64n16, 69n21, 311n1 Sicroff, Albert A., 81, 82n22–23 Sieber, Harry, 249n1 Sierra Martínez, Fermín, 154n38 Las siete partidas, 79, 79n14, 80n17, 81, 81n18 Siguén, 235–37 Simerka, Barbara, 34n2, 38, 38n12–13, 316n5 Sinai, 212

Siorvanes, Lucas, 218, 218n7, 219 Skinfill Nogal, Barbara Lucas, 275n34 Sloane, Robert, 175n24 Smith, Paul Julian, 314 Sniader Lanser, Susan, 252n3 Smith, Dawn, 113n18, 170n12, 171n13 Smith, Shawn O., 260n14 Snow, Joseph, 17n25 Society of Jesus (see also Jesuit), 230 sodomy, 53 Soja, Edward, 172, 172n18 soliloquy, 289 Solórzano Pereira, Juan de, 67 Sophocles, 34, 313, 325–26 Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, 24, 72, 160, 220, 255, 258n10 Sossa, 37 Sotelo, Luis, 229, 230n6 Soufas, Christopher, 291, 291n19 Speak, Gill, 302n12 Spretlan, Lewis, 290 Stafford, Emma, 218n7 Stafford, Nick, 132n14 stage directions, 70, 130, 156 stage machinery, 59, 63 Stainton, Robert, 315n4 Starobinski, Jean, 301 Stations of the Cross, 224, 227 Stern, Charlotte, 8n3 Stoll, Anita K., 113n18, 170n12, 171n13, 241n30 Stratton, Suzanne L., 196n32 Straznicky, Marta, 7n1 Stroud, Matthew, 1, 86n37, 91–104, 259n11, 314 Strout Dapaz, Lilia, 175n24 Stuart, Donald Clive, 92n4, 93n8 Suárez, Ana, 271n19 Suárez, Francisco, 321 Suárez, Juan Luis, 167n6 Suárez de Figueroa, Cristóbal, 168 Suárez García, José Luis, 20n3 suicide, 36–37, 85, 233n23, 239 Sullivan, Henry, 2, 311–36 Surtz, Ronald E., 8n3 syphilis, 186 Tagus, River of, 182 Taléns, Jenaro, 249n1 Tametsi Decree, 106, 107n5 tarasca, 63, 68 Tate, R. B., 260n14 Taylor, Scott K., 89n43 Teatro Pavón, 132 technology, 2 Tedeschi, Anne C., 48n34



index

Tedeschi, John, 48n34 Ten Commandments, 211 Ter Horst, Robert, 166n2 Terence, 8, 9, 14, 14n17, 34, 39, 43, 47, 47n32, 48–50, 300 Thacker, Jonathan, 1, 49n37, 255n7 theatrum mechanorum, 287 Thebes, 325 Thirty Years War, 250 Thomas, Keith, 127, 127n1, 134, 134n22, 135 Thompson, Peter E., 148n15–16 Tietz, Manfred, 55n54 Timoneda, Joan, 72, 147, 147n8–9 Tirso de Molina, 33, 41, 48, 167–69, 172, 174, 255, 316, 332 El amor médico, 304–05, 305n19 Los balcones de Madrid, 165 El burlador de Sevilla, 19–32, 122–24, 140, 165 El condenado por desconfiado, 321 Don Gil de las calzas verdes, 123–24, 124n32, 169 En Madrid y en una casa, 165 El melancólico, 176, 304 La vida y muerte de Herodes, 96, 96n17, 96n19 Titian, 43–46, 48–51, 53 Tokugawa dynasty, 234 Tokutomi, Soho, 230n7 Toledo, 118, 124, 124n32, 182, 185, 260 La Torre de la Parada, 154n39 Torres Monreal, Francisco, 128, 128n4, 131, 131n12 Torres Naharro, Bartolomé, 146, 151, 217 tragedy, 2, 13n16, 17, 33–40, 43, 48–55, 88, 91–104, 120, 296–97, 297n34, 301, 311–36 tragicomedy, 7–17, 37, 40, 43, 48 tramoya, 287–88 transvestism, 114–15 Tree of Jesse, 196, 205 Tree of Knowledge, 196 Trinitarian, 168 trobairitz, 23 troubadours, 1, 19–32 Troy, 39, 52, 189 True Cross, 196, 211 Tudor, 115n23 Turkish, 140n38 Turriano, Juanelo, 287n11 Unamuno, Miguel de, 255n6 United Kingdom, 313 United States, 313 Universal Church, 316 Urban IV, Pope, 63

387

Urbina, Juan de, 93 Urzáiz Tortajada, Héctor, 39n14 utilitarianism, 314 uxoricide (see also wife murder), 313 Vaca, Mariana, 114 Vaenius, Otto, 273, 281 Valbuena Briones, Ángel Julián, 88n41, 92n3, 100n29, 148n17, 274n29, 322n13, 331n39 Valbuena Prat, Ángel, 60, 60n3, 62, 72 Valdés, Juan de, 79, 79n11, 79n13, 226 Valdés, Pedro de, 124n32 Valdivielso, José de, 72 Valencia, 44, 185, 210, 223 University of, 15 Valency, Maurice, 96n18 Valentine, Robert Y., 294n28 Valera, Diego de, 83n28 Valeriano, Pierio, 274, 274n33 Valignano, Alessandro, 230n8 Valverde Mucientes, Carlos, 284n2 Vanderjagt, Arjo, 83n28 Varey, John E., 26, 26n17, 64n16, 112n14, 173n22, 311n1 Vela, Diego, 111 Velasco, Horacio M., 64n15 Velásquez, Andrés, 303n15 Velásquez, Diego, 169, 199, 252 Vélez de Guevara, Luis, 72, 99n28, 128–36, 150, 168, 173 El caballero del Sol, 281, 281n67, 282 El diablo cojuelo, 176 La serrana de la Vera, 165 La venexiana, 15 Venice, 43, 48 Venus, 34, 43–46, 48, 50–53, 95 Vergara, Alexander, 169n10 Vicente, Gil, 2, 146, 217–28 La Victoria, 173 Vienna Burgtheater, 326n20 Vilches, Elvira, 171n14 Villamediana, Count of, 168 villancico, 71, 227 Villava, Juan de, 270n17, 278, 280, 280n59 Villaviciosa, José de, 153 Virgil, 38–39, 50, 57 Virgin Mary, 22, 60, 121, 196, 205, 207 fig. 5, 279 virginity, 28 Virués, Cristóbal de, 34–35, 55, 92, 97, 97n20–22, 99n28 Visigoth, 92 Vitse, Marc, 170n12 Vivero, Juan de, 52

388

index

Vives, Juan Luis, 304 Vizcaíno, Sebastián, 234 Voltaire, 333 Von Schack, Adolf Friedrich, 301 Voragine, Jacobus de, 186, 186n2, 186n5, 188, 197, 199n40 Voros, Sharon D., 20n3

Wilson, Emily, 97n21 Wilson, Margaret, 1, 255n7 witch, 52 Wolfe, Jessica, 286n8, 287n12 World War II, 301 Wunder, Amanda, 170n11 Wyatt-Brown, Bertram, 85n35

Wack, Mary, 302n12 Wade, Gerald E., 92n6 Walsh, Richard, 252n3 Wardropper, Bruce W., 61n6, 62, 62n8, 64, 70, 93n10, 99n27, 101n32, 103n40, 234n26, 256n8, 260n14, 294n28, 296n30 Watson, A. Irvine, 102n38 Waugh, Patricia, 255n5 Weber, Alison, 299, 299n2, 300, 300n3–4, 300n6, 309 Weber de Kurlat, Frida, 234n26 Weiner, Jack, 187n9 Weinstein, Arnold, 249n1 Weissman, Ronald F. E., 15n20 Whinnom, Keith, 8n4, 304n17 Whitaker, Shirley B., 98n23 Whitbourn, Christine, 179n33 White, Hayden, 252, 252n4 Wicks, Ulrich, 249n1 wife murder (see also uxoricide), 1, 91–104, 313 Williams, Raymond, 180n36 Williamsen, Amy, 113n18 Williamson, Edwin, 261, 261n16 Wilson, Edward M., 101n34, 323n14 Wilson, Edward Osborne, 1

Xavier, Francisco (see also Francisco de Jasso y Azpilicueta), 230 Xerxes, 37 Ximénez Patón, Bartolomé, 82, 82n26 YouTube, 129 Ynduráin, Domingo, 260n13, 261n15, 262n17 Zabaleta, Juan de, 92, 99n28 Zafra, Enriqueta, 249n1 Zafra, Rafael, 70n22, 193n23, 267n2, 269n14, 280n56 Zamora Vicente, Alonso, 124n32, 227, 227n23, 280n60 zarzuela, 154n39 Zayas, María de, 24, 31, 115, 116n26, 121, 124, 128, 138–39, 183, 255, 258n10 Zimic, Stanislav, 227, 227n23, 260n14 Zimmerman, Susan, 15n20 Ziomek, Henryk, 255n7 Zonca, Vittorio, 287n11 Zuccaro, Federico, 44 Zuffi, Stefano, 211n70 Zugasti, Miguel, 278n46 Zurbarán, Francisco de, 199, 212