The Story of Joseph in Spanish Golden Age Drama (review)

Reviews1 77 opposed him. The reader gets to learn about the spy system related to Godunov, the mysterious deaths of successors, especially the False Dmitri or Lzhedmitri, how the House of Romanov comes into power, and how the Christian alliance drives the Turks out of Europe. Hados, which belongs to a group of Golden Age plays, by several authors, that treats the mysterious Godunov, informed and molded his image in Spain more than the chronicles on Russian history of the time. For this reason, Lauer convincingly concludes that Hados is the most poetic version , a political play on the Slavic theme. In conclusion, Lauer gives us a meticulously prepared text, which might be enhanced with modernized spelling and a cogent introduction that places the play in a meaningful context, thereby making the work understandable and interesting. His analysis of the work offers perspicacious insights and even-handedly points out the play's strengths and weaknesses. Because Lauer presents his material judiciously, without bias, guiding his reader without being intrusive, his edition can serve as a model for Hispanists. Robert L. Fiore University of Arizona The Story of Joseph in Spanish Golden Age Drama. Selected, translated, and introduced by Michael McGaha. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, London: Associated University Presses, 1998. 344 pp. This sterling collection of plays based on the story of Joseph and his brothers (Genesis 37-50) serves as a companion volume to the author's previous work, Coat ofMany Cultures: The Story of Joseph in Spanish Literature, 1200-1492 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1997). The present anthology consists of a preface, six dramatic works (three comedias and three autos sacramentales), an appendix, succinct notes for each work, a select bibliography, and an index. The time span covered is 1535-1685. The works in question are, in the order listed by 1 78BCom, Vol. 54, No. 1 (2002) the editor, the Josephine Tragedy (Tragedia Josephina) [1535], by the New Christian Miguel de Carvajal; the anonymous sixteenth -century auto entitled Joseph's Wedding (Los desposorios de Joseph); Lope de Vega's The Trials ofJacob (Los trabajos de Jacob) [1635]; Pedro Calderón de la Barca 's Sometimes Dreams Come True (Sueños hay que verdad son) [1670]; the novohispana Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz's Joseph's Scepter (El cetro de José) [1680]; and the Sephardic Dutchman Isaac de Matatia Aboab's Harassed But Happy (El perseguido dichoso) [5446 (1685-86)]. The brief appendix, which might have served as an introduction, covers chapters 118-22 of Vincent of Beauvais's Speculum Historiale, a thirteenth-century compendium ofworld history wherein is contained the story of Joseph and his bride Aseneth. Excluded from this list is Antonio Mira de Amescua's El más feliz cautiverio, y sueños de Josef, which served as Calderón's model for his auto and which McGaha deemed of poor quality (11). As the editor explains, this compilation of little known plays was prepared for one's silent reading and (also) for potential performance (12). Such dual purpose explains the inclusion of additional stage notes as well as the felicitous and upbeat translations of many comic passages, especially in the Josephine Tragedy. Every play presented here is indeed truly unique and, if anything , should prove, without a doubt, that the Spanish theater of both the Renaissance and the Baroque is by no means monolithic , either in structure or in worldview. The Josephine Tragedy, following a neo-Senecan structure (consisting of five acts [partes], subdivided into several scenes [ados], preceded by a prologue and an argument, and followed by a chorus and a final moralizing redondilla), is a remarkable work that, as translated by McGaha, not only anticipates the mixed genre that would eventually become the Comedia, but also the narrative theater foreshadowed in Cervantes's "Retablo de Maese Pedro" and later developed by Brecht. Its self-irony (erroneously perceived as antiSemitic by at least one critic), its distancing and metadramatic techniques, its multilingual character (Spanish, German, Italian, and French phrases are used), its humor (both subtle and bawdy), its pathos (Jacob's planctus), its secular morality Reviews1 79 ("virtue survives all temptations" [66]), and its enlightened message of ethnic and religious tolerance (between...