Doce comedias buscan un tablado (review)

194BCom, Vol. 54, No. 1 (2002) pertenece a otra época. Los trabajos coleccionados en este volumen confirman que los debates sobre la interpretación seguirán mientras que los espectadores , investigadores, actores y directores mantengan vivo el interés en el teatro clásico. Gracias a la AITENSO y otros grupos similares, ni el debate ni la comedia están en peligro de morirse. Lisa Vollendorf Wayne State University Doce comedias buscan un tablado. Ed. Felipe B. Pedraza Jiménez . Cuadernos de Teatro Clásico, 11. Madrid: Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico, 1999. 235 pp. Starting from the premise that theater companies in Spain presenting Golden Age works have a very limited base of plays from which to choose, the objective of this collection of essays is to encourage said companies to expand their repertoire of "classical" dramas, to think outside the box as it were. As a result, the essays are not necessarily directed to those who teach and publish in the field but rather to those who select the works to be performed . Very few of the comedias studied in this collection will be familiar to any but the most well read specialists in Golden Age theater , which is precisely the point of the compilation. Due to this unfamiliarity, the essays generally contain a plot summary of the work in question, some of which are more detailed than others. Although the title of the collection indicates that twelve plays are discussed, two of the essays discuss two plays, bringing the total to fourteen. The essays include abundant general observations about the comedia, which some specialists will find elementary, but which may be helpful for others. The reader of the entire collection will come away with a strong sense of what Golden Age theater was all about. The plays themselves are a sampling of the subtypes of the comedia: comedias defigurón, de capa y espada, de santos , and villanescas. They contain many of the dominant formu- Reviews1 95 las popular during the seventeenth century: the gracioso, la mujer varonil, disguises, a wedding as the desenlace, the opposition of corte/aldea, and the themes of honor and love. Two of the essays recognize the connections that can be drawn between events in a playwright's personal life and those of the work. The importance of the role of the public, as well as the popularity of national and/or historical themes, are also highlighted. The authors of the essays in essence are defending the worth of the play—or playwright—in question. All find merit in the works at hand and believe they warrant a contemporary staging, although one essay does acknowledge the issue of the economic practicality of presenting lesser-known works (132). Although all of the plays studied are considered outside of the "canon" of frequently taught—and frequently performed—plays, two of the playwrights are also non-canonical (i.e., works by Cubillo de Aragón and Bances Candamo are not generally included in anthologies of Golden Age theater). For inclusion in the collection, each essay had to discuss a work which met two criteria: the play had to be truly "classical," i.e., capable of speaking to today's audiences; and it could not have been produced on stage in the recent past. The plays studied include four by Lope de Vega (La viuda valenciana [Teresa Ferrer VaHs], Lofinigido verdadero [Victor Dixon], La villana de Getqfe, and La moza de cántaro [José María Diez Borque]); two by Juan Ruiz de Alarcón (La prueba de las promesas [Rosa Navarro Duran] and No hay mal que por bien no venga [German Vega García-Luengos]), Antonio Mira de Amescua (La próspera fortuna de don Bernardo de Cabrera and La adversafortuna de don Bernardo de Cabrera [Antonio Serrano]), and Pedro Calderón de la Barca (Mañanas de abril y mayo [Ignacio Arellano] and La devoción de la cruz [Javier Huerta Calvo]); and one each by Tirso de Molina (La villana de Válleseos [Francisco Florit Duran]), Alvaro Cubillo de Aragón (El invisible príncipe del Baúl [Francisco Domínguez Matite and Elena Elisabetta Marcello]), Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla...