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202BCom, Vol. 54, No. 1 (2002) O'Connor's notion of marriage as massively as his book would lead us to believe? David J. Hildner University of Wisconsin-Madison McKendrick, Melveena. Playing the King: Lope de Vega and the Limits of Conformity. Monografías A. Vol. 182. London: Tamesis, 2000. 230 pp. Playing the King is a comprehensive study that spans Lope de Vega's literary career, from the early plays to the cycle of senectute . It is a much needed re-evaluation, taking as a point of departure the representation of kingship and focusing on the pseudo -historical, tragic, and peasant plays. In this important new book, Melveena McKendrick brings to light the complexities of both Lope's canonical works and some ofhis most obscure plays, showing how the playwright's clever, ambiguous, and politically polite theater measured its characters, plot, and action against a background of social and political change. More importantly, she convincingly argues that Lope's plays include a sustained and serious critique of kingship, one that is prudently negotiated. Although critics such as William R. Blue, Margaret Greer, and Susana Hernández Araico have over the past fifteen years carefully and painstakingly foregrounded the oppositional discourse inscribed within Calderón de la Barca's theater, Lope's comedias are still regarded by many as subservient to the dominant ideology . Years ago, Charlotte Stern raised the question: Lope de Vega, propagandist? McKendrick, following her lead, has published a book that can serve as a model of how to write about a playwright as commentator upon power. Taking as a point of departure the popular notion that Spanish Golden Age theater served to reinforce the political, religious, and social structures of the times, McKendrick, in an elegantly written and meticulously researched book, shows the flaws in this assumption, as she problematizes the notion of theater as instrument of the state: "To claim that the theatre as a whole, not just the court theatre, was directly har- Reviews203 nessed to the purposes of government and class is seriously to underestimate the complexity of the relationship between the Spanish theatre of the day and the society that produced it" (5). Arguing against the notion of a monolithic society (and a uniform audience for the theater), McKendrick foregrounds Henry Kamen's notion that "the excesses of the time were always, within Spain, opposed by a body of opinion so substantial and influential that we must reckon it to be not a negligible movement but a major alternative tradition" (3). Arguing against the ideologically monolithic play, McKendrick stresses the multivalent and subversive nature of Spanish theater. Indeed, in this intelligent and carefully thought-out book, McKendrick consistently uses seventeenth -century documents to prove that Spanish theater was in no way an instrument of state propaganda or aristocratic elitism. For example, she reminds us that critics of the early-modern Spanish theater often accused it of teaching immorality, anarchy, and even revolution. Proponents never saw it as a governmental tool. McKendrick's book is divided into eight chapters. After "Reconsiderations ," an important introduction to the critical debate surrounding the theater of the Golden Age, she turns in chapter 2 to the role of kingship during the period—as represented both in political tracts and in the theater. Utilizing the many treatises written to advise monarchs, McKendrick shows that the ideal virtuous prince of the sixteenth-century gave way to a more political figure. Tacitism, she claims, "permitted Spanish intellectuals to reconcile Machiavellian theory with Christian principle: political imperatives, it maintained, must be held in balance with ethical considerations" (17). McKendrick then turns to Lope de Vega, arguing that the somewhat idealized monarchs of the peasant plays are not representative of his theater: "Contrary to the generally -held perception, his monarchs in fact tend to be a bad, or at least severely compromised lot, particularly those who play a substantial, rather than minor strategic, role in the plot" (37). Chapter 3 is the first part of what McKendrick calls "Fractured Icons." The chapter begins with Lope's La corona merecida, a play set in the twelfth century, which is viewed in terms of the compromised image of King Philip III. Other plays such...

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