Cuatro comedias celestinescas (review)

Reviews125 original, no puedo librarme de la muerte humana (el pecado original introdujo la muerte en el mundo). En conclusión, Smieja merece nuestro indiscutible aplauso por haber puesto a nuestro alcance un texto más de un género hasta ahora marginado. Mis reparos a la introducción y notas quieren ser una ayuda a futuros lectores . Espero que sirvan de impulso a estudios más eruditos que la pieza se merece. Ricardo Arias Fordham University Pérez Priego, Miguel Ángel, editor. Cuatro comedias celestinescas. Collecci ó Oberta, Serie Textos Teatrales Hispánicos del Siglo XVI, 3, Valencia : UNED/Univ. de Valéncia/Univ. de Sevilla, 1993. Paper. 374 PPThe volume under review provides current scholars with new editions of four celestinesque plays: Comedia Tesorina, Comedia Tidea, Auto de Clarindo , Comedia Pròdiga. These complement the five printed in the previous volume of this same series (edited by José Luis Canet Valles, also 1993): Egloga de la tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea, Penitencia de amor, Comedia Thebayda, Comedia Hipólita, Comedia Serafina. All ofthe comedias presented by Pérez Priego are well-edited and attractively printed, with line-numbers, scene divisions, and invaluable notes, these latter providing information on matters of lexicon, versification, dialect , allusive material and, given the general title, reminders of the homage these texts pay to either Rojas' Tragicomedia or its early continuations. What is well worth remarking on here, however, is the introduction (9-41) that precedes these curious pre-Lopean theatrical entertainments. Pérez Priego, a respected authority on sixteenth-century Spanish literature , first addressed the topic of Celestina and the theater ofthe first half of the century in Epos (Madrid, vol. 7 [1991]: 291-31 1) and expanded his remarks for a subsequent piece in Fernando de Rojas and Celestina: Approaching the Fifth Century (I. Corfis, J. Snow, editors, Madison, WI: Seminary of Medieval Spanish Studies, 1993, pp. 295-319). It is evident that these two items, along with this introduction, are products of an ongoing study of and fascination with the channeling by other authors of the vast creative energy of the Tragicomedia into the plots, themes, and characterization ofearly Renaissance theater in Spain. 726TíCom, Vol. 46, No. 1 (Summer 1994) Pérez Priego identifies three distinct periods in terms ofthe theatrical use ofthe celestinesque model in the sixteenth century. The earliest touches on a renewal in the presentation of the égloga: here he traces the influence of Rojas' work on Encina's Plácida y Vitoriano (ca. 1513) and Ximénez de Urrea's Égloga de la tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea (1513), an almost slavish versification oíCelestina's early acts. The second celestinesque period is aligned with Bartolomé Torres Naharro and his followers around mid-century, when conceptual links to the Tragicomedia are more prominent, and situation and character development are greatly simplified. The final period—the last third ofthe century—reflects a moralizing trend in which the offending celestinesque morals (and the Celestina -figure herself) are cast down and vilified (as in Juan de la Cueva's El Infamador or Romero de Cepeda's Comedia Salvaje of 1582. What Pérez Priego makes clear—and keenly demonstrates—is that the full celestinesque model is only seen in bits and pieces, for nowhere (except perhaps in the first two acts of the Comedia Salvaje) is there an extended and close use of it. The model is shown by Pérez Priego to have been now reduced or schematized, now muffled or distorted, here altered, there more conventional. The fact that the theater's arte menor verse alchemizes the Tragicomedia's prose already represents a significant displacement of the text(ures) ofthe model itself. The move toward actual stage performance alters the rhythms and expansiveness of the model's unique and sometimes dissonant discourses. Finally, the almost universal adoption of the "happy ending" (comedia definalfeliz) forces other sacrifices in intensity and feel, comedy replacing tragedy. In the prose continuations and imitations of Rojas' work, its formulas and situations are closely copied although its greatness is never rekindled. These theatrical works, created side by side with the Segunda, Tercera and Cuarta Celestina, retain mostly echoes, shadows and—occasionally—quite clear memories...