La comedia. Seminario hispano-francés organizado por la Casa de Velázquez: Madrid, diciembre 1991-junio 1992 (review)

70BCom, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Summer 1996) dias of which he possesses a seemingly encyclopedic knowledge. Whether or not readers are ultimately persuaded that Andrés de Claramonte actually authored La Estrella de Sevilla, much less the other canonical works credited to him here, this book will surely convince many that Deste agua no beber é, El secreto en la mujer, De lo vivo a lo pintado and his additional remaining plays are worthy ofinvestigation and reassessment. Christopher B. Weimer Oklahoma State University Canavaggio, Jean, ed. La comedia. Seminario hispanofrancés organizado por la Casa de Velazquez: Madrid, diciembre 1991-junio 1992. Collection de la Casa de Velázquez 48. Madrid: Casa de Velazquez, 1995. Paper. 475 pp. These meticulously edited essays were delivered in Madrid during a series of seminars in the 1991-92 academic year by 22 comedia scholars, all but two from French and Spanish universities. The essays are divided equally into six research themes which cover a remarkably broad range of topics: transmission of texts, life in the theater, birth of the comedia, poetics , ideological background, the comedia today. The titles ofthe 22 presentations are for the most part self-descriptive, and can be located in the appropriate sections ofthe Bulletin ofthe Comediantes ' annual bibliography. The volume's value lies clearly in each section's lead essay on "el estado de la cuestión." Ignacio Arellano offers an extensive review of the latest progress in textual editing, with valuable suggestions on orthography, punctuation , and annotations. He suggests that future research, especially that done by editorial teams, should conform to a unified code of criteria, which unfortunately has yet to be established. Josep Lluis Sirera's review ofrecent work on the physical theater and its cultural role in the community urges more attention to the late medieval and early neoclassical periods of transition , especially in the ways the comedia was produced on stage. The most complete essay is Joan Oleza's review of the development of the comedia in the late sixteenth century, which includes a bibliography of over 250 entries . Oleza suggests that future researchers should concentrate more on the causes and purposes of the Spanish theater's tremendous variety ofthemes: benefactors, audience, locale, calendar, regional preferences, occasional topics, local themes, etc. Pablo Jauralde, on the other hand, sees a need for more research on the important ideological transition from the early 1600s Reviews71 to the end of the century, with the shift from corral to palace and the increasing emphasis on spectacle and machinery to the detriment of the actor 's locution and the author's social message. Marc Vitse's review of recent work on aesthetics laments the absence of a complete taxonomy of texts. Cotarelo's Bibliografia and the incomplete Preceptiva dramática espa ñola need to be reformulated and incorporated into a new corpus of all the pertinent material. Finally, César Oliva addresses the problematic nature ofmodern scenography and urges scholars and teachers to work together to ensure that today's public can appreciate better the comedia as a unique, irreplaceable , idiosyncratic dramatic experience valid in itself. Attempts to "modernize" the plays for today's expectations or to "archeologize" them as reproductions of a seventeenth-century performance only denigrate the valuable uniqueness of the geme. Today's artistic directors should emphasize the comedid's brilliant ability to purvey a culture that still percolates in Spain's collective consciousness, plus the comedia's strange, often shocking peculiarities as an art form unlike any other in existence today, which thereby allows it to express human insights not accessible to other artistic media. This volume thus covers a wide range of comedia themes and topics far beyond the limits of standard literary criticism, because it gives equal weight to non-textual matters such as the physical conditions of the representation , aesthetics, ideology, and adaptation for the modem audience. In all these areas it opens the way for further research by establishing the present conditions and criteria for a proper appreciation ofthe material. David H. Darst Florida State University Ruano de la Haza, J. M. and John J. Allen. Los teatros comerciales del siglo XVII y la escenificación de la comedia. Madrid: Editorial Castalia, 1994...