Teatro español del Siglo de Oro (review)

172BCom, Vol. 52, No. 2 (2000) Golden Age specialist could suppose that calzas, mango and capa mean "stockings", "sack," and "hat." But since Gitlitz, inexcusably , gives not a single note, how are those for whom one translates supposed to know? The comedia needs many more scholarly editions and recommendable translations; this book, regrettably, does not meet that need. Victor Dixon Trinity College, Dublin Strosetzki, Christoph, ed. Teatro español del Siglo de Oro. Frankfurt: Vervuert/ Madrid: Iberoamericana, 1998. Studia Hispánica, 7. 381 pp. The Münster symposium focused on two topics: the poetics of the comedia and the moral justification for theater and for the acting profession. A. Egido explicates the topos of Heraclitus the Weeping and Democritus the Laughing Philosopher over more than a century of tragedy-in-comedy, comedy-intragedy , and tragicomedy. She traces the fortunes of this last term from Celestina onwards (76-77), pointing out that it was used of Don Duardos at the very moment (1548) that Francisco de Holanda was reporting on the esteem in which artists in Italy held the grotesque and the monstrous. True tragedy had a short career in the sixteenth century, though the idea survived that man's life was that of an animal de dolor (83). What the comedia nueva revealed was how a closer imitation of "what happens" proved more pleasing to audiences. Egido locates the origin of this and other ideas in the work of G. B. Guarini, well before Lope's Arte nuevo (96). The "realism" of the comedia nuevo then, intrudes in spite of authority's insistence on decorum; Egido repeats Tirso's observation that the grafting process, defying antipathies among trees, produces better fruit (73). The gracioso began to embody the interpénétration of the of the two philosophers (98), and Egido points both to Tello of El Caballero de Olmedo and to the "sad comedy " evoked in such tragedies as Elpintor de su deshonra (90). The contribution of A. de la Granja accompanies photo- Reviews1 73 graphs of the now restored Corral del Carbon in Granada (161, 162, 188), recorded as a theater space from the late sixteenth century. La Granja takes the opportunity to correct things stated recently about the corrales, primarily on the basis of what we know of the atypical Madrid examples. An insistence on separate women's entrances was not universal; structures and accommodations showed great variety (182); there was a relative decorum observed among the mosqueteros, poorly observed, however, among the lindos gesteros showing off in the front seats, and among noble patrons, whose quarrels could be lethal (168). As to women, La Granja points to the vexations actresses could suffer while dressing (169), while on the other side of the "footlights" there were disorders in the cazuela (and there is another attempt made at an etymology ofthe term [175-76]). I. Arellano continues his work on Bances Candamo, focusing both on the Asturian's own plays and on his treatise, to account for his preferences among the genres: comediapalatino comedia historial comedia de fabrica (that is, the sort of play that, if anything, is read of Bances today) and fábulas or mythological pageants. Arellano notices Bances's promotion of the advice-to-prrnces drama, with scenes of gala and of the chase, and on more than one occasion dealing with Queen Christina of Sweden. An obsession with decorum at all costs led Bances to neglect the comedia de capa y espadajust when commoners found it to their taste, while he reduces the gracioso to a nobler but hollowed-out figure, detached from the main action. Only culto poetry and musical accompaniment atoned for this capitulation to decorum. M. Blanco also deals with Bances, who as it happens writes on the Symposium's two topics: poetics and the justification of theater as a moral space. Blanco makes this a preamble to a virtual treatise on how tragedy evolved into tragicomedy, as she studies the Aristotelian theorists from El Pinciano (1590) to González de Salas (1633), giving them a modern coloring in light of the psychology of Charles Mauron: the ludic sustains comedy, the oneiric sustains tragedy. In her historical survey, she notes that El...