Progne y Filomena (review)

108BCom, Vol. 51, No. 1 & 2 (1999) hay cuatro elementos, pero no se pueden identificar con los cuatro clásicos. De Armas parece reconocerlo en el uso de expresiones "can represent" (21), o el "could" que usa cuatro veces (25). Algo semejante en la página 28, nota 6, refiriéndose a las edades del hombre: al vecino adulto se le hace representar lapueritia (niñez). F. J. Martín (sobre El burlador) identifica a las cuatro mujeres con los cuatro elementos. Martín reconoce las dificultades de esta correlación; sus rodeos explicativos no convencen. Preferible desistir de ella a tener que acudir a la idea de la "transelemental imagery" (33). Dice de Tisbea: "despite the principal identification of this fisher woman with water, it is evident that fire ends up playing a dominant role in her world" (35). En conclusión, es un manojo de estudios desiguales. La mayoría son muestra de buen conocimiento del tema y de madurez crítica. Otros, fruto prematuro e insatisfactorio. La mitología clásica es omnipresente en la comedia : adopta libremente esquemas y motivos literarios, pero rechaza errores teológicos y morales, como autores cristianos lo habían hecho desde el principio. El campo a explorar es amplio, y muy positivos los resultados a que se puede llegar. Ricardo Arias Fordham University Rojas Zorrilla, Francisco de. Progne y Filomena. Edición, introducción y notas de Alfred Rodríguez y Saúl E. Roll-Vélez. New York: Peter Lang, 1994. Hardcover. 147 pp. This book is an edition, with introduction and notes, of Rojas Zorrilla's mythological play, Progne y Filomena. The introduction comprises a scant total of 23 pages, the play text 105, and the lexical notes 16 pages. The main contribution of the volume is to make available Rojas's play, based solely on the Madrid 1640 printed text of the work, and to draw scholars' attention to the fact that Mesonero Romanos's BAE text (vol. 54, pp. 3960 ) was seriously defective. The nature of the annotation to the text leads me to conclude that students may be the intended audience for the edition, although the Peter Lang series is generally scholarly in its orientation. In a time when editing ofthe Comedia has made great strides in terms oftextual criticism, this volume falls terribly short of most desiderata for both scholarly and student editions. To begin with, the Madrid 1640princeps edition ofthe Primera Parte of Reviews109 Rojas's works, in which Progne y Filomena first appeared, surely is located in several libraries, and where several copies exist, printing variations, sometimes significant in nature, can and frequently do occur. The editors, however, do not tell us what copy, or copies ofthis text they have consulted in preparing their edition. Even more crucial as a basic first step in the editing process is the need to consult at least a representative number of all extant versions ofthe work. This the editors likewise have not done, although this information is available in the standard bibliography on Rojas, that of Raymond R. MacCurdy, Rojas Zorrilla: Bibliografia crítica (Madrid: C.S.I.C, 1965), which work the editors have noticeably failed to cite in their bibliography. Consultation of MacCurdy reveals that Progne y Filomena exists also in the Madrid 1680 printing of the Primera Parte, the text printed in the Parte Sexta of Comedias escogidas de los mejores ingenios de España (Zaragoza 1654), the version printed in the tomo facticio published in Lisbon (1645) containing Rojas's play, and as at least nine suelta texts. The scholarly community has come to expect a thorough examination of extant texts as basic to the preparation of a solid scholarly or student edition. Since this has not been done, I will describe what the editors have accomplished. As already stated, this is an edition of the Madrid 1640 text of Rojas, with some emendation (11-12) based on the editors' critical judgment after consulting the text of Mesonero Romanos. Significantly, the editors have used only the 1866 edition of Mesonero Romanos, when the first edition (1861) and subsequent printings (the latest known to me is 1952) should have been consulted to determine what...