Don Gil of the Green Breeches (Don Gil de las calzas verdes) (review)

Reviews165 In his neologisms and invented words, Lope concentrated mostly on proper nouns and place names, such as names of supposed cities of Armenia , introduced in a play by a Muslim. Lope also invented terms that supposedly represented German, but really did not belong to that language . While it does not take a genius to learn a foreign language, it does take dedication and time to acquire it. Lope did not dedicate himself to serious, time-consuming study of the living modern languages. Ifhe had, he would not have had the time to create so many hundreds of his comedias . When he needed foreign words, he resorted to the perusal of works by other writers, especially as we have seen, Torres Naharro. Generally speaking, this is a very worthwhile contribution, with word lists, helpful (though imperfect) indices, and an extensive bibliography. C.-de R. has produced a study of considerable interest, and, certainly, one that is admirable in its execution. John Lihani Emeritus, University ofKentucky Molina, Tirso de. Don Gil ofthe Green Breeches (Don Gil de las calzas verdes). Translated with an Introduction and Commentary by Gordon Minter. Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1991. 31 1 pp. This is the first published translation of Tirso's delightful and perennially popular comedy Don Gil de las calzas verdes. Gordon Minter is a superb translator; this translation is accurate, readable, and I believe would lend itself well to performance, which is all the more remarkable, given that it is done in rhyming and scanning verse! The introduction to the volume is also much more substantive than is usually the case. It is in fact an important contribution to criticism not only of Don Gil but of El burlador de Sevilla as well. Minter begins by defending Tirso's comedies , and particularly Don Gil, against earlier critics' assertions that they are "light and frothy without profound intellectual themes to recommend them." Minter makes a strong case that Tirsian comedy is in fact informed by a genuine comic vision comparable to that of Molière, for example, and is as worthy of respect as the dramas ofthe period. Most of the introduction, however, is devoted to a fascinating study of the relationship between Don Gil and El burlador. Minter argues persuasively that "Don Gil ofthe Green Breeches is an ironic, female-centered inver- 166BCom, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Summer 1993) sion of the Don Juan legend as elaborated in The Trickster of Seville" (31). Don Gil has certainly never been interpreted in quite this way before , but what is even more original is Minter's argument that the Elvira character in Molière's Dom Juan and in the two opera libretti derives from the character Juana's imposture as Elvira in Don Gil. If he is correct —and I can only say that he convinced me—it becomes clear that early audiences and readers must have been well aware ofthe connection between the two plays, which really do complement each other in important ways. The 62-page commentary following the play copiously annotates every biblical, mythological, literary, historical, and geographical reference in the play that an undergraduate might find puzzling, thereby enhancing the book's usefulness as a text for introductory courses in world literature or theater. Unfortunately, it is not suitable for use in Spanish literature classes (except those taught in translation), because the Spanish text of the play is worse than useless. Except for a very small number of emendations based on the editions of Blanca de los Ríos and Ildefonso Manuel Gil, it simply reproduces Hartzenbusch's 1842 BAE edition (with all its peculiarities, including the forms crêd, eres, llevandôs, viend ôs [for creed, crees, etc.]) and even vitiates that edition by introducing new typographical errors. It seems very odd that Minter would choose to reprint that edition, with its anachronistic scene-divisions, since he himself comments that "the French convention of editing by making scene divisions coincide simply with entries and exits has obscured the very different structural methods used by the Golden Age playwrights" (299). Also his commentary, so full in other respects, almost completely ignores the many peculiarities of seventeenth-century Spanish usage that modern...