An Index to the Spanish Theater Collection in the London Library (review)

272BCom, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Winter 1985) sentía también poderoso, apasionado y alegre, y a la vez perplejo, atormentado y quejoso de su fortuna, que no de la Providencia» (p. 24). En apoyo de estas aseveraciones el autor aduce una serie de textos que comprueban la afición teatral de los españoles de la época. Desde luego, hace falta explicar más convincentemente el por qué de esa afición, y hacer un análisis más minucioso de los valores de los españoles (¿de cuáles, los de las ciudades?) de entonces y los que el teatro hace visibles en el escenario. No explica tampoco la tesis de Navarro González por qué Calderón escribe una comedia burlesca tan paródica y autoparódica como Cèfalo y Pocris, con cuyo estudio cierra el libro. Sin embargo, llamar la atención sobre este interesante experimento poético y dramático de Calderón es algo que debemos agradecer al autor (que ha editado esa comedia). Lo grotesco, tanto en Calderón como en Cervantes y los grandes pintores del Siglo de Oro, sin duda reflejaba predilecciones del público al que se dirigían. Pero sobre todo obedecía a una evolución de los presupuestos estéticos de esos artistas provocada por cambios profundos y premonitoriamente modernos en el concepto de la epistemología y la expresi ón. El Barroco no fue un arte retrógrado, sino la manifestación plástica en el mundo hispánico de dudas y experimentos que en otros ámbitos tomaron un cauce filosófico. Roberto González Echevarría Yale University GREGG, KARL C. An Index to the Spanish Theater Collection in the London Library. Charlottesville, Virginia: Biblioteca Siglo de Oro, 1984. 399 pp. Prices: $25.00 for students and professors (who include payment with their orders, postage free), $30.00 for libraries who order directly from the publisher, and $40.00 if purchased through another distributor or bookstore. Seven catalogs of comedias sueltas have appeared in the last twenty-five years. Each of the catalogs (Toronto, 1959; Wayne State, 1965; North Carolina, 1965; Real Academia Española, 1966; Cambridge University, 1977; University of Texas at Austin, 1978; and the New York Public Library, 1980-81) describes sizable holdings of these Spanish plays in this now well-defined and readily recognizable printers' Reviews273 genre. Now one more entry has been added to the corpus of catalogs. Any additional reference work is welcome in a situation where the objects studied are numerous and scattered, while the bibliographic tools for their study are few. A catalog of such a rich and extensive collection is cause for celebration. One of the reasons for studying comedias sueltas as a corpus is to learn about seventeenth- and eighteenth-century printing practices and to follow variations in text transmission. In order for us to interpret correctly the clues offered by the sueltas, we must at the very least be able to distinguish among different editions. This relies on the exact observation and recording of the elements that make up the printed work: typography, spelling, accentuation, spacing, ornamentation, etc. Over the last quarter century the catalogs describing sueltas holdings have become increasingly more detailed and bibliographically more accurate and sophisticated. With the last three catalogs it is possible to identify with reasonable certainty sueltas as belonging to the same or different editions. The London Library collection totals 1794 separate items, representing 1135 titles of comedias and saínetes. In the Index Gregg chose not to follow the practices of the last 3 catalogs; he states in the Introduction that his purpose is «to present a 'short' descriptive listing rather than the more complete, traditional, bibliographic format for each item.» One assumes that consideration for space motivated this decision . Certainly the depth and extent of each description must be carefully considered when dealing with such a large collection. Indeed, the measurement of the page size, for example, would have been excessive. However, concrete identification of editions is of paramount importance; therefore the accurate transcription of capitalization (in the epithets and authors' names), use of italics (in authors' names), use of diacritical marks (on upper case...