How to Read a Comedia: Branching Points in the Script of Lope's La discreta enamorada

As readers of comedias we must train ourselves to animate the texts by staging the play in our minds. An analysis of Lope's La discreta enamorada—the Spanish text, the English translation by Vern Williamsen, and the 1986 Chamizal performance—shows that our attention to the script's branching points, those moments when an interpretation can go in one of several equally valid directions, enables us to perceive the variety of interpretations (or performance texts) inherent in the play's written script. We realize how the director, actors, and production crew, as well as the critic/translator, by their choices narrow (or even sometimes expand) a play's meaning. For one example, in some scenes the script of La discreta enamorada allows Lucindo to be played as either sincere or callow, or Fenisa to be naive, calculating, or wholeheartedly in love. Thus the responsible critic, avoiding monolithic interpretation, will instead map for us the meanings encompassed by the artistic event.