The Reconstruction of a Spanish Golden Age Playhouse: El Corral del Principe 1583-1744 (review)

REVIEWS ALLEN, JOHN J. The Reconstruction of a Spanish Golden Age Playhouse: El Corral del Príncipe 1583-1 744. Gainesville, FIa.: The University Presses of Florida, 1983. Hard cover, xi, 129 pp. $25. Professor Allen's meticulous study of the physical characteristics of the Corral del Príncipe is the most significant work of its kind since Shergold's History of the Spanish Stage. A three-dimensional model of the corral has been constructed primarily on the basis of two contemporary drawings — a scaled ground plan made in 1735 and a box assignment sketch dated 1730. These drawings, interpreted in the light of the voluminous documentation preserved in Madrid archives, permit not only a view of the corral in its final years but also reasonable conjectures about its earlier periods. Allen posits three stages of construction: (1) the initial building of the stage and the lateral platform, completed in 1583, at which time the façade rose only one or two stories; (2) a second phase ending in 1602 which completed the gradas and the cazuela baja and added to the façade building a third floor housing seven boxes; (3) a third expansion, between ca. 1627 and 1636, which added a fourth floor housing desvanes, the tertulia for the clergy, and a cazuela alta; all the secondand third-floor lateral boxes in existence in 1730, whether privately owned or controlled by the theater management, except one, were also in place in 1636. «Thus,» Allen concludes, «the physical plant of the Príncipe was fully developed in Lope de Vega's lifetime, ... The theater seems to have survived virtually unchanged for over a century» (p. 95). Calculations as to the full capacity of the theater indicate 1,047 spectators in the early years, 1,129 around 1600, and 1,937 around 1635 (p. 100). In the construction of his working model Allen has been forced to make, as he admits (p. 4), highly conjectural decisions. Principal among 205 206BCom, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Winter, 1984) them are the assumptions (1) that the stage was elevated above the yard only six Castilian feet rather than the ten suggested by some evidence (pp. 31, 37); (2) that in the comers between the stage and the gradas, lateral platforms separated from the stage proper were used either for seating of spectators and alcaldes and alguaciles or, when needed, for special scenery and stage furniture such as portable staircases (p. 45); and (3) that the third- and fourth-floor expansion in the 1627-36 period was accomplished by building out in airspace purchased from the owners of surrounding lower houses (pp. 73-80). The theater is thus presumed to have widened out from 78 feet at the front street-level to 90 feet at fourth-floor level (p. 75). Although the 1735 Ribera sketch and Allen's model suggest «a relatively uniform and regular relationship between /the neighboring buildings/ and the walls of the corral,» Allen admits that «the architecture may in fact have been somewhat more irregular and varied» (pp. 101-102), as is perhaps indicated by the hodgepodge of buildings on the block containing the corral depicted by Texeira on his 1656 Madrid map. Allen claims that «instead of the naive staging which has been universally accepted as characteristic of the corral ... we are dealing with what was probably the most flexible and, in a sense, modem stage in Renaissance Europe» (p. 46). Though this judgment arises apropos of the likely use of the sides of the stage for acting purposes rather than seating, it represents a fair summary of his view of the Principe and its facilities as a whole. And he may well be right. From the beginning the Príncipe stage was a permanently fixed structure, and the theater was destined solely for use by actors, whereas in London as late as 1614 the Hope theater was used perhaps two days a week for bear- and bullbaiting and was thus designed with a portable stage which had to be dismantled weekly to make way for the animals (Glenne Wickham, Early English Stages 1300 to 1660, II, Pt. 2 /New York: Columbia University Press, 19727, pp. 61, 71-75...