Calderón: Códigos, Monstruos, Iconos (review)

Reviews207 the Madrid corrales and the playhouses of London, suggesting that the similarity may be due not to Spanish copying of the slightly earlier English model but to expert advice about stage construction provided in both countries by the Italian acting troupes who visited London and Madrid in the 1570's. This conjecture merits more study. The Reconstruction is a handsome book enriched by theatrical prints and clear drawings of floor plans and cross sections of the Príncipe which aid the reader to visualize structures often confusingly described in the documents. Willard F. King Bryn Mawr College Calderón: Códigos, Monstwos, Iconos, ed. Javier Herrero. Co-Texts, No. 3, (Montpellier: Centre D'Etudes et Recherches Sociocritiques). April, 1982. $8.00. This hard to acquire volume contains three challenging essays: Harry Sieber's «An Introduction to Language and Communication in the Theater of Calderón,» Roberto González Echevarría's «El 'monstruo de una especie y otra':La vida es sueño,» and Javier Herrero's «El volcán en el paraíso: El sistema icònico del teatro de Calderón,» plus an introduction to the collection by Prof. Herrero. These essays were presented as papers at Yale in commemoration of the tricentenary of Calderón's death. While recognizing the debt that each of the authors owes to the«Bristish School» of criticism, Herrero notes that only rarely do scholars in that tradition attempt inclusive analyses of authors' complete works; rather they analyze sagaciously individual plays or series of related dramas. The three pieces herein, however, seek the codes that inform large numbers of Calderón's plays as well as the relationships between the plays and their moment in history. They propose for themselves the classic structuralist task of melding the particular work back into the langue of which it is a partial articulation as they describe the organization of Calderón's ur-system. Sieber's essay selects as the master code, language, which reflects and sustains the social order portrayed in the plays. That social order depends ultimately on the real or felt presence of the king as the 208BCom, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Winter, 1 984) authorizing figure. Linguistic order and social order are mutually reinforcing , thus a rupture in one creates an equal rupture in the other. When Segismundo, for example, is first brought to the palace, «he is unable to speak the language of the Court ... Accordingly he resorts to the bestial language he knows: physical violence, irrational outbursts, threats» (p. 17). Society is disrupted to the point where rebellion eventually occurs. However, by the end of the play, Segismundo has acquired a rational language and thus the regime's «legitimate continuation is assured by the rational voice of royal authority and power» (p. 17). Silence, like irrational language, can have an equally powerful effect. In El médico de su honra, to cite only one of the examples, silence takes the place of open communication thus breeding secrecy, distrust, and overzealous protection of honor. Even the bloody handprint mutely but eloquently bespeaking Mencia's murder is cleansed from the doorway (silenced) on the king's orders. The king, «in so doing legitimates silence as the language of his kingdom» (p. 23) and, morally correct or not, «the king ... is the final authority for the interpretation of signs» (p. 24) in this play. Therefore, it is the king who ultimately decides whether language or silence work to create order or disorder in both plays. Sieber's essay posits a final authority in both language and society, a figure or a place where plenitude or ultimate presence is fixed: in his examples , a king who authorizes language, breaks down the separation between sign and referent, reifying his reign and rule simultaneously. That notion of final authority or of ultimate presence seems to work against Herrero's description of one of Sieber's theoretical underpinnings : deconstruction. González Echevarría chooses the monster as Calderón's emblem of«lo hiperbólico, lo monumental, lo tenebroso» thus characterizing that aspect of the dramatist's esthetic which depends «del asombro, de la maravilla, del portento» (p. 28). Acknowledging the contributions of Octavio Paz...