The Rhetoric of Therapeutic Symbols in Calderón's El medico de su honra

THE RHETORIC OF THERAPEUTIC SYMBOLS IN CALDERON'S EL MEDICO DE SU HONRA ROBERT Y. VALENTINE The University ofNebraska An individual from any age brings his ready-made values to the literary experience. Whereas Eric Bentley insists on «universality» in the comedia [HR 38 (1970), 147-162/, Arnold G. Reichenberger suggests that there is something«unique» about the way the comedia was originally intended by the dramatist and experienced by the public three hundred years ago [HR 27 (1959), 303-316; HR 38 (1970), 163-1737. How does one read El médico de su honra? Roberta J. Thiher calls it the most ambiguous of Calderón's dramas because «the reader is left bewildered.»' Often the twentieth-century reader reacts differently to rhetorical aspects of earlier cultures. We can appreciate El médico more fully when we examine and attempt to understand symbols that normally do not affect the modern audience. The medical imagery of «therapeutic» theme that distinguishes this drama has been discussed primarily with regard to the roles of Gutierre and Mencia, but other applications of this imagery, important to the Golden Age spectator, have escaped contemporary critical attention.2 Gutierre is not the only one occupied with the safekeeping of his honor in Calderón's «play about suspicion and fear of suspicion.»3 Almost all of the characters distrust each other, but the significance of King Pedro's suspicions has been generally overlooked. He has been evaluated primarily as a judge.' However, Pedro is also the «médico de su honra,» anxious to preserve his salud as King of Castile, wary of his half-brother Enrique, who seeks to replace him on the throne. The King has a «premonition that Mencía's experiencia is to be repeated on his own person (Soons, 379). In each instance the salud of King Pedro and Gutierre is threatened by Enrique, Gutierre's faulty perceptions cause Mencía's death. Pedro also makes an erroneous diagnosis, which precipitates his own death after the conclusion of the play. That Gutierre and Pedro are both doctors of their respective honors gives El médico de su honra dramatic unity. Calderón introduces therapeutic symbols, either absent or deemphasizfed in Lope's earlier version of the play, that reinforce Pedro's concern with the preservation of the health of his honor, body and kingdom. The significance of Pedro's gifts of diamonds coupled with the display of a bloody handprint on the door of Gutierre's house may escape most modern readers, but the 39 40Bulletin ofthe Comediantes rhetoric of these symbols augmented the emotional and intellectual reaction of earlier audiences. Whereas Lope de Vega uses no gems in his version, a diamond figures prominently in the court scene in Seville and, later, in the encounter between Pedro and the blood-letter Ludovico in Calderón's version of the play. The King is acknowledging his court and dispensing favors when he is suddenly confronted by an old beggar. Pedro removes a diamond from his apparel and gives it to the astounded old man who exclaims: «¿Para mi os le quitáis?»1 Judging Pedro to be a cruel man, A. E. Sloman brushes off this incident as the act of a disinterested monarch who merely performs the expected functions of his station." But A. Irvine Watson argues that Pedro is an «exemplary King who is never cruel in any way.»7 Watson insists that in the diamond scene Calderón shows that «Peter despite his reputation is a just, essentially kind and generous King who has the interest of his subjects at heart ...» (Watson, 331). C. A. Jones labels Pedro an «odd mixture: cruel, just and recklessly generous by turns . . . unstable and unpredictable . . .»' Pedro speaks to the astonished old man to whom he has just given the diamond: Y no os espante; que, para darle de una vez, quisiera, sólo un diamante todo el mundo fuera (I, 592-594). What the scene reveals, beyond possible generosity, cruelty or indifference, is a modicum of suspicion, which will grow throughout the drama. No doubt Pedro wishes he could rid himself of his personal and political burdens as easily as he gives...