El teatro de Guillén de Castro (review)

Reviews Garcia Lobenzo, Luciano. El teatro de Guillen de Castro. Barcelona: Editorial Planeta, 1976. Paper. 211 pp. It has long been traditional to view Guillen de Castro as the author of only one drama worth discussing or, lamentably , to discuss it not at all and instead merely mention it as the source of Corneille 's Le Cid. As recently as a decade ago, William C. McCrary could come up with only three scholars whose efforts had concentrated specifically on the art of Las mocedades del Cid. Since 1967, we have seen a number of contributions which have concerned themselves with the art of this play, and even an occasional study of other works by Castro, notably Ebersole's analysis of Los malcasados de Valencia (Hispania , 1972) and Pappanastos' perceptive exegesis of El amor constante (BCom, 1976). William E. Wilson's volume in the Twayne series, Guillen de Castro (published in 1973 and reviewed here in 1974) gave us, nearly three and a half centuries after the poet's death, the first book-length study of this VaIencian dramatist. Now, only three years — not centuries — have passed, and Luciano Garcia Lorenzo offers us a new study of Guillen de Castro. The approach is a fresh one and does indeed focus upon the art of the comedias studied. A brief chapter, "Características generales del teatro de Guillen," reflects perception and a high degree of familiarity with the poet (whom he almost invariably calls simply "Guillen"), but which is even more general than the title might lead one to expect. The opening sentence, moreover , arouses concern: "La producción literaria de Guillen de Castro se compone , si aceptamos la edición de Julia Martínez con los problemas de atribuci ón para él ya resueltos, de más de treinta comedias ..." (p. 27). But many of these problems (of chronology as well as of authorship) remain far from resolved, despite the major advance of Courtney Bruertons "The Chronology of the Comedias of Guillen de Castro " (HR, 1944), a study listed in the bibliography and occasionally referred to in the text ("según Bruerton") with no specific reference to which work by Bruerton except in the bibliography. Such references concern themselves only with chronology and take no heed of doubtful authenticity, as we shall note again below. It is in fact in some conspicuous omissions that most of the weakness lies. The major inadvertancy is the omission of Wilson's book (although three earlier articles by Wilson are listed but never cited), a lacuna which is made all the more serious in view of the author's assertion in his introduction (dated "Navidad de 1975") that "es, precisamente, el contraste manifiesto entre [la] importancia [del teatro de Castro] y la falta de un trabajo de conjunto moderno" which moved him to produce his book. No mention is made of the perceptive McCrary study referred to above. Conspicuous for their absence are: the 1973 Ebersole edition of El perfecto caballero; the 1935 Julia Martinez monograph Lope de Vega y Valencia (despite the subject of chapter III: "Guillen, Lope y el teatro valenciano del siglo XVI"); W. E, Wilson's "Guillen de Castro and the Codification of Honor" (BCom, 1967), which was the first to identify la ley de amistad as an underlying motif in Castro 's theater and is not mentioned by Garcia Lorenzo despite two sections 45 entitled respectively "Amistad y conflicto matrimoniales" (pp. 39-40) and "Amor, amistad y matrimonio" (pp. 142-47). As may be noted, the above are not mere gaps in a bibliography. Few of us can escape the criticism of having failed to take note of some work or other. However, although many other indispensable works are indeed referred to in this volume, the lacunae listed above are fundamental not only for Castro's theater generally, but very specifically for the themes Garcia Lorenzo has chosen to study at length. That he has indeed chosen is evident from the titles of some chapters: ?1 rey tirano," "Guillen y el Romancero," "Temas cervantinos," "Temas míticos," etc. The author wisely avoids the compulsion to deal with every work by Castro, selecting instead two or three plays as representative of...