On the Authorship of El encanto es la hermosura: A Curious Case of Dramatic Collaboration

ON THE AUTHORSHIP OF EL ENCANTO ES LA HERMOSURA: A CURIOUS CASE OF DRAMATIC COLLABORATION Thomas Austin O'Connor, State University of New York, College at Cortland On November 29, 1675, D. Agustín de Salazar y Torres died while writing El encanto es la hermosura, also known as El hechizo sin hechizo and La Segunda Celestina. Since then, much written about the play has been misleading and inaccurate. The questions that have been raised concerning El encanto deal with two aspects: first, did Salazar finish the play, and, if not, where did he leave off when he died?: second, if he indeed did not finish the play, then who did? This article intends to answer these questions. The first to deal with El encanto was Agustín Duran, who said: Esta comedia es la misma, hasta una parte del segundo acto, que la escrita por Salazar, con título de la Segunda Celestina.. Sin duda Vera Tassis, que es autor en El encanto, desde parte del segundo acto hasta el fin, no sabiendo la identidad de la una y de la otra, creyó que Salazar la dejó por acabar y la concluyó él de otro modo. La equivocación debió proceder de haber hallado incompleto el manuscrito original de la Segunda Celestina , con el título de El encanto es la hermosura, entre los papeles de su amigo.1 There are several points brought out by Duran: 1) El encanto was written by Salazar and Vera Tassis; 2) Vera Tassis' contribution to the play commenced somewhere in the second act; 3) there is another version of the play known by the title Segunda Celestina, which, Duran implies, was completed entirely by Salazar. These opinions of Duran were very influential on subsequent critics who accepted these assertions as facts. Errors concerning this play abound in bibliographic studies and in general introductions to Salazar's works, and a most curious one was committed by Adolfo de Castro. He stated that El encanto was finished by Vera Tassis acting on the orders of Felipe IV.2 This is a purely chronological error, since Felipe IV died in 1665 and could not have been the monarch who ordered the play to be completed, but it is indicative of the conflicting information which surrounds the play. In the middle of all this confusion, one man, Ramón de Mesonero Romanos , basing his assertions on the original texts, implied that the two plays were essentially the same and that the play was indeed finished by Vera Tassis. He also noted in the text where Salazar left off and where Vera Tassis began, and he indicated that Segunda Celestina was exactly the same concerning Salazar's contribution, but contained a variant ending, though based on that of Vera Tassis, by an anonymous author.3 I will return to this point later. While Mesonero Romanos cleared up the major problems, there were others which he did not bother to explain. Unfortunately, the results of his investigations were not noted by other critics and bibliophiles. A few years later, La Barrera repeated the errors of Duran, not noting the work done on Salazar by Mesonero Romanos and, in haste, even contradicting his own information. He first said: "Hallábase en la florida edad de treinta y tres años, cuando atacado de una larga enfermedad que, no perturb ándole el sentido, le permitió concluir la comedia: El encanto en (sic) 31 h hermosura, que escribía por superior mandato . . ."4 Further on in his article he said: "El encanto es L· hermosura, y el hechizo sin hechizo. (Concluida por Vera Tassis. Con loa. — A los años de doña Mariana.)"5 He then quoted the paragraph of Duran cited at the beginning of this study, and finished off the section on Salazar implying, as Duran, that Segunda Celestina is another version of the play entirely by Salazar.6 Following the erroneous lead of others, Pedro Salva y Malien further complicated the problem by accepting Durán's opinion that there were two plays, Segunda Celestina of Salazar and El encanto, which repeats the first act and part of the second of Segunda Celestina. Accordingly, Vera Tassis then...