La tragedia en el Renacimiento español (review)

Reviews HERMENEGILDO, ALFREDO. La tragedia en el Renacimiento español. Barcelona: Editorial Planeta, 1973. Cloth. 603 pp. In 1961 Alfredo Hermenegildo published Los trágicos españoles del siglo XVI, a volume of 617 pages based on his doctoral dissertation written at the University of Madrid. One could only admire the enormous labor that went into the preparation of that in-depth survey of sixteenth-century Spanish tragedy, an undertaking that one would normally expect to challenge the resources of a veteran scholar rather than the determination of a doctoral candidate. The book filled a longstanding void in the history of Spanish drama, because except for general histories of the theater and articles and monographs devoted to individual plays and playwrights, no book had ever been addressed specifically to pre-Lopean tragedy. Predictably, however, as is often the case of dissertations which are not allowed to age sufficiently before being rushed from doctoral committee to printer, Los trágicos españoles del siglo XVI retained unmistakable signs of its origin as an academic exercise "presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy ." The mass of material dimmed the author's focus and left unsolved major problems of integration; some chapter divisions were arbitrary; transitions from section to section and from author to author were often abrupt; and critical judgments occasionally appeared to be unsubstantiated or gratuitous . Also the bibliographical apparatus was minimal: there were a few footnotes (a blessing, of course, except when footnotes are needed); quotations from the text were often not identified by edition, act, or verse numbers; and references to secondary sources were often incomplete. These deficiencies detracted from the usefulness of the book as a reference work, though they were not grave enough to obscure the importance of Hermenegildo's contribution , as many favorable reviews attest. At first glance La tragedia en el Renacimiento español appears to be little more than a slightly revised edition of Los trágicos españoles, but such is not the case. In the new book most of the bibliographical shortcomings have been corrected; the transitions between sections and authors have been smoothed out by new introductory and concluding passages; and the critical commentary, often expanded, has become more provocative and sophisticated. Influenced especially by Americo Castro's studies of the underlying determinants of Spanish literature, Hermenegildo has provided new interpretations of many plays by relating the authors and their tragedies to the socio-political conditions of their times. La tragedia en el Renacimiento espa- ñol contains a greatly expanded introduction , nine chapters, an appendix (which includes the cast of characters, plot summaries, versification tables, and a bibliography of editions and of critical studies for all the plays ), and a separate general bibliography of works not pertaining to individual authors or plays. Unfortunately there is no index, the absence of which is regrettable in a volume of such size and complexity. In the introduction Hermengildo explains the nature of the revisions and his reasons for making them. He mentions the scholarly works published since his earlier book which enabled 130 him to incorporate new data and to approach his subject from different points of view (the works, to mention only a few, of Americo Castro, Francisco Márquez Villanueva, JuHo Rodriguez Puértolas, and Francisco Ruiz Ramón). One paragraph is noteworthy because it not only explains the basis of Hermenegildo's "new approach" but also because it accounts for (if his thesis is accepted) the rise and fall of Spanish Renaissance tragedy: "La historia de la época ofrece una serie de elementos — desde la universidad al rey y de la corte al pueblo, pasando por las tensiones entre cristianos viejos y nuevos — que aglutinan y conforman una auténtica tragedia en el Renacimiento español, manifestada a través de un grupo de tentativas que fracasaron por estar todas ellas desconectadas de Ia parte de la población (la masa cristiana vieja) cuyos criterios acabaron imponi éndose y triunfando dolorosamente en la sociedad española" (p. 15). Lope de Vega, of course, carried the banner of the triumphant Old Christians and New dramatists. Chapter I, "El Renacimiento español y el concepto de...