The Art of Role-Change in Calderonian Drama

THE ART OF ROLE-CHANGE IN CALDERONIAN DRAMA* Susan L. Fischer, Bucknell University Calderonian scholarship has been dominated since the 1930's by what R.D.F. Pring-Mill has termed "thematic -structural analysis."1 Such eminent Hispanists as E. M. Wilson, A. A. Parker, William Entwistle, and A. E. Sloman have viewed Calderón as a moralizing playwright who constructed his plays around a system of universal principles designed to demonstrate some sacred or secular truth. According to these critics, Calderón's primary interest lay in the creation of a basic theme which was to serve as the vehicle of moral thought and follow an ideal pattern of Christian behavior. Not until recently did critics begin to focus on the pyschological forces and the subtleties of characterization in Caldeder ón's dramas. Edwin Honig, in his recent book, Calderón and the Seizures of Honor,2 contests the moralistic investigations of earlier critics who "tend to read the plays for their message as if they were autos extended into largescale enactments" and "miss the shadings of characterization aimed at effecting an interesting dramatic moment on the stage rather than creating a supreme lesson which characters must confirm in the end" (p. 187). Honig's study heralds a new trend in comedia scholarship by emphasizing the "psychological subthemes, motifs, and resonances " (p. 177) which make Calder ón's characters personal subjects of the playwright's own experience and universal subjects of mankind. Honig's psycho-mythic consideration of the honor phenomenon has shown that a systematic study of the psychological forces manifested in Calderón's plays is both feasible and overdue. Of special consequence is Calderón's profound understanding of the dynamics of the human personality, of man's propensity to change his nature — his role in life — in response to psychic and social circumstances. It is a normal occurrence for man to display widely differing facets of his personality in order to adapt to volatile life conditions. Ideally a man's fictionalizing or roleplaying is an expedient that enables him to meet his fellow-man on the most favorable terms. At times, however, abnormal or deranged men act out a part without needing to, with catastrophic results both for themselves and for those associated with them. Man's theatrical nature is given artistic representation in Calderón's dramas. Hardly a playwright who could have divorced the expression of his theme from the creation of his art, Calderón — poeta faber — employed the theater as the medium for his incisive insights into human behavior. The essence of the theater is change — the theoretically temporary metamorphosis of an actor into a character he is to portray on stage. By means of certain devices of the stage itself — roleplay , impersonation, and dramatic metaphor — Calderón succeds in giving artistic expression to man's mimetic instinct , his propensity for temporarily altering or permanently transforming his essential self in response to varying internal or external forces. Calderón's dramas reflect the tendency of men to "dramatize their lives" and may be grouped according to the factors which motivate his characters toward one form or another of rolechange . The social convention of honor is one such force capable of driving a 73 person to adopt complex forms of rolechange . In such plays as La devoción de L· cruz, A secreto agravio, secreta venganza, El médico de su honra, and El pintor de su deshonra, a weak and suspicious individual's exaggerated concern for his honor leads him to distort reality. Calderón's husbands erroneously suspect their wives of compromising their honor by means of willful wrongdoing . While the supposedly offended husbands begin at once to carry out their socially conditioned obligations of vengeance, they protest vehemently against the cruel and unChristian law. They simultaneously respect the code and abhor it, and as a result they suffer severe inner conflict. But once they have "imagined" their dishonor, they feel compelled to "imagine" a way to restore the lost honor. Adopting secondary roles at variance with their natures, they devise schemes — in effect, fictional plots — which they believe will enable them to avenge themselves on the supposed offenders. Their...