Some Uses of Palaeographic and Orthographical Evidence in Comedia Editing

FOOTNOTES ' Citations from Alarcón in my text are to the Fondo de Cultura Econòmica edition of Obras completas, ed. Agustín Millares Carlo (Mexico City, 1957, I, and 1959, II). 2 Madrid: Austral, 1964, pp. 193-94. 3 On the basis of the handling of the theme of fortune and the use of poetic justice, we might offer a conjecture about the chronology of the Fortune trilogy. La industria y la suerte appears to be the earliest of the three because it is the weakest on all counts, especially in the handling of Fortune. Castro Leal, who places its composition between 1605 and 1608 is probably closer to the truth than Bruerton, who dates it 1620-21. In terms of subtlety in handling the theme of fortune and in convincing use of the principle of poetic justice, Todo es ventura is likely the last in order, and here Bruerton (1614-17) must take the nod over Castro Leal (161415 ), 1617 being the most likely date, since Los favores del mundo, which I would take to be the middle piece, was supposedly written in 1616 or 1617, again according to Bruerton . Of course it is equally possible that the last of three plays on a given theme could represent a diminution of interest or imaginative power; with this in mind, I would certainly hesitate to suggest that my chronology is definitive. 4 To my knowledge, there is only one allusion to Providence in which it could be taken to be synonymous with Fortune. It occurs in one of those seemingly rampant personal allusions and is spoken by the gracioso of Los pechos privilegiados: Cuaresma: Dios no lo da todo a uno; que piadoso y justiciero, con divina providencia dispone el repartimiento. Al que le plugo de dar mal cuerpo, dio sufrimiento ......... (??, iii) Providence is not directly equated here with Fortune; yet it is obviously used in much the same way Calderón understands it in his phrase "no hay más fortuna que Dios." See Alexander Parker's edition of the auto (Manchester : Manchester Univ. Press, 1949), esp. the introduction. Parker's "human Fortune" seems to be synonymous with Otis Green's Fortune "de tejas abajo." 5 Gracián, op. cit., p. 56. SOME USES OF PALAEOGRAPHIC AND ORTHOGRAPHICAL EVIDENCE IN COMEDIA EDITING Don Cruickshank, University College, Dublin The object of this paper is unashamedly propagandist. I wish to draw the attention of editors of Golden Age plays to some of the benefits that may be gained from a consideration of the handwriting and spelHng of the author they are editing. This is not a new idea; some years ago, for example, C. J. Sisson made a systematic application of palaeographical methods to the editing of Shakespeare, and the theory behind the methods was already old then. Broadly speaking, Sisson's method involved writing out a doubtful reading in English secretary hand and then trying to discover whether the words so written resembled a more likely reading .1 His results were discredited by Prof. Fredson Bowers in a lecture given in Cambridge two years later. Bowers objected that Sisson made no allowances for errors of memory on the part of compositors and scribes, or for differences in handwriting styles. Several examples survive of the hand of Ralph Crane, one of Shakespeare's scribes, but apart from signatures, there exists no unquestioned example of Shakespeare's handwriting.2 Editors of Spanish comedias are very fortunate. The two major dramatists, Lope and Calderón, have left large amounts of autograph material behind them, enough for us to form an opinion of their handwriting styles during the major part of their careers. Furthermore , a glance at Paz y Melia's Catálogo shows that information is available 40 to anyone who is willing to investigate the copyists of Lopean and Calderonian manuscripts.3 SpelHng is as important as handwriting . Shakespeare scholars who ingeniously succeed in recovering one authentic Shakespearean spelling have reason to congratulate themselves;4 lopistas and calderonistas merit censure for the way in which they neglect a mass of useful information by not paying close attention to the spelHng-preferences of their authors. In theory, it is possible for a...