Holy Wednesday: A Nahua Drama from Early Colonial Mexico by Louise M. Burkhart (review)

536 BOOK REVIEWS itage.The research is intense, the writing is pithy, and the impact on the reader is beyond what one author could fabricate. I recommend this volume to interested readers as it will be a standard book on the shelves of universities, schools, and privates libraries for a considerable time to come. TerenceJ. Fay, SJ. St.Augustine's Seminary, Toronto School ofTheology, University ofToronto Latin American Holy Wednesday:A Nahua Dramafrom Early Colonial Mexico. By Louise M. Burkhart. (Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press. 1996. Pp. xii, 314. $42.95 clothbound; $18.95 paperback.) Ofall the techniques used by the missionary friars for evangelizing the native populations of Mexico after the Spanish conquest, one of the most intriguing is that of "edifying play." Preconquest rituals among the Mexica had strong elements of drama. Sacred drama also had a long and important history in Spain, where, as in other countries, stage plays originated in liturgical functions. Whether by means of the auto sacramental or seasonal presentations dramatizing specific feasts, drama was a natural tool for instructing the faithful. Hence it is not at all surprising that the missionaries in sixteenth-century New Spain, especially the Franciscans, would turn to stagecraft as a way of conveying the Christian message. Following the official policy of reaching out to the indigenous peoples in their own languages, the friars wrote, or had written, dramas in Nahuad (Aztec), the most widespread of the native languages and a veritable linguafranca in the early years of the missionary enterprise. Generally, these dramas tended to follow Spanish dramatugical conventions,even to the point of having the stage directions in Spanish.As with so many other compositions in the native languages, it is often difficult to say what role was played by the missionaries and what role by native assistants.The resulting body ofwork offers a fascinating glimpse not only into mission methods but also into the outlook and attitudes of the natives in the years following the conquest. Náhuatl drama has been studied by Fernando Horcasitas, Angel Maria Garibay , Barbel Brinkman, and others. Louise Burkhart, whose book The Slippery Earth: Nahua-Christian Moral Dialogue in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Tucson : University of Arizona Press, 1989; reviewed ante, LXXVI [October, 1990], 906-908) was a groundbreaking study of the interacting attitudes of missionaries and Nahuas, has now published a translation and commentary on one such play, composed about seventy years after the Spanish conquest of Mexico.This new work contains valuable introductory material on Spanish drama and literary genre, the impact of the conquest, Náhuatl theater, Franciscan educational methods, Nahua scholars, Nahua devotional practices, and approaches to interpreting the play. These sections are clear and cogent and are highly recom- BOOK REVIEWS537 mended to anyone teaching or studying New Spain in the colonial period.The translations of the Spanish and Náhuatl are on facing pages and are linked to Burkhart's commentaries by a simple code system. The original Spanish and Náhuatl are not reproduced in the book but are available on disk. What is unique about this play is that it was a translation ofa Spanish original, Lucero de Nuestra Salvación (beacon or star of our salvation), by a Valencian bookseller named Ausías Izquierdo Zebrero, which was probably published some time in the 1580's.The Spanish play belonged to a genre called despedimiento (farewell), in which Christ takes leave of the Virgin Mary prior to undergoing his passion and death. In these dramas the Virgin often remonstrated with her son about his upcoming sufferings and sought to have him avoid them. Eventually she became reconciled to the idea because of their necessity for redemption. Izquierdo's play was translated into Náhuatl by a native scholar some time around 1591 and is, as Burkhart points out,"the earliest known extant script of a play in Náhuatl—or any other Native American language" (p. 3). What makes this Náhuatl translation invaluable is that it allows us to see the changes, deliberate and otherwise, that were introduced by the native translator . Contrary to the Italian adage traduttore, traditore, this translator was not a traitor but rather an adapter who consciously or unconsciously mingled...