Jerusalén libertada, a Doubtful Comedia Attributed to Antonio Enríquez Gómez

JERUSALÉN LIBERTADA,A DOUBTFUL COMEDIA ATTRIBUTED TO ANTONIO ENRÍQUEZ GÓMEZ by John B. Wooldridge Northern Virginia Community College SON of a marrano father and an Old Christian mother, Antonio Enríquez Gómez was born in Cuenca in 1600. By the mid twenties he had moved to Madrid, married an Old Christian as his father had, sired three children and established a mercantile business in the capital. He was also beginning his literary career, concentrating on the theater. Exactly when he wrote his first play, Engañar para reinar, is unknown. But in the final lines of this play, first printed in Doze comedias, Tercera parte (Lisbon, 1649), Enríquez writes: “Y aquí el Poeta da fin/ a su comedia, notando ser la primera que ha hecho.” However, there is documentation of performances of six other early plays in the years 1633-37 (see Dille 22). Around 1636, for reasons not fully understood, Enríquez abruptly left Spain for exile in France. While living there, first in Bordeaux and then in Rouen, he continued to write works for the Spanish stage. Yet he also found time to write a number of important non-dramatic pieces, including the Academias morales de las Musas (1642), El siglo pitagórico, y vida de don Gregorio Guadaña (1644) and his vehement two-part attack on the Inquisition, La política angélica (1647). For an insight into the content and publication of the two parts of La política angélica see Dille 136-38. The Segunda parte was reprinted by Révah in “Un pamphlet contre l’Inquisition” (115-68). In the prologue to his heroic poem Sansón Nazareno, published in 1656 but written for the most part in 1649 while he was still living in France, Enr íquez claimed authorship of twenty-two comedias (listed in Dille 185). However , another play, No hay contra el honor poder, appeared under Enríquez’s 1 name in the Segunda parte of the Comedias escogidas (Madrid, 1652). This work was probably completed after the prologue to Sansón was printed. Sometime around 1649, Enríquez returned clandestinely to Spain, where he settled in Seville and assumed the pseudonym of Fernando de Zárate y Castronovo . In Seville he apparently devoted himself exclusively to the theater, composing some twenty-four additional comedias under this alias. A good summary of Enríquez’s life may be read in Dille (9-20). For further details see the fundamental work of Révah (81-114). All in all Enríquez contributed perhaps fifty plays to the theater of Spain’s Golden Age. Twelve of these works are not extant, although one of the twelve may have survived. The manuscript of a work entitled El capitán Chinchilla, the fifth title on Enríquez’s Sansón list, is currently housed in the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma. The work bears the name of Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla. However, no one, to my knowledge, has studied the play, and its authorship remains problematic. To complicate matters even more, thirteen additional comedias have been credited to Enríquez or Zárate in various sources (five to Enríquez and eight to Zárate). Four of these are definitely by other playwrights, and nine were not, in my opinion, written by the merchant-writer from Cuenca (for the titles of all these plays see my essay “False Andalusian Rhymes” 1-4). In the present study I propose to show that one of the nine apocryphal plays, Jerusalén libertada, was, in all likelihood, composed by Dr. Agostín Collado del Hierro, not Antonio Enríquez Gómez. Jerusalén libertada (JerLib) bears Enríquez’s name in an undated suelta with no information on its publication. My copy of this suelta derives from a microfilm copy of the play in the British library, generously supplied years ago by Professor Glen Dille. The library’s card catalog provides the following information on the publication of the suelta: “Seville? 1740?” (noted by Dille 185). But Dr. Barry Taylor, Curator of the library’s Hispanic Printed Collection (1501-1850) has informed me that he believes this date was simply an educated...