Memories of the Comediantes

MEMORIES OF THE COMEDIANTES Alva V. Ebersole The first meeting of the Comediantes I attended was in Madison, in 1957 (MLA) . The topic for discussion was a definition of tragedy as it could (or could not) be applied to the comedia española. Valbuena Briones was a principal speaker, raked over the coals by Gerald Wade for adhering to a strictly Aristotelian concept of tragedy. Subsequent meetings continued this debate before proceeding to other concepts of comedia criticism as they were emerging during the 60's and 70's. As a result, we have discussed Hesse's Freudian interpretations of Segismundo and others, the term Metatheater as it applies to the comedia, Northrop Frye's Jungian application of myth, the use of semiotics, the staging of the comedia (the last session I chaired) , plus a variety of other themes I cannot recall at the moment. My wife and I do recall, however, the session in which we presented music from the theater of Lope, when we shared the podium with Americo Castro. Our luncheons have progressed from a Spartan, but highly enjoyable , gathering in a Chicago restaurant after a long walk through the Windy City's canyons in five degree weather, to the sophisticated gourmet dinners of the past few years. The Bulletin has evolved into a journal that stands among the best of the specialized publications dedicated to the comedia; it is one of the most valuable tools available to those of us interested in Golden Age theater. The number of series dedicated to editions of Golden Age plays has increased during the past decade, which reflects, I hope, that our ef255 256BCom, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Winter 1 986) forts to make more comedias available for other scholars are being rewarded . Most of us were nurtured on the ideal of the perfectly transcribed text, restored to the original, disdaining the refundiciones of the 18th and 19th centuries; we see today, however, that refundiciones ate part of the current effort of re-establishing a classic theater in Madrid, with Marsillach's El médico de su honra as an example of the modernization he feels necessary in order to satisfy contemporary audiences. This leads to my last reflection: where do we go from here? As footnotes increase in number and length (witness recent numbers of the Bulletin) , axe we going to out-do Menéndez y Pelayo in the preparation of texts as a display of scholarship, limiting ourselves once again to a small number of «las mejores comedias»? Is «the archeological approach » (which I was accused of fostering, back in Los Angeles) no longer valid? Or have we gone overboard in attempting to make the comedia universal and continue to overlook those intrinsically Spanish (and Golden Age) values that made of that period in literary history something that was unique in Western literature? My hope is, of course, that the Comediantes continue to challenge the young scholars just walking on-stage, that our meetings (and our publications) continue to be as varied as they have been in the past, that we never let ourselves be dominated by one point of view, by one school of criticism in our studies of the comedia. I will miss the warmth of friendship we always found in our Comediantes sessions. ...