Writing and Inscription in Golden Age Drama (review)

144BCom, Vol. 46, No. 1 (Summer 1994) stock, and foot-soldiers like characters in military-comedy television. His extension to five lines ofDon Lope's advice on the danger to Zalamea was probably very effective for an audience who remembered Oradour and Lidice. The question ofthe King's entry may be more complicated. On the London stage such a royal entry has usually been anticlimactic, with a tradition extending from Buckingham's Rehearsal. To leave Crespo as the final authority -figure, and not as his delegate, just is not Calderón, however. This semi-allegorical authority-figure is probably in our day not recuperable. Concerning all these essays, the criticism has to stand that ofthose written by non-native speakers some are excellent while others are expressed in a lamentable Spanish. Revision would have helped a lot, and notjust in the case ofpesky words like estratagema (1 1 1), a feminine by exception. Some minor rectifications might be suggested: for Spanish readers libros de James Bond perhaps ought to be libros de Ian Fleming (or libros de la serie James Bond, 12); in a present-day exposition the author's name Bovistán (14) should be Boaistuau (surnommé Launay, natifde Bretagne, as the 1575 title-page has it); one play cited (20) should be called Blurt, Master Constable . Has any of the admittedly discrepant editions ofKing Lear the spelling "Reagan" (96) for the name ofthe middle daughter? Shakespeare located striking-clocks in ancient Rome, but to put a cereal called maíz there (105) is misleading. Almost certainly a Muslim would cry ¡Gracias a Alá! and not ¡Gracias a Ali! (but I have not seen an original text ofLas misas). Alan Soons State University ofNew York at Buffalo Oriel, Charles. Writing andInscription in Golden Age Drama. West Lafayette , IN: Purdue UP, (Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures, vol. 1) 1992. Hardcover. 189 pp. $26.00. Charles Oriel's skillful application of contemporary theories of communication to Golden Age Spanish drama demonstrates definitively that, even as deconstruction itselfappears to be waning, the insights into the nature of speech acts, writing and inscription which Derrida, Ong, and Austin and Searle brought to the foreground, continue to provide productive approaches to texts, particularly to comedia studies. In his Introduction, Oriel provides a lucid overview of the elements in this group of theories that are most relevant to the study of Renaissance Spain: the figuration of writing Reviews145 and speech as absence and presence, the interdependence of oral and written communication, and the key Derrida-logisms: inscription, pharmakon, and supplément. Oriel grounds his assertions regarding the relevance of these terms in the contention that the contemporary concerns about modes of expression that gave rise to deconstructive theories have an "analogue" in sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe. He identifies the invention of the printing press and the subsequent transition from an oral to a text-based culture as the basis for the period's anxiety concerning "the status and authority ofnearly every genre ofwritten discourse that had been produced by Western culture up until that point" (16). Oriel points out that theories of inscription are particularly relevant to the comedia, because "drama constitutes an 'intersection,' a place where orality and writing necessarily coexist" (15). In each of the five chapters, Oriel analyzes the elements of inscription that dominate a single play, having chosen works by five different Golden Age dramatists in order to show the wide-spread viability of communication theories. In chapter 1, Oriel's examination of how writing contributes to the immanent presence ofthe monarch is unique in that it is the only play studied which represents writing in a primarily positive manner. Even then, he points out, El villano en su rincón establishes that "the written word as a force of social order is ultimately subordinated to orality, for Juan must come to live at court, in the full presence of the King, in order to be integrated fully into society" (165). In chapters 2 and 3 Oriel links the conception of presence and absence to two of the major themes of Golden Age drama, the honor code and the indeterminacy of Fate, through his study of the use ofwriting to...