Fuente Ovejuna (review)

218BCom, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Winter 1 990) go del discreto, Lope de Vega puts his audience in the position "of being in a house of mirrors and suddenly 'finding a door out.' But stepping outside the house of mirrors and finding oneself in the midst of the ongoing carnival, raises the question of whether the 'outside' is less or more labyrinthine than the 'inside' " (97). The motif of judgment, in its various connotations, is most evident in La adversa fortuna de don Alvaro de Luna, in which Mira de Amescua foregrounds the judge (the king) over the judged (his favorite) . The play is not so much about the victim as about the arbiter of fate. Calderón's mythological play, El mayor encanto amor, is likewise, and ironically, about judgment. The playwright distances himself from political reality to make a political statement. The character Antistes, who may represent Calderón, "warns Ulysses of Circe's deadening charms, advises him to flee, bewails his slothful forgetfulness of duty and country, and tries to awaken his commander by 'putting on a play.' The play 'fails' because with it he cannot awaken the leader's conscience, yet Antistes knows that he must try no matter what the personal consequences" (167). The study demonstrates the importance of contextual considerations of the comedia, in conjunction with solid readings of the nine plays. The writing is clear, and the commentary is sound. Blue might have given greater attention to critical precedents on the individual plays. In light of his knowledge of drama and literary theory, one might have hoped for a more directed introduction and a comprehensive concluding chapter, as opposed to four pages of "final words." The fact that a reader might want more is a testament to the analytical skills of a critic who in future investigations surely will address issues left open here. Edward H. Friedman Indiana University Lope de Vega, Fuente Ovejuna. Edited and translated by Victor Dixon. Warminster, England: Aris & Phillips, 1989. Paper. 223 pp. $19.95. When I mentioned this book to a colleague in the Theater Department, he asked: "Who needs another Fuente Ovejuna?" His response was understandable , for no other Lope play has been translated so often into English, and few if any have appeared in more editions, including several excellent recent ones. Nevertheless, Victor Dixon has accomplished the seemingly impossible task of surpassing both all previous editions and English translations of the play. If I could have only one Fuente Ovejuna, this is the one I would choose. Dixon's introduction provides an intelligent synthesis of the major earlier Reviews219 critical studies of the play. His personal conclusion is that the play's single theme is the importance of unselfish love, which the play demonstrates both in the public and in the private spheres. What is most original and valuable about the introduction, however, is that Dixon interprets the play from a director's viewpoint , offering many subtle observations about the development and motivation of the individual characters, the play's dramatic movement, staging (space, props, costumes), and the use of music. A novel, and welcome, feature of the table of metrical forms is Dixon's indication of scene divisions within the acts, which I believe helps one to see how "the successive passages of different metres and stanza forms are...the true...building blocks of the play" (32). Dixon's Spanish edition is a model of textual scholarship, taking carefully into account the variants between the two editions of the Dozena parte (1619), as well as the variants that appear in the surviving copies of the first edition. He has also made excellent use of the findings of earlier editors, especially López Estrada, Profeti, Marín, Blecua, and Cañas Murillo. There are unfortunately a number of misprints in the Spanish text. Inverted question marks and exclamation marks are sometimes omitted (e.g., 1023, 1770), as are accents (tu for tú 1423; mate for maté, 2288) and tildes (engañado, 2314; but 1662 has cañas where canas is required). Line 1636 mistakenly reads palas (palos); 2190 has tal for tan; and 1850 substitutes "tu nombre cobra" for "tu sangre cobra." Dixon's English...