Social and Literary Satire in the Comedies of Tirso de Molina (review)

REVIEWS Halkhoree, Premraj. Social and Literary Satire in the Comedies of Tirso de Molina, Ottawa Hispanic Studies 5. Editors, José María Ruano de La Haza and Henry W. Sullivan. Dovehouse: Ottawa, 1989. Paper. 293 pp. Social and Literary Satire was Halkhoree's 1969 doctoral dissertation, written at the University of London under A.A. Parker and posthumously edited for publication by Henry Sullivan and José María Ruano de la Haza. It consists of individual studies of considerably varying length of eight plays by Tirso, edited down from fourteen in the dissertation. To appreciate Social and Literary Satire the reader must first understand the author's usage of its two key terms: satire and wit. As the editors explain, here satire signifies "the ridicule of some social or literary convention," and "wit" is employed "in a thesis-bearing sense akin to the seventeenth-century Spanish ingenio. " These terms are the weapons with which Halkhoree sets out to defend Tirso's comedies against popular charges of slapdash construction and "immortality." Those who find Tirso's comedy awkwardly put together miss the point of their construction: their scenes are often joined not causally but through wit or satire—often through "implicit contrasts with conventional literary devices, figures, and structures." Critics dismayed at obscene and licentious elements in Tirso's theatre misunderstand how wit and satire give meaning to Tirso's comedy: apparent "immoralities" actually serve to champion virtue—censuring evil practices and admonishing man to make "moral values... (his) guide in his relationship with others." When Halkhoree plays the role of devil's advocate, however, the case he makes for the "apparent flaws" in Tirso is sometimes stronger than his contention that satire and wit transform these faults into brilliant innovation. In his discussion of El amor médico, for example, his overly ingenious argument is powerless to dislodge the impression on the reader made by his earlier discussion of its seeming flaws in construction: two expositions providing the 177 178BCom, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Summer 1991) same information, the central character "disol(ving) into a stock farcical figure," and a potentially important character simply disappearing. In most of his studies of the comedies studied, however, Halkhoree makes a reasonably strong case for satire's redemptive influence. Looked at through the prism of Halkhoree's expansive notion of satire and wit some of their irrelevancies become significant, some structural imbalances disappear, and some moral frivolities metamorphose into biting social criticism or witty literary parody. The opening speech of Don Gil de las calzas verdes, a list by the gracioso Caramanchel of his various masters and their moral failings, often dismissed as comic diversion, for example, is actually a "satiric" moral preamble which announces the play's theme of corruption and sensitizes the viewer to the shortcomings of Martin, Inés, and their respective fathers, the moral villains of the play. Caramanchel's often crude even offensive references to Juana's lack of virility are not obscene because they are not gratuitous but satiric. Coupled with the population explosion of Don Giles in the play Caramanchel's quips satirize the Golden Age convention of the woman dressed as a man. The former reminds the viewer that no one really would be taken in by such a disguise; the latter underscores the artificiality of the convention by showing that it can be repeated ad infinitum. Although Halkhoree's book focuses on satire and wit in Tirso, it is also a general study of the Mercedarian's comedy and contains a precise and minute discussion of any number of elements of works discussed— characterization, structure, theme, language, even chronology. In the words of its editors, it represents "the most pianstaking analysis to which Tirso's dramatic craftsmanship has ever been submitted." Indeed a principal fault of Social and Literary Satire is that it tries to say too much—discussing in unnecessary detail the twists and turns of it seems at times every critical analysis of Tirso ever published, and commenting too extensively and in too much detail on issues not intimately connected to its central argument, like the extended discussion of whether or not Esto sí que es negociar is a refundición of...