Tirso de Molina: His Originality Then and Now (review)

Reviews113 matists. By bringing their work to light in her two complementary texts, Soufas offers a superb example to all who seek to illuminate the lives of early modern Spanish women. Anne J. Cruz University ofIllinois, Chicago Sullivan, Henry W. and Raúl Galoppe, eds. Tirso de Molina: His Originality Then and Now. Ottawa Hispanic Studies 20. Ottawa: Dovehouse, 1996. Paper. 225 pp. The twelve articles in this volume illuminate several neglected aspects of Tirso's plays. For example, articles by José M. Ruano de la Haza, Dawn L. Smith and Catherine Larson address staging and performance, and essays by L. Carl Johnson, Matthew D. Stroud and Anita K. Stoll examine the question of Tirso's modernity. The plays under analysis are primarily comedies . Three in particular, El vergonzoso en palacio, Marta la piadosa, and Don Gil de las calzas verdes, are the focus of essays by Valerie Hegstrom Oakey, Larson, Johnson, Smith and Mahlon Lee Stoutz. William R. Blue studies five additional comedies. Throughout the collection, there is a dichotomy between traditional and more experimental analysis, the latter drawing on the psychoanalytic insights of Jacques Lacan in the studies by Stroud and Henry W. Sullivan, modern interest in metatheatrical devices in the articles by Smith and Stoll, and the multiple approaches to historical events of the New Historicism in the essay by the late Louise FothergillPayne . James A. Parr's work balances traditional and postmodern approaches . Like many current comedia critics, several authors ground their analyses in recent work on Shakespearean theater, especially that of Andrew Gurr and J. L. Styan. The first article is Ruano de la Haza's valuable overview of Tirso's elaborate and sophisticated use of stage props, decor, trapdoors and the elevator -like contraption called the canal. Of Tirso's use of the tiring-house façade, Ruano writes that he has "not encountered any other dramatist that makes use of every single space... with the frequency or the dramatic impact that Tirso does" (31). Smith's contribution illuminates Renaissance acting style and analyzes El vergonzoso en palacio in that light. She closes with some observations on recent productions of comedias, including that of El vergonzoso by the Teatro Clásico company of Madrid. Smith concludes that the best modern stagings are faithful to seventeenth-century 114BCom, Vol. 50, No. 1 (Summer 1998) style. Also writing about staging, Larson stresses the "tension existing between the classics and modern stagings of them" (47) and focuses on the various reactions to the Centro Universitario de Teatro's 1986 staging of Marta lapiadosa at the Chamizal festival in El Paso, Texas: "[t]he Centra's staging oíMarta united the Spanish Golden-Age text with Mexican historical and esthetic tradition" (53) and provoked pleasure and pain in the audience . Blue's article previews his book on Tirso's comedies of the 1620s, many ofwhich revolve around or involve Madrid. They proffer "the image ofMadrid as marketplace" in which self-interest prevails: "[m]en and women in Madrid's atmosphere become whatever they choose to get what they want and in the process will betray friends and family to achieve their ends" (76). Other contributions adopt more experimental methods. Stroud applies the Lacanian psychoanalytic terminology of imaginary and symbolic structures to the depiction of God and of Juana's mysticism and sexuality in the Santa Juana trilogy. Juana can be seen as an "hysteric [who] experiences jouissance through suffering" (155). In his study ofHabladme en entrando, Sullivan presents Lacan's view ofthe Oedipal triangle which is not literal as is Freud's conception. Lacan's law of the name of the father enacts the incest taboo and imposes "divisive limits or boundaries on a small child's sense ofpower [which] is what Lacan means by castration" (171). Since the play contains many references to incest between brother/ sister and father/ daughter and restoration ofthe authority ofthe father, Sullivan's analysis is fascinating. Fothergill-Payne sees what light the New Historical approach might shed on Tirso and also gives a glimpse at what postmodern esthetics might offer instead. She concludes, in part, that "by privileging the discourse ofpower over all other discursive elements, New Historicists tend to flatten the...