Il romance spagnolo in scena. Strategie di riscrittura nel teatro di Luis Vélez de Guevara (review)

The book is a detailed and closely reasoned discussion of the importance of the romance tradition and its utilization in the Comedia, particularly as regards the works of Luis Vélez de Guevara. Crivellari divides the study into three major sections: 1) the romancero in the theater, 2) the dynamics of rewriting, and 3) the structure of the Comedia. The second part is the most extensive of the three.

The popularity of the ballads, propelled even further by the advent of the printing press, provided dramatists of the Golden Age with an inexhaustible fund of material for their works. Crivellari finds several important elements that made the romancero such an opportune source of inspiration: the intrinsic theatricality of the ballads themselves, the diegetic nature of the poems that lent themselves to their utilization in what he terms teatro di parola, and, above all, the shared knowledge of the material between the dramatist and his public. Indeed, the central conclusion of the author is that the audience's familiarity with the romances is what makes feasible their seamless inclusion in the dramatic works. By depending on this knowledge, dramatists were able variously to establish ambience, to forge characterizations, to draw parallels between personages and situations, and to make ironic or parodic allusions. Conversely, it is this lack of familiarity by modern spectators that makes impossible the recognition and decodification of textual suggestions. The "intergeneric" transferability is further enhanced by the shared use of the octosyllabic form, as evidenced by the presence of both pre-existent and ad-hoc romances in the same text. The inclusion of known ballads in the comedias was due in part to their general diffusion thus ensuring the ready acceptance by the public of the dramatist's works.

Crivellari suggests that the ballads permit the inclusion of events and places that do not or cannot take place on the stage thus making it possible to enlarge the spatial and temporal limits of the play. The anachronic nature of the romancero facilitates, moreover, a re-contextualization of events. By juxtaposing the implications present in the ballads to the mimetic moment, the dramatist can give a new and larger meaning to the action. The facility with which ballads can be used as a point of departure for a play must not veil the fact that Baroque dramatists elaborated the material in a personal way. Crivellari finds four major ways in which this transposition is effected:

1. 1. The narrative component of the ballad (diegesis) is transposed to the narrative necessity of the play (diegesis) without changing it either into a mimetic moment or into a dialogue.

2. 2. The narrative component of the ballad (diegesis) is transformed into a representational situation (mimesis) by means of a dialogue between personages.

3. 3. The representational situation (mimesis) present in the ballad is changed into a narrative in the play (diegesis).

4. 4. The representational situation present in the ballad (mimesis) is transposed to the representational scene of the play (mimesis). In this case, the dialogue structure of the ballad is maintained in the play.

For each situation, Crivellari gives examples and discusses at length the repercussions of the insertion for an understanding of the play.

As regards the extent to which romances are used within a play, the author provides a scale for their utilization: a minimum, a partial, and an extensive coincidence. In the first instance, the presence of the ballad can be as minute as the citation of a few verses or lines that may have become part of the general language, and their effect on the play is fleeting. El diablo está en Cantillana and Los hijos de Barbuda are given as examples. In the second case, the use of the ballad has a considerable influence on plot and theme of the play or in the setting up of a particular atmosphere or physical ambience, whether it be courtly or rustic. The romance sung...