Dramas of Distinction: Plays by Golden Age Women (review)

286 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Dramas of Distinction: PUys by Golden Age Women University Press of Kentucky, 1997 By Teresa Scott Soufas For years, European scholars had a profound influence on the study of Golden Age theater in this country. Their canon, research methodologies , and cultural expectations—including gender constructs—shaped our treatment of the comedia. Recent American scholars, Teresa Soufas among them, have invigorated the study of the comedia by expanding the canon and adding women authors to it. Why were female Golden Age dramatists excluded from theater space? How did they overcome obstacles in their dealings with the dominant patriarchal order, the monarchy, and the Catholic church?This book, which will instruct generalists and delight specialists, presents plausible answers to these questions. Using a new historicist approach, Soufas studies representative works of five female authors (Azevedo, Caro, Cueva, EnrÃ-quez, and Zayas) within an historical and ideological framework. The book begins with an introductory chapter on convention, gender , and the comedia which treats Renaissance social organization and demonstrates how the dramatists were affected by social, political, and artistic conventions. Chapter two offers an analysis of one play by Caro and another by Cueva that examines bodies of authority and illustrates the difficult relationship between women and the monarchy. Soufas points out how dramatized situations portray a new understanding of women in the public arena and how they deconstruct the androcentric practice of authority. Caros play, for example, presents the double bind of a female single monarch. If she remains single, she threatens the male-dominated hierarchy, if she marries she loses her independence. Chapter three, the highlight of the book, offers a discerning overview of Spain's decline during the reigns of Phillip II, III, and IV which illustrates the important role of treatises (arbitirios). Some treatises proposed solutions to end moral and economic decline by idealizing a national past, while others, critical of the backwardness of the socio-political situation, prescribed more modern solutions. With this fine introduction to the period, its decline, and its moralizing diatribes, Soufas prepares the reader for her excellent literary/social analysis of Azevedo's play Dicha y desdicha del juego. Although some readers may consider the plots of this and other plays treated in the book a bit trite, they will find Soufas's examination oÃ- Dicha simply fascinating. Her analysis includes a Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 287 study of disempowered women, marriage, and the degenerate nobility as well as the tole of the Virgin Mary as related to justice. Soufas skillfully shows how women's roles were defined by sexual and economic relationships and how Azevedo's drama represents a pessimistic criticism of injustices related to the decline of economics and virtues. She points out a scene that depicts the noble Felisardo offering his sister as collateral at a gambling table, thereby using a woman as a real commodity. Also, she explains how the intercession of the Virgin Mary insinuates that there is no human solution for the economic and moral decline, that the ills of society can be remedied only by an external divine force. Chapter four treats the carnivalesque implications of masquerading elements in two plays and demonstrates how cross-dressing of men and women blurs gender attributes. It includes some interesting contemporary views on women as well as attacks on effeminate courtiers and an abusive patriarchal system. Chapter five shows how Enriquez's theoretical tracts challenged the Lopean comedia nueva, and the conclusion illustrates how Golden Age culture and theater were shaped by men and women, and finally, how the unavailability of theatrical space for women authors is reflected in their dramas. This fine book will influence the study of the comedia and Golden Age culture in this country. Scholars will no longer be satisfied with a stilted canon, nor will they readily accept Arnold Reichenberg's views that "women, generally, have the delightful right to be nothing but women—girls who guard theit honor and capture their future spouse." Robert L. Fiore Michigan State University ...