La traición en la amistad (review)

REVIEWS Zayas y Sotomayor, María de. La traición en la amistad. Ed. Valerie Hegstrom. Friendship Betrayed. Trans. Catherine Larson. Lewisburg, PA; London: Bucknell University Press; Associated University Presses, 1999. 199 pp. This book is an edition with translation of Maria de Zayas's play La traición en la amistad, with introduction and notes. The edition was prepared by Valerie Hegstrom on the basis of the unique extant manuscript of Zayas's work. The volume consists of twenty-nine pages of introduction , a photographic reproduction of the first and last folios ofthe manuscript , and the 2914-line play-text itself, with the English prose translation of Catherine Larson printed facing the Spanish text. Hegstrom's aim in preparing this edition has been to make Zayas's play "available to undergraduate and graduate students and comedia specialists in the United States" (26), since three earlier editions (that of Serrano y Sanz from 1905, reprinted in 1975; that ofMelloni dating from 1983 with apparatus and introduction in Italian; and that of González Santamera and Doménech from 1994) are not easily accessible to American readers. While Hegstrom's edition was in final stages ofpreparation , Teresa Soufas's edition oíLa traición appeared in Women's Acts: Plays by Women Dramatists of Spain's Golden Age (Lexington: U of Kentucky P, 1997). Hegstrom plausibly argues that the Biblioteca Nacional Madrid manuscript (Res. 173) is not likely an autograph (14, 26), which opinion coincides with that of Serrano y Sanz in his 1905 edition (2: 590, nl), in contrast with Soufas in her edition, who, without presenting evidence, calls the manuscript an autograph (274). While Hegstrom has not attempted to date the hand ofthe manuscript, Serrano y Sanz dated it mid-seventeenth 201 202BCom, Vol. 55, No. 1 (2003) century. Soufas has convincingly proposed 1628-32 as the date of composition ofZayas's play, while Hegstrom, on the basis of evidence available to her, offers a further refinement ofthe date ofcomposition as 1632, or close to that year (16). In addition to being a carefully prepared edition, with helpful annotation relating to the unusual spelling ofwords, as well as problematic readings in the manuscript, the Hegstrom/Larson volume provides students and scholars a readable English translation of Zayas's play prepared by Catherine Larson. Hegstrom's annotation reflects her consultation of the three previously published editions in textual matters, and includes the clarification of lexical items. I have verified Hegstrom's transcription of the first and final folios reproduced in the volume (35, 199) and have found it to be accurate. The annotation provided by Larson to the English translation for the most part clarifies cultural contexts and secondarily comments on the subsequent relationship to the text in question. The respective notes to the Spanish and English texts complement one another effectively. I did find, however, that there was greater need for clarification of the language used by the lower-class characters, most notably that ofthe gracioso León. For example, the passage on pp. 52-58 requires greater annotation to illuminate further the levels of meaning in Leon's speeches. Hegstrom's criteria for regularization and modernization ofthe Spanish text follow those established by most Comedia scholars, retaining distinctive spelling practices that reflect pronunciation habits of certain characters or which are important for metrical or rhyming purposes (26-27). I have found a limited number of typographical errors in the Spanish text, in particular in words requiring accentuation near the end of the play; for example, "poder en él vivir ..." (v. 2501). One final criticism of the Spanish text relates to the orthoepy, for I have found one instance in which diéresis is necessary for proper line scansion ("si quieres que yo pueda confiada [sic for confiada]," an eleven-syllable line, v. 2073), and another verse in which diéresis is necessary on eitherfiel or criado for correct scansion ("¡Ay, León, ay, fiel criado!," an eight-syllable verse, v. 2156). These two cases lead me to suspect that there may be others, since this aspect of the poetry is not mentioned anywhere in the annotation to the Spanish text nor in the introduction. Another criticism has to...