The Prince in the Tower: Perceptions of La vida es sueño (review)

Reviews127 for us, theater in the sixteenth century certainly drew regularly upon the richness ofscene, plot, situation and character in Rojas' masterpiece. Pérez Priego (and Canet in the companion volume) has started the ball rolling: would that these dramatic texts now attract the attention of young scholars of the Spanish Renaissance in search of promising research projects. They are rich in much more than their nexus with "la celestinesca ," but we should be grateful that now, in their Celestina guise, they have been so handsomely resurrected. Joseph T. Snow Michigan State University De Armas, Frederick, editor. The Prince in the Tower: Perceptions ofha vida es sueño. Lewisburg, PA.: Bucknell University Press, 1993. Cloth. 229 pp. $39.50. The present volume grew out of an International Symposium on Calder ón's La vida es sueño held at The Pennsylvania State University, March 31 to April 2, 1990, organized by Prof. Fred de Armas. La vida es sueño has remained perhaps the most difficult ofall classical Spanish masterpieces because of its apparent distance from modern, and by now post-modern, sensibilities . This collection to my view traverses a considerable part of that distance on a number of fronts, and I am pleased to recommend it to students of Calderón. The volume is divided into five parts: a preface section which features an introduction by de Armas ("The Critical Tower") and essays by Anthony J. Cascardi ("Allegories of Power") and John J. Allen ("Staging"); a second part entitled "Strategies" which features articles by Edward H. Friedman ("Deference, Diffèrance: The Rhetoric of Deferral"), A. J. Valbuena-Briones ("The Strategy of the Painter of the World"), and Don W. Cruickshank ("El monstruo de losjardines and the Segismundization of Clarín"); a third section entitled "Love and Carnival" with chapters by Teresa S. Soufas ("Death as a Laughing Matter"), William R. Blue ("Carnival and Lenten Alternations"), and Thomas A. O'Connor ("La vida es sueño, Reason and Renunciation, versus La estatua de Prometeo, Love and Fulfillment"); a fourth section "The Dream" with contributions from Henry W. Sullivan ("The Oedipus Myth: Lacan and Dream Interpretation"), Daniel L. Heiple ("Life as Dream and the Philosophy of Disillusionment"), and Charles Ganelin ("Calderón in a Dream: The Duque de Rivas's El desengaño en un sueño"); and a fifth part entitled "The Shadow" with piec- 128BCom, Vol. 46, No. 1 (Summer 1994) es by Susan L. Fischer ('"This Thing of Darkness I/ Acknowledge Mine': Segismundo, Prospero, and Shadow"), Ruth Anthony [El Saffar] ("Violante : The Place ofRejection"), and Javier S. Herrero ('" Vivo cadáver': Segismundo in the Shadow"). In general, the quality of these contributions is quite good. Owing to limited space, however, my approach to this review will be to mention those essays which I personally found most noteworthy. De Armas's introductory essay was actually more than that, a comprehensive overview of the state of critical opinion about the play itself and Calderón as a dramatist. It is noteworthy and provides a succinct statement about present-day thinking about the play. Allen's essay on staging the play is interesting simply because, among the many significant areas that comedia criticism needs to address more fully, performance considerations have been largely overlooked. Allen's approach is historical and archeological in that he attempts to account for how specific scenes, notably the play's initial moment in which Rosaura falls off a horse, could have been staged in the corrales of the 17th century. Cruickshank argues for a contextual interpretation of La vida es sueño, and he relates the mythical structure and problematical ending ofthis play to one ofCalderón's later plays, El monstruo de losjardines, which contains numerous similarities to this play. The parallels between the two comedias lead to observations about significant parallels between Segismundo and Clarín. The essay by O'Connor is similar in development to the Cruickshank piece and uses a later play, La estatua de Prometeo, as the basis for gleaning new insights on La vida es sueño. O'Connor argues that La vida es sueño resists closure while La estatua de Prometeo promotes a more harmonious and comprehensive vision...