The Birth of a Theater (review)

Reviews113 These matters do not deprive Williamsen's work of its merit, which lies in the painstaking description of the evolution of the genre apart from, though intimately related to, the stellar dramatists who are the exception, not the rule. Even in the minor poets' failures we appreciate the techniques of the art form, its appeal to the ever more sophisticated audiences, and the changing sensibilities as the century progressed. Williamsen's perceptive argument that Spanish drama evolved on its own toward a neoclassic style rather than as an abrupt reaction to the comedia nueva is an important observation that merits further study. The reader of this book will have a more thorough understanding of the comedia's development in the 1600s, a better appreciation of the poets whose names are at best ancillary in studies devoted to the giants, and, thanks to Williamsen, a desire to read further in a field that seems inexhaustible. Williamsen has worked vigorously and diligently and the result is of lasting significance. Those who presume to understand the comedia are well advised to learn from this book what the genre, qua genre, entails. John G. Weiger University of Vermont SURTZ, RONALD E. The Birth of a Theater. Madrid: Castalia, 1979. Paper. 227 pp. As the subtitle indicates, this volume attempts to trace «Dramatic convention in the Spanish theater from Juan del Encina to Lope de Vega.» The author returns again and again to Encina's techniques, but only in the last chapter, «The Castilian Drama in the late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries,» do we find that Lope is treated to any extent, although earlier there are scattered references. Doubtless, the greatest contribution of this study is tracing how the dramatic idea may have developed under the influence of the liturgy in medieval Spain. Because of a lack of documents from the twelfth-century Auto de los Reyes Magos to an isolated work of Gómez Manrique (1427?-1490?), an attempt is made to fill the gap or accept concepts that the spiritual climate in some way was unfavorable , that militarism in the peninsula was so strong that men did 1 14BCom, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Summer 1983) not care for pious representations. The author points out, however, that even the recitation of the epic or the later romances perhaps had dramatic aspects. Classical grammarians such as Donatus and the Vergilian eclogue probably influenced Encina. One reads at the end of the first chapter: «Apparently , no play existed before the ninth century, but the fact that Amalarais and his school viewed the Mass as drama leads Hardison to the conclusion that 'the «dramatic instinct» of European man did not«die out» during the Middle Ages as historians of the drama have asserted. Instead it found expression in the central ceremony of Christian worship, the Mass.'» The author then states briefly the topics to be examined in the two following chapters. «Together, the liturgy and the court entertainment established certain conventions that were to become the theatrical conventions of Encina and his successors and that would eventually condition the rise of the comedia itself.» Because of few early extant plays it was inevitable that scholars would sooner or later tum to an examination of the liturgy, as did Luis Iglesias in a lengthy dissertation at Tulane University some years ago in which the plasticity of Franciscan tradition was stressed to some extent. One explanation of course for the sudden popularity of the «new» theater might well lie in the widespread availability of Encina 's Cancionero and Torres Naharro's Propalladia in numerous editions and the frequent publication of broadsides. In his discussion of «Temporal and Spatial Ambiguity,» Professor Surtz mentions the roles of «the pagan sibyls, Solomon, and three Old Testament prophets» in Gil Vicente's Auto da Sibila Casandra . These, like the proud sibyl Casandra, recognize the «true humility of Christ and the Virgin.» While it is evident that one has the «coexistence of the whole of historical time in the eternal nunc of sacred time and space, as exemplified in the Mass . . . ,» the author might have cited the same work earlier in his discussion of allegory since the most distinguished Old Testament figures...