Tirso de Molina's Self-Plagiarism, Constructed Forms, and Compositional Procedures in the Renaissance

TIRSO DE MOLINA'S SELF-PLAGIARISM, CONSTRUCTED FORMS, AND COMPOSITIONAL PROCEDURES IN THE RENAISSANCE DAVID H. DARST Florida State University One of the notable peculiarities of Tirso de Molina's dramatic creativity is that he repeatedly portrayed the same visual scenes of action, apparently heedless to the theme or content of the particular drama in which the moment transpired. These identical scenes and episodes that so abound in Tirso's works have been noted by a number of scholars. At the turn of the century Emilio Cotarelo y Mori' documented the following substantial resemblances in plot material: 1) the first moments of Las quinas de Portugal and Los lagos de San Vicente; 2) a comic scene in La villana de la Sagra (III, xiii)2 and La celosa de sì misma (III, xviii); 3) Cautela contra cautela and El amor y la amistad in all of the first Act and part of the second; 4) Esto sí que es negociar and El melancólico; and 5) El árbol de mejorfruto and La ventura con el nombre. In 1936, Gerald WadeJ reviewed Cotarelo's findings and added to the list the use of one and the same situation in 1) Por el sótano y el trono, Los balcones de Madrid, and En Madridy en una casa; 2) Las quinas de Portugal (I, i), Los lagos de San Vicente (I, i), and La ventura con el nombre (III, ii); 3) Amar por señas (I, ix) and El amor y la amistad (III, xvi); 4) Quien calla otorga, Amor y celos hacen discretos, and Amarpor arte mayor; and 5) some coincidences in plot between Tirso's prose book Los cigarrales de Toledo and his dramas. Wade also commented on the reason for so much repetition, which he termed self-plagiarism: «There are two major reasons why Tirso made subsequent use of plot material which he had developed previously. In the first place, even his universal genius could not on every occasion provide absolutely new material. Again, he seems to have been reluctant to plagiarize material from other playwrights» (p. 56). Guillermo Guastavino Gallent' later contributed an essay that demonstrated how scenes xi and xii, Act II, of La celosa de sí misma, scene xx, Act II, of No hay peor sordo, and scenes iv and v, Act II, of Los balcones de Madrid are similar in plot. Another, different voice on the subject is that of Ion Tudor Agheana. In a chapter entitled «Self-Plagiarism versus Situational Drama» from his book The Situational Drama of Tirso de Molina (New York: Plaza Mayor, 1972), Agheana lists many of the aforementioned uses of similar 29 30Bulletin ofthe Comediantes plots, protagonists, and dramatic devices in different plays. He proposes a novel explanation: «What motivates Tirso's self-plagiarism is not alleged inability to produce fresh material, but rather a conscious effort to probe profoundly into the perceptive and expressive potential of his protagonists. . . . Tirso, we recall, was interested in exploring the more human facets of his protagonist and, whether self-plagiarism or not, he did so by exposing them to a large gamut of psychological and situational variations» (p. 97). A study by André Nougué5 in 1962 cited three themes concerned with the problem of appearance versus reality that occurred repeatedly in Tirso's dramas: 1) the «scène du rêve» in Tanto es lo de más como lo de menos (II, ?), Santa Juana Part II (IH, viii), El árbol de mejorfruto (III, xi), El vergonzoso en palacio (II, xiv), La mujer que manda en casa (I, vi-viii), and La mejor espigadera (I, ?); 2) the «scène mimée» in El vergonzoso en palacio (II, xiv), La vida y muerte de Herodes (III, vii-viii), La venganza de Tamar (II, vi), and El Aquiles (H, viii); and 3) «la thème des apparences ou de l'aberration des sens» in El castigo delpenseque (I and H), Esto si que es negociar (II and III), La villana de Va/lecas (III, iii), El Aquiles (II and III), Privar contra su gusto (H, ii-v), and Los hermanos parecidos (auto). Nougué's explanation for such a proliferation of repeated scenes was that...