Lucas Fernández (review)

powers of character drawing. The main motivating forces in Alarcón, Poesse views as being, in descending order: honor, loyalty, friendship and love. The writer also deemphasizes Alarcón's moralist leanings, hints at his misogyny, and shows that his interest in the occult was stronger than his rather conventional Catholicism. Poesse, while conceding La verdad sospechosa its due, offers the stimulating view in his Conclusion that La prueba de las promesas was structurally and thematically Alarcón's masterpiece. As one would expect of a bibliographer of Professor Poesse's distinction, the critical apparatus and notes are thorough and much more extensive than is usual in this series (some 25% of the total pagination). However, could not all footnotes consisting merely of a page reference have been incorporated into the text itself? One also wonders at the bibliographical inclusion of Stuart's 1910 study on the pundonor in a subject so extensively treated since. As regards translation of quotations. Professor Poesse has adopted the only solution of line-by-line renderings in idiomatic, modern English prose. I note only a few lapsi. "Protocoles" on p. 9 should be Protocolos, and Humor (p. 134) is an obvious misprint for Honor. The form "laudation" (p. 139, n. 3) does not exist in the OED. The admirable desire of the Twayne Series is to commission competent scholars to write a monograph that goes out to meet the non-specialist or intelligent English-language reader rather more than halfway. Dr. Poesse has struck to his brief and produced a lucid, compact and readable Alarconian study. He is certainly to be congratulated. University of Illinois, Chicago Circle.henry w. suixtvan dtéSf* LIHANI, JOHN. Lucas Fernández. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1973. 179 pp. $5.95. This survey of Lucas Fernández contains a biographical sketch ( Ch. 1 ) , an account of the literary and historical circumstances relevant to his theater (Chs. 2-4), an analysis of the Farsas y églogas al modo y estilo pastoril y caste üano published in Salamanca in 1514 (Chs. 5-9), and an evaluation of this playwright who along with Encina, Gil Vicente, and Torres Naharro formed the Salamancan School of Renaissance dramatists (Chs. 10-11). A chronology precedes the study; notes, a bibliography , and an index follow it. Drawing from Ricardo Espinosa Maeso's biographic essay, Lihani reconstructs the life of Lucas Fernández and formulates a new appraisal of him as an ambitious, socially-conscious man with an adventurous, active nature whose diverse responsibilities led him to travel in the province of Salamanca and in Portugal. Since no documentary proof exists of Lucas Fernández' personal relations with contemporary playwrights, "reasoned speculation" (39) is employed to posit "the friendship, and mutual awareness that the Iberian Renaissance dramatists had of each other" (46). To elucidate the circumstances that fostered Lucas Fernández' dramatic activity, Chapter 4 deals with the theatrical tradition. Rejecting both widelyheld notions about the genesis of medieval theater and the currently popular theory on the origins of Spanish secular drama, Lihani suggests that medieval theater grew from the interactive influences of religious services, Classical plays, and other entertain37 ment and asserts that religious and secular drama coexisted in the Middle Ages in Spain; in fact, secular drama may have preceded religious plays. In any event, the theatrical tradition involves the church, a gathering place of the times. The study of Espinosa Maeso's publication of church records of Corpus Christi celebrations sponsored by the Cathedral of Salamanca from 1501 to 1562 emphasizes Lucas Fernández' collaboration, the nature of the festivities, their preparations, church expenditures, and the rise and fall of the popularity of plays. The remainder of the book focuses on the works themselves. Lihani affirms that Lucas Fernández, the first Spanish dramatist to use the word comedia to refer to his own plays, surpassed his contemporaries in the use of explicit stage directions and Golden Age writers in the accurate depiction of the Salamancan dialect. For Lihani, the Auto de la pasión prepares the way for the auto sacramental, the episodic slapstick scenes of the Farsa de Probos y el soldado presage the entremés, and the Diálogo para...