Interpretando la comedia (review)

Reviews75 HESSE, EVERETT W. Interpretando la comedia. Madrid: Ediciones José Porrúa Turanzas, 1977. Paper. 184 pp. $10.00. In his preface to this new collection of ten essays Professor Hesse writes:«nuestro propósito es ampliar y revisar un análisis anterior, y acentuar esos aspectos que no han sido estudiados previamente, enfocando nuestra atención en los elementos sociológicos, psicológicos, éticos y estéticos los cuales atraen mucho al lector moderno. Hemos escogido estos elementos también porque, a nuestrojuicio, describen mejor a la comedia como una imitación de la vida.» With the words «En algunos casos ofrecemos dos veces un análisis e interpretaci ón de la misma comedia, pero desde distintos puntos de vista, describiendo ese aspecto que queremos subrayar, » he prepares his reader to expect a deliberately limited scope in some of the individual essays as well as some repetition from essay to essay of critical material and detail of plot. The ten individual studies are grouped into four parts, which are called«Lope de Vega,» «Tirso de Molina,» «Calderón,» and «Aspectos de la Comedia .» There is a useful index, but no comprehensive bibliography. In«La perversión del amor en El castigo sin venganza» Professor Hesse identifies and examines six aspects of the perversion or corruption of love that he discovers in the relationships between the principal characters. In «El arte de encubrir la realidad en El castigo sin venganza» he demonstrates how the tragedy is brought about by the efforts of each of the principal characters to hide from the others his or her true motives. In «Las nociones del amor en Fuenteovejuna» he studies the effects that self-love, sexual desire and altruism have on the principal characters and how changes in their attitudes toward these aspects of love influence their actions. In «La imaginación creadora en El vergonzoso en palacio» Professor Hesse shows how the creative imagination of the principal characters leads to misunderstandings as they assume new roles and rewrite the «script» they are enacting. Using as his guide the analysis of the psychologist W. R. D. Fairbairn, in «La personalidad de Gutierre en El médico de su honra» Professor Hesse traces the deterioration into schizophrenia of Calderón's protagonist. He demonstrates in «Los tribunales del honor en El médico de su honra» his conception of the play as a series of honor trials in which the principal characters argue their points of view in the royal court (with the King Peter as judge) as well as in the court of public opinion (with the reader or the audience as jury). He studies in detail the mental conflicts and the dreams of the principal characters and their use of the power of suggestion in «La realidad psíquica en Za vida es sueño. » Lionel Abel's book is his point of departure for a discussion in «El arte de metateatro en La vida es sueño» of Calderón's use in this play of improvisation, onstage «prompters,» the play-within-theplay technique, the characters' awareness of their own role-playing, and the confusion that is created for them by the representation in the play of the metaphors of the world as a stage and life as a dream. Professor Hesse examines in «El doble criterio de valores en la Comedia» situations in six plays by Lope, Tirso and Calderón (El castigo sin venganza, Los melindres de Beiisa, El burlador de Sevilla, El médico de su honra, 76Bulletin ofthe Comediantes La devoción de la cruz and La vida es sueño) in which individual characters either create for themselves a double standard of ethics or abandon one moral position for another in an effort to fulfill an immoral desire, to cover up a misdeed, to protect personal interests, or to bolster a weakened sense of self-esteem. The final essay, «Perspectivas sobre la tragedia en el Siglo de Oro,» contains Professor Hesse's description of the «new» tragedy of the Spanish Golden Age, which is characterized by its «preocupación con la vida interior opsíquica de sus personajes.» (p. 175) The major flaw in this attractive book...