Julia's Reasoning in Calderon's La Devocion De La Cruz

ness, the interior duplication represented by Octavio's words serve as an internal commentary, not only on other forms of dramatic representation, but more significantly on the whole design which Lelio has executed. Although it is a design which has a satisfactory conclusion , its absurdity and the confusion for all which it occasions, makes it no more nor less than slapstick (Octavio, in w. 3424-25, remarks that we must see what end this Plautus is going to give his game). Thus the role of internal commentary passes from Tadeo, who serves to foreshadow a possibly disastrous outcome for his master's machinations, to Octavio, the paternal figure who, on the verge of the happy dénouement, can see LeHo's design, not as a plan for tragedy, but the foolish antics of the young. And it is on this note that the comedia concludes. As Octavio says: Porque he reído un buen rato de lo que ahora aún no creo, con las burlas de Tadeo. . . . (vv. 3522-24) IV Góngora's play may not survive a close comparison with the best of Lope de Vega and the other major damatists of the seventeenth century — the fact that he finished only one play, and that perhaps inspired more by a desire to "answer" Lope's Arte nuevo than by artistic necessity, indicates the lack of an adequate commitment to dramatic art. But as our comments have suggested , it does possess some interesting qualities that merit discussion, quaHties that prevent it, when the final balance is struck, from being an embarrassment to the Cordoban's complete works. FOOTNOTES 1 Quatro comedias de diversos autores (Córodoba: Cea, 1613), and Qvatro comedias famosas de Don Luis de Góngora, y Lope de Vega Carpio (Madrid: L. S., 1617). 2We have used the text as it appears in Millé's edition of the complete works, 4 ed. (Madrid: Aguilar, 1956), pp. 709-816. 3 See ed. cit., pp. 817-71. 4 See éd. cit., pp. 875-84. 5 Robert Jammes, Etudes sur l'oeuvre poétique de don Luis de Góngora y Argote (Bordeaux : Institut d'Etudes Ibériques et IbéroAmericaines de l'Université de Bordeaux, 1967), pp. 472-505. 6 The dominance of this element in the comedia of the period has been the subject of a monographic study: Mario N. Pavia, Drama of the Siglo de Oro, a Study of Magic, Witchcraft , and Other Occult Beliefs (New York: Hispanic Institute in the United States, 1959). But then, given Shakespeare, this element of seventeenth-century literature should not be surprising. 7 These two leitmotivs are again exchanged, but only once, in the middle of Act II, w. 1382-83 (Camilo) and w. 1394-95 (Tadeo). 8 The aspects of interior duplication in these compositions are discussed in David William Foster and Virginia Ramos Foster, Góngora (New York: Twayne, to appear). The term "interior duplication" is used here as Leon Livingstone presents it in "Interior Duplication and the Problem of Form in the Modern Spanish Novel." PMLA, 73 (1958), 393-406). JULIA'S REASONING IN CALDERÓN'S LA DEVOCIÓN DE LA CRUZ Florian Smieja, University of Western Ontario In her excellent study of the bandolera theme Melveena McKendrick deals with JuHa, the heroine of Calderón's La devoción de la cruz, declaring that "she turns to a life of crime out of despair in its fuU theological sense."1 I concur with this opinion. JuHa's state of mind becomes patent when, having escaped from the convent, she is thwarted in her desire to cHmb back to 37 her cell by the disappearance of the ladder. Seeing in this a sign from God she explains defiantly: Pues, si ya me habéis negado vuestra clemencia, mis hechos de mujer desesperada darán asombros al cielo, darán espantos al mundo, admiración a los tiempos, horror al mismo pecado y terror al mismo infierno. ( 824-831 )2 Her stand is expressed in unequivocal terms but it seems to me that JuHa has been aware of staking everything from the moment she decided to follow her suitor. Outraged by his unexplained departure , JuHa, a...