La comedia española y el teatro europeo del siglo XVII (review)

472Comparative Drama lished Church. Indeed, by the time ofhis knighthood in 1895, Foulkes perceptively points out, the roles of the theater and Church had been reversed: "The church had become the suitor, seeking through an alliance with the Theatre a place in, and influence over, the nation's increasingly secular culture" (234). Echoing my opening analogy of the similarity between Church and stage, Foulkes observes that during the reign of Queen Victoria, the "inherent affinity between preaching and acting was increasingly recognised" (239). In a short but focused "Epilogue," Foulkes summarizes his argument, and this succinct interpretation should be required reading for anyone interested in nineteenth -century British culture, not just for those examining the connection between Victorian steeples and stages. Robert Sawyer East Tennessee State University Henry W. Sullivan, Raúl A. Galoppe, and Mahlon L. Stoutz, Eds. La comedia española y el teatro europeo del siglo XVII. London: Támesis, 1999. Pp. ? + 193. $60.00. Carefully edited and printed on low-acid paper, this excellent collection of nine essays by different writers presents a multifaceted view of the influence exerted by the Spanish comedia on seventeenth-century European theater in Italy, France, Germany, and Poland. In the first study, "La comedia española en la Italia del siglo XVII" (1-36), Nancy L. D'Antuono states that the dramatic successes of Lope de Vega and his followers were brought by a Spanish company to Naples beginning about 1620. Subsequently, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, traveling acting companies from Italy were instrumental in popularizing the plots and characters typical of the Spanish Golden Age of comedia throughout most of Europe. This comparative study focuses on several scenarios: three based on Moreto's No puede ser and one on Calderóne Mejor está que estaba. Alejandro Cioranescu's extensive article (37-81), "Calderón y el teatro clásico francés," reveals that the Spaniard's cape-and-sword comedies (characterized by intrigue and careful stagecraft), not his more tragic or philosophical plays, were what interested the French early on, from 1640-1660. In separate sections, this study treats the adaptations ofthe ten Calderonian comedies most popular during those years: Casa con dos puertas mala es de guardar, La dama duende, and eight others. Cioranescu and the editors assume a reading knowledge ofFrench, since several extensive quotations are presented without Reviews473 translation, as are a small number ofquotations in the next essay by Frederick A. de Armas. His essay concentrates on several French adaptations of one of the already cited Calderonian comedies, "'¿Es dama o es torbellino?': La dama duende en Francia de D'Ouville a Hauteroche"(82-100). In the valuable article byJohn Loftis, "La comedia española en la Inglaterra del siglo XVH" (101-19), familiarity with French is also assumed, for while the Spanish quotations are also rendered in English, those in French remain untranslated. According to Loftis, in the years between the 1623 visit ofPrince Charles to Madrid and the closing of the English theaters in 1642, several adaptations based on Spanish plays were done by authors such as Shirley, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger. During the Restoration, the new dramatic form was an Anglicized version ofthe capa y espada plots, seen in some plays by Tuke, Wycherley, and Dryden. Also dealing with England, Angel M. Garcia Gómez (120-42) compares Sir Richard Fanshawe's 1653-54 paraphrase with its model, Hurtado de Mendoza's 1622-23 play Querer por sólo querer. Henry W. Sullivan, in a fascinating essay, "Una traducción flamenca de La devoción de la cruz de Calderón que no está perdida" (143-51), traces the unusual transmission ofthe text, gives a sketch ofthe relatively unknown Antonio Francisco Wouters, and discusses the letter's aesthetically and ideologically modified version of the original. Seventeenth-century Dutch theatrical life is summarized by Rina Walthaus (152-74), and she proposes Theodore Rodenburgh as the first Dutch adaptor ofSpanish works and themes. Martin Franzbach explores (175-85) the interchange with Spain at the three dominant cultural nuclei in German-speaking Europe: the Court of Leopold II at Vienna, the itinerant theatrical company of Johannes Welten, and the opera of Hamburg. According...