The Ambiguous Mirror: Dreams in Spanish Literature by Julian Palley (review)

Book Reviews155 picture of the rank and file English Protestant servant" as seen by English papists (177), and that King Lear is a "drama of Christian redemption" in which God sustains the right (214). Predictably enough, there are times when the burgeoning critical center of this wide-ranging book cannot hold; yet even this serious flaw cannot obscure Murphy's most significant achievement — the quite remarkable mass of background material that his tireless spadework has uncovered. All that anyone could possibly want to know about the "Babington world" and its religio-political machinations are here painstakingly set forth. Indeed, there are times when Murphy's pages read more like an inventoriai tour deforce than simple investigative scholarship. Consider, for example, the dizzying sequence (96-97) during which Murphy refers directly to some forty separate personages in dissecting the complicated network of familial and political associations that bind them. The book abounds with passages of this sort, and the happy reader who can maintain both his syntactic equilibrium and his powers of absorption will finish this study gorged with an astonishingamount offactual information. For his exacting presentation offact, the author merits both high praise and many thanks. The critical conclusions drawn from this mine of information, however, are another matter. Much of the persuasiveness of Murphy's argument depends upon hearing with his ear; that is, agreeing with him that the rhetorical and ideational connections he sees among literary works are clear and probable. To be sure, in many instances he deserves the benefit of the doubt, but in many others he does not. Chapter five, for example, in which Murphy attempts to link the work of Day with that of Sidney and Shakespeare is particularly unconvincing. Although he does admit that there is no question of direct "borrowing" between Day's work and Shakespeare's, the "odd resonance[s]" Murphy alleges (138) seem far-fetched at best. And Murphy's assertion regarding the key connection between Harsnett's allusion to Will Sommers and Shakespeare's Fool seems equally tenuous (172-75). Here Murphy should at least have explained how he could regard as an apparent source for King Lear a passage not even mentioned in Geoffrey Bullough's important study of Shakespeare's sources (Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, 7 [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975]). But despite the frequent reservations that one may have about Murphy's handling of his material, his book deserves to be taken seriously if only because of the useful body ofbackground information it makes readily accessible . And for those readers who hear echoing in this "complex intertextuality" what Murphy hears, the book may very likely prove critically persuasive as well. JOSEPH CANDIDO University ofArkansas JULIAN PALLEY. The Ambiguous Mirror: Dreams in Spanish Literature. Valencia-Chapel Hill: Ediciones Albatross/Hispanófila, 1983. 253 p. Julian Palley, in his introduction, tells his readers quite clearly what he proposes to accomplish and from what critical point of view he intends to 156Book Reviews approach his subject. The Ambiguous Mirror is intended as an overview rather than an in-depth studyofparticular works, and the point ofview is to be somewhat eclectic. In the first instance, it is a fair contract; this book provides a historical sequence ofexamples. From Juan Manuel's Fable ofDonIllan and the well-known romance "Death and the Lover" from the medieval period, through Renaissance poetry and Baroque theater, with Lope's El caballero de Olmedo, he continues with the "Cave of Montesino" episode from the Quijote and a long discussion of La vida es sueño. From the Romantics he chooses the post-Romantics Bécquer and Rosalía de Castro, and for modern examples Antonio Machado, Carmen Martin Gaite, and Lorca. In an epilogue he discusses Borges, but considers him more a cosmopolitan than a Spanish literary figure. In his conclusion he also touches on two dream sequences in Galdós' Fortunata y Jacinta. All his choices are important works, if somewhat conventional , though not all are, in the strictest sense, dreams. All are consonant with his major theme: Life is mirrored in dreams, and dreams in life. His centerpiece is La vida es sueño, in which life imitates dream. The critical point...