Don Gil de las calzas verdes (review)

In this new edition of Don Gil de las calzas verdes, ably edited by Enrique García Santo-Tomás, Tirso's comedia cortesana receives the Cátedra treatment, a compact print edition with an extensive scholarly apparatus and a shiny black cover that helps bestow on the play canonical status. A masterwork of intrigue and shifting identities first performed in 1615, Don Gil boasts one of the most complicated plots in all of early modern Spanish theater. Here, as well, Tirso (1579-1648) demonstrates sensitivity to the condition of women in Doña Juana, unperturbed redeemer of her own honor, and creates a memorable gracioso in Caramanchel. Central to both action and character is the Madrid of the author.

In his introduction, García Santo-Tomás argues for the playwright's skill in dramatizing place, revealing "una soprendente familiaridad con el tejido urbano" of Madrid (20), where Don Gil takes place and Tirso lived from 1619 to 1625. In "Madrid como motivación escénica," García Santo-Tomás contends that the reader should know the city to know the play "[...] para apreciar [...] las resonancias laberínticas en esta fusión entre el espacio físico y el teatral que define Don Gil" (20). (The relationship between place and its literary representation is the editor's particular expertise, as evidenced in his Espacio urbano y creación literaria en el Madrid de Felipe IV [2004] and his earlier study on Lope [2000].) García Santo-Tomás paints a vibrant portrait of baroque Madrid, characterized by frenetic expansion, political crisis, and artistic innovation, an "egregio parnaso" (22).

"La comedia urbana de Tirso de Molina" considers Tirso's capa y espada plays as a group, allowing the editor to relate Don Gil to later works written during his residence in the capital. The playwright affirms Madrid as the "here and now" and frequently depicts new sites of the city; nonetheless his portrayal is "un cariz ambiguo" (33). García Santo-Tomás makes prescient comments on Tirso's use of interior spaces to intensify action and the material world of an early modern house, which often takes on unexpected symbolism. Tirso reformulates "home" as distinct from the common understanding, a space that allows a degree of female agency: "La noción tradicional del hogar deriva hacia un concepto doméstico como un ente híbrido y no sujeto a reglas masculinas" (38). At the same time, interior space is embedded in its urban setting through allusions to the city that lies beyond the exterior walls.

In "El viaje, el mercado, el sentimiento," on discussing Don Gil exclusively, García Santo-Tomás describes how the movement of characters, letters, and money from the periphery to the center establishes the symbolic place of Madrid in early modern Spain, "un centro neurálgico" (32). Tirso shows us how identity becomes theatrical in the metropolis, a matter of names, costumes, and speech. He points to the effects of urban culture on the characters, their success predicated on understanding the new rules of the game (Doña Juana, Caramanchel, Doña Inés) or not (Don Martín, Don Pedro).

"'Plata quebrada': la identidad como desencuentro" poses the problem of identity based on conduct rather than nature. The editor makes a forceful connection to place: "[C]on sus idas y venidas y sus cambios de vestuario, con sus voces naturales e impostadas, con sus conductas innatas y aprendidas, este don Gil de las calzas verdes será entonces la ciudad misma, el espectáculo completo, el teatro puro" (57-58). Decoupled from any single character by the closing scene, Don Gil is an homage to the fantasy of Madrid.

This edition also includes a detailed performance history and a thoughtful plot summary, important to new readers of this play. A list of previous editions and a well-selected bibliography round out the scholarly grounding. In addition to modernized spelling and grammar, the play text...